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As an organization, the WI Association for Talented and Gifted has been highly committed to both excellence and equity in gifted education. For many of you “Wisconsin gifted education veterans” out there, you may still even have our mug with the logo “Excellence and Equity” inscribed on it. As an organization, we have been keenly aware of the underrepresentation of minority and diverse students in gifted education programming in our state, and sought to bring awareness to this issue. Over the years, WATG has, with the help of Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction gifted and talented grants, sponsored several Diversity Summits in our state. One of the first Summits was held in at the Wingspread Conference Center in Racine, Wisconsin. In December of 2008, a second Summit was held in Janesville, and in January of 2009 a third Diversity Summit was held in Green Bay. WATG also sponsored Four Corners events in Hayward, Platteville, Marshfield, and Kenosha, and highlighted issues related to identification and programming for underserved students. During the 2009-2010 school year, WATG teamed with Milwaukee Public Schools and Cooperative Educational Services Agency #1 in a multi-pronged learning effort entitled “Overlooked Gifts: Finding and Serving Children with Promise.” Workshops, SENG (Supporting the Emotional Needs of Gifted) parent groups, and an internationally-attended conference in Milwaukee were some of the highlights of this joint venture.
In the decade since, WATG has continued its commitment to furthering equity and excellence in gifted education in our state by sponsoring breakout sessions which celebrate diversity at our annual conferences, speaking about these issues at other state and national conferences, (e.g., the WI Public Education Network Summits, the WI Association for School Boards and District Administrators conferences, NAGC), and forging partnerships with other associations such as the Wisconsin Rural Schools Association. WATG has also provided numerous scholarships to students to help promote diversity in learning opportunities for students. Most recently, WATG has been highly supportive of the districts (Milwaukee Public Schools, Racine Unified, and Kenosha Unified), who have been part of the federally funded Javits Grants, focusing on underserved students who are economically disadvantaged, limited English proficiency, disabled, or “other.” While the work is being heroically done in these districts, many of our WATG Board Members and Association members have served on strategic planning and implementation teams to further the work of these grants, and we are proud of their efforts. We look forward to the “upscaling” of the learning and implementation to all corners of our state, and want to help in this effort. Though much has been done, and is being done, so much more needs to be done. In countless articles such as these, Unequal access to gifted-and-talented education is a National … This Top Gifted and Talented School is Integrated, Money over merit? New study says gifted programs favor …, The Contradiction at the Heart of Public Education, it is apparent that much more needs to change in gifted education identification and programming to make it more equitable, while preserving the excellence that our students seek and deserve. So...what can be done at the local level? Here are some ideas, gleaned from much of the current research on “leveling the playing field” for underserved students: Recommendations for the identification of gifted and talented diverse students:
Recommendations for gifted and talented programming for diverse students:
Although these ideas serve as a springboard, we are certain that other strategies are being tried around our state, and we, the WATG Board, invite hearing what is being done in your district. We will share your ideas, and will continue the quest for both excellence and equity.
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As many of you may know, the Wisconsin Association for Talented and Gifted is an affiliate of the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC), and we are always inspired and motivated by the work that this national organization does for gifted children, families, and educators. Each year selected representatives from our board travel to Washington DC to work with NAGC to learn about policy, research, advocacy, and a myriad of other issues related to gifted education. Experts at NAGC prepare these board members to lobby for gifted children on Capitol Hill, and to work with our own state legislators as well. The work of NAGC also influences our thinking back in Wisconsin, and helps to unify our state perspective with a national perspective on gifted education. The NAGC provides the “view from the balcony” to those of us who are “on the dance floor” in our individual states.
