Category: News

Eight years ago Professor Csermely was elected President of ECHA[1] in Münster; four years later, in 2016, ECHA’s members voted for him again. His term in office, which is no longer renewable, has expired recently. This interview is about his 8 years spent as President of ECHA and changes in his life in that period.

What did you think about the importance of ECHA eight years ago and what made you accept the post of president?

It was Franz[2] who invited me to the post. “What if I appointed you president?”, he asked without any preliminaries. An interesting invitation, considering that I had not participated in ECHA’s work before. I did write about talent support in Hungary several times,

but I had no scientific publication in talent support. I believe in gradual development; I do not consider it natural to suddenly invite someone to act as president. I knew that my election could lead to a special situation, i.e. the post of president of ECHA being filled by a person hardly known to its members, with only a few exceptions.

So why did I accept the post of president in an organisation that did not know me? The networking efforts of the Hungarian Talent Point system had been remarkably successful by 2012, and I was very confident that it was worth setting up a similar network in other countries and in Europe as a whole. Organisations such as ECHA could play a potentially decisive role in this process. In fact, this was the most significant reason why I got into such a challenging situation.

As president, I had to learn a lot in the first year or two about how to run a European organisation. I had to understand the different frameworks of interpretation that stem from the diversity of European culture and make them acceptable to members to be able to work together.

ECHA has always brought together the most significant talent support researchers of Europe and the world. As president, I realised that ECHA gives little ground for my original concept, the “organisation of organisations”, due to its structure. Although the opportunity has been there, no more than 4-5 organisations joined ECHA over the years, that is, an “organisation of organisations” in talent support could and had to be created, and this is what ETSN[3] was about. By the end of the second year, we had got used to each other with ECHA, and that was when the main principles of the European Talent Support Network (ETSN).

It is still not clear to all that, despite their similar objectives, the two organisations, ECHA and ETSN, have highly different memberships and profiles. Many keep confusing them, and they fail to understand why the second had to be set up. However, despite their similarities, both have their raison d’être. ECHA is an organisation of individuals; ETSN of organisations. The long-term cooperation agreement of the two multiply the power of both.

Do you consider organisations relying exclusively on persons, such as ECHA, outdated?

Not at all. Talent support is a highly diverse, continuously changing science and practice, demanding diversified approaches, and requiring permanent international consultations. Permanent consultations not only between organisations, but also persons. Many do not, or do not want to affiliate to organisations, and that is fine. Talent support is a personal thing, and it has developed its niche in science cultivated by persons, not organisations. ECHA has a very long future ahead, as indicated by the fact that it has stood the test of time for more than three decades.

How different have you become over the past 8 years, how much has the post of ECHA President changed you?

I have become a completely different person over these 8 years. I could perhaps say I am the same person, but my dominant characteristics are different now. Interestingly, when I read into my writings from 10-12 years ago, I find that I would now describe many things the same way, but they have a completely different meaning for me.

My view of the world has deepened in recent years; I feel I have gained something of a “new understanding”. This new understanding essentially means a much more direct relationship with Totality, where by Totality I mean God, I mean Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, but here, in this context, I would like to highlight the meaning of Totality. I have gained a more ordinary and live understanding of the un-understandable, of what Totality, of which we realise various small slices in our own lives, is in the world.

Talent support, too, falls into place when you are ready to come across someone quite different from you and in many respects much more valuable than you any time. Why? Because that other person reflects another slice of Totality or reflects the same slice to a different degree. Consequently, we mutually disclose some part of Totality, different for each individual. In this sense, the nature of Totality is endless. Each of us, born to this Earth, gets a slice of it. Consequently, we can experience constant amazement in the world; see how beautiful it is; how much it gives us; and with what humility we should relate to everything/everyone we meet. Well, this humility had not been present in me to such extent eight years ago. As I get older and more and more experienced, not in the last about Totality, this hum

ility is developing in me. I consider this a crucial change in myself

How did ECHA change me in the past 8 years? It gave me humility. Because an international, European, arena — if you do not conceive of it as a battlefield, as many do, but a stage for cooperation — helps you learn humility, recognise the assets that different people, habits, traditions, solutions etc. from different countries can give you. I saw this at some depth during my work at ECHA.

Would today’s Péter Csermely have accepted the post of President of ECHA?

Put this way, this is a rather “unhistorical” question: it cannot be answered, because today’s Péter Csermely is past an eight-year presidency. I have always felt people get used up in a specific position over the years, that it, it is imperative that someone else take over the tasks and give an organisation a new approach. How many years —  that is a good question. Nowadays, I realise that in some positions, e.g. that of a pastor or priest in a congregation, you must be able to coexist with a community in the long term, accompany them through ups and downs; suffer and rejoice with them. These situations are not development projects that can be handed over once you had reached your goal, whatever it was.

