NAGC has identified Universal Educator Preparation in Gifted Education as a primary goal for the organization (NAGC, 2024). As K12 school administrators working on a university campus, we have seen firsthand the need to prepare all educators to effectively serve gifted learners.

To address the goals of NAGC, we designed a collaboration between our school and state university. As part of an introductory university education class, pre-service teachers completed 10 hours of classroom observations. Through this collaboration, we designed a full-day experience to introduce pre-service teachers to gifted education while also modeling and supporting best education practices.
In this session, we will describe our model for university collaboration and share best practices and lessons learned. Connections to existing research will empower attendees to advocate for universal educator preparation in gifted education in their communities. Participants will leave with the tools to reproduce this model in their own contexts.