Family Owned & Operated HITE PHOTO "ONSITE" SWEEPSTAKES WIN FREE FILM PROCESSING FOR ONE YEAR* Winner drawn on 3-31-91. Need not be present to win. No purchase necessary. Name Address Zip State City Phone Bring this entry form to: Hite Photo Onsite 7385 Orchard Lake Rd. West Bloomfield, MI 48322 Phone: 851-6340 Roeper Teacher Seeks To Help Gifted Students SUSAN GRANT Staff Writer L otte Geller's commit- ment to the education of gifted and talented students extends well beyond the boundaries of her Roeper City and Country School classroom in Birmingham. As one of 22 members of a national steering committee on gifted education, Mrs. Geller, a biology, philosophy, psychology and English teacher at Roeper's Upper School, is helping to shape the future of the nation's gifted and talented programs. *Maximum 52 rolls of 36 exposure 35mm or 110 C-41 Pro- cess Color Film. Printed 3x5 or 4x6 1 each with Hite Over- nite Service. One entry per person only. Not bad for someone who began her teaching career 21 years ago by swearing to the Philadelphia Board of Edu- cation that she never had any affiliation to the Com- munist Party. TREADMILL SALE! She started out a diag- nostic bacteriologist at a children's hospital, said Mrs. Geller, who earned a biology degree at George Washing- ton University in Washing- ton, D.C. She took a 10-year break to raise two children with her husband, Irving. When her youngest child was 5 years old, Mrs. Geller, who wanted to go back to work, asked the Philadelphia school board what she had to do to become a teacher. At first, board members thought she was crazy, Mrs. Geller said. But suffering from a teacher shortage, the board asked her to simply swear her loyalty to America. A few days later, she found herself teaching biology in an inner city high school. She stayed for more than a year, but later moved to schools in New York and New Hampshire before com- ing to Roeper five years ago. "I discovered I like children better than bacteria," she explained, smiling. Despite her experience and success with students, Mrs. Geller doesn't consider herself an expert on gifted education, especially corn- pared to the other members on the committee who are esteemed professionals in the field. "I looked around the committee and saw all these experts and then there was me, little miss nothing from nowhere," she said. Battle Creek POWER WALKER 1 H.P. 0-6 mph Now Only Compare at $1,300! Other Models on Sale too! MGM BICYCLE & FITNESS EQUIPMENT 2680 Rochester Rd. 746 E. Maple Road Rochester Hills 852-0888 Just North of Auburn Rd. "Look for the Green Awning" Birmingham 644-9181 (formerly Birmingham Bike Shop) January Clearance Sales Continue WEST BLOOMFIELD • MICHIGAN Orchard Lake Road • North of Maple 54 FRIDAY, JANUARY 18, 1991 Lotte Geller But as one of two teachers on the committee, Mrs. Geller isn't about to short-change gifted students. "Gifted and talented students are a natural resource, much like ore and minerals, to be utilized by the nation and individual children should be able to fulfill his or her potential," Mrs. Geller said. "When the child with an IQ of 170 becomes a plumber, it is a waste of a natural resource and a waste in terms of an individual's fulfillment." While she believes plumb- ing is an honorable profes- sion, educators "need to find a way to develop programs to enable gifted children, whether they are part of a majority or a minority, at- tend a public or private school, to fulfill their poten- tial," she said. The committee, which was formed after Congress ap- proved the Jacob K. Javits Gifted and Talented Students Education Act of 1988, is charged with designing national, standar- dized programs for students who show high performance capability. The first meetings were held in September. During another series of meetings in early December, the com- mittee continued to for- mulate ideas for programs. The committee will finalize its recommendations during meetings in late March or early April. A final 50-page report is expected by the end of the year. Among the committee's concern is the identification of gifted and talented students, especially among minority communities, she said. But once children are identified, there have to be programs in place to tap that resource, she added. Listening to the recom- mendations of five Univer- sity of Maryland students, who had attended gifted programs, the committee agreed most programs estab- lished should not separate gifted children from other students. "They were against pull- ing gifted children out of the general classroom envi- ronment," said Mrs. Geller, who advocates a combina- tion of informal and formal educational opportunities. The committee is examin- ing the possibility of ad- vanced placement classes, enrichment programs and magnet schools which at- tract the brightest students in certain fields such as science and the performing arts, in an attempt to de- velop a national vision, she said. While some public and private schools, including a few in Detroit, already cater to the needs of gifted chil- dren, those programs are scattered across the country in a haphazard way, Mrs Geller said. "There should be a way to provide a national outline for programs so the gifted and talented children in New Hampshire who move to Cleveland don't have to take a break from their studies," Mrs. Geller said. But whatever recommen- dations are made, they "will have to be broad enough to be utilized by small towns and large cities," she said. She insists that the com- mittee recommend programs which can instantly benefit gifted children. "We want programs to be implemented now, not in the year 2349," she said. "The programs don't have to be expensive," she said. "We're well aware of the shortage of money." The committee doesn't want to waste its time com- ing up with excellent pro- grams only to discover they are too expensive to imple- ment except in all but the wealthiest areas, she said. "There is no point in creating pie-in-the-sky pro- grams. We don't want to spin our wheels for nothing." ❑