I could not give ECHA much more. Also, in the meantime, I have moved to a brand new career: I am a university student in theology, preparing to be a Lutheran pastor. This excludes filling such an important post also in terms of time. I am very grateful to Lianne Hoogeveen for accepting the post of president of ECHA from 10 September this year.

What do you consider the biggest achievement of the past 8 years within ECHA?

I consider the establishment of ETSN and its becoming independent the most important achievement. But, in addition, I consider the launch of thematic conferences very important, as it had become clear over the years that many wanted to organise ECHA conferences, but we had to reject many offers. The aim was to have smaller and more specific thematic conferences. Of course, the coronavirus situation makes us re-evaluate many things; we will have to invent creative arrangements also for our conferences.

Another major achievement is that the ECHA education programme has received a transparent framework; for twenty years, there have been excellent programmes all over the world, but they have been far from uniform and lacked monitoring, and this has led to intensifying uncertainty. A legitimate need arose to clarify what was common in these educational programmes. I am most grateful to the Educational Committee led by Professor Christian Fischer for drafting the relevant standards and having them adopted through years of work and international consultations.

I consider it important that transparency has become typical of the work of ECHA also in many other respects: a great part of previously ad hoc decision-making has sound theoretical bases now. I would not say the process is completed, but we are on track.

I was very glad we could adequately celebrate the 25^th and 30^th anniversaries of the organisation, and we have also collected 25 years of history and the history of the conferences. So the history of ECHA will not be lost without a trace: it has been documented. Let’s not forget that ECHA was born a short time before the systems changes, in 1987, and one of its goals was to reconcile the two halves of Europe, that is, it has been shaped by very special times in Europe.

The above achievements, however, are dwarfed by the fact that I could take Franz Mönks to the London flat of Joan Freeman, and Joan received him there. We arrived with a large bouquet, and Joan received us with lots of photos. During a very nice conversation lasting several hours the founding president and the three-times president of ECHA made up in my presence (after almost twenty years). This was followed by Dublin, where Franz asked Joan to dance at the gala dinner. And Joan said yes. That dance – that was my most important achievement in eight years.

What do you consider the most important achievement of the past eight years in your own life?

My deepened spirituality; my more intensive relationship with Totality that fills me with infinite joy. I can live a much “rounder” life than a few years ago. And this gives me an incredibly amount of purity, humility and poverty (in a broad sense, all of them). The things really worth living for have crystallised in my life. I experienced impoverishment in the good sense, when the superfluous things are omitted from one’s life and only the ones that are really crucial remain. It is clear to me now that the crucial things all relate to Totality.

Totality is a beautiful standard; it has light and it has love. Using these qualities as a compass, one’s life starts to get settled, and after a while it turns into beautiful poverty. Of course, this settling process of my life is still in progress; I am glad I can take steps along this path with the power of grace.

What professional topics occupy you most nowadays?

I have started to realise what is truly important also in my profession. There are very few such things, 2-3 maybe, and it is not certain that you will be the one who detects even one of them, but you will be happy anyway for being involved. There are many traps and temptations also in network research: one could get stuck with certain components or consider whatever he is occupied with an enormous thing. Understanding, intuition of what is really important in a field of science requires lots of time, at least ten years, and also sufficient humility for this to happen. We do not see what is truly important in a field by ourselves, but if we are open, we’ll receive the grace for it. What I am most occupied with in network research currently is how networks change and develop; what activates their development and what makes a single cell learn and how.

Big questions of the world …

Yes, but smaller ones are not worth tackling. In some sense you need to get poor also in this context, and to start to look at life from the perspective of the universe. Then you realise that 90 percent of what you had done before was valueless, and you also realise that you’d better discard it all, no reason to carry it with you. When you omit the unimportant things, you will be much happier and lighter. Maybe sometimes not in this world…

This is concurrent with getting closer and closer to Totality in your life. This proximity, of course, does not exclude everyday activities. To the contrary! Now, for example, we are having a conversation here because of the interview, but I do not only converse with a friend, but also with Totality. It is possible to experience quality time also this way, with one more person: Totality, in other words Jesus Christ, is also sitting at the table with us, but we do not always notice Him. Whereas we should realise that it is only the presence of Jesus Christ that makes the table a table.

Was it difficult to keep ECHA, a very diverse community where theory meets practice, together?

It was difficult. Yes: science and practice meet in this community, but different European practices, different generations and disciplines also meet there, and neither are easily “kept together”.

