S1 E1 - Intro/What is GT?

In the first episode, Michael Bridges, GT and AP Coordinator for the Alma School District, discusses the future plans for the podcast and what you can expect for upcoming episodes. At the 4:45 mark, Mr. Bridges explains what it means to be gifted and talented and what is involved in placement into the GT program at Alma and most other public schools. We hope that this will better educate the community on what a gifted and talented student is and how a student qualifies for the program. Listen in! You might be surprised by what you learn. If you have any questions, please feel free to email Mr. Bridges at [e-mail].

Episode Transcript

(00:10):
Hello everyone, and welcome to thevery first episode of the podcast. Has
the nerve, and has the audacityand yes even has the gall to just
come right out and ask, Hey, what's your deal? My name is
Michael Bridges, and I am thegifted and Talented and AP coordinator for the

(00:34):
Alma School District here in Alma,Arkansas. And once again I want to
welcome you in to the podcast calledHey What's Your Deal? And this will
be a place where people can comeon and express just that exactly what their
deal is, exactly what they wantto talk about. So how did a
podcast come about? I am alwayslooking for things that will challenge my students

(01:00):
and give them an extra outlet ofchallenge and creativity. So I decided to
do a podcast. And as Iwas looking through and researching what to do,
how to do it, where togo, who to listen to,
on how to figure things out?I saw that the Arkansas Securities Division was

(01:21):
offering grants. So I filled outthat grant for podcast equipment, and the
Arkansas Securities Division was nice enough to, well, there's no better way of
saying it than to grant my grant, So they gave me the money that
I needed, and I went outand bought podcast equipment, and we have

(01:41):
a podcast board, we have acomputer, we have microphones, we have
headphones. We have really great equipmentthat was at no cost to our school
district and that the Arkansas Securities Divisionjust provided for us. So I would
like to just thank them greatly becausethey have set us up with a first
class program here and I am veryvery grateful to them for doing that.

(02:04):
So what's the purpose of our podcasthere? I want to represent the GT
community and I plan to do thatin several ways. And again in a
moment, I will get down towhat exactly GT means and does not mean.
I want my students to be ableto have kind of a soap box,

(02:25):
so to speak, and to beexposed to something different. We have
discussions in our class numerous times abouthow there is a communication breakdown in society
today. I mean, you guys, remember communication right when we used to
meet like face to face and talkto one another civilly and we could have
a disagreement and not yell and screamat each other. Good times, good

(02:46):
times, remember those halcyon days forsure. So I want my kids to
have that experience. My GT studentsto have that experience. So that's that's
why we're here. We're going togive them a platform to speak and they're
going to be able to talk aboutwhatever interest them, whatever their deal might
be, whether it's they want totalk about basketball, or maybe they want

(03:10):
to talk about a social issue,or maybe they want to talk about why
your favorite color should be purple,which is a great color by the way.
Whatever they want to do perfectly fine, but they're going to have to
research it, gather their thoughts andhave a pre interview with me before we
ever put a microphone in front oftheir face. But this will give them

(03:30):
an outlet and like a new areato try. And my hope is that
they take this and they run withit and they go do a podcast on
their own. You know, thirtydifferent podcasts down there, all for Malma
Arkansas would make me nothing but happy. So that's one thing I'm trying to
do. That's goal. One goalto is to also talk to people that
are involved within the GT community,the AP community, and even the high

(03:54):
achievers out there that offer things forstudents that want to challenge themselves a bit
beyond what is normally offered within aschool. Different programs, just different opportunities
for them because I think things flyunder the radar. As I spoke earlier
the Arkansas Securities Division, Hey teachers, if you're out there and you're listening,

(04:14):
look into that grant. There arepeople that don't apply for it.
There's money sitting out there to get. And I think that's our problem is
we're so busy and we have somuch information flying bias that we miss it.
So I'm going to have people inhere from the district, from outside
the district, people that I workwith, and they're just going to provide
you with information and hopefully a littlebit of knowledge about what it is to
be GT AP high achieving, maybesome social emotional and awareness. We all

(04:42):
all could use that for sure.So let's get down to kind of the
nuts and bolts of it. Whatis or what isn't GT? And I
think it's probably easier to start offwith what GT isn't what Gifted and Talented
is not. It is not aclub. I'll have students come up to

(05:02):
me and say, mister Bridges,put me in GT, and I can't
do that. This isn't something thatyou can sign up for or even pay
a registration fear or anything like that, and just turn in an application to
me and bam, you're in.It's not some kind of club where you
know, we take in a certainamount of members quote unquote and then we

(05:24):
can't take anymore. Gifted and Talentedis actually special education. Now, it's
probably the opposite end of the spectrumfor special education that you're thinking about.
But my degree in gifted and talented. My master's degree says degree in special
education. It is a special needsprogram. It is for students who are

(05:46):
not their needs are not being metin the classroom. So just like we
have some students who are struggling withlearning and their needs aren't being met in
the classroom and they get extra assistance, we have some students that may be
going above and beyond that learning andhave special needs outside of the classroom.
And you may say, well,how how do you determine that their student

(06:08):
is nominated by a parent or ateacher? And then I proceed to give
them a battery of tests, severaldifferent tests that I give them on.
We also interview their teacher and wealso interview the parent just to find out
some background information on them. Andthen I gather all that information after the

(06:30):
scores have been tallied and the interviewquestions have been put up, and I
put that on a sheet of paper, and I assigned that sheet of paper
a number. And the reason Iassigned that sheet of paper a number is
because we have a committee of anywherebetween i'd say six to ten, sometimes
twelve faculty members that come in andthey make the decision on who needs GT

(06:50):
placement and who does not. Alot of people think that I make that
decision, and I do not.I'm a compiler. What I do is
I gather the scores, I assignit a number, and then I pass
it off to the committee. Andthe committee has no idea who they're looking
at. Many times they don't knowif it's a boy or a girl.
It's just there's a number assigned toit. And that's that's what we discuss.

