Academic Booster Club

Our first board meeting of the 2010 – 2011 school year will be Thursday, September 2nd, at 6:30 at Chili Thai.  All are welcome!

Received today from the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC):

Over the last few weeks, Congress has taken significant steps to eliminate the only federal investment focused on high-ability, disadvantaged students, the Jacob Javits Gifted and Talented Students Education Act.

Thankfully, Congressman Courtney (D-CT) and Congressman Gallegly (R-CA) are leading the effort to reinstate Javits funding by asking their fellow members of Congress to sign on to a letter to the powerful Appropriations Committee (the body that makes federal spending decisions).

We need your help! Contact your Representative and urge them to sign on to the Courtney-Gallegly letter TODAY! Congress will only act if their constituents make it a priority!

NAGC suggests you use CEC’s Legislative Action Center. It will to make contacting Congress easy and fast by providing a sample email and contact information.

Our nation is failing high-ability, disadvantaged students; don’t let Congress continue down this path.

Take Action Today!

A refresher about the Javits program:

While the Javits program is small by federal standards, funded at $7.5 million last year, it impacts thousands of students, teachers, and schools across the country.

Studies are showing a growing gap at the highest achievement levels between low income students and their more advantaged peers. Our nation is failing to serve high-ability, low income students. The Javits program directly addresses this issue. It focuses on developing strategies to identify and serve students who traditionally have not had access to gifted education programs. Because of work done through the Javits program, teachers have been trained to better understand how to identify high ability in students and modify curriculum to meet their needs. If the Senate eliminates the Javits program, this work will end.

Additionally, the Javits program solely funds the National Research Center on Gifted Education. The elimination of funding for the Javits program would result in closure of the Center and a tremendous loss to classrooms. The mission of the center is to develop best practices, which have been disseminated and implemented in schools across the nation.

Programs funded through the Javits program include a program that helped to serve as a model during the redesign of QUEST, and one that is being used by the Washington State Highly Capable Technical Working group as it works on its recommendations to the Quality Education Commision and the Washington State Legislature.

SENG is bringing their 2011 national convention to Seattle. They also hope to be able to launch a series of training classes for parents, and for trainers, to bring the tools that SENG is built on to more families in more places. They hope to be able to provide full scholarships to participants in their training blitz, and are in the running for a Pepsi Refresh Everything grant to fund it. Many of you have already seen first hand what it takes to win a Pepsi grant. Please take a minute to vote for SENG, and remember to vote again every day throughout the month of August.

To celebrate National Parenting Gifted Children Week, July 18-24, 2010, SENG, Supporting Emotional Needs of Gifted, offered a special week-long series of special mini-newsletters.  Each day’s issue focused on a specific topic relating to parenting gifted children.  The issues were:

• Identifying and Recognizing Giftedness
• Challenges of Parenting Gifted Children
• Underachievement Issues and Twice Exceptionalism
• Gifted Minorities, Gifted Boys, and Gifted Girls
• Misdiagnosis and Depression in Gifted Youth
• Advocacy for Gifted Children, Teaming with Educators and Legislators
• Parenting Supports and Resources

We’ve linked to each of the newsletters on SENG’s site if you missed this fantastic information the first time around.

Representatives from ABC have been working with SENG in advance of their 2011 National Conference which will be held in Seattle.  We’re looking at ways to bring more of the tools that SENG has developed to our parents during the coming year.  Be sure to check out the newsletters and the articles they’ve made available.

Received from the National Association for Gifted Children:

Javits Funding in Peril in Senate:  Help Needed with Senate Appropriations Committee

The Senate appropriations subcommittee that handles education funding allotted $0 for the Javits Gifted & Talented Students Education Act yesterday.

We have a chance to recover Senate funding for the Javits program if a few Senators on the committee speak to Chairman Harkin personally when the full appropriations committee meets TOMORROW (Thursday) afternoon.  Because your Senator, Maria Cantwell, is on the Labor/HHS/Education appropriations subcommittee, we’re asking you to CALL her office and ask to speak with the Education staff person in an effort to get Senator Cantwell to take action in support of the Javits program at the Appropriations Committee markup tomorrow.  Please make your as soon as possible, but before Noon on Thursday.  You may have to leave a voicemail message. 

