Middle School Gifted Specialist
North Kansas City Schools, Missouri
Derek A. Hutchinson is a middle school gifted specialist at the Northland Innovation Center in the North Kansas City School District. At the innovation center, Derek works with approximately 100 sixth-eighth grade students and enjoys building and employing units of study that allow students to explore personal and academic interests rooted in real-world scholarship, alongside real-world innovators. Derek has taught in elementary and middle school gifted and talented program during his 15 years in education. After completing a PhD in Curriculum & Instruction in 2017, he spent 4 years teaching and doing research at the University of Kansas. Based on Dewey's notion of experience and education, Derek's research has centered on narratives of experience as a way to make sense of identity told and lived out in people's lives. Thinking about identity in this way allows us to consider the ways that experience shapes identity; as well, the stories people live and tell (identity) shape the ways they make sense of experience. In the world of gifted education, this research allows us to consider the ways that giftedness--experiences, abilities, and stereotypes/dominant stories of giftedness--shape the experiences of highly capable children and adults. Moreover, this perspective allows us to pay attention to the diversity of experiences and identities embodied by identified and unidentified gifted and talented folks.
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Saturday, November 19, 2022
3:45 PM – 4:15 PM