VAGTC Conference 21-22 May 2015

Last week I was very fortunate to be able to attend the VAGTC Gifted Education Essentials Tools for Putting Theory into Practice conference which was held at CQ Function Centre Queens St Melbourne on Thursday 21 and Friday 22 May 2015 http://www.vagtc.asn.au/vagtc-conference-2015

Some of the presentations can be read at http://www.vagtc.asn.au/conference-2015-presentations

The conference was officially opened by Judith Graley Member for Narre Warren Sth and Parliamentary Secretary to Hon. James Merlino, the Victorian Deputy Premier and Minister for Education who spoke of collaborating with the VAGTC to make Victoria ‘the Education State’ by acting on the accepted recommendations from the report into the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into the Education of Gifted and Talented Students
https://giftedresources.wordpress.com/2012/08/20/victorian-parliamentary-inquiry-into-the-education-of-gifted-and-talented-students/
Funding has been allocated for increasing opportunities for rural and outer suburban students, Koori students, ESL students and low socio economic group students.
The VAGTC has been contracted by DET to deliver teacher and parent half day seminars in 5 country towns in Victoria. VAGTC are writing an online resource for teachers to be placed on the DET website.
DET were the major sponsor for the conference.

Day 2 was opened by Judy Connell from Catholic Education Office, also sponsors of the conference.

Conference participants were treated to musical performances by Sadie Mustoe 2014 from The Patch Primary School winner of The Maldon Minstrel Award for country music singer-songwriters on Thursday http://www.maldonfolkfestival.com/maldon-minstrel-award.htm  
and Alby Sands, a young jazz musician and composer from St Leonards College on Friday.

Photo Jo Freitag

The excellent opening Keynote address presented by Dr Katherine Hoekman, the Consultant: Academic performance at the Association of Independent Schools NSW was titled Play, Passion and Performance.

Dr Hoekman also presented two mini keynote sessions Creating Agile Learning Spaces to Connect and Support the Community of Learners
and Applying Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Principles: Creating Opportunities for Depth and Complexity

The Keynote address on Friday 22 May given by Manoj Chandra Handa, a Gifted Education Consultant at Oceans of Excellence http://www.oceansofexcellence.com/ Sydney NSW was titled Building Differentiated Schools of Curious Delight.
He also presented an inspiring session titled Strategies for Identifying and Addressing Underachievement among Gifted Learners

There was a great selection of presentations and workshops.
I enjoyed attending these sessions

Andrea Blake It All Starts with Identification
http://www.vagtc.asn.au/sites/vagtc.asn.au/files/Copy%20for%20website%20Subjective%20identification%20presentation_0.pdf

http://www.vagtc.asn.au/sites/vagtc.asn.au/files/Andrea%20Blake%20Resource%20list%20for%20Subjective%20Identification%20VAGTC%20Conf%20presentation%202015.pdf

Christine Ireland Tools, Practical Examples and Important Considerations for Teaching Creatively across Domains
http://www.vagtc.asn.au/sites/vagtc.asn.au/files/Christine%20Ireland%20creativity%20and%20innovation%20presentation%20%20.pdf

Michele Juratowitch “Boring!” Understanding and Alleviating Tedium
http://www.vagtc.asn.au/sites/vagtc.asn.au/files/VAGTC%20Conf%2015%20Boring%20HO.pdf 
PARENTS SEMINAR
A Parent Seminar was run in conjunction with the conference on Thursday 21 May
At this seminar Jenny Gotz Papillo spoke about her experiences in an excellent presentation titled One journey http://www.vagtc.asn.au/sites/vagtc.asn.au/files/Jenny%20Gotz%20Papillo%20Parent%20Seminar.pdf

Next a panel of experts moderated by Paul Double answered the parents’ questions on issues and concerns relating to parenting and educating gifted children.
The panel comprised Dr Gail Byrne, Andrea Blake, Kate Mitchell Dr Anne Grant and Jenny Gotz Papillo

Photo Jo Freitag

After lunch the parents were addressed by Derek McCormack of Raising Children Network http://raisingchildren.net.au/

Then Michele Juratowitch of Clearing Skies Brisbane http://www.clearingskies.com.au/index.html presented ‘Gifted and Happy?’
Michele observed that whenever she speaks to parents the thing they most often say to her is “I just want my child to be happy!” Her own research influenced by the work of Dr Martin Seligman, Prof Miraca Gross, Dr Linda Silverman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi showed that students who were suitably placed in terms of educational challenge and true peers could be happy and did not have to make a forced choice.
I really enjoyed the experience of participating in the conference which ran very smoothly and catching up with friends and colleagues, especially the members of the VAGTC Committee, and also meeting and learning from so many people who are passionate about the education of gifted students.

