E99: Gifted Educator [IEP Team BONUS Series]
Did you know that a child can be on an IEP AND ALSO have a gifted education plan? It's true! In this episode of the IEP Team BONUS Series, we go over the qualifications and what gifted educators actually do as part of your child's school team.
Did you know that a child can be on an IEP AND ALSO have a gifted education plan? It’s true! In this episode of the IEP Team BONUS Series, we go over the qualifications and what gifted educators actually do as part of your child’s school team.
We cover:
1) Example of state requirements to have this certification
2) What gifted educators actually do in their sessions
3) A common example of a student that may require both an IEP and gifted programming.
Download IEP Process Step-By-Step Guide
Link to CO State License Information(used as example in episode)
E99: Gifted Educator
[00:00:00] Did you know that a student can have an IEP, a K a, a disability and be gifted at the same time? It’s true. And that’s why in this episode of the IEP team bonus series, we are talking about gifted educators, their qualifications, and what they actually do. So stick with me.
You are listening to the parent IEP lab, the podcast that helps you get an effective IEP plan for your child so that you can get them supported and learning in school. I’m Beth leads and Feld occupational therapist, who started to notice trends in parents who got effective IEP for their kids without having to fight the school. My mission is to help you turn insider knowledge from the school side into effective parent advocacy for your child.
The parent IEP lab focuses on providing you knowledge about your parent role in the IEP process and taking away the stress of an upcoming IEP meeting through the ultimate IEP prep course. But also on the podcast, we highlight commonly missed parent advocacy opportunities between IEP meetings, which is really how you avoid having to fight with the team.
So let’s dive [00:01:00] in and think about what we can change and tweak to get the right formula for success for your child to learn and grow with school. Welcome to the lab.
Just a super quick reminder that I do have a free download for you available on the website. And this is the IEP process step-by-step guide. It takes you through the 10 steps of the. Of the annual review process, including your parent input and when you should submit your parent input as well. So snag that in the link below this podcast, in your podcast player, or you can go to the IEP lab.com/iep to get your free copy. We also have a super exciting event coming up. If you are confused about your child’s IEP and you don’t know what you’re looking at, which is essentially the most important thing, when you’re trying to advocate for your kid is knowing what’s inside of your child’s.
Yep. Then go ahead and check out the link below this podcast and your podcast player to check out the IEP bootcamp. That’s coming up at the end of January. Yes, you can [00:02:00] attend live. And I hope that you do throughout january 27th to 29th. But also you will get recordings of everything so that you can watch it when you have time as well.
You can check out more information and then link below this podcast in your podcast player. Or you can go to the IEP lab.com/bootcamp. Okay. Let’s get into the episode.
If you are new to the IEP team bonus series, then welcome. I’m so glad that you found it. We are actually more than halfway through and going through each IEP team member that you might have as part of your IEP team. So if you want to scroll back to every Thursday for the last couple months, you will find special education teacher, speech, language, pathologist, OT, PT, teacher of the visually impaired.
We’ve covered a lot of them. So if you’re like, huh, I’ve been wondering about what this person actually does. Does then you can scroll back in your player or you can head over to the website, the IEP lab.com. And if you go to the podcast [00:03:00] page, there’s a section on the right-hand side that has categories. And if you look at the IEP team bonus series and you click that link, then they’re all right there online for you to, if you just want to quickly scroll through them.
So. That is there as well for you as a resource. And this is so important because you, as a group, went into the Facebook group and I put a poll and I was like, okay, what, what bonus series is most interesting and most helpful to you? And by far you guys chose this bonus series. Now here’s the thing, though.
You might say, okay, well, I guess I just know more about the people on the team, right? Why would I need to know this? Well, this allows you to know what’s out there. Right? So many people have said, oh, physical therapy is in the schools. I didn’t even know that was a thing. And so you can understand what’s available inside of each school or what’s supposed to be available in each school.
