That fall, when Grace started the gifted school-within-a-school program, was not spent focusing or doing what she was supposed to. Her teacher was emailing, albeit carefully, letting me know that she was hoping Grace could focus a bit and give her best effort. These emails made my husband and I smile. She was getting in trouble because she had found her … [Read more...] about Community. Life or Death? It Was for Us.
Kris Happe, MEd
Parent, student, teacher, administrator, coordinator, coach, consultant, and speaker. You really want to meet and or connect with Kris Happe. She is kind of a big deal… popular, tall, and sometimes a beautiful, complicated mess of learning. Her husband likes to say that she thinks she’s pretty funny, to top it all off.
Kris Happe (sounds like Happy) is a veteran educator with two gifted children of her own. Giftedness, ADHD, dyslexia, anxiety, intensity, and depression are part of the picture the Happe family experience. With more than thirty years in education, her roles have included being a fourth and fifth grade classroom teacher, a gifted education program specialist in elementary schools, a district gifted coordinator, a literacy and intervention coach and coordinator, and an assessment and data coordinator.
Kris served on the Minnesota Department of Education’s Gifted Education Advisory Council from 2006 to 2016. She is a popular presenter to both educators and parents at national and local conferences for groups such as the National Association of Gifted Children (NAGC), Supporting Emotional Needs of Gifted (SENG), Minnesota Council for Gifted and Talented (MCGT)—our parent advocacy group in Minnesota, and the Minnesota Educators of Gifted and Talented (MEGT). She is a nationally certified SENG Model Parent Group facilitator and an educational and family consultant.
Urgent, Paralyzed Possibility
My continuing search for information was often debilitating, mired in ambiguity and desperation to find clarity not for myself but for my students and my own children. Questions that started to plague me included some of the following: Does learning disabled mean broken? Does an affinity for aesthetic beauty and art become void when paired with dyslexia? What about a need for … [Read more...] about Urgent, Paralyzed Possibility
Brilliant, Gorgeous, Talented, and Fabulous—or a Hacker?
I became a talent scout as I started looking for intensities, creativity, ingenuity, and quirkiness in my students and the adults around me. Listening to a comment from a student that was particularly insightful or witty, I dug deeper. If I heard a teacher complain about someone not ever turning in homework, but acing tests, I flew into the office to dig into student files for … [Read more...] about Brilliant, Gorgeous, Talented, and Fabulous—or a Hacker?