Kate Simkowiak

Resources

Includes books and websites with resources for gifted education.

Robinson Center’s Saturday Enrichment Program (Current Grades K-11) at the University of Washington

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SATURDAY FALL 2012 CLASSES

Math, Writing, Science, and Dance Classes

The Robinson Center will offer a full slate of math classes from K/1 (including one with parents) to Grade 11; creative writing classes for grades 4-8; and, NEW THIS TERM, an exciting astrophysics class for grades 6-8 and a dance and movement class to nurture both brain and body. These classes are intended to provide intellectually ambitious students with challenge, inspiration, and fun, in a collaborative, supportive learning environment.

Students should register for the course according to their CURRENT grade in school.Placement is determined by grade, not age. Class size is limited, and so it is first come/first served; waitlists will be established if necessary.

Tuition is $225 for our 50 minute classes and $425 for our 100 minute classes. There is a $25 registration fee for all classes. Tuition is to be paid in full when the student registers for the course. Go to the Robinson Center website for more about how to register for the classes.

Limited financial assistance is available for Saturday classes. Students who receive Free or Reduced Lunch in their school district may receive reduced tuition. Please find more information on the federal income eligibility guidelines for free and reduced price lunch here.

Parking is available for free on the University of Washington campus as of 12:00 noon on Saturdays. Before noon, we recommend the W14 lot near Gould Hall and across 15th Avenue from the Robinson Center. Go to the 40th Street gate entrance to campus for your $5.00 parking pass for W14.

 

Important Dates

SEPTEMBER 17: REGISTRATION BEGINS (online registration via our Robinson Center website)
OCTOBER 6: CLASSES BEGIN
NOVEMBER 24: NO CLASS
DECEMBER 8: LAST DAY OF CLASSES

Apply Now!

SENG Webinar Event – Sept. 20th: Joyful Living in 6 Easy Steps

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Presented by: Dianne Allen, MA, CAP

Gifted individuals can take life very seriously and often miss the power of living joy filled. By learning the steps to living joyfully, one can establish and maintain a lighter life which leads to a healthier lifestyle on all levels, especially emotionally.

This presentation discusses joy as a vital part of life. The importance of joy and the 6 easy steps to living joy will be presented. How to establish and maintain a joyful daily life will be presented.

Register Now!

Do We Know How to Teach Highly Able Learners?

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Article by Peter DeWitt on Education Week’s blogs

The reality is that we need to look at this issue as achievement versus growth. Many highly able learners may achieve high grades without ever growing at all.

Teaching highly able learners is a topic that we often ignore in education. We discuss how to teach struggling learners and spend a great deal of time discussing how to meet the needs of special education students. However, when parents state that their children are gifted, some teachers (and a few administrators) politely smile and roll their eyes when the parents leave the room.

There are a few sad excuses why this happens. Sometimes parents will enter a new school and tell a teacher that their child is highly able, and then after testing and other authentic assessments, the teacher finds out the students is not highly able at all. There are parents who want their children to be gifted so they tell everyone around them that there child has special capabilities. In a nation that pushes children to the breaking point, some parents want their children to be more academically gifted than they really are because it helps them stick out in a crowd.

For full disclosure I have been a skeptic. After teaching for eleven years and being a principal for six, I heard my share of “highly able” stories. I often worry that we push kids too much too soon. They need to be Michael Jordan on the court, Tiger Woods on the field and Doogie Houser in the classroom (I’m showing my age). However, I began questioning my own skepticism when I began teaching. I began to feel uncomfortable that I was contributing to the problem and not being a part of the solution.

The truth is that if we have so many students who qualify for Academic Intervention Services (AIS) we must have students on the other side who qualify as highly able. Some times we cannot see it because the child who is highly able does not want to show us what they know. Other times, our own stubbornness blocks us from being able to see that a child has the ability to advance quickly or engage in academics at a much deeper level than their peers.

The issue becomes complicated when we look at the fact that children with special needs or those who qualify for AIS may get extra services by teachers other than their classroom teachers. Highly able children often do not get special services and it is left to their teacher to find engaging and authentic learning experiences for them. If a teacher is working in isolation, which using 21st century skills should never happen, or feels overwhelmed, they may not feel they have the time to search for these activities on their own.

SENG Webinar Event June 21st: Parent Engagement in Promoting a STEM Identity Among Gifted Black Students

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Presented by Dr. Tarek C. Grantham and Kristine Collins

Educators, parents and counselors are invited to join us as we explore how students can help cultivate positive STEM identity.

