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“When in doubt, choose change.” “There is nothing permanent except change.” “There is nothing so stable as change.” The list of quotes about change goes on and on. I think we can all agree that change is a part of life, whether we like it or not. In this case, I hope the change is good for everyone.
As the new Executive Director for Wisconsin Association for Talented and Gifted, I will be “taking over” the News From the Board in our monthly newsletter. It will be good for me to connect with all of you and give some insight into what is going on within the organization. Speaking of change...WOW! WATG is offering free membership to parents through September 2022. It’s been absolutely amazing to see the interest. And it’s not just signing up for membership -- the number of parents looking to be involved with our Board has been eye-opening. We don’t know what has triggered this interest but we’re obviously thrilled to see it. With all this interest in involvement and leadership, our Membership Committee has decided to explore ways to capture this desire to be actively involved. Board membership is one path for involvement, but we also have committees and task forces, and would love to have fresh ideas and involvement in these groups. In September we scheduled two virtual meetings with those interested in working with the Board. Many ideas surfaced in the brainstorming sessions, and we will harness this desire to be involved. Stay tuned. Welcome to all of our new parent members! We are looking forward to seeing how many more parents join our mission in the coming year. Please share this information with other parents, grandparents, and caregivers. Roxane Hagedorn Executive Director of the WI Association for Talented and Gifted WATG extends a huge thank you to Dr. German Diaz of Milwaukee Public Schools for translating this article into Spanish for our families and educators who speak Spanish. The translation can be found on our website.
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Movie goers all over the world report that they enjoy sneak peeks at coming attractions. Sneak peeks intrigue them, pique their curiosity, and nudge them to view the upcoming movie. Sneak peeks are great for sales and great for people, because people love having something to look forward to.
As you know, our virtual WATG Annual Fall Conference, Leading the World Into the Future, is just around the corner - on October 3, 4, and 5th, and we’d like to give you a continued sneak peek into our schedule. In August’s newsletter we focused on programming for Sunday, October 3, and in this newsletter we will focus on programming for Monday, October 4 and Tuesday, October 5. Both days are filled with national and local speakers, with topics of interest to parents, educators, administrators, and business and community members. Monday, October 4th lineup includes outstanding topics and speakers:
WATG extends a huge thank you to Dr. German Diaz of Milwaukee Public Schools for translating this article into Spanish for our families and educators who speak Spanish. The translation can also be found on our website. In our July newsletter, we hinted that we would have some exciting news about the hiring of an Executive Director for the Wisconsin Association for Talented and Gifted. WATG is pleased to announce the hiring of Roxane Hagedorn as our new Executive Director, effective August 1, 2021. Roxane will join Nancy Woodward, our outstanding Executive Assistant, in furthering the work of our association. WATG has been growing exponentially in service to gifted and talented students, their families, and educators, and the time was right to grow our organizational administrative staff.
In her application letter, Roxane described herself as “highly motivated and progress-focused, with a long-standing background in education and community partnerships”. She continued, “I have a track record of initiative and dependability and I’m passionate about Gifted and Talented students and their education.” Roxane has had experience as a parent of a gifted and talented child and as a former WATG Board member from October 2011-October 2013. She described her additional gifted and talented leadership experience by highlighting her service to the Wausau School District Gifted and Talented Advisory Committee, which presented gifted and talented issues to their school board. This helped her gain an even greater understanding of perspectives from educators and parents. Roxane’s most recent work experience has been as the Volunteer and Community Involvement Coordinator for the Wausau Schools, where she has used her organizational skills and people skills to serve children and families. She concluded her letter of interest with these words, “I am someone who has ideas and the drive to continue to build on the success of WATG. I want to continue the outreach to the rest of the state and bring in more local leaders. The louder the megaphone the organization has, the more awareness we can bring. I want to be your next Executive Director because I believe in the mission of educating about and advocating for the needs of gifted in our state. I can continue your organization’s success through continued outreach, including in person meetings, social media and our statewide conference.” When Roxane begins her work at WATG in August, one of her first projects will be to become immersed in the continued planning process for our virtual annual fall conference, “Leading the World into the Future,” October 3, 4, and 5th. Our conference chairpersons, Stacy Novak and Nicole Meier, along with their outstanding programming committee, have begun assembling a conference that is not to be missed! Dr. Jonathan Plucker and Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings, keynote speakers, along with featured speaker, Alonzo Kelly, will be joined by a lineup of breakout sessions designed to pique your curiosity, build your skill sets, and prepare you for educating and parenting today and in the future. Here is a “sneak preview” of some of our offerings...
