S1 E9 - What's the Deal with a Placement Committee?

In this episode, Mr. B. discusses how placement happens within the Alma School District and how the placement committee goes about determining which students require gifted and talented services within the district.

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
All right, folks, just metoday, working without a net. Here
we go. How's everybody doing outthere? I want to welcome you back
in to the podcast. It hasthe nerve, the audacity, and the

(00:27):
unmitigated goal to come right out andask you, hey, what's your deal?
Welcome back everybody once again. Iam your host, Michael Bridges,
and I am the GT and APcoordinator or the Alma School District here in
Alma, Arkansas, and I wantto welcome you in to our little podcast.
So there's been a couple of thingsgoing on since we last spoke,

(00:51):
just to update you on them.The AGATE conference came and went and happened,
and I thought went really well.I got to receive an GT Educator
Award, which was really cool andI was very honored to receive and now
is sitting by my desk just veryproud and blessed to be able to receive
that award. Also was able topresent at the conference on philosophy. That

(01:17):
was a lot of fun. Ifully believe that elementary school students, even
non gifted students, can benefit fromphilosophy. You can kind of put it
into that argument of teachers indoctrinating studentsif you teach them how to think on
their own and to think critically,to examine arguments and viewpoints and different things

(01:38):
on their own without assistance. Notthings that I want them to think are
ways that I want them to think, but the way that they think philosophy
can go a long way to improvingthat. So I was really glad to
be able to present that and metsome really cool people, and I think
some people who were going to goback and use philosophy with their GT students,

(01:59):
which is eight. We had quizBowl competitions last week for regional competitions,
and our fourth grade placed third andfourth. Our fifth grade placed third,
and then our sixth grade also placedthird. I believe, so we
were really doing well next year,you know, hope to move on up

(02:22):
there. But I got to understandthere was a lot of tough competition at
the at the quizz Bowl tournaments,and I was really impressed with the way
our Alma students did. They weregreat. Also had a lip sync battle
with the student, a fifth gradestudent. She brought all the single ladies
that what it is? I don'tknow, it's the Beyonce song. I

(02:44):
brought LLL cool Jay Mama said knockyou out to a bunch of fifth graders
and then realize that's like a twentytwenty three year old song, So it
might have been a little bit overtheir heads, but hey, it was
fun. We had a good timewith it. Yesterday on our morning show,
we did a creepy Barbie contest asit was National Barbie Day. And

(03:07):
if you've never looked at some oldschool barbies, and I can't say I
recommend it, they're kind of they'rekind of chilling. But we did a
school wide vote and determined who thescariest barbie was and it was the barbie
that I referred to as the ParisHilton Barbie, which was really done up.
And then there was another one thatshe tied with. It looked like

(03:27):
bad Lip Collegen Barbie who had reallypuffy, crazy looking lips and really bad
hair dube, which catches us upwith today and why I am doing this
podcast. Yesterday my GT committee met, so I've been busy today placing students,
sending letters, getting students entered ontheir transcripts as marked as GT,

(03:52):
and I just thought it might bea good idea to come on here and
explain a little bit more about theGifted and Talented program and maybe what al
committee is. As I've said beforein these podcasts, I do not make
the decision on who is placed inour GT program. And again it's it's
it's not a club, it's notyou know, anything you can join or

(04:15):
sign up for. Again, ifyou haven't listened to episode one in episode
two of our podcast, highly recommendyou go back and listen to those because
that's going to explain more of kindof what I'm in on today. So
we have a placement committee that decideswho needs to be placed in our GT
program who needs services. And thatcommittee is made up of There are elementary

(04:36):
school teachers, there are intermediate teachers. Intermediate school teachers are counselors. Part
of that, I've recently added ourhigh school media specialists. There are high
school teachers on there. I tryto kind of spread the net as far
as I can throughout the community becauseI want different voices and different opinions on

(05:00):
that committee. And they do anexcellent job. I am blessed to work
with them. They're great, theylisten, and they work very hard to
be very very fair as far aswho is placed and who isn't placed.
When we meet. They look atthree criteria, which your creativity, cognitive

