At the 2024 National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) Annual Convention in Seattle, WA, the Professional Learning Network honored a team of researchers with the prestigious Network Award for their groundbreaking work on Project Appalachian Coders. This award celebrates sustained and impactful professional learning initiatives that equip educators with the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to excel in gifted education.

Project Appalachian Coders is a five-year initiative funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Jacob K. Javits Gifted and Talented Students Education Program. Its primary aim is to empower in-service teachers to effectively integrate computational thinking (CT) into their classrooms, emphasizing the needs of gifted learners and striving for inclusivity across all student demographics. Central to this project is the use of Code.org’s professional learning programs and resources. The research team includes Principal Investigator Dr. Carla Brigandi from West Virginia University, together with co-investigators Dr. Karen Rambo-Hernandez of Texas A&M, Dr. Jiangmei Yuan of Pennsylvania State University, and Doctoral Candidate Maryann Hebda from Baylor University.

Characteristics of Effective Professional Learning

The success of Project Appalachian Coders stems from its alignment with research-backed principles of effective professional learning, which are essential for improving teacher efficacy and practice. Key elements of effective professional learning include:

1. Content Focus:
Professional learning activities should focus on subject matter and how students engage with content. For CT, this means equipping teachers with strategies to simplify complex concepts like coding and computational logic, making them accessible to young learners.

2. Active Learning:
Effective professional learning prioritizes hands-on engagement. Teachers should actively participate in activities such as exploring coding resources, experimenting with tools, and coding, rather than passively attending lectures. 

3. Coherence:
Professional learning must align with educators’ existing knowledge, beliefs, and broader school or district goals. For example, schools prioritizing mathematics can benefit from integrating CT into math instruction, fostering cohesive and complimentary teaching practices.

4. Duration:
Sustained engagement over time is essential, with effective professional learning programs requiring a minimum of 20 contact hours spread across a semester or longer. Professional learning activities offered in smaller, consistent increments ensures that teaches have time to implement new strategies, reflect on their practice, and make iterative improvements.

5. Collective Participation:
Engaging teams of teachers from the same grade level or school fosters a collaborative learning environment. Teachers learn from and with one another, strengthening their practices through shared insights and challenges. This collective approach was a cornerstone of the project’s design.

Innovations in CT Professional Learning
Most CT professional learning programs primarily rely on initial workshops, with varying degrees of ongoing support. Although some programs provide follow-up coaching or peer collaboration (e.g., Jocius et al., 2022; Ketelhut et al., 2020; Luo et al., 2023; Nugent et al., 2022; Rich et al., 2021), others lack the sustained support necessary to achieve lasting change (e.g., Carter & Crockett, 2018; Roberts et al., 2018; Simmonds et al., 2019). Project Appalachian Coders transcended this limitation by implementing a comprehensive CT professional learning model that combined initial training with sustained mentoring and community building.

Teachers were introduced to the Code.org curriculum through immersive workshops that emphasized the fundamental principles of CT: decomposition, pattern recognition, abstraction, and algorithmic thinking. The program then provided ongoing assistance through various channels, including:
• In-person professional learning communities,
• Online instructional videos,
• Classroom visits and observations,
• Virtual and in-person mentoring sessions, and
• Support from in-school CT teacher leaders.

This holistic approach bridged the common disconnect between professional learning sessions and real-world classroom application, ensuring that teachers could seamlessly integrate CT into their daily teaching practices.

Impact and Implications

Preliminary findings from the project’s empirical studies suggest that sustained CT professional learning improves teachers’ confidence in teaching computational concepts and increases their use of CT practices in the classroom. Teachers reported feeling more prepared to integrate CT into core subjects like mathematics and science, and student engagement with CT activities improved significantly.

Moreover, Project Appalachian Coders underscores the importance of tailoring professional learning to diverse classroom contexts. By equipping educators with adaptable resources and fostering a collaborative learning community, the project demonstrates how sustained PL can drive meaningful change in both teaching practice and student outcomes.

Conclusion

The success of Project Appalachian Coders serves as a model for future initiatives aiming to blend professional learning with computational thinking. By adhering to evidence-based professional learning principles and emphasizing ongoing support, the project has advanced teacher efficacy and enriched classroom practices, particularly for gifted education. As computational thinking becomes an increasingly vital skill in today’s digital age, equipping educators with the tools to teach it effectively is not just beneficial—it is essential.

