Kate Duey – Institute for Educational Advancement Connecting bright minds; nurturing intellectual and personal growth Tue, 28 May 2024 22:44:58 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 /wp-content/uploads/2021/12/ieafavicon-e1711393443795-150x150.png Kate Duey – Institute for Educational Advancement 32 32 A Basketball Center En Pointe and Parabolas on the Fairway /blog-basketball-center-en-pointe-parabolas-fairway/ /blog-basketball-center-en-pointe-parabolas-fairway/#respond Wed, 15 Mar 2017 03:46:16 +0000 https://ieadev.wpengine.com/blog-basketball-center-en-pointe-parabolas-fairway/ by Kate Duey, Certified College Consultant

March Madness in almost here, making college basketball top-of-mind. And so I perked up at last week’s California Association for the Gifted Conference when Dr. Sandra Kaplan mentioned that UCLA’s basketball team takes ballet classes. This caused me to sit up and think. Any young woman or man playing on a Division I basketball team is a gifted athlete. But ballet?

Well, yes, ballet. There is a lot of fancy footwork going on down below while basketball players are busy dribbling, passing, shooting and dunking.  Watching the Lehigh versus Bucknell Patriot League Conference Tournament Championship game, and looking only below the knees, I saw dance. Pirouettes, jetés, leaps, and the occasional third and fourth position were all there. Lehigh’s Tim Kempton (6’10”, 245 pounds, 20.4 PPG) would make a wonderful Rat King in The Nutcracker.

This all begs a few questions. Can an art inform a sport? Can sport inform an art? Can students advance in one field because they explored another? By combining unrelated fields, will our gifted scholar-athletes create a greater exceptionality? And what does this mean for us?

I am an independent college counselor, often working with gifted students as they apply for college. (I am also an ÓĹĂŰĘÓƵ mother and consultant.) Some families consult with me when their students are just entering high school, so I see exciteabilities develop over the course of four years. Before taking on Dr. Kaplan’s question, I knew, but I didn’t comprehend, how ballet made for better basketball. My happiest students have been telling me for years that they like it when they mix things up, when obvious skills and interests become companion to less obvious skills and interests. Reflecting back, I see that those students who intellectualize their giftedness were among my most joyful.  Here are some first hand examples.

My first inkling this was happening came fifteen years ago, from a Mentor supervising five high-school-aged ÓĹĂŰĘÓƵ Apprentices in a material science research lab. (ÓĹĂŰĘÓƵ’s Apprenticeship Program has evolved into the , both outstanding.) These Apprentices were similar in lab skills and science understanding. One stood out, however, because of his English skills. Specifically, he could more quickly tease out ideas shared in conversation, read manuals and reports in and out of context, and clearly stated questions that moved ideas forward. Early on, he became the student leader because everyone in the lab understood him. He is now a very successful computer scientist. (And an aside: research labs are often home to scientists from around the world and of many languages, so clarity of communication makes for better science.)

I’ve had many students with exceptional mathematical abilities, and their stories speak directly to drawing energy from unusual sources. Four of them were quite upfront that their love of math was fueled outside of math classes. One, a Berkeley graduate, said that creative writing relaxed her into a feeling of bliss, and then, without any notes, she would imagine the answers to her problem sets. Another, now a math major at Reed, described how her remarkable sophomore year English teacher inspired her, through close textual reading, to consider multiple approaches to any problem. A UC San Diego math major told me he feels strongly that poetry and math are the same subject–economy of ideas—and so he approaches them in tandem. And another student, bound for college in 2018, craves playing golf every day because it is so much fun to watch parabolas on the fairway.

And it’s not just my mathematicians. One student, a Harvard graduate, became a better Russian language student when she started playing the piano every day. A current Berkeley undergraduate understands literature more deeply on days when she sees poor immigrants walk into traffic to sell flowers. One of my favorite students this year keeps finding ideas for prosthetic designs watching movies that are not about prosthetics. One young man, Cal Tech bound, described how ideas come while he paints. If he didn’t paint, would he have these ideas?

Lastly, and saluting March Madness, I have worked with both a semi-professional dancer, and a winning basketball player. My dancer, on History: “Yep, the world has always been all about ebb and flow.” And my basketball player thinks his internship in a research university’s chemistry lab is less akin to science classes and more like passing just outside the paint: “The graduate students throw ideas around faster than a good offense, so I’m still hustling to keep my eye on the ball.”

