Polson teacher earns state honor
Berl Tiskus
Tamara Fisher, gifted and talented teacher, works with student MaKauly Morrison as he prepares a presentation.
Berl Tiskus
Gifted and talented teacher Tamara Fisher glances at the screen as sixth graders wait for a presentation by classmate MaKauly Morrison.
Berl Tiskus
Sixth grader Ashley Turner displays a horse skull in Tamara Fisher’s class. All sorts of things end up in Fisher’s classrooms across the district, everything from Battlebots to novels to skulls.
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POLSON — Studying Japanese or Latin, constructing an electric guitar from scratch, dissecting bovine brains, learning computer programming languages, writing novels and self publishing, studying coccidiosis or designing snowboards — these are just some of the subjects students have delved into in Tamara Fisher’s class.
Fisher, the gifted and talented teacher for Polson District No. 23, was recently honored as Montana Gifted and Talented Teacher of the Year.
The purpose of the award is to honor a teacher who goes above and beyond for gifted kids.
“I was very surprised,” Fisher said, “since the award often goes to a regular classroom teacher.”
Fisher is finishing her 17th year of teaching in Polson and has seen hundreds of gifted and talented students pass through her classes.
She completed her Masters in Gifted and Talented Education in 2004 at the University of Connecticut. She attended classes on campus for three summers and worked online during the school year. Fisher said her six professors are the most well-known educators in the gifted and talented field.
Sometimes Fisher’s class makes the difference for kids, allowing them to make it through the rest of the day and giving them a chance to explore an interest regular subjects don’t delve into.
“Well, what I like best (about my job,) is giving kids who often feel like the odd duck in life a chance to realize it’s okay to be who they are,” Fisher said.
It’s a big challenge to stay ahead of the kids, too.
“It’s a humbling job,” she added. “I’ve been beaten at chess by a kindergartner and had a middle school student score higher on the SATs than I did,” Fisher said.
You need to be comfortable with who you are to be a gifted and talented teacher, Fisher said.
“The kids will outpace you and outshine you all the way. If you have insecurities, you better get over them,” she added, laughing.
Yet Fisher does everything she can to help every student, finding resources, advocating, suggesting, supervising, directing research, prodding and applauding her students.
There is still a lot of misunderstanding about gifted and talented kids.
“Every kid should be learning in school,” Fisher said. “When school aims at the middle (learners), some kids aren’t stretched, aren’t given the opportunity to ‘grow’ academically.”
“It’s not that gifted kids are more special; every kid is special,” she added, with an “of course” flip of her hands. “They are learners who are outside the norm, and my purpose is to keep them stretched. We don’t make all third graders wear the same size shoes,” she countered.
If a 9-year-old is capable of advanced fifth-grade math, then he or she should be working at that level, even if it’s not convenient.
“I believe in process,” Fisher said, “although so often we focus on the end product.”
Right now, Fisher’s sixth graders are finishing self-reflection papers on their quarter’s work and presenting their projects. In this paper, among other issues, they must explain how they decided on a project, any mistakes they made, what they learned from the mistakes, how they used their time, any paths they took away from their original objective, what they would do differently and what they learned, all processes of the project.
To illustrate the different interests fostered in Fisher’s class, MaKauly Morrison presented his project, a song he composed and divided into parts for the Linderman Elementary School band.
Classmate Ashley Turner created a computer game and the ceramic figurines of the computer game characters. Turner also brought in a horse skull for students to examine.
School should be about learning, and that’s what Fisher strives for for all students.