These snapshots are just a “sneak preview” of the workshops offered on Sunday, October 3, 2021. There are many more exciting workshops, exhibitors, and networking opportunities on the docket for October 4 and 5th, and we will preview them in the months to come. Please share information about our conference with your friends, family, and colleagues; your word of mouth is our best advertising! As you plan to attend our conference, be sure to watch for updates and teasers about our planned activities; we have lots of surprises! Also, please extend a warm welcome to Roxane Hagedorn online! We wish you could meet her in person at a face-to-face conference, but that will have to wait until 2022. We are sure that you will find her warm, knowledgeable, and engaging, just as we have! WATG extends a huge thank you to Dr. German Diaz of Milwaukee Public Schools for translating this article into Spanish for our families and educators who speak Spanish. The translation can also be found on our website. “Summertime...and the livin’ is easy…” these are words to a popular tune from American composer George Gerschwin’s famous English-language opera, Porgy and Bess. And while those of us on the WATG Board are enjoying the beginning of summer (as we hope you are), our “living” has been busy! As an organization, we have many projects and initiatives in progress, and we’d like to share these with you.
As you may be aware, we at WATG are experiencing some much-anticipated growth. As we ramp up our efforts in government action, membership and networking, and educational programming, we are in the process of interviewing candidates for the position of Executive Director of our organization. Our very talented Executive Assistant, Nancy Woodward, will continue to serve as Executive Assistant, but it is time to augment her services with those of an Executive Director. This person will become one of the important faces of our organization, and will allow us to fulfill our mission more completely, “to educate about and advocate for the needs of the gifted in Wisconsin.” At this writing, a team of board members and consultants are completing the interview process. Stay tuned for an exciting announcement in the very near future! As a Board, we also value the fresh talent and expertise that our interns bring to our organization. We’d like to thank Everett Harmelink and Camryn Ballweg, our former interns, for their immense enthusiasm and contributions to upgrading our website, our google presence, and our podcast; many people have commented on their work. Good luck to Everett and Camryn as they continue their studies. We have learned a lot from you, and we hope you have learned a lot in your internship with our organization! At this writing, we are pleased to introduce our newest WATG intern, Kurt Getchell, a journalism, advertising, and media studies student at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee. Kurt assumed his role as the Digital Marketing and Media Intern at WATG on June 1, and will be with us until the end of November. Welcome, Kurt! We look forward to tapping into your talent! In addition to the “busy-ness” at the administrative level, our entire board has been engaged in goal-setting and planning for the future. On June 18, we held our annual “face-to-face,” (but this year virtual) meeting of the Board of Directors. As a result of this meeting, we have a proposed operating budget for the upcoming fiscal year, and goals from each of our three committees. Our programming committee announced these ambitious goals for the following year:
Our membership committee announced these ambitious goals for the following year:
Our government action committee announced these ambitious goals for the following year:
As the summer progresses, we at WATG will certainly enjoy some easy-living moments with families and friends, but will also continue our work together - planning our Virtual Fall Conference, Leading the World Into the Future, October 3, 4, and 5, 2021, creating webinars and podcasts, speaking at various conferences, answering requests from parents, caregivers, educators, and students, and communicating with legislators and our membership. We hope that you will support us in our efforts. How are we doing? What else can we do to serve you? How can you help us further our goals? Let’s have a productive summer together. “Summertime - and the livin’ is easy - and busy - and exciting!” WATG extends a huge thank you to Dr. German Diaz of Milwaukee Public Schools for translating this article into Spanish for our families and educators who speak Spanish. The translation can also be found on our website. “Giving is not just about making a donation; it is about making a difference.” This quote is attributed to Kathy Calvin CEO and President of the United Nations Foundation, and reflects the values of the Board of Directors of the Wisconsin Association for Talented and Gifted. As a volunteer board, we are committed to donating our time and talent to improve educational and social emotional services for gifted and talented students in our state.