Our students give us their giftedness; our efforts should include enabling their intellectualism. The UCLA coach who first enrolled the basketball team in ballet is now a personal role model. Dr. Kaplan’s workshop, “Giftedness versus Intellectualism,” has prompted me to think of ways to help my students identify and encourage the productive combinations in their lives.

For me, as an independent college counselor, that means more time listening and waiting for the student to share enough so that I can ask more direct questions. For a gifted student, who feels his or her exciteabilities more strongly, working at this intersection is key. Within my niche in their lives, answers to those questions make for powerful application essays.

Sometimes we talk about nurturing a gifted student’s spirituality. For me, the mere though was daunting, so I stayed away. It is easy to get tripped up here because many of us equate “spirituality” with “religion.” But that was never gifted educators’ intention—instead, it is something wholly interior, unseen, and a powerful animator. Perhaps a mathematician’s spirituality lies in poetry.

Kate Duey is a private college counselor serving gifted students. She has worked with students who are age-mates with their graduating high school class, home schooled students, community college students, and students seeking accelerated or early college entrance. Kate is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Business School. She has a Certificate in College Counseling from UCLA. She also has three incredible daughters.

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Book Review: “College at 13: Young, Gifted and Purposeful” /blog-book-review-college-13-young-gifted-purposeful/ /blog-book-review-college-13-young-gifted-purposeful/#respond Wed, 23 Mar 2016 02:44:51 +0000 https://ieadev.wpengine.com/blog-book-review-college-13-young-gifted-purposeful/ by Kate Duey, College Counselor

Razel Solow, Ph.D. and Celeste Rhodes, Ph.D. turn the chief criticism of early college entrance–that early entrance inhibits healthy social development–on its head in College at 13: Young, Gifted and Purposeful (Great Potential Press, 2012). Their book is centered on a longitudinal study of fourteen women who entered Mary Baldwin College’s Program for the Exceptionally Gifted (PEG) between the ages of 13 to 16. Dr. Rhodes, who had been the Assistant, Associate and Executive Director of PEG, began the study supported by a grant from the Malone Family Foundation. When poor health precluded her from continuing her work, Dr. Rhodes invited Dr. Solow to finish the project. Dr. Solow is the former director of the Center for Gifted Studies and Education at Hunter College.

Rhodes’s and Solow’s case study materials stretch from birth into well-formed adult lives. Pseudonymously presented, the PEG graduates share their stories in detail. The reasons they entered PEG offer important insights into the life of a gifted girl in middle school. Many scholarly publications on the development of gifted children precede College at 13, but Rhodes and Solow stay away from normed studies. Instead, they stay with their subjects’ voices and let these fourteen women describe the world of giftedness. The women share stories of being isolated, confused, humiliated, and slapped. The authors spare nothing.

Grounded in this detail, Solow and Rhodes make the case that socialization and social development ought not be confused. Socialization, the art of joining a group, can be an impossibility if the group is fundamentally hostile. The middle school years, when students turn away from their families and toward their peers, present a painful choice: give up your passions, conform, and be included; or not. Beyond fellow students, the girls’ teachers are a mixed bag, some supportive and some clearly destructive. The consequences of socialization denied include social development inhibited. Echoing her fellow PEGs, Julia says, “Not caring about what everyone thinks is one thing, but feeling okay about being different is something else.”

Supportive parents are the heroes of the book, and Solow and Rhodes get to the parents’ stories straightaway. It takes a special kind of mother and father to move a thirteen-year-old daughter onto a college campus. Words describing home life with these parents include “peace,” “trust,” and “seriousness.” Over and over the parents talk about how they want their daughters to pursue their dreams and interests. Comparing these students to a study of 81 class valedictorians in Illinois, Solow and Rhodes observe that there are important differences between parents who want their children to succeed and parents who want their children to grow. Identifying those parents and the support they have given, and likely will give, is crucial in making radical acceleration work.

And what happens twenty years or so later? These students have remarkably unremarkable lives. To be sure, most of them continue as students (eight Master of Arts, Master of Science, Master of Fine Arts degree holders, and one in progress; one lawyer; one Ph.D. and one in progress; one M.D. in progress). But they don’t speak of isolation and feeling different, even when they are different. One young woman entered law school at eighteen and surprised her classmates when everyone went to a bar and she couldn’t order a drink. She was confident, they were respectful, and the evening rolled on. Other alumnae describe the nuts and bolts of everyday life: putting a bed in an office because of fibromyalgia; struggling to come out to a father; juggling her desire to build a woodworking business and her promise to finish her parents’ kitchen remodeling. These details are small, sometimes humorous, and very reassuring. Being denied normalcy in their mid-teens, these women are having typical, mostly stable and happy, ordinary adult lives.

