Unwrapping the Gifted

Walking a Tightrope

2012-02-03T11:22:43Z

Being a teacher of the gifted (plus I'm program coordinator... In a small town we wear all the hats...) comes with a host of scenarios where I find myself walking that fine line, or feeling like the rope in a tug-of-war. It's a massive balancing act of accommodating (competing?) interests, advocacy efforts vs. status quo, and being a teacher AND a program director (but sometimes being viewed by my colleagues as only a teacher - and therefore dealing with misunderstandings about the rest of what I do).

We all face challenges and walk a fine line in parts of our lives, so I'm not out of the ordinary in that respect. But I do often encounter situations and individuals who don't see what I deal with. This post today isn't a complaint about the tightrope I walk (I love my job, warts and all), but rather a glimpse for you into the aspects of this job that are rarely talked about, often overlooked, and frequently misunderstood. It's easy to think that teaching the gifted kids is all rosy and happiness. In a regular classroom, many (but by no means all) of these kiddos are (often, but by no means always) eager, engaging, and progressing (particularly if/when they are challenged). Teachers dream of having a classroom full of learners like that, and since I (theoretically) do, the assumption can be that I don't have to "deal with" any of that other "stuff." But it's what you may not see about my job that brings the stressors, the angst, the sleepless nights, the ulcers, the tears, the fears, and the frustrations. It is this balancing act that (sometimes delights and yet also) wears me out daily...

How do I advocate for my students without offending and alienating my colleagues?

How do I teach my students about what it means to be gifted without also unintentionally "giving them the big head"?

How do I stay ahead of dozens of kids who are ahead of me?

How do I think outside the box to get their needs met within the box that is our current reality of School?

How do I educate administrators about giftedness and a gifted program when they never step foot in my classroom? (despite being invited!)

How do I diplomatically let the parent of an above-average-but-not-gifted student know that his child doesn't need the services I offer?

How do I convince a teacher that the student driving her up a wall every day may just be the brightest kid in the class?

How do I become a fully-recognized and fully-participating member of the staff at four different schools when I'm only at each part-time?

How do I remain informed, engaged, and excited about what's happening nationally in Gifted Education while still working within my local realities?

How do I continue to dream big about education, even after I come crashing down to earth?

How do I communicate that what I do with these learners is not about them being "better," it's simply about them being far outside the norm - and having unique needs because of that?

How do I tell a respected, award-winning teacher that it's not okay to daily use the gifted student in his class as a teacher's assistant?

How do I counteract the misperceptions about what I do without coming across as a know-it-all?

How do I help my students to navigate the fine lines that they walk, too, because of being gifted?

How do I help the parents of my students find that balance between letting their children "run" and not pushing them?

How do I do best at finding students who need gifted services when there's no perfect way to find them?

How do I adequately give my time to my students (whose needs range from challenge to advocacy to acceleration to so much more), their parents (who - outside of each other - have no one else they can talk to about the struggles and challenges they face parenting gifted kids... because no one else "gets it"), and my teacher colleagues (who - like most teachers - were ill-prepared for stretching the most advanced learners in their classrooms, but know they want to do right by them and have only me as a local resource to help them fill the void...)?

How do I weigh tough decisions, such as whether or not to skip David two grades, when to speak up in meetings and when to keep my mouth shut, and whether to risk alienating my colleagues for the sake of my students (or does doing so in turn pose any future risk to current or future students), ...?

How do I develop and maintain positive working relationships with those who don't understand or agree with what I do, but who still play a role in the education of my students?

How do I help others come to understand (the apparent paradox) that a gifted program is about more than academics?

How do I, indeed! For sixteen years, I've navigated these and other rivers, (usually) managing to not bump too wildly into either shore. I've made mistakes and learned lessons the hard way, I've had moments of brilliant strategic maneuvering, I've muddled along and sailed along. And while I've gotten bolder - as well as more tactful - over the years, none of it has gotten any easier. And I no longer expect it to. :o)

Which fine lines do you walk for the gifted youth in your life?

It's Webinar Time Again

2012-01-13T11:53:02Z

A new slate of webinars on Gifted Education and related topics is set for this spring. Various organizations offer these, and if you are interested and able to take advantage of these opportunities, there's something for everyone.

SENG (Supporting Emotional Needs of the Gifted) calls their webinars "SENGinars," and the next one is scheduled for Thursday, January 19th. Richard Cash will be talking about "Self-Regulation: Essential Skills for Adolescent Gifted Students." The description for this session reads:

As gifted children move into adolescence, motivating and engaging them in learning becomes more complex and complicated. In many cases this perceived lack of motivation and/or engagement may be due to the students' deficit in the academic strategies of self-regulation to learn independently. It is essential that parents and teacher assist students in developing the skills of self-regulation, including planning, organizing and meta-cognition. This session will offer suggestions as to how to develop self-regulated learners and ideas of how to encourage autonomous learning.

To sign up, visit this link. If you can't listen in live, you can access the recorded version after the fact. You can also access previous SENGinars and watch those recorded sessions. Topics that might be of interest are "Helping the Disorganized Gifted Family" with Kathleen Crombie, "Forging Partnerships with Teachers and Why They Often Don't Work" with Nancy Robinson, "Preparing Gifted Children for College... Or Preparing Them for Life?" with James Webb, "Helping Gifted Children to Cope with Trauma" with Marc Caplan and Lori Comallie-Caplan, "Existential Depression in Gifted Children and Adults" with James Webb, "You Can't Make Me Do It! How to Encourage Motivation from the Inside" with Cheryl Franklin-Rohr, and "Stress, Anxiety, and Gifted: Coping with Everyday Life" with Michele Kane.

A handful of webinars will be available in February through UC Irvine's Extension Office. Gifted Education related topics include "Cluster Grouping: A Paradigm Shift in Gifted Education," "Understanding and Supporting the Emotional Aspects of Giftedness," "Identifying, Serving, and Enfranchising Our Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Gifted Students," and "Technology Tools for GATE Teachers." All of UC Irvine's Gifted Education webinars are free. Their Recorded Events section also includes access to webinars from previous year. Just click the "Education" link for a list. (Youngsters in your life interested in Engineering, Information Technology, Life Sciences, Business Management, and other topics might be interested in some of their other webinars, too!

The National Association for Gifted Children's spring Webinars on Wednesdays series includes a host of timely topics:

* State of the Nation: Effective Advocacy Resources in a Challenging Climate
* The NAGC Pre-K - Grade 12 Gifted Programming Standards: Getting Started
* Assessments for Measuring Student Learning Outcomes
* Common Core State Standards: What Gifted Leaders Need to Know
* Instructional Strategies for Differentiated Assessments and Products Within the Classroom
* Action Plans: Bringing P-12 Gifted Programming Standards to Life
* P-12 Gifted Programming Standards: Models & Program Design
* Using the P-12 Gifted Programming Standards to Identify Gifted Low Income & Minority Students
* What Parents and Educators Should Know about RtI
* RtI & Twice-Exceptional Students: A Promising Fit
* The Intricacies of Twice-Exceptional Children: An Overview
* Double the Label, Double the Need: Strategies for Educators & Parents of Twice-Exceptional Children

Registration for NAGC's WoW series can be done online. Access to previously-aired webinars is available in their Live Learning Center. Additionally, currently available for free in their Live Learning Center are some of the most viewed sessions from last fall's NAGC convention in New Orleans, including "To Group or Not To Group," "Intelligences Outside the Normal Curve: Creating Social Capital and Leadership Potential in Young People," and "Differentiation and the Brain: Using 21st Century Knowledge to Support Student Growth."

Happy Learning! :o)

A Window to My Classrooms

2011-12-21T12:37:01Z

I have some more photos to share with you today... snapshots of various moments with my students which help to illustrate some of what we do, what some of their talents are, and some of what I teach them.

For my Advanced Studies (independent project) class, Binary is learning about electromagnetism. Here you can see he has rigged up a meter (consisting of a gauss meter, an AM radio, and an aluminum pole) to search for areas/items of high electromagnetic output:

The biggest surprise so far is that the item emitting the most electromagnetism in my classroom is not the laptops, not the cell phones, not the iPods, not the fluorescent lights, but rather the digital clock on my desk. Hmmm...

The ear buds that Binary was wearing (to hear the "feedback" from his meter) kept falling out of his ears. He became annoyed enough to find his own solution to the problem:

A couple months ago, a professor at the local tribal college invited me to give a presentation about gifted learners to the students in her Exceptional Needs class. These future teachers were learning about students whose needs within a classroom fall outside the norm, and I was granted two hours to give them all I could squeeze in as preparation for the gifted learners in their future classrooms. They invited me back a month later requesting that I bring a "student panel" - some of my students who could talk with them directly from the kids' point of view about what they love/need as learners. I brought about ten students, ranging from a sophomore (student on left below) to a 2nd grader (student on right below). I love how this photo gives a peek into the broad age range I work with every day!

Here Bradley is stumped by a Rush Hour puzzle.

As I've talked about before, a big focus of my work with my students is preparing them for how to deal with challenges in healthy ways. Gifted students so often breeze through school, especially the early years, that they don't always develop study skills, school work ethic, and academic persistence because they are never/rarely called upon to need those things. Part of my mission is to make sure they DO develop those skills, and this is accomplished by intentionally placing them in problem solving and learning scenarios where they can learn and develop those skills (with support as needed). Rather than giving up or goofing off like he used to when faced with a true challenge, you can see that Bradley is now learning to

As my students get older (about 4th or 5th grade), I dedicate a class discussion to the generation of multiple examples contrasting healthy/positive strategies for tolerating frustration with unhealthy/negative strategies. We talk about how the unhealthy and negative strategies are used by people because they offer some sort of immediate gratification, but they are unhealthy because they also have short- or long-term negative consequences. We talk about the importance of recognizing when they are facing a learning challenge and focusing on the use of healthy strategies for tolerating the frustration that can come with that. Again, we have this conversation because these students are the ones most likely to have had the fewest opportunities to develop their academic persistence. I also want them to be more aware of what types of strategies they use and to know that if they find themselves using unhealthy strategies, it's okay to ask someone (a parent, a counselor, myself) to help them transition to healthier ones. Here is the list generated a couple weeks ago by my 5th graders. (The section in the middle is for strategies that could be healthy in moderation or unhealthy in large doses. The blue, rectangular magnet is a little something I give them after the conversation. It includes ideas for "101 Ways to Cope with Stress.")