(05:25):
ability, and reasoning problem solving,and special recognition. That reasoning, problem
solving and special recognition kind of allgo together on one test. I'm not
going to tell you the tests,because, believe it or not, if
I tell you those tests and thenyou go google them, one of the
first things that will pop up inyour Google search engine is a study guide
to take these tests. And that'snot how it works. You're the students

(05:47):
are supposed to come in cold andjust take these tests and do the best
that they can on them. It'ssupposed to be natural ability, not something
that you prep for and can kindof can kind of study for just to
get better at. It's it's naturalability. And we look at those abilities
as low ability, below average ability, average ability, above average ability,

(06:12):
and then high ability. And whatwe really want to see are above average
ability and high ability in at leastone and preferably two of those categories.
I just gave you. One ofthe tests that we're I'm currently looking at
changing is the cognitive ability tests becausewhat I find is I get a lot

(06:33):
of students that are very smart,very dedicated students, and they score really
really highly in that cognitive ability,but I find that it doesn't necessarily PenPoint
gifted ability the way that I wantit too. So I'm getting ready to
probably do a little bit of changewith that this summer, when I have
a bit more time and can startlooking at some different testing. So the

(06:57):
cognitive and the reasoning problem solving specialrecognition tests or automatically graded for me.
The students take those on a computer, it's sent to the testing site systems
that I use. It sent totheir database. The database automatically grades them
and sends me back a score ona bell curve, so I can easily
kind of look at it and identify, Okay, this student is high ability,

(07:19):
this student, you know, isabove average ability on down the line
wherever they may fall. The toughtest that I do is the test that
measures creativity. Because stop and thinkabout that for a second. How do
you measure creativity? It's kind oflike measuring art, right, kind of
like determining what art is, what'sart to someone's going to be trash to

(07:41):
someone else. So creativity can bea little bit more difficult, which is
why my committee is so great becausethey can come in there and they look
at things and we can talk thingsout. And it helps me to have
those extra people in the room becauseI'm surrounded by this daily and they kind
of come into it and they canhave a fresh set of eyes and they

(08:03):
can either confirm what I'm thinking,or maybe they come in with a different
aspect on what I'm thinking. Andthen after we've done all this and I've
compiled all the scores and everything,the students are measured against national norms.
But that is kind of changing.And the reason that is changing is because

(08:24):
I don't think it's very fair totake a student that is in maybe in
a rural community with you know,rural experiences, and look at a kid
who grows up in Los Angeles ora kid that grows up in New York,
or a kid that grows up inNew Hampshire or Connecticut or any kind
of different area of the nation.You know, I would much rather,

(08:48):
and I'm learning this as I goalong, I would much rather serve my
community by picking students in that communitythat aren't measured trying to measure up against
kids in different states and different areasof the country. So for the future,
you know, I'm looking at addingsome things that the committee can look

(09:09):
at. So maybe the standardized testthat we take, act aspires, the
MAP test, things like that.Just look at those scores not as a
be all, end all measurement,but is something that I can look at.
That's just another set of criteria thatwill help me get a better a
better picture of that student. Becausehere's the whole deal, here's what all

(09:31):
of this is about. It's servingthe student. I don't want to miss
a student, and I also don'twant to place a student in our program
that probably didn't need those services,because I think I've said this before,
it's not good for those students whenthey're when they're not gifted there maybe just
to be highly, highly functioning andvery organized and a great student. It

(09:52):
can be a little overwhelming to getin a GT classroom because as Miss single
Kia said before, it's like agoat torn in here at times. So
things are flying about the room andit is the definition of organized chaos.
So we go through all that andyou maybe wonder, well, then how
they how do they decide who's placed. Well, we have a profile sheet,

(10:13):
like I said, and it's gotthose different criterias on it and kind
of a spand that it goes through. And also I send down a Google
form that the teacher fills out andthe parent fills out. So the teacher
feels it out as their student.The parent fills it out of course as
their child, and they answer basicallythe same questions, and I write those