Two clear advantages of radical acceleration for women emerge. First, they have more time to complete their educations and build careers before they start families. For a number of women, there is a new dimension to balancing career and family development. The challenge for some women, especially working in professions which require lengthy educations and apprenticeships, is finding the point at which to divide a career between working long hours and working with flexibility once professional credentials are in place. Radical acceleration adds years to early career building. Second, being younger at graduation means the women have “extra time as a bonus, not as a launching pad for another round of running ahead.” It struck me that these bonus years can be transferred years. Skipping over high school moves years that can be destructive and esteem-busting into post-college years better lived because the whole self is more formed. Social development is a lifelong affair.

College at 13’s shortcoming is that these are successful entrants and graduates of radical acceleration. Rhodes’s and Solow’s fourteen PEG alumnae are among twenty handpicked by Mary Baldwin’s administration. Did everyone’s story go so well? What about the students who dropped out of PEG, or struggled with their youthfulness after graduation? And are all successes Mary Baldwin graduations? Several years ago I worked with a young woman who attended PEG for one year, “because I needed a break from high school.” Feeling better about herself, she was ready to return to high school.

Solow and Rhodes do us all a favor by shining light on a subject that can arouse passions without understanding. We talk often about supporting the whole gifted child. What exactly does radical acceleration offer the whole gifted adult? Not every gifted child is a good candidate for radical acceleration. Not every gifted child is a good candidate for high school. College at 13 contributes to understanding the differences.

Kate Duey is a private college counselor serving gifted students. She has worked with students who are age-mates with their graduating high school class, home schooled students, community college students, and students seeking accelerated or early college entrance. Kate is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Business School. She has a Certificate in College Counseling from UCLA. She also has three incredible daughters.

Kate will be speaking about college selection and admissions for gifted students at ÓĹĂŰĘÓƵ’s next parent meeting on March 30th. Register for this free event here (the event has since ended).

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College Selection and Admissions for Gifted Students: Resources /blog-college-selection-and-admissions-for-gifted-students-resources/ /blog-college-selection-and-admissions-for-gifted-students-resources/#respond Wed, 20 May 2015 05:50:05 +0000 https://ieadev.wpengine.com/blog-college-selection-and-admissions-for-gifted-students-resources/ Kate Duey is the Director of Admission Planning, LLC. She has worked with ÓĹĂŰĘÓƵ supporting gifted students since 2009 and has a wealth of knowledge about their unique challenges and their wonderful potential. Kate has a BA from Harvard College and an MBA from Harvard Business School. She earned College Counseling Certification from the University of California, Los Angeles. Kate is a member of the National Association of College Admission Counselors, the Western Association of College Admission Counselors, and the California Association for the Gifted.

Gifted students and their families face special challenges during the college search and application process. ÓĹĂŰĘÓƵ parent and supporter Kate Duey recently spoke to a group of parents and students about these challenges during an ÓĹĂŰĘÓƵ Gifted Child Parent Support Group Meeting.

Below are some of the resources Kate recommends on college selection and admissions for gifted students.

Online Comprehensive Resources

Books for Gifted Applicants 

Interesting Webpages for Gifted Applicants

Books for All College Applicants

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Liberal Arts vs. Research Universities for Science Students /blog-liberal-arts-vs-research-universities-for-science-students/ /blog-liberal-arts-vs-research-universities-for-science-students/#respond Wed, 29 May 2013 05:17:58 +0000 https://ieadev.wpengine.com/blog-liberal-arts-vs-research-universities-for-science-students/ By Kate Duey

Kate Duey is a private college counselor serving gifted students. She has worked with students on traditional schooling paths, home schooled students, community college students, and students seeking accelerated or early college entrance. Kate is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Business School. She has a Certificate in College Counseling from UCLA.

