Gifted programs go on at Yuma schools despite funding issues
Lil Wayne, the famous rapper, may have more in common than you might think with some gifted and talented students in Yuma schools.
A gifted musician himself, Dwayne Michael Carter Jr. — Lil Wayne’s birth name — dropped out prior to high school to become a recording artist. Like some other gifted students, he perhaps found formal education seemingly irrelevant to his needs back then. In 2008 near Yuma, the U.S. Border Patrol apprehended him for illegal possession of firearms and drugs on his tour bus, and he was assigned later to community service as a part of his probation terms.
Subsequently, Lil Wayne provided Yuma School District One with a financial grant for gifted students from a nonprofit charitable foundation that he had established, said Special Projects Coordinator Terry Lowe, who also serves as the district’s gifted program coordinator.
Like Lil Wayne, gifted students can find themselves isolated from their other classmates, who may not understand the special needs that can motivate gifted students toward success.
To prevent this isolation or a lack of socialization skills among these exceptional students, both Yuma School District One and Crane School District implement “a gifted cluster classroom” in which three to ten gifted students are placed together within a regular class. Each gifted student in these districts also has an educational plan designed specifically for his or her needs.
“Gifted kids are very different,” said Lowe. “That’s one of the reasons I really like the gifted education plan approach because you can tailor it to what they need. And if what they need is to be in a friendship group to learn how to get along, OK.”
With at least eight different kinds of intelligence having been identified by world renowned psycholo-
gist and Harvard graduate school teacher Howard Gardner, the jobs of teachers to accommodate each student’s educational needs may seem daunting. However, the personalized learning plans for students in both Crane and also District One help with this challenge.
Even student placement tests — especially for highly gifted and talented students — are often inadequate to enable educators fully determine the gamut of students’ strengths that might be more fully developed under appropriate guidance.
Test scores on stateapproved exams, most of which have not changed for years, help determine which students should be placed in a gifted education program. One newer test, however, is simply unaffordable. Tests currently used measure primarily three aptitudes — verbal, nonverbal and spatial. Furthermore, a lack of funding for special tests and programs for gifted students prevents schools from doing more for these future leaders.
The lack of funding for gifted programs at both Crane and District One is significant, especially when compared with the federal funding at the opposite end of the spectrum of programs in which students have special needs.
“That’s the old attitude that they can make it on their own, which is not true,” said Lowe, referring to a lack of funding for gifted kids. “Some of them make it on their own, but usually it’s not really on their own. They have good family supports and resources, but some of them even with good family support just get so bored. I think kids particularly from dysfunctional families or struggling backgrounds — they’re street smart and they learn quickly — but they don’t see the relevance in what goes on in some classrooms, sometimes in a lot of classrooms; so they just check out. It’s a waste of talent, and it’s sad, really sad.”
As of this writing though, Arizona Representative Heather Carter (R) has introduced a bill to allocate $5 million from the general fund to the Department of Education. The bill (HB 2112) requires allocating $4.5 million for gifted programs and distributing $500,000 in the form of grants to school districts and charter schools for assessments to identify gifted students.
Bobi Kress, a Gowan Achievement Project (GAP) teacher at Pueblo Elementary School, shares Lowe’s concerns.
“We do not have a pullout program or any special anything for our gifted students at this time because we don’t have the funds,” said Kress. “This is unfortunate. The GAP program is funded by a private philanthropist. This extra funding is what allows us to do many of the extra things our program does. Lack of funding keeps our district from having special enrichment for gifted students.”
Moreover, gifted students for whom English is their second language may be more difficult to identify because some of them may not even understand the directions on the tests.
“Because we have a lot of second language learners, many of them will show their giftedness in the nonverbal or the quantitative area,” said Lowe. “And they are probably gifted as well in verbal — first of all because they are learning a second language quickly, but our paper and pencil tests don’t pick that up.”
Both of Yuma’s elementary school districts use an alternative identification system in which teachers are provided with a checklist of characteristics to look for in the gifted prospects. They match the characteristics with students’ names on their classroom rosters to determine which of those students demonstrate multiple characteristics from the list. Teachers then submit those students’ names for testing.
“What I’d like to do,” said Lowe, “is pull a committee together and figure out how we might broaden how we make more gifted kids. But it takes time and resources.”
