WELCOME TO AAGC!

The mission of the Alabama Association for Gifted Children is to provide advocacy leadership, and support to assist educators, parents, and community partners in meeting the educational and affective needs of gifted children and youth in Alabama.

Time to start planning and preparing for the January 2024 Gifted Education Month (GEM)!  Reach out to your elected officials.  Need to know what to do?  Check out our Advocacy page at https://alabamagifted.org/advocacy  Our gifted students deserve to learn something new every single day.

Gifted advocacy takes a year-round effort.   We made great strides this last legislative year but we are far from the much needed funds to make full-funding a reality.  Share what is happening in your classroom on all your social media outlets.  Reach out to your elected officials.  Until gifted education is fully funded, we will continue striving for that goal!  Go here, to find out what you can do!

Parent Webinar Series 

January 9, 2024, 6:00 pm CT

Family Passion Projects: An Opportunity to Learn, Grown, and Serve Together

Are you looking for ways to engage your gifted child and cultivate their passion for learning?  Do you want to find meaningful ways to bond as a family while making a positive impact in your community?  “Family Passion Projects” is a workshop that will show you how to use the 6 P’s of Genius Hour framework to work on passion projects together.

During this workshop, you’ll learn how to implement the Genius Hour framework at home, including how to identify your child’s passions and interests, plan and pitch project ideas, develop the project, and present the work.  You’ll also discover how this approach can help your child practice life-ready skills and experience productive struggle in a supportive and collaborative environment. We’ll explore how passion projects can benefit the community and how to make a postive impact through your family’s work.  You’ll leave with practical ideas for how to create meaningful learning experiences at home, strengthen your family bond, and encourage your gifted child to pursue their interest and make a difference in the world.  

This workshop will give you ideas, tools and strategies that you need to learn how to inspire your gifted child to reach their full potential through passional-driven learning and service to others.

Meet Andi McNair

Andi McNair-Andi was a classroom teacher for 16 years before pursuing her passion to change education by sharing practical ways to engage and empower this generation of learners. She is currently a digital innovation specialist at ESC Region 12 in Waco, Texas. Andi is passionate about using meaningful  technology in the classroom and finding innovative ways to engage today’s learners. She believes that the students that we are educating today are unique and we must be creative in our teaching strategies. Andi was named one of the Top People in Education to Watch in 2016 by the Academy of Education Arts and Sciences. Andi has published Genius Hour: Passion Projects that Ignite Innovation and Student Inquiry, A Meaningful Mess: A Teacher's Guide to Student-Driven Classrooms, Authentic Learning, Student Empowerment, and Keeping It All Together Without Losing Your Mind, and Ready-to-Use Resources for Genius Hour in the Classroom: Taking Passion Projects to the Next Level. She absolutely loves sharing her passion for innovative education with other educators who want more for their students.

Click here for printable PDF.

Register here.

PD Webinar Series 

January 16, 2024, 6:00 pm CT

The Gift of Self: Developing Effective Self-Concept in Gifted Students

A healthy, effective self-concept promotes student achievement and life satisfaction. Telling kids they’re smart and/or pretty is the entirely wrong way to go about creating this. This engaging workshop focuses on specific, research-proven tools that build self-confidence and self-concept in learners (and the adults who serve them!).

Meet Lisa van Gemert

Using a combination of neuropsychology, pedagogy, experience, humor,technology and sheer fun, Lisa Van Gemert shares best practices in education with audiences around the world. She is an expert consult to television shows including Lifetime’s "Child Genius," and a writer of award-winning lesson plans, as well as numerous published articles on social psychology and pedagogy and four books, including the Legacy Award winning Perfectionism: A Practical Guide to Managing Never Good Enough. A former teacher, school administrator, and Youth & Education Ambassador for Mensa, she shares resources for educators and parents on her websites GiftedGuru.com & VocabularyLuau.com. She holds an undergraduate degree in English and an M.Ed.T. from the University of Texas at Arlington. When she’s not trying to teach random kids she meets in the grocery store, she is a volunteer genealogist for the Daughters of the American Revolution and will happily search old newspapers for your family. Lisa and her husband Steve are the parents of a lot of sons and live in Arlington, Texas.

Register here.

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TIER FOUR SPONSORS - PARENT NIGHT SPONSOR