(10:35):
down by hand on the portfolio sheet, so we kind of have it and
we can see what the teacher saysand what the parent says. Now,
as I stayed again, I'm gonnagonna give a lot of shout outs to
my committee here. My committee isvery good at going and reading what the
teacher says and what the parents says. If we've got some kid that's close,
we look at those. It's it'snot some superfluous that I just throw

(11:00):
on there just to say, oh, well, I've got this. We
actually use that material and it's veryimportant to us. So if you're out
there and your kids looking to gettested, and you have a coordinator that
is sending you questions or wants tointerview, you show up for that interview,
fill out that form. It's important. This is for your kid.

(11:22):
You need to fill this stuff outto help them get the help they may
need. Teachers, same thing,if your coordinator or somebody sending that to
you, fill it out, helpyour kid and maybe they don't make it,
but at least you've given them theopportunity to possibly see if they need
these services. So we got allthese kids together and we compare them against

(11:46):
the current set of students that Ihave at that moment. So I believe
yesterday in our committee meeting, Ithink we had seventeen kids. I'm believing
ten of them were fourth and sevenof them were fifth. I'm not positive
about that. So we basically comparedthose ten fourth graders against each other and
looked at those, and then theseven fifth graders against each other and looked

(12:07):
at those. Now it wasn't like, well this is the highest of the
bunch and we're going to take thiswhen they had to, you know,
score high in those one or two. Like I told you previously, we
also compared against the scores of thecurrent GT students that are in the program.
We kind of look and see wherethey fall within that parameter, and

(12:28):
then we have to just sit thereand we discuss it and hash it out.
Some kids we can look at immediatelyand we'll have them in. We'll
have them hitting high ability in everything. Well, that's easy to do,
boom they're in. We may havethem hitting above average in one section and

(12:48):
then they're below average in two more. That's a bigger discussion, and again
that's where those interview questions can comein. That's where you know, advocating
for that child can come in.And I can and do advocate for kids
if I if I've spoken to thatchild, I'll sit there and say,
yeah, there's there's something a littlebit different about this when this one's got

(13:11):
quirks and there's you know, it'snot like I have, you know,
a gifted and talented radar or spidysense going on. But if I think
a kid could possibly benefit from theprogram, I'm going I'm going to relate
that to my committee. I'm there, I'm there to help, just like
everything else. We also look atthe current number of students that we're serving,

(13:33):
and as of right now, Ihave twenty fourth graders that I'm serving,
which is nine percent of the population, which is about where I want
to stay. I don't like goingover serving ten percent of the population because
then I think you could possibly beidentifying. And with that said, I'm
getting ready to shoot myself in thefoot because we're currently serving twenty seven fifth

(13:54):
graders, which is just butting upto eleven percent. So it's not bad,
but it's kind of it's kind ofa high number of identification in that
grade level. But with that beingsaid, let me be clear, nobody

(14:15):
gets turned away if we sit thereand say, hey, this kid is
gifted. You know, we cansee it in the scores. They are
gifted, they're getting placed in theprogram. I will always find a way
to serve kids and to service themwithin our program. Would I would never
say, well, yeah, it'sjust too bad if they would have gotten

(14:37):
in at the beginning of the yearwhen I still had openings in the program.
That's not how we work. That'snot how any good gifted program should
work. You just have to finda way. If that means, and
it may eventually come to this,if that means I have to split my
plounce and my meetings with students intotwo different sessions. You know, I'm

(14:58):
doing them two different days a week, so it but I will adjust to
accommodate my students. I would neverever turn anyone away, So let's just
let's get that straight and be clearon that. So we get to the
end of the committee meeting, we'vedetermined, yes, this student needs services.
Know this student is being served inthe classroom through regular curriculum. They're

(15:20):
good. What happens next The nextday I go through and wait on the
bell. The next day I gothrough and I have to send out letters.
I send placement and non placement lettershome with the students. I advise
the teachers, Hey, have themtake these letters home, don't have them
open them at school. And mostI believe most of the teachers, as

