Advocating Highly Capable Students
What Can YOU Do???
What types of advocacy for gifted students would you recommend when working with other educators; families; communities; and other professional organizations?
Whether you are an educator, families, community or professional organization, we need to gain knowledge to be strong advocates. It is our responsibility to take action and not just “talk the talk, but walk the walk.” As collaborative partners working with highly capable students, we need to work together to focus on a concise goal. As advocates in education, we need to work together to support and meet the needs of all our students.
What can families do to advocate for highly capable students?
- Utilize media (social / print, etc) based on their knowledge and experiences to broaden the general public’s understanding of gifted.
- Collaborate with teachers and administrators as an advocate to promote highly capable programs.
- Guide, support and encourage highly capable students to excel and challenge themselves.
- Become familiar with local and state policies that govern gifted education, the processes whereby these policies were created, and how they can be changed (Robinson & Moon, 2003z, 2003b).
- Advertise coming events with e-mail, posters, telephone trees, texting, or Twitter and take photographs and videos for publicity.
- Help to build a strong, positive image for gifted learners by focusing on the unique skills of students.
What can educators do to advocate for highly capable students?
- Showcase the significant contributions beyond what might be expected for peers of highly capable students.
- Continually attend trainings for professional development to support differentiation for all students.
- Collaborate with your colleagues to help improve the development of differentiation for all students.
- Create a learning environment that is not only appropriate, but equitable to teach all students to the highest level of which they are capable.
- Provide differentiation to increase challenge and rigor to improve learning for all students.
- Create classroom and library bulletin boards, or even the school entry to display articles and photographs chronicling students’ participation in various activities (e.g., academic competitions, special programs, community service, student contributions to the newspaper, special events, and newspaper articles or blogs about the gifted program).
What can the community and professional organizations do to advocate for highly capable students?
- Become well-informed and supportive in the understanding of the benefits of gifted education.
- Support highly capable learners by mentoring students at their personal interest area.
- Serve on a committee and / or get involved in the PTG to advocate for highly capable programs.
- Become involved in a special interest group to become involved with a goal to support highly capable students.
- Support the need for highly capable learners by donating to support programs.
- Provide opportunities to utilize highly capable students within professional organizations.
- Become active in mentorships with the highly capable, as these students will be our future leaders.
Lewis, J.D., & Karnes, F.A. (2015). Public relations and advocacy for the gifted. In F. Karnes, & S. Bean (Eds.), Methods and materials for teaching the gifted (4th ed., pp. 665-702). Waco, TX: Prufrock Press.
Stephens, K.R. (2015). Getting what you need: Locating and obtaining money and other resources. In F. Karnes, & S. Bean (Eds.), Methods and materials for teaching the gifted (4th ed., pp. 703-722). Waco, TX: Prufrock Press.
http://www.ctd.northwestern.edu/fall-2015-talent-newsletter
http://www.nagc.org/get-involved/advocate-high-ability-learners