There鈥檚 little disagreement that the past year-plus has had its share of challenges and obstacles brought on by the pandemic. While few demographics were spared, student were hit especially hard by the demands of virtual school and the almost complete lack of campus and outside activities and socialization with friends and classmates. Until very recently, this year鈥檚 graduating class of high school seniors were pretty much 鈥渇lying blind鈥� to quote a CDB Scholar when it came to visiting any college and university. And those rare campuses that did allow visitors on site offered no campus tours, in person interviews or informational sessions outside of Zoom webinars, with their student community attending virtual classes.

High school seniors also faced the reality that many of the nation鈥檚 highly selective colleges and universities dealt with a surge in applications, as the previously mandated SAT and ACT tests were optional for the 2021 application year. This resulted in applicants who previously would not have met test standards stipulated at certain universities and colleges took the attitude of 鈥渨hat do I have to lose?鈥� and applied to schools that in another year might have been out of reach by virtue of their test scores.

In spite of this changing college application landscape, the CDB high school seniors鈥攖he class of 2021鈥攑ersevered and figured out alternative ways to conduct their college research. As a class, they applied to over sixty colleges and universities in the United States and abroad. Many of the senior Scholars reached out to CDB alumni who currently attend the colleges and universities they were interested in learning more about from insiders at the various schools. I was delighted to hear back from many CDB seniors that the CDB alumni not only responded to their inquiries by phone, email and Zoom sessions, but also reached out to them to let the seniors know who they were and what particular schools they attend to start a dialogue. As more schools opened up in April and May, some of the seniors were able to visit the colleges where they were admitted and meet with CDB alums in person鈥攎asked and safely socially distanced.

This year鈥檚 CDB seniors will matriculate to colleges and universities throughout the United States and abroad, schools that match their academic interests and offer them the opportunity to pursue ongoing areas of interest as well as many course possibilities to explore. One CDB  Scholar will be taking a gap year and plans to pursue advanced educational and service projects before starting college in 2022. Another CDB Scholar will be attending Oxford University in England.

CDB Scholars from the class of 2021 have been recognized with multiple academic, service and achievement awards and recognition including Presidential Scholars, National Merit Scholar Finalists, Valedictorians and Saluditorians of their class as well as matriculating to honors programs at their upcoming colleges and universities.

CDB welcomed ten new schools and programs to our international list of colleges and universities attended by CDB Scholars since the inaugural class of 2002 Scholars. Here is a list of the schools and programs the CDB class of 2021 will attend this coming fall. Several Scholars are still deciding among their admission options:

• Brown University
• Brown University鈥檚 PLME program (an eight year program for students who are committed to a career in medicine and who also want a broad liberal arts education)
• Bryn Mawr College
• Columbia University
• California University of Technology
• Columbia University
• Georgetown University
• George Washington University
• Harvard College
• Macalister College
• Oxford University
• Stanford University
• University of Florida Stamps Scholar Program
• University of Pennsylvania
• University of Pennsylvania Management and Technology Program
• University of Texas  Agriculture and Mechanical Honors Program
• Washington and Lee University
• Webb Institute
• Wellesley College
• Whitman College

The 优蜜视频 and CDB communities wish our graduating high School seniors a successful and engaging next chapter of their lives and look forward to staying in contact with them as they continue to thrive.

What are some educational, personal and professional highlights and/or accomplishments of yours since graduating from high school?

Graduated from Stanford with my BS in Computer Science (started out very intent on the Engineering Physics major; in classic Stanford fashion, accidentally took a CS course, discovered I could not put the books down, ignored everything about “be different, be different, don’t become a CS major” and became a CS major).听 Did a bunch of research like optical character recognition on historical law texts (my favorite library was the law library), gamified e-commerce, wrote my own programming language (on top of Python, silly me), etc. etc.听 Did a bunch of internships, most memorably LinkedIn the summer they announced the Microsoft acquisition.听 Started my MS in Computer Science also at Stanford but pulled a Larry & Sergey and took leave of absence听because I could not wait to get my hands dirty in industry.