Hey there, NAGC family! Our team couldn’t be more excited to join you at the NAGC 2024 Annual Convention in the beautiful city of Seattle! We’ve been gearing up for the Creativity Network’s Super Sunday session, titled "Concocting Creativity: The Secret Recipe Revealed!", and trust us—it’s going to be nothing short of spectacular! Get ready for a dynamic, fun-filled, and insightful experience where we’ll dive deep into the world of gifted education, innovation, and creativity. Buckle up because we’ve packed this session with exciting takeaways, fresh ideas, and a few surprises to keep you on your toes!

This session is all about unleashing creativity and critical thinking in gifted learners. Picture curiosity simmering, critical thinking bubbling, and creativity overflowing as students face “impossibilities” with a dash of strategic brilliance. We’ll be your team of “chefs,” cooking up a menu of practical strategies and activities that meaningfully engage gifted learners in the creative process, spanning a variety of content areas.
Our secret recipe for learning experiences blends some of the finest ingredients from educational research. We’ll be using high-quality creativity theories and best practice gifted instructional strategies, mixing together the Williams’ model for Thinking and Feeling with the Torrance & Safter Incubation Model and stirring in elements of Kaplan & Gould’s Depth and Complexity with a dash of Visible Thinking. This concoction is designed to help students stretch their thinking, make connections, and embrace their full creative potential.

During the session, you will experience a teacher-tested, three-course learning experience based on the stages of the Incubation Model:
1. Heightening Anticipation
2. Deepening Expectations
3. Keeping It Going

After each "course," we’ll reveal how our secret recipe nurtures the thinking and feeling process through a specific content area while incorporating Williams’ Modes of Teaching. You’ll see firsthand how these strategies are designed to engage even the most advanced learners in critical thinking and creativity.

We also recognize that gifted learners can sometimes be sensitive to frustration and anxiety when faced with setbacks. So, we’ll be serving up a side of resilience-building tools and strategies to help them embrace challenges and view learning as a journey, not just a destination.

By the end of our session, you won’t just leave with ideas—you’ll walk away with a collection of recipe cards packed with content-rich, creative learning experiences that go far beyond bland assignments and junk-food exercises. These recipe cards will provide you with practical, hands-on activities that will inspire your students to think critically and creatively. Along with these, you’ll also have a ready-to-use template for designing and sharing your own "concoctions of creativity," ensuring your classroom is always buzzing with innovation.

But that’s just the start. You’ll leave the session not only energized but armed with a menu of teacher-tested strategies specifically crafted to challenge and engage gifted learners at every level. We’ll dive deep into how setbacks can be transformed into powerful catalysts for creativity, offering resilience-building techniques that encourage students to see obstacles as opportunities for growth. You’ll explore our secret recipe, which blends creativity theories with best practices to ensure your lessons remain meaningful and engaging for even the most advanced students. We’ll show you how to personalize these strategies, so you can craft your own unique learning experiences that will motivate and inspire your students.

And this is where the true transformation happens. We’ll help you shift from the educational equivalent of fast food—those uninspired, one-size-fits-all assignments—to passion-driven learning that sparks your students’ curiosity and feeds their hunger for discovery. You’ll learn how to turn your classroom into a dynamic space where every lesson becomes a satisfying and enriching experience. By the time we’re done, you’ll be equipped to serve up your own blend of creative learning that transforms even the most routine school days into something truly extraordinary.

Now, let me introduce you to the dream team of “chefs” who’ll be guiding you through this extraordinary culinary adventure:

Dr. Brian Housand, the tech-savvy professor from UNC Wilmington, has been revolutionizing the integration of technology in gifted education for over two decades. He’s presented in 40 states and internationally and is the co-author of Using the Schoolwide Enrichment Model with Technology. Whether you’re a Star Wars lover or a fan of all things Disney, Brian is sure to keep you entertained while delivering powerful strategies.

