Connect Canyons
Learning is about making connections, and we invite you to learn and connect with us. Connect Canyons is a show about what we teach in Canyons District, how we teach, and why. We get up close and personal with some of the people who make our schools great: students, teachers, principals, parents, and more. We meet national experts, too. And we spotlight the “connection makers” — personalities, programs and prospects — we find compelling and inspiring.
Connect Canyons
Ep 117: Unlocking Potential: SALTA Program Provides Enhanced Opportunities for Students
Have you noticed your child has a penchant for asking deep questions or noticing patterns and connecting ideas their peers don’t see? Perhaps your child is a fast-finisher who gets frustrated at having to wait for next steps. All of these signs could point to your child being a candidate for Canyons’ gifted and talented magnet program, SALTA.
“Some of us, when we learn to play an instrument, we learn one instrument at a time,” says Halley Kirk, Canyons SALTA Coordinator. “Gifted students are just wired differently. We hear one part of a song but they’re hearing the whole orchestra, what’s missing, what could be added, what can be adjusted.”
On this latest episode of Connect Canyons, we sit down with Kirk who talks about the benefits of CSD’s Supporting Advanced Learners Toward Achievement program for students as well as their families. Kirk also explains what families can expect with the testing process and how simply having your child take the test can be beneficial.
Welcome to Connect Canyons, a podcast sponsored by Canyons School District. This is a show about what we teach, how we teach and why we get up close and personal with some of the people who make our schools great Students, teachers, principals, parents and more. We meet national experts too. Learning is about making connections, so connect with us.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Connect Canyons. I'm your host, frances Cook. Right now, the window to apply for students to test into SALTA Canyons District's Gifted and Talented Magnet Program is open for those interested in joining next year's program. Joining me today to talk about the benefits of SALTA and provide tips for families looking to apply is our Cany Canyon SALTA coordinator, hallie Kirk. Thank you for joining us, hi. Thanks for having me. Hallie, let's start with you. I'd love to know how you became the SALTA coordinator, because that's a very particular position.
Speaker 3:I taught fifth grade at Peruvian Park Elementary in the SALTA program for nine years and then a position opened up to help support it at the district level. So I'd be working then with our other school site, sunrise Elementary, and then Midvale Middle School, where our middle school feeder is supporting our testing process, programming, curriculum, instruction, all the things. So I kind of leapt at the opportunity to advocate from a classroom perspective for what I knew my students needed. This will be my fourth school year in this role.
Speaker 2:Fantastic. So let's get into what SALTA is and what are the benefits for both parents and students.
Speaker 3:Sure. So SALTA is, as you mentioned, our Gifted and Talented Magnet Program. But what that means in our district and statewide in Utah is we're really looking at cognitive giftedness, which would be students who are in the top 4 to 5 percent of their peer group in terms of cognitive ability. That can be sort of a misconception, because we're not really saying that these students are all getting straight A's or they're getting 100 percent on everything. They certainly can be, but that's not always the case. Everything it certainly can be, but that's not always the case.
Speaker 3:I like the analogy where you know, for gifted learners, like some of us, when we learn to play an instrument, we learn one instrument at a time. Gifted students, they're just wired differently, where they're hearing the whole orchestra, what's missing, what we could add, what can be adjusted, and it's exciting, but it can be overwhelming. So it requires them to have some specialized instruction to develop their abilities and potentials and not burn out or feel alone. These are students who are just recognizing patterns, connecting ideas in unique ways that maybe isn't common for their peer group, and sometimes that thinking can be so advanced that it does make school harder. And so the idea of the SALTA program is we're giving them the tools they need to help continue to develop their potential, while simultaneously give them supports for areas that they do need help in.
Speaker 2:These are kind of the students that are asking all kinds of in-depth questions that make the teachers go oh wow, good on you for thinking that deep into it, right. They're insatiably curious. They're constantly looking for something else to expand their minds. But sometimes that can come across differently. So I think that's a great point that you made. It's not necessarily just the straight A students. It can be, but it can manifest in different ways. So what does a day in the life of a student in the SALTA program look like? How is it different from our standard methods of teaching and learning?
Speaker 3:Great question. So I would start with that. Our teachers in the SALTA program all have specialized training in how to support gifted students. They're more prepared to be able to make adjustments to grade-level curriculum and give them those opportunities for deeper, more complex thinking. Really, the biggest difference in pedagogy with gifted students is education, giving them more opportunities to apply learning rather than more repetition in acquiring these concepts. So we do a lot of what's called curriculum compacting, where it might take a typical second grader 10 days to get through one's part of the math curriculum.