Identity development is an area that is tied to social and emotional issues. Many Black students’ positive STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) identity is under-developed or frail due to barriers such as low STEM self-esteem, parent misunderstanding of STEM fields, few role models and mentors in STEM fields, and accusations of “acting White” by peers.

Parent engagement in STEM is essential to promote effective school improvement initiatives that promote excellence and equity in STEM education. Parents of gifted Black students are critically important in addressing the quiet crisis that exists in STEM fields. While there is greater ethnic diversity in public schools, educators struggle to cultivate a STEM scholar identity among gifted Black students and to serve the pipeline of advanced courses and experiences that lead to careers in STEM fields. Parents are children’s first teachers, and they can help to shape the social, academic, and career identity that support children’s STEM awareness. Schools need effective STEM parent engagement programs to help gifted Black students navigate threats to their multiple identities as students who are smart and Black and who can be successful in STEM areas.

This presentation will provide research on STEM programs and offer strategies to promote parent engagement in cultivating positive STEM identity in gifted Black students.

Sign Up Now!

Mindful Intensity

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If you are a person who has heard statements like, “you’re just too much,” “you think too much,” or “you’re too sensitive,” your whole life, this article is for you.

Perhaps you perceived such comments as indicators that something was wrong with you, or you weren’t even sure why people were saying these things to you.

Well, take heart, you are not alone!

Here is a great article just for you: Mindful Intensity By Belinda Seiger

SENG Webinar Event May 10th: Mother-Daughter Relationships of Profoundly Gifted Young Girls

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Presented by Joy L. Navan, PhD

Educators, parents and counselors are invited to join us as we explore the social and emotional needs of gifted girls.

What social and emotional strengths and needs accompany the development of exceptional and profoundly gifted girls? What do mothers learn about themselves and their emotional needs as a result of raising gifted daughters?

Sign Up Today!

Guest Speaker Chris McCurry, PhD on Preparing Our Children for Success in the World

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Please join us April 26th at 7:00pm in the Terrace Park Commons for an insightful presentation:

The Gift of Resilience:

Preparing Our Children for Success in the World

by, Chris McCurry, PhD

This presentation will cover:

  • Ideas about what makes children successful in life
  • The nature and origins of childhood distress
  • A new way of thinking about a child’s stress-related behaviors; one based on intention and attention
  • Strategies for responding to your child’s distress that promote psychological flexibility and growth
  • Tools for promoting resilience in your child, and in yourself

Chris McCurry, Ph.D., is a clinical child psychologist in private practice at Associates in Behavior and Child Development, Inc., P.S. in Seattle. He is a clinical instructor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Washington. Dr. McCurry specializes in the assessment and treatment of children who are experiencing behavioral and emotional problems including anxiety disorders, attention disorders, underachievement in school, and parent-child conflicts. He is the author of Parenting Your Anxious Child with Mindfulness and Acceptance published in 2009 by New Harbinger.

Please join us for our CPA General Meeting before Dr. McCurry’s presentation from 6:30-7 pm.

Highlights:

  • Election of new board members
  • CPA 2011/2012 Budget
  • The New Play Shed Project

New SENGinar April 19th: Teaching Academics to Gifted Youth with Asperger’s

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Presented by Terry Friedrichs, Ph.D., Ed.D.

In this SENGinar, parents and educators will discover, among other things, how to improve on the youths’ skills in communicating, understanding directions, and predicting consequences in basic academic subjects at the elementary, middle and secondary levels.

Gifted students with Asperger’s Syndrome are increasingly being identified in school systems. This webinar presents ideas for teaching these students basic academic subjects – reading, writing and mathematics – at the elementary, middle, and secondary levels, in more socially and emotionally supportive ways. Dr. Friedrichs offers approaches at each level on instructing reading, writing and mathematics, taking into account the high-potential and challenging traits associated with Asperger’s, specifically including social, communication and restrictive-interest characteristics.

Sign Up Now!

SENG Webinar Event March 15th, 2012: Giftedness and Learning Disabilities: Unearthing the Missed Diagnosis

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Presented by Paul Beljan, PsyD, ABPdN

In this SENGinar, teachers, parents, and counselors will learn how to correctly diagnosis learning disabilities in gifted and talented children.