(15:41):
I went and check the mailboxes earlier, they're holding off until the end of
the day to give those two kids, which is great, which is what
you want to do, because somekids are going to be happy and some
kids may be disappointed. And that'snot what I want. That's the part
of my job at I like theleast is when a kid's just crushed and
we try and you know, we'retrying to gate that as much as possible,

(16:03):
but it, I mean, itdoes hurt some feelings and I really
do hate that I have to updatethe student records. As I said in
our in our databases that go tothe Department of Ed and everything. Students
need to be marked as gifted whenthey are placed inside the program, so
I update those records, and thenin that if a child is determined that

(16:27):
they need services, I also haveto send home a permission for parents so
that I can serve that student.I can't just go, Okay, that
kid's gifted, we're putting them inthe program, let's go. I have
to again, even though the parentnotified me that yes, they're good with
their student being tested, I alsohave to get the signature that yes,

(16:51):
they want them to receive services.And then in fourth and fifth grade,
we do two and a half hoursa week. I will whole fourth one
usually in the morning, fifth inthe afternoon, and then every other week
we switch. Fifth will go inthe morning and fourth will go in the
afternoon, two and a half hours, and we just do different things.

(17:11):
You know. I kind of lookto see what this group needs, and
right now, as I can see, basically across the spectrum, everybody needs
communication skills, which goes back tophilosophy, as I was talking about earlier
in the podcast. So that's aboutit. I'm not sure if I actually
actually you know, answered everything thatI wanted to hit. It's a lot

(17:34):
to take in. I hope Ihit the high points. As always,
you know, you can always reachout to me. Email is m as
in man bridges, as in whatyou drive over or what crosses troubled waters
at Alma SD as in school districtdot net. Shoot me an email.

(17:56):
You want to talk about any ofthis stuff. You want to talk about
philosophy, you want to talk aboutplace, you want to talking about GT
students. You've got a question about, Hey, does my child need to
be tested? Send me an email. More than happy to talk to you
about that. So that's going toabout bringing into the podcast. But first,
as always, we have to doa shout out. That's that's just

(18:18):
the way it is. That's traditionhere. So I have a shout out
today that you can guess who it'sfor. It is for my placement committee,
because as I said, they're great. One of my teachers, this
is Jordan, brought me donuts yesterdayfor the placement committee to celebrate my like
trophy, which was really awesome andthat I didn't see it coming. But
again, this job is great becauseyou get to work with students. But

(18:41):
it's also awesome because you get towork with some great people with a great
heart who are in this for theright reasons. And the people on my
placement committee are exactly that. Sothis shout out is for you, little
goat there. It's the best Ican find. You know how hard it

(19:02):
is to find shout out clips onthe internet that are decent. It's getting
getting hard to be a podcaster outthere today. But again, I wish
I could have had a student foryou. It's kind of hard to coordinate
their schedule in my schedule. SoI thought it would be good to just
come out and maybe give some moreinformation about our program. So that is
what I've done. But I cantell you that we do have upcoming episodes

(19:29):
like Soccer. We're gonna have somekids talk about soccer and that should be
really great because I got to behonest people, I'm not a soccer fan,
not at all. And I toldthose two students that I wasn't a
soccer fan, and it looked likeI insulted their mother or something, but
I'm not. It's just not mything. So that should be an interesting,
hopefully not too heated podcast. We'vealso got hiking with goats, everybody's

(19:52):
favorite activity coming up, A studenttalking about theme parks, student talking about
butterflies. So there's lots of differentthings on the horizon, and I'm really
hoping that after spring break we cankind of jump on those things and really
get started because I've got a littlewindow there before ap testing kicks in and
I've become a phantom again, whichit's part of the job, folks,

(20:14):
part of the job. Again.I want to thank you for tuning in.
Any questions. Remember hit me upon an email, you know,
like the podcast, leave a reviewout there so more people can see it.
And is always never ever forget toembrace your inner WARDO. Have a
great day, everybody,