Gifted and Talented Program
Maximizing Achievement for Gifted Students
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Contact: D11 Gifted and Talented Coordinator |
What We Believe
Vision: The Gifted and Talented will maximize achievement for all gifted students.
Mission: The Mission of the Gifted and Talented Department is to support gifted and talented students in achieving their academic, social-emotional, and creative-productive potential by providing an appropriate learning environment based on best practices in gifted education.
Guiding Principles: We, as the Gifted and Talented Department:
- Promote high academic achievement for each student
- Seek meaningful and challenging learning experiences
- Facilitate talent development
- Encourage social and emotional growth
- Support future planning
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Develop habits of good citizenship
GT Email Distribution List:
Michael Chamberlin, Gifted Resource Teacher (GRT) at Palmer has created a GT Email Distribution List for those of you who are interested in joining. Everyone is welcome to join. Several parents have already joined the list, but it’s hardly complete. You won’t be inundated with emails if you join the list. The distribution list will be used to inform parents, students, and interested members of the community about meetings, conferences, and other gatherings pertinent to the gifted population, significant updates to this website, and other information deemed important to the audience about gifted education. To join, you can email Michael Chamberlin your name and email address(es) or complete this online form.
http://creator.zoho.com/wacomme/gtdistributionlist/form-perma/Contact/
Older Gifted Students Need…
…adults who are willing to listen to them carefully and to monitor them for positive means of dealing with their intense emotions during this period. Tracy L. Cross noted that many gifted teenagers may experience frustration and even rage at the way they often feel under-valued for their abilities and the ways that they are consistently forced to wait for peers to ‘catch up’ with material they’ve already known for along time. Her article identifies the following needs:
- Adults who acknowledge that students today experience different situations than previousgenerations (it’s more than ‘just teasing’)
- Schools with zero tolerance for taunting or bullying
- Consistent messages from adults concerning their value, worth, and responsibilities (that include taking the time to teach new things to the gifted students, too, and not assuming that they’ll get along fine just because they’re gifted)
- Families and teachers working together to create
environments that disallow negative remarks andanti-intellectual behavior,
and encourage respect for individuals of all ability levels and
interestsRead the entire article ”Social/Emotional Needs: The Rage of
Gifted Students” by Tracy L. Cross, Nov. 2003 Gifted Child Today,on-line
at:
http://www.sengifted.org/articles_social/Cross_SocialEmotionalNeedsTheRage.shtmlThe Dating Scene:
Gifted adolescents also need support with navigating the dating scene and understanding that possibly they may not date much in high school-- not because of individual worth but because of their uniqueness from their peers. They need to know how to look for their own positive role models in adults and their own positive peers from various circles of friends, and they need to find support systems that enable them to be truly themselves so that they don’t feel compelled to mask their gifts in an effort to fit in or to attain a particular boyfriend or girlfriend who may not be ‘as smart’ or as interested in learning as they are. They need contact with peers who share gifted traits and they need to be encouraged that eventually they will be able to find a broader range of people to date when they leave the fishbowl of high school. They may also need coaching on the ways to positively attract reliable and supportive friends while remaining true to themselves.Career Planning:
The authors of Smart Boys particularly mention the importance of ‘falling in love with an idea’ that will enable gifted students to find their passion and their calling, which is something that can be particularly difficult with students of multi-potentiality. Parents and counselors need to encourage gifted students to carefully consider not just what they do well and what might seem the ‘safe’ choices to pursue as a career, but also what ideas truly excite and motivate them. Barbara Kerr, lead author for both Smart Girls and Smart Boys, emphasizes the disillusionment and dissatisfaction that gifted adults face later in life if they have not pursued an area of passion. Gifted girls in particular need to know how to find appropriate, helpful mentors in their chosen fields—mentors who will responsibly guide them through the ins and outs of the profession until they find their own way—and both gifted girls and gifted boys need to know how to make their dreams become a reality with the amount and the expense of schooling that may be required.
Links:
GT Student/Parent Meeting Presentation on 9-3-08 -The meeting was the first in a series of evening Student/Parent Meetings. The topic was an overview of the GT program. Our next meeting will be sometime in early December, 2008.
GT Staff Presentation on 10-6-08 - The presentation was about our understanding of the gifted child and their learning, a synthesis of compiled research studies by Professor Karen Rogers.Board of Education Policy IHBB - D11 Policy on Gifted and Talented
District ALP Form -This form is completed online by the Gifted Resource Teacher (GRT), in collaboration with the student, parent(s), teachers, and other interested parties.
MIT - Not only has MIT created more of their undergraduate and graduate courses online:
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm but they also have a special section for high school students–great preparation for AP exams.Advanced Learning Plans (ALPs)
