Gifted Education Coordinator
Amphitheater Public Schools, Arizona
I am the Gifted Coordinator for the Amphitheater Public School District in Tucson, Arizona. I have been an educator for twenty years. My journey toward gifted education began when I took over an advanced placement sixth grade math class. I fell in love with the gifted population and pursued my gifted endorsement. I was hired as an elementary gifted specialist after ten years of teaching middle school. All of my gifted specialist experience has taken place at Title 1 schools across the district. One of the goals of our department is, “Improve Our Creative and Critical Thinking Skills”, hence my interest in Creative Problem Solving. My love of creative problem solving lead me to coach Future Problem Solving teams and Odyssey of the Mind teams. I have taken both types of teams to World Finals competitions. I am passionate about the creative problem solving process as it inspires teachers to encourage their students to use both divergent and convergent thinking skills. It provides a concrete way to solve real world problems. The process is ambiguous by nature as there is no right answer. This creates a novel experience for gifted learners as they don’t typically experience gray areas during the course of their educational careers. I have presented Creative Problem Solving at professional development workshops for my district and most recently at the Tucson Regional Educator Collaborative June Summit 2022 and the 2022 Arizona Department of Education Teacher’s Institute and Leading Change Conference. I also enjoy presenting effective strategies for visual spatial learners, gifted characteristics, and overexcitabilities. I look forward to leading our gifted department as we work toward implementing a cluster grouping model at the elementary level, redesigning our middle school program, and piloting a REACH English Honors course at the our three high schools.
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Saturday, November 19, 2022
9:15 AM – 9:45 AM