ElonIs an aspiring Ph.D. in the sciences better served by an undergraduate education at a liberal arts college or a research university? The vast majority (83%) of Ph.D.’s in science are awarded to students who graduated from research universities. The top ten research universities graduating undergraduates who go on to earn the most Ph.D.’s in the sciences are:

    1. UC Berkeley
    2. University of Michigan
    3. Cornell University
    4. M.I.T.
    5. University of Wisconsin, Madison
    6. Penn State
    7. UCLA
    8. Harvard
    9. University of Minnesota
    10. University of Washington

Liberal arts schools, however, educate roughly 8% of American college students, and from those 8% come 17% of Ph.D.’s in science. Thought of another way, the per capita distribution of science Ph.D.’s is twice as high in a liberal arts college as in a research university. Among the National Academy of Science members, 19% received their undergraduate education at liberal arts schools. The top ten liberal arts colleges graduating undergraduates who per capita go on to earn the most Ph.D.’s in the sciences are:

  1. Swarthmore
  2. Carleton
  3. Haverford
  4. Grinnell
  5. Oberlin
  6. Pomona
  7. Bryn Mawr
  8. Williams
  9. Amherst
  10. Wesleyan

Why are liberal arts colleges more productive at preparing science Ph.D.’s?

Thomas R. Cech, a Nobel Prize winner in chemistry who led breakthroughs in the catalytic properties of RNA, discusses this in “”.

Dr. Cech offers several explanations for the imbalance, including:

Characteristic Liberal Arts Colleges Research Universities
Professorial focus – Teaching undergraduates
– Researching on a small scale
– Access to professors leads to
confidence and self-worth
– Teaching graduate students
– Researching on a large scale
– Publishing
– Applying for research funding
– Building national and international prominence
– Fundraising for the university
– Performing public service in other educational settings
– Working on state-wide economic development programs
– Coordinating intellectual property controls
– Teaching undergraduates
Cross-training – More requirements in multiple
fields
– Seeing conflicting data in multiple fields
– More demands to interpret new information
– More written assignments
– More in-class discussions and presentations
– Fewer requirements in
multiple fields
– Can take more science
classes
Which students gain experience as lab assistants? Juniors or seniors who have distinguished themselves Graduate and Postdoctoral students who are required to work as part of stipend
Lab schedules – Fewer lab users
– Lab assignments can become open-ended
– Less competition for equipment
– Professors typically supervise lab work
– More lab users
– Lab time must be scheduled
– Lab experiments are designed to be straight-forward and predictable to accommodate demands on lab time
– Budget cuts intensify these issues
Professorial Contact – Introductory classes typically have 50 students
– 3rd and 4th year classes typically have 12 students
– Introductory classes typically have 500 students
– 3rd and 4th year classes typically have 100 students
Fellow students – Selectivity means stronger
academic preparedness overall
– Higher performing students
create a culture of academic
development
– Undergraduates witness higher levels of scholarship and competitiveness of academic research

As Dr. Cech illustrates, it is worth exploring all options available to you when looking for a university science program, including liberal arts universities.

What has your experience been with science programs at liberal arts or research universities? Please share in the comment section below!

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“College at 13” Book Review /college-at-13-book-review/ /college-at-13-book-review/#respond Wed, 10 Apr 2013 05:35:47 +0000 https://ieadev.wpengine.com/college-at-13-book-review/ By Kate Duey

Kate Duey is a private college counselor serving gifted students. She has worked with students on traditional schooling paths, home schooled students, community college students and students seeking accelerated or early college entrance. Kate is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Business School. She has a Certificate in College Counseling from UCLA.

College at 13Razel Solow, Ph.D., and Celeste Rhodes, Ph.D., turn the chief criticism of early college entrance–that early entrance inhibits healthy social development–on its head in (Great Potential Press, 2012). Their book is centered on a longitudinal study of fourteen women who entered Mary Baldwin College’s Program for the Exceptionally Gifted (PEG) between the ages of 13 and 16. Dr. Rhodes, who had been the Assistant, Associate and Executive Director of PEG, began the study supported by a grant from the Malone Family Foundation. When poor health precluded her from continuing her work, Dr. Rhodes invited Dr. Solow to finish the project. Dr. Solow is the former Director, Center for Gifted Studies and Education, at Hunter College.

Rhodes and Solow’s case study materials stretch from birth into well-formed adult lives. Pseudonymously presented, the PEG graduates share their lives’ stories in detail. The reasons they entered PEG offer important insights into the life of a gifted girl in middle school. Many scholarly publications on the development of gifted children precede College at 13, but Rhodes and Solow stay away from normed studies. Instead, they stay with their subjects’ voices and let these fourteen women describe the world of giftedness. The women share stories of being isolated, confused, humiliated and slapped. The authors spare nothing.

