MAGC Spring Conference 2026
Keynote Speakers
Dina Brulles
Building Parent–Teacher Partnerships to Support Gifted Learners
Today’s classrooms are more diverse and complex than ever, making strong parent–teacher partnerships essential to meeting the academic and emotional needs of gifted learners. This session offers a shared lens for understanding what giftedness looks like across home and school, addressing common misconceptions and highlighting traits that are often misunderstood at home or overlooked at school. Participants will explore practical strategies—such as flexible grouping, curriculum compacting, and meaningful enrichment—that promote challenge, engagement, and a sense of belonging. Attendees will leave with concrete tools and actionable strategies to collaborate more effectively and build partnerships that help gifted learners feel understood, encouraged, and engaged in both the classroom and at home.
Using DOK to Challenge to Reach and Teach All Learners
Every student deserves access to challenging, meaningful learning. This session explores how the Depth of Knowledge (DOK) framework empowers educators to design tasks that engage learners and provide rigor. Through interactive discussion and classroom examples, participants will learn how DOK supports all learners, with an emphasis on gifted and twice-exceptional learners by emphasizing reasoning, creativity, and authentic problem-solving. Attendees will leave equipped with tools to deepen engagement, affirm diverse strengths, and expand opportunities for advanced learning.
Identifying Giftedness Across Languages, Cultures, and Contexts
Traditional gifted identification often overlooks students whose talents aren't tied to language or academic performance. This session views giftedness through an equity lens, exploring how to recognize potential in ALL students, including multilingual, diverse, and underserved learners. Participants will examine innovative, language-free tools that emphasize reasoning and thinking skills over achievement. Participants will learn about methods for building inclusive gifted programs that reflect today’s classrooms and expand access for students too often left out.
Mark Talaga
Lonely, Not Broken: Rethinking the Roots of Disconnection
Loneliness is often misunderstood as a personal deficit or a lack of effort. For gifted individuals, it is frequently an adaptive outcome of development-what happens when cognitive asynchrony, peer mismatch, and heightened sensitivity limit opportunities to practice connection skills. This presentation reframes loneliness to open the door to compassion, growth, and meaningful repair.
Dr. Rebecca Mann
Twice Exceptional Learners: Precocious and Perplexing
Twice-exceptional learners-students who are gifted and have learning disabilities-often go unrecognized in schools. The disability masks intellectual strength, preventing gifted identification, while the gifts enable compensatory strategies that hide their struggles. This population, with exceptional abilities and significant challenges, remains invisible, leaving them without appropriate instruction. This presentation explores the dilemmas these students face and provides insight into recognizing and supporting learners whose dual areas of exceptionality set them apart from their peers.
Cassidy Broadwell
Building Thinking Classrooms: Next Steps Roundtable (Beyond the First Toolkit)
You've taken the 101. You've implemented your first toolkit. Now what?
This interactive roundtable is designed for educators already familiar with the Building Thinking Classrooms instructional framework who are ready to move from initial implementation to refinement and impact. Together, we'll dig into the "micro-moves" that make the difference. Bring your questions, challenges, and real classroom scenarios. We'll tackle FAQs, common sticking points, and next-step decisions. Come ready to share. Leave with clarity, practical strategies, & a sharper lens for your next phase of implementation!
Mallory Aferi
Monday Madness: Kitchen Sink Science Experiments to Spark the Minds of Young Scientists
Monday Madness: Kitchen Sink Science Experiments to Spark the Minds of Young Scientists is an engaging learning session designed specifically for parents and educators of gifted and talented students. This workshop focuses on practical, hands-on strategies for using simple household materials to create meaningful science experiences that challenge advanced learners while keeping curiosity and joy at the center of instruction. The session will also highlight ways to foster creativity, perseverance, and scientific identity in young learners who thrive when given both structure and freedom.
Nan Janecke and Kelly Schultz
Fewer Dead White Guys: Creating a Multicultural English Curriculum that Makes a Difference
Literature teaches more than plot, tone, and character - it's about differences in experience, culture, and worldview. With the goal of creating more socially engaged students, one AP English teacher redesigned the curriculum to give students a diverse perspective by including authors from different genders, races, ethnicities, and religions, thereby encouraging gifted students to directly confront racism, misogyny, and similar issues. Teachers will gain a new appreciation for our multicultural and intersectional world, and ideas for how to adapt any English class to cover these topics.
Games aren't just fun; they're a way to build skills that support the unique social-emotional and learning needs of gifted students. Come explore board and card games that promote creativity, collaboration, and critical thinking. Discover ways to help gifted students practice self-awareness, perspective-taking, flexible thinking, perseverance, and resiliency while they play.
Troy Scott
Lost Einsteins: Unlocking Pathways to the Frontiers of STEM
What does it take to help children grow up to be inventors and innovators in our modern economy? While most focus is traditionally put on academic achievement, we'll examine data showing that academic achievement alone is insufficient for pushing the frontiers of STEM and that exposure to innovation from a young age plays a key mediating role. Based on this research, we'll examine the National Math Stars program as a case study for how to develop programs to help underrepresented students grow up to push the frontiers of STEM.
Lohren Carter-Nzoma
Impact on Nurturing Gifts & Talents: A Family's Journey
This workshop will provide a unique perspective on the importance of parental engagement and its crucial role in identifying giftedness and nurturing the development of our children. Using our family's oral tradition of storytelling, this workshop will be an interactive and contemplative journey ending with a reflective exercise for each participant.