I wanted to go way out of my comfort zone so I did the hardest thing imaginable and joined Bridgewater (hedge fund) because I’d fallen in love with portfolio management algorithms.听 I learned so much about how the world’s most intense systems (hundreds of billions of dollars) are engineered and optimized and re-engineered and re-optimized to the tiniest granularity possible.听 But I could not ignore my growing hunger to keep learning and building things for people, for human lives, for my family & friends to enjoy, so last year I joined Alexa at Amazon where I am now a software engineer working on a team that is building smart shopping for grocery, physical stores, and all sorts of devices among other things, which has become exponentially more useful and relevant to the world in this past year.听 Very excited to see what we can make for all of you.

What is a favorite 优蜜视频/CDB memory?

This is going to be a very predictable but I think important answer. Not even a few days into my first year of college, an 优蜜视频 alumna reached out to a group of new college freshmen to invite us to brunch. We had met perhaps once in person before then, but we instantly bonded as a group over our mutual shared experiences, the Conferences and events,听and appreciation for the 优蜜视频 community and those that make it possible. (It’s a widely known secret – I’m now going to only partially spill the beans – that there is a group of us self branded as “Bonnie’s kids” or some similar lingo which changes over the years. I am not sure what the current lingo is, so I’m not spilling the full beans, but Bonnie’s kids meet up all over the world and it is delightful and hilarious and heartwarming to me every time.)

What words of wisdom would you pass on to current 优蜜视频 students?

This question makes me laugh because I am absolutely not wise and do not feel qualified to write anything here.听 Maybe I’ll be able to say more at an 优蜜视频 event someday.听 One thing I do want to say, though, is to take the advice of your mentors seriously and yet not be afraid to challenge them and do things differently when your gut is screaming at you to听do otherwise.听 Who knows if this is the “right” way to do things, but I have found I am happiest and most able to act on my instincts when I know it’s right for me and it’s not what people expect of me.听 I think when that divergence happens, if (especially) it’s painful to reconcile, that’s a great sign that you’re following your internal compass and being true to yourself.

There was a time when children were taught to be 鈥渟een and not heard,鈥� and yet today, many of the world鈥檚 most powerful leaders and harbingers for change are under the age of 20. Here are five inspiring young people who are trailblazing for a new generation of activists and innovators.

1. Greta Thunberg: Climate change activist

Age: 17

Greta Thunberg started out as a lone protestor advocating for climate change policy and was eventually named . Since photos of her holding a sign outside the Swedish Parliament went viral, she has become the leader in a mass youth movement for climate change activism. In September 2019, 4 million people joined her in the global climate strike, many of them being school-aged youth who walked out of classrooms and schools. She has become a symbol of youth activism and continues to meet with some of the world鈥檚 most influential leaders, speaking at climate rallies, forums and parliaments.

2. The Parkland School Students: Gun control activists

Ages: 19, 20

Since the devasting school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on February 14, 2018, many surviving students such as Emma Gonzalez, Jaclyn Corin, and David Hogg have become the of a large youth movement for stricter gun control laws. The students founded Never Again MSD, a coalition of the larger Never Again organization, and led the powerful march and demonstration 鈥淢arch for Our Lives鈥� in Washington, D.C. They continue to lead and inspire youth activists who are advocating for gun control policies.

3. Thandiwe Abdullah: Co-founder of the Black Lives Matter LA Youth Vanguard

Age: 15

Abdullah is the co-founder of the Black Lives Matter LA Youth Vanguard and in 2018 was named one of TIME鈥檚 most influential teens. In the wake of movements like Never Again, she called for the youth gun control movement to become more intersectional, particularly when it comes to children of color. The LA Youth Vanguard organizes students and adult allies in the over-policing of Los Angeles鈥� public schools. The group also works closely with the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) labor union to campaign against the criminalization of black youth.

4. Jack Cable: Computer programmer, 鈥渨hite hat鈥� hacker, and business owner

Age: 19

Many of us think of hackers as masterminds who use their tech brilliance to promote widespread havoc, sometimes for personal gain and sometimes for the sake of a joke. Jack Cable is a 鈥渨hite hat hacker,鈥� a tech mastermind who finds and reports bugs rather than taking advantage of them. Cable is a student at Stanford University and the winner of the HackIT Cup in Kyiv, Ukraine, where the one-and-only Steve Wozniak presented his award. He also founded Lightning Security, a firm that helps cryptocurrency companies protect themselves against traditional hackers.