We’re working in coordination with the Council for Exceptional Children in suggesting the following points to make when your call:

My name is _______________. I am a constituent from ____________ (town/city) and I am extremely concerned that the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Education voted to eliminate funding for the Jacob Javits Gifted and Talented Students program earlier this week. This program is the only federal investment in gifted education. While the Javits program is small by federal standards, funded at $7.5 million last year, it impacts thousands of students, teachers, and schools across the country.

Studies show a growing gap at the highest achievement levels between low-income students and their more advantaged peers, which is partly due to a lack of resources and teacher training to identify and serve these students. The Javits program directly addresses this issue by focusing on developing strategies to identify and serve students who traditionally have not had access to gifted education programs. Because of work done through the Javits program, teachers have been trained to better understand how to identify high ability in students and modify curriculum to meet their needs.  Elimination of funding for the Javits program would also result in closure of the National Research Center on the Gifted & Talented, which would be a tremendous loss to classroom teachers and school leaders who depend on the best practices information produced and disseminated by the Center to improve instruction.

I understand that the full Appropriations Committee will review the bill on Thursday afternoon.  I urge the Senator to do everything possible to reverse the earlier decision made by the education subcommittee and fund the Javits program at at least the $7.5 million funding level it received this year.

If you have any examples of how how your state or school district has benefitted from the Javits program (e.g., that you use curriculum or assessments developed under a Javits grant, or if your districts have relied on information about gifted students and classroom strategies from the National Research Center), be sure to tell the staff person.  It’s important that Senators understand who has benefitted from this federal investment.

All Senate offices can be reached through the Capitol operator at 202-224-3121.  Senator Cantwell’s office is 202-224-3441.  You may also use the Council for Exceptional Children’s online action center, which will link you to your Senator’s office, at http://capwiz.com/cek/callalert/index.tt?alertid=15422516

I just called and left my message.  My phone call lasted three minutes.  Please pick up the phone right now and make the call.  Thank you for your support!

There are two great opportunities for parents of gifted children coming up this week. 

On Tuesday, July 27th, the Northwest Gifted Child Association, http://www.nwgca.org, and SENG (Supporting the Emotional Needs of the Gifted),  http://www.sengifted.org, are hosting a free presentation, Eleven Key Parenting Issues, with Dr. James Webb, author of  A Parent’s Guide to Gifted Children and other books, in the Lake Washington School District this summer.  Dr. Webb will be in town preparing for next year’s SENG Annual Symposium in Seattle in July 2011.
  
Eleven Key Parenting Issues, Presented by Dr. James Webb
 
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
7:00pm – 9:00pm
Redmond High School Performing Arts Center
17272 N.E. 104th Avenue, Redmond
 
This is a FREE EVENT — there is no RSVP required!!
  
Eleven issues are common concerns for parents of gifted children — from tots to teens:
           
♦ Communication and relationships
♦ Motivation and underachievement
♦ Discipline, power struggles, self-management
♦ Intensity, stress and perfectionism
♦ Acquaintances, friends and peers
♦ Siblings and only children
♦ Values, traditions and uniqueness
♦ Idealism, unhappiness, and depression
♦ Complexities of modern parenting
♦ Misdiagnosis
♦ Finding a good educational fit
 
Information will be given about each, along with how four major factors – range of ability, asynchronous development, over excitabilities, and thinking styles — influence these issues.

James T. Webb, Ph.D. has been recognized as one of the 25 most influential psychologists in gifted education. In 1981, he established
SENG (Supporting Emotional Needs of Gifted), a national non-profit organization with programs that support gifted individuals and the parents, educators and health professionals that support them. He is the lead author of five books including A Parent’s Guide to Gifted Children and Misdiagnosis and Dual Diagnoses of Gifted Children and Adults.
 
This event is sponsored by the Northwest Gifted Child Association and Social & Emotional Needs of the Gifted (SENG), hosted by the Lake Washington School District and the Gifted Education Advisory Council (GEAC).
 
For questions, contact Pauline Bowie, 206-715-5261, Pauline@RaisingTheGifted.com

On Thursday, July 29th, Seabury School in Tacoma will be hosting Amy Price, Executive Director of SENG from 7-8:45pm at its middle school campus, 925 Court C, Tacoma, WA 98402.
 
Amy will do a general presentation on characteristics of gifted children with resources and tools for parents and educators.  This event is open to the general public.  From 8:15-8:45 we would like to give local district representatives/leaders an opportunity to talk about what is happening with gifted education in their districts.

This is going to be a unique opportunity for advocates of gifted ed in the South Sound to come together and create a stronger partnership with each other and SENG.

For more information call  253-952-5944.