Workshops take unusual look at gifted learners

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Workshops take unusual look at gifted learners

Workshops in gifted education usually focus on the gifted child – how to identify them, how to teach them. But Dunedin is shortly to host two events which take a very different look at working with these children.

In an interesting back-to-back workshop double, parents and teachers will learn about each others roles in the education of the gifted child.

Gifted children are an extraordinarily diverse group who just don’t fit into any one pattern. They range from the highly introverted child doing brilliant work in a corner somewhere and never saying boo to a goose right through to the slapdash extrovert who never finishes anything. They include the absent-minded professor-type of popular legend, the class clown, the way-out lateral thinker, and, sometimes, the all-round high achiever.

No wonder they are notoriously difficult to identify for sure – and no wonder parents and teachers can be at odds over who is and who isn’t gifted and what to do with them!

“Parents and teachers need to be able to work in partnership,” says Alison Tay, secretary of The Otago Association for the Gifted and Talented, “and that can only happen when we understand the situation from each other’s perspective.”

She is coordinating the parent evening on October 24th while the teachers’ session will take place the following day as part of two days of workshops on gifted learners.

Speaker for both events is Rosemary Cathcart, former director of the George Parkyn National Centre for Gifted Education and of the One Day School. A long-term advocate for gifted learners, Rosemary Cathcart has worked for many years throughout New Zealand with both parents and teachers at every level, and says the task remains “a fascinating challenge, full of the unexpected, the delightful, and the difficult!”

The parents’ evening will be held at 7.30 pm on
Wednesday October 24th
at East Taieri School, Cemetery Road, East Taieri.
Admission $4 Members; $8 Non-Members

ENDS

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