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Kansas Association for Gifted Talented and Creative |
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Advocacy |
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Advocacy at KGTC takes many forms. The most obvious is pursued through the Legislative Coordinator, who is charged with keeping up with current legislation in Topeka that may have an impact on Gifted and other high achieving students. Multiple trips are made to the Legislature annually and continuous communications with legislators who are “friendly” to Gifted Education must be established and maintained. In addition, our Legislative Coordinator must be aware of national legislation in the U. S. Congress. Annually KGTC sends representatives to the “Affiliate Conference” in Washington D.C. Through this conference our representatives are afforded the opportunity to meet with Congressman in key education committees and Congressmen from Kansas to discuss educational issues and focus attention on Gifted students. This is one area in particular in which we don’t want our gifted students left behind. There are many benefits to our Gifted students for participating in the KGTC-sponsored Legislative Day. However, this activity also serves KGTC well by making Gifted Education personal for our legislators who participate. They meet and interact with our gifted students, seeing first hand the benefits of the services offered our students. This also gives our legislators the opportunity to ask informal questions of those that could be affected most by potential legislation. Advocacy also takes on the role of informant to our constituency and other interested parties by alerting parents, teachers, administrators and others interest in Gifted Education if something should arise at the national or state level that would have an adverse affect on our students. Through the KGTC Listserve and the Gifted Information Profile member lists, we can quickly notify a large number of people if a call to action is needed to contact either state and/or national legislators to proffer our case for continuation of beneficial laws or funding. Advocacy can also take the form of KGTC providing assistance and support to Gifted Education Facilitators in making presentations to district and/or building administrators and staff. If you take a poll of general education teachers, you would find that most have only been exposed very briefly in their undergraduate education. Some have had as little as 15 minutes of “instruction” about how to deal with gifted and other high achieving students. Teachers are taught how to deal with students with disabilities, but few recognize the “smart” student who may isolate themselves from the rest of their peers is suffering just as much as the child with a physical handicap. Through the provision of technical support and/or with the assistance of our speakers bureau, KGTC advocate for gifted students and help others understand the educational and social/emotional issues of the students we represent. One of our annual events is taking nominations for and awarding the Kansas Association for the Gifted, Talented and Creative Annual Award to the parent, teacher, administrator or community member who, in the opinion of the selection committee, has contributed the most to further gifted education in the state of Kansas since the last convention. Nominations are made from a current member of KGTC. Of course, the nominee need not be a member. |
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The Kansas Association for the Gifted, Talented and Creative Annual Award nominations are open from now until 9:00 PM on August 1, 2010.
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