Snyder,+Chad,+Talented+&+Gifted

= Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Chad's wondrous and whimsical wikipage. =

And now, a little about me.
===** I've always known that at a certain point in my life I'd finish my education in education and become a teacher. Starting very on I began to realize the power of knowledge and education and later, as I evolved as a person and an intellect, the notion of helping others become life-long learners began to grow on me. Something about my personality also suggested that I could be an effective and inspiring educator, a supposition that I hope proves true in my teaching career. **=== ===** Learning changed me. First it was literature and popular culture, later it was science and mathematics. With every bit of information I acquired confidence grew. And not only confidence, but also a sense of well-being and spiritual equilibrium. Each piece of knowledge seemed to fall into position in a web of understanding and context, enriching other pieces on all sides and adding to an over-arching feeling of satiety, both personally and universally. Learning made my life better, and I hope to assist others with the same kind of intellectual and personal growth. **=== ===** As for my educational goals, part of my aspirations are being satisfied by completing the M.A.T. program: after that, the future is open. Obviously, after completing the program, I intend to apply for a teaching position in a high school and then... Not really sure. Only time will tell. Perhaps the high school classroom environment will satisfy all my desires, but then again I may be inclined to further my education in English Literature and/or Education and teach at the collegiate level. **=== ===** What I hope to gain from this class is a greater understanding of what it's going to take to tailor my curriculum to serve all kinds of students, regardless of any challenges they may face. I want, too, to understand those challenges and gain some sort of insight into the lives of students who face a steeper educational grade than others. My mission is to help every student, regardless of capacity or capability, to become the best, the most centered and the most informed person they can be. **=== = = = = = **Disability Community Based Learning Project** = ====** For the CBL I opted to observe my sister, Mrs. Snyder, a Special Educator teacher at Hoover Elementary in Medford. Her's is what's called the "Oportunity Classroom," a non-permanent class for kids with severe learning and behavior issues. Several schools re-allocate students to her class in the hopes ultimately being able to re-integrate them after several weeks of specialized care and teaching. Check back for the reflection, interview and observation notes. **====

**Interview with Chelsea Snyder, SPED teacher at Hoover Elementary School, Medford**
Chad: What would you say is your overall classroom management philosophy? Mrs. Snyder: It’s earned privileges/incentives. Good behaviors get you good things. Chad: It appears as though you use a lot of active ignoring in an attempt not to enable certain behaviors, would you say that’s true? Mrs. Snyder: Yes. Some behaviors are ignored to help students self-regulate their own negative behaviors. Chad: How do you balance maintaining positive student behavior and presenting curriculum? Mrs. Snyder: It’s a fine art. Sometimes in this setting curriculum is put on hold as to keep classroom environment and students safe. Assistants help with this process. Chad: It is important to be able to prioritize discipline between multiple misbehaving students considering that multiple students are often acting out at the same time? Mrs. Snyder: Yes. Knowing the students and their disabilities it’s easier to address the behaviors of some students who are easier to turn around or to deal with more violent/aggressive students first. Chad: What type of behavior problem would you characterize as the most difficult to deal with? Mrs. Snyder: Physical aggression, bullying, non-compliance and extreme disrespect. Chad: I noticed a lot of positive reinforcement. How effective do you feel it is in the SPED environment? Mrs. Snyder: With these kids it is ESSENTIAL. Because of negative home lives we want to have incentives and have this be a positive environment. Chad: What would you deem the most important aspect of classroom management in the SPED context? Mrs. Snyder: Safety of the classroom environment. Chad: How do you tailor curriculum for severely intellectually challenged students? Mrs. Snyder: Ability groupings, presenting curriculum at ability level and not grade level and having a lot of data to back up students’ abilities.

