Okay -- Be truthful -- did I overwelm you with the technology portion? If so, don't panic, I will help you sift through it soon enough!
Thank you for coming -- feel free to share!
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About Me
- Marlene Armstrong
- I'm married to the amazing Michael and have 4 terrific kids, ages 25, 22, 18 & 16. I am also very blessed to have a grandson who is a year old. I have the best job -- I am an Assistant Principal at San Tan Charter School.
Yeah I little, but I am sure we will get the hang of it. What is the topic for our first discussion?
ReplyDeleteDiscussion Topic #1:
ReplyDeleteWhat is your philosophy about giftedness? and
What do you hope to learn from our discussions?
I am still learning about what it means for a student to be gifted, so I do not have a well defined philosophy about gifted instruction. My son has been tested for giftedness and while he has an IQ of 134 and is considered to be gifted in the verbal area, I am not sure what that means (especially in light of the fact that he fails a lot of his high school courses).
One of the reasons I am taking this class is to learn more about gifted children and gifted instruction, so that I can develop a solid philosophy and teaching approach to meet the needs of this unique group of students.
I was able to attend the AAGT (Arizona Association of Gifted and Talented) Parent Conference this weekend and my big 'aha' moment came when I realized that gifted children often hide their giftedness and as teachers we may have students in our classrooms that fit into the category of extreme giftedness (kids who are usually smarter than we are) and not even know it.
Another goal I have in taking this class is to learn how to identifying the truly gifted students in my class, so that I can meet their academic needs.
Last but not least, I want to learn how to diversify my lessons, so that there are learning activities that meet the needs of all the students in my classroom.
Okay, gang . . . I got us started, so let’s see where it goes . . .
Kristi:
ReplyDeleteYour post was amazing! Let me see if I can break it down and respond to everything.
1. My philosophy: Some of you may be surprised by I don't have one! My basic philosophy is that ALL children should be taught at their unique ability level. My problem is I have a personal interest in gifted because of my giftedness & my children.
As I went to the same conference as you - my biggest aha moment was that we are moving forward and we have come so far in gifted education in the last 2 years. I just want the momentum to continue in a positive manner that will help gifted students in addition to helping teachers. I truly believe that this will make our jobs easier rather than harder and that we will enjoy watching the fruit of labors. As far as seeing the gifted kids who are smarter than you are -- I've been living with that since my son was 2 :) AND I see it every day with some of our profoundly gifted kiddos.
The identification is the hard part and we actually will spend some more time discussing this as we go through the rest of the book....good news we have a solid foundation at our school for doing this.
Diversification is the hardest part of this entire process and hopefully as we go further in our book study we will have simple tools that will allow this to be an easy process.
Gifted worries me. Let's remember always that it has a whole chapter dedicated to it in Special Education.
ReplyDeleteThese kids can blow us away with their insight, but it is other aspects of life which overwhelms them. Maybe it is because of their unique cognitive abilities, that they choose to ignore and loose the mundane, a cheap and costly mistake with socializing and coping mechanisms.
Wanda: You are absolutely right! When my oldest was little people would tell me how wonderful it was that he was so smart, I would tell them, yeah but he is the one that I worry about the most, mt 2nd child just seemed to be happy--he was never happy.
ReplyDeleteLike Marlene, I don't have a Philosophy. I know I should but I just believe that every child is unique and we, as educators, should strive to develop that which is in them to it's greatest potential. A gifted child is like a butterfly, their is so much inside that they can become, but many times the world tells them to be a worm because everyone else is a worm. They struggle and try to hide their differences so they won't be recjected, they become frustrated and give up, they go into their cacoon and never come out. But if they were directed correctly, nurtured and encouraged they would sprout beautiful wings and fly. Gifted's have the ability to take ous out of the box, to show us things we can't even dream. We need to embrace that and encourage it. I guess thats my Philosophy
ReplyDeleteTed: I couldn't agree more!
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely not! Actually, I enjoyed learning about twitter. I wish I had more time to spend "tweeting," but I have even told other teachers about the possible benefits of setting up a profile.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the technology portion!
Marisa: It is so easy to share with people who want to learn and when you are sharing something you love :)
ReplyDelete