Analogies are an excellent (and the students think fun) way to develop comparative thinking.

This packet of analogies for my 3rd graders is challenging enough that they often have to look words up in the unabridged dictionary to figure out the solution:

Reagan is making a battlebot for Advanced Studies. Here he is working on one of the parts he might use, the motor from an old rotary fan. Because his Advanced English class conflicts with the class period when I teach Advanced Studies at our high school, we scheduled him into an earlier time slot that matches up with when I teach the class at our middle school. As the two buildings are next door to one another, this accommodates his schedule as well as his mentoring skills. The middle school students have great questions for him!

My friend's husband accidentally bought a couple dozen too many Eggies. I decided all the extras could be an interesting opportunity to toss a creative thinking challenge at some of my students. In about 20 minutes, my 2nd graders generated almost 40 ideas of "what these could be," including a spinning top, mouse barrel racing barrels, a monocle, cookie cutters, an hourglass, and (pictured) a rocket ship:

I do thinking-skills-based activities in Kindergarten and 1st grade classrooms. This is partly to develop higher-level and creative thinking skills in all students, as well as to give me an opportunity to see which students consistently exhibit gifted behaviors (and therefore which students might be most in need of the other services I offer). Here a 1st grader contemplates the solution to a cut-and-fold problem from a great little thinking book called Smart Snips:

Seventh grader Pickles is learning how to play the guitar and has expanded his musical interest to composing. Here, on the computer screen, you can see a work in progress using Noteflight:

Umbra, a senior, is learning six computer programming languages (Python, Perl, Java, html5, C++, and C#). Here he is working on creating a tkinter using Python:

I love the variety that comes with my job!

State of the States in Gifted Education 2011

2011-12-01T04:12:17Z

A couple weeks ago when I was reporting from the national gifted education conference, I mentioned the release of NAGC's biannual "State of the Nation in Gifted Education" report. At the time, details from the report weren't yet available online, but they are now, so I wanted to direct you to some links as well as highlight for you some additional points from the report that I find most intriguing.

Every other year, the National Association for Gifted Children surveys U.S. states (and territories) seeking information and data regarding the identification of and provision of services for gifted children in that state. For the 2010-2011 report, 44 states and one territory responded to the questionnaire about gifted policies, programs, services, and other practices.

The following are data points from the report that caught my interest:

* Thirty-one of the responding states have a mandate related to gifted and talented education, some requiring identification, some requiring services, and some requiring both.

* Fourteen states have no mandate to identify or provide services for gifted learners, and five of the states that do have mandates do not provide funding for those services.

* Fourteen states reported that the number of students in the state who are identified as gifted and talented is information not collected or not available.

* Only twenty-nine of the responding states report advanced proficiency indicators on district report cards or state accountability reporting forms. But shouldn't that be relevant information for an innovative nation to want to know about its schools in all states?

* While seven states have policies permitting early entrance to Kindergarten, ten states specifically do not allow early entrance. Another twenty-four states leave the decision to local districts.

* Decisions and policies regarding whether a student may be dually enrolled in middle and high school are made at the local level in most states. While ten states directly allow this kind of dual enrollment, eight states specifically prohibit middle/high school dual enrollment. Seventeen states allow high school credit to be earned in these situations, and one state specifically prohibits a middle school student taking high school courses to earn high school credit for that work.

* Fourteen states fund a virtual high school. (I imagine this number will continue to grow as technology becomes a more and more viable delivery option for schools and students.)

* Only six states require pre-service training for regular classroom teachers on characteristics and needs of gifted students. Yet it is in the regular classroom where gifted learners are expected to have the bulk of their learning needs met.

* In thirty-six states, regular classroom teachers are never required to receive training about the gifted learners who are inevitably in their classrooms.

* Twenty-one states require teachers who work specifically with gifted learners to have a
certificate or endorsement in gifted education. That means that more than half of the states do not expect teachers whose sole focus is the gifted learner to even know something about those students.

* A sizable majority of responding states said pre-service training in gifted education for future teachers (34) and professional development for general education teachers in instructional strategies for gifted learners (40) were areas in need of attention, along with the need for funding for these ventures (34).

* Twelve states cited a national focus on bringing underperforming students to proficiency as resulting in limited challenge for students who had met or surpassed that target already.

* Thirteen states indicated that gifted and talented education programs, services, or staffing had been reduced and/or that less money was being spent on those educational features as a result of national education law focusing on a bar of proficiency.

* Among the states that do provide some funding for gifted education, reported state funding per identified gifted student ranged from less than $8 to more than $2,500. (And this amount, obviously, would be $0 in other states.)

You can access a summary of the report at this link on NAGC's website. This four-page summary in PDF format would be a concise version of the data to distribute to stakeholders in your district.

An extensive overview citing many additional data points is available at this link.

A summary of the findings featuring a multitude of graphs and other visuals is available at this link. Two in particular that I found interesting were this one showing what states found to be most in need of attention regarding gifted learners:

and this one showing the level of training teachers in each state receive (or are never provided!) about gifted learners:

Images used with permission from the National Association for Gifted Children.

A news release, titled "Nation's Infrastructure to Support Gifted Students is Crumbling, Survey Finds," can be accessed here. It's in a nice format for sharing with stakeholders in your school or district.

And a flash drive containing a complete picture of the survey and its entirety of results is available for sale in the NAGC bookstore.

NAGC 2011 Day 4

2011-11-06T11:13:24Z

Well, I've now had beignet, jambalaya, and gumbo, in addition to the fried alligator. Quite a unique place, this New Orleans! :o)

I began Day 4 in a session by Miraca Gross about grouping practices and their impact on gifted learners. As she discussed in her presentation, since we know that gifted learners
* learn at a much faster pace
* retain more in a more efficient way
* have a higher mental age (think in ways more like children who are older)
* and have a greater ability to connect ideas and manipulate information,
then TRULY responding to their learning characteristics means providing them with curriculum that is
* paced faster
* pitched at a higher level
* and is more complex and abstract
than the curriculum provided for average learners. If it is too slow, too easy, and too simple, gifted learners (and I would add high potential learners who haven't been discovered yet) are robbed of the opportunity to show what they are truly capable of and to learn at the levels to which they can be stretched. I loved this quote from her: "A simplistic curriculum acts as an imposed camouflage on gifted learners." Followed by, "We have to start acknowledging the range of achievement in the mixed ability classroom and the amount of unnecessary revision [repetition] imposed on the bright and gifted students." And I practically cheered at this humdinger: "How do we justify an educational system that ignores competence and achievement, and utilizes chronological age as the primary, or only, factor in student placement?"

She went on to cover the advantages and disadvantages (all overcomeable, IMHO) [yes, I know that's not really a word ;o)] of various grouping practices where gifted learners have time together with intellectual peers (such as cluster grouping, subject acceleration, self-contained classrooms, pull-out, etc.). Among the advantages, she highlighted:
* higher levels of social and academic peer support
* increased opportunity for gifted learners to work within their zone of proximal development
* increased likelihood of encountering a curriculum that is differentiated to meet their learning needs

The mini keynote that I attended today was "Bullying of and by Gifted Children and Teens" with Jean Sunde Peterson, Tom Hebert, Dan Peters, and Michelle Haj-Broussard. Many children, unfortunately, experience bullying in its various forms, including gifted youth. The presenters pointed out some factors that impact the susceptibility of gifted children to bullying, such as the fact that many gifted children are so different and quirky, some of them aren't aware of (or don't care about) the social consequences of being outside the social norm, their keen sense of justice can prevent them from backing off of or ignoring what they perceive as injustices, and their heightened sensitivities can magnify the effect of bullying on them.

Among the "what to do" suggestions given for the helping adults in the lives of children experiencing bullying were the following (and these certainly are good advice for helping a child of any ability level who is being bullied):
* Make sure they have experiences where they feel liked and valued
* Provide a consistent presence in the child's life
* Offer them strategies and tools for dealing with bullying
* Assist them in their quest to find purpose and meaning in life
* Focus on their strengths
* Validate their input
* Consider a new environment
* "Help them focus on the marathon of life"

You might like to read this summary of some of the research on bullying and gifted children that was referenced in the presentation.

In the afternoon, I was part of a packed room that thoroughly enjoyed the humor and mathematical insights of the internationally well-loved Rachel McAnallen, a.k.a. Ms. Math (or now, Dr. Ms. Math, as she recently earned her PhD in Gifted Education at the age of 75! You can read her dissertation on math anxiety in elementary teachers here.) I've seen her present many times, but had never seen her do a session on fractions, so I was curious what her angle on that would be. She talked about teaching children "fractioneze," or the language of fractions. Here she demonstrates a way to teach accurate language for parts of a group, the beginnings of developing the concept of parts of a whole:

"One out of four is on wheels." "One out of four is black." "Two out of four have four legs." "Zero out of four are red." "Four out of four are not red." I encourage you to check out her thorough description of the whole lesson and process! She has it written so you can apply/adapt it to any grade level.

You can access other descriptions of her additional strategies for teaching fractions on her website. You can also access many of her other insightful, conceptual strategies for all grade levels there, too.

Well, I'm off to begin Day 5, followed by a long flight home. I hope to cover the rest of Days 3 and 4 later.

NAGC 2011 Day 3

2011-11-05T03:46:37Z

It's really only Day 3? It feels like Day 7!