5. Sheku Kanneh-Mason: Cellist

Age: 20

Kanneh-Mason, the first BBC Young Musician to achieve 鈥渢op 40鈥� status with a debut record, began playing the cello as a six-year-old and had won a scholarship to the Junior Academy of the Royal Academy of Music by age nine. He participated on Britain鈥檚 Got Talent in 2015, and he was featured in a BBC documentary entitled Young, Gifted and Classical: The Making of a Maestro the next year. He has since received myriad awards, including the Male Artist of the Year and Critics鈥� Choice Awards at the Classic Brit Awards, the 2019 PPL Classical Award, and the South Bank Sky Arts Breakthrough Award, an honor bestowed on the 鈥渕ost promising young artist across all genres.鈥� In May of 2018, Kanneh-Mason achieved widespread notoriety when he played his cello at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. The same year, he was appointed the global ambassador for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. He donated a chunk of his 2018 earnings to his former school, enabling ten students to continue their cello lessons. Kanneh-Mason currently studies at the Royal Academy of Music, and his latest album, Elgar, was released in January of 2020.

Summer is here and you may be wondering what programs or activities are available for your child to attend. We have done some research for you and compiled a list of fantastic Summer programs that serve gifted youth. All these programs come from the , Institute for Educational Advancement鈥檚 database. The GRC is a free public tool which serves as an online database of resources appropriate for the gifted learner from Preschool through High School. The GRC contains an abundance of resources and information regarding advocacy, gifted programs and organizations, schools, scholarships, supplemental learning opportunities, testing and counseling professionals, and the twice-exceptional (2e) learner.

Below is a sample of some of the resources that offer and provide activities during the summer. More information about these programs, as well as many more that are not listed here, is available on the .

9-12

Girls Who Code offers a free 7-week summer program for current 10th-11th-grade girls to learn to code and get exposure to tech jobs. Each week the program covers projects related to computer science, such as art, storytelling, robotics, video games, web sites, and apps. Participants will also hear from guest speakers, participate in workshops, connect with female engineers and entrepreneurs, and go on field trips. The program culminates in a final project where students build their own product and share it with the class.

6-8 路 9-12

Digital Media Academy is a nationally recognized organization that provides hands-on summer resi颅dential and day computer camps for teens as well as youth (ages 9-13).

6-8 路 9-12

Summer Discovery is a pre-college academic enrichment program offering middle school and high school students a meaningful summer experience with lifelong value. Choose from over 300 interactive courses at 14 different university locations in the United States and abroad. Their summer programs combine academics with social activities, travel, recreation, and sports.

K-5 路 6-8 路 9-12

CodeREV Kids provides classes and curriculum for students ages 6 to 18, focused on explor颅ing STEM by learning coding, technology, and robotics. Classes are project-based, allowing stu颅dents to engage in deep learning through unique creations and hands-on projects. CodeREV offers classes and summer tech camps in a variety of locations throughout Southern California: Santa Monica, Solana Beach, Encino, Irvine, Beverly Hills, Fountain Valley/Huntington Beach, and Mali颅bu/Palisades.

K-5 路 6-8 路 9-12

Girls Garage is a one-of-a-kind design and building program and a dedicated workspace for girls ages 9 to 17. Located in Berkeley, California, it offers after-school programs, summer camps, and workshops.

优蜜视频 ACADEMY K-5 路 6-8

优蜜视频 Academy is a program of the Institute for Educational Advancement which provides students in Kin颅dergarten through 8th grade with advanced learning opportunities that promote exploration and ap颅plication of knowledge. Classes are taught by content-area specialists and taught at a flexible pace to accommodate the learning needs of gifted and 2e students. Classes are small and grouped by ability rather than chronological age. 优蜜视频 Academy sessions take place in Pasadena, California and are held seasonally: fall, spring and summer (three sessions hosted each summer).

9-12

Stanford High School Summer College offers academically outstanding high school students the oppor颅tunity to take Stanford College courses and earn university credit. Program participants enroll as visiting undergraduates in Stanford鈥檚 Summer Quarter and take the same courses, taught by the same Stanford faculty, as matriculated Stanford students.

6-8 路 9-12

Summer@HPA offers students entering grades 6 through 12 a unique four-week day and boarding expe颅rience structured for academic enrichment and designed to make the most of summer and take advan颅tage of our wondrous island-home to 80 percent of the world鈥檚 ecosystems. The diverse class offerings integrate environmental stewardship and awareness, and sustainability education and practices.

