REGISTRATION CLOSED. (PAST EVENT.)

Friday, February 5-6, 2021

8:30 a.m. - 1:30 p.m. 

Member Registration fee: Early Bird: $100; After December 20, 2020: $150

Non-Member Registration fee: Early Bird: $150; After December 20, 2020: $175

Recordings of all presentations will be available to registrants after the summit.

Professional Development Credit:

Participants are eligible for one PD hour per session if sign in/sign out and evaluation form requirements are met.

 

Educators, school and district administrators and gifted specialists are invited to attend the IAGC virtual “Equity & Inclusion in Action Summit” on Friday and Saturday, February 5-6, 2021. (Although this summit is geared toward education professionals, interested parents are also welcome!)

At this special summit, state and national experts will share six special one-hour presentations focused on practical strategies to identify and meet the needs of advanced learners from diverse racial, cultural, linguistic and socio-economic backgrounds. Presentations will be followed by a one-hour lunch break-out session time for networking and informal discussion to further explore topics of interest.

Join us and be a "part of the action" to make diversity, equity & inclusion in advanced programming a reality in all of our schools!

 Summit Presenters, Schedule & Topics:

Understanding and Addressing Disproportionality in Gifted Education

Friday, February 5, 2021: 8:30 a.m. - 9:30 a.m.

What are the causes of the underrepresentation of students from some ethnic-racial groups and low-income backgrounds in gifted education and why has it persisted for so long? In this session, Dr. Worrell will review the primary drivers of ethnic-racial and income disproportionality in GATE programs as well as the benefits and challenges of various approaches for reducing disproportionality. The session will conclude with recommendations for developing identification that will result in more diverse GT programs.

FRANK C. WORRELL is a Professor of School Psychology in the Graduate School of Education and an Affiliate Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. His areas of expertise include talent development/gifted education, at-risk youth, cultural identities, scale development/validation, time perspective, and the translation of psychological research findings into practice. Dr. Worrell is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, the American Educational Research Association, and five divisions of APA, and a former Editor of Review of Educational Research. Dr. Worrell was a 2015 recipient of the Distinguished Contributions to Research Award from the Society for the Psychological Study of Culture, Ethnicity, and Race (Division 45 of APA), a 2018 recipient of the Outstanding International Psychologist Award from Division 52 of APA (International Psychology), and the 2019 recipient of the Palmarium Award in Gifted Education from the Morgridge College of Education, University of Denver.

Local Norms for Gifted Identification: Improving Equity and Conceptual Alignment

Friday, February 5, 2021: 10:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m.

Equity challenges have plagued gifted and talented programs since their inception. This session will share an overview of how local norms can be used in gifted and talented student identification in order to diversify service populations and bring greater conceptual coherence to gifted services. Multiple resources will be shared, including an online template and “how-to” handbook to aid in implementation.

SCOTT J. PETERS is a Professor of Assessment and Research Methodology at the University of Wisconsin – Whitewater. His research work focuses on educational assessment and data use, gifted and talented student identification, equity within advanced educational opportunities, and educational policy.

Equity and Gifted Education Beyond 20/20                             

Friday, February 5, 2021: 11:15 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.

Participants will be guided through practices that move the field from the rest stop courageous conversations to a pathway that outlines courageous actions aimed at meeting the needs of gifted learners from underserved populations. Development of policies aimed at highlighting a strengths-based approach to developing a continuum of services that merges equity and excellence in gifted education. Instructional "look fors" in the classroom will be shared to permit classroom teachers, coordinators, counselors and other educators to provide an appropriate environment where all learners can thrive.  

Hide & Seek: Stop Hiding Behind Equity and Move Anti-Racist Work in Gifted Education

Saturday, February 6, 2021: 8:30 a.m. - 9:30 a.m.

The work of making gifted spaces inclusive includes creating spaces for students where their identities are welcomed. As educators reflect deeper on the teaching practice as a platform for social justice, we center the voices of those who have been pushed to the margins. Through recognizing the weight of missingness, invisibility and microaggressions educational environments can be transformed to places where all students thrive. Participants will be guided through an exploration that improves experiences for children of color in gifted programming. Educators and school leaders have immense power in creating a culture that values and supports anit-bias and anti-racist work. 