I began today in a mini-keynote titled "Critical Questions in Talent Developement: Answered Through 40 Years of Longitudinal Research by Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY)," presented by Camilla Benbow and David Lubinski, both of Vanderbilt University. I loved the questions that were part of the description of this session in the program book, among them:

* "Who among talent search participants become eminent and creative as adults?"
* "Do educational interventions in adolescence boost adult creativity and professional accomplishment?"
* "Can we enhance the likelihood that true excellence will emerge?"

The 40 years of data that they analyzed included 5,000+ gifted youth in five different cohorts, many of them somehow connected to one of the Talent Search programs (at Johns Hopkins, Duke, and Northwestern). These are programs where (usually 7th grade-ish) students take the SAT or some other radically-off-level test and score at the highest levels, thereby qualifying themselves to attend the summer programs of intense immersion in advanced academic content hosted by these universities. Among their findings of the longitudinal data on these students are the following:

* The higher their age 12 or 13 SAT performance, the further their post high school accomplishments, even with all other important factors constant (motivation, support, others).
* In comparing grade-skippers with those of about equal ability who weren't grade-skipped (and were also comparable on about a dozen other variables), the grade-skippers were far more likely to get doctorates, be published, and achieve other markers of advanced "success." Additionally, they led overall more productive lives (i.e. they had access to more years of adulthood to be productive and contributing citizens).
* Those who entered STEM fields had greater spatial ability scores relative to their verbal ability scores (on their 7th grade Talent Search test), whereas those in all other future careers (except those earning 4-year business degrees) had greater verbal scores relative to their spatial scores.
* Kids with a higher "dose" of intervention opportunities became more successful and higher achievers than comparable kids with a less intense (or "low") "dose." Interventions really do make a difference for these advanced learners! The Talent Search students in the study (once identified and given the intense, highly-advanced summer coursework), didn't have to "wait to grow." They didn't have to wait until high school to take Algebra II or Calculus. They were ready to learn it, and got to do so in a very intense summer while also interacting with other similar kids who were also ready for the same material.

I'm serving as a mentor for one of the Javits-Frasier Scholars this week. The Javits-Frasier Teacher Scholarship Fund is available to teachers from Title I schools who are attending NAGC for the first time. Consider applying for next year (Denver, November 15-18, 2012); or, if you want to support the program, consider making a donation to the fund. Here are this year's Javits-Frasier Scholars:

Do you tweet? You can follow the goings-on via @nagcconvention!

I took a little time to wander the Exhibit Hall today and found the ALEKS booth. I have very recently begun to learn about ALEKS, so stopped to learn even more. It's even more incredible than I had thought! ALEKS is a fully-online (web-based), adaptive option for learning mathematics. After the student takes an initial (again - adaptive) assessment, the system provides the student with access to the content and problems he has just shown he is ready to learn and solve. The system includes handy pie charts (viewable to student, teacher, and parent) that show how much of the content the student has mastered (dark colors) and how much is yet to be mastered (light colors). Here is one example:

(ALEKS is a registered trademark of ALEKS Corporation.)

When solving a problem, there is an "Explain" button which pops up an explanation of how that problem works. If the explanation doesn't make sense, the student can click the "Another Explanation" button and have it explained in another way. There's even a "I haven't learned this yet" button on the initial assessment.

There is a worksheet option, too. The problems can all be done online, but they can also be printed for those who can't access the internet at home to do their work. When a student clicks to download a worksheet (at school, in this case), the answer key is immediately emailed to the teacher!

Obviously some outside instruction, particularly tasks involving manipulatives, would be needed (and more teacher-based), but for certain, somewhat sizeable, portions of math learning, this systems looks like it could fill a lot of opportunities for advanced learners ready to move on.

The "Review" tab allows the student to be re-assessed about every five hours or 20 topics. If any mastery has been lost since previously showing mastery, that portion is added back into the child's "pie" of material to be learned.

Yes, it is all correlated to mathematics standards: those of all 50 states (plus the Canadian territories), and the Common Core. "Textbook Integration" is also offered. You can tell the system that your classroom is using a particular math text and the system will adjust the problems given (and vocabulary used) to correlate with the material the students are encountering in their math texts.

Teachers can access and analyze individual student reports on their progress toward mastery of the standards, how much work they have done within ALEKS, and what they are ready to learn next. (Whole-class data of this type is available for the teacher to analyze, too.) Students ready to learn a particular topic could be grouped together for that instruction. Students who are far ahead can work at their quick pace and move on when ready to do so. It's real-time ready-to-learn learning.

And it's reasonably priced, ranging from $20 per student for one month of access, to $40 per student for 12 months of access. The fee gains the student access to the system, not access to a single course. So for those who might complete the available coursework for a class sooner than the "window," they can accelerate ahead at their own pace without having to pay additional funds. You can also try a free trial, good for up to 100 students for up to 3 months (assuming the students average 3 hours of work within the system per week.)

ALEKS could be used to supplement your current curriculum, or could be used to provide quality above-grade-level content to a student who has advanced beyond what the teacher or district can adequately provide. It could also be used for additional practice for students struggling more with mathematics.

I'm fried! I'll have to post the rest of today later.

NAGC 2011 Day 2

2011-11-04T06:03:51Z

Oh, where to even begin...! These days are long and intense and so full of information! As much as I will write here tonight, it will only be the tip of the iceberg.

The morning began with a "State of the Nation" message from NAGC Executive Director Nancy Green and NAGC President Paula Olszewski-Kubilius (one of these days I will learn how to spell her name rather than just copy/pasting it from the NAGC website...!) The "State of the Nation" report is a biannual survey of states that seeks information about their policies, programs, funding, and personnel for gifted education. The federal government doesn't perform this task, so NAGC's survey is the only national data collection of this type of information about the "state" of gifted education in America. (I would like to post a link to it for you, but currently their website is still showing the last biannual report.) Forty-three of the fifty states responded to the survey. The four over-arching conclusions from the survey are:
* Lack of accountability for schools and districts to reach these students, even when mandates are in place.
* Limited support for these students (with WIDE disparities in types and availability of services)
* Teachers are unprepared to meet the needs of these students (for example, only 6 states require training about gifted students for pre-service teachers)
* A patchwork collection of services (meaning in most places it is left up to the district, which often means in practice that little to nothing is happening)

Random tidbits revealed by the survey:
* In 36 states, teachers are never required to get ANY training about gifted learners.
* For those who teach gifted learners, in 24 states there is no requirement for special credentials or certification. In those states, you technically don't have to know ANYTHING about these unique students and yet you could still be hired to teach them. (It is apparently elsewhere as it is in Montana - they're happy if you're breathing and willing to fill the position for a year before, as many do, transitioning into a "regular" position.) (Do we hire basketball coaches who don't know anything about basketball? Do we hire Special Education teachers who don't know anything about learners who struggle? Do we hire science teachers with no special training in science education? Good grief.)
* The amount of funding that states provide for gifted education ranges from $0 (somewhat common) to a very rare $300 million.
* Ten states specifically DO NOT ALLOW early entrance to Kindergarten for children who would qualify for and need that option. (And only 7 states specifically DO allow it - meaning it's left up to the schools everywhere else, which leaves the option's availability open to misinformed misperceptions.)
* In more than half of our states, teachers working specifically with gifted learners are not required to seek or receive annual professional development about gifted learners. (But don't you want your doctor receiving annual training in her area of specialty?)

It's all a bit depressing, but as Paula said this morning, "We don't have the luxury of being discouraged. The kids need us to be alarmed, not discouraged." So what do we do to improve the state of our nation for our gifted learners? Share this information. Utilize the tools in the Advocacy Toolkit. Join NAGC's Legislative Action Network. Talk with stakeholders about the importance of casting a wide identification net across a K-12 open window. Create school climates that celebrate academic excellence.

(At some point, the PowerPoint for the presentation will be available here.)

For the half-day "Gifted Education Applications in the Classroom" sessions this morning and this afternoon, I was scheduled into two on Response to Intervention. The first was by George Betts and Robin Carey. Among my many take-aways from this session were the following questions, thoughts, ideas:
* What does the child need, and how can we give it to him when he needs it?
* How does the child respond to the intervention? And how do we then respond to her response?
* Implementing learner-based curriculum and instruction (it's about what the student needs and is ready for, not what the teacher wants to do).
* This book was highly recommended by someone sitting at the same table as me: "The NEW RtI: Response to Intelligence"
* And my biggest A-HA from the morning was regarding the Core or Level I tier. (In Colorado, where George and Robin are from, they call it the Universal Level.) For our struggling learners, Level I is where we find out what they can't do - and then provide the intervention to help them learn it. For our gifted learners, here's an additional way to think of that level: It's where we find out what they ALREADY know/can do - and then provide the intervention to help them move beyond that.

(At some point, the PowerPoint for this presentation will be posted here.)

Over lunch, I enjoyed chatting with Lauri Kirsch from Florida and Ken Dickson, the gentle giant, from Maryland, plus I met Jaime Castellano from the Navajo Reservation in Arizona and we shared stories about our experiences working with gifted Native youth. That's a big part of what coming to this convention is all about for me - getting to meet and interact with so many interesting people who do what I do elsewhere. Whether formally or informally, there's always so much to learn from one another :o)

The afternoon session on RTI that I attended was presented by Stuart Omdal, Daphne Pereles, and Lois Baldwin. Here are my summary points:
* Quotes from Daphne: "It [RTI] is about building a responsive system." "We don't trust that when we say 'all' we mean 'all.'" When implementing RTI - "You're never done. It's a continuous improvement process." And RTI "is about changing our broken education system." (here! here!)
* The six-legged table of principles for RTI implementation: 1) All students can and have the right to learn. 2) Early Intervention - for gifted learners - is key to reaching/catching them BEFORE they start to underachieve. 3) Tiered Interventions - a multi-tiered system of supports. It's interventions and services in tiers, not kids in tiers. 4) Use of Data should guide what we do for kids. 5) Collaboration creates shared ownership for student success. 6) Family Partnerships - "You get in the mud together."

