CONFERENCE ABSTRACTS

Presenter: Paul Lees

GIVE THEM WINGS

Manurewa High School’s Talent Development Initiative took a school wide approach to giftedness through mentoring. In the three years since funding began, a huge shift has taken place in school-wide development for gifted and talented learners. Special emphasis was placed on Maori and Pacifica students. We used a positive model in order to develop systems that would allow our gifted students to have an environment that was safe, challenging and did not isolate from them from the school community. To sustain our programme we looked at developing expertise on the staff , embedding the ideas of mentoring ,enrichment and acceleration within the culture of the school and giving the students a voice so that their needs were meet. We measured our success through a combination of baseline data, reports and results from questionnaires, and anecdotal evidence, all of which indicate an enormous shift has taken place within the school in the area of Giftedness.