ABSTRACT
This chapter offers some thoughts about the role of teachers when in contact with high-stress students, as well as some perspectives about assumptions, resilience, and loss. Teachers, activity directors, and coaches may actually spend more time with students than parents do, sometimes with sustained contact for several years. Teachers may assume that smiling, pleasant, handsome, organized, high-performing students are comfortable with themselves and others and are happy and satisfied. Teachers may consider losses related to achievement. Achievers may “lose” fun, time, play, friends, and opportunities to differentiate themselves from family. Informed teachers and school counselors can help students make sense of feelings and behaviors by providing psychoeducational information about social and emotional aspects of giftedness, “normal” responses to change, and resilience.