My biggest A-HA from this session came to me when they were talking about the problem with the former special education "discrepancy model" for identification for services because it was a "wait to fail" model (i.e. some kids had to slip far enough for a discrepancy to appear before identification/services/interventions could be tried on that learner). Now with RTI, EARLY INTERVENTION means we can try these supports early on and see how the learner responds. Well, that got me thinking. With the (former) delayed identification and delayed intervention special education model, kids had to (essentially) "fail" first before they could get what they needed as learners. They had to wait to GROW. And that's exactly what happens in gifted education when we delay the identification process and subsequent interventions (and that's what they are - interventions) until (typically) 3rd grade. We're making the kids "wait to GROW." And I don't think that's right, either!

At the end of this session, Karen Rogers from the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota announced that UST is the first university to offer graduate certification specifically in "Twice Exceptional Education." It will be an online, 18-credit, 6-course program designed to "prepare educators to identify, provide services for, and develop/administer programs for children with dual exceptionalities." Interested? I imagine many of you are ;o) Visit this link to learn more and to apply!

Here's a link to Colorado's RTI page.

The PowerPoint for this session will at some point be posted here.

Next came the BIG MOMENT.... the opening keynote with Bill Nye the Science Guy! The scene totally cracked me up: A giant room packed with 3,000 teachers, all with their cell phones and digital cameras whipped out to capture whatever they could of the science guy to take back and show their students. (At least, that's why I was doing it, and I imagine it's why nearly everyone else was, too. I promised my students I would get as much video as I could of his speech, for as long as my 16 GB SD card had space and my battery had life.) At one point, I had to wonder, what other group of ADULTS besides teachers would get this excited about a kids' geek science TV star?! The whole room was thoroughly star-struck. The most hilarious moment (and there were many!) came at the very end when he finished and the room of a few thousand teachers gave him an instantaneous standing ovation. He was so stunned that he whipped out HIS cell phone camera to take a picture of US!

He told us fascinating stories about his dad (who had a sundial obsession and apparently - if I understood correctly - invented the sandial) and his mom (who was a codebreaker for the military during WWII); he encouraged us to nurture curiosity in our students and to make sure they ponder BIG questions like, "Are we alone in the universe?" and "Where did we come from?"; and he got me thinking when he referenced that ol' saying about how the bumblebee defies the laws of aerodynamics. He said his A-HA moment when pondering that was that "the problem is not the bee, it's the theory." (ie. It's the theory that doesn't fit, not the bee.) The bee is our students. The problem is not the gifted child who defies the "laws" of education, it's the other way around: the laws and theories don't (always) fit the child.

Honestly, I'm sure I could've had many more take-aways for you on this keynote, but I was 100% in the moment and my hands were busy videoing rather than taking notes. My students will be excited to learn I got some great video clips, though!

At the opening of the Exhibit Hall, I took a picture for you of the new handbook that I mentioned last night which is a guide for implementation of the new gifted education standards:

The evening concluded with an awards ceremony for many distinguished and inspiring individuals. Here are a few:

And the ceremony included some phenomenal student talent, including this choir (click to listen):

[Never mind... I couldn't figure out how to upload a video file. Suffice to say, the Caddo Magnet High School A Cappella Vocal Band was superb!]

Some of you asked me today (after reading that I had tried alligator for dinner last night) what sort of exotic cuisine I was going to try this evening. Well, ...

No adventurous opportunities presented themselves, and after the awards ceremony concluded, there were only a few hours left in the day and I needed to get writing... Perhaps tomorrow. Check back for a report on Day 3!

NAGC 2011 Day 1

2011-11-03T02:15:11Z

And it's that time of year again! :o)

The national gifted education conference kicked off today here in New Orleans with a day of "Gifted Education Essentials" sessions, including a full-group session this morning with Susan Johnsen offering a wealth of information and insights on the still-relatively-new Pre-K to Grade 12 Gifted Programming Standards. Newest this year in that regard is an extensive handbook created by NAGC as an in-depth guide to assist schools and districts in their implementation of the standards. (It's so new, as a matter of fact, that I can't find it listed on their website yet in order to offer you a link. When I find it, I'll pass it on.) Time was also provided this morning for us to discuss and share how we are already using/implementing the standards, plus any obstacles we're encountering in that regard. On one hand, it's good to hear one is not alone in these situations. On the other hand, it's sad to learn we're all dealing with the same challenges in our schools, districts, and states.

The afternoon session that I scheduled into today was "Understanding & Addressing the Needs of Young Gifted Children," presented by Richard Cash, Director of Gifted & Talented Services for the Bloomington, MN, school district. You can check out his full PowerPoint yourself at this link. Among the many, many things he talked about today regarding young gifted learners were the following:
* The importance of self-regulation in school for all kids, and in particular for gifted kids because in order to develop their giftedness and potential they will need to learn/know how to self-regulate the less-comfortable aspects of pursuit that don't go as swimmingly well as all the "easy" stuff does for them.
* Brain research is showing biological neural differences in the brains of gifted children, including a pre-frontal cortex that is a more efficient neural processor and has more activity as compared to the brains of their same-age average peers. To those of us in the field, this makes sense because we've all had a parent of a gifted child say to us, "My child can't/won't sleep" - and we know that it's because the kid can't get his brain to turn off. Apparently there is also research showing their brains have a greater number of neural cells, which means more synaptic connections and therefore expanded potential for higher-level thinking. (Geake & Dodson, 2005)
* One benefit of early identification and receipt of gifted services for the young gifted is early time together with intellectual peers - which quickens the timeframe in which these children get over the "big fish in a little pond" sense of themselves and realize, rather, that there are other highly intelligent kids out there, too (they're not alone), and that some of them are smarter than they are. (Much healthier to learn all this at a young age than it is when older!)
* Another benefit of early identification and receipt of gifted services for the young gifted is development of coping skills. Without gifted programming, and without those interactions with intellectual peers who can challenge them, they are far less likely to learn in a regular setting the toolbox of skills that will help them deal with challenges, frustration, and struggle. (Again - Much healthier to learn those coping skills at a young age by confronting those challenges early on than it is when older!) (This assists with the development of self-regulation.)
* The importance of academic rigor EARLY to prevent misdiagnosis of ADHD, ADD, EBD, etc. Some kids will exhibit those type of behaviors when the problem is actually an inappropriate curriculum, not an underlying disorder. When EARLY rigor is provided, they are far less likely to express their lack of stimulation by exhibiting those ADHD/ADD/EBD-like behaviors.
And these gems:
* "It's an opportunity gap, not an achievement gap."
* "These children have a barrel's worth of space but are only getting a cup's worth of fill."
* A resource mentioned by another attendee in this session: "Learning to Be a Durable Person," activities to develop social and emotional understanding in K-5 gifted learners. (Published by Prufrock Press.)

The afternoon was topped off by a "Leadership and Life Lessons from the Field" panel session featuring Joyce VanTassel-Baska, Karen Rogers, Julia Link Roberts, Tom Hébert, and George Betts (and moderated by Del Siegle).

(I wish I had a little more control over the spacing and formatting when I upload images here. Sorry for the funky spacing. I know it doesn't make sense.)
Moderator Del Siegle takes a moment to indulge his other interest, photography.
I loved Del's questions for the panel and it was a thoroughly enjoyable couple hours to hear each of them reflect on their various and extensive experiences in (gifted) education.

Most of the panelists referred to an experience early in their teaching careers where they found themselves thinking, "Who ARE these kids? I want to learn more about them."

Julia: Broaden your influence. Each of us must take our passion for gifted education beyond the walls of our own classrooms and schools. That may be where our influence begins, but at some point we must move beyond that in order to have any hope of bigger change for these students.

Between questions 2 and 3, the session took a fascinating turn along the lines of Newton's quotation, "If I have seen farther, it has been by standing on the shoulders of giants." George reflected on all those who had helped him get a start in the field (relaying a funny story involving John Feldhusen), and commented that in regards to leadership he now finds himself thinking, "What can I do for those who come after me? Allow opportunities for them to find their own path." Karen offered suggestions of six categories of leaders in the field of gifted education. (Forgive me, I didn't get all the names she put into each category written down...)
* The Great Thinkers (Tannenbaum, Passow, V. Ward)
* The Great Doers (Renzulli, Reis, Feldhusen)
* The Great Researchers (Subotnik, Olszewski-Kubilius, Torrance, Stanley, Lohman)
* The Great Writers (Gallagher, van Tassel-Baska, Gross)
* The Great Communicators (Delisle, Silverman, Kaufmann, Rimm)
* The Subtle Generators (N. Robinson, Kaplan, Siegle)
And I found myself reflecting on all the incredible shoulders I've been blessed to stand on in this field (Jann, Del, Joe, Sally, Sally, Susan, Tom, Bonnie, Marcia, Karen, Karen, George, Bertie, Rachel, Jim, Scott, Felicia, Julia, Maureen, Pat, ... thank you...)

George: It starts with unconditional positive regard.

Question #5 was skipped because they all had essentially covered it ("who influenced you"). I wasn't quick enough on my trigger.

Julia: Be strategic in your advocacy.
Tom: Be sure to secure your mask before assisting others. (i.e. Take care of yourself in order to be of benefit to the kids.)
George: Nothing - Each lesson learned along the way has simply been a part of the journey.

Most of the panelists talked about having "passed it on" to their students (K-12 and post-secondary) in various forms.

I neglected to write their responses to this question down, but I do remember that Del said his most recent books have been "Clifford the Big Red Dog" ones. ;o)

This was an interesting one, with responses reflecting their varied perspectives and experiences. Their insights on this question ranged from "absorbed into general education" to "becoming more differentiated in self-contained models" to "imagine how advancing technology will continue to bring changes that will educationally benefit these learners" to "we need to make sure we stay a part of the conversation and communicate why these learners need unique services."