Despite the current lack of funding, Yuma schools do their best to meet the needs of these gifted, talented and highly advanced students who are admitted to special programs by means of high scores on state tests, recommendations of teachers and/or parents and occasionally (but rarely) by the students themselves.
“Really in our district when things are going ideally, a gifted label shouldn’t make a whole lot of difference because of the emphasis on personalized learning and the availability to all of our kids to after-school programs,” said Lowe. “Things like Odyssey of the Mind are not limited to gifted kids. And robotics and iTEAM KiDS are things that we do.”
The iTEAM KiDS, a nationally recognized program, is in all of District One’s schools. These kids learn the school’s technology, including its background, how it works, how to fix it, and how to support teachers with using their smartboards when something goes wrong.
“And the cool thing they do when we have a Districtwide professional development day, the iTEAM KiDS from each campus present sessions for the teachers. So they train the teachers on maybe new apps or new interfaces that the teachers might be interested in using, and it’s pretty cool because you see these little third graders get up and train the teachers. And the teachers’ reactions are really interesting. First of all, they are blown away by the kids, but you hear teachers going out of those trainings saying, ‘Well, I guess if a third grader can do it, I can do it,’ “laughs Lowe. “We’ve had some of those kids who have gone and presented at national conferences a couple of times, which is an incredible thing to watch.”
In the Crane District, some schools’ gifted students in the Gowan Achievement Program (GAP) have participated in First Lego League, a problem-based learning project that combines Legos, robotics and coding.
“This year we built a unit around the Lego League’s theme, which was Hydrodynamics,” said Kress.
Using Facetime to communicate online, students from Mesquite Elementary have been working together with those at Crane Pueblo Elementary on a project-based learning program whose theme is Exploration. Parts of the curriculum may involve online programs in which they can design their own animated programs. Or students can control small drones after programming them on their iPads.
The GAP program combines students grades four through six in projects, often working together. The fourth graders face up to the challenge. Kress said that sometimes the fourth graders come up with bright solutions that surprise their older classmates.
“Well, it’s kind of difficult because they know a lot more than I do,” admits fourth grader Mario Lopez, who is in the Pueblo Elementary GAP program. “So I have to do a lot more research in this group.”
“It’s exciting when the kids come up with creative responses to problems through collaboration, research, and trial and error,” said Kress. “Students in our GAP program get to choose what they want to investigate or explore through Genius Hour. They make presentations involving models and video presentations when they complete their project.”
The Genius Hour, Kress explained, is a student selfdirected project program — generally implemented on days with shorter schedules — that has been incorporated in many of the Crane schools but is not limited to gifted students. Pupils are allowed to select a subject of interest to themselves, and then research and present their research to their peers each quarter. They enhance their skills in electronic media and public speaking, helping to meet state standards. Some students do more than one project per quarter.
“It’s a fun project for them because it is selfdirected,” said Kress. She says students react with things like ‘What do I want to learn about?’ and then respond, ‘Wow! I get to do this in school?’ “I think when we can bring an element of fun to learning, we learn more,” added Kress. She explained that the students often see how their lessons cross over other disciplines such as math, science or social studies.
Lowe also mentioned that when gifted students get to be in about seventh grade, they are eligible for other summer programs from outside entities like ASU and others funded by foundations. By then they must have the test scores and the gifted label to be considered.
“That’s not true of all of those programs, but even the ones that don’t require (the gifted label) are certainly swayed by it,” Lowe said.
The local gifted programs are almost as varied as the students themselves. Because some schools tailor their programs for the needs of the gifted or advanced students at individual schools, the programs may change annually with the shifting population, and programs may differ from school to school.
“In middle school the opportunities for the gifted kids are advanced classes,” said Lowe. They vary by campus and are based upon students’ individual plans that list their strengths and needs. The District then determines the programs available before, during and after school, in the summer; “anything we can think of,” she said. “Some of them are online learning programs — or making sure that they get into robotics if that’s what they want to do.”
“Our district philosophy is that a student who is gifted is gifted all day every day,” said Lowe. “One of my hopes — if the state ever sees fit to fund the gifted even at a minimal level again — is that we could find the resources to expand the way we identify giftedness because we are really only identifying a narrow spectrum of the kids who are.”
Throughout the Yuma Union High School District, gifted and talented students enter the Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) program automatically if their middle schools have identified them as gifted, Community Engagement & Communications Director Eric Patten said. Most of them enroll in Advanced Placement (AP) courses.