Grounded in this detail, Solow and Rhodes make the case that socialization and social development ought not to be confused. Socialization, the art of joining a group, can be impossible if the group is fundamentally hostile. The middle school years, when students turn away from their families and toward their peers, present a painful choice: give up your passions, conform and be included; or not. Beyond fellow students, the girls’ teachers are a mixed bag, some supportive and some clearly annoyed. The consequences of socialization denied include social development inhibited. Echoing her fellow PEGs, Julia says, “Not caring about what everyone thinks is one thing, but feeling okay about being different is something else.”

Supportive parents are the heroes of the book, and Solow and Rhodes get to the parents’ stories straightaway. It takes a special kind of mother and father to move a thirteen-year-old daughter onto a college campus. Words describing home life with these parents include “peace,” “trust” and “seriousness”. Over and over, the parents talk about how they want their daughters to pursue the daughters’ dreams and interests. Comparing these students to a study of 81 class valedictorians in Illinois, Solow and Rhodes observe that there are important differences between parents who want their children to succeed and parents who want their children to grow. Identifying those parents, and the support they have given and likely will give, is crucial in making radical acceleration work.

And what happens twenty years or so later? These students have remarkably unremarkable lives. To be sure, most of them continue as students (eight MA/MS/MFA degree holders, and one in progress; one lawyer; one Ph.D. and one in progress; one MD in progress). But they don’t speak of isolation and feeling different, even when they are different. One young woman entered law school at eighteen and surprised her classmates when everyone went to a bar and she couldn’t order a drink. She was confident, they were respectful and the evening rolled on. Other alumnae describe the nuts and bolts of everyday life: putting a bed in an office because of fibromyalgia; struggling to come out to a father; and coping, simultaneously, with her desire to build a woodworking business and her promise to finish her parents’ kitchen remodeling. These details are small, sometimes humorous and very reassuring. Being denied normalcy in their mid-teens, these women are having mostly stable and mostly happy ordinary adult lives.

Two clear advantages of radical acceleration for women emerge. First, they have more time to complete their educations and build careers before they start families. The challenge for many women, especially working in professions which require lengthy educations and apprenticeships, is the point at which to divide a career between working flat out and working with flexibility once professional credentials are in place. Second, being younger at graduation means the women have “extra time as a bonus, not as a launching pad for another round of running ahead.” It struck me that these are not really bonus years, but transferred years. Skipping over high school moves years that can be destructive and esteem-busting into years better lived because the whole self is better formed. Social development is a lifelong affair.

College at 13’s shortcoming is that these are successful entrants and graduates of radical acceleration. Rhodes and Solow’s fourteen PEG alumnae are among twenty handpicked by Mary Baldwin’s administration. Did everyone’s story go so well? What about the students who dropped out of PEG or struggled with their youthfulness after graduation?

Solow and Rhodes do us all a favor by shining light on a subject that can arouse passions without understanding. We talk often about supporting the whole gifted child. What exactly does radical acceleration offer the whole gifted adult? Not every gifted child is a good candidate for radical acceleration. Not every gifted child is a good candidate for high school. College at 13 contributes to understanding the differences.

Have you read College at 13? Please let us know what you thought in the comment section below!

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Summer Programs and Intensities /blog-summer-programs-and-intensities/ /blog-summer-programs-and-intensities/#respond Thu, 14 Mar 2013 07:01:27 +0000 https://ieadev.wpengine.com/blog-summer-programs-and-intensities/ By Kate Duey

Selecting an appropriate summer camp for a gifted student requires careful consideration of the whole child. Who are they, and how can they benefit from the summer? There are no standard answers to this. Some students want to spend the summer more fully pursuing a passion. Others want to try something new. And some don’t want to go to camp at all, preferring to read, imagine, work for money, visit family, or more. All of these are worthwhile options.

To understand a child’s greatest strengths and needs, and how educational choices can best support a child, I often look to Dabrowski’s Theory of Overexcitabilities, also often called . If we can identify a child’s intensities, we can better analyze which resources best serve him or her. For a good understanding of Dabrowski’s theory of gifted children and their intensities, I recommend Sharon Lind’s article, “.”