George: I think I can, I think I can.
Karen: Be your own best you.
Julia: Define your goal and articulate it well.
Joyce: Find a mentor.

I concluded my day by having something for dinner that I'd never eaten before: fried alligator! (Somewhere out west my parents and sister are gasping...!)

Most of these are not menu items we have in Montana!

Check back tomorrow for a report on Day 2!

A Symbaloo for Gifted Education

2011-10-26T10:52:32Z

The bulletin board above my desk was getting a wee bit cluttered.

I've mentioned here before the "independent project" class I teach for my middle and high school gifted students. Advanced Studies is basically a "blank slate" on which they can pursue studies, topics, and projects of their own choosing. No, it's not a free-for-all. Whatever they do/learn must be school-appropriate, have academic value, and be connected to our state standards. Within that range, though, they have tackled a wide variety of topics over the years, and they frequently come up with ideas I never would have thought of. They also frequently prove to me just how much they are capable of when given a chance to "break free" of the type of teaching where the teacher tells them everything to do and how to do it. For example, over the years I have had students write novels, learn computer programming languages (such as Python), learn complex graphics programs (such as Blender), build computers, learn how to develop film ("the old fashioned way"), create movies, design apps, study specific topics (such as how different cultures view and deal with death, corporate law, electromagnetism, and others), conduct science experiments (one learned how to use an electrophoresis machine), learn languages (such as Latin and Navajo), and building things, such as the boy one year who designed and built an electric guitar from scratch:

(Interesting side note: About 2/3 of my students go into a future college major and career that is somehow related to at least one of the independent projects that they did through Advanced Studies.)

Over the fifteen years I've taught this class, I have been collecting useful websites for the kids to use for their various projects. It started gradually when the internet was still young. At first it was just a helpful site or two that I knew from memory and would suggest to a student as a resource. Then the internet grew and I began scratching the addresses of a growing number of sites down on scraps of paper and thumb-tacking them to my bulletin board. And then the internet really took off and my students were helping me discover all sorts of great places they could use and my bulletin board looked a bit ridiculous.

Then this summer at Edufest when I attended a session by Brian Housand, I learned of Symbaloo. A symbaloo (also called "webmix") is a place where you can collect a plethora of links on various topics and organize them however you want. So I began creating a symbaloo of all these wonderful online places that have been or could be great resources for my students to use while pursuing their independent projects. Yes, I've been working on this for months! It's still not done (it never will be because there will always be great links to add), but it's finally "done enough" that it's at a point I feel comfortable sharing it with the world now - so you and your students can make use of it, too, if you want. Here is a screenshot of what mine looks like (so far):

I have organized it by verb, so the students click on a link (blue box) that says what it is they want to do (such as "Compose" or "Create Graphics" or "Program" or "Collect & Show Data"). Clicking a blue box link then takes them to a new symbaloo containing links of sites that fit that topic or task. At that level, when they click a box, it will open that site in a new web browser. Clicking the red "HOME" box at a sub-page will take them back to my symbaloo homepage.

A few highlights from my symbaloo for you... The "Share" box will take you to a collection of links to places where students can share their creations with others. (I require them all to have a "real-world" audience in some form.) Some of these are online places to share (such as Instructables), and some of them link to tools that students can use (such as Prezi) when sharing with a face-to-face audience. The "Learn" box contains links to mostly-online learning opportunities, such as MIT Open Courseware and Omega Math. The "Write, Blog, Publish" box links to a collection of sites where students can self-publish their writing (such as my students' favorite, Blurb), learn writing tips (such as the Snowflake Method), and blog (such as Posterous). The "Organize Information" section contains links to sites that help (yes, it's obvious) organize information, such as LiveBinders and SpiderScribe.

And the green "Gifted Education" box will take you to my still-growing collection of favorite Gifted Ed links.

When you go to a symbaloo, a white box appears above the link boxes that asks you to "Add this webmix." If you click that (you don't have to to use the symbaloo), it might pop up a "create a symbaloo account" box, but just click cancel or the red X (unless you actually want to create a symbaloo account). It's entirely possible to use the webmixes without having an account. Clicking the "Add this webmix" box will eliminate the big white box at the top. It will then give you a version of the webmix with tabs to other webmixes, such as "News Highlights" and "Major News" and "Webmix Collection." I have NOT created those other webmixes and I haven't yet figured out how to eliminate those tabs from showing up on my own webmix. (Symbaloo is a relatively new thing and it seems its creators are still working out some kinks. Minus those kinks, I love it - and so do my students.)

Before you click the "Add this webmix" box, note the new webmix's url (address) at the top. You can jot that down to directly link to it again in the future, or to help point someone directly to that specific webmix. The direct address for my symbaloo is www.symbaloo.com/mix/thethinkteacher.

I have done my best to make sure that the places I'm linking the kids to are kid- and school-appropriate; however, the internet can change fast and I haven't had time to explore every last sub-page within each site. I'm about 98% confident that all of these are safe places, but because some are places where people can post their own content, I make no guarantees. (And actually, our school's filter will block those sub-pages anyway.) So when I showed this to the kids, I told them that there are dark alleys on the internet, too, and that if at any of the sites they discover a dark alley, to let me know and I will "unlink" it from my symbaloo. So far that hasn't happened.

Access to some of these sites is blocked to all students within our district. (As many of you know at your own schools, even reasonable places are sometimes blocked!) But I have been able to secure getting individual sites unblocked for individual students if they need that site for their project. (This is possible because in our district every middle and high school student has a unique login and profile).

Some of the sites I've linked to (such as Scratch and others) are good resources for elementary level students, too, but if your child/student is younger than 5th or 6th grade, you may want to explore this symbaloo yourself first and see what it's like before sending them there (or you can use it to find sites to then recommend to them). Again, I'm nearly totally confident that it's all just fine, but I have to make this caveat just in case.

Do you have suggestions of great sites I could add? Please let me know!

Happy link exploring :o)

Gift a Teacher

2011-10-04T04:30:43Z

A couple of months ago, as part of my encouragement to you to help a teacher "see the light" regarding gifted students, I suggested giving a regular classroom teacher a book about gifted education. Some of you asked for specific suggestions, and today I have that list for you. This is by no means a complete list of great options; rather, it's a list of many good possibilities with which I happen to have some familiarity. Anyone who has another book to recommend that I don't have on the list below is certainly welcome to mention it in the comments section. In most cases, I have linked the book's title to the publishing company's webpage where you can purchase it.

For teachers who want ideas of in-class strategies they can implement to differentiate for their advanced learners:

Advancing Differentiation: Thinking and Learning for the 21st Century, by Richard Cash. Along with the enclosed CD-ROM, this handbook is an excellent resource for those teachers who are ready to take their differentiation strategies to the next level.

Assessing Differentiated Student Products: A Protocol for Development and Evaluation, by Julia Roberts and Tracy Inman. This resource offers a multitude of ideas for how teachers can offer and assess a variety of types of student products.

Curriculum Compacting, by Sally Reis, Deborah Burns, and Joseph Renzulli. This book is widely recognized as the complete guide to modifying the regular curriculum for high ability students.

Curriculum Compacting: An Easy Start to Differentiating for High-Potential Students, by Sally Reis and Joseph Renzulli. This is a "compacted" version of the original, more in-depth version mentioned directly above.

Differentiating Content for Gifted Learners in Grades 6-12: A CD-ROM of Customizable Extensions Menus and Study Guides, by Susan Winebrenner. This CD provides detailed information about how to differentiate content for gifted and high-ability learners in the middle and high school grades. It includes more than 140 customizable forms and templates for teachers to adapt to their own purposes and needs. All academic subjects are covered, along with relevant examples.

Differentiating Instruction in the Regular Classroom: How to Reach and Teach All Learners, Grades 3-12, by Diane Heacox. Together with the included CD-ROM of customizable forms, this handbook outlines the principles behind differentiation along with multiple strategies for classroom implementation.

Differentiation in Practice: A Resource Guide for Differentiating Curriculum, by Carol Ann Tomlinson, Caroline Cunningham Eidson, and Cindy Strickland. These handbooks, one designed for grades K-5, one for grades 5-9, and one for grades 9-12, are the ultimate resource on differentiation strategies and philosophy.

Helping Gifted Children Soar: A Practical Guide for Parents and Teachers, by Carol A. Strip and Gretchen Hirsch. A widely-renowned favorite in the "gifted books" collection, this all-in-one handbook covers every aspect of information about parenting and teaching gifted children.

Making Differentiation a Habit, by Diane Heacox. Together with a CD-ROM of customizable forms, this teacher-friendly handbook offers a plethora of tools and strategies to help teachers make differentiation a habit in their classrooms.

A Nation Deceived: How Schools Hold Back America's Brightest Students, by Nicholas Colangelo, Susan Assouline, and Miraca Gross. A thorough compilation of 50+ years of comprehensive research on student acceleration. It contains articles, research statistics, and an important discussion of the nuts and bolts of acceleration issues. In particular, the material documents the overwhelming evidence that appropriate acceleration has positive benefits for gifted students. Available for download at the title's link.

The Practical Strategies Series in Gifted Education, edited by Frances Karnes and Kristen Stephens. All 25 of the books in this series can be purchased individually. Each is a condensed handbook on a specific gifted education topic, excellent for someone who is wanting to begin learning about a specific gifted education topic or someone who wants an easy-to-use handbook for getting started.

Primary Education Thinking Skills: A Curriculum for Higher Level Thinking (four book set), by various authors. Created for K-2 classrooms, these books include hundreds of activities that promote the development of convergent, divergent, visual, and evaluative thinking skills. Books can also be purchased individually.

Raising a Gifted Child: A Parenting Success Handbook, by Carol Fertig. Despite its title, this book is an excellent resource for teachers, too. It covers every angle of information about gifted children together with a comprehensive list of suggested resources.