The core mission of ECHA is to link theory and practice, to bridge the gap between the two. ECHA is excellent in this bridging role. Why is it excellent? Because in this community, scientists do not look down on those active in practice, but learn from them. Take for example Joan Freeman[4], who has been listening to the most practical reports with infinite humility to this day, because she can always find something of interest in each that may even be worth considering scientifically later. But Albert Ziegler[5] is also such a leader, and I could list many others. One could say that all the decisive personalities in ECHA have been like that, including Professor Mönks, of course. This has actually marked ECHA to a large extent: you cannot conceive of this organisation any more without including attentive listening among its essential properties. This is a very nice thing in this organisation.

Do you have a talent concept?

No, I think talent as a notion is very close to Totality; it is close to a complex concept that cannot be reached by reason, only by intuition. It is a beautiful moment when, during a conversation, you realise that the person you are conversing with is highly talented, and you become certain of it. However, it is far from certain that you could also put into words why you think so. I found it beautiful that, as it turned out in conversations with the best talent supporters of the word, this was our common experience.

It is important to define, measure, develop etc. such a colourful thing as talent in diverse ways also scientifically. The essence of science, in my opinion, is that it always gives you something new, just like understanding Totality. It opens up new dimensions, and repeatedly surprises you by its depths. When you feel you are comfortably moving about in a dimension you have become familiar with, suddenly a new depth is revealed, and this process is as endless as Totality itself …

What in your opinion are the most serious challenges in talent support in Europe today?

Let me start out from the virus emergency. This is not an instantaneous condition in the life of humanity. I am convinced we got it to redirect humanity onto a new course. The previous course is unsustainable. Unsustainable in the sense that it is destroying the Earth, and also in that humanity is destroying itself, because it raises the number of the poor to an astonishing extent and gives insatiable unhappiness to the bulk of the rich. The virus warns us that with humility, purity and poverty, in the broad sense, we must restrain ourselves. We cannot continue to devour things as we have done for decades. During our astonishing enrichment in the objective sense, we failed to notice that what we accumulated was garbage, not essential things. If we return to the same way of life, humanity would be destroyed. As ecosystem, the Earth also feels that this course is unsustainable and starts to do something to counter it. It feeds back, what we experience as retaliation. Whereas this is a teaching and a message.

Crises becoming permanent is quite a new situation. Without underestimating the common sense of the average, people with high creativity can help a lot, in an outstanding way. But we have not prepared them adequately to really help find answers. Self-critically, I must admit that I have not done that myself either — talent support has not really faced this problem yet; we must start to prepare the youth much more thoroughly to provide help. As pastor student, I deeply experience the importance and incredibly rich opportunities of this.

In the past years, the number of persons who joined the ECHA Facebook group rose to six thousand. There are five hundred ECHA members… It is interesting to see that the majority of members lives in extremely poor countries without any talent support traditions, outside Europe. This alerts us to the fact that these destitute people consider talent support an outlet for being party to Europe, to talent, to European talent. We, on the other hand, must be able to give them these outlets. This is not altruism pure and simple: it is also in our own interest. I do not mean brain-drain here: we have a single Earth and we would all perish with it if we did not put its omnipresent talents in a position where they can (and want to) ease the worries of the common home. The works of field-workers, such as the head of Narayan Desai Talent Centre, India, who can offer escape routes through talent support for those who have no other perspectives is extremely important. We must try to bring part of the ever poorer population of the Earth within the scope of talent management and support.

May the Almighty grant us strength, wisdom, foresight and mercy for this effort in the highly varied terrain where the paths of our lives lead us!

Csilla Fuszek

[1] ECHA = European Council for High Ability; NGO registered in The Netherlands, founded in 1987

[2] Franz Mönks (1932 – 2020), former president of ECHA

[3] ETSN = European Talent Support Network

[4] Prof. Joan Freeman, UK, founding president of ECHA

[5] Prof. Dr. Albert Ziegler, deputy president of ECHA

The aims of ETSN as organisation were formulated for the first time five years ago, in 2015. Later on, in 2019, the original concepts were included in the Articles, the rules of operation of the organisation, with certain addenda. We thought it would be good to draw up a short summary of the aims taken out of the original documents to think over their current status/degree of achievement today, 5 years after ETSN’s establishment in 2015.

Let us start by pointing out that, over the past 5 years, ETSN has become the biggest European NGO in the field of talent support, with more than 400 member institutions. It has also made the diversity of talent support organisations more visible by showing them in its Talent Map.

We know that ETSN membership has been an asset to the cause of talent support in several countries, although this is difficult to quantify. Of course, we have not reached the “ultimate” goal. turning into a “critical mass”, a force to be taken into account also by European decision-makers. Five years, however, is not a long time in this context, especially since we speak of a grassroot movement here in a field which is often subject to controversial judgements in Europe.

The grassroot quality applies more to the activity of the Talent Centres, the drivers of the Talent Point system which is more of a network built from top-down. Talent Centres are meant to make the institutions (the Talent Points) active in talent support day by day, understand why it is important for them to be present at European level jointly.

