Gifted students and parents
Nobody has a problem with a kid being smart, but nobody likes parents who drive their children, who “own” them like accessories, and who lord the gifts of their children over other families. That’s not what Sycamore is about.
What Gifted Means
When we talk about a gifted student, we’re talking about an objective reality – not the ambition a pageant parent has for his or her child.
Gifted means that a child is functioning at or near the very superior level of intelligence. That’s two standard deviations above the mean, and represents approximately two percent of the population.
Every child is different, and every child has his or her own needs, but intelligence plays a significant role in how a child learns and sees the world. Traditional education does a remarkable job serving over 95 percent of all children. The farther one moves from the mean – in either direction – the more a different educational approach is needed.
Gifted and Different
For most people, the process of getting to know oneself and how one relates to other people is a daunting one. Anything that makes a child feel different can easily become something that makes him of her feel “weird” or like an outsider.
The right setting allows children to see themselves simply as people, rather than as a collection of labels derived from the responses of others.
Gifted children usually don’t face the same specific threats, or display the same responses, as Special Education students, but they do experience the same benefits when they’re offered an educational approach that fits their needs.
- At Sycamore School, gifted students learn at a rate and intensity that fits them. It is accelerated, but it’s the rate and challenge that stirs intelligence to life and delight.
- At Sycamore School, gifted students achieve greater learning success. The greatest challenge in educating a gifted student is engagement – and giving minds that cover ground in a big hurry a ton of ground to explore.
- At Sycamore School, high intelligence is normalized. Rather than being “different” and feeling like an outsider, gifted is the norm at Sycamore, which allows kids to be themselves.