Farewell from the President
August 2021 marks the end of my tenure as the President of the North Dakota Association for Gifted Children (NDAGC). During the last three wonderful years, we reconstituted NDAGC into an affiliate of NAGC and created a strong, stable base of officers and board members from across the state. Thank you to Alicia Schroeder-Schock, Andrea Edstrom, Ann Duchscher, Beth Ustanko, Jackie Owen, Julie Jaeger, Kim Stein, Ligia Carina de Drago, and Mikayla Cramer. We showcase the expertise of the group of dedicated professionals in our webinar series. I am very proud of the monthly webinar newsletters that recap their content and the quarterly newsletters that summarize all that NDAGC does. Most exciting was contributing to NDDPI’s new guidelines for gifted programming called ND Best Practices in Gifted Education that was just released. Thank you to Mikayla Cramer for diligently writing the monthly webinar newsletters and to Allison Anderson for creating order out of our chaos by coordinating our quarterly newsletters. Thank you, Beth Ustanko, for your commitment to teachers’ professional development by teaching our summer professional development webinar course. I am also delighted that Jackie Owen created a local GT endorsement through Valley City State University, a much-needed service for our state. Finally, many thanks to Ann Duchscher, who created and maintains a beautiful new website for us that showcases the hard work NDAGC does every day. What an amazing team of volunteers!
Helping to create and lead this non-profit organization has been a privilege. In 2010, when I attended my first NAGC Conference, I noticed a clear lack of North Dakota representation. The idea of forming an NAGC affiliated organization did not cross my mind until my student Edwin Edpalina—a 2017 NAGC Javits-Frasier Scholar—suggested we create one (click picture). Now, three years later, NDAGC participates in the NAGC affiliate meetings and presents at their conferences. This year Alicia Schroeder-Schock will present her work at the 68th Annual Convention in Denver.
I cannot begin to count how many new tasks, opportunities, and challenges I faced in my role as President. The strong support of my fellow officers and directors made it possible to successfully overcome so many roadblocks. Whatever the challenges, NDAGC must continue advocating for students. As a discipline without a federal mandate in a state that equally does not mandate its protection, gifted education in North Dakota needs NDAGC. As NDAGC embarks on its next creative adventure, I offer a few words of reflection. Remember and model key principles of gifted education used to support student success. Embrace risk-taking and vulnerability as necessary components of growth.
With gratitude,
Yee Han Chu Ph.D. MSSW
New Website Feature
NAGC 68th Annual Convention
https://www.eventscribe.net/2021/NAGC21/
One of our very own officers, Alicia Schroeder-Schock, will present at the Annual Convention alongside Dr. Brian Housand, coordinator of the Academically or Intellectually Gifted program at University of North Carolina Wilmington. Read below to learn more about the topic of their session.
Session Name: How Did You Think Today? Putting Students and Their Thinking in the Driver's Seat
Teachers of gifted students are often tasked with bringing their students deeper into the general curriculum and elevating thinking to higher levels while assisting regular classroom teachers in the process. In this arrangement, the onus of the thinking is on the gifted teacher while gifted students and classroom teachers often remain unaware of the thinking processes involved.
What if we re-engineered this and empowered gifted students to focus not only on the content and questions presented but also on how they are thinking?
This session will model lessons that deeply engage curiosity and critical thinking. Together we will identify and analyze the thinking processes being activated while emphasizing that it is not the quantity but the quality of questions asked in classrooms that get students engaged in specific thinking processes.
Participants will experience an introduction to a comprehensive, synthesized crosswalk of critical thinking and inquiry-based learning frameworks commonly used in gifted education which includes but is not limited to Kaplan’s Depth and Complexity, Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy, Project Zero’s Thinking Routines, Webb’s Depth of Knowledge, the Curry/Samara Model, Paul’s Elements of Reasoning, and the Cambridge Assessment Taxonomy of Critical Thinking.
Information shared will have direct implications for K-12 gifted programming related to making thinking processes purposeful by focusing on suggestions for integration into the regular classroom to push student thinking higher and deeper. Participants will leave with a collection of lesson resources, ready-to-use strategies and increased confidence in putting their students’ thinking into the driver’s seat of the learning environment.
The New “North Dakota Best Practices for Gifted Education”
These Best Practices are not intended to comprise a comprehensive textbook on gifted education. They will not take the place of careful study of the literature, nor are they intended to eliminate the need for the services of trained professionals at the local level.
This document is also published and available through the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction.
