Meeting with Gifted Lead Teacher

Meeting Date: November 2, 2021

Meeting Location: Zoom
Meeting Length: 30 minutes
Meeting Attendees: Andrew Nichols (Former Midtown High School Gifted Lead Teacher),
Thaddeus Roberts, Gina Robinson and Ben Sellers

This meeting was scheduled about 2 weeks before Mr. Andrew Nichols, who served as the
Gifted Lead Teacher at Midtown High School for __ years was promoted to a
GATEdistrict-level position. Below is a summary of my notes from this meeting.

After the exchange of a few pleasantries, the meeting started with Mr. Nichols
stating that the meeting would be informal and centered mostly around
questions from us, the educators enrolled in the Midtown Gifted
Endorsement course. Mr. Sellers asked about the SY’22 gifted testing calendar
for APS. Mr. Nichols responded that testing was different this school year. He
said that the parent referral window was still during the month of October
and that the TABs process was still in January. He went on to say that the
new Midtown High School Gifted Contact, Ms. Kelly Wren, would conduct
teacher training on the TABs instrument in December and that we could
consider participating in that training. All in attendance agreed that it would
be an excellent opportunity to obtain another two hours of internship
experience. Mr. Nichols then continued with the testing timeline of CogAT
assessments planned for March and TTCT planned for February. A bit later
than previous school years, Midtown High School plans to finalize the 1st
look roster during the last 2 weeks of January.

2021-22 ­Gifted Endorsement Internship Gina Robinson

 Meeting with Gifted Lead Teacher
Similar to the Morningside Elementary Parent Interest Meeting, Mr. Nichols
emphasized that this school year, there are additional requirements of
parent-referred students needing to score 80% or higher on MAP Reading or
Math and TABs referrals requiring 85% or higher. He also said that additional
1st Look candidates may be added with the second MAP assessment in
December. He also stated that the third MAP assessment in 2022 may be
used as an additional data point for gifted screening.

I then asked Mr. Nichols about his feeling about the MAP assessment being
required of all APS students this school year. He answered that although the
administration of the assessment district-wide has been a headache at the
school-level, it has been helpful in the identification of additional candidates
for gifted screening. He added that not only is MAP an excellent universal
screener, helpful in identifying students requiring remediation, but has also
shed light on the fact that across the district an alarming number of gifted
identified students have shown 50% or lower growth. Mr. Nichols stated that
this data shows that we as a district aren’t serving gifted students as well as
we should.

Mr. Nichols went on to emphasize that the MAP assessment is a growth

versus an achievement test and that continuous MAP data demonstrates a
good story of student development. For instance, a new first grader may
score close to 0 and an exceptional high school senior could score 1,000. Due
to the new 80th percentile requirement, the gifted first look roster could be
much shorter than in past years. He added that the developmental trajectory
of students in Kindergarten through 2nd grade is very high. This is where
knowledge still exceeds the influence of the environment. By assessing all

2021-22 ­Gifted Endorsement Internship Gina Robinson

 Meeting with Gifted Lead Teacher
APS students through MAP, the GATE office hopes to identify these students
earlier and provide support for this younger age group.

As a group, we shared with Mr. Nichols that in completing Course 1 of the Gifted
Endorsement, we are all impressed by the multiple-criteria process in Georgia and
how APS takes the additional steps of using TABs and Second Look to identify even
more gifted candidates throughout the district. The meeting concluded with us
thanking Mr. Nichols for such an informative and thought provoking discussion. He
made a plug for his next PL session in March 2022 about Gifted Assessment,
indicating that the session was open to all interested teachers, not just those with
gifted endorsement.

2021-22 ­Gifted Endorsement Internship Gina Robinson