(07:13):
Is we look at raw scores andsay, wow, this kid has
really scored highly in these areas andthey need services or no, this kid
is this kid is hitting the middleof the scale. So they are being
met in the classroom in a waythat they need to. It's not it's
not a popularity contest. There's nofavoritism. It's a completely blind selection committee

(07:38):
and that's that's how we work.Also, another myth that I would kind
of like to lay to rest isthat GT kids are smart. Hold up,
I am not saying GT kids arenot smart. But when you sit
there and say GT kids are smart, what are you automatically saying about kids

(07:58):
who don't qualify for or kids whohave tested for GT and didn't make it.
You're saying they're not smart. Andthat is absolutely not true, and
that's a hill. I will dieon Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday,
Friday, and I'll even give youthe weekend to boot. GT is
not about being smart once again,take it back. GT is about special

(08:22):
needs, special education. It's aneed that a student has. So I've
seen kids that have not qualified,and honestly, I've been surprised that they
didn't qualify, that their scores didn'tshow it better because they're brilliant, they
can work their way around math problems, their writings incredible. It's just they
didn't qualify on the scores that welook at, and that's what we use

(08:46):
to decide everything needs. You know, a set of parameters that they have
to fall in and that's what weuse, or those tests and those interviews.
Another thing that I hear is everyoneis gifted. Every child is gifted.
And again I a hundred percent agreewith you. I'm not going to

(09:07):
fight you on that. You cancome to me and say that and I'd
be like, yeah, you're absolutelycorrect. Again, it goes back to
need. Is that student really giftedin drawing but they're getting everything they need
in their classroom and in their artclasses. Or are they gifted in drawing
and in music and in spatial reasoningand they're socially emotionally complex and feeling a

(09:33):
lot of emotions that they don't knowhow to deal with. There's so many
different aspects And by no means amI an expert in this. It's very
very deep, and I've been studyingit for years and I'm still learning new
things. But everyone is gifted.It's just are they so gifted in different

(09:54):
areas that they really need special helpfor this? Can they be serviced in
the classroom? And I'm going tohave my good friend Karen Grady on here
eventually, who is our regional GTspecialist, And she kind of presented us
with something that I think may kindof help help you get your brain around

(10:15):
it. There was the the pictureof Batman versus Superman. Okay, so
I need you to picture that inyour head. You got Batman, You've
got Superman. All right. Batmanhas all this technology that he's got,
right, and yes, he's trainedand he's done all these things, but
he's kind of learned all these thingsas he's gone through. Then you've got
Superman over here on the other side. And Superman is who he is.

(10:39):
He has super strength, he haslaser vision, he can fly, he
can freeze things with his breath.I'm not going to totally geek count on
you here, I promise, Butbasically what it comes down to is Batman
is like the smart kid and Superman'slike the gift kid. Batman can decide

(11:01):
I'm going to walk away from allthis and I'm going to take off the
cowl and everything and I'm going tojust go back to being a regular guy,
a regular guy who's like a billionaire. Right, It's not a bad
life, Okay, But then yougot Superman on the other side, and
Superman is who he is and couldbe considered, you know, to kind
of have a disorder or be abnormal, and the only way that he's considered

(11:22):
normal would be to go back tohis home planet. And that's kind of
what our classroom is. If you'reidentified as a gifted student, it's that
gifted child's home planet. They feelcomfortable here. I think every teacher would
tell you that this is a placeof comfort for them, and that's one

(11:43):
of the things that I try toprovide for them. And when we get
students in here who aren't gifted orwho you know, maybe barely barely made
the cut, I've seen that happenbefore, and it's it's tough because it
kind of kind of gets a littlecrazy in here at times, with anywhere
between fifteen to twenty GT students ata time. As Miss Inglekey, one

(12:05):
of our great third grade teachers outthere shout out to miss Inglkey, she
coined the phrase that GT actually standsfor goat tornado because when she walks by
my classroom, it looks like I'mstanding in the middle of a tornado and
there's a lot of goats flying aroundbecause it is it is organized chaos here,

(12:28):
But it is organized chaos that Ilove, and I love all students,
love working with them, love tosee the light shine in their eyes
when they understand things and when somebodygets them. I think it's great.
But I also believe that certain teachershave a certain calling to certain areas.
For some of them, it's speechspeech pathology, which I may need because

(12:48):
I kind of rolled it there.Some of them it's dyslexia. For me,
it was gifted and talented, andI knew it from the time that
I interned. I wanted to workwith gifted students, so that's what I
do. And I hope that inthis conversation that I've had, it's kind
of given you an idea of exactlywhat it means to be gifted. If

(13:11):
not, if you heard this andyou're still I do not understand a thing
about this program or what he said, I'm more than happy to talk to
you about it. My email ism as in Michael Bridges, b R
I, d G E S atAlma Alma SD dot net. Send me
an email. I'd be more thanhappy to talk to you about it because

(13:35):
you're going to be hearing more aboutour GT community, and hopefully it's going
to be happening right here on ourpodcast. So I hope I haven't bored
you with too much jargon and toomuch background information, but I just wanted
to kind of give you an overviewof exactly what we are and exactly what

(13:58):
we do in the Gifted program.So I just want to thank you for
tuning in for listening again. Ifyou have any questions, any concerns,
please don't hesitate to contact me.More than happy to talk to you about
it, and I hope you allhave a great day or night depending on
when you listen to this. Talkto you soon.