In the article below, Jonathan Plucker, President of NAGC, sums up the “big balcony picture” perspective of gifted education in our nation, viewing it in a way that is congruent with our WATG perspective. In gifted education, we do “serve many masters,” and it may seem that some of them have conflicting needs. However, in meeting these various needs, we at WATG are diligently addressing all of the concerns that surround quality gifted education. As an example, the WATG Government Advocacy Committee and others, along with Drs. Pam Clinkenbeard and Scott Peters, representing academia, met with legislators and aides in a briefing in Madison on October 8, 2019. At this meeting, the focus was on educating legislators about the unique needs of gifted students, and the services needed to provide them with a challenging education. In this way, we as an organization were serving parents and students, and grounding our “asks” in current research. Future meetings and actions will keep this momentum going. WATG’s Membership Committee is focused on attracting and serving our members. As a committee, they have a highly visible presence on social media (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram). Research articles, parenting tips, humorous and thoughtful posts are shared daily. Additionally, this committee will be hosting several “Meet and Greet” opportunities around the state to share information, and to promote networking. WATG’s Programming Committee is charged with planning and executing our annual fall conference, and overseeing any additional educational outreach opportunities sponsored by our association. These could include runouts to underserved areas in our state, webinars, or other educational opportunities requested by our membership. An overarching goal of this committee is to provide quality, cutting-edge information based on the work of the academics in our field, and tied to the needs of our constituents. Our Acceleration Team has been researching the prevalence of acceleration opportunities for students throughout our state. Teaming up with researchers, the eventual goal is to make acceleration a possibility for qualifying students in every district in Wisconsin. In the interim, they will be educating audiences about acceleration, and working with legislators to make this happen. Finally, WATG supports children and families by providing coaching services, and by helping connect parents to educational resources, and to medical and mental health professionals who have expertise in the field of gifted education. As an organization, we are highly committed to supporting the emotional needs as well as the academic needs of gifted learners, and our conferences always include breakout sessions that serve this need. Though the work is daunting, it is also very satisfying work. We as a working board welcome your input, and, if you have time and expertise, your help in keeping our work vibrant and moving forward. In this month of giving thanks, we are thankful for all of you who help us further our mission, “To educate about and advocate for the needs of gifted in Wisconsin.” Together we have the potential to make great progress, keeping our eyes on both the view from “the balcony” and “the dance floor.” Reconciling the Field's Many Motivations September 20, 2019 Jonathan Plucker, President NAGC (National Association for Gifted Children) As I work with educators, parents, and advocates around the country, they are often surprised by my optimism about the future of the field. As I begin my term as NAGC president, the time feels right to share the reasons behind my excitement … but also a cautionary note about how our current progress can be easily lost if we’re not careful. I see plenty of reasons to be optimistic. We have more and better theories and research on developing students’ gifts and talents; we have more advocates than ever before, and they’re constantly improving their strategies for creating policy and educational change for talented children; educators are implementing sound practices and showing a clear commitment to equity; districts are implementing research-supported strategies such as universal screening; and we’ve never had so many policymakers sensitive to the needs of gifted children. We are collectively focusing on development of children’s talents, helping them improve their quality of life and future prospects. That’s optimistic by definition! But as an NAGC officer over the past two years, I've also come to understand the nature of our major weaknesses, and how those issues threaten this recent progress. I’ve talked to many people about these problems and potential solutions, including parents, students, educators, consultants, and higher-education folks. These conversations are often difficult but always enlightening and inspiring. Yes, we have challenges, but they aren’t insurmountable. The big challenge is that the gifted education community is really several different communities. They’re loosely connected like squares of an afghan blanket, with some communities less connected than others. Each group has its own motivations and goals, and their perspectives often don’t overlap that much. As a result, we talk past each other, roll our eyes at each other’s views, and move the field forward in inches rather than miles. We have four main communities, from my perspective.* Parents want solutions to the problems their child faces, generally caused by lack of services within their school, and strategies for dealing with the wide range of social and emotional issues their child experiences. This makes perfect sense: You’re concerned about your child, you don’t really care whether other students’ face similar issues, you don’t have the time to keep up with the latest research – you want solutions that help your bright child immediately. Even more to the point, parents feel an urgency for quick action because, for example, an underchallenged fourth-grader only has one shot at fourth grade, and the problem needs to be addressed NOW. So a deficit perspective that treats each gifted student as dealing with unique academic, social, and emotional issues and challenges is reasonable. Yet many other parents and the school may appear unsupportive or even dismissive of your child’s needs: “They’re smart, they’ll figure it out on their own without any help.” Most talented students know they are different, even at a young age. Their concerns tend to involve keeping themselves challenged and interested when in school, along with all the normal trials and tribulations faced