Happy New Year, all. I hope you found your first week back to school full of excited students waiting to share what they did while away from your class.
This year poses challenges to gifted education, both old and new. As budgets shrink, educational entities across the state grapple with how best to recruit and retain both students and teachers. Nowhere else is this felt more profoundly than in our gifted and talented programs across the state. I confess that I, too, struggle with occasional moments of doubt and concern over our future. However, it is in those moments that I remember what gifted and talented educators do best: innovate. Gifted and talented educators embrace the array of challenges thrown at them to such an extent that we made it into a problem-based curriculum for students to become future professionals. As part of these exercises, we require our students to tackle problems that have limited information, cursory directions, and a variety of possible answers. We recognize the anxiety it creates for students who spend much of their class time answering questions so tightly constructed that the path to the correct answer is often quite clear. We explain to the students that working through such abstruse problems is good for them because it teaches them valuable educational and socio-emotional lessons that can only be learned in the midst of productive struggle. We tell them that we understand it is hard, but that struggling through multiple challenges, limited resources, and uncertain solutions is exactly what has led humanity to create the wonders we have managed to achieve.
I look into 2026 with optimism, not because I believe it will be easy or that change is right around the corner, but I know what gifted educators are capable of. I know it is hard, but I see a light in this difficulty. I see this year as the time when gifted educators are able show off exactly what their programs produce and what their students are able to achieve. I see it as a time when administrators in districts across the state point to what their gifted and talented classes are doing as the very thing they use to market, recruit, and retain students and teachers alike. Leading the way is hard. It means that we are the first to encounter danger, but it also means we are the first to break new ground. My hope for you this new year is that you and your program shine with such brightness that you are the beacon that pulls in those around you, that people point to as an example of what is possible even in difficult times, and that guides us toward the incredible possibilities in our future.
I am grateful for your support for TAGT, but most of all, I am grateful for who you are and what you do. May 2026 be your best year yet.
Best,
Luke Hurst
TAGT President
