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It is popular in the education milieu today to talk about the dangers of assuming a deficit perspective, approaching students based upon our perceptions of their weaknesses rather than their strengths. Such a perspective deteriorates expectations for students and weakens educators* abilities to recognize giftedness in its various forms (Ford & Grantham, 2003). The most devastating brand of this sort of deficit thinking emerges when we mistake differenceparticularly difference from ourselves-for deficit. If one concentrates best while sitting still it may be difficult to imagine that somebody else-a student or colleague, perhaps-concentrates more effectively while pacing or tapping a pencil. Similarly, if one always has lived among people who speak a certain language variation, such as what people commonly refer to as" standard English," she or he might mistake somebody's use of a different variation, such as the …