Rationale
The Center recognizes that the teaching of gifted learners is an educational specialization. Research has found certain practices to be of particular benefit in the teaching of exceptionally able students.
At The Center, teachers act as students' "guides on the side." This is because authoritarian learning environments for gifted learners can have negative effects on their development.
The Center provides a psychologically safe environment where both students and teachers test their developmental limits without penalty. Gifted learners are at risk for achievement anxiety because they can so easily come to believe that they are valued for what they can memorize or produce or achieve.
The Center provides a learning-how-to-learn environment to offset possible academic regression. Responsible research on gifted learners shows that the longer they are in a regular classroom environment there is increased regression toward the norm for school-related activities. Some of the scholarly strategies gifted learners experience at The Center include planning with real time, planning with student intentions, finding where new knowledge fits, how it fits, and why it fits. These behaviors are part of a life course curriculum that can be transferred to places of more advanced learning, regular school requirements, places of employment, and personal adventures.
The Center refers to children with superior cognitive abilities as gifted learners. There is a tendency in literature and social policy either to idealize or disparage a child who bears the label "gifted child." The Center recognizes that such children have an extraordinary need to explore and use the intellectual realm and a need to be nurtured and respected for their desire to learn. "Gifted learner" is considered an appropriate descriptor for them.
