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Jodie Mahoney Center for Gifted Education
William and Mary Center for Gifted Education
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Vanessa Hill, Master of Education Curriculum and Instruction, National Board Certified Teacher Middle Childhood Generalist

District Coordinator for Gifted Services
Amphitheater Schools, Arizona

I am the Gifted Coordinator for the Amphitheater Public School District in Tucson, Arizona. I have been an educator for over twenty years. My journey toward gifted education began when I took over an advanced placement sixth grade math class. I fell in love with the gifted population and pursued my gifted endorsement. I was hired as an elementary gifted specialist after ten years of teaching middle school. All of my gifted specialist experience has taken place at Title 1 schools across the district. One of the goals of our department is, “Improve Our Creative and Critical Thinking Skills”, hence my interest in Creative Problem Solving. My love of creative problem solving lead me to coach Future Problem Solving and Odyssey of the Mind teams. I have taken both types of teams to World Finals competitions. I am passionate about the creative problem solving process as it inspires teachers to encourage their students to use both divergent and convergent thinking skills. It provides a concrete way to solve real world problems. The process is ambiguous by nature as there is no right answer. This creates a novel experience for gifted learners as they don’t typically experience gray areas during the course of their educational careers. I have presented Creative Problem Solving at professional development workshops for my district and presented on the topic at both the Arizona for Gifted and Talented Annual Conference and the National Association for Gifted Children Convention. I also enjoy presenting effective strategies for visual spatial learners, gifted characteristics, and differentiation. I look forward to leading our gifted department as we work toward implementing Kaplan's Depth and Complexity prompts K-12, continuing the redesign our middle school program, and piloting a REACH English Honors 10 course at our three high schools.

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