VAGTC EmpowerED for Giftedness Conference

Last week I was very fortunate to be able to attend the VAGTC EmpowerEd for Giftedness conference which was held at CQ Function Centre Queens St Melbourne on Tuesday 23 and Wednesday 24 April

The conference program can be read here
http://www.vagtc.asn.au/sites/vagtc.asn.au/files/Program%20at%20a%20Glance.pdf.

The main theme of the conference was differentiation and the keynote speakers were Susan Winebrenner from the US http://www.susanwinebrenner.com/and Debbie Youd from Tasmania. It was wonderful to hear Susan Winebrenner speak as her books are favourites of mine and ones I often recommend.
Susan Winebrenner’s opening keynote presentation was titled Compacting and Differentiation are Easy!  Her closing mini keynote was The most equitable way to provide gifted education services – The Schoolwide Cluster Grouping Model.

The conference also saw the launch of the ‘New opportunities for the gifted and talented directions paper’
http://www.education.vic.gov.au/school/teachers/teachingresources/diversity/Pages/gifted.aspx
This directions paper builds on the findings of the Victorian Parliament’s 2012 Inquiry into the Education of Gifted and Talented Students (the inquiry) by signalling a renewed focus on the needs of gifted and talented children and young people, their educators and their families. For the final report for the 2012 inquiry, see: Inquiry into the Education of Gifted and Talented Students

Jewel Topsfield wrote about this in The Age newspaper
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/political-news/more-state-schools-may-cater-for-gifted-students-20130422-2iaqr.html

David Southwick MP, chair of the Parliamentary Inquiry launched the ‘New opportunities for the gifted and talented directions paper’ and presented a conference session titled Unmasking Economic Potential of our Gifted Students in Victoria.

Sarah Humphreys of ACARA spoke about newly added provisions for adjusting the National Curriculum to meet the needs of gifted students See
http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/
Gifted and Talented
http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/StudentDiversity/Gifted-and-talented-students
Student diversity and the Australian curriculum
http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/StudentDiversity/Pdf/StudentDiversity

A Parent Seminar was run in conjunction with the conference on the morning of Tuesday 23. At this seminar Dr Anne Grant spoke about research into giftedness in early childhood and the factors impacting the transition to school.
Lynne Maher, the president of the Tasmanian Association for the Gifted, and her son Jonathan Geeves spoke about acceleration and the various types of acceleration which Jonathan had experienced. It was very helpful for the parents to hear about the social/emotional as well as the academic aspects of acceleration from a student’s point of view.
Susan Winebrenner also spoke to the parents covering many topics including differentiating instruction for gifted students and perfectionism

I also attended an excellent practical workshop presented by Andrea Blake and Kylie Graham titled Differentiating for Gifted Learners within an Inquiry Framework , a session presented by Christine Ireland titled Making differentiation work for gifted students: strategies, options and pitfalls and a session presented by Mark Smith describing the provisions for gifted and talented students at Macedon Grammar School titled Using Differentiation to Build Classroom Engagement and Uncover Student Talent

Conference participants were also treated to a display of fencing by Gabriel Spano and Sam Gilfillan, members of VRI Fencing Club https://www.vrifencing.com/   organised by Kayt Spano and Dr Zoltan Vilagosh directors of Fencing Victoria
Kayt describes fencing as ‘physical chess’ and says that it can be a sport for gifted students which builds transferrable skills in physical co-ordination and strength while appealing to their mental strategic and problem solving skills.

