Gifted & Talented Education at Tuba City District<br>

“We have a joint commitment to find new ways to open doors of opportunities to all students of diverse backgrounds; and by supporting EPGY in our TC school district, they have made known their unconditional support to work with diverse school populations regionally, nationally and internationally.”

He stressed EPGY’s strong commitment to unite teachers, scholars and students worldwide “to improve formal and informal learning across cultural boundaries.”

“It is with this vision and focus that we began EPGY for our TC District some time back,” Dr. Begay said. “We were finally able to get the program off the ground just a little over a year ago.

“Thus far, Stanford has invested some $50,000 in our district and by the end of this year, that figure will have gone up to some $80,000.

“We can’t say enough about how grateful and fortunate we are to have this outreach program from Stanford and how our Governing Board and Dr. Tahu, our superintendent, with their joint support, have made all this possible for our children and students.”

Dr. Begay outlined TCUSD’s role in the partnership.

“Our share of this joint institutional effort is to find more appropriate ways and means to make these challenging resources available to as many of our students as possible and certainly to have all of our students succeed in this program,” he said. “It is essential to have ‘cultural amplifiers’ and ‘cultural transmitters’ of this caliber if we are to turn our schools into exemplary schools.”

The individual programs can start and end at any time of the year.

“There are several pros to the program at Tuba City and they are that programs are entirely self-paced,” said Cheryl Jackson, TC Gifted director.

Stanford University does all of the individual grading and the standards are extremely rigid. There are only three categories of grades, A or B or Fail.

If students complete a high school math course through the EPGY program, they can then go directly into a college math course without lower level math prerequisites.

Another big factor in this gifted program for Tuba City District students is the cost effectiveness. Stanford is able to bring high quality resources to the Tuba City classrooms that will challenge kids and support their accelerated needs.

For more information on the EPGY program at Tuba City District, contact Cheryl Jackson at 928-283-4029 or Dr. Harold Begay, associate superintendent, at 928-283-1210.

(Rosanda Suetopka Thayer is Public Relations Director for Tuba City Unified School District.)

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