Dr. Joan Lewis is ready to begin her night class, and she is the only one in the room. She opens the course’s Blackboard site. In a monitor on the far wall, she sees that her student in Omaha has arrived. She opens a virtual chat, and quickly the classroom fills—not with bodies, but with the presence of people who want to learn.

Miles, or hundreds of miles away, Dr. Lewis’ image and her lessons appear on students’ computer screens. They have probably already finished a full day of teaching, some in one-room schoolhouses and others in huge urban districts.

Most log on to the live video, but others may wait and get it from the archive later, or watch it again when they have more time. Still others will stay after class, using their Webcams and instant messaging to get some added one-on-one instruction.

Dr. Lewis may never see some of her students face-to-face, but she views each as an individual, with individual needs. By reaching students wherever they are, in ways that fit their lives, she is simply practicing the educational philosophy she tries to pass on.

“We need to recognize the diverse needs to be served within any student population,” she said, “and treat (students) as individuals.”

Dr. Lewis, a professor in the Department of Teacher Education, teaches all six classes in UNK’s online Gifted Education Endorsement. In addition, she chairs the department’s graduate program committee and is the gifted education specialist for the entire University of Nebraska system. Since 1993, Dr. Lewis has published more than a dozen articles on gifted learners, her chapter on “Advocacy for Public Relations” in a methods and materials book is in its third edition, and she has written two books aimed at helping schools, parents and teachers improve gifted education. Her latest book, The Challenges of Educating the Gifted in Rural Areas, was released in May. Through her teaching, research and writing, Dr. Lewis said she hopes to build bridges among the many people who want to improve America’s gifted education programs, adding that collaboration, whether among communities or professionals, is key to delivering instruction that will meet the needs of each individual student.

Dr. Lewis took “a circuitous route” to her own interest in gifted education, beginning in southern California where she earned her bachelor’s degree in bacteriology. Only after moving several times with her husband’s job, and raising two daughters, both having benefited from many years in a gifted education program, did Dr. Lewis get her master’s degree in education. She had volunteered at a school while in Mississippi, she said, and the way she interacted with the students got the district’s attention. She became part of a committee revising the school’s gifted program, and then became a substitute teacher for the elementary and junior high gifted classes.

“Long story short, I decided I loved it.”

Dr. Lewis earned her Ph.D. in special education, with an emphasis in gifted education, from the University of Southern Mississippi in 1994. She said that at first she

focused mostly on the needs of gifted girls, gifted minority students, advocacy, and encouraging the use of technology in public school and university instruction.

Educators have long faced special challenges when they start to develop programs for students who show high abilities, she said. The difficulties begin with defining what qualifies a student as gifted and identifying those students, particularly students who come from underserved populations (e.g., English Language Learners, minority and low income students, and those who also have a disability).

They continue as schools develop their programs, with debate over questions such as whether gifted students should receive enhanced instruction in their regular classrooms in their areas of strength, or spend time each day in separate enriched and accelerated classes. The bottom line is they need both based on their unique strengths. And as with all educational efforts, Dr. Lewis said, supporters struggle to fund the kind of programs they want to deliver.

The result has been uneven opportunities for high-ability students in this country, Dr. Lewis said. In some school districts, gifted education is minimal or nonexistent, while gifted students in other districts have the opportunity to learn much more. Certain groups of students are more likely than others to miss out on those opportunities, and Dr. Lewis said much of her recent work has focused on the needs of rural students.

“My emphasis is (on) rural education now, because I’ve had it called to my attention there is such a need,” she said. While she saw that need in small Mississippi districts, Dr. Lewis said the point was driven home when she came to UNK in 1998. She arrived just after the Nebraska Legislature passed a bill that provided $3 million to help schools identify and develop programs for high-ability, or gifted, learners. For UNK, that meant many more Nebraska teachers who would need training.

“In the fall of 1999, I had seven practicum students in the Panhandle,” Dr. Lewis said. “The closest was in Bridgeport.” Driving to their schools and others around the state for observational visits, she learned just how isolated some schools, and therefore teachers, can be. One building seemed more the size of a playhouse to her than a school; at another, she encountered students for the first time who “boarded” in town, because they lived too far away to drive every day.

Smaller schools offer a lot of benefits, but also tend to have less money and fewer resources, Dr. Lewis said. Among the challenges she outlines in her book are some tied to the low student population—rural teachers often have only a few students who qualify as gifted, which can leave those students socially and intellectually isolated. It can also be difficult to give those students learning opportunities that match their abilities, Dr. Lewis writes. For example, field trips to museums or concerts or planetariums are commonplace in metropolitan gifted education programs. In rural areas, the cost and time involved make those trips impossible.

Community attitudes in rural areas can also be an obstacle for gifted learners, Dr. Lewis notes, because programs for high-ability students can draw fire as being elitist. It can go against a community’s ideas of fairness and equality to identify some children as gifted, Dr. Lewis said, but she said that she feels the true inequality comes from treating all students as if they were the same.

“Every child should have the opportunity to learn at their ability level and work up to their ability,” she said.

Like the first book Dr. Lewis authored, Advocacy for Gifted Children and Gifted Programs: The Challenges of Educating the Gifted in Rural Areas is part of the Practical Strategies Series in Gifted Education. According to Dr. Lewis, the series is aimed at providing everyone interested in gifted education–teachers, parents, administrators and others–information about the latest instructional techniques.

Sharing information and involving all supporters is essential for gifted education programs to flourish, Dr. Lewis said. That belief is a guiding principle of her previous book, which gives supporters ways to advocate for and promote gifted programs. It also led her to accept the challenge when the series editors asked her to write a second book. Several of the strategies Dr. Lewis offers her readers involve technology, which she said has created many new opportunities in all areas of education. Using electronic materials, such as videos and ebooks, is one way for educators to work within a small budget. Dr. Lewis’ suggestions also include using virtual field trips and online social networking features, such as blogs and listservs, to reduce rural students’ and teachers’ sense of isolation.

Utilizing new technology is something at which Dr. Lewis has become expert since her early semesters at UNK. Hired to teach distance education classes, Dr. Lewis said at first she broadcast lessons to only Nebraska sites capable of receiving the one-way satellite transmission. She learned each new technology as it became available, and today is able to reach students anywhere in the world.

All students need is an Internet connection, and they can watch her lectures, either by logging onto a real-time streaming video or taking a link to an asynchronous stream. They can download class materials from Blackboard and engage in virtual chats.

This spring, she began using Wimba software which makes it easier for her to share audio and video files with her students.

Dr. Lewis uses the same technology to connect her students to the larger world of gifted education. Through her class sites, they can network with other educators, find out about new resources and techniques, or reach one of the professional organizations of which Dr. Lewis is a part. She has created Blackboard pages for the Nebraska Association for Gifted and the Nebraska’s Creative Association for Problem Solvers to facilitate meetings and disseminate materials.

Bringing people, ideas and resources together is a goal in all of Dr. Lewis’ work. According to Dr. Lewis, collaboration is the real answer to the challenge of giving all gifted students a chance to reach their full potential, an idea she sums up in the introduction of her book with a simple call to action: “The idea is to accomplish together what cannot be done separately.”