This post is for parents and teachers:

I love cabbies. I could easily add Uber to my new phone, but I keep taking cabs to O’Hare anyway. I talk to such intriguing people, almost all of them immigrants from distant places. The last guy came from Nigeria, planning to retire to his already successful chicken farm, run by relatives while he drove.  A fellow before that was a Ukrainian who knew that dolphins were alien visitors. He directed me to websites holding further information. (Dolphin-fellow made my kids a little nervous.) A few years ago, I ran into difficulties when I tried to give an overly generous tip to a Turkish man, and the fare software refused the amount. I figured his wife could use the money for her ambitious medical education plans. When yesterday’s cabbie told me the five languages he spoke, he identified his Indian origins. His English carries only a trace of an accent. I am sure his Punjabi remains impeccable.

We talked about my cabbie’s kids. He described what they could do in school, a proud dad whose elementary-age son did algebra and whose younger daughter read so voraciously that he kept trying to get her to put her book down on road trips. I’d already flagged the kids as likely gifted when he made the remark that sealed my impression: “Their teachers, they always have them teach the other kids in the class.”

Under No Child Left Behind (and for other reasons I ought to explore further sometime), gifted education has taken heavy damage in the last few decades. How do we identify the gifted? Sometimes we do not bother because no programs exist for them. But if we want a good informal place to start finding the gifted, looking at groups helps. Most groups today are structured with a mix of abilities. The gifted today may be used as back-up teachers, while the “Real Teacher” works in other small groups around the room.

Parents: If your kids always seem to be teaching material to other kids, I recommend you become actively engaged in an effort to find them challenges worthy of their abilities and interests. Make sure they are being forced to think. If they can always teach what they are learning, the classroom material is too easy for them. You may have to go outside the school system to make enrichment happen. Consider creating your own home-schooling classes for the afternoon and invite likely neighbors. Online resources abound.

Teachers: In the flurry of data meetings, behavior meetings, Common Core meetings, planning meetings, curriculum meetings, and simply meeting meetings, many teachers are ridiculously swamped. But can I add one task to the to-do list? Look at those kids who you put into the group to help lead and teach within the group. Would some of them benefit from greater demands? Ask yourself how you could help them.