K-5 路 6-8 路 9-12

From early childhood through elementary, middle and high school, Center for Talent Development (CTD) gifted summer programs encourage gifted kids to explore academic areas of interest and con颅nect with a community of peers. CTD offers life-changing residential and commuter programs provid颅ing challenging enrichment, honors and Advanced Placement courses taught in a highly supportive environment.

9-12

Summer Academy is a two-week academic program designed to provide US and international rising 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th graders the opportunity to have a glimpse of college life for two weeks during the summer. During their stay on campus, students take one of the different classes offered such as Exam Preparation, Debate, Engineering, Arts, or Literature and earn a 陆 Carnegie high school credit for this classwork.

PRE-K 路 K-5 路 6-8
The Quad Manhattan is an inclusive meeting place for Twice-Exceptional kids 鈥� a place where social and executive functioning 鈥渓ife鈥� skills are developed through FUN! Twice Exceptional or 2e children have intellectual or creative gifts, and also have lagging social or executive functioning skills. Developed by experts in medicine, child psychology and gifted special education, the Quad uses kids鈥� strengths and passions to hide skill development in creative and engaging afterschool classes and activities during our summer camp.

9-12

Carnegie Mellon鈥檚 Pre-College programs will show you what college life is all about鈥攆rom the class颅room to what鈥檚 happening on weekends. Carnegie Mellon offers Pre-College summer programs in a variety of subject areas, such as math, science, architecture, drama, music, art, and gaming. There are no tuition, housing or dining fees for students selected to attend the Summer Programs for Diversity.

PRE-K 路 K-5 路 6-8 路 9-12

Summer Wonders is a nonresidential, full or half-day program that allows students to explore diverse subjects in a challenging, creative environment through an integrative, hands-on, non-traditional ap颅proach. Summer Wonders is a specialty program for gifted children entering Pre-K through 6th grade and is held during three different two-week sessions at ACE Academy in Austin, Texas.

K-5

Gifted student Cassidy Kao published her first book at 8 years old and founded iPoetTree at 12 years old. The nonprofit organization seeks to inspire a passion for writing in kids kindergarten to 6th grade. Cassidy provides a fun and free curriculum, supportive environment for sharing poems, and assis颅tance with becoming a published author like her.

听In addition to searching the hundreds of resources in the GRC, you can also download our and with opportunities for K-12 students. and check out our curated Guides.

听Like this post?听听to receive more stories, information, and resources about gifted youth straight to your inbox.

If someone had asked me before my ninth grade summer if I knew what Artificial Intelligence was, I would have talked about Ava in the film Ex Machina. Ava, though technically a robot, has a consciousness, morals of her own, an ability to manipulate emotion and an ability to act on her own instinct. The film inspires unsettling uncertainty: if AI beings like Ava were to join society, would they be considered human? What role would we play in such a world?

In reality, however, AI is far from being as autonomous as Ava is. Though pop culture has popularized an image of AI as robots and superhumans, an AI algorithm can actually be as simple as a 5-line program that scans a massive amount of data, looking for patterns within this data. Using these patterns, the program can make predictions for new instances of related data. For example, Google Photos was trained with millions of photos of labelled entities, so that when given photos it had never seen before, it could categorize these photos by what they pictured.

Although this explanation generalizes certain aspects of AI, what鈥檚 significant is that the data used to train AI algorithms is chosen by human programmers. This means that programmers can, even if unconsciously or inadvertently, introduce their racial and other biases into the algorithms they create. This can sometimes be innocuous, but more often this can institutionalize these biases. For instance, in 2015, Google Photos鈥� photo categorization software mislabeled a black person as a gorilla. This is only one extremely infamous incident out of thousands.

One source of the problem is the astounding lack of diversity in the AI industry; at Google, only 2.5% of the workforce is black, only 3.6% is Latinx and only 0.3% is Native American. The lack of true demographic representation in the AI industry is an issue that is under-acknowledged but increasingly pressing as the use of AI technologies propagates across industries and sectors, including law enforcement, healthcare and scientific research.