There were also performances of Ave Maria and Gloria by singers from Salesian College, music from Mary McKillop College Leongatha, hip hop dancers from Damm School of Dance see their news item at http://www.daamdance.com.au/news.html  and the songs “Don’t write us off” and “If you could see the world through my eyes” written and performed by twice exceptional students from Kids Like Us http://www.kidslikeus.org.au/

A Tribute to Professor John Geake was given by Jonah Oliver and the book Explorations in mind A collection of articles by John Geake edited by Wilma Vialle was launched

At the Conference Dinner life membership of the VAGTC was conferred on Christine Ireland in recognition and appreciation of her excellent commitment, contributions and service to the VAGTC and gifted education over many years.

I enjoyed the experience of participating in the conference which ran very smoothly and catching up with friends and colleagues and also meeting and learning from so many people who are passionate about the education of gifted students.

Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into the Education of Gifted and Talented Students

Australia is engrossed in welcoming home the athletes who participated at the London Olympics, planning street parades for them and evaluating the effectiveness and cost of the Australian Olympic campaign

It was great to read an opinion piece by David Southwick MP, Chair of the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into the Education of Gifted and Talented Students,  in The Age newspaper today
http://www.theage.com.au/national/education/forget-the-games-we-need-to-support-our-gifted-students-20120817-24ddj.html

It expresses very similar sentiments to one of my posts on Sprite’s Site blog on2 July 2012 http://spritessite.wordpress.com/2012/07/02/the-un-olympics-bower/

Here is part of that post

On 25 July 2011, the day of the first of the hearings for the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into the Education of Gifted and Talented Students, http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/etc/article/1339

the front page news was

Cadel Evans wins Tour de France
http://www.theage.com.au/sport/cycling/a-selfconfessed-loner-with-a-nation-riding-beside-him-x2014-australia-celebrates-a-new-sporting-legend-20110724-1hvdq.html

and

http://www.abc.net.au/am/indexes/2011/am_20110725.htm

This led Carmel Meehan, President of the VAGTC, to say during her evidence

“We celebrate people like Cadel Evans. He had a problem that he has solved in a physical way, and we have him on the front page of our papers today. We have people like Gustav Nossal and people who are working in stem cell research in our universities and who are doing brilliant work, but we do not see much of that on the front page of the paper. Our gifted and talented students are the resource that we have to solve those problems and the people who tomorrow will be at the cutting edge of helping humanity to survive.”

And

“We acknowledge our sporting heroes. We have a very good model for acknowledging excellence in our sporting domains. That could be transposed very easily into celebration of academic excellence, problem-solving, music and arts. In this country if we have good leadership in acknowledging gifted and talented people and celebrating their successes in the way that we celebrate our sporting heroes’ successes, then we are well on the way to having a very smart next generation coming through.

What we are looking for is equity for all the fields, whether it be in sport, arts, dance, mathematics and science, or whatever. In a level playing field let us celebrate it all, not one at the expense of the other.”
http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/images/stories/committees/etc/Past_Inquiries/EGTS_Inquiry/Transcripts_of_Evidence/25_July_2011_VAGTC_CORRECTED_VERSION.pdf

On 12 August 2011 Cadel Evans was given a street parade through Melbourne http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2011/08/11/3291187.htm

Extract from Sprite’s Site blog entry 21 June 2012
http://spritessite.wordpress.com/2012/06/21/in-the-news/

On Wednesday 20 June 2012 the report of the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into the Education of Gifted and Talented Students 2011 was tabled and the report posted at http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/etc/article/1341
with the full 336 page report in PDF form at http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/images/stories/committees/etc/Past_Inquiries/EGTS_Inquiry/Final_Report/Gifted_and_Talented_Final_Report.pdf

The recommendations arising from the Inquiry can be found on the VAGTC website at
Recommendations from the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into the Education of Gifted and Talented Students
http://www.vagtc.asn.au/sites/vagtc.asn.au/files/Recommendations%20G&T.pdf

The Age newspaper reported on the findings of the inquiry at
http://www.theage.com.au/national/education/gifted-students-go-dumb-to-fit-in-20120620-20ogw.html

If you follow Sprite’s Site you may remember that on 2 July 2011 I was busy writing a submission for this inquiry and had delayed celebrating Sprite’s blog birthday because of it http://spritessite.wordpress.com/2011/07/02/hard-to-please-everyone/

My submission to the Inquiry can be read at
http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/images/stories/committees/etc/Past_Inquiries/EGTS_Inquiry/Submissions/113_Gifted_Resources.pdf