The member institutions of ETSN are highly diverse. This diversity – the coexistence of talent support forms of various types – was one of the aims. We wanted to show that talent support can be effective, in terms of institutional frameworks and also methodological solutions, in various ways. We work continuously to make this colourful network a community of mutually supportive entities in lively relationships with each other – although this is not very simple to realise given the linguistic differences.

As for moulding the Talent Centres into a community, Erasmus+ coordinated by the Irish Talent Centre and also the meetings in Budapest have already helped a lot, but there remains a lot to be done here.

The primary goal of networks is always to ensure the smooth flow of information within the Network and to exchange best practices (know hows) through that. The Network Council has realised this and pays special attention to presenting as many best practices as possible in its quarterly newsletter. This goal has partly been met, but the relevant activity of Talent Centres and Talent Points fluctuates: it would be good if more would present their work and best practices in the talent support field. Positive conduct is often a must to make the Network viable, since information sharing is the tool helping us to have ever new research ideas and joint projects.

We have obviously set out on a journey already: we can be proud of many things, but we still need to make progress in many areas, which will obviously be easier this way, collectively.  Our direct goal is to access more and bigger EU funding to facilitate starting new joint projects, visiting each other, supporting talents and establishing new contacts.

I recommend everybody to re-read the aims summarised below.

 

Aims of the Network: 

1. increase the identification of highly abled young people in Europe;
2. provide different types of support to highly abled young people (educational, financial, moral, etc.) beyond what is currently provided in this field;
3. boost research activity in the field of high ability and related areas as well as to help transfer findings into practice;
4. extend the current Network members’ framework of best practices (from policies to educational know-hows) to the field of high ability both in Europe and internationally;
5. demonstrate that persons involved in the field of high ability have reached a “critical mass” at the European level that needs to be taken into account when discussing EU and national policies related to high ability throughout Europe (such as education, research, innovation, social affairs, public health, etcetera);
6. help to further increase membership to the European Council for High Ability (ECHA) by increasing the number of people knowing and acknowledging ECHA’s activities in theory, research, and practice;
7. create a community that focuses on the different needs of the highlyabled that is not exclusively academic in its outlook;
8. develop a culture that promotes respect and celebrates diversity within this community.

 

The European Talent Support Network (ETSN), established with the substantial contribution of the European Council of High Ability (ECHA), managed by Hungarian President Professor Péter Csermely in the last 8 years, celebrates its 5th anniversary on 29 September 2020. We have drawn up a short summary of the achievements and chronology of the first five years of ETSN. 

The European Talent Support Network was officially founded on 29 September 2015 in the Brussels European Parliament building, in the presence of senior EU officials and MEPs. The founders were the first 14 winner European Talent Centres of the call announced by the ECHA Qualification Committee. The applicant countries committed themselves inter alia to the deployment of a Talent Centre/Talent Point system and to developing a registration system for institutions engaged in talent support activities (Talent Points). The first meeting of Talent Centre representatives held at the same place, with the participation of these 14 centres, adopted the guidelines for the criteria of European Talent Point status.

In the years that followed (2016-2019) the above call has been announced annually, together with calls for Talent Points; as a result, there were 21 active Talent Centres in Europe and 4 outside Europe by early 2020.  There were two in each of Austria, Belgium and Germany; one each in Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Greece, Holland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland and Turkey. The four non-European TCs were in India, Peru, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The number of European Talent Points, present in 47 countries already, has exceeded 400. In practice, this means that ETSN is the organisation gathering the highest number of talent-support-focused organisations, however different they might be, in Europe, more than half of which come from European public education institutions. 

ETSN increasingly focuses on the coordination of joint European work and the quality assurance of its operation. Therefore, it has been managed since end-2016 by a 5-strong elected Network Council (NC), with Csilla Fuszek from the European Talent Centre within MATEHETSZ acting as Network Council coordinator, and Prof Dr Albert Ziegler as president elected for the second time.

Work within ETSN has led to creating the website and newsletter of the Network (TalentWeb). The annual number of copies of the newsletter has been increased gradually, and it has acquired a special profile with mainly European best practices in talent support in the focus. The newsletter has provided a self-presentation opportunity for several Hungarian best practices in this field. The Network website features a so-called European Talent Map with basic information about the associated organisations. 

The year 2019 was marked by ETSN becoming a registered European NGO and by the drafting of its rules of organisation and operation: Articles adopted by the members of the Network almost unanimously (with one abstention). This, of course, has altered the relationship between ECHA and ETSN, as set out in a mutual cooperation agreement. The main difference was that the Qualification Committee  became part of ETSN. 

The summit of the European Youth Platform has been organised annually since 2016, with the exception of this year (2020). It was hosted by Vienna, Budapest, Dublin and Dubrovnik, and gave the youth an annual opportunity to get acquainted with ETSN in more depth, to present their own education systems, and delve into the issues of talent support. 