Andi McNair, our innovation expert, is on a mission to change education. Author of Genius Hour and A Meaningful Mess, she brings an infectious energy to the room. Andi’s all about empowering learners to take charge of their education, and she’s ready to share how you can make that happen in your own classroom.

Stephanie Higgs, also known as Little Miss Gifted, is an award-winning educator and instructional coach who is all about arts integration and creative teaching. Her experience in weaving arts into learning proves that education is limitless. Stephanie’s ready to show you how thinking outside the box can unlock new possibilities for your students!

Justin Mitchell, an 8th grade Social Studies teacher and Gifted & Talented Coordinator from Kentucky, is a master at making history come alive. A 2021 Kentucky History Teacher of the Year and a leader in education policy, Justin is here to connect the dots between gifted education, history, and creativity.

So, get ready for a Super Sunday that’s going to be jam-packed with inspiration, collaboration, and a whole lot of fun! Don’t miss our session, "Concocting Creativity: The Secret Recipe Revealed!" We can’t wait to see you there and share everything we’ve been cooking up. See you soon, Seattle!

The European Council for High Ability held its biannual conference this past August in Thessaloniki, Greece. The folks at CTY Greece at Anatolia College put on a fantastic event, filled with engaging workshops, numerous networking opportunities, and enlightening keynote addresses from leaders in gifted education, including Colm O’Reilly, Del Siegle, Franzis Preckel, and Amy Shelton. As a presenter, I aimed to effectively represent the work my colleagues and I are doing at Davidson Academy Online. However, as an attendee and the Curriculum Coordinator at DAO, I kept an eye out for innovations and information that I could bring back to my team. While I’ve dabbled in research, I’m still a practitioner at heart, so classroom-ready concepts were the most appealing. This year, talent development models were a major focus, and while these models are research-based, they truly shine in active educational settings, making them the perfect souvenir from Thessaloniki. 

Researchers have largely moved away from static concepts of giftedness in favor of multidimensional models that consider environmental, socio-affective, and opportunity-based factors. While this shift is generally positive, it hasn’t always been realized in either school settings or in broader cultural conceptions of giftedness. Older models—which focus on academic performance and rely heavily on IQ scores—create challenges for identifying gifted students. In these models, a child is either gifted or is not, and access to specialized educational opportunities is often restricted. Talent development models, however, take a broader approach, allowing teachers to focus less on identifying stereotypically gifted characteristics and more on creating environments that allow talent to flourish. Talent development models–such as Subotnik, Olszewski-Kubilius, and Worrell’s (2021) Talent Development Megamodel and Preckel et al.’s (2020) Talent Development in Achievement Domains (TAD) Framework–encourage educators to cultivate abilities in specific domains and while also supporting the development of psychosocial skills. This emphasis on malleable talent and continuous growth is especially important for educators in gifted programs or self-contained classrooms, where gifted characteristics are well-known, and identification isn’t the driving purpose. Rather than simply teaching educators how to recognize innate abilities, talent development models can be used to train teachers how to foster and refine students’ domain-specific skills. 

This is where curriculum comes in. Unlike models of giftedness that focus on identification, talent development models offer classroom-ready applications and are approachable enough to be usable by teachers at all experience levels. Teachers become “talent scouts,” searching for potential in all students, and identification is on-going, as talent might be found in different domains at different points in a student’s development. Additionally, the phrase “talent development” is likely to be more palatable to stakeholders who might be skeptical of gifted education. Research on frameworks such as the Schoolwide Enrichment Model (Renzulli, 1977) has found that these approaches offer challenging and strength-based opportunities for all students (Reis & Peters, 2021). And since neither normative results or ceilings are defined within talent development models (Preckel et al., 2020), teachers can collaborate with students to set personalized goals and benchmarks, guiding them toward excellence in their chosen domains. 

The Schoolwide Enrichment Model is widely known in gifted circles, and frameworks such as TAD offer specific applications in domains such as mathematics, music, and the visual arts. However, teachers who don’t have a background in gifted education can still apply talent development principles effectively in their classroom via well-designed curricula and student-centered practices. Below are some recommendations based both on wisdom from the talent development models and the kind of practices we engage in at Davidson Academy Online. 