Speaker 3:Let's say and we know that for our gifted students, a lot of them come in with a lot of that foundational knowledge already, or even if they don't have it, they need less repetition to master it. So we do a lot of pre-assessment let's see what they already know, let's give them the instruction on the things that they do need to learn. Often that could be two, three days and then with the rest of that time we're doing more real-world, task-based application of those concepts. So we have things like our hydroponics lab or our new student-led podcast or really things where we're trying to get them to apply what they've learned in novel ways and make connections that are a little bit deeper because they're ready, they're interested to do that, but also the teachers have more space instructionally to do that, to accommodate it within the program.
Speaker 2:It sounds like it's almost a bit more regimented instruction because, as we know, people who have that gifted mindset or even, for example, people perhaps with ADHD, they need a little bit more of that structure. Can you lean into that a little?
Speaker 3:bit. So I think I agree with you Routine and structure is very important for all students. Cognitive giftedness actually is considered a neurodivergence, just by definition. So we do have a lot of students in our program that what we call twice exceptional learners, where they have a diagnosis like ADHD or autism and simultaneously they're cognitively gifted, and so a lot of the supports you would give for students in one of those categories or another doesn't necessarily fit with this group of kiddos.
Speaker 3:To your question about having the more rigid structure or routines, I think it's more about having it be more student driven and giving them the tools, especially those executive functioning skills of how do they evaluate what they already know, how do they advocate for themselves, how do they work with their peer groups. Those types of more durable skills tend to be areas where gifted students need more support. So a lot of what we're doing in the classroom is really giving them opportunities to be self-directed learners, because they're not going to necessarily be struggling with the material necessarily. It's kind of everything around it in terms of the application, and I know personally as a fifth grade teacher in the program I was never the smartest person in the room as a teacher, which is the exciting part, but it can be overwhelming if you're new to the gifted world.
Speaker 2:Sure, sure. That's very cool. You're giving them that opportunity to kind of learn and grow on their own, while providing that extra level of guidance when they need it. While providing that extra level of guidance when they need it. You mentioned we have three schools that have SALTA programs. What does that entail? So if someone say their student is going to another school but then they get into the SALTA program, are they switching schools? Are they being bused to that school? How does that?
Speaker 3:look. So we do have our gifted program just at the two school sites for elementary. So it starts in first grade. The only places it's available in our district right now would be Sunrise Elementary or Peruvian Park. If you don't live in those school boundaries, you get the permit along with your enrollment Once you qualify and I can kind of speak to our enrollment process, our evaluation process. But if your student qualifies for enrollment in the program, they will be assigned one school or the other. Typically those school assignments correlate with where the family lives boundaries.
Speaker 3:But because we have to balance out our resources across two school sites, sometimes we do have those kids that are like right on the fence that end up at a different school. Those are the two schools they'd go to. And then, in terms of transportation, we have busing from those elementary schools to the middle school, midvale Middle School and back. So you wouldn't necessarily have busing if you lived in a different part of the district, to Sunrise Elementary, let's say. But if your child stays in the program, we're one of the few programs in our district that we do offer transportation to at the middle school level. Very cool.
Speaker 2:You mentioned the application process. It's very involved. There's tests. I know that can be a very daunting word for some people. Let's talk about what that process looks like.
Speaker 3:Each fall. So right now in September, we open up a window to register students for testing and what this is is basically you just go to our website, you fill out your information and that puts your student on the list of participants. For when we do go out to our schools and administer the assessment, we have a testing team that is able to assess students in every school throughout our district. So they'll do it during the child's regular school day at their regular school and then for out-of-district students or kids that maybe aren't attending district schools but live in our boundaries, we have testing at the district office. That test for kindergarten and first grade we spread over the course of two days. It's about an hour and a half each day just because it's so long for the little ones. So we split it up. Second grade and up. That assessment's all done in one day. It takes under three hours. It's done on Chromebooks for grades two through seven and it's done on iPads for K-1, and K-1. We also read aloud the questions for them.
Speaker 3:The testing process is pretty rigorous. Once we have all of our students who have registered to be assessed, they've taken the evaluations, then our team looks at all of the results. We identify who qualifies what students. We might need additional testing done on or more data points to determine whether or not the program would be a good fit. Be a good fit.