by young people: making and maintaining friendships, developing a sense of identity while not wanting to stick out from the crowd too much, having fun. They realize they have the potential to do important things, but they also live in a culture where advanced academic achievement is paradoxically either an expectation (to an excessive degree) or a social detriment – especially for low-income, Black, Hispanic, Native American, twice exceptional, and female students. Or both! Educators within our field want effective strategies for working with bright students. They may have one advanced student or dozens; they may have no identified students but many diamonds-in-the-rough who will do great things if only given the right opportunities. They understand the value of research but wear many hats and have little time to keep up with the latest studies. Educators’ concerns are usually broader than those of parents (several students vs. one or two children), and they are working within educational systems that provide little credit for helping students perform at advanced levels (and may even be hostile to the idea). Academics generally are concerned about conducting cutting-edge research, working with the other communities to implement research-based practices, and training future educators. They often focus on improving the situation for large groups of students, not necessarily individuals, through promotion of research and research-based practices, and their work is examined quite closely by their employer (mainly through peer evaluation) to ensure they’re having the desired impact. Academics rarely have large numbers of colleagues with similar interests, and many work in settings where gifted or advanced education is a very low priority, if not offensive to many. Four overlapping communities, each with its own motivations, strengths, and hurdles to overcome. Our greatest weakness is that we don’t put ourselves in the shoes of people in other communities, leading to misunderstandings, division, and pulling in opposite directions at times. This may be one reason why I look across the field and see so many passionate, hard-working advocates … but not nearly the advocacy results one would expect from such a talented group. NAGC has an important role to play in bringing our communities together. We can promote conversations among these stakeholder groups; we can ensure that all groups are represented when planning events, outreach efforts, and convention sessions; we can provide a wide range of resources that address the needs of each group while acknowledging the contributions each community made to that particular resource. We can model our field’s commitment to inclusivity and diversity by not merely exhibiting tolerance – which implies there is something to be tolerated – but carefully considering a wide range of opinions, valuing perspectives different from our own, and modifying our views accordingly. The future of the field depends, in large part, on our communities acknowledging their different mindsets and learning to work together across those well-entrenched perspectives and biases. If we all start pulling in the same direction, much like the field of special education has done, we will create the long-term change for gifted students, their families, and our schools, culture, and economy we have struggled to achieve. I look forward to working with you as we take NAGC to the next level in our support for gifted students. Footnote: *There are probably more than four communities within our field, but I boiled things down for argument’s sake. The same issues exist whether we have 2 or 22 communities. Jonathan A. Plucker, Ph.D., is the President of the NAGC Board and the Julian C. Stanley Professor of Talent Development at the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth. The views expressed herein represents the opinion of the author and not necessarily the National Association for Gifted Children. Copyright 2019 National Association for Gifted Children. Used with permission of NAGC www.nagc.org As you read this newsletter, we at the Wisconsin Association for Talented and Gifted are still basking in the “afterglow” of our fall annual conference, “Revolutionizing the Basics: Making Education WORK for Gifted Students” October 3 & 4 at the Glacier Canyon Conference Center in Wisconsin Dells. We were pleased to share this dynamic learning event with well over 300 guests, speakers and exhibitors. Our audience included teachers and administrators, retired educators, state representatives, teens, parents, psychologists, social workers, and members of the business community. We welcomed attendees from all areas of our state, and shared countless ideas of what works best for kids and gifted education. Many conference attendees remarked that there was a “charge” in the rooms, an electricity or palpable energy as we learned and grew together. Without a doubt, many special things were happening. Old friendships were rekindled; new ones were made. Old ideas were challenged; new ones forged. Conversations were lively and productive, with much laughter (and some libations) shared. There was, indeed, a “charge” in the air, and we thank you, our attendees, for bringing our conference to life with your energy and curiosity.
Though it is impossible to thank everyone who helped to make this event so successful, we especially want to thank our conference chairwomen, Kitty Ver Kuilen and Beth Fairchild for their boundless energy, enthusiasm, and encouragement. With the support of Nancy Woodward, our highly capable Executive Assistant at WATG, these ladies ran a spectacular conference! We also want to thank Board Member Lalitha Murali, and Stacy Read, Web and Software instructor at Waukesha County Technical College, for their work with 28 diverse and dedicated teens, who crafted online games to help solve world problems that are near and dear to their hearts. Bravi tutti in this endeavor! Please see the article in this month’s newsletter for more details about the Teen Conference. We also want to thank our exhibitors for sharing ideas, information, and resources with our attendees. All of them stretched our thinking, and provided us with the tools to pursue excellence in gifted education. The format change of this year’s conference allowed attendees to participate in two full days of learning, and our attendees took advantage of this. Participants engaged in thirty(! ) sessions, including five extended learning opportunities. Our highly inspiring keynote presenters, Ian Byrd and Dr. Scott Peters, challenged us to get to the heart of gifted education, to revolutionize the basics, and to respect the unique joys and challenges of raising and educating gifted children and adolescents. Our heartfelt thanks to these gentlemen for sharing their time and talents with us. Each WATG conference is also a chance to celebrate some of the people who have made unique and lasting contributions to our field during the past year. This year’s award winners included:
Our kudos and grateful thanks to all of them! Finally, we’d like to acknowledge the abiding care and thoughtful presence of our outgoing president, Cathy Schmit. Under her indomitable leadership, our organization continues to grow, and to tackle new tasks that will benefit gifted learners in our state. Thank you, Cathy! Every outstanding conference leaves us with excellent memories, and also with a “charge” to go forth - to use what we’ve learned - in our homes, our classrooms, our schools, our state, and our nation. Therefore, we as a board are “charging” you with two duties during the coming year:
P.S. If you still have the “earworm” of the WATG Board’s performance of “Big Rock Candy Mountain” rolling around in your brain, you’re welcome :) I was visiting with an elderly woman recently and she was telling me about her experience with getting her eyes examined. She was surprised to learn that her vision had changed drastically from the last time she had been checked. Her comment was that she had had such imperceptible changes over time that she never really noticed what was happening. She compared it to sitting on your porch on a sunny day engrossed in a good book, when suddenly you look up to realize that it has gotten dark and you need to turn a light on to continue reading. Her new glasses were nearly miraculous, like someone turned the light on for her. Time has a way of changing things… I am learning that it is important to stop and reflect on those changes, or lack thereof. Are they for the better, worse? Moving forward or moving backward? Healthy or unhealthy? Energy filling or energy draining? Are we changing or are just the things around us changing? The way we teach, parent or advocate for our gifted children is the same way. The world is moving at such break-neck speed. Life is overflowing with opportunities and obligations, and there is simply no way that we can keep up. But it’s not until we STOP and reflect back on where we’ve come from that we realize where we are. Forward? Backward? Stuck? Please accept the following invitation as an opportunity for a reflective “pause” - to help you to examine your teaching, parenting, advocacy, and/or support of our gifted kids. Are you doing things the same way as you have always done them? Are you changing with the times? Do you know the current research? Are you applying it? Do you network with others concerning gifted? Do you advocate for better support of gifted education? Do you know a gifted child that is counting on you? Please consider joining us for a personal check-up! You are cordially invited to the WATG Fall Conference Revolutionizing the Basics: Making education WORK for Gifted Students October 3-4, 2019 Wilderness Resort and Conference Center, Wisconsin Dells Take some much-deserved time out of the busy-ness of life and join us in examining where we are and where we can go with gifted education in Wisconsin. Dr. Scott Peters and Ian Byrd will be our keynoters. Conference breakout sessions are designed to stimulate, enrich, and provide networking opportunities for educators, families, teens, and business and community leaders. …We’ll turn the light on… Summer is in full swing, and with the long days and warm afternoons comes the typical hustle and bustle of August. Stores begin their marketing toward a school year that may be filled with apprehension or excitement for students and parents alike. But the lessons to be learned from summer are not quite over! This last week I had the opportunity to spend the week at SOAR G/T summer camp with a group of wonderfully gifted and talented young adults from around Wisconsin. This group of students, bright and curious, came together, some for the first time and some returning to learn with one another. They spent a week learning what it can mean to be gifted, surrounded by peers who share similarities and similar struggles. They were challenged to learn new things and explore different ways of understanding. These lessons are crucial for gifted kids as they learn to understand themselves and what it means for them to experience challenges in a world when so often they are not challenged in their daily settings.
As I spent the week growing with these students, there were also crucial lessons for me to learn. The most important take-away for me came from watching the campers learn methods to accomplish new tasks. When gifted students are presented with difficult things in school and within their comfort zone, they can learn to do the task so quickly that they require no instruction. The math problem, or piece of music, or logic puzzle can be accomplished with seemingly minimal effort as their brains adapt to the challenge before them. However, if you take a gifted kid and present them with something that requires more practice or steps to master, it is important to realize just how important teaching and providing these steps is. Time and time again this last week I heard the following from the campers -- “I always wanted to learn [something new], but I didn’t know the steps. You taught me the steps.” Regardless of whether this referred to learning chess, communication, or something seemingly insignificant, the effects of learning the steps to accomplishing something was powerful for the campers. I believe this lesson also applies to parents and educators of gifted students as they advocate for gifted education. Sometimes it is important to combat frustration, and start at the beginning with step one. Learning how to advocate using a step-by-step approach can help individuals advocate for gifted education in a more sustainable way. Moreover, teaching people how to advocate using steps can help them understand the process and overcome the challenges faced with trying to advocate. As the school year approaches, do not be afraid to go back to step one, and, just as we should encourage gifted kids to practice and learn in steps, we should do the same for each other. Encourage one another to take things step-by-step in our fight for advocacy and representation for gifted students. |
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