1. Utilize both diagnostic and formative assessment. Talent development models view giftedness as mutable, so continuous assessment is key. Diagnostic assessments help teachers understand students’ starting points, while formative assessments–such as portfolios, reflections, and rough drafts–allow teachers to monitor student progress and adjust the curriculum accordingly. Feedback from these assessments can help students to identify areas where they might need more support and where they’re ready for more challenge. 

2. Embrace differentiation. Differentiation is essential for talent development. The Schoolwide Enrichment Model advocates for curriculum compacting, which includes assessing students’ abilities, eliminating content they’ve already mastered, and replacing it with challenging alternatives. This method can be applied to all students, allowing teachers to serve multiple ability levels in one classroom. Student choice is another form of differentiation, one that embraces the idea that students' passions and interests play a role in talent development. While differentiation in a large classroom can be challenging, it can result in more satisfied students who are better equipped to reach their potential. 

3. Offer opportunities for real-world applications. Talent development models emphasize that talent can manifest both inside and outside of the classroom. It is crucial, therefore, that teachers find ways to marry what students are learning at school with skills that might be utilized in real-world scenarios. Teachers can achieve this through in-class project-based learning and through access to competitions, mentorships, and other talent-based extracurriculars. 

4. Build social-emotional learning and executive functioning training into the curriculum. Talent development models prioritize not only academic or artistic talent, but also the development of social and emotional skills. Strong psychosocial skills (e.g., motivation, concentration, self-confidence) are critical to the development of talent and can be cultivated by teachers and mentors. The TAD recommends that teachers work to minimize psychosocial delimiters (e.g., unproductive mindsets) and maximize enhancers (e.g., resilience, developed social skills). These skills are taught most effectively when they are integrated into the curriculum, meaning that activities should give students the opportunity to collaborate with their peers, take intellectual risks, struggle productively, and “fail well.” 

Many of these recommendations will not be new to veteran teachers, especially those familiar with gifted research. But for me, developing curricula based on talent development models is a significant shift away from traditional conceptions of giftedness. Rather than focusing on identifying a select few who meet predefined criteria, these models empower teachers to see potential in all students. This mindset can be useful for teachers who are in mixed ability classrooms but can be even more powerful for teachers in ability grouped settings who are hoping to find research-backed methods to nurture their students’ talents. Learning more about talent development models at ECHA reaffirmed that we’re on the right track at Davidson Academy Online, and I’m hopeful that these fresh insights will help me and my colleagues to continue refining our curriculum to better serve our students. 

Works Cited 
Preckel, F., Golle, J., Grabner, R., Jarvin, L., Kozbelt, A., Müllensiefen, D., Olszewski-Kubilius, P., Schneider, W., Subotnik, R., Vock, M., & Worrell, F. C. (2020). Talent Development in Achievement Domains: A Psychological Framework for Within- and Cross-Domain Research. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 15(3), 691-722. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691619895030

Subotnik, R. F., Olszewski-Kubilius, P., & Worrell, F. C. (2021). The talent development megamodel: A domain-specific conceptual framework based on the psychology of high performance. In R. J. Sternberg & D. Ambrose (Eds.), Conceptions of giftedness and talent (pp. 425–442). Palgrave Macmillan/Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56869-6_24

Reis, S. M., & Peters, P. M. (2021). Research on the Schoolwide Enrichment Model: Four decades of insights, innovation, and evolution. Gifted Education International, 37(2), 109-141. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261429420963987

On July 31st, NAGC’s Parent, Family, and Community Network held its second Sip ‘n’ Speak: Relaxed Talks on Raising Gifted Children. These informal member chat sessions bring parents and professionals within the gifted community together to discuss various topics. The PFC network will continue to host more of these chats throughout the coming year to serve our wider NAGC community. These chat sessions are each framed with a few prepared questions or topic stems to get the conversations flowing while allowing for organic questions along the way from participants. 

In July, our goal as a network was to allow parents and professionals the opportunity to discuss the challenge of responding to our children’s expressions of boredom with engaging ideas for at-home learning, especially in the later weeks of summer. Our goal for the evening was to discover how to transform those "I'm bored" moments into opportunities for intellectual growth and exploration. With a few facilitated questions, the discussion flowed organically from one topic of concern to another. The following article is a summary of all the ideas and resources generated by this lively conversation.
What learning activities do you recommend to manage boredom at home?