Re-Forming Gifted Education: How Parents and Teachers Can Match the Program to the Child, by Karen Rogers. From her analysis of research that spans a full century, the author describes various types of gifted children, as well as options for school enrichment and acceleration and the effectiveness of each option. Also shown are practical ways to design ongoing programs that best meet the needs of bright children. (For teachers who would want a very in-depth resource.)

Scamper Combined Edition, by Bob Eberle. Adaptable to any grade level, these activities promote the development of creativity and imagination.

Teaching Gifted Kids in the Regular Classroom, by Susan Winebrenner. This book offers strategies and techniques every teacher can use to meet the academic needs of gifted and talented students in the regular classroom. It includes information on curriculum compacting and contracting for various subject areas, cluster grouping, characteristic behaviors of gifted and talented students, and ways to create more challenging activities for gifted students, plus more. A CD-ROM of customizable forms in the book is also available.

Teaching Young Gifted Children in the Regular Classroom: Identifying, Nurturing, and Challenging Ages 4-9, by Joan Franklin Smutny, Sally Yahnke Walker, and Elizabeth Meckstroth. This excellent resource provides information on identifying the young gifted child, creating a challenging learning environment, compacting the curriculum, promoting creativity, discovery, and critical thinking, and understanding and meeting a young gifted child's social and emotional needs, plus more.

For teachers who want to learn about the social and emotional needs of gifted students:

Coping for Capable Kids: Strategies for Parents, Teachers, and Students, by LeoNora M. Cohen & Erica Frydenberg. A thorough look at many issues and problems common to gifted kids, plus strategies for how to deal with them. Includes chapters on perfectionism, boredom, underachievement, drug and alcohol use, anorexia and bulimia, depression and suicide, developing social skills, metacognition, emotional development, goal setting, coping with change, family functioning, dealing with feeling different, and many others.

Intelligent Life in the Classroom: Smart Kids and Their Teachers, by Karen Isaacson and Tamara Fisher. This book highlights the traits and characteristics of gifted students, told through narrative, real-life examples and with healthy doses of humor and insight.

A Love for Learning: Motivation and the Gifted Child, by Carol Strip Whitney and Gretchen Hirsch. De-motivating factors can lead to underachievement and even depression in gifted students. With the four C's (Challenge, Commitment, Control, and Compassion) and the strategies described in this book, parents and teachers can pro-actively help gifted students to maintain their motivation.

Misdiagnosis and Dual Diagnosis of Gifted Children and Adults: ADHD, Bipolar, OCD, Asperger's, Depression, and Other Disorders, by James Webb, Edward Amend, Nadia Webb, Jean Goerss, Paul Beljan, and Richard Olenchak. The traits and characteristics of giftedness share some similarities with various disorders, yet the psychologists who diagnosis these disorders receive no training in their educations about the various manifestations of giftedness and their similarities with these disorders, nor how to distinguish between the two. As a result of their slim knowledge of the gifted, psychologists around the country have mistakenly misdiagnosed many gifted children and adults as having one of these (or other) disorders. This important text is the first to differentiate how giftedness and these disorders - though at first blush similar - are actually separate and distinct. While it is possible for an individual to be gifted and also have one of these disorders (some do), it's important for parents, teachers, and psychologists to know the differences so that a mistaken diagnosis is not made and so that accurate diagnoses are made.

On the Social and Emotional Lives of Gifted Children, by Tracy Cross. With insights for both teachers and parents, this collection of in-depth chapters provides a thorough examination of the complexity of social and emotional challenges faced by gifted children.

Removing the Mast: Giftedness in Poverty, by Ruby Payne and Paul Slocumb. One volume from Ruby's renowned collection of works on students from poverty, this book focuses on gifted students who live in poverty and how best to identify them. The book also provides a wealth of examples of the unique needs and issues of gifted students who come from a poverty background.

The Social and Emotional Development of Gifted Children: What Do We Know? edited by Maureen Neihart, Sally Reis, Nancy Robinson, and Sidney Moon. A service publication of the National Association for Gifted Children, this book summarizes and highlights all of the best and most current research regarding the social and emotional development of gifted children. Over twenty specific topics are covered.

To Be Gifted and Learning Disabled, by Susan Baum and Steven Owen. The gifted and learning disabled child exhibits remarkable talents in some areas and disabling weaknesses in others. This book covers the research behind this phenomenon and strategies to assist parents, teachers, and students who struggle with this challenge.

When Gifted Kids Don't Have All the Answers: How to Meet Their Social and Emotional Needs, by James Delisle and Judy Galbraith. A comprehensive compilation for any adult who lives or works with gifted students, this book offers proven, practical suggestions for encouraging social and emotional growth among gifted kids. Based on classroom experience, survey data, current research, and contributions from students, it explains what giftedness means and how gifted kids are identified. It also focuses on ways to create a supportive environment for all gifted students, ways to advocate for gifted education, and covers many social/emotional issues common to gifted youth, including perfectionism, boredom, and underachievement.

Why Bright Kids Get Poor Grades: And What You Can Do About It - A Six-Step Program for Parents and Teachers, by Silvia Rimm. Underachieving gifted students are a complex and confusing phenomenon to most adults. How is it that such capable children can sometimes not do well in school? This book analyzes the factors contributing to underachievement and outlines a plan for how parents and teachers can help get these students back on track.

You Know Your Child is Gifted When...: A Beginner's Guide to Life on the Bright Side, by Judy Galbraith. This book blends humorous cartoons with solid information on giftedness -its characteristics, challenges, and joys,- plus reassuring and insightful first-person stories from those who have been there. (Available as a PDF download.)

For teachers who want to challenge their students in specific content areas:

Challenge Math: For the Elementary and Middle School Student, by Edward Zaccaro. With chapters on statistics, probability, trigonometry, algebra, and much more, this great resource is full of challenging problems for students who crave harder math. Each problem includes challenging extensions in Level 1, Level 2, and the Einstein Level.

Plexers: Arithmetic, by David Hammond, Tom Lester, and Joe Scales. Perfect for Math classrooms of grades 6-12, this resource offers 270+ highly challenging word puzzles that all relate to mathematics.

Plexers: Science, by David Hammond, Tom Lester, and Joe Scales. Perfect for Science classrooms of grades 6-12, this resource offers 284 highly challenging word puzzles that all relate to science, including the areas of biology, chemistry, geology, meteorology, and physics.

Plexers: Social Studies, by David Hammond, Tom Lester, and Joe Scales. Perfect for History and Social Studies classrooms of grades 6-12, this resource offers 273 highly challenging word puzzles that all relate to social studies, including the areas of anthropology, government, history, politics, and sociology.

Some of My Best Friends Are Books: Guiding Gifted Readers from Pre-School to High School, by Judith Wynn Halsted. This guide for parents, teachers, librarians, and counselors offers updated background information on the emotional and intellectual needs of gifted children, describes typical reading patterns of high ability readers and their need for reading guidance, and includes an annotated bibliography of over 300 books carefully selected to be useful in promoting the intellectual and emotional development of high-ability children.

Super Sentences, by Susan Winebrenner. With sections for different ability levels, this resource provides challenging vocabulary activities for grades 3-12.

The Ten Things All Future Mathematicians and Scientists Must Know (But are Rarely Taught), by Edward Zaccaro. Mathematicians and scientists have been closely tied to many famous disasters. The Challenger explosion, the failure of the Mars Orbiter, and the Kansas City Hyatt Regency walkway collapse all involved thinking errors. This book presents the ten things our future mathematicians and scientists must know to prevent these kinds of tragedies from occurring. Because science and mathematics instruction is often dominated by facts and calculation, children are rarely exposed to these important concepts. Over 50 stories are included that show children the strong connections between mathematics and science and the real world.

(And even more great challenging math books by Edward Zaccaro...)

In addition to the options listed above, you can find many other suggested books in the National Association for Gifted Children online store and at the Hoagies site.

Happy shopping and gifting! :o)

Advancing Potential and All That Jazz

2011-09-07T10:33:21Z

It is once again that time of year... Time to register for the national gifted education conference. This year's National Association for Gifted Children convention will take place November 2-6, 2011, in New Orleans (hence the "All That Jazz" theme!)

It all kicks off Thursday evening with an opening general session keynote by none other than Bill Nye the Science Guy®! Oh, my students are going to be so jealous :o) Saturday's general session keynote will feature Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein for a hands-on experience exploring creativity and imagination in the arts and sciences. And Sunday's closing general session keynote will showcase Louisiana's own, artist George Rodrigue. If the name doesn't ring a bell, it's quite likely that a peek at his Blue Dogs will. You can read more about each of these general session keynotes here.

Those seeking an expanded experience can show up a day or two early for some "pre-conference" opportunities. Wednesday offers "Gifted Education Essentials: Your Toolkit for Delivering Successful Programs and Services." The Wednesday morning session will focus on "Essentials of Gifted Education: Designing and Delivering Excellent Programs for High-Ability Learners," and the afternoon features nine three-hour, in-depth sessions to pick from. I'm debating between "Developing a Philosophy of Gifted Education for the 21st Century," "Understanding and Addressing the Needs of Young Gifted Children," "Best Practices in Identification and Assessment," and "Middle Grades Essentials for the 21st Century." Wednesday concludes with what looks to be a fascinating panel discussion ("fireside chat" style) on "Leadership and Life Lessons from the Field," featuring some well-known names in Gifted Education who will offer their reflections from their full careers in the field. I look forward to gleaning what are sure to be some valuable insights from Joyce VanTassel-Baska, Karen Rogers, Julia Link Roberts, Tom Hébert, and George Betts. You can learn more about Wednesday's on-site offerings here.

Also available on Wednesday (off-site) will be a selection of "Action Labs," i.e. field trips for adults. A few of the options this year include "Heritage Education/Destrehan Plantation," "Arts-Based Education/Lusher Charter School, K-12," "Wetland Watchers/St. Charles Wetland Watchers Park," and "Special Schools for Special Students/Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts and New Orleans Center for Creative Arts." An additional unique Action Lab opportunity on Wednesday will be the "Lending a Hand" Day of Service, a collaboration between Habitat for Humanity and NAGC's Global Awareness Network. Fifty participants will assist in the continued re-building of New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina struck six years ago. Never thought I might be considering bringing my tool belt to an education conference!

