GAM 2022 Conference (Gifted Association of Missouri)

In the long era when increasing standardized test scores has been the aspirational target for most schools, we have lost sight of excellence.  Understood appropriately, excellence should be our aspiration for every learner—striving for complex thinking, application and transfer of learning, and what Ron Berger calls “beautiful work.”  What if adjusted our aspirations and sought both to understand what it means to  teach with excellence as the hallmark of student work and therefore of our work as well?  We’ll explore briefly what “teaching up” means, how it might look, and why it matters so much in a time when equity of access to truly excellent learning opportunities for each of our learners is our clearest mandate and greatest opportunity as educators.  “Teaching up” has profound possibilities for who we recognize and teach as gifted—and for teaching the massive number of students we tend to look at less optimistically. This keynote will invite participants to think about what it means to “Teach Up” and how its philosophy and practices can revolutionize teaching and learning.