The Hungarian Talent Centre has organised so-called “Budapest meetings” annually since 2016 for representatives of the Talent Centres of the Network, to pass key strategic decisions, present new Talent Points and establish new network contacts – this meeting could be called the “soul” of ETSN. For the known reasons, we could only organise an on-line meeting in 2020 so far, dedicated to the analysis of changes due to Covid-19.  

Budapest Meetings of Talent Centre representatives, 2016, 2017

As can be seen from the above, ETSN is a young and dynamically developing network; it has acquired hundreds of institution members over 5 years, and it is becoming increasingly well-known globally. Hopefully, this dynamism will prevail in the next 5 years, and intra-Network contacts will strengthen. 

Links and articles/writings referred to in the text and in the chronology below will hopefully give the reader an opportunity to study the development of the Network in more depth. 

Brief chronology of European Talent Support Network events after the 2016 ECHA General Assembly

2015 

1. 29 September: Brussels, European Union Parliament Building; Foundation of the European Talent Support Network by the first 14 Talent Centres qualified by the ECHA Qualification Committee; 1st official meeting of EU Talent Centre representatives 
2. 15 October: The ECHA Qualification Committee invites European or in case of Associated Centres non-European talent support organisations to submit their application to become European or Associated European Talent Centres: https://www.echa.info/call-for-application-to-be-a-european-talent-centre-or-an-associated-european-talent-centre-in-the-european-talent-support-network

2016

1. 3 March: 5th meeting of the Qualification Committee (Vienna)
2. 10 April: 2nd Call to be a European Talent Centres was published
3. 20 April: successful promotion of the European Talent Support Network in Ljubljana, Slovenia involving 28 European Talent Points in Slovenia, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia and Serbia
4. 8 May: 12 proposals from 11 countries received for the 2nd Call to be European Talent Centres
5. 10 June:  6th meeting of the Qualification Committee (Dublin); in July, five new European Talent Centres were accepted from Denmark, Germany and Greece and two Associated European Talent Centres from India and Peru
6. July: the Youth Platform of the European Talent Support Network (having at that time 33 members from 15 countries) elected its interim representative, Armin Fabian, and his deputy Lukas Kyzlik
7. August: the Youth Platform published its description and membership criteria http://echa.info/175-youth-platform-of-the-european-talent-support-network-description-of-aims-and-membership-criteria   
8. 30 September: 261 proposals received  for the second call on European Talent Points
9. October: election of the 1st Council of the European Talent Support Network: Albert Ziegler president/chairman, Csilla Fuszek coordinator/secretary, Colm O’Reilly treasurer / Antonios Apostolou / Mojca Jurisevic
10. 27 October: 1st meeting of the interim Youth Platform Council in Budapest
11. 28 October: 2nd official meeting of the EU Talent Centre representatives in Budapest
12. 28-29 October: 1st meeting of the Network Council in Budapest
13. December: election of the first Council of the Youth Platform: Marco Agozzino (Italy), Armin Fabian (Romania), Liliana Gerse (Austria), Lukas Kyzlik (Czech Republic) and Elle Loughran (Ireland)

2017

1. 29 March – 2 April: 2nd Second European Youth Summit held in Budapest with 63 participants from 17 countries and 20 nationalities (Summits in the future will be held at the ECHA International/Thematic Conference of that year)
2. 31 March: 1st Network Council meeting in 2017 in Budapest
3. June 2017: homepage of the European Talent Support Network goes live: https://etsn.eu; 
4. 19 June: 3rd Call to become a European Talent Point issued (application process made continuous from the beginning of 2018 )
5. 3 August: 3rd Call to become a European Talent Centre was issued on the ETSN website
6. 20 September: 2nd Network Council meeting in Ljubljana
7. 22 October: 9 proposals received from 9 different countries to the 3rd Call to become a European Talent Centre: 
8. 16 October: after careful preparation, a summary of the needs of gifted and talented young individuals drafted by he First European Youth Summit in Vienna, 2016 was published: http://echa.info/212-summary-on-the-needs-of-gifted-and-talented-students-by-participants-of-the-first-european-youth-summit-vienna-29-feb-5-march-2016 
9. 11-14 November: Youth Platform Council and Project leaders meeting in Budapest
10. 23 November: ECHA Qualification Committee meeting in Dublin; new European Talent Centres accepted from Belgium, Portugal and Spain as well as a new Associated Centre from the United Arab Emirates.
11. 24 November: 3rd Network Council meeting in Dublin