Mrs. Snyder’s classroom at Hoover is populated by a wide array of students from different grades and socio-economic backgrounds as well as representing an assortment of emotional disturbances and intellectual challenges. As such it is a small class of about 20 students whose education is facilitated by Mrs. Snyder and two aides. What I noticed first was simply how much time and energy it took simply keeping students at their desks and on-task. It was an issue from the first moment, no result of Mrs. Snyder’s control of the classroom environment, instead simply the manifestation of the behavior and impulse-control issues among the students. Several have Tourette syndrome and other obviously suffer from extreme emotional disturbances which results in a number of outbursts throughout any given class period. I watched Mrs. Snyder circulate through the class and interact with every student several times with the one-hour math block. Several teacher behaviors caught my attention. First, in the SPED classroom, a lot of time is spent positively reinforcing good behaviors, and the students respond well to this. There are negative consequences, but largely what I saw working most effectively – both in terms of management and curriculum issues – was praising students for self-monitoring and being successful. Not that this would be any different in a GE classroom, but use of the technique was quite obvious. In one particular situation, a boy we’ll call Brent wasn’t participating in the math exercise on the overhead. Mrs. Snyder approached him and complemented him on his behavior earlier in the day. That was all it took. Brent Re-engaged and finished the exercise. Another student, Eli this time, was struggling with the same exercise and was becoming demonstrably upset because he could finished several of the problems. The technique employed with Eli was very much the same, complement on something earlier, in this case a problem he had already finished, and constant validation that he could and would finish the problems. Ultimately he did. This wasn’t an altogether new experience for me, but focusing on behavior management and interactions with particular students was. What I was able to see – and learn more about in the interview – was the employment of specific knowledge about student needs and how that helps kids learn and stay on-task.
 * REFLECTION:**

= Inclusion Strategies Research: Talented and Gifted =


 * Introduction to Gifted and Talented**

In the strictest sense, gifted means possessing higher than average intellectual ability, but said definition is woefully ineffective at describing the wealth of characteristics that make students exceptional. Yes, some are easily defined as gifted because of their advanced mathematic, language or scientific understanding, but others need to be recognized as exceptional for other, less obvious reasons. What about a gifted artist? Or a musician? Those qualities should necessitate a gifted label, but the overwhelming trend is only to acknowledge the prior, more conventional types of advanced students. In the interest of my research I tried to keep in mind and plan for students with advanced talents of all types and how I intend to provide instruction for all of them.

Once identified, gifted students need the type of differentiated instruction that is best provided by a specified program but often has to take place in a GE classroom. Regardless of context, T.A.G. is, as specified in the Wikipedia page (“Gifted Education,” n.d.), “a broad term for special practices, procedures and theories used in the education of hildren who have been identified as gifted or talented .” That said, as educators, our job is to narrow down the broadness and general philosophical approach to a clearly defined and executable set of practices and differentiations that will best serve our advanced students while at the same time to understand how not to compromise the overall effectiveness of the GE classroom. It’s a tiny target to aim for, but with sufficient understanding of the demands of both groups and an adequate quiver of resources, an effective teacher can hit the bull’s eye for every student.


 * What I Learned**

First and foremost, I learned there are a lot of resources out there for those wanting to be the best possible teacher of gifted students. What may seem like an insurmountable task can be achieved when GE teachers utilize the wealth of information and resources out there on the subject of gifted education. The only question is whether or not we choose to take advantage of them and integrate a functional gifted education initiative in our classrooms.

Additionally, I learned a lot about the variety of differing types of gifted students. Not that I ever believed gifted students were narrowly defined as high-IQ, but having looked into the issue more deeply, I see now more clearly than ever that there are many different types of advanced skills and understandings. This makes the task of providing an inspiring education for all students even more difficult, but grasping the aforementioned different types of “gifted” is the first step in tailoring curriculum for them that is simultaneously rewarding and challenging.

In that same vein I learned that, on a whole, evaluation of students needs to be understanding of the far-reaching variety of gifted capacities. A simple IQ test is never going to provide insight into the true nature of every student’s gifts. Educators need to draw from a wide variety of assessments so as to make correct evaluations of what students need to be provided in terms of differentiated instruction based on their superior skills. Case in point, an IQ or Lexile test will not tell you if a student is gifted musically, artistically or socially, and these gifts need to be acknowledged as much as the conventionally understood types of gifted.

During my research I also learned that, as suspected, gifted students often fall through the cracks and suffer in GE classrooms. Gifted students often feel bored, unchallenged and marginalized in the average classroom environment. Additionally, these students can incur detrimental effects to both their intellectual and psycho-social development, as this particular researcher can attest to personally. Understanding this, it becomes even more important to provide for the needs of gifted students in the interest of simply limiting the adverse effects of the limited GE classroom environment.

