Professional Development

Below are several recent professional development sessions I have delivered. Topics span a range of focus areas, including best practices, gifted and talented/social-emotional learning (GT/SEL), service delivery models, and instructional strategies. Each entry includes sample slides from the session, with full presentations accessible through the provided hyperlinks.

Programs Start with Purpose

These sample slides are excerpted from larger PD presentation provided to a county organization in central New Jersey. This section addresses program structures and implementation strategies.

Identification Best Practices

Identification matters! Kids with high potential need early opportunities for Productive Struggle in order to develop positive learning strategies and resiliency. Being identified for gifted and/or enrichment services will support the development of these key traits.
This series of slides was drawn from the Professional Development sessions referenced above.

Gifted Education: What’s Required, What’s Fabulous

The presentation from which these slides were selected includes an overview of the various dimensions of gifted traits, information on identification strategies with the Multiple Pathways chart, followed by discussion of service delivery models.

Equity Analysis: One District’s Journey

This presentation is the latest installment in One District’s Journey, a series I’ve delivered for the New Jersey Principals and Supervisors Association. It outlines the rationale and process districts can use to self-audit their identification systems.

SEL as the Foundation of Cognitive Learning

These samples slides are excerpted from a presentation on supporting GT/SEL, drawing on my recent coursework at Bridges Graduate School of Education for Cognitive Neurodiversity.

Motivation Through Engagement and Challenge

This topic is one I have presented in in several versions and revisions over the years, beginning with a focus on underachievement and later including perfectionism and mastery orientation. Sample slides are taken from the 2023 presentation for NJAMLE.

Find Strength in Unity: Building Leverage Through Consortia

These slides are from my 2024 presentation at the National Association for Gifted Children, describing how rural and small districts can grow their gifted education services by through strengthening collegial networks.

I presented a similar session at the 2022 NAGC conference and my proposal has been accepted for 2025.

The Cost of Life: Choice and Consequence in Real Life Economics

The Cost of Life is a popular sequence for fifth graders, as big dreams meet real world consequences in a no-risk hypothetical context. These sample slides will give a sense of the students’ learning activities as they gain basic financial literacy.