Thursday will feature another sampling of longer, in-depth sessions, all under the umbrella of "Gifted Education Applications in the Classroom: Critical Models for Delivering Successful Services." The day will begin with an opening general session by new NAGC President Paula Olszewski-Kubilius and NAGC Executive Director Nancy Green titled "State of the Nation in Gifted Education." The day's Breakout Sessions (some in the morning, some in the afternoon) include the hard-to-choose-between "Harnessing the Power of Technology to Increase the Potential of Curriculum and Instruction," "Response to Intervention: A Leadership Framework for Identifying Potential," "Tech THAT: Gifted Children Online," "Beyond the Core: Infusing Critical and Creative Thinking into the Curriculum," "Maximizing Outcomes for Twice-Exceptional Children: What Educators Need to Understand and Be Able To Do," "I Always Knew I Was Smart. What Took Y'all So Long? Our Response to that Question Two Decades Later," and "Thinking in the Future Tense: Creating Positive Futures for Gifted Students." You can read more details about Thursday's offerings here.

And let's not forget my new favorite NAGC conference offering, the Mini-Keynotes. Friday's mini-keynote choices are "Separating the Wheat from the Chaff: What Really Constitutes Differentiation for Gifted Learners?," "Critical Questions in Talent Development: Answered through 40 Years of Longitudinal Research by Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY)," and "Stereotypes and the Nature and Nurture of Intelligence." Saturday's mini-keynote choices are "A Focus on the Arts: Arts Integration and Arts Programming for Gifted Students," "Bullying of and by Gifted Children and Teens," and "Connecting for High Potential: How Parents, Teachers, and School Counselors Can Work Collaboratively to Reverse Underachievement for Gifted Students." You can learn more details about each of these here. (Scroll about half-way down.)

You can get the best deal on registration if you do so by September 16. Registration after that date is still possible, it'll just cost you a little more. Registration can be done the old-fashioned way (paper & snail mail) or online.

College student? You get to register at a special rate!

Network Events are interesting and fun evening events hosted and sponsored by each of NAGC's 15 Network communities. I am particularly looking forward to the Conceptual Foundations Network's next edition in their "Legacy Series." This year's taped interview with a notable Gifted Education leader will showcase Don Treffinger. I am also excited to participate in the Technology Network's "Speed Geeking" session.

Parents! Want to soak up some of the opportunites but don't think you can take advantage of it all? Saturday is dedicated as Parent Day, with a multitude of sessions focused specifically for the needs and inquiries of parents of gifted youth. Please note there is a separate paper or online registration for Parent Day if you are only coming for that day as a parent.

Be sure to check out the Exhibit Hall, too. I have recently learned about Aleks and see that they will be an exhibitor this year, so I will definitely be stopping by their booth, along with all my old favorites.

For those who need to earn some CEU's or graduate credits, those options are available, too. Visit this page for more details.

Trying to plan but need to see a "map" of what's available? The "Schedule at a Glance" page helps me with that.

Traveling by air or rental car? Be sure to learn about discount opportunities! Important information about hotel reservations is also available at this link.

Finally, I continue to love the "Itinerary Builder" feature which aids you in reading and selecting sessions you're interested in ahead of time. This is so handy to do before arriving at the conference because there never seems to be enough time while there to peruse the full program and decide what to do. At least being able to narrow it down ahead of time has always assisted me in streamlining my decision-making process.

It's always an intensely informative week and I hope to see many of you there!

Go to the Office!

2011-08-24T03:08:46Z

I've decided I'm going to send my gifted students to the principal's office this year. A lot. Like at least one kid a week per school.

Principals are very busy people, so since my students don't end up in their offices (well, usually...), and since things in my classroom are typically sailing along quite smoothly, I think we're off their radar most of the time. Well, not this year. This year, even if they don't come to us, I'm going to send us to them.

If a student has a huge "a-ha" moment, he'll be sent to the principal's office to share his new insight.

When a student finishes writing the book she's been working on all semester, she'll be sent to the principal's office to show her the manuscript.

If a student finally solves that puzzle he's been working on for 20 minutes, he'll earn a trip down the hall to show Principal how he's learning to master that secret key called persistence.

When I teach the Kindergarteners how to do analogies, I'll select a student to go teach the concept to the principal.

If Ross stops by to tell me about the improvements he made over the summer to his do-it-yourself home security system, I'm sending him to the principal's office to demonstrate how it works.

When Binary once again generates a list of 40 fascinating topics he wants to pursue for our Advanced Studies class, this year I'm going to send him to the principal so the principal can see where this kid is beginning in his narrow-it-down-to-one process.

If one of my 2nd graders poses a breath-catching question, I'm sending her to the principal to get another adult's input (and to let the principal witness the kinds of questions these kids ask).

When my high school students finally figure out how to code a moving three-dimensional object for the iPhone app they're creating, I'm sending them to the principal to share their success.

If my 6th graders learn new strategies for keeping perfectionism healthy, I'm sending them to Principal to pass on their new insights.

When my 5th graders rave about their advanced math class, I'm going to send them to the principal's office to thank him for making sure the class survived huge (HUGE!) budget cuts over the summer.

See, I think principals get buried in the bad news. Day in and day out, they spend a sizable chunk of their time dealing with behavior problems; upset parents; serious student offenses; federal, state, and local paperwork details, etc. It often appears they are dealing with problem after problem. This year, I hope to offer them some sUnLiGhT! And the sly subversive advantage is I'm quietly advocating for my students in the process by subtly educating the principals on what we do in gifted education and how these kids really are different.

A few years back, my parents attended a middle school band concert in another town to cheer on a family friend's daughter. They were so thoroughly impressed by the students, the band director, the quality of the music, the way the band director interacted with the kids, and how the whole evening was one impressive moment after another, that they decided to call the school's principal the next day to compliment him on his staff and students. It went something like this:

Secretary: Whatchyamacallit School, how may I help you?

My Parents: We'd like to speak to the principal, please.

Secretary: What is this regarding?

My Parents: Your band concert that we attended last night.

Secretary: Are you parents of one of our Band students?

My Parents: No, we were just in the audience last night.

The secretary puts my parents on hold and informs the principal that a couple of community members are calling regarding the concert the night before.

I can just imagine the principal taking a deep breath here and bracing himself as he picks up his phone.

Principal: This is Principal Smith, how may I help you?

My Parents: We were at your band concert last night and just wanted to call and let you know how impressed we were by all of your students and the band director. They did a wonderful job and we really enjoyed it.

Principal (CRYING): ...and I thought you were calling to complain about something...! You don't know how much this call means to me. I will definitely pass on your compliment to the band director and his students.

I hope to make a principal cry this year :o) Send your gifted students to the office and see if you can do it, too!

International Day of the Gifted

2011-08-10T13:18:17Z

The 19th Biennial conference of the World Council for Gifted and Talented Children is taking place this week in Prague, Czech Republic, and today, August 10, 2011, has been designated International Day of the Gifted to help raise awareness around the world about gifted children and their learning and social/emotional needs.

I attended (and presented at) the WCGTC conference back in 2005 when it was hosted in New Orleans (just a few weeks before Hurricane Katrina hit). I enjoyed meeting people from around the world and realized that the obstacles and challenges we face here in Montana and America aren't that different from those faced around the world.

You can follow a Twitter feed of this year's world conference here. You can also learn about the keynote presentations, read descriptions of the pre-conference sessions, and view the entire conference program, which shows each presentation as belonging to one of eight topic areas: Assessment & Identification, Characteristics, Underachievement; Working with Administrations at Different Levels; Lived Experiences of the Gifted; Classroom Practices and Effective Pedagogies; Interventions, Social and Emotional Aspects of Giftedness; Teacher and Teacher-Training Development; Parent and Community Interest; and Creativity and the Talent Dimension.

What could you do to help celebrate this first International Day of the Gifted? Well, here are a few ideas:
* Join the World Council for Gifted and Talented Children
* Visit the website of another nation's gifted association and learn about what's happening around the world in gifted education
* Plan to attend the next WCGTC conference in 2013 (location TBA)
* Subscribe to the WCGTC's Newsletter and/or Journal (use links on right side)
* Add some international gifted connections to your LinkedIn account
* Consider attending another international gifted conference (here's one possibility)
* Read and follow some international gifted blogs. A few options are Innreach (Ireland), Gifted Phoenix (United Kingdom), Creating Curriculum (New Zealand), and Begabungs (Germany).

What are your ideas?

Seeing the Light

2011-08-03T03:51:35Z

As someone who has pretty much always understood the need for and value of gifted education for our brightest little whippersnappers, I continue to be fascinated by people who have undergone a transition in their thinking and teaching regarding these students. I'm intrigued by teachers who once thought gifted students could do it all on their own, but now understand they need to be stretched and educated just like any other student.

Most of our society (especially - ironically! - in education circles) seems to think these kids will be just fine on their own, that they don't need anything "extra" because they were born with something extra. But every child should be encouraged and allowed to LEARN, and for our most advanced students learning often isn't happening. Frankly, our gifted students typically experience educational negligence because very little effort is put into actually teaching them. It isn't anything "extra" at all to do what we should be doing in the first place: educating every student to the best of his or her abilities.

What is it, then, that triggers a transition of thought in those who once believed these students essentially didn't need teaching? I suppose in a way I've hoped that if only I could find the answer to that question, then I could find the secret magic bullet that would help thousands of teachers and schools "see the light" and subsequently do better by these students.

At Edufest last week, I crossed paths with four women who fit this scenario. They happily agreed to offer their insights about their transition of thinking for all of us to ponder. (Names are pseudonyms.)