Right. You can also understand if they need a service. a particular problem that they’re having or challenge in school now, you know, that it’s [00:04:00] possible to get an evaluation from that particular service provider. Right. The other thing is that if you have a defined need that isn’t getting met, which is my preferred thing, I really don’t recommend you going and saying, I need OT for my kid. Start with a defined need that isn’t getting met that you think might be addressed by somebody like an OT or PT, your TVI or whatever it is now, you know what professional to go and ask about it.
The other thing is that if you have a really big team for your kid, You might not know where to go to ask a specific question, right? So maybe you have some sensory concerns. Well, if you have both a special education teacher and an OT on the team, you might not know who to go to, to ask those questions, or you might be trying to go to the completely wrong person who doesn’t know anything about that and your request or your concern is just going to fall flat because they don’t really know what to say about it because they’re not the right professional to ask.
So this gives you some [00:05:00] clarity around who to ask what things and to also just know that, know what services are out there supposed to be out there. Right. So today we’re talking about gifted educators and I’m going to be super honest here. It is not my expertise and yes, you can have a child that has both an IEP.
I mean, they have a disability and they’re also gifted. So this is possible, but I’ve actually never served. One of these kids who is sometimes they’re called two E or twice exceptional. Where they have a disability and they’re gifted at the same time.
So we have an episode coming up on two E with a school psychologist who specializes in this area, but I would love to talk to a gifted educator as well, to get more details. So if you are a person and you have a gifted educator, That you think does a really amazing job with your kid? I would love to be connected with them. So let me know if you happen to know somebody, because I would love to have a little bit more details about what they do. I have been in contact with them. I have shared a room with them, so [00:06:00] I’ve seen them do interventions.
Um, so that’s what we’re going to talk about at the end, but, you know, it’s always best to hear directly from the person who actually does the thing. So. I’m going to do my best just to give you some context here, moving forward.
So it’s really interesting because if you’re new to me, I am in the state of Colorado. So I used Colorado state’s website a lot, just for an example. I’m an example person. I really like giving examples. So it’s really interesting to me that there are actually two separate qualifications on the Colorado state website for a gifted educator. So we’re going to go through both of those, and then we’re going to talk about what they actually do afterwards, before we wrap up. So let’s go ahead and get into the qualifications.
So the first one, the title of this one is gifted education core. pre-K through 12th grade and then it also has a couple of PDFs. So if you are a person that like likes to dive into this and really wants to see it, I will link this up in the show notes so that you can see exactly what I’m looking at. And then it has a link to another PDF. So [00:07:00] here’s the outline of what they say this gifted education core person has to have in order to do gifted, educating.
So the first one is added endorsement. Only applicant must hold a valid Colorado teacher’s license. So they have to have a teacher’s license note though that it’s not a special education teacher’s license. It’s just a general education teacher’s license. Okay. The second one is completion of an approved program from a regionally accredited institution for the preparation of gifted education.
Educators. That’s a little redundant, but okay. Including prescribed field experience and student teaching requirements or 24 semester hours of specific coursework requirements outlined in the gifted education worksheet at left. And then the third one is that they have to pass a big test called the Praxis gifted education, 53 58 exam with a minimum score of 1 57. So that is the first category. And then the second category, the first category again, was gifted [00:08:00] education core.
The second category is gifted education specialist. pre-K through 12. So this one, the first qualification is added endorsement only must hold a valid Colorado teacher’s license with a gifted education, core endorsement.
So they have to have that endorsement and then they have to have a master’s degree in gifted education from a regionally accredited institution, including prescribed field experience and student teaching requirements. And it says a little note here. This can not be the same degree by what you met the gifted education core endorsement requirements. So there’s almost two levels to it, right? It sounds like the gifted education core is the one that you go for first. And then if you want to, you can add the gifted education specialist on top of that.