Before considering the environment of a summer program, there are a few overarching questions to consider. Do they want to fill their summer with what they already know they like, or do they choose to try something personally challenging? Do they want to stay in their comfort zone, or experience a summer outside of it? After your child has answered these questions, you can think about your child’s needs more specifically. Here are ideas, based on my work with gifted children, to help you think about summer camps and programs based on their personal intensities.

Psychomotor Overexcitabilities

These children are restless, driven, usually in movement, active and energetic. They can successfully attend camps with non-athletic foci, but they must have daily opportunities for physical expression.

Last summer a gifted rising high school senior was in a college counseling seminar I led. The best part of his summer was playing basketball, and it seemed the worst part was sitting in my two-hour meeting. His dream is to attend the U.S. Naval Academy, and toward that he had an aggressive schedule of running and weight lifting. Another student told me he had to practice circus stunts every day or he would be depressed.

A summer experience for this type of student should in some way include:

  • A big campus with easy access to open spaces
  • Fast-paced sports options
  • Challenging physical activities with some sense of riskiness
  • A climate that allows daily outdoor activities
  • Sleeping arrangements that accommodate students who need fewer than average hours of sleep
  • Camp programing that encourages students to settle themselves into some quiet time

Sensual Overexcitabilities

These children are highly sensitive to pleasurable or displeasureable sights, smells, textures, tastes and sounds. They can feel overwhelmed by increased sensory input, especially if they are placed in a displeasureable environment. Food quality is particularly important for these children. Music, language and art camps are well suited to these students.

A summer experience for this type of student should in some way include:

  • Appealing food – One ÓĹĂŰĘÓƵ client attended a Chinese language camp, which was a great experience for her – except that she did not like Chinese food. (She did come to like some of the menu’s choices.) Camps with strong kitchen odors can also be a problem for these children.
  • Supportive dining arrangements – Food is what you eat, plus how you eat it. Is the meal rushed? Is the camp turning over tables to feed everyone? Is the eating area clean? Or are students encouraged to sit, have conversation and stay at the table as long as they want?
  • Good air quality
  • Access to music
  • Visually soothing campus – One student told me she would only feel peaceful if she was surrounded by trees.

Intellectual Overexcitabilities

These children need to seek, understand, analyze and synthesize knowledge. They are able to concentrate for long periods and love to talk about theoretical and moral issues. They can be unintentionally critical of other students who are not peers.

Last month, I was in workshops with gifted high school students who aired their frustrations with limits on intellectual exploration. Most of them cited teachers who were sometimes unable to explain advanced material. AP classes are a mixed blessing: there is more advanced material, but so many assignments and a strict curriculum crowd out genuine thought.

A summer experience for this type of student should in some way include:

  • Association with teachers or mentors who have complete mastery of their field
  • Connection with peers who can socialize in compatible ways
  • Intense learning possibilities
  • Opportunities to discuss moral concerns
  • Time to read

Imaginational Overexcitabilities

These children often create their own private worlds with imaginary people and storylines. They tend to prefer fantasies and dreams over facts and have preferences for the unique and unusual.

One gifted student interested in art had a superb summer in an architecture program. He was thrilled when his teacher gave him a viewfinder and told him to walk around the city, looking only at the details of architectural elements. He loved it all, especially working with the viewfinder.

A summer experience for this type of student should in some way include:

  • Creative inlets and outlets such as plays, movies, creative writing, poetry, photography and crafts
  • Storytelling
  • Access to workshop space on an as-needed schedule
  • Free time to imagine and wander
  • Something within the program that is new to the student and out of the ordinary

Emotional Overexcitabilities

These children have intense feelings within themselves and strongly identify with the feelings of others. Their intensity includes physical responses, such as stomach aches, and they can be accused of over-reacting in situations.

This intensity is a challenge for residential camp staff, especially if the camp counselors are young. One student with emotional overexcitabilities was unable to sleep at residential camp until she was allowed a visitor and began to receive daily mail.

A summer experience for this type of student should include:

  • An empathetic environment
  • Mature counselors with good communication skills
  • Camp commitment to accepting all feelings
  • A calm environment, sometimes facilitated by a low staff to student ratio
  • Good medical facilities, especially if the child is on any medication

As an organization specifically dedicated to serving gifted students, all of keep these overexcitabilities in mind. For programs not specifically designed for gifted students, theses intensities are important to consider and have the potential to make a significant difference in your child’s summer program experience.

