My Story

Going through school gifted and bored was not a good combination.  When I was bored I made my own fun.  When I made my own fun, I got into trouble.  Suffice it to say, I got into a lot of trouble. 

At the end of grade 3 I was identified as gifted and this has started my life long journey in gifted education.  I transferred schools and was placed into a contained gifted class with 13 others.  This cohort went through grades 4-8 together as one class. 

Our high school had no programming for gifted students.  I always wondered why.  Why was it provided in elementary school but not in high school?  It made no sense.  We were still gifted learners, nothing had changed there.

Fast forward to my teaching career.  In my third year of teaching I moved cities and moved to a school for gifted and talented.  In my first year there, teaching physics, I asked the department head of Gifted Education, "what made a class gifted?"  We had many conversations and how the class could be ‘enhanced’, align with the curriculum, and align the program being delivered to their learning profile.  It was easier than I thought.

In my 4th year of teaching, I became the coordinator of the gifted program. 

The lens I used to guide the program followed this simple thought, “I want to help build a school that my friends and I would want to attend”.  Very simple but challenging at the same time. 

My vision is to help everyone in education see gifted students for what they are.  Special education students who will flourish with specialized programming.