2018

1. 11 January: the European Talent Support Network started its regular Newsletter called TalentWeb: https://etsn.eu/talentweb-newsletter/
2. 9 February: 3rd official meeting of European Talent Centre representatives in Budapest and 1st Network Council meeting in 2018
3.  By January: altogether around 350 Talent Points of 42 countries had registered to the Network, and the number of European Talent Centres rose from 14 to 23, including 20 European and 3 non-European ones (located in the United Arab Emirates, in India and in Peru, respectively), over the 2.5 years since the first meeting
4. April: the European Talent Support Network started its plans to become a European NGO and formulated its Articles – please find it enclosed as an Annex of this report.
5. June: Youth Platform Project in the Czech Republic organized by Czech Talent Centre – 
6. 8 August: 2nd  issue of the TalentWeb was sent out
7. 10 August 1st ETSN General Assembly meeting during the ECHA Conference
8. 8-11 August: 3rd European Youth Summit was held in Dublin parallel with the ECHA Conference: https://etsn.eu/working-with-gifted-students-in-the-21st-century-echa-conference-in-dublin-ireland-from-8th-august-to-11th-august/
9. 15 October: 4th  Call for application to be a European Talent Centre or an Associated European Talent Centre in the European Talent Support Network
10. December: Election of the 2nd  Council of the European Talent Support Network: Albert Ziegler president/chairman, Csilla Fuszek coordinator/secretary, Colm O’Reilly treasurer / Antonios Apostolou / Mojca Jurisevic

2019

 

• January: Election of the Youth Platform Council of the ETSN

 

1. 21. January: ETSN Council Meeting, Nürnberg
2. 4 April: 3rd issue of the TalentWeb was sent out 
3. 4-6 April: 4th official meeting of EU Talent Centre representatives in Budapest; ETSN Network Council meeting, Budapest
4. 30 May: 2nd ETSN General Assembly meeting – on-line voting on the Article; out of the voting 97 institutions 95 voted yes  and 2 abstained
5. 11 July: Registration of the ETSN in the Netherlands 
6. 2 September: 4th issue of the TalentWeb was sent out 
7. 15-19 October 4th European Youth Summit was held in Dubrovnik parallel with the ECHA Conference 
8. 15 October: 3rd ETSN General Assembly meeting
9. 23 November: ETSN Network Council meeting, Dublin
10. 24 November: Launch of the EGIFT project, Dublin
11. 29 November:  5th Call for Application to be a European Talent Point or to be an Associated European Talent Point: https://etsn.eu/apply-to-join-etsn/ 
12. 29 November:  5th Call for application to be a European Talent Centre or an Associated European Talent Centre in the European Talent Support Network
13. 5 December: 5th issue of the TalentWeb was sent out

2020

 

• By the beginning of the year, ETSN had 25 Talent Centre and more than 400 Talent Points in 47 Countries

 

1. 28-29 February: Youth Platform Council meeting, Budapest and on-line, preparation of the Youth Summit Guideline: https://etsn.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/The-ETSN-Youth-Platform-and-Youth-Summit-Guidelines.pdf
2. 8 April: Network Council on-line meeting
3. 17 April: 6th issue of the TalentWeb
4. 9 May: 5th (1st on-line) meeting of EU Talent Centre representatives
5. 14 May: ETSN on-line Qualification Committee meeting 
6. 11. June: Network Council on-line meeting
7. 23 June: 7th issue of the TalentWeb
8. 2. July: Network Council on-line meeting on the Qualification Process

 

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How can you become a mentor volunteer?

Global Talent Mentoring is currently looking for mentor volunteers! If you are a STEMM expert and would like to mentor, please fill out our Mentor Volunteer Form at www.globaltalentmentoring.org/mentor For more information about Global Talent Mentoring’s background, goals, and operations, please visit www.globaltalentmentoring.org Mentor registrations for the next round of mentoring are currently being accepted through 31 July 2020.

Transforming problems and challenges into ideas and opportunities: New digital summer courses

CTY Greece at Anatolia College, 555 35 Thessaloniki, 2310398253, cty@anatolia.edu.gr

“The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.”
― Albert Einstein

The dismay and confusion stirred by the COVID-19 outbreak across Europe didn’t take long to reach our doorstep here at CTY Greece. In the last months, schools were closed down, social distancing was enforced and the country finally came to a complete lockdown in late March, to help control the spread of the virus.

And as scientists were racing to understand and contain this novel virus, CTY Greece began turning the coronavirus pandemic into an opportunity for change and improvement, adopting a mindset of progress through new ideas and ways of offering educational experiences to its students. It is not the first time that CTY Greece has been fast at adapting to real-world conditions (let us not forget the financial crisis Greece faced in 2015 with major economic consequences for its citizens and stakeholders). But being a talent center, CTY Greece’s people have always been geared toward flexibility, re-design, innovation and an unceasing drive to advance and improve every program and service they offer. After all, these are the kind of principles that are passed onto the talented students who join the CTY Greece community. They are encouraged to express their ideas and are empowered to believe that their contribution can (and will) make a change in the world they live in. So, it was actually quite natural for something new to emerge swiftly given the current worldwide situation. Thus, a new digital program – the CTY Greece Digital Summer Program – has been developed for the gifted and talented youth of Greece and Cyprus.

