By Angela Small
Wholehearted Teaching of Gifted Young Women, written by educator Doctor Kathryn Fishman-Weaver, is a book about twenty gifted young women’s journeys through high school and college. It uses a youth participatory action research model, which means that the participants took part in investigating the issues that affect them, with guidance from their teacher, Dr. Fishman-Weaver. She explained that “[the book] is about identity, gender, giftedness, the power of personal storytelling, and the importance of community.”
Dr. Fishman-Weaver was inspired to write this book when running an empowerment group for high achieving young women with her colleague. She immediately knew it was something she wanted to further research, as “[she] noticed something pretty amazing happening in [the] group that [she] wanted to explore as a researcher, teacher, writer, and human being.” Even though navigating the complicated concepts at play took time, throughout the process she maintained the knowledge that the stories she discovered would help students, parents, and educators.
To understand major themes of the book, one must first understand the meaning of giftedness. Dr. Fishman-Weaver stressed that the term holds a great deal of nuance, as “achievement and giftedness are malleable depending on social-emotional conditions.” Therefore, she more often uses the terms “high achieving” and “academically high achieving.” As she wrote Wholehearted Teaching, Dr. Fishman-Weaver also kept in mind that what it means to be a young woman, or a gifted young woman, could not be generalized either. Therefore, she used common points in the stories of individuals as a basis for her book.
In this intersectional approach, Dr. Fishman-Weaver and her students explored the intricacies of gender, and how it intersects with other identities such as race and culture. She did in fact find trends from female identifying students, a common theme being young women being held to different standards than young men in academic settings. Some students described how they were met with shocked reactions when they said what field they were in. Another student pointed out how she was shamed for being assertive in areas for which her male peers were praised. As students in the study shared these stories, others opened up about similar experiences. Dr. Fishman-Weaver asserted the importance of discussions like these. “Finding these points of connection and having a safe space to explore what it meant for each of us to be a gifted young woman mattered,” she stressed.
Through these discussions, Dr. Fishman-Weaver found major threats facing academically high achieving young women. The main one was misunderstanding surrounding the definition of giftedness. The fact that “like all human beings, gifted young women are complex and in-progress,” can often be overlooked. According to Dr. Fishman-Weaver, this problem is contributed to by a number of factors. The first contributor is that schools mainly use quantitative measures of success. Dr. Fishman-Weaver found that “if a student is ‘successful’ by these measures, we assume they also have everything else together.” This means that the social-emotional needs of gifted young women are more likely to be overlooked in academic settings, as long as their grades are high. The next factor is that “gifted young women are socialized to mask their social-emotional challenges.” Therefore, the challenges of high achieving women are even more likely to be overlooked, as they become skillful at hiding them perhaps even from those who are looking. Lastly, schools are lacking when it comes to addressing social-emotional needs in a learning environment. When social and emotional learning is done, it may just be for “auxiliary to the numbers outlined in the first point.”
In order to solve these problems, Dr. Fishman-Weaver believes that the contrary needs to be done. Firstly, success at school should not exclusively be measured quantitatively. She advises that schools “celebrate creativity, compassion, service, and leadership.” Next, schools should motivate students to partake in “vulnerable story sharing,” rather than hiding their emotions. Finally, social-emotional learning should be incorporated into the curriculum. By doing so, Dr. Kathryn Fishman-Weaver hopes that schools will motivate young women to practice courage, find community, and partake in self-care.
Learning about the struggles of gifted young women bore some weight, so Dr. Fishman-Weaver had to cope with what she was doing by engaging in the same practices she stresses the importance of in her books. She “sought community, practiced courage, used writing as inquiry, attended to [her] own self-care, and tried to be kind and gentle with [her]self when things were challenging.” Since finishing her book, Dr. Fishman-Weaver says this framework continues to affect how she lives her personal life, as well as how she teaches her class. She is also now a more active listener, as “[she is] certainly more aware of what a gift personal stories are for the listener.”
Dr. Fishman-Weaver hopes that teachers and students alike get certain takeaways from her book. The message for teachers is to “actively and intentionally listen to the young women in [their] gifted education programs.” She also stresses the importance of discussing the issues that come with giftedness, and encourages telling personal stories in classrooms. She wants to leave the following message with students: “Your story matters. Practice courage and self-care. Seek out community. All of your feelings are valid.”
When asked what her advice is for young female identifying scholars who are struggling with the pressures of being academically high achieving, Dr. Fishman-Weaver emphasized the necessity of talking about how they’re feeling, taking care of themselves, and finding community with others. “We're all works in progress; figuring out life is a long-term journey,” she says.
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