Considering School Options for Your Highly Gifted Child? Tips for You
As a parent, you always think of your own child as special, unique, and gifted. However, when the school also labels your child as not just gifted but highly gifted, you may find yourself wondering what you can do to ensure that your child excels in their educational environment. If you have started considering different school options for your highly gifted child, it is important to know which factors to keep in mind when making the choice between public, charter, and private schools in your area and around the world. Get to know some of these factors so that you can make the right choice for your highly gifted child.
What Are Their Interests and Goals?
If your child is highly gifted in all subjects but is an especially skilled musical prodigy, you may not want to send them to a school that is more focused on traditional academics. While they may have traditionally academic skills as well, if their passion is music, then keeping them from that could be detrimental rather than beneficial.
Be sure that you take into account your child's interests and goals and send them to a school that can best support all of those areas as well as those in which they are highly gifted though maybe not as interested in. There are arts high schools (both boarding and non-boarding schools) that offer full-time arts education as well as rigorous academics. On the other hand, if your child is a science buff, then you may want to consider a private or charter school that is known for excellent science education.
Are You Willing to Be Separate from Your Child?
Some of the best schools in the world in terms of academics are boarding schools or schools that offer boarding as an option to students whose families do not live locally. Because these schools are scattered across the United States as well as in other countries, you need to ask yourself whether you are willing to consider being separated from your child for much of the year.
If you and your child are quite close, and you feel that the parent-child relationship would be damaged from this distance, or if you have concerns about the boarding-school environment as a whole, this might narrow your school search and give you parameters to work within.
Is Diversity in School Important to You?
Diversity is often an issue that parents of highly gifted children are concerned about. On one hand, they want their child to have every opportunity to thrive and excel. On the other hand, they also do not want their child to go to school in an isolated environment of children who are exactly like them.
If diversity is an issue for you, make sure that you and your child visit various public and private schools and pay careful attention to diversity in the population. Is there a good mix of boys and girls? Are there children of different racial, ethnic, and religious backgrounds? Are there children of different economic statuses? All of these factors represent forms of diversity that you may want to ensure that your child is surrounded by in order to get a better understanding of the world around them. Diversity is especially good for highly gifted students, as it can help foster creativity, compassion, and a sense of purpose in their achievements.
With these factors in mind, you can be sure that you are working diligently to find the ideal school for your highly gifted child.
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