As educators, we are challenged in teaching face-to-face classes when the health and safety of students and teachers need to be guarded, as is the case in these extraordinary times. However, as pedagogues, we have the duty to serve the needs of our students regardless of impediments. Thus, the new digital program emerged as an addition to our existing online program. The program will be based on a combination of synchronous and asynchronous teaching. And of course, it will incorporate a fun activities program aimed at providing opportunities for students to play, have fun and bond with their peers. Already it is looking like an amazing program that will spark student enthusiasm and provide unique academic experiences to our students. Let us not forget that talented students, like all students, have different learning styles and we have seen from our existing online programs, that some students can really sparkle in an online learning environment – we are referring to those particular students who stress in brick-and-mortar schools and who unleash their talents when they feel they are not fully exposed. We need to provide blended learning experiences to all of our students, combining online, digital and face-to-face opportunities according to their needs and to the situations that they face.

But apart from an unparalleled experience for its students, CTY Greece views the new digital summer program as a superb training opportunity for its instructors to reach a higher level of professionalism. CTY Greece educators have already begun to be trained in the technology needed for their online courses and are becoming equipped with best practices and strategies that go hand in hand with effective online teaching. For CTY Greece the difference between status quo and reaching higher goals, for both students and educators, is based on a pro-active improvement attitude, on innovative thinking and on working hard as a team to turn problems into solutions and opportunities!

“However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at.” Stephen Hawking

Link: https://www.cty-greece.gr/en

Talent Centers in Action: EGIFT-European Gifted Education Training

Colm O’ Reilly, Director, Centre for Talented Youth, Ireland, Email: colm.oreilly@dcu.ie

A group of ETSN/ECHA members completed an EU funded Erasmus Plus Programme that designed a FREE online course for teachers of gifted students in regular classrooms which is available at www.highability.eu. You just need an email address to sign up for the programme.

The programme was developed in five strands with a partner taking responsibility for each strand.

The first strand was developed by Dublin City University and involved identification of gifted students. The categories in this strand included the relationship between intelligence and giftedness, formal identification, informal identification and identification in special populations. Finally this section covered identification of gifted children in special populations such as gifted students from lower socio-economic disadvantage, gifted students who may underachieve and gifted students who may also have a learning difficulty.

The second strand was developed by the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and involved lived experience of gifted students. The categories included some basic facts about the lived experience of gifted students which exposed some myths about stereotyping and mistaken beliefs. Using the Ziegler model of Educational and Learning Capital this strand looked at various learning resources available to gifted students in formal and informal educational settings. The strand looked at typical personality traits of gifted students and hownon the gifted can contribute to society. Finally the strand looked at the advantages of mentoring and positive uses of social networking to help gifted students.

The third strand was developed by the University of Ljubljana and involved social and emotional well being of gifted students. The categories in this strand included common beliefs about giftedness and gifted students, the psychological adjustment of gifted students into a school context and the promotion of mental health and resilience in gifted students. Within social and emotional well being there were sections on the social and emotional needs of gifted students and protective and risk factors in the mental health of gifted students. There was also a closer look at gifted students reactions to success and failure at school. Finally this strand covered the promotion of mental health in gifted students and paid particular attention to potential environments that caused the greatest risk to gifted students while also detailing the importance of counselling and social andemotional support.

The fourth strand was developed by the University of Glasgow, and covered teaching strategies for gifted students. The categories in this strand included the importance of creating a heterogeneous learning environment for the gifted student and of creating a positive classroom and whole school environment, encouraging teachers to support gifted students through best practice and for teachers to continually analyse and evaluate their lesson plans. Within heterogeneous environments there was closer analysis of the need for different learning, home and school environments for optimal learning conditions for the gifted student. Within analysis of practice teachers were given examples of how to develop their skills and ways to encourage more student voice.

The fifth strand was developed by Matehetsz, the Association of Hungarian Talent Support Associations, and covered best practice for designing a programme for gifted students. The categories in this strand included the importance for a shared philosophy of giftedness for the stakeholders, a comprehensive needs assessment for each school, design principles of format and curriculum and the need for effective planning and evaluation. Within the shared philosophy of giftedness an effective policy for each school or organisation can be created. All stakeholders including teachers, parents, school leaders and especially the students themselves need to be represented in these consultations.