• Hands-on Play and Screen-free Learning Activities
• Engineering and Craft Kits such as Crunch Labs and Snap Circuits
• Parent created boxes with random pieces and props for creative and imaginative play
• Puzzles https://www.completingthepuzzle.com/ This is a puzzle-renting company. They send you a puzzle in the mail with a return label. When you send it back, they'll send you your next one. You always have a new one to work on. Anywhere from 250 - 1000 pieces.
• Board Games and Card Games were a hot topic and generated many excellent ideas of old and new favorites including: Qwirkle, Blokus, Sequence, Stratego, Mastermind, Code Names, Risk, Trekking, Trivial Pursuit, Chess, Checkers, Exploding Minions - Kittens - Zombies, Ticket to Ride, Catan, Othello, Skyjo, Battleship, Uno (and new Uno spin-offs), Mancala, Pandemic, Scrabble, Scattergories, Prime Club, Quarto, Taco-cat-goat-cheese-pizza, Ring it, Play Nine, Abalone, Power Grid, Trigon, Spontuneous
• Creating collaborative family trivia games with notecards where everyone contributes questions
• Taking field trips to unusual parks, museums, or going “behind the scenes” at a restaurant, factory or place of business

• Learning with Technology
• Duolingo - Study a new language together
• Wonderopolis – A great place for curious learners to explore and learn new things.
• Camp Wonderopolis – A part of Wonderopolis created specifically for summer learning.
• TED Ed – Lots of topics, ideas, and concepts to explore through video.
• 5 Clue Challenge – The 5 Clue Challenge gives learners the opportunity to receive 5 clues and use what they know to make an educated guess about what the clues describe.
• Google Maps Treks – Such a great tool for learners who would like to explore but are unable to leave their homes.
• National Geographic Kids – Find amazing facts about animals, science, history, and geography, along with fun competitions, games, and more.
• Magic Tree House – If your child likes The Magic Tree House series (and let’s be honest, who doesn’t?), they’ll love The Magic Tree House website. Students climb up the tree and enter the tree house to find some great puzzles, fun games, and quizzes on any of the 45+ MTH books.
• Toporopa – Can’t afford that summer vacation schlepping around Europe? No worries, just pull up Toporopa on your nearest browser and learn all about the geographical, political, historical, and economic aspects of the wonderful continent.
• Coder Kids – Coder Kids is a great company that offers online, in-person, and on-demand coding classes and camps for kids of all ages. Their free on-demand class, Introduction to Scratch Coding, is the perfect way for kids to begin their coding journey!
• Code.org – offers Hour-of-code lessons that are particularly useful for kids looking for a quick class. They can learn to program Minecraft animals and Star Wars droids or code their adventure with Frozen characters.
• Resources for Families (Prince William County Schools) https://www.pwcs.edu/academics___programs/gifted_education/parent_resources


• Ideas for Getting Kids Excited about Reading
• Read the same book to have conversations
• For younger children: Illustrate the story or Act it out with toys
• Parents can read the narrator stuff and the kids do the “voices” of the characters to not be overwhelming.
• Record them re-telling the story - News anchor summary of the book
• Movie and book comparison as a family discussion
• Audio books if it is a topic that is written above their readability level.
• www.getepic.com
• https://giftedguru.com/books-for-gifted-kids/ Lists with links and several other helpful articles on reading for gifted children
• https://www.mensaforkids.org/ - Book lists and challenges for all ages
• Bookmarks with deep thinking questions
• https://funinfirst.com/comprehension-bookmarks/
• https://www.123homeschool4me.com/reading-comprehension-bookmarks_24/
• https://smarterinterventionshop.com/products/comprehension-bookmarks-25-pack
• https://gifted.uconn.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/961/2015/07/semr_elementary_school_bookmarks.pdf

As a group, parents and professionals concluded that modeling active learning, curiosity, and imagination alongside our gifted children brought the most positive long-term ways to counteract boredom. Many parents shared stories of interaction and/or healthy competition as a family that allowed children to stretch both their intellectual and social-emotional skills. We also agreed that technology can be an extremely helpful tool for learning and creativity while also a dangerous distraction.