Kali: What did you used to think and believe about gifted students and gifted education? I used to believe that gifted ed starts in 3rd grade and that students who are gifted always do well academically unless they are lazy.

Describe the experience, person, book, moment, connection, or insight that triggered your "seeing the light" transition. My good friend and colleague brought me to Edufest in 2010. I was introduced to the concept of "twice exceptional" students and had a huge "A-HA!"

What is an analogy you would use to describe this transition? Even though a wrench is great at tightening a bolt, it doesn't mean it works well as a hammer. I need to use all the tools in my kit and add more when needed.

How are you different now? How is your teaching different now? How is your thinking different now? I think I'm better at recognizing "hidden giftedness". I work harder now to present lessons in multiple ways to teach all of my students. I want each one to learn and love learning.

Could you or would you ever go back? Not a chance.

Melissa: What did you used to think and believe about gifted students and gifted education? My previous attitude was that gifted students would not need any of the teacher's help. I believed it was up to their parents to supplement and enrich at home. I thought the gifted child should do the same work as the rest of the class - no excuses.

Describe the experience, person, book, moment, connection, or insight that triggered your "seeing the light" transition. A parent encouraged me to look at students individually because her son was gifted. She became a teacher to help more children like her son. Finally being the teacher of gifted students in the regular ed room, I began teaching more "individually" and after becoming educated through Edufest and a college course, I'll never go back to my previous thought pattern.

How are you different now? How is your teaching different now? How is your thinking different now? I am personally eager to provide for the more advanced/gifted children now. I do feel that more can be expected of the average and gifted children. I am not afraid now to allow children to go above and beyond my knowledge, skills, and expectations. I think gifted students are being underserved in today's schools. I want to do more to help.

Could you or would you ever go back? Absolutely not.

Karen: What did you used to think and believe about gifted students and gifted education? I used to think "gifted" only meant academic smarts. I thought "smart" kids could and would thrive and challenge themselves regardless of teacher interaction or lack thereof.

Describe the experience, person, book, moment, connection, or insight that triggered your "seeing the light" transition. My son, who was in a pull-out program for gifted students, was failing his high school general education classes. The GT teacher brought me to Edufest (as a parent - I'm also a teacher) to help me understand my son. As the week at Edufest went on, I realized that my son actually THINKS in a non-traditional fashion. Therefore, traditional education did NOT meet his needs.

What is an analogy you would use to describe this transition? Regular (traditional) education for my son was like planting and nurturing a plant hoping it would be corn and reach to the sky, when he was actually a potato hiding and growing in the dirt (dark).

How are you different now? How is your teaching or parenting different now? How is your thinking different now? I realized that my job was to love my son and allow him to be who he is. What he did with his education was up to him. I've been coming to Edufest for about 10 years now. As a teacher, I am more aware of the different abilities and learning styles in my classroom. I enlist the help of the GT teacher to differentiate my instruction. I also encourage other general ed teachers to attend Edufest. Also, this year I joined ITAG so I could advocate for gifted students and their education and have a voice in the Legislature. I strongly believe regular ed teachers need to learn how to reach and teach our gifted students to ensure a bright future.

Could you or would you ever go back? He11 NO!

MaryAnn: What did you used to think and believe about gifted students and gifted education? With budget cuts, I had made up my mind that if I had to choose between gifted ed and special ed that I would choose to keep the special ed.

Describe the experience, person, book, moment, connection, or insight that triggered your "seeing the light" transition. It wasn't any one thing. The keynote and Special Topics speakers, the Strands, and the other teachers at Edufest that I talked with all influenced me in my thinking.

What is an analogy you would use to describe this transition? It's like always making sure my dog has food and water but never checking on the cat, which seems independent but actually depends on me as equally as the dog. The dog will stay nourished and grow, but what will happen to the cat? She will eventually lose weight and decline in health if I don't feed her, too.

How are you different now? How is your teaching or parenting different now? How is your thinking different now? I now feel that my gifted son deserves an education that is at his own level. He deserves to be challenged as much as my special needs son is. I'm not sure my parenting will change, however my thinking now is to be sure that I advocate for my gifted son as much as I do for my special needs son.

Could you or would you ever go back? I do not believe so. Knowing how much my gifted son craves information, where would he be without specialists that are trained to work with him? Just think of the possibilities for gifted students. Who knows where their limits are? Why should they be stifled to fit into the regular classroom? Gifted students' needs are just like those of special ed students, except on the other end of the spectrum. Let's give gifted students what they need, just like we do for special needs and average students.

I don't know if it's a secret magic bullet, but the common theme I pick up on in reading their insights is that (again ironically) education was a transitional trigger for them (e.g. attending Edufest or taking a college course about gifted students). As I have mentioned here before, we typically learn shockingly little in teacher preparation courses about gifted students and how to best reach and stretch them. It's no wonder, then, that teachers struggle to see the light about why these students need education, too. Until broad changes are made at the college level, this awareness and knowledge will continue to have to come after-the-fact. So what can we do? Give a teacher a book about gifted students or differentiation. Sponsor a teacher's (or pre-service teacher's!) way to a gifted education conference. Provide gifted ed professional development for your school or district. Contact the college where you got your education degree and let them know how much you wish you had learned about gifted students BEFORE you got into the classroom. Advocate, advocate, advocate. Educate, educate, educate.

Report From Edufest

2011-07-27T03:59:54Z

This week finds me at my favorite gifted education conference, Edufest in warm & sunny Boise, Idaho. In part, I love this conference because it affords much greater time for DEPTH of learning. In addition to six outstanding keynotes, the schedule includes what are essentially three "mini classes" where you get to learn from the same presenter on the same topic over four days. As a participant, I appreciate being able to absorb a deeper level of the material. As a presenter, I appreciate being able to cover layers of material that there normally otherwise isn't time to cover. Plus it's a tremendously fun conference, with eager learners and engaging presenters.

A portion of my drive here took me through the jaw-dropping Sawtooth National Forest:
(The spots are cows. Photo by Tamara Fisher.)

And I managed to squeeze in a trip to a nearby ghost town before the conference got rolling Sunday afternoon:

(Silver City, Idaho. Photo by Tamara Fisher.)

Tonight marks the halfway point of this intense experience and I'm already amazed at how much I've learned; how excited I am to take these ideas, resources, and loads of knowledge back with me; and how both exhausting and energizing this week is.

I asked some of my fellow participants and presenters to share some insights with all of you. I posed the following questions:

What do you wish the people back home knew or understood about gifted education and/or gifted students?

What is an "a-ha!" moment you've had here so far this week?

What is something you have learned or gained that you will be taking back with you?

And here are their responses:

"What I wish people back home knew is how learning about and understanding the strategies of gifted ed and characteristics of giftedness broadens your ability to understand and teach ALL kids. It allows you to pick up on behaviors and attitudes in all kids that you maybe otherwise wouldn't notice and understand."

"I've taught with a man for 20 years who teaches mathematics and gameology, and as I watch him present here I'm still in amazement after all this time at how he achieves such depth of understanding for his learners of all ages."

"I wish the folks back home would recognize that gifted children have needs just like every other student, and it's our job to make sure they develop their talents, too."

"I've had a huge a-ha moment. Just a couple weeks ago, someone asked me - a parent of both a gifted learner and a special needs learner - which service I would eliminate due to budget cuts. I said GT because I thought like so many people think that those kids are okay. But now, I've had a turnaround in my view of funding. Now I wouldn't choose to cut GT funding. I wouldn't cut either. I'd find another way. I now see that my gifted son can only go as far as the teacher is going to take him, and without GT he has less of a chance of reaching his potential."

"I wish the people back home understood that gifted kids aren't just in the top 3% of some test. You have them in your classroom. They don't have to be identified to still be gifted and many of them aren't."

"I learned about Weebly, a webpage creation site, and Alice, which helps kids learn about computer programming."

"My a-ha moment was when I heard Margo Long say, 'When you find your passion, you no longer work.'"

"While implementing RTI, our school district has forgotten about gifted students. The scripted curriculum we're using is not appropriate for our gifted learners. We need to stop assuming they're okay where they are, because they're not. They need to be learning!"

"I've been pondering this week how to convince my district back home that RTI is for gifted kids, too. My district only sees RTI for special ed."

"I wish my colleagues back home understood that a child can struggle in one area and be gifted in another."

"I'm realizing just how much gifted learners are like special education learners in that they are another population of students that can't be served well by a 'Turn to p. 23' approach. Teaching gifted students requires of a teacher the same things that teaching special education students requires of us: to find out who the child is, what the child needs as a learner, and what we can do and need to do to meet the child where he is."

"My a-ha moment was learning and realizing that evaluation tools are not exact. We shouldn't depend fully on them and we should be open-minded about results."

That last comment was likely in response to this morning's keynote on Identification by Karen Westberg. One thing Karen talked about was Standard Error of Measurement and how "cut-off scores" eliminate some children from receiving gifted education services who actually need the services, and had they taken the test on another day they may very well have qualified.

(Slide by Karen Westberg.)
This slide demonstrates why. Say a test has a standard error of measurement of 6 points and say a child scored 116. In reality, there is statistically a 68% chance that if the child were to take the test again, his score would be somewhere between 110 and 122 (6 points below 116 and 6 points above 116). But 68% certainty still isn't very certain. So increasing the certainty to 95% means adding another 6 points above and below the child's score. Now we can say with 95% certainty that if the child were to take the test again, his score would be in the range of 104-128. That's a sizeable range! And yet in schools everywhere, children scoring 127, 128, 129 (i.e. just below a 130 "cut-off") are being told they don't qualify for receiving gifted education services. But if the standard error of measurement was taken into account (along with other data and information on the child because no single piece should ever be the be-all, end-all of identification for gifted services!), that student may very well need and otherwise qualify for getting those needs met via gifted ed services. As I still remember my undergrad educational statistics professor saying, "You're a band, not a point."

I love how Karen summed it all up:

(Accept it! Slide by Karen Westberg)