Ksenija R. Benaković, RITHA specialist in gifted education, vice president NGO “Wind at the back”, Email: kbenakovic@gmail.com

We are NGO „Wind at the back“. We became European Talent Point in 2016. We are organizing workshops for gifted children from the age of 4 to 14. This year in our program, called Iskrice, there are almost 200 gifted children involved. They used to attend workshops once a week. Our aim is to give support to the whole personality of the gifted child, working on its cognitive and social-emotional development, creativity, tenacity and resilience. Of course, when the “Corona era” had started in Croatia and our schools and kindergartens closed, we also stopped our live workshops. But, our staff studied how to continue with our work. So, we offered to our little clients online workshops. Mostly we used Zoom application, then Edmodo and Discord. It was great news that almost 90% of the participants of our program accepted online workshops. We still meet once a week online. For the smaller children we offer scientific experiments for kids, working sheets with verbal, spacial and mathematic riddles, association games and creative activities. Children were inventing machines that could save us from Corona virus and earthquake (in Zagreb there was recently an earthquake, too).

With older children we do quizzes (sometimes over Kahoot platform or Zoom), logical and lateral puzzles, debates (about actual situation or some other interesting topics). We are developing critical thinking (learning about difference between myths, legends, facts and personal opinions) and creative problem solving. We even organized escape room online. Two of our groups worked together with gifted children in Israel and organized two meetings over Zoom application. We were all involved in the international project “The view of the fool moon from my window”. Of course, we are also offering psychological support for the children, talking about their fears, worries and problems. Now we are exploring how to offer webinars for parents and teachers. Before Corona, we started live seminars for 30 participants in Zagreb and Pula, so we would like to continue with it. This unfortunate situation made us learn many new things, act creatively and put our minds together to overcome it. The knowledge that we are gathering now will help us in future to offer our services to gifted children, their parents and teachers from some smaller, inaccessible places of Croatia.

Internationally renowned Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda (https://msubaroda.ac.in/) is one of the oldest educational centres of Western India; its Faculty of Education and Psychology and its Department of Education-CASE (https://msubaroda.ac.in/Academics/Department), organised an international conference for the second time in January 2020.The first conference, in 2019, focused on quality teacher training (Towards Developing Professional and Humane Teachers for Quality Education). The topic of that in January 2020 was inclusive education (Inclusive Education: Present Perspectives, Future Prospects).

Csilla Fuszek at the main entrance of the conference

The 218 participants of the scientific conference came mainly from various states of India, but thanks mainly to contacts established earlier by the organisers, it was attended also by international professionals. Two persons active in different segments of education came from the United States, and one from Australia, Italy, Hungary and Bangladesh each to give an insight into the concept of inclusion from different perspectives.

The conference including 143 presentations mainly on research projects was free of charge for the participants, thanks mainly to the support granted to CASE by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India (https://mhrd.gov.in/): in 2017, the Department acquired so-called Inter-University Centre for Teachers Education (IUCTE) status from the Ministry, implying also financial support for organising events of this kind. If the support continues, a third conference will also be organised in the year 2021.

Flower ornaments at the entrance to the plenary hall

The meaning of inclusion in education correlates to a large extent with the traditions, social structure and nature of inequalities in each country. This has made the content of the conference particularly interesting also for non-Indian participants.
The conference was deemed a success by one of the chief organisers, Ms Prof. Sujata Srivastava. What lay behind this success? Partly the richness of the topics represented at the conference. One of the priority subject matters was the inclusion of students from the LGBTQ community, considered a taboo for a long time in Indian society. Note that it was only in 2018 that the Indian Supreme Court de-criminalised homosexuality – this makes the innovative power required for putting this topic on the agenda even more obvious. It is also
important to know that today the transsexual community includes nearly 4.5 million; it is no accident that the researches included the specification of methodologies to create transgender-friendly schools. Significant emphasis was given to equal access to education for boys and girls, the special educational needs of children needing special treatment, i.e. those suffering from the consequences of polio, and also to talent support.

Talent support is a brand new topic in India: the relevant initiatives and researches are very few considering the size of the country. It was a special pleasure to see that talent support researches covered in several cases the examination of the inclusion of multiply exceptional
pupils (e.g. talented children suffering from some kind of disorder or handicap).
The other secret of the success of the conference was that the 5-strong organising committee expanded into an operative group of 50 Department faculties, researchers and M.Ed. students acted as one and did everything to make the conference a success and to ensure the smooth flow of the events, from section meetings to cultural programmes. Mr Prof. R. C Patel, Dean of the Faculty, and Ms Prof. Sujata Srivastava were present everywhere to coordinate these 50 persons.
Traditionally, all Indian conferences start by a so-called Candle/Lamp-lighting Ceremony : the candles symbolise the spread of the light of knowledge, and the ceremony is repeated at the closing event of the conference.
This conference,addressing also topics discussed less openly and frequently at scientific conferences previously, lit many gorgeous lamps throughout India.