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.

The ABC Read-A-Thon kicks off March 26th and runs through April 4th.  The Read-A-Thon is our largest fundraiser of the year.  Where ever your Spring Break may take you, we hope you’ll bring along plenty of reading material for your kids and challenge them to read all they can.  Ice Cream parties, gift certificates, and much more are on the line for out participants.  For more information about the Read-A-Thon, including our rules and extra pledge sheets, please be sure to read all about it on our website.

On April 15th, ABC is joining with SENG, the national organization dedicated to supporting the emotional needs of gifted, to share a webinar titled “Navigating the Quest for Help:  Understanding Your Gifted Child’s Puzzling Behavior.”  Puyallup parents are invited to join us at Stewart Elementary at 7:00 to view the webinar and discuss what we hear with other parents in your situations.  For full details and to reserve your spot, see here.

Stewart was selected as the site of our discussion because the QUEST Regional site currently hosted at Meeker, serving students from Stewart, Karshner, and Meeker elementaries, will be moving to Stewart beginning in the 2010 – 2011 school year.  Meeker has been an amazing host school for our students for a number of years, but physical limitations have forced a move.  The number of kids who need highly capable services has grown beyond what Meeker can accomodate.  Mrs. Miller and Mrs. Franks will bring their years of experience teaching highly capable students along with them as they join our kids in making the move to Stewart.  Mrs. Hoban, Principal at Stewart, worked with our highly capable students during her time at Meeker, and is looking forward to working with all of us on making the move a success.

A little bit further out, SENG has recently committed to bringing their national conference to Seattle in July of 2011.  Some ABC volunteers have already met with SENG representatives to begin the planning process and we’re very excited about working with other gifted advocates from around the region to make this conference a valuable experience for you and your children.  ABC has been looking for ways to improve the services we can offer our parents, and we’re looking to introduce some SENG concepts and tools to you as we build toward next year’s national conference.

Thank you for your support of ABC, and our highly capable students.  We welcome each of you to participate with us as we continue to support excellence in the Puyallup School District, and increase awareness of the needs of our academically talented students.

Now, it’s time to put in a little more work to make sure that all the things we enjoyed will still be there for us next year.  If you’ve not yet returned your YES vote for the renewal of the Puyallup programs and operations levy, we urge you to do so today. 

We’ll also be headed to Olympia on Friday, February 5th, to meet with our legislators and policy makers from the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction.  Gifted Education Day is a fantastic opportunity to meet with other highly capable families and advocates, and to demonstrate the value that programs like QUEST and PAGE have for our kids.  If you’ve not yet been to Gifted Education Day, I strongly encourage you to find a way to make it.  I’ll be there with my two QUEST students, and the Washington Coalition for Gifted Education has said that this year may be the largest turnout they’ve had for this event.  Don’t miss it!

Here’s what’s been posted on our website at http://www.questabc.org during the past week:

• Gifted Education Day – February 5th
• Thank You to Our New and Renewing Members
• February ABC Board Meeting
• and if you’ve not yet done so, be sure to check out the District’s Budget Priorities Survey

• February 9th – Puyallup School District Operations Levy ballots due.
• February 5th – Gifted Education Day in Olympia
• January 28th – QUEST Open House at Maplewood
• January 26th – QUEST Open House at Shaw Road
• January 23rd – ABC Pool Party at Rogers
• January 21st – Puyallup School District Operations Levy Ballots are Mailed
• Right Now - Your chance to let the District know what you believe their budget priorities should be.

We hope that you’ve now seen our Winter 2009 newsletter, but if you haven’t we’ve posted a copy on our website.  One of the newsletter articles is about Gifted Education Day, February 5th in at the State Capitol.  With the release of the Governor’s propsed 2010 – 2011 Supplemental Budget and its proposed cuts to gifted funding (see the linked article below for more information and how you can respond), our presence in Olympia this year will be critical.   We hope you’ll be able to join us.

Here’s what’s been posted at www.questabc.org recently.

