If there’s one thing Marc Smolowitz’s upcoming documentary will include plenty of, it’s hope.
“If things are only bad,” says the director of
The G Word, “why wake up and make movies?”
If you’re wondering whether the “G” in
The G Word stands for gifted, well, Smolowitz says it’s more than that. “There are other ‘G’ words that get into the mix: grit, growth, even, as some say, un-gifted,” he says. All those perspectives are in the documentary, due to be released in late 2020, but “the lens of this movie is giftedness and that includes twice-exceptionality.”
Over the last 25 years, Smolowitz has directed or produced dozens of documentaries about “equity and social justice,” including Heaven Adores You about indie rocker Elliot Smith, Trembling Before God about gay Orthodox Jews, and The Power of Two about organ donors. Neurodiversity and the particular issues surrounding it have been in his wheelhouse since he was labeled as a gifted teenager in the 1970s.
So when a friend suggested in 2012 that Smolowitz turn his documentary camera on the world of giftedness, the subject struck a nerve.
“I’ve been dealing with stigma my whole life,” he says from his San Francisco Bay Area production company, 13th Gen. “I know how to lean into that conversation and how to use storytelling to combat stigma. Whenever people are disenfranchised, it is an interesting place to go.”
As Smolowitz dug deeper into the world of gifted education, the focus of the film quickly broadened to other, sometimes unexpected “places and spaces” where giftedness and neurodiversity are not found — unless looked for. Over the last few years, his cameras have gone into prisons, Indian reservations, communities along the U.S.-Mexican border, and rural, inner city, and an increasingly integrated suburban schools, searching for what we mean when we talk about giftedness or 2e.
“There are high numbers of 2e people in our population,” Smolowitz says, adding that it didn’t take long looking into twice-exceptionality before it became clear that neurodiversity is more typical than not. “This movie is all about questioning what giftedness looks like.
“Mainstream notions of giftedness are white, male, and privileged. We think Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg. But gifted is an identity. We ascribe it to certain people in our culture, but it doesn’t belong to just them.”
Smolowitz wants to open the question of “who gets to be gifted in America, and why?” and explore what that looks like. Included in this are focuses on race, gender, class, and zip code.
“Where you live informs the kind of educational access you’ve been afforded,” he says. “If you’ve grown up in the wrong neighborhood or are the wrong skin color, you are that much more unlikely to be identified and supported as gifted. Because of circumstance, the way the world disenfranchises people who are different, it becomes more a question about how you announce your self-agency, self-esteem, self-worth, and self-efficacy.
“Those four ‘selfs’ have to be in play for a child to look in a mirror and say, ‘yes, I’m smart, and yes, I can be successful in school, and yes, I am gifted.’”
Smolowitz sees a tight connection between ideas of giftedness and 2e or neurodiversity. He even describes 2e as being a “savior of gifted.” Smolowitz details how, historically, our culture focused on deficits. Over the last few decades, it became understood that children who had learning challenges needed to be supported in public schools. Diagnostic tools identified learning disabilities and educational best practices addressed those unique challenges.
“We saw a problem and we’re Americans, so we fixed it,” says Smolowitz, who is looking to a
Kickstarter campaign to help fund the film’s production. “The gifted kids, however, got left out of the equation. Giftedness never had the chance to express itself as a special need. It was like ‘these kids are strong, they’ll be fine.’
[perfectpullquote align=”right” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]This movie is all about questioning what giftedness looks like.[/perfectpullquote]
“Well, flash forward, and these kids are not fine,” he says, noting how educators now are realizing that some kids have learning deficits and are gifted at the same time.
Acknowledging that correctly screening for 2e happens on the local level, Smolowitz kept coming back to the stories of valiant families trying to get educators and administrators to recognize the special needs of their children.
“The more I dug into 2e, the more it became a major focus of the movie,” he says. “The dynamics of how 2e plays out are really decided at the local level — whether it’s the city, municipality, county, district, or how the superintendents and principals and stakeholders shape those discussions and awareness and understandings.
“If they get 2e, it’s going to become a priority. Whereas if someone sees it as an outlier of concern, they’re not going to take it as seriously.”
Smolowitz discovered the drive of “incredible moms — and sometimes dads” who are wholly dedicated to finding the best services for their child. That could mean the parent forming their own school and becoming a change agent in the community.
“(They) help other moms and dads and families make sense of all this stuff and get their needs met,” he says.
[perfectpullquote align=”left” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]If you’ve grown up in the wrong neighborhood or are the wrong skin color, you are that much more unlikely to be identified and supported as gifted.[/perfectpullquote]
The real drama of the movie comes from parents trying to advocate for their children and in the growing realization that “school” is coming to mean something very different in the 21st century than what it meant previously.
“The social contract is still there, guaranteeing public education, but many kids are not having their needs met, are sent home in tears, are being bullied, whatever that looks like, and those are just a few of the problems that parents experience,” he says. “Parents are now cobbling together an education for their children that makes sense for their family.”
When it works, when it all comes together, as Smolowitz’s film makes clear, there’s a “joy” for students in a 2e-specific classroom.
“The children find their tribe, others who behave like them, who see the world the way they do,” he says. “That may be the most important thing we can do. By creating a sense of community and identity for these kids, we help them develop a well-formed sense of self, so they can go out into the world and interact with other people with other experiences and be with each other on a level playing field with mutual respect.”
Yes, there is a hopeful ending to
The G Word. As Smolowitz says, “It’s a vibrant time to be thinking about how we serve these kids.”
