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Thursday, November 3, 1977
University Daily Kansan
Special education training program offered here
By HENRY LOCKARD Staff Writer
The University of Kansas is the place to go in the Midwest to get a certification to teach gifted and talented children, Donald Treffinger, chairman of the department of educational psychology and research, said this week.
Treffinger said KU was participating in a consortium with six other universities in the
country concentrating on developing improved special education teaching programs. Students with special educational needs include the learning-disabled, mentally retarded who can be physically handicapped, gifted and talented.
KU, Columbia University Teachers' College, the University of Virginia, the University of Connecticut, Purdue University, the University of Georgia and
the university of Southern Florida are the only seven universities in the country formally organized to pool their resources on students with special educational needs.
The University Events Committee yesterday approved a bluegrass concert to be held at 6 p.m. Dec. 2 in the Kansas Union Ballroom. Frank Blake will perform, and tickets are $3.
Bluegrass concert okayed by KU events committee
LATELY THERE has been interest in the education of the gifted and talented because of the Kansas Education of Exceptional Children Act of 1974. The act mandates that each unified school district in Kansas have a special educational needs all children with special educational needs.
Alpha Phi Omega, service fraternity, will sponsor the bathtub-and-outhouse at pull 10:45 a.m. and 1:15 p.m. on Nov. 15, and 11:15 a.m. and 1:15 p.m. on Nov. 16. The fraternity will pull the bathtub and outhouse from the Union to the ChI Omega fountain and back.
The fraternity is sponsoring a dance and proceeds will go to the American Heart
The Carlo-Pulmonary Resuscitation Association will sponsor a training session for all resident hall staff and scholarship hall residents from 9 a.m. to noon and from 12:30 p.m. to 2 p.m. Nov. 12 in the Big Eight Room in the Union. A training film and demonstrations of resuscitation on a mannequin will be shown.
Treffinger said that most schools had been providing programs for the learning-disabled, educable mentally retarded and the physically handicapped but that the gifted and talented children usually had been ignored.
nere's been a myriad of misunderstanding about the gifted and talented children," he said. "People believe the teachers will teach them, but they think they will make it on their own."
"That's not the case. If we don't work with these kids and provide them the training they need, they often get bored or turned off with school and don't make it."
ROBERT LOWE psychologist for
Lawrence district District 497,
died in federal and salient county.
He said talented children were those children who showed superior skill in the fine arts such as art, music, dance and dance technique, and scientifically and intellectually superior, he said.
Part of the reason gifted and talented children have been ignored, he said, is a failure by teachers in the classroom to recognize a superior student.
Treffinger said a steering committee comprising representatives from the various departments of the School of Education to expand the initial preparation of teachers.
The committee would help new teachers recognize superior students and identify their needs, he said. The teacher could then decide what programs the student should be placed in and evaluate the student's progress.
LOWE SAID it was important for the office or targeted areas of interest aifted or talented child to attend.
"Gifted children are more likely to want to be doctors or lawyers and usually are more interested in math and science than most other children." Lowe said.
other subjects so it's important to get information from all available sources<sup>2</sup>, such as
*"The under-educated gifted child might be very skilled in art or writing but bored by*
**text.**
He said to serve the gift child's needs it was necessary to reevaluate that child's goals at the end of the year and change the program to keep up with his needs.
Treffinger said that most training of new teachers for work with gifted and talented children was sought by graduate students, but in the past years she was essentially a masters' degree program.
He said it required a minimum of 29 hours of credit in general course work in special education, background courses in educational psychology and specialized work on education of the gifted, talented and creative student.
HE SAID he would advise a student to get an undergraduate degree and a job teaching somewhere before trying to get certification to teach gifted or talented children.
But he said there was definitely a need for qualified teachers in the classroom.
Lowe said the Lawrence school district had applied for a $202.00 grant to expand its program, and by 1979 Lawry hoped to fund a project to work with gifted and talented children.
He said the district had one full-time
teacher and three part-time teachers who
work to work with gifted and
talented children.
Treffinger said perhaps as much as 15 per cent of the population of grade school children could be classified as either gifted or not gifted. In a million children across the country, he added.
Astronaut plans visit to campus
Astronaut Col. Henry Hartfield will visit the University of Kansas Nov. 18 to speak to aerospace engineering students about the NASA space shuttle program.
Hartfield is scheduled to be on one of the space shuttle flights, which will begin in 1979.
Jan Roskam, professor of aerospace engineering, said yesterday that Hartford would hold a seminar to explain the application and application of the space shuttle.
The space shuttle is a reusable craft designed to take off like a rocket and to land beautifully.
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