Many times our “donations” benefit one child, or one family, one educator or administrator, one school counselor or school psychologist. Sometimes our organization benefits many with our various services. Each month board volunteers answer inquiries from parents, educators, and sometimes even students. We answer questions, share resources, and coach. Questions from parents often center around gifted identification and testing, or working with individual school districts or teachers. Parents often ask for names of professionals who are experts in the social and emotional needs of gifted students - psychologists, psychiatrists, and counselors. They ask about summer camps and year-round educational opportunities. They ask for resources to stimulate and challenge their children. They ask about behaviors…and they are often searching for community, a place to speak with other parents who have “walked the walk.” We do our best to provide suggestions, guidance, and reassurance, and we hope that we make a difference. Educators also often ask for resources, or for suggestions on how to best meet the needs of gifted students in their regular classrooms. So few teachers have any specialized training in gifted education, and they are yearning to do their best for all of their students. They ask for help working with parents, with administrators, and with their school boards. They ask how they can work with us to press for more funding for gifted and talented education at the state level. They take advantage of our conferences, webinars, podcasts, Townhalls, and the other outreach activities we provide.They are committed, and are seeking answers. Again, we do our best to provide answers, guidance, and connections to others on the same journey, and hope that we make a difference. Finally, there are the students. Sometimes we get inquiries from children and young adults about giftedness. They want to know what it is, how they can find challenging learning environments, or how they can advocate for themselves. They worry about friendships, and they hope to find others like themselves and share activities with like-minded kids. Every year, WATG invites students to apply for scholarships to camps, lessons, and extended learning activities, and every year we provide scholarships to deserving students. This year a total of twenty-one students applied for a variety of scholarships, and we were delighted to award scholarships to 12 of them. As a result, students will be aided as they pursue opportunities in coding, music, art, math, science, languages, writing, artificial intelligence, engineering, SOAR camp, and minecraft. Reading their applications and glowing letters of recommendation, viewing their videos and slideshows, and hearing their voices shine through was a remarkable experience for board members who served as the scholarships task force. We hope that our donation of funds will make a difference for these students. We wish we had even more funds available for more students. The need is there, and the talent is great! At the close of their term of service on the WATG Board, every board volunteer is presented with a glass starfish. Perhaps you have heard the original starfish story, written by Loren Eisley. It goes like this: A young man is walking along the ocean and sees a beach on which thousands and thousands of starfish have washed ashore. Further along he sees an old man, walking slowly and stooping often, picking up one starfish after another and tossing each one gently into the ocean. “Why are you throwing starfish into the ocean?,” he asks. “Because the sun is up and the tide is going out and if I don’t throw them further in they will die.” “But, old man, don’t you realize there are miles and miles of beach and starfish all along it! You can’t possibly save them all, you can’t even save one-tenth of them. In fact, even if you work all day, your efforts won’t make any difference at all.” The old man listened calmly and then bent down to pick up another starfish and threw it into the sea. “It made a difference to that one.” As a board, individually and collectively, we hope to make a difference. Ours are donations of time (thousands of hours each year) and talent, and sometimes money; we hope those are making a difference in the lives of gifted and talented children, their families, and their educators. WATG extends a huge thank you to Dr. German Diaz of Milwaukee Public Schools for translating this article into Spanish for our families and educators who speak Spanish. The translation can also be found on our website. “No Man is an Island” is both a book, and a selection from the prose quotes of author John Donne. This metaphor illustrates the literal meaning of how an island is separated from other landforms by oceans; it also asserts that humans cannot afford to be islands. We need each other, both literally and figuratively. And so it is with organizations, such as the Wisconsin Association for Talented and Gifted.
