Gifted Jaguars and Eagles

We were fortunate to have Minneapolis as the host city for the NAGC conference this weekend. I got to attend with many educators from Bloomington including Kris Krenz, Kathryn Haddad, Josh Coval, Lori Schultz and Nick Hupton. I got to go to lots of sessions and think about how to improve myself as an educator and how do I improve the services that we provide for students in Bloomington. I love opportunities like this. It gives me a time to reflect and to get motivated. Sessions I attended: Equity and access in K 12 gifted and the need for targeted professional learning for teachers, Culturally responsive professional learning in gifted education, The positive impact of empowering gifted learners, When grouping works for gifted students, Transforming text based talks to reach today’s gifted learner, Simple models that promote complex thinking across the content areas, Embedding GT practices in the classroom, Lighting the career path:  counseling strategies and activities for g

November 5, 2018 Dear BPS families, An opportunity awaits you! Kennedy science teacher Cory Elsmore, in partnership with an organization called Seeds for Change ( http://www.seedsforeducation.org/ ), is offering a summer enrichment experience to Jefferson and Kennedy science students. This experience is a summer trip to Costa Rica, featuring biology research. I took students on this trip in 2016.  In addition to being FUN, it was amazing to see the research that our students were able to do in such a short period of time.  I am very excited we are able to offer this opportunity again this year to 16 students to conduct their own experiments and do their own research in the rainforest with college professors and field experts.  This summer’s trip will be from July 20-30th, 2019. You are invited to an information meeting on to learn more about this opportunity on Wednesday, November 14th at 5pm in the Jefferson Media Center .   Please email celsmore@isd271.org if w

This morning the Bloomington Gifted Department got to meet with parents from multiple sites to hear their feedback on how we are doing and to update them on our growing programs.  Great start to the day!