AI4ALL was founded by world-renown Stanford professor Fei-Fei Li and then-graduate student Olga Russakovsky with the goal of educating high schoolers from underrepresented groups, including women, about AI and the humanitarian impact AI can have if done right. The organization鈥檚 aim is to diversify both the AI workforce and inform on the ways in which AI can be applied to social issues.

In 2017, I participated in a two-week , where close to thirty girls were exposed to a myriad of lectures by Stanford professors and other leaders in AI; we learned about how AI is applied to everything from education to linguistics research to robotics. We were also taught how to program our own AI algorithms addressing a social issue; one group identified cancerous tissue with Computer Vision, a subsect of AI, and my group used another subsect of AI, called Natural Language Processing, to categorize Tweets from the time of a natural disaster into topics like 鈥渇ood,鈥� 鈥渨ater,鈥� 鈥渙ther鈥� and 鈥渕isc.鈥� in order to expedite resource allocation for disaster relief. I learned from the experience that AI can be leveraged as a tool for social good and as a means of addressing community needs in unprecedented ways.

AI4ALL has been one of the most enriching programs I鈥檝e ever been able to participate in, and the alumni community is a group of some of the most talented yet approachable people I鈥檝e ever met. I鈥檝e made some of my closest friends through AI4ALL, and each is an inspiration; one founded a nonprofit STEM education organization that has taught over 500 children through over 70 workshops, and another started the Bay Area鈥檚 first all-girl high school hackathon. AI4ALL facilitates such efforts by providing a vast network of resources, support and funding.

In conclusion, I truly hope many members of the CDB community choose to apply to an AI4ALL program this summer. For those who are too old, there are still an infinite number of ways to begin understanding how to leverage AI algorithms for social change; AI4ALL is digitizing their curriculum on an OpenLearning platform that will be released in only a few months, and other platforms like Coursera and edX also offer online courses taught by university professors and AI experts.

AI could be the solution to predicting wildfires, ending racial discrimination in the justice system and understanding how to treat chronic illnesses. The industry just needs a diverse workforce – and you – to back it.

Am茅lie Buc is a 2015 Caroline D. Bradley Scholar. She is currently a junior at Trinity School in New York, New York. To learn more about the CDB Scholarship or apply for the 2019 class, visit the .

Mark Erlandson, the parent of a gifted student who presently attends a boarding school out East, is a former lawyer and public high school English teacher from Wisconsin starting a new business as a legal writing consultant.

While many may look at online learning as a recent innovation, the roots of distance learning in the U.S. run deep. As early as the 1800s, clergymen studied by way of correspondence and home study programs, especially for women, flourished. By the early 20th century, educational institutions from colleges to elementary schools offered correspondence classes. Each new technological advancement, including radio and television, was used as a medium for more distance learning. Today computers and the Internet provide the foundation for a new generation of distance learners. The needs of gifted learners at the elementary and secondary levels make the opportunities offered by distance learning particularly suitable.^[1]

The National Center for Education Statistics recently estimated that the number of K-12 public school students enrolling in a technology-based distance learning course grew by 65 percent in the two years from 2002-03 to 2004-05. A 2009 survey estimated that more than a million K鈥� 12 students took online courses in school year 2007鈥�08. A panoply of online learning opportunities is available. They range from courses taken only for enrichment or preparation for future classes to accelerated or honors classes that provide students the chance to earn high-school credits from the students鈥� local schools. More recently 鈥渧irtual schools鈥� have proliferated, e.g., Stanford University Online High School. These schools grant degrees and diplomas. (The U.S. Department of Education has an online guide, , which offers case studies of a variety of online learning opportunities in Part III. In addition to the opportunities found through , has an extensive list of distance learning programs, as does the .)

Several university-based gifted student programs offer distance learning opportunities for elementary and secondary students, the most prominent being The Center for Talented Youth (CTY) at Johns Hopkins University (pre-K – 12), the Talent Identification Program (TIP) at Duke University (grades 8 – 12), the Center for Talented Development (CTD) at Northwestern University (grades 4 – 12), Stanford Online High School (OHS) (grades 7-university level) and GiftedandTalented.com (K – 12). Courses range from the standard 鈥� e.g., Anatomy & Physiology (with a virtual laboratory and experiments), Economics, foreign languages, and AP漏 courses 鈥� to more exotic offerings like The Wonders of Ancient Egypt and Making Moby Dick.

