Parallel Session Proceedings »
5.3.5 In Search of Equity: Providing Access to Training and Resources through Free Online Resources
Javits Grants are competitive grants from the United States government dedicated specifically to gifted and talented students. The grants fund evidence-based research, demonstration projects, innovative strategies, and activities designed to enhance schools ability to identify gifted and talented students. The program focuses on traditionally underrepresented populations. This session details two grants that approach equity by providing access to gifted education training and resources.
The Maryland GT Discover project is an online technical assistance resource through which information, data, instructional toolkits, professional learning, guidance, and a forum for collaboration will be available to educators, students, families, researchers, and community members.
GT Discover will host and facilitate the development and implementation of state policy and recommended identification protocols, thereby increasing local school system capacity to identify and serve more underrepresented students. The Maryland State Department of Education is partnering with Johns Hopkins University IDEALS Institute, to create the GT Discover online platform. The overall goals of the program are to provide an online platform that will be a repository of resources, including data, identification and service delivery models, instructional strategies, and interactive online training modules and courses and to research and develop an equitable state policy and supporting guidelines for the identification of gifted and talented students.
Project North Star’s three-prong approach elevates culturally responsive identification and programming approach for underserved rural populations by 1) Preparing teachers with a basic knowledge of giftedness and talent, and the basics of curriculum adaptation and instructional differentiation. 2) Preparing leaders with a basic knowledge of giftedness and talent; the special issues of the underserved gifted populations; program design, development, implementation, and evaluation; working with families and communities; the specifics of programming for twice exceptionality, culturally/linguistically diverse and poor students with a specialized focus on instructional leadership and what it takes to establish and maintain a defensible identification system and program of services. 3) Preparing communities to advocate for their gifted and underserved children, supplement what school programs provide, and learn more about the capabilities and potential of their children. Professional learning materials developed for this project reinforce the importance of cultural competence for educators and administrators so that they have knowledge of the attitudes, background, and beliefs of cultures other than their own. Materials developed by the Minnesota Department of Education are free and available through a learning management system