• ABC Newsletter – December 2009
• ABC Membership Drive
• Gift Cents Orders Have Arrived
• Shop Amazon.com and Support ABC
• Bad News for Highly Capable in the Governor’s 2010 – 2011 Supplemental Budget

Our newsletter is one of the tools we’re using to communicate with you.  But communication needs to go both ways to be successful.  We have volunteers at each of the QUEST Regional sites who are working with ABC to be liaisons between the schools and ABC.  Recently we asked those liaisons what they’d heard about how the new QUEST program was working at their schools.  You may have been contacted by them directly to hear what you think.  Some people wondered what our motivation was in asking the question.  Our goal was to simply to increase communications among our parents and between our parents and ABC.  We want to work with our families, teachers, and administrators to support our highly capable students.  We can’t serve you if we don’t hear what you have to say.

We’ll have a lot more information to share with you in the coming weeks, and we hope that you’ll feel comfortable sharing with us.  Look for information about our January pool party, Gifted Education Day, our February Levy election, and much, much more.

Here’s what’s been posted at www.questabc.org recently:

• Are you receiving all the latest ABC news?
• Shop at Amazon.com and support ABC.
• November Update — Advocacy Edition

 The Puyallup highly capable programs  did very well in the face of last year’s financial challenges, but that doesn’t mean that we can be complacent.  Discussions are underway in Olympia about how to proceed with the implementation of last session’s education reform legislation, and we need to make sure that highly capable is included in those discussions. 

Further, the Puyallup School District will seek approval in February of a programs and operations levy to replace the current expiring levy.  A special kick off rally will be held next week to begin preparations for the campaign in support of the levy, and everyone is welcome to join.   Highly capable could also use a voice on the citizen’s committee working to coordinate support of the levy.  If you think you might be interested in serving on the committee, or have questions about what it may entail, please contact ABC and we’ll pass your information along.

To learn more about what’s needed at the state and local levels, as well information about how to take advantage of matching contributions to double the value of your donations to ABC, please see what’s been posted to our website at www.questabc.org:

• What are you thankful for?
• Support ABC through Annual Giving Campaigns
• Levy Kickoff Rally on Tuesday, November 24th
• Karshner Museum Family Days
• Gifted Education Day is Coming

This week we’re holding our November Board meeting on Tuesday.  Everyone is welcome to join us as we discuss what we learned from you at the Ice Cream Social, and what we can improve to better serve our students, teachers, and families.  One of the things we heard and have acted on was that you wanted more options for receiving updates from ABC, and Facebook was one that was mentioned frequently.  We’re new to Facebook, and learning as we go, so become a Fan of the Academic Booster Club of Puyallup and let us know how we’re doing.  We’ve also added some new options to our blog, so if you find something of use and would like to share it through Facebook or any other site, look for the icons below each post for a link you can use to share our information at many popular sites.

Here are some recent highlights posted to our website at www.questabc.org.

Parents took advantage of the opportunity to check in with other parents to get their perspective on what was happening in their child’s classrooms. They wanted to hear what other parents had to say about things at their child’s school, and to compare experiences with those who have children at other schools. We invite you to continue the conversation in our forum.

This week, be sure to look for information about our first fund raiser of the year. For a preview, you can visit our website to learn about the Gift Cents program and how you can help raise money for ABC at no additional cost to you. If you use Facebook, you can now get information about the latest ABC events there, too.

Here are some recent highlights posted to our website at www.questabc.org.

I have two sons currently participating in the QUEST program.  My oldest is now in Mrs. Franks’ Fifth/Sixth classroom at Meeker.  He’s been in a full-time QUEST classroom since third grade, and participated in the pull-out program for the two years before that.  My middle son was in the pull-out program last year, and is in a second grade clustering classroom this year.  We’ve had some experience handling this time of year and the demands of the full-time program.  For many of our families, however, this year has been filled with unknowns.  Last year there were around 120 students in a full-time program.  This year, that number is about three times that.  It can be a bit of a shock.  Hang in there, and encourage your kids to hang in there.  It’s worth all the hard work.  If you would like to discuss what you’re going through with other parents in a similar situation, please check out our forum.

Now that everyone has had a chance to start getting settled into their new classrooms, we invite you to join us this Thursday, October 22nd, at Sunrise Elementary from 6:30pm to 8:00pm.  We’ll be hosting our annual Ice Cream Social.  It’s a great opportunity for kids and families to get together and learn about ABC and what we have to offer.  It’s also a great opportunity to put names and faces together, both of your child’s classmates and their parents.

Here are some recent highlights posted to our website at www.questabc.org.