NAGC Scholarship Recipient: Laura Saiki
Impact statement from Laura Saiki:
Thank you for awarding me the scholarship to the NAGC Conference ’24 in Seattle. In 2023-24, my school district had 19,585 students enrolled, and they did not have the funds for any teachers to attend the conference. This scholarship allowed me to not only grow in my own practice, but to bring ideas back to my elementary highly capable team of 8 teachers that will impact not only the identified hicap students, but also high achieving students of 16 elementary schools. With budget cuts in our school district’s administrative office, our department has not been given much support or professional development on best practices or up to date research. Attending this conference has allowed me to learn (and bring ideas back to my team) about differentiation strategies, co-teaching, cluster grouping, developing coding skills while supporting teachers, critical thinking skills, creating virtual learning universes for students, the power of creativity, boosting research for students, learning about measuring growth for advanced learners, gross motor play in primary science, empowering self-advocacy skills, rethinking characteristics of gifted students, creativity lessons, and hearing about many new tech tools. I was really interested in learning about the Javits Program and the amazing research-based lessons, projects, etc. that were accessible for us to use and learn from. These will be helpful for classroom teachers to also use in their classrooms like co-teaching math and teaching critical thinking skills in various subjects. Because the projects are research-based, the buy-in will be greater! Not only have I learned a lot, I’m grateful for the opportunity to be inspired by people who are also advocating for the same population. It can be frustrating advocating for a population that is overlooked due to misconceptions and other factors, so I am thankful to hear about the fantastic work that’s happening around the country that gives me hope for our district and our state.