If you are interested in attending our next PFC Network event designed specifically for parents and families, please join us on September 25th for Part 2 of our Advocacy series that began in February. This webinar will include a panel of national experts sharing advice for how gifted families can speak out clearly for their child’s needs at school and beyond. Registration is free and open to anyone. https://nagc.org/page/webinars

In a sane world, winning a state championship should be a well-earned celebrated instance of glory for a talented young person. However, last month, as sophomore Aayden Gallagher crossed the finish line first, winning the 200-meter race at the Oregon School Activity Association (OSAA), she was met with cruel boos and hostility from event attendees. Further, she was accused of cheating and her talent was questioned. Why the derision? Aayden is transgender. And like many talented LGBTQ+ youth in schools and at school events she had to endure yet another disgusting occurrence of bigotry. Read the story here (Lavietes 2024).

Like Aayden, many LGBTQ+ kids and teens who are also gifted and talented experience the challenges of a hateful world. It’s hard to navigate the masses of people and policymakers who are still stuck somewhere within a continuum of hatred, ranging from prejudice to violence, as illustrated in Hicks’s (2006) report and the most recent National Survey of School Climate (GLSEN, 2021). Despite slow progress, these reports reveal the remaining hostility that society and schools in particular still carry against LGBTQ+ people. Thus, we need Pride. Pride Month, celebrated in June every year, is the reminder of why such large-scale LGBTQ+ awareness is necessary. For our community, Pride is remembrance, resistance, freedom, and fun. 

For the gifted education community, Pride Month is an opportunity to use the power of transformational giftedness of LGBTQ+ learners to counteract the influence of toxic giftedness. According to Sternberg (2023), toxic giftedness is “used for negative and even harmful ends'' such as creating and promoting anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. Toxic leaders use their gifts, power, and influence to undermine human rights by banning information, limiting discussion, undermining opportunity, restricting healthcare, by making us invisible 

On the contrary, “transformationally gifted individuals seek positively to change the world at some level--in their own way, to make the world a better place” (Sternberg, 2020). This is what most gifted and talented LGBTQ+ children have to do at some point in their lives. To resist and survive this anti-LGBTQ+ society, learners use their self-transformational giftedness to cope and adapt to challenges. Others go further, they transform the world with their intelligence and creativity, by becoming icons, fighters, and activists (Parra-Martinez & Treat, 2022). Many gifted LGBTQ+ people have fought for social acceptance, inclusion, recognition, and respect of their rights and the rights of others. Their transformational power made space in this world for them and others But, self-advocacy can’t be the only way. All gifted individuals in education, leadership, and in positions of power have a human duty to use their intelligence, creativity and talents to make the world a better place for those who are not visible, for those who are oppressed. 

Our gifted LGBTQ+ young people need caring adults who can see, hear, and understand them. That is our primary objective here within the NAGC LGBTQ+ network. We welcome anyone and everyone (you don’t have to be gifted nor identify as LGBTQ+). Please consider joining our efforts to help raise awareness about the realities and needs of these vulnerable kids and teens. Help us grow our community!

Research suggests that gifted young people tend to be more aware and sensitive to not only their immediate environment (Gere et al. 2009) but also to media representations about giftedness (Bergold, Hastall & Steinmayr, 2020; Dunan et al., 2020). Research also indicates that LGBTQ+ youth tend to look toward media and pop culture for role models (Bird, Kuhns & Garafalo, 2012; Greensmith & King 2020; Berger et al., 2022). While research about the overlap of giftedness and LGBTQ+ identity is limited, it stands to reason that gifted LGBTQ+ youth are indeed paying close attention to media and are influenced by pop culture representation. Since much progress has been made with LGBTQ+ acceptance and rights in the past 50 years, there is more LGBTQ+ representation in the media than ever before. Educators and families can utilize the media’s positive portrayals of gifted and talented LGBTQ+ people to help guide gifted LGBTQ+ youth toward finding community, understanding themselves, and providing potential role models. The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) publishes an annual “20 Under 20” list honoring young LGBTQ people “who are accelerating acceptance of LGBTQ people while shaping the future of media and activism” (see last year’s list). The Advocate recently compiled a list of “LGBTQ+ celebrities and activists TIME called the Most Influential People of 2024.” Additionally, positive LGBTQ+ representation is becoming more common in pop culture. Recent examples in fiction include (but are not limited to) Disney’s The Owl House, Stranger Things, Star Wars: Asoka,  Disenchantment, Batwoman, Better Nate Than Never, Red White & Royal Blue, and so on. And there is more representation than ever in music (such as Kim Petras and Billie Eilish) and sports (such as NFL’s Carl Nassib and soccer star Megan Rapinoe).

