Banfield Elementary School is just one building in the Austin Public School District that now has a full-time teacher focusing on gifted and talented students thanks to a three-year donation from the Hormel Foundation. Banfield did have a part-time position last year.

Jennifer Lawhead is now the school’s gifted and talented intervention teacher. She works with students in grades 1-5 “identified as gifted or high achieving,” she said.

The students are identified as gifted when scoring above a 95 percent on Scantron tests — about the top 5 percent of students. High achievers usually score a 90-95 percent on the tests.

Determining which students fall into these categories is a decision largely made by classroom teachers, Lawhead said.

“The teachers are amazing at differentiation,” she said.

“The main thing is, we’re trying to give them the level of education they need,” she said.

Lawhead said students need intervention not only when they are low-performing, but high-performing, too.

“We’re not giving these kids the opportunity to learn,” she said.

“They need to learn at a faster pace. They don’t need as much repetition. They need more individualized attention.”

Lawhead said she sees about 56 students per day at Banfield, which has about 500 students total. She works with students mostly on higher-level reading and math during their regular classroom time.

Some of her students are reading novels and also literature by Emily Dickinson.

“They’re really digging into that literature,” Lawhead said.

The Hormel Foundation is also paying staff to obtain their gifted and talented certificates from St. Mary’s University.