Characteristics of gifted and talented children can result in incorrect diagnoses, such as overlooking learning disabilities. Learning disabilities can take the form of academics (reading and math) or innate abilities in general learning that may relate to social learning.

In this SENGinar, Dr. Paul Beljan will review some of the basic tenants of giftedness that include intellect and asynchronous development. He will then turn to the nuts and bolts of learning disabilities: what they look like, how to assess them, and what to do about them in the contexts of the gifted population. The “discrepancy model” of learning disability will be dispelled in favor of understanding the brain basis of learning disabilities. Dr. Beljan will present several anecdotes and case examples to illustrate the process of learning disabilities.

Sign Up Now!

Message from The Washington Coalition For Gifted Education – March 9th, 2012

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THE BUDGET

The legislature is going into special session beginning Monday since they have been unable to agree on a second supplemental budget during the regular session. While we all hope they will limit themselves to the budget, any bills may be considered so who can guess what will happen.

All the various budget proposals with even a breath of life in them treat Highly Capable Program funding similarly. The small differences in the total amount to be allocated result from different case load counts and pension adjustments and do not reflect an intent to decrease funding to the districts.

Last minute actions kept levy equalization funding at the current level while prior versions of the budget made a big cut. It is hard to know what the compromise that eventually emerges will do so, if you have strong feelings about LEA, contact your legislators now.

More information may be posted but as of right now, the most recent budget proposal is in amendment 1344 on the ESB 5967 page at http://apps.leg.wa.gov/billinfo/summary.aspx?bill=5967&year=2011

EDUCATION BILLS

Several bills which would have enacted some of the recommendations of the Highly Capable Program Technical Working Group, including a new definition of a highly capable student and guidelines for identification, got caught in an intramural squabble and failed to get out of committee in both houses. The Coalition had serious concerns about these bills, so this is not entirely a bad thing – better no bill than an unsatisfactory one – and we will be back to work on the issue in the next regular session. Meanwhile, we will continue our work with OSPI to get as many of the recommendations as possible included in the necessary rewrite of the Washington Administrative Code (WACs) and to get the rewrite done as soon as possible. Your strong showing on Gifted Education Day makes our work easier.

With all the various educational issues that came before the legislature, you may wonder why the Coalition did not call your attention to any of them. This is because the Coalition is a single issue political advocacy organization: appropriate educational opportunities for highly capable students. We advocate with legislators and administrators for these students and usually do not become involved in other issues, thus leaving our supporters free to take individual stands as they see fit.

OPPORTUNITY AT THE ROBINSON CENTER AT THE UW FOR SPRING MATH AND WRITING GRADES K-11

Click here to download the flyer for this program.

GIFTED EDUCATION DAY 2013

We have been successful in obtaining a permit to use the Columbia Room for Gifted Education Day 2013 on February 8. The date is early enough in session to avoid conflicts with cut off dates which make it difficult to get appointments with legislators and, so far as we know, does not conflict with school holidays. Please mark your 2013 calendars now!

FEDERAL LEGISLATION

The following comes from the National Association For Gifted Children, our national organization which lobbies with the Congress.

No Federal Funding For Gifted Ed In 2012 – Congress Directs Department To Continue Research

In mid December, 2011 the Congress approved a package of appropriations bills to fund federal agencies and programs through September 2012.  The “omnibus” bill does not include funding for the Javits program, which was de-funded in 2011, but the report that accompanies the omnibus appropriations bill includes some supportive language for gifted education.

The “report language” urges the Institute for Education Sciences (IES), the U.S. Department of Education’s research arm, to continue research into the learning needs of gifted and talented students, to retain a national research center on the gifted, and to include gifted and talented children in the key data collection efforts and reports developed by IES.  NAGC and CEC will discuss with Department officials several ways in which IES can meet Congress’s intent to continue this critical research.

Gifted students have been fortunate to have long-time friends in the Congress who lead the effort to secure support for funding for the Javits program each year. Gifted education supporters have done a great job in developing bipartisan support in both the House and Senate for the needs of gifted students.  It’s imperative that we keep up the education and advocacy efforts with every Members of Congress so that there is increased understanding and support that can be translated into federal initiatives.

The annual federal budget process is now underway in Congress. To find what you can do regarding funding for Javits Gifted and Talented Students Education Act, please go to http://www.magnetmail.net/actions/email_web_version.cfm?recipient_id=189770814&message_id=1849408&user_id=NAGC&group_id=343230&jobid=9333559

We need you to take action by March 16th.