Shelley Green receives Gifted and Talented Educator of the Year Award

Last month, during the Annual Conference of the Colorado Association for Gifted and Talented (CGAT), “Empowering Change,” Shelley Green, Custer County Schools Gifted Education Teacher and Coordinator, received the CGAT 2025 Educator of the Year Award. CGAT began their annual conferences in 1975 with a modest 315 attendees. Earlier this week, in its 47h iteration, the CGAT Annual Conference drew over 900 attendees for workshops, keynotes, and recognition ceremonies at the gathering in Embassy Suites, Loveland. Green was among six persons—educators, administrators, parents, advocates, community members—honored for their leadership in Gifted and Talented education programs, while an additional five persons received scholarships and youth impact awards for continuing studies and professional development.

Green’s citation reads in part, “What distinguishes Shelley is her joy in watching students flourish through experiential learning. In collaboration with her friend and colleague Dr. Vicki Boley, Professor at CSU Pueblo, Shelley has opened her classroom to a study applying the CRISPA paradigm [Connections, Risk-taking, Imagination, Sensory Experience, Perceptivity, Active Engagement] as an Artifact Catcher. Together, they are exploring how this approach can both identify gifted learners and provide them with targeted, meaningful instruction while supporting their growth as students and as whole people.”

Formed in the 1970s out of a coalition of Colorado educators, CGAT holds the “belief that all humans have an inherent right to develop their full potential,” and has as its mission to foster “an understanding of all gifted children and their exceptional needs, and advocates for appropriate education and affective support through partnerships with educators, families, students, administrators, legislators, and the general public.”

CGAT’s extensive service to Colorado K-12 learning environments, curricular development, legislative advocacy, and community service can be viewed at coloradogifted.org.

“Gifted,” in CGAT’s purview refers to those students who “are capable of high performance, exceptional production, or exceptional learning behavior by virtue of any or a combination of these areas of giftedness: 1. General or Specific Intellectual Ability, 2. Specific Academic Aptitude, 3. Creative or Productive Thinking, 4. Leadership Abilities, and 5. Visual Arts, Performing Arts, Musical or Psychomotor Abilities.”

Colorado’s Exceptional Children’s Education Act (1CCR 301-8, Section 12) expands on that a bit, stating, “‘Gifted and Talented Children’ means those persons between the ages of four and twenty-one whose abilities, talents, and potential for accomplishment are so exceptional or developmentally advanced that they require special provisions to meet their educational programming needs. Gifted and talented children are hereafter referred to as gifted students. Children under five who are gifted may also be provided with early childhood special educational services. Gifted students include gifted students with disabilities (i.e. twice exceptional) and students with exceptional abilities or potential from all socio-economic and ethnic, cultural populations.”

Congratulations, Shelley Green! Custer County Schools and the community-at-large are privileged to have you as a dedicated faculty member working with your co-learners, our students who will carry the future on our behalf.

As for her part, Green modestly says, “I am honored to work with our kids. It is my true calling.”

– W.A. Ewing