There are also state programs. The Wisconsin Center for Academically Talented Youth (WCATY) Academy, for example, offers an integrated curriculum for gifted students in grades 5 – 8 that blends online learning with face-to-face meetings (approximately three times a quarter). The classes are intended to replace a quarter of language arts, history, science, or math curriculum for students in over 75 school districts throughout the state. In 2011, the Academy served almost 1,600 students.

The delivery and instructional methods of online learning are similarly diverse. Originally, most of these courses were self-paced and basically an independent study class. With the advent of more and more technological advances, contact between teacher and students and between students themselves has increased. Hybrid models of instruction now include virtual class meetings, discussion forums, live text-chatting, real time face-to-face meetings, and interactive white board instruction, among other methods.

There are several advantages to distance learning. Perhaps the most important for the gifted student is the ability to choose from myriad advanced courses not available at the students鈥� own schools or via home-schooling. These needs are particularly acute in the rural and low-income schools where problems range from a lack of resources (everything from teacher training to textbooks) to a lack of a critical mass of gifted students that would make in-school accelerated classes economically feasible. And that is another benefit. A key challenge to keeping gifted learners engaged and growing is exposing them to peers who are just as advanced. Those distance learning classes that require student interaction allow students to do just that.

Another advantage would be more personalized learning. While the variety of courses allow the students to craft a curriculum closer to their interests, the hybrid models of distance learning allow for more one-on-one attention from the course instructor, according to a 2009 survey by Education Week. Because of its more independent nature, distance learning also allows students to move faster through the curriculum and at their own pace.

In addition, 21st-century skills are enhanced through distance learning. These enhanced skills would include self-directed learning, problem-solving skills, information and communications technology literacy, and time-management and personal responsibility. For this reason, among others, the state of Michigan now requires that every high school student complete an online course before graduation.

Several studies have found that gifted students have been successful at distance learning and satisfied with the experience. A U.S. Department of Education meta-analysis of the available research concluded that 鈥淸o]n average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction.鈥� Some positive effects that they found included enhanced independent study skills as well as increases in students鈥� problem-solving abilities, collaborative learning skills, and higher-order thinking skills.

That same U.S. Department of Education meta-analysis also concluded that caution should be used in extrapolating its findings to the K – 12 population. Even less attention has been devoted to studying younger, i.e., pre-secondary, students. Subsequent to that meta-analysis, one major study looked only at students enrolled in the Johns Hopkins University CTY distance education program from July 2005 – March 2007. One major difference was that younger students took courses because of an interest in the content of the course rather than to obtain credit or placement. Another major difference was the emphasis students placed on the relationship with their instructor, suggesting the critical importance of instructor-led courses for these students.

Not all gifted students will achieve in a distance-learning format. To begin, students need to be self-disciplined and experienced with working independently. Perhaps critically, students need to be willing to ask for help since teachers do not have the advantage of non-verbal clues to pick up on student confusion. Of course, strong study and computer skills are also a necessity. Finally, the physical presence of an adult and the support of a parent are also necessary for distance learning to be effective.

A major drawback to distance learning is often isolation and its effect on social skills. Nonverbal communication is extremely limited in this setting where a greater emphasis is given to writing, technological skills, and independent learning. However, the trend is clearly towards more active involvement in these courses as the technology evolves.

Those students who reported being dissatisfied with distance learning often cited a lack of interaction with teachers. Another common concern voiced was the lack of traditional textbooks and written course materials as many courses rely only on computer technologies. Therefore students need to assess their own learning styles and then choose courses wisely.

^[1] The terms 鈥渄istance learning鈥� and 鈥渙nline learning will be used interchangeably throughout the body of this blog. 鈥淒igital learning,鈥� which is not used herein, is quickly replacing both of these terms.

Like this post? to receive more information and resources about gifted youth straight to your inbox.

Have your gifted children participated in any online classes? Share their experiences in the comment section below.

Mark Erlandson, the parent of a gifted student who presently attends a boarding school out East, is a former lawyer and public high school English teacher from Wisconsin starting a new business as a legal writing consultant.

Grit. I鈥檒l admit I didn鈥檛 have it. Twice now I have put this blog down and stopped writing because I felt uninspired and bored. Weeks have gone by, and too many times to count I have ignored that voice telling me the deadline was approaching and I needed to get finished. So how essential is grit to success, and more importantly, how do we teach our children to get it?

