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Center for Gifted Education

What We Do

The Center for Creativity and Gifted Education is committed to understanding and encouraging high level achievement of diverse learners, with a particular focus on the urban context. This Center emphasizes developing school-based enrichment programs for creative and gifted students. The Center is working toward developing global dialogue in gifted education through collaborations with and funding from other institutions worldwide.

The Center for Creativity and Gifted Education is committed to understanding and encouraging high level achievement of diverse learners, with a particular focus on the urban context. This Center emphasizes developing school-based enrichment programs for creative and gifted students. The Center is working toward developing global dialogue in gifted education through collaborations with and funding from other institutions worldwide.

Within the School of Education, programs for professional development on educational practices with diverse learners have been established in a scaffolded manner and include a Professional Degree, Gifted Education Teacher Certificate Program, Advanced Certificate and Doctoral degree in Instructional Leadership. The Center for Creativity and Gifted Education would contribute to the development of the programs for the professional development for teachers in charge of gifted education. The Center is housed at the St. John's University Queens campus with satellite locations in Long Island and Manhattan.

Goals and Objectives

To maintain a vibrant, internationally recognized Center with a robust agenda of activities that are beneficial to children and youth with exceptional gifts and talents, their teachers, and their parents, and that encourage high level achievement in diverse kinds of learners, with a particular focus on urban settings.

Objectives

  1. Facilitate collaboration within and between St. John’s University and Collaborative schools in the vicinity and beyond
  2. Establish a scaffolded set of teacher development opportunities
  3. Encourage giftedness across age, talent, socioeconomic status, race, sex, religion, etc.
  4. Create environments of collaborative, thoughtful engagement in learning
  5. Foster the dispositions and skills essential to leadership in a complex, pluralistic, and rapidly changing democracy
  6. Create a nexus for programs, activities, services, and institutions pertaining to gifted education and development
  7. Become the “go-to” place for urban gifted issues

Graduate Programs

Javits Grant Research

  • Project Hope: High Outlook for Promising ELL's in 2009-2014

Project TEAMS (Twice Exceptional Students Achieving and Matriculating in STEM) in 2014-2019

Program Objectives

We are working toward achieving these objectives in a number of ways:

  • Developing a gifted education graduate program to meet New York State requirements leading to Extension in Gifted Education
  • Providing professional development opportunities for teachers
  • Creating a Gifted Professional Development registry; investigating and facilitating professional development opportunities
  • Providing access for parents to expertise and resources
  • Investigating ways to provide support for at-risk, under-achieving, doubly exceptional, and otherwise vulnerable gifted students
  • Doing research, publication, and conference presentations
  • Participating in and establishing gifted education networks

Contact Information

Seokhee Cho, Professor
Director, Center for Creativity and Gifted Education
[email protected]
718-990-1303

James Campbell, Professor
[email protected]
718-990-1469

St. John's University
The School of Education
Sullivan Hall Rm 511
8000 Utopia Parkway
Queens, New York 11439
Tel: 718-990-1303
Fax: 718-990-2091

Additional Information

Do you want to improve your students’ math achievement? Join our Project Hope the Javits Grant Research!

If you would like your school to participate in Project Hope, download application form.

About Project Hope
Project Hope is a federally funded, five-year research study designed to implement and evaluate the effectiveness of Mentoring Mathematical Minds (M3) program for mathematically promising English learners. The M3 program was originally developed by Dr. Katherine Gavin at the University of Connecticut and her research team members, including Drs. Suzanne Chapin, Linda Jensen Sheffield, and Judith Dailey. It is a research-based mathematics curriculum for promising students. It was developed as an acceleration and enrichment
curriculum. One of its emphases was on developing students' communication skills for mathematical problem solving.The Project HOPE took place in two states: New York and South Carolina.

The M3 Program
The M3 program, developed by the University of Connecticut's Dr. Katherine Gavin and her research team, which consists of  Drs. Suzanne Chapin, Linda Jensen Sheffield, and Judith Dailey, is a research-based mathematics curriculum for promising students. It was developed as acceleration and enrichment approach with emphasis on students' communication skills to achieve a mathematical way of problem solving.

Potential Benefits for Schools

  •     LEP students’ math achievement and English Language proficiency will be improved.
  •     Teachers’ expertise in math and ESL instruction will be improved.
  •     Schools will be provided with enrichment resources in math.
  •     Achievement of all students in the school will be improved as “A rising tide lifts all boats.”