APRIL WELLS is an educational consultant, conference presenter, and author. She is the Gifted Coordinator in Illinois School District U-46, where she facilitated the redesign of the District’s gifted program. April serves on the Board of Directors for the Illinois Association for Gifted Children. Her work has served as inspiration of other organizations highlighting universal screening, talent development and the use of local norms for gifted programming. She has presented extensively at conferences. She is a national consultant and professional development trainer whose message centers around the equity imperative. Her interests focus on equity pedagogy, underrepresented learners, developing gifted continuum of services and providing instructional supports that allow students to maximize their pursuits. She received one of the 2018 Gifted Coordinator Awards from the National Association for Gifted Children. Her first book, Achieving Equity in Gifted Programming: Dismantling Barriers and Tapping Potential was published in January 2020.

The Equity Case for Prioritizing Gifted Education at a Moment of Reckoning

Saturday, February 6, 2021: 10:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m.

With the COVID-19 pandemic placing a spotlight on existing inequities in education, issues of racial justice rising to the top of public consciousness at level unseen in generations, and massive budget cuts likely in K-12 education, there are serious questions about the will to support the needs of gifted and talented learners. At the same time, our society's need for critical thinking has never been stronger. Colin Seale, education advocate Founder and CEO of thinkLaw, and author of Thinking Like a Lawyer: A Practical Framework for Teaching Critical Thinking to All Students, will share powerful, but practical arguments for prioritizing and expanding the benefits of gifted education as a key pathway for achieving educational equity.          

COLIN SEALE was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, where struggles in his upbringing gave birth to his passion for educational equity. Tracked early into gifted and talented programs, Colin was afforded opportunities his neighborhood peers were not. Using lessons from his experience as a math teacher, later an attorney and now a keynote speaker, contributor to Forbes, The 74, and Education Post and author of Thinking Like a Lawyer: A Framework for Teaching Critical Thinking to All Students (Prufrock Press, 2020), Colin founded thinkLaw, a multi-award-winning organization to help educators leverage inquiry-based instructional strategies to close the critical thinking gap and ensure they teach and REACH all students, regardless of race, zip code or what side of the poverty line they are born into. When he’s not serving as the world’s most fervent critical thinking advocate, Colin proudly serves as the world’s greatest entertainer to his two young children and a loving husband to his wife Carrie.

In the Trenches: Identifying and Supporting Advanced Emergent Bilinguals in your Classroom

Saturday, February 6, 2021: 11:15 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.

How do you support your Advanced Emergent Bilinguals in your classroom when you work in a district that has policies for advanced learners but no resources? A large percentage of Emergent Bilingual students are in districts with no Gifted and Talented program, so they are never formally identified. In these cases, teachers are on their own to spot the high ability and support it. We will talk about ways teachers can identify and support Advanced Emergent Bilinguals in their classroom.

PATRICIA VALENTE is the Bilingual Elementary Coordinator and Instructional Coach at Rantoul City Schools, where she continues to co-facilitate the redesign of the District’s Bilingual Program. She has presented extensively at conferences including Literacy Research Association Annual Conference, National Association of Bilingual Education Annual Conference, Illinois State University’s Culturally Responsive Campus Community, Literacies for All Summer Institute of the Whole Language Umbrella (WLU) and Dominican Republic 2014 Woman’s Conference in Spanish. Her interests focus on culturally relevant pedagogy while integrating student testimonials, multilingual learners and their families, developing multilingual continuum of services and providing instructional supports that allow students to maximize their opportunities.  She has co-author chapters in Brain Science for Principals: What School Leaders Need to Know, edited by Linda L. Lyman; and an article Momentos de Cambio: Cultivating Bilingual Students’ Epistemic Privilege through Memoir and Testimonio with Dr. Lara Handsfield. 

Virtual Lunch and Breakout Sessions: 12:30 p.m. - 1:30 p.m. 

Following the presentations, join one of our informal virtual lunch break-out sessions to network, ask questions, reflect, and/or discuss summit topics in greater depth. Sessions will be facilitated by IAGC Board Members and/or summit presenters. Breakout session descriptions and links will be available when you login to the summit!

Break-Out Sessions: Discussion and networking sessions facilitated by presenters and IAGC board members 12:30 p.m. - 1:30 p.m.

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