Inspirations brought on by the year 2020
The year 2020 has revealed changes both good and bad. This realization happened for the third and fourth grade Gifted and Talented students at Aaron Parker Elementary while studying leadership.
Inspired by a quote of an unknown author, “To see change, we need leaders to lead change,” the students realized there are many things they would like to see changed in their lifetime and were moved to be leaders of positive change.
Guided by their GT teacher Britany Creamer, the fourth graders, dubbed The Doubles, and the third grade group, named the GT Bro’s, have recorded and published podcasts aimed to teach, inspire and motivate positive change. The Doubles debate the most important leadership qualities while the GT Bro’s retell the classic story of Peter Pan and link it to Walt Disney’s most profound leadership quality of vision for family entertainment. The podcasts are published to Spotify, Google Podcasts, Breaker, RadioPublic and Pocket Casts with other publications pending approval. They can be heard at
https://anchor.fm/britany‐creamer.
The GT programs on the North Lamar campuses have students digging deep into investigating their passions. Those at North Lamar High School are creating Passion Projects with the guidance of advisors and GT teacher Melissa Arnold.
Passion Projects are an innovative way of combining personal passions with a need to come up with an inspiring solution to the problem. Students involved in this program will have a distinctive cord to wear at graduation.
GT students at Stone Middle School and Bailey Intermediate have been participating in the Texas Performance Standard Projects to deepen their academic learning. Under advisors Callie Johnson,
Julie Laughlin and Stephanie Easton, the sixth, seventh and eighth graders are choosing projects they can explore during activity period while the fourth and fifth graders at Bailey have been working on the Puzzles, Teasers and More under the leadership of Anna Linch. GT teacher Lara Fendley is challenging her first grade students at Higgins to self‐explore their Hopes and Dreams and encouraging her students at Everett as they participate in Destination Imagination Challenges.
