How To Spot & Nurture Potential in the Classroom

Do you have the time to spot and nurture the potential of the 30, 150 or 300 student you see in an average day? If you are like most teachers, your days are filled with delivering lesson plans and your evenings are filled with paperwork and grading assignments.

So you need ideas that enhance what you are already doing in the classroom and have a big impact on the lives of your students without adding to your To Do list.

Enhancing What You Already Do

A teacher's day is filled with communicating knowledge, testing for understanding and giving feedback. So that is where you already are investing your time. To enhance your students understanding of the material, making it relevant is the first step we recommend. However, the feedback portion of your day is where we think you can have the biggest affect on your students. What most students get feedback about is how well they are doing at passing the class. Few hear comments about what they excel at in the classroom, what they have a natural ability or knack for. But that type of comment is what will stay with them for a lifetime. So a slight shift in the type of feedback you give can make all the difference.

Making A Big Impact In A Student's Life

Take a moment and think back about your own days in school. Which teacher had the biggest positive impact on your life? How did they achieve that? Which one would have had a bigger impact on your life -- being told you were getting a B+ or being told exactly what you had a gift for?

Years after they graduate, students remember the moment and teachers who pointed out their talent and encouraged them to pursue it. For many, it can be a life defining moment that plants the seed for a career or business.

Being Perfectly Positioned To Spot Potential

Once a student starts spending the majority of their day in a classroom, teachers have the best opportunity to spot their gifts and talents. And seasoned teachers have a wealth of experience to draw on so they can spot the rare and unusual talents their students have. That, along with a lack of family bias, mean your words can carry enormous weight.

Just think about it. If you have seen hundreds or thousands of students throw a football, solve a calculus problem, learn to speak French, try out for band or write a poem -- it is easy to spot a student who has a natural ability for it. This is an opportunity which few parents and career counselors have.

Spotting Potential In Action

In order to spot your students' potential, you need to know what you are looking for. We offer several pages that will help you learn more about potential and the basics of gifts and talents.

Telling The Student About Their Potential

Once you spot a gift or talent, you want to tell your student what it is and how special it is. Here are a few tips ...

Make the feedback very specific, so the student knows exactly what skill they excel at. Instead of telling them they are good at writing, tell them the specific thing they are great at -- such as creating real life characters, crafting memorable dialog, using witty turns of phrase, making persuasive arguments or designing dramatic plot twists.
Keep your comments focused on the skill and how excellent, unusual, rare or strong it is. You want to give them food for thought, something to mull over. The focus should be on planting the seed that they can excel at something, and giving them a hint of what it is. Many students need time to absorb this type of information, and saying anything else may overwhelm them. Let them decide when they are curious enough to want to know more.
Avoid mentioning a specific job title or profession. Unfortunately, many people make the mistake of immediately suggesting a career -- and that is what the student walks away remembering. There are thousands of jobs, careers and businesses that can be built around any one ability -- so the chances are very slight you would guess the right one. And mentioning the wrong one has kept many students from paying attention to the natural talent that sparked the comment.
If they ask for more information, you might suggest what they can do to explore, develop or use it further. Again, avoid saying too much, since any advise can easily overshadow what they are gifted at. But, you can suggest how they can further explore their gift. That could mean suggesting they participate in an after school activity, choose a specific homework assignment, or just spend some extra time developing on their talent. However, the idea that they may be gifted at anything may be so new to them, that they need time to let the idea sink in before they do anything about it. So do not be discouraged if they do not follow your advice.

Making Potential Spotting A Regular Part of Your Day

The best way to make it a part of your day is to adapt the feedback method you already use. So use whatever you are doing now that works -- taking a moment to write a note in the margin of an assignment, pointing it out during class discussion or mentioning it after class as the student is leaving.

It may take a little practice to get a feel for how you want to pass on your personal insights about their potential and gifts.But, the important thing is to clearly state that you think they have a gift or talent that is special, and give them a good idea of exactly what it is. For example ...

"Hey, this is a great paper. You really seem to have a talent for expressing opposing views."

"Wow. That was a great save today. You have a knack for being in the right place at the right time to block goals."

That is all it takes -- a simple comment that is specific, gets right to the point, and is so unmistakable that it has the power to sink in.

After class, you may want to make a note of it so you can mention it in the next parent - teacher conference. pass it along to their career counselor, or follow it up during office hours if the student drops in. And if you want to challenge yourself, you can keep track of the gifts and talents you spot and see how many students you can impact in a big way.

Tools For Revealing Potential

If you want to learn more, we offer a free trial guidebook that helps people find their gifts & talents. You can use it to identify your own, get ideas from the way we word our questions for ways to talk to your students, or even use it as a homework assignment. We also share online our recipe for dream jobs, which you are welcome to share with your students.

The Next Step

You might also be interested in looking at our ...

Teacher, School Career Counselor & Administrator Pages

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