To Be or Not to Be. . .
Are we born smart or do we get smart?

Mrs. Smyth was my favorite teacher. She was young and graceful and wore camel-colored cashmere sweaters and matching wool skirts and smelled of Shalimar. Sometime around the holiday break in my fifth grade year, she told us she would be moving away. She assured me that she wouldn't leave us until after the school year was over and promised us her address. I adored her.

On the last day of school, I hung back, wanting to be the last person to say goodbye to Mrs. Smyth. I found little tasks to do around our classroom, picking up trash, straightening desks until the last two children were lining up for their hug goodbye. They happened to be Bobby Eaton and Sue Ewald, who I had known since pre-school. Mrs. Smyth hugged them and then placed a slender hand on their shoulders. "You two are so smart," she told them leaning down to look right in their eyes. "I expect to read about both of you when you receive Boettcher scholarships. You are definitely Boettcher material." Boettchers were reserved for Colorado's top graduating high school students.

I don't recall if she hugged me. But I am sure she didn't say anything about how smart I was. To me that meant I wasn't. I have often wondered if Sue and Bobby remember that moment.

Years later I heard nationally known Harvard scholar Jeff Howard speak to a group of educators about innate intelligence. He asked the group to respond to this question: Is smart something you are or something you can get? Intriguing question, intriguing way to pose it. The overwhelming majority of educators that day defended innate intelligence, an intelligence quotient, some hard-wired, pre-determined intelligence with which we are born. Nothing, they argued can drive that IQ number up or down. That's just the way it is.

Dr. Howard shattered those arguments with research reaching back generations. He told the group that the single most challenging and complex intellectual task human beings ever encounter is the development of oral language, which most do in the first five years of life. He cited further research that stated any human who has learned a working familiarity with oral language (around 1000 words) by the time he or she is five has the "innate" intelligence to learn calculus, to speak and write at least one additional language, to read at a college level and to write a complex essay-length piece. It's a matter of teaching, he said, the quality of teaching. I will not forget the stunned silence in that room.

Dr. Howard, who happens to be African American and happens to have grown up in an impoverished community, suggested that children of poverty and children of color have, for generations, been burdened with artificial notions of intelligence. Even parents, he argued, unwittingly contribute to the problem. His anecdotes sounded all too familiar – how many times had I heard parents of my students say "he's our gifted one"?

Since hearing Dr. Howard, I have been acutely aware of my propensity to think of intelligence as a fixed commodity. I thought about the way I spoke of colleagues and friends. "She's so smart, third in her law school class. . . " I began to look more closely at the children I taught. I began to scrutinize the way I taught. Why did I reserve certain projects for children I perceived to be brightest? Were Bobby Eaton and Sue Ewald really smarter than I, as I had believed for so many years? Or did my beloved Mrs. Smyth have it wrong?

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My first Masters degree is in Special Education. I studied children with "learning disabilities", children who had been identified for special education services. I read studies that suggested 3–5% of children have a legitimate learning disability but have not one less ounce of aptitude than their peers. I wondered why 12 percent of children in my school were identified for special education services. I decided to use my Masters thesis to expose what I perceived to be false dichotomies between labeled children and non-labeled children.

My thesis was a case study focusing on a young man named Elliot, who is today 30 years old and an expectant father. Elliot was one step away from a full residential treatment facility when I met him. He had witnessed a murder in his kitchen when he was five and watched as his father was arrested, and that was only the beginning of Elliot's nightmare.

When I met Elliot, he had three "special education" labels and spent most of his day in counseling. My intervention with him involved using instructional techniques I read about in journals about teaching "gifted" children. I worked with him in a summer program, engaging him in independent research, rigorous writing and reading tasks that all the tests would have indicated were too difficult.

Perhaps it is anticlimactic to report that Elliot thrived when presented with intellectually engaging material. His oral language grew and he showed an interest in stories and research rather than throwing chairs. He started to read at age 12. He started to think of himself as an intellectually capable person.

I won't suggest that his life has been a fairy tale. He eventually dropped out, completed high school in a GED program, and had two run-ins with the law, one of which landed him in jail for 7 months. Today Elliot keeps us posted on his challenges and triumphs. There are plenty of both. Throughout, however, Elliot has always told me that he is fully aware that he has the intellectual capacity to do anything he chooses.

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What does this mean for our classrooms? Does it mean we shouldn't tell individual children they are smart because someone else might be listening? Does it mean we should always use techniques reserved for the gifted? Does it mean everyone is the same? Of course not.

I believe it does mean we should take a closer look at our own perceptions of intelligence. Do we believe it is a fixed asset or something to be developed? Do we believe that our students' behavior and motivation are related to their so-called aptitude? Do we believe that children who come from challenging circumstances like Elliot's are less likely to be smart? Are we comfortable with an increasing percentage of our children being labeled for special education services?

What would it take to reshape our beliefs and perceptions about intelligence? In Dr. Howard's words, how might we begin to consider intelligence something you get, rather than something you have?

During these weeks as we are gather a wide variety of data from children in Cornerstone classrooms, perhaps we can use the assessment process as a starting point for these conversations with colleagues. When the same old excuses insinuate themselves into a conversation, perhaps we can look at things a little differently. If we start with the assumption that all children have the innate capacity to complete high level math, reading and writing, and to solve complex, multi-disciplinary problems, think how different the conversations might be. . .

• Instead of comparing one child's phenomenal performance with another whose scores were somewhat disappointing, why not sit down with the children's teachers and talk about what the data indicate about next steps for each child?
• When a colleague looks at a child's assessment data, shrugs and says, "That's what I would expect," consider discussing how to engage the child in more, rather than less, challenging material.
• When a child becomes frustrated during an assessment procedure, how about saying, "You know, you're so lucky to get to work on something that is hard. Really smart people like you get to figure out really tough problems."
• Rather than discussing a possible special ed referral, how about discussing all the ways a teacher might revise classroom practices to challenge and engage that child?
• When a colleague expresses frustration about children's behavior in class, suggest that you work together to create a daily literacy block in which children are so deeply engaged and challenged in their reading and writing, they have little opportunity to misbehave?
• Instead of thinking of the easiest way to present a topic or idea to the children, might we consider telling them that the concept they're discussing is complicated, difficult and will take them a long time to learn, but that it is so significant and important to them that it will change the way they learn and remember for the rest of their lives?

We can't change the tone and community of America's schools simply by changing the way we talk to and about students. It took many of us well into adulthood to discover our intellect. Our own schooling revolved around endless rote tasks and drills, and our teachers made assumptions about the degree to which we were "Boettcher material." Our capacities were too often disguised and dormant. But they were there.

We can make dramatic changes for our children. If we focus studied attention on assuming a high level of innate intelligence, suddenly the tables are turned and the burden is on the adults in each child's life. And a delicious burden it is. Speaking of lucky! How lucky we are to be the ones who plan challenging ways to engage children so they will discover how really smart they all are!