Speaker 3:And then we let families know in December whether their child meets our qualification criterion and then they have to accept the placement of the program. This is where it can be kind of confusing for families. They have to accept yes, we would like our student to be a participant in SALTA for the following school year without knowing which school they're assigned to yet. And that again is because we receive our full-time employee allocation as a program between the two school sites. So we want to make sure that our class sizes between the sites are as balanced as we can, that our teacher staffing, all of that is as balanced as it can be. So Once we know all of these kids are going to be joining us for the following school year, we then go through and make our school placements and then by usually we try to have that done by the end of January for enrollment in the following school year.
Speaker 2:So it's a very involved process. Is that why it's the year before and not during the summer for the next school year?
Speaker 3:Yeah, for the next school year? Yeah, and we do have. We have occasional cases where we've got students moving in from other districts or out of state that have been participating in gifted programs. We really believe here in Canyons that if a student qualifies for gifted services, we should be able to offer them those services. So we don't do what like a wait list, like some other districts may do, because we feel like we want to offer it to any student who qualifies and would want to participate in it. So that's where we have to kind of push our testing window up really early in the school year to give us time to go through all of those checkpoints.
Speaker 2:Can you tell us a little bit more about the test and what students will be? You call it a bit of an evaluation. So what are they being tested on? What kind of are they answering questions? Is it multiple choice? What can?
Speaker 3:they expect. Our primary assessment tool is called the COGAT. It's the Cognitive Abilities Test and it's really designed to measure students' thinking, how they're recognizing patterns. There's a lot of analogies looking for how do they go about approaching a problem, rather than have they already learned the concept. So it's a little different than what we would consider an achievement test, like an end-of-year RISE assessment. It's really designed to look at how they're thinking and the website kogatcom has all kinds of resources for families and students to kind of look through. They have practice questions you can look through. We really strongly discourage having students prepare for the assessment Really, Because it can kind of lead to what you know, a sense of a false positive. If you trained for the test, you're likely to do better on the test, but that doesn't mean in practice then that you are you know best. So we're really just trying to see how does your kiddo's brain work? And is that maybe a good match for the way our program's designed? Very cool.
Speaker 2:What message would you have for families who are maybe on the fence about whether they should apply, or maybe they're not sure if their student would be a good fit for the SALTA program? What would you say to them?
Speaker 3:I would say that you don't have anything to lose. There's no obligation to enroll in the program, even if your student qualifies At the bare minimum. I think it's a great opportunity to learn more about your child. Have them take the assessment. It gives your family more information to make decisions for their education. So there's not really to me, I think, a downside decisions um for their education. So I don't. There's not really to me, I think, a downside I do. You know, as I mentioned, we don't want kids prepping for the test. We also want to approach it with a, you know, as low stakes as we can, which is hard. I know it's testing, but you know, preparing your child before. Here's what we're doing. We're just trying to see what you know, let's see how you're learning, to make sure that we've got you in the right place. I think you can approach it from more of a lens in that direction. Very, cool.
Speaker 2:I myself have learned a lot about this program. I've heard it, the term bantered around and it sounds like just a great way to, like you said, find out where your child is on their educational journey, and whether they take a right or a left on the path is up to them. Right, but the application window is open now through.
Speaker 3:October 1st Correct On our website. There's also additional links on our main Canyons page. So for the next little while you'll see links all over the place that you should be seeing flyers in your child's school. Also, we do give all of this information to teachers right ahead of parent-teacher conferences so that if they see students in their class that are maybe exhibiting some of these characteristics, they can encourage the family to have them assessed.
Speaker 2:Very nice. Any final words about the program.
Speaker 3:Just that. These are really incredible kids and teachers and amazing things are happening in our program every day. So it's exciting to see the passion that kids can have in any context, but I think, with SALTA specifically, having kids that are like-minded, that can be a little quirky. Finding their people is just really, really special to see.
Speaker 2:We're all a little quirky now and then, right, yeah, well, thank you so much for joining us and for telling us about this program and providing some information for parents who may have had questions. Hopefully they have all the tools they need and they'll go apply.
Speaker 3:Great Thank you, and if you do have any additional questions, please feel free to email me. It's halliekirk at canyonsdistrictorg. I'm sure it'll be linked in the show notes or something.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 3:Please reach out. I'm happy to support in any way I can. Wonderful Well, thank you.
Speaker 2:Hallie, we really appreciate it, thank you, and thank you for listening. If there's a topic you'd like to hear discussed on the podcast, send us an email. It's communications at canyonsdistrictorg.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to this episode of Connect Canyons. Connect with us on Twitter, facebook or Instagram at Canyons District or on our website, canyonsdistrictorg.
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