鈥淕rit,鈥� otherwise known as persistence or determination, is currently a passion (some would call it a fad) in certain educational circles today. Angela Duckworth, a University of Pennsylvania psychologist, is a leading advocate of the importance of tenacity in life. Watch for a fascinating explanation of the results of her research in the area. Basically, she concludes, based, among other things, on her research of West Point graduates and National Spelling Bee contestants, that what correlates with success most is grit, not intelligence. Similarly, in the area of gifted students, the most famous study, conducted by University of Connecticut psychologist Joseph Renzuli, director of the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented, concluded that 鈥渢ask commitment,鈥� together with ability and creativity, was, indeed, one of the three essential components of giftedness.

Duckworth believes that grit can be quantified. Her University of Pennsylvania website has a . (My score was a 2.25 on a scale of 1 – 5 ,with 5 being the grittiest, and concluded I am 鈥済rittier than at least 1% of the U.S. population.鈥� Ouch, no wonder I can鈥檛 finish this blog.)

So what can we do to ensure our children will have grit when they need it?

First, stop praising your child for his or her intelligence. A Stanford University study found that children praised for their intelligence learned to care more about their grades than about learning on subsequent tasks, and after failing, they were less persistent than their unpraised peers. Instead, praise your children for their hard work and determination. Also emphasize to your children that intelligence can be improved through hard work. Another Stanford study concluded that students who believed that intelligence is malleable earned better grades during the next two years than those who believed that intelligence was fixed. (Carol Dweck, a Stanford University psychology professor, has a designed to measure to what extent you believe that success comes from effort rather than innate intelligence or talent.)

Next, show kids the effect of grit in the real world. Everyone, for example, has heard the story of how Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team but continued to practice. Other examples might include Steve Jobs, who failed at several Apple projects and ended up losing control of the company for several years, and Andrew Wiles, a mathematician who ultimately proved Fermat鈥檚 Theorem after years of failure. Of course, as always, modeling for your children where you have used grit to be successful may be the best teacher. (Maybe I can get my daughter to read this.)

Watch for when your child becomes frustrated. Use this as an opportunity to discuss the everyday nature of frustration, and explain to him or her that this is an opportunity for growth.

Finally, according to Paul Tough in his book How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power Of Character, the best thing to do to develop the character of our children is to let them experience failure. As he states,

American children, especially those who grow up in relative comfort, are, more than ever, shielded from failure as they grow up. They certainly work hard; they often experience a great deal of pressure and stress; but in reality, their path through the education system is easier and smoother than it was for any previous generation. Many of them are able to graduate from college without facing any significant challenges. But if this new research is right, their schools, their families, and their culture may all be doing them a disservice by not giving them more opportunities to struggle. Overcoming adversity is what produces character. And character, even more than IQ, is what leads to real and lasting success.

So now that this blog is done, maybe it鈥檚 time to get that unfinished novel out again and prove Duckworth鈥檚 test wrong.

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References

Duckworth, A. L., Peterson, C., Matthews, M. D., & Kelly, D. R. (2007). Grit: perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Journal of personality and social psychology, 92(6), 1087.

Duckworth, A. L., & Quinn, P. D. (2009). Development and validation of the Short Grit Scale (GRIT鈥揝). Journal of personality assessment, 91(2), 166-174.

Dweck, C. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. Random House LLC.

Dweck, C. S. (2000). Self-theories: Their role in motivation, personality, and development. Psychology Press.

Tough, P. (2013). How children succeed. Random House.

Every gifted person has a unique story. The following story is part of a series of posts depicting the many faces of gifted by highlighting gifted children and adults we have found through 优蜜视频 programs. 优蜜视频鈥檚 鈥� mentioned in this story 鈥� links gifted high school students from across the country with mentors who advance each participant鈥檚 skills through the application of knowledge and exposure to real world experiences.

Monica Lienke
2001 Apprentice, Industrial Design at Art Center College of Design (Art Center)
Law Student, Stanford University

Twelve years ago, Monica Lienke was one of the first 优蜜视频 Apprentices at Art Center. She worked closely with Stan Kong, a leading design educator in Los Angeles. She described her two-week experience as 鈥渓ong hours and a lot of work, but extremely gratifying. I remember feeling that I had learned a ton by the end of it. But probably the best part of the program was getting to know the other participants in the program, who were all incredibly talented and unique individuals.鈥�

Monica focused on product design at Art Center and designed a concept for an ergonomic gardening tool. She said she chose a design-oriented program because she liked that there were creative and visual art components to it. Her days were spent in and out of the classroom with lectures, discussions, model-making, sketching classes and field trips.