As an organization, we are deliberately reaching out to other individuals, groups, and organizations so that we can share our messages, get new insights, and grow. We are both teaching and learning in these efforts, and we’d like to share some of our most recent work. Most recently, our Government Action Committee has been enormously busy on multiple fronts reaching out to legislators. First of all, they are currently working with legislators to increase the amount of funding for gifted and talented education in the upcoming budget. Wisconsin currently receives $237,200 annually in small competitive grants for projects that serve gifted students and their educators. Our neighboring states, by comparison, invest much more money - Minnesota, approximately $13 million per year, and Iowa, approximately $40 million per year. The No Time To Lose report (published by the National Conference of State Legislatures) examines the critical role of the states in developing the country's economic competitiveness, and the Blue Ribbon Commission on School Funding in the previous Wisconsin budget cycle recommended increasing our state's investment in gifted and talented education. To support this effort, Board members and others testified at Joint Finance Committee Budget hearings in April. However, our work as a board (and with you as our partners) is never done. We invite you to contact your legislators as the budgeting process evolves, and to share personal examples of how gifted education impacts your family, our students, state, and our nation. Most legislators never hear about gifted/advanced learning or talent development K-12, and are shocked when they see how little investment Wisconsin makes to find and develop gifts and talents compared to other states. To find your legislators, go to https://legis.wisconsin.gov/ and click on “Find My Legislators,” and join us in this effort. Another way that our Board is reaching out to others is through the work of our Membership Committee. Recently the Membership Committee surveyed our members about ways that we can best serve their needs. Currently, this committee is analyzing and sharing its findings with our other committees so that we can provide a targeted approach to growth, and provide necessary requested services. We are actively soliciting members, partners, and supporters to further our mission. To see the benefits of becoming one of these affiliates, click here. This Membership Guide has recently been translated into Spanish, and will appear soon on our website, providing access to our Spanish-speaking constituents. Additionally, board members are providing professional development to other groups around the state. For example, on April 1, WATG Board Members provided a workshop entitled “Social and Emotional Needs of Gifted Learners, or TAG! You’re It” to the Wisconsin School Counselors’ Association. Additionally, plans are in the works to present at the August Wisconsin Public Education Network conference. These are all ways to ensure that WATG is not an “island” organization. Finally, Our Programming Committee is working hard to organize events that will encourage parents and educators to learn together. Our Townhall Meetings have been a great success, and have encouraged discussions around various topics related to gifted education. If you have ideas for an upcoming Townhall theme, please contact us at watg@watg.org. If you are more interested in podcasts, WATG has been recording and sharing them on Spotify. Here is the link. Again, if you have suggestions for future podcasts, or can point us to future interviewees, please contact us. Recently, our Programming Committee surveyed our Membership regarding our Fall Conference, “Leading the World Into the Future,” October 4-5, 2021. During these challenging COVID times, it is extremely difficult to plan for events, and to weigh the risks and benefits of a face-to-face conference versus a virtual event. After examining all of the survey results, doing an extensive benefit/risk analysis, and much lively debate, our Programming Committee made a decision on April 24 to go virtual. More details will follow. This decision was very difficult to make, but we are confident that we have made the best decision at this time. As a Board, we continue to examine ways that we can remain connected to others who care about gifted and talented individuals. We look for your ideas, and welcome you to share your time and talent. This is another way that we can ensure that we are not an island. The more connections we make, the more we are joined in strength and outreach. We are currently seeking several new board members, so if you’d like to join us, please contact us at watg@watg.org. WATG extends a huge thank you to Dr. German Diaz of Milwaukee Public Schools for translating this article into Spanish for our families and educators who speak Spanish. The translation can also be found on our website. Have you ever in your life wondered what was “behind the curtain?” Perhaps you were at a theater production, or a concert, and have wondered “what’s really going on behind that curtain? I can’t wait for it to open.” Perhaps you’ve looked at a completed project and wondered, “What’s “behind the curtain?” How was that accomplished so well? Who was responsible? How did they make it happen?” If you are a person who wonders about what is “behind the curtain,” then this article is for you.
As an organization, there is lots of activity going on “behind the WATG curtain.” We now know that many, many of you read our monthly newsletters and are aware of our many initiatives and the many hours that are spent on them. But are you aware of the reasons for the work? What beliefs and values underpin our work? Who is responsible for the work? What research guides our work? How can you help? To more fully understand the scope of our work, you will want to check out our website at www.watg.org. The headline banners there provide a glimpse into the vast work that we are doing. One of the banners that you will see is our justice for all banner. In June of 2020, in response to the events that were unfolding in the United States, our board of directors crafted this statement, ““Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” ~Maya Angelou. “As our nation faces the grave consequences of long standing and systemic racism, the Wisconsin Association for Talented and Gifted remains committed to equity and justice for all. As an organization, we are cognizant of the inequities in identification and educational programming for gifted students of color. We remain committed to examining these inequities, and rectifying these inequities. We pledge to do our part to dismantle structural and institutional racism. We invite partnerships with other institutions, groups, and individuals to share conversations about the impacts of race, and will work to listen, learn, and support each other in this critical process of changing our world.” Each month our justice for all task force meets to examine our work as a board through lenses of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Most recently, we have been working with Mark Schwingle, the gifted and talented consultant at the Wisconsin Department of Public Education to align our efforts with the work of DPI. If you choose the Equity tab on the menu bar, it will take you to a long list of resources that you may find helpful as well. Our task force is using these resources to guide our work. Another banner provides information about our upcoming Townhall Meetings. Each month, WATG hosts a Townhall Meeting, open to all interested people. This is a relatively new offering, and is gaining momentum each month. Questions are posed, and participants are invited to share their ideas and resources. Topics in the past have included basic gifted education information, leadership, and most recently, growing gifted girls. What other topics would you like to see offered at our Townhall Meetings? We are always open to suggestions. Yet another banner highlights our annual fall conference. This banner, and the banner on the accompanying Teen Conference, which is held in conjunction with our adult conference, will keep you updated on information regarding our conferences. These banners are almost like “sneak previews”, and are designed to whet your appetite for more learning. With the help of our intern Everett, WATG has recently begun recording podcasts on a wide variety of topics of interest to educators and families. The podcast banner on our website will get you easily connected to our series of podcasts. In today’s busy world, podcasts are often a prime source of information. Again, we welcome suggestions regarding topics for future podcasts. Logo contests and scholarship information are advertised in other banners on our website. These are opportunities for our young people to grow and show their talents. We invite you to explore these with your children or students. Often we at WATG are asked about resources for programming for gifted students. Our resource page, newly developed, is packed with resource ideas on topics such as advocacy, artistic domain, assessment and identification, creativity domain, coordination, program development & evaluation, curriculum and instruction, equity, homeschooling, intellectual domain, leadership domain, parenting, parent-community-school partnerships, specific academic domain, social and emotional wellness, summer opportunities, and Wisconsin Gifted 101. It is a great place to find information, whether you are an educator, a parent, or a student. We highly recommend that you check out this section! Our final banners encourage you to join WATG, and outline the many benefits of membership. You can also see photos of our hardworking board members, all volunteers. Two newly added features that have recently been added to our website are the flip-open Membership Brochure, which highlights all of the benefits of WATG membership, partnership, and sponsorship, and a flip-book of our long-awaited Acceleration Report. We thank our intern, Camryn, for her work on incorporating these documents on our website. Finally, our website is the place where we archive all of our newsletter items, articles, and blogs. This is a great place to “get the pulse” of gifted education, and to read up on gifted issues locally, in our state, our nation, and our world. Now that you’ve been “behind the curtain,” we encourage you to stay for the show(s). Keep viewing our website, as the “show” changes frequently. Share the “show” with your friends and family, and consider sampling many of the “acts” that we provide. If you have an “act” to share, please send us your “script.” We’d love to have you on the stage with us! (WATG extends a huge thank you to Dr. German Diaz of Milwaukee Public Schools for translating this article into Spanish for our families and educators who speak Spanish. The translation can also be found on our website.) In our last month’s newsletter, we shared that WATG’s Membership Committee sent out a survey during the month of January. The purpose of the survey was to gauge how well we are doing as your state gifted organization. We wanted to find out what we are doing well, what we need to improve, and how we can more fully serve you, our constituents. In this month’s newsletter, we’d like to share some of the results of the survey with you. In the pie chart below, you will find that of our 96 respondents, 39.6% were members of our organization, 32.3% were not, and 28.1% were not sure if they were members. When asked why they were not members, 56.7% of non-members chose the option, “I am not sure what benefits I would get if I joined.” Clearly, as an organization we need to explain the benefits of membership more fully. Members, partners, and supporters enjoy these benefits: advocacy for gifted students at the local, state and national level (and our membership numbers count when we advocate at the state level for funding), access to high quality professional development (including our conference, workshops, webinars, and podcasts) for parents and educators, coaching and consulting services, briefings on the research of gifted education issues and topics on our website and social media sites, scholarships for gifted students and educators, and networking opportunities. Essentially, we offer a knowledgeable platform for gifted students and their parents and educators in Wisconsin. As an affiliate of NAGC, the National Association for Gifted Children, we are constantly kept abreast of national and international issues in gifted education, and share this information with our members.  