CAPE TEACHER HONORED AT GIFTED EDUCATION CONFERENCE

Dixie Lee Cook, gifted facilitator at Cape Girardeau Central Junior High School, received the Mercedes Smith Scholarship Award at the annual Missouri Conference on Gifted Education.

The award is presented to a Missouri educator who has developed innovative programming for gifted education and includes a $250 scholarship.

In 1981, Cook developed an exemplary gifted education program at Central Junior High, which was recommended as a model for the state. A teacher for more than 30 years, Cook has coached her students to at least 20 first-place awards in academic competitions in Missouri and four in the nation. She was one of two Missouri delegates who toured Russia and Hungary in 1991 to present programs on gifted education.

She has been named to Who's Who Among America's Teachers and has been selected to participate in STARR (Select Teachers as Regional Resources), Missouri's new statewide teacher-to-teacher program.