ÓĹĂŰĘÓƵ is currently accepting applications for summer programs for gifted kids ages 5 to 18. For more information about these programs, please visit the . Apply today!

What factors do you consider when selecting a summer program for your gifted child? Please share in the comment section below.

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Consider Taking a Gap Year, and Bring Your Zeitgeist to College /blog-consider-taking-a-gap-year-and-bring-your-zeitgeist-to-college/ /blog-consider-taking-a-gap-year-and-bring-your-zeitgeist-to-college/#respond Wed, 30 Jan 2013 07:08:38 +0000 https://ieadev.wpengine.com/blog-consider-taking-a-gap-year-and-bring-your-zeitgeist-to-college/ By Kate Duey

Kate Duey is a private college counselor serving gifted students. She has worked with students on traditional schooling paths, home schooled students, community college students, and students seeking accelerated or early college entrance. Kate is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Business School. She has a Certificate in College Counseling from UCLA.

What happens if a student graduates from high school exhausted? AP classes, standardized testing, extracurricular activities, sports, music, community service, research projects…and all of those college essays! What if they worked so hard they can’t remember what they like? Are they ready for four or five or six more years?

Among gifted high school students, it is especially important to remember that giftedness is innate to a person, and we should embrace the whole student by supporting their intellectual, social, spiritual, emotional and physical growth. When a gifted student’s high school years disproportionately emphasize intellectual development, the whole person is neglected. Refreshing all parts of a gifted student’s self helps to focus his or her intensities in ways that work with and for the student.

For graduating high school students who find themselves exhausted, an intentional pause to decompress and plan their next steps – a “gap year” between high school and college –could be a viable option. They often enter college with better perspective, more maturity, chronological alignment with his or her class, and enthusiasm for an old or new interest elevates the student’s whole experience.

Taking a gap year does not mean the student does not apply to college as a high school senior; they absolutely should. As a high school student, he or she has access to the teachers and counselors who will write letters of recommendation, grades and test scores are in hand, and good reference materials to search for college are easier to access. Definitely apply! Then, defer.

As a college counselor working with gifted high school students, I’ve twice seriously advised a gap year. One student considered extreme mountaineering, the other living in Europe with extended family. (Admittedly, neither did it.) I’ve talked about it with every student who has an interest in studying foreign languages. Among our tabloid friends, Prince William and Kate Middleton took gap years. Kate spent much of hers studying Italian. Every year, fifty to seventy students defer entrance into Harvard College for a gap year. In 2006, Harvard reported some of the focuses of those gap years:

  • Backpacking
  • Caring for grandparents
  • Writing the Next Great American Novel
  • e-commerce startup
  • Figure skating
  • Kibbutz life
  • Language study
  • Military service
  • Mineralogy
  • Ěý˛ŃłÜ˛őľ±ł¦
  • Political campaigns
  • Reading
  • Special needs education
  • Sports
  • Steel drumming
  • Storytelling
  • Swing dancing
  • Working to save money for college

Parents often worry that, by detaching from a year-to-year academic progression, their child will fall behind. Colleges seldom see it that way, and many letters of admission come with the option of deferring for a year. Once in college, students are often encouraged to take a year off, and college student counseling centers freely offer advice about opportunities. Splitting the difference, some colleges offer mid-year entrance, allowing the student a “gap semester.” American University and Brandeis University have formal off-campus programs for first-year fall semester.

A year off can center around any endeavor. Now that average student indebtedness at graduation is $25,200, saving for a year before college can create more flexibility after college. Another opportunity is more family time, especially with grandparents, which may have been sacrificed for academic achievement.

Some parents and students prefer a structured year. There are many services which will match a student with a gap year program, and a quick internet search will yield many. Also, think outside of the box; my personal favorite was a year at Austin Community College studying blacksmithing.

A gap year can make for a more interesting student, capable of adding more to the academic community. Best of all, students can discover their passions and capture their zeitgeist before they begin college.

Has your child considered taking a gap year? Please share your experience in the comment section below.

Kate will be discussing college admissions at our next . The talk will take place at 6:30 pm on February 13, 2013, at the ÓĹĂŰĘÓƵ Learning Center, located at 625 Fair Oaks Avenue, Suite 288, South Pasadena, CA 91030 (across the hall from the ÓĹĂŰĘÓƵ main office). Please RSVP to reception@educationaladvancement.org. We hope to see you there!

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