I haven't exactly been lurking, but I don't think I ever properly introduced myself before contributing [cough] 37 posts. Guess I just jumped right in.
I either have no children or 134 children, depending on how you look at it. I am a middle school social studies teacher, and I meet my new students tomorrow. Three of them have been sort of informally identified as gifted. Many more have been identified as disabled, of course.
My career path has been a bit odd, except for lower socio-economic PG types, I guess. I've been a cashier in a convenience store, a researcher on federal contracts, an artist for a major publication, a contact rep for a federal agency, a teacher of English in Asia, and even a page-numberer.
I became a K-12 public school teacher 9 years ago. Since then, I've taught in the inner city, in a rural school where 3/4 of the students were indigenous, and now in a small town where the student population is extremely diverse (and this is not a euphemism for Black and Latino in this case).
I am taking the new GRE in a few weeks and planning to go back to graduate school (again!). Since I live in a remote state with almost nothing in the way of training for teachers of gifted students, I am interested in an online program like those at Georgia and Connecticut.