On a positive note, I’ve learned there is an existing philosophic and procedural framework aimed at providing for the needs of gifted students. In particular Tomlinson’s text (2004) contains a section entitled //Building Bridges Between General Practitioners and Educators of the Gifted: A Study of Collaboration// in which the research of Purcell and Leppien states, “Enrichment specialists can assist teachers in implementing reforms in ways that maximize the promise and minimize the problems of those reforms for gifted students.” So there is help for us out there. Many trained professional, both locally and nationally, are at our disposal to assist in creating curriculum to assist and provide for the needs of gifted students. We won’t purely be shooting in the dark; we only need to seek assistance and work collaboratively to achieve the goal of an inclusive classroom that simultaneously functions in the GE capacity and provides for high-ability students.


 * The Best of the Bunch**

The aforementioned text, //Differentiation for Gifted and Talented Students,// edited by Carol Ann Tomlinson, is probably the top to the heap. //Differentiation// seems to focus on a collaborative model of differentiation and provides some insight into how staff development programs and communication can help teachers provide for the needs of the gifted in public schools. Tomlinson (2004) also speaks in a positive tone about the future of gifted education with sentiments like, “A great opportunity is available in our field; for as we continue to advocate for gifted and talented students, we can also play important roles in the changing educational reform movement.” Her belief is that a well thought-out and executed plan for differentiating curriculum of gifted students can be part of an over-arching philosophic and infrastructural reform package that will better serve present and future students. I agree, and I plan to use gifted education as one of the cornerstones of my evolving picture of what education should look like.

Two chapters in the text struck me as particularly important. This first, entitled //The Impact of Staff Development on Teachers’ Ability to Modify Curriculum for Gifted and Talented Students,// starts with a statement of the perceived problem, then moves on to address a plan for modifying regular curriculum for gifted and talented students, complete with a methods and procedures study. The chapter also contains a discussion section in which elimination of content for gifted students is discussed, as well as curriculum compacting. Compacting strikes me as extremely important as time is going to be the only limiting factor with these students, and reducing content to that which students need will provide time to give gifted students additional instruction and time to work on higher-level content and concepts.

The second important chapter in my mind, 9, regards learning in the language arts. This is personally relevant to my classroom for obvious reasons, and the ideas contained should translate well to my own curriculum. The chapter asserts that, “Literature programs at middle and high-school levels should involve gifted students in reading high quality adult literature and should help them develop skill and enthusiasm in the intellectual and aesthetic experience of literature,” a statement I fully agree with. The chapter focused on a study that’s results advocated the use of a William and Mary language arts unit, which contained, “a rich set of applied research questions,” and, “emphasizes interdisciplinary connections and involves students in issue-based research.” The goal of the unit is to develop six specific skills as outlined by the chapter: Although several of these are in-line with current standards, they also represent the higher-level thinking skills we need to activate in gifted students and frame a curriculum that can help gifted students succeed.
 * Analytical and interpretive skills in literature
 * Persuasive writing skills
 * Linguistic competency
 * Listening/oral communication skills
 * Reasoning skills in language arts
 * Understand the concept of change in the language arts

== **Identification of Talented and Gifted: __4__ : A video outlining the differing types of gifted abilities, the needs of gifted learners and raising some questions and concerns about the way gifted learners are identified.** ==

== ** Differentiating the Language Arts for High Ability Learners: __5__ : A article outlining the specific needs on differentiation in the language arts, including two vignettes about two different “advanced” students and how to serve them best. A winner. ** ==

//**__List of references:__**//

Heacox, D. (2002). //Differentiating Instruction in the Regular Classroom: How to Reach and Teach All Learners, Grade 3-12.// Minnesota: Free Spirit Publishing.

Northey, S. (2005). //Handbook on Differentiated Instructiion for Middle and High School.// New York: Eye On Education.

Reis, S. M. (2004). //Differentiation For Gifted And Talented Students.// California: Corwin Press.

Tomlinson, C. A., & Strickland, C. (2005). //Differentiation In Practice: A Resource Guide For Differentiating Curriculum.// Virgina: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Tomlinson, C. A. (2001). //How To Differentiate Instruction In Mixed-Ability Classrooms.// Virgina: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Van-Tassel Baska, J. (2003). //Differentiating the Language Arts for High-Ability Learners//. On the National Association for Gifted Learners website. Retrieved from []

[] Also available at: []
 * Gifted Education**, retreived from YouTube

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 * Identification of Talented and Gifted,** retreived from YouTube

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 * Gifted Education: Let's Do it**! retrieved from YouTube