Gifted students and parents
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.
What Gifted Means
When we talk about a gifted student, we’re talking about an objective reality.
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.
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 like an outsider. The right setting allows children to be themselves.
- 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.