Empower Tomorrow’s Innovators with Talent-Targeted Teaching and Learning

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Which of our students have the potential to become tomorrow’s innovators, those creative problem solvers who discover unique solutions to enhance our world? A talent development mindset believes that all of them may. In this session, you’ll gain new vision and practical tools to teach to develop talent, a unique approach that prepares learners to become tomorrow’s innovators, today. Talent-Targeted Teaching and Learning is a brain-based instructional model which fosters students’ metacognition and creative problem solving as they gain content expertise. Students gain new confidence, sense of purpose, and self-efficacy as they begin to “talk talent,” identifying these all-important “aptitudes of innovators” in themselves and applying them in learning and life: curiosity, logical reasoning, creativity, insight, persistence, metacognition, leadership, and more. The paradigm shift for educators is the process used to create and assess talent-targeted instructional goals that apply the “aptitudes of innovators” in meaningful, purpose-driven tasks. Teachers assess students’ growth using the talent aptitude learning progressions in rubrics, and students use corresponding rubrics to self-assess, reflect, and record their progress in their portfolios. Talent-Targeted Teaching and Learning engages and advances students’ talents in STEM and the humanities by aiming beyond content mastery to nurturing the talent aptitudes essential for educating innovators.