And kind of upgrade your education and your level of experience in education. So those are the two qualifications. I’m sure they’re similar in a lot of different states if you have any questions about trying to find these qualifications in your own state, [00:09:00] feel free to jump into the Facebook group, the link to join as well as this podcast in your podcast player. And we will help search and locate the links to your own. State’s gifted qualifications as well.
So let’s shift into the second and final section of this podcast, which is what they actually do.
So children might be bored by the general education content, if they are gifted. Or they may need some sort of challenge, right? They may need behavioral supports because they’re bored in class. They may not be applying themselves because they’re bored in class, all kinds of, of different things. And to qualify for gifted, you have to be really, really high when you’re tested. So, you know, 99th percentile if you’re familiar with that,
If you’ve gone through the decoding IEP data workshop, you would understand that, but really, really, really high on testing to be able to qualify for gifted. So, you know, these students might ask a ton of questions, want to take a deep dive into things. They’re very curious, very [00:10:00] interested. Um, this is a way to have them access more challenging content.
So just to kind of simplify what they do, they design challenging lessons that go beyond the common core standards. So we’ve talked about standards before. There’s a former episode about standards. If you’re curious about those, but those are kind of outlined state by state on what your child is actually supposed to be learning in that grade.
And so gifted programs go a step further than that and teach, you know, either the core standards from the next grade up, or they take a deeper dive on the common core standards that are presented. Rented in the grade level that they’re in as well. So I’ve actually shared a room. Because OTs, you know, we’re in a building for like maybe one or two days a week. So we end up kind of sharing with these other itinerant people or people who aren’t in the same building every single day. And so I have shared a room when a gifted educator was pulling small groups and usually they do pull small groups and they do a different lesson inside of those small groups.
So when [00:11:00] I shared a room with them, they would work on poetry, like more advanced poetry than they were learning in class. They would work on math problems and solving them different ways. They would go super deep on a topic that they were covering in class, but maybe in class, they were just kind of touching on it and moving on, maybe they were taking a deep dive into like native American history and then getting hands on and then having projects related to that as well.
So they go a. A lot deeper into topics, and kind of advance their skills in different ways so that they get a challenge.
Gifted educators also screen and test all students in Colorado. I think it’s second grade where they test every single second grader, but I’ve heard of other states screening as early as kindergarten because I’ve heard of like even preschools, I think having a gifted preschool. Um, now you might be wondering.
Why doesn’t everybody get screened for needing an IEP? I don’t know. I don’t know the history behind that. It would be a really interesting thing to ask somebody who’s higher up and the [00:12:00] gifted community on why that’s not a thing for IDPs, but you know,
It’s something that I wonder a lot about,
so just a little bit of a note on kids who might need an IEP and gifted education at the same time, some of these kids might be neurodivergent so
they might qualify under the OHI category or other health impairment category for things like ADHD or, and they have a hard time organizing themselves. They need direct instruction for, you know, managing their time or, You know, specialized instruction to use their accommodations or anything like that, but they also might be, need to be challenged as well academically. That’s just one example of what that might look like.
, so hopefully that helped, you know, that gifted education is a thing as always joined the conversation inside the Facebook group, the link to join that group is below this podcast in your podcast player. And don’t forget to snag your free IEP process step-by-step guide that goes through the 10 steps of an annual IEP meeting. That link is also [00:13:00] below this podcast in your podcast player. And the last thing that’s there is registration for the bootcamp.
So if you are needing some help, understanding your child’s IEP, if you want to be able to read that draft IEP, when it gets sent home before your meeting and not feel totally overwhelmed and not know what to look for. Then go ahead and join us in the bootcamp. I’m so excited. Registrations are starting to pour in.
And so it is over a weekend. So if you can’t fit it in, you get all of the recordings automatically, but if you are able to join live, it’s going to be a lot of fun and you get a lot of feedback if you join VIP as well. And so so excited to support you in that. So. All the links to everything that I mentioned in the episode are below this podcast in your podcast player. So thank you so much for joining and I will see you. Same time, same place next week. Thanks so much!