Why should your School participate in the study?

  • The educational needs of LEP students are unique. LEP gifted students are advanced and motivated to learn but their strengths are usually not recognized. They often receive little differentiated instruction or curriculum according to their level of advancement.
  • The Mentoring Mathematical Minds (M3) program addresses the LEP students’ needs directly by recognizing their strengths in math and using these strengths to augment their English language development. The advanced and motivating curriculum offered by M3 has shown to be effective in increasing the math achievement of gifted students in high poverty urban schools.
  • This study is funded by U.S. DOE under the Javits Gifted and Talented Students Education Act and seeks to expand the implementation of M3 program in four states — New York, New Jersey, Florida and California.
  • This project is a cooperative effort between schools and researchers to find more responsive ways of scaffolding learning, linguistically and academically, for LEP gifted students nationwide.

For more information about Project Hope, please contact Seokhee Cho, Ph.D. at (718) 990-1303 or [email protected].

Project Bridge Logo

Welcome to Project BRIDGE: Developing Academic Competency of Young Gifted English Learners with Advanced Mathematics Program and Language Scaffolding

Dr. Seokhee Cho, Professor, Department of Administration and Instructional Leadership is awarded a very competitive research grant of $1.9 million from the US DOE for 2017-2022.

Key members of this Project BRIDGE are:

  • John Spiridakis, Ph.D., Professor of TESOL, Department of Education Specialties,
  • James Reed Campbell, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Administration and Instructional Leadership,
  • Judith Mangione, Ph.D., and Bilge Cerezci, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Dept of Curriculum and Instruction
  • Son Mi, Ph.D. Research Director
  • Jenny Yang, Ed.D. Research Coordinator
  • Nia Hulse, Doctoral Fellow, Department of Administion and Instructional Leadership
  • Kyung Hee Jeon, Ed.D., Visiting Scholar, Department of Administration and Instructional Leadership

Project Bridge is an interdisciplinary project which will examine the impact of scaffolding strategies for teaching mathematics to potentially gifted English learners for three years from kindergarten through second grade after school on their motivation, math and literacy growth. Project BRIDGE is built upon the team’s prior Project HOPE, funded by the US DOE in 2009–2014.

Project HOPE scaffolding strategies were found to contribute to increased math achievement, creative problem solving, and English proficiency for promising English language learners in grades three through five.

Currently, the team has prepared instructional materials which integrated scaffolding strategies, Professional Development Program, and instruments for data collection, recruited 10 schools (300 gifted ELs and 30 teachers) in New York City.

 

The project targets Gifted English Learners (GELs) from kindergarten through grade 2.

Through the project BRIDGE, the following goals will be accomplished:

Goal 1. To improve GELs’ mathematical proficiency and English proficiency.

Goal 2. To increase the number of GELs who are officially identified by the New York City Department of Education (NYC DOE).

Goal 3. To increase teachers’ use of effective Language Scaffolding Strategies for GELs.

Goal 4. To disseminate a professional development program that trains teachers to use the Project BRIDGE Program for young GELs.

Project Wings Logo

Does your elementary school have a high percentage of Emerging Bilingual/English Learners? Is your school Title I? If so, we’d love to partner with you to bring this grant funded, award-winning after-school math enrichment program to your students!   

Project WINGS is funded under the Jacob K. Javits Gifted and Talented Students Education Act to build math enrichment programs for English learners with high potential, including those with disabilities in Grades K to 3 in New York, Texas and California. The program model is based on theories and research from 10 years of designing appropriate curriculum and instruction to meet the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse students. Project WINGS extends the work of previous grants, Project HOPE and BRIDGE, by integrating the best practices in the fields of math, gifted, and special education.

Project WINGS will work in partnership with Title I schools to:

  • Establish an afterschool math enrichment program for K-3 English learners.
  • Identify English learners with high potential, including those with disabilities for the program. 
  • Implement a standard-based and inquiry-driven math curriculum for culturally and linguistically diverse students in the afterschool program.
  • Provide training and on-going professional development to teachers on teaching accelerated math to high-potential English learners in the afterschool program.
  • Provide the instructional materials required for the implementation of the math curriculum.
  • Assess the learning outcomes of students who participate in the afterschool math program.
  • Collaborate with teachers and school leaders in community outreach efforts to increase parents' access to educational resources.

For more information, contact Dr. Seokhee Cho, Professor at St. John’s University, at [email protected]. 

Centers

Associations

Programs for the Gifted