What else can you do to show your support during pride month? 

• Join the LGBTQ+ Network within the National Association for Gifted Children by attending and volunteering at our events.
• Help us remember those LGBTQ+ individuals who have transformed the world in the face of discrimination and oppression.
• Display and use your talents to creatively protest and resist unjust legislation and bigotry. 
• Live the transformational power of our youth giftedness and diversity by attending, volunteering, and contributing to any of the Nationwide pride celebrations during June 2024
• Engage teachers and learners in the GLSEN survey of school climate for LGBTQ+ Learners to provide current and accurate information of the status of LGBTQ+ rights in your school

Finally, As for Aayden Gallagher and our community, her gold-metal win was bittersweet. We must continually strive for a near future in which any young talented person’s victories are not bitter, just simply sweet. Happy Pride Month, everyone!


References

Berger M.N., Taba M., Marino J.L., Lim M.S.C., & Skinner S.R. (2022). Social Media Use and Health and Well-being of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Youth: Systematic Review. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 24(9). DOI: 10.2196/38449. 

Bergold, S., Hastall, M.R., & Steinmayr, R. (2020). Do Mass Media Shape Stereotypes About Intellectually Gifted Individuals? Two Experiments on Stigmatization Effects From Biased Newspaper Reports. Gifted Child Quarterly, 65(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/0016986220969393

Bird, J.D.P., Kuhns, L., & Garofalo, R. (2012). The Impact of Role Models on Health Outcomes for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Youth. Journal of Adolescent Health, 50(4), 353-357. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2011.08.006 

Duncan, S., Goodwin, C., Haase, J., & Wilson, S. (2020). Neuroscience of Giftedness: Greater Sensory Sensitivity. Gifted Research & Outreach. https://gro-gifted.org/neuroscience-of-giftedness-greater-sensory-sensitivity

Gere, D.R., Capps, S.C., Mitchell, D.W., Grubbs, E., & Dunn, W. (2009). Sensory Sensitivities of Gifted Children/Invited Commentary on "Sensory Sensitivities of Gifted Children." The American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 63(3), 288-95. https://unco.idm.oclc.org/loginurl=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/sensory-sensitivities-gifted-children-invited/docview/231968900/se-2 

Greensmith, C., & King, B. (2020). “Queer as hell media”: Affirming LGBTQ+ youth identity and building community in Metro Atlanta, Georgia. Journal of LGBT Youth, 19(2), 180–197. https://doi-org.unco.idm.oclc.org/10.1080/19361653.2020.1829524

Hicks, T. (2006). Humanizing the Other in “Us and Them.” Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice, 18(4), 499-506. DOI: 10.1080/10402650601030435 

Lavietes, M. (2024, May 21). Transgender Teen Booed After Winning Girls’ Track Race at State Championship. NBC News.  https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/transgender-teen-booed-winning-girls-track-race-state-championship-rcna153383

Parra-Martinez, A., & Treat, A. R. (2022). The Rainbow Revolution: Empowering Gifted LGBTQ+ Learners for Transformative Action. In R. J. Sternberg, D. Ambrose, & S. Karami (Eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Transformational Giftedness for Education (pp. 287-312). Cham: Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91618-3_15

Sternberg, R. J. (2020). Transformational Giftedness: Rethinking Our Paradigm for Gifted Education. Roeper Review, 42(4), 230–240.
https://doi-org.ezproxy.lib.purdue.edu/10.1080/02783193.2020.1815266

Sternberg, R. J. (2023). Toxic Giftedness. Roeper Review, 45(1), 61–73. https://doi-org.ezproxy.lib.purdue.edu/10.1080/02783193.2022.2148311