In examining the data from the survey, we were surprised to find out that a large percentage of our respondents did not know if they were members of WATG. Because membership dues are part of the fee structure for our annual conference, we believe that some respondents (especially those who are signed up for our conference by gifted coordinators, for instance), did not know that they actually were members, even though they attended our conference. It also came as no surprise that many priorities changed during the pandemic. Less people attended WATG’s virtual conference than our standard in-person conferences. School districts who often paid for past conference attendance were attending to other priorities, and many educators admitted to being “zoomed out” as a result of online teaching and learning. However, most respondents shared that they still utilized many of WATG’s services. When asked about which WATG services were used by our respondents, it became evident that our monthly newsletters (71.3%), website (69.1%), conference (67%), and webinars (22.3%) were most popular. 75.3% of our respondents indicated that they read the newsletter every month, and some had suggestions for improving both the newsletter and website. Some members asked for more information on resources, technology tools, books and classroom ideas. Others asked for advice on parenting gifted kids, and how to help gifted kids make and keep friends. Still others asked for more information/publicity regarding upcoming podcasts, webinars, conferences, and other learning opportunities. One respondent shared this comment, “We belong to CESA6 & use their resources, but I APPRECIATE the WATG newsletter & the VALUABLE information by the various authors...I also link it for parents in my district.” This is encouraging information because it greatly expands the range of our message. It would be amazing if more district gifted coordinators would share our resources widely. We highly encourage it.  One very interesting set of statistics centered around conference attendance. In the graph below, you can see that many of our conference attendees attend each year. It was somewhat disappointing to see, however, that roughly a fourth of our respondents had never attended a WATG conference. We welcome ideas on how to improve this statistic. We are very hopeful that once the pandemic is mitigated, people will be eager to get together to network and learn face-to-face. Many respondents shared this sentiment!  Our survey also asked about WATG’s presence on social media, and our respondents who used social media overwhelmingly chose Facebook as a preferred platform. It was interesting to note that 50.5% of the respondents do not follow WATG on social media, and another 19.8% do not use social media at all. Though we did not ask about what kind of social media posts would be most helpful, we will continue to analyze our social media metrics to get further insight about this.  Though webinars and podcasts are relatively new additions to our WATG services, we were surprised to find that 28.7% of the survey respondents had watched a WATG webinar, and 5.3% of the respondents had listened to a WATG podcast (a most-recently debuted service). We are definitely planning to continue these services. The feedback assured us that these offerings work very well for our constituents, and fit into our busy lives.
Frequently suggested topics for webinars and podcasts included: Building and coordinating GT policy and programming on a budget (in rural, urban, and suburban districts), collaborating with other educators regarding gifted kids and best practice strategies, equitable identification of gifted and talented learners, differentiation and high-ceiling learning for gifted learners, equity issues in gifted education, culturally responsive and anti-racist teaching, trauma informed teaching, and an examination of successful models of programming for gifted learners in Wisconsin. Also high on the list were parenting strategies, parenting and educating young gifted children, social and emotional needs of gifted children and adolescents, advocacy (both for individual children and for gifted programming), twice exceptional (2E) gifted kids, underachievement, motivation, and engagement in gifted kids, and homeschooling advice and ideas. Finally, several respondents asked to hear success stories from students. How is gifted programming helping them, or how did gifted programming help them? What are their stories? This is great feedback, since human interest stories appeal to wide audiences. We will take this advice into consideration as we plan future programming. When asked about what other events WATG could offer, in addition to ideas offered above, here are some suggestions we received:
Our organization has gleaned some very useful information from this survey, and we want to thank all of you who participated. We will be using this information as we prioritize and strategically plan future initiatives. As promised, we randomly chose five respondents to receive a year’s free membership to WATG. WATG is pleased to announce these winners: M. Kennedy, P. Merrifeld, C. Henricks, S. Calhoun, and G. Schiller. Congratulations, winners! In the meantime, everyone, please keep your suggestions coming. You can always contact us at watg@watg.org. We are eager to hear from you and to grow with your help. |
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