GTA All Grade Levels Newsletter

In the GTA, we value our students, first and foremost. With this in mind, we strive to accomplish several primary goals.

#1 - To appropriately challenge and engage students academically.

#2 - To understand and meet their social emotional needs.

#3 - To foster their growth as leaders, human beings, and global citizens.

#1 - The curriculum in the GTA is unique to the academy, covering FBISD's scope and the required TEKS while appropriately extending beyond those to challenge and engage students. We value both collaborative and individual learning. We strive to engage students; compact and accelerate learning when appropriate; allow for student choice in content, process, and product when possible; and differentiate curriculum to best meet the needs of various students. We do NOT believe that our GT-identified students should do MORE work; we believe that the quality and challenge of their learning should be founded upon HIGHER QUALITY CURRICULUM and MORE ENGAGING OPPORTUNITIES.

#2 - Our teachers are highly experienced as far as working with, working for, and understanding GT-identified learners. They strive to be supportive and empathetic when interacting with their students. And our overall programming is designed to take students' social emotional well-being into consideration. The structure of the GTA was purposefully created to have students learn in classes with other GT-identified students who support one another and value learning. This structure fosters empathy and positivity among our students--whether extraverts, introverts, or in between.

#3 - The GTA offers a multitude of opportunities and experiences that help students grow and progress as human beings. Through opportunities like our GT Ambassador Program, Elementary Open House Recruitment Initiative, the Expo of Excellence, Be the Change, Raider Camp Leadership, Imagine the Change, Volunteering at the Houston Food Bank, and multitudinous others, we support the development and growth of our students as global citizens and leaders. Through a plethora of field experiences such as the Cultural Anthropology Trips, the Eternal Gandhi Museum, the Texas Journeys Overnight, the Houston Holocaust Museum, UH Public Arts Tour, Camp Olympia Overnight, and many others, the GTA offers chances for students to learn and grow in the field, interact with different people, and sometimes be carefully pushed outside of their comfort zone to foster their development as human beings.

The students in GTA are--in general--very conscientious and dedicated students. They are also still kids. We have found that they often call everything they are doing in class a "project." Often, the work is actually not "project," but, rather, simply assignments or classwork. Here's some things to know about that.

The teachers in the GTA are excellent practitioners, who teach the curriculum with purpose and zeal. When they assign various LEARNING CHALLENGES--whether they be daily grade assignments or major grades--they allot class time accordingly. For more extensive tasks, they--almost without exception--provide MULTIPLE class periods (even weeks for some tasks) for students to work on them IN CLASS. They understand the various demands that students face, and they do their best to MINIMIZE the amount of work students have to complete outside of class. OF COURSE, there are times when work must be completed as homework, but GTA studies should not consistently dominate a student's time outside of school.

If your child reports to you that he/she has a major task to complete and major amounts of work to complete just prior to it being due, it is very likely that time was used inefficiently during class. This might not always be the case, depending on how various students learn and process, but we find that it often is. In particular, with the district-issued laptops, we often discover that some students are playing games and participating in other off-task pastimes when they are given time to work in class. Even with active monitoring, if a child is consumed by these off-task digital activities, he/she will find ways to do these activities whenever he/she knows the teacher isn't able to see his/her screen.

Remember, it is one of our goals in the GTA to teach a HIGHER QUALITY and APPROPRIATELY ENGAGING curriculum. Not to simply give our GT-identified students more to do.

Typically, at this time of year, especially for our 6th grade families, concerns about transportation can seem quite urgent. Yes, transportation is important, YET the less stressed parents are about it, the more ASSURED their children will be.

As coordinator, I can assure you that THINGS WILL WORK OUT and SMOOTH OUT. There are almost 80,000 students in FBISD. Not all of them ride buses, but many of them do. EXPECT delays and imperfections during the first few weeks of school as Transportation settles into their routine for the year. Maybe there won't be any issues and everything will run smoothly from day one; then, no worries... But if there are issues, experience has taught me, THEY WILL BE CORRECTED AND WORKED OUT. So please try to practice patience during the first weeks of school. And please communicate with me and Mr. Pena about your concerns. We will advocate and work for you, your student, and the GTA program. ~Mr. Bernhart

• FBISD Transportation has informed me they sent invitations to Stopfinder and suggested checking your spam/junk mail if you have not received one. They also advised you go to their webpage, which has instructions for Stopfinder AND a link to email them if needed (see below). Here is the support email address if needed: Stopfindertransportation@fortbendisd.gov

Chaperones will be needed for a MULTITUDE of on-campus and off-campus

field experiences in EVERY GRADE LEVEL!

Please complete your annual FBISD Volunteer Background Check NOW, so you'll be available to chaperone LATER. It is required to complete this background check EACH school year.

THANK YOU TO THOSE WHO'VE ALREADY PAID THE GRADE LEVEL DUES!

See the PDFs below each grade level due button for breakdown

of how DUES are used in each grade level in the GTA.

If you are are able, please DONATE to support GTA students whose families need support in paying the annual dues. Your GENEROSITY is AMAZING and APPRECIATED!

Joseph Bernhart

Academy Coordinator

Gifted & Talented Academy

Quail Valley Middle School

joseph.bernhart@fortbendisd.gov

(281) 634-6687