After high school, Monica went on to earn a B.A. in political science from UC Berkeley and is now at Stanford for law school. 鈥淎fter graduating, I worked for a year at the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy, a political economy research institute on campus. I then spent almost three years in the legal department at Google. Going into my job at Google, I actually hadn鈥檛 intended to go to law school, but I found myself really enjoying my role there, which involved learning about technologies, helping to realize innovative ideas, and working with amazingly smart and passionate people.鈥�

鈥淚鈥檓 still in law school and working on the side for a small early stage start-up that was co-founded by an engineer and a law school graduate who met each other at Stanford鈥檚 Hasso Plattner Institute for Design. The product is a website for people with a creative project (like a product design, start up, or artistic work) to discuss their projects with a broader group of people, get feedback and guidance, and develop supportive communities around their projects to help them succeed. The A.I. component of the site is a recommendation engine that scans a person鈥檚 social networks to suggest people they know who could contribute to whatever issue they are discussing on the site. My role in the start-up is multi-faceted, but I mostly focus on user engagement and business development. I鈥檝e loved getting to work with a great team on a product whose underlying goal is to encourage more people to undertake and participate in creative endeavors.鈥�

Monica still takes some design-oriented classes and hopes to work with a start-up company or for clients that create and innovate.

When I asked Monica what she鈥檇 say to others who are considering 优蜜视频鈥檚 Apprenticeship Program, she replied, 鈥淚t鈥檚 an amazing opportunity to explore an area you might be interested in and meet people who will inspire you!鈥�

Does the Apprenticeship Program sound like a good fit for a high school student you know? 2014 Apprenticeship information and applications are now!

On February 22-24, 2013, we hosted the 10th annual Bradley Seminar in San Jose, California. The event, funded by , provides an amazing opportunity for the , their parents, and alumni to come together each year for a three-day conference to discuss issues of global importance and personal relevance.

The 优蜜视频 community has found great personal and collective growth in sharing and learning together in an emotionally safe environment. Our most powerful moments have involved cross-generational discussions where each individual feels heard and supported. The Seminars offer a perfect forum to focus on a purposeful theme that causes us to look inward and to challenge ourselves to grow, not only intellectually, but also personally. This year, the theme was 鈥�Know Thyself.鈥�

Those of us who work with highly able youth seem to agree that the unique social and emotional issues related to their giftedness, coupled with adolescence, cause the majority of 鈥渟tressors鈥� in these students鈥� lives. In an effort to assist our population in dealing with stress, we explored aspects of resiliency and identification of personality types.

Prior to the event, participants read excerpts from The Resilience Factor by Karen Reivich and Andrew Shatte and completed the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). These served as a starting point for conversation.

Knowing thyself 鈥� personality types

After a Friday evening welcome for Scholars, alumni, and parents, Saturday began with reflections and discussions on learning to deal with stress. 优蜜视频 President Elizabeth Jones led the group in exercises to learn what issues or situations 鈥減ushed鈥� individual buttons and presented key points on how to develop resiliency. This dialogue set the stage for learning and exploring personality types. Guided by 优蜜视频 co-founder and president of The Davis Group Ltd., James W. Davis, we discovered our personality types and learned about the characteristics of each type. Mr. Davis emphasized that the MBTI is a starting point to use to understand your preferences and grow, not an excuse to stay stuck in your ways. Some things are easy and natural, while others require growth. MBTIs help you understand where there is room to grow.

Parents and kids alike were interested to see how they were similar and different in their personality types. In many cases, the MBTI helped shed light on familial interactions and communication barriers that have been present but not understood for years!

Learning about different personality types at the Seminar encouraged us to better understand our own temperaments as well as those of our friends and family. It helped provide a structural foundation for understanding differences and methods for seeking out, incorporating, and acknowledging the value of other viewpoints.

Exploring Silicon Valley

On Saturday afternoon, the Scholars ventured to two amazing companies: