ABSTRACT
A teacher trained in gifted education will have 12 hours of endorsement coursework from an educational institution, including a practicum in which he or she is supervised in his or her work with these students in schools. The greatest determiners of readiness to work with children of poverty and those with cross-categorical disabilities may be empathy and openness to experiment with what interventions might work with such students. The qualities described as most beneficial were the ones associated with openness. “Open” teachers who were willing to try different approaches were described as “the most successful and influential teachers.” Other positives identified in role model teachers were the use of metacognition to develop self-awareness in learners and the use of connected learning that provided interdisciplinary connections of interest. One of the most important instructional strategies used with these students was metacognition.
