Tidbit # 11-Where are we going?

I’ve been turning around a few ideas these past months about college prep, test prep, high school classes, middle school requirements — “necessary” skills and knowledge and the energetic push to guide our children as best we can (while we can) to be successful, happy, productive individuals. Or at least, happy … or at least, […]

TIDBIT # 12- AUTONOMY IN THE CLASSROOM

Kids go through various stages of increasing autonomy as they age. However, numerous studies have found that the stage that begins around 6th grade and continues through the teen years is unique. Unfortunately, this is what gives ‘the rebellious teenager’ an infamous bad rep. Home and street behavior are fertile ground for the flexing of […]

Tidbit # 13-Innovating creative pedagogical solutions…

An Online School Like No Other: Innovating creative pedagogical  solutions to support shared goals for gifted and twice-exceptional  K-12 learners across the world Laura Sawyer Lowder  Pfeiffer University & Scholars Academy for the Gifted & Artistically Elite  United States  laura.lowder@pfeiffer.edu  Hannah Hill Park  Scholars Academy for the Gifted & Artistically Elite  United States  Hannah.Park.SA@gmail.com  Abstract: […]

Tidbit # 14-A Major Issue In Education Today

A Major Issue In Education Today Too many students fail to reach their potential because they did not receive appropriately challenging curriculum and services. The National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) reports that 73% of teachers agreed that, “Too often the brightest students are bored and under-challenged in school. – we’re not giving them a […]

Tidbit # 15-Strengths-Based Private Education at Scholars Academy

A strengths-based private education, at Scholars Academy, is a type of educational program that focuses on the individual’s unique talents and skills, rather than their weaknesses. While public schools have traditionally used an academic system focused on identifying students’ weaknesses, a private school with a strengths-based approach is designed to help students reach their full […]

Tidbit # 16-Highly-Qualified Faculty

We are proud to have such highly qualified faculty members at Scholars Academy for the Gifted. Our team of educators possesses teaching licensure, academically gifted licensure, reading specialist licensure, and National Board licensure. Additionally, many of our faculty hold advanced and terminal degrees from top-ranked institutions and have been awarded recognition in the field of […]

Exordium

So it began, closer to two fleeting decades ago than the time my mind is willing to accept has passed. The chaotic birth of my daughter, Haley, the first offspring of what would (quickly) become a clan of seven Lowders. “It will be easy.”, I boasted. “We’re teachers, we’ve got this!”, we claimed. “Our kids […]

Tidbit # 2

How to start the year on the right foot? I feel safe in saying that pretty much everyone experiences some degree of anxiety about the start of the new school year, and as one approaches the end of high school, the real and imagined pressures mount. And because gifted kids tend to have heightened emotional […]

Tidbit # 1: Permission to Be

The challenges of living, as an adult, with one’s own giftedness and raising a child who is gifted, are many. Of course, there is the predictable set of expectations that one has for one’s child, which can be amplified by the knowledge that the child is “gifted” and the more so as a projection of […]

Tidbit # 4: “The fallibility of innate talent”

Just the other day, I exchanged a lengthy text communication with a student who needed to write about a weakness he had overcome. He wrote me to say that he could not for the life of him think of any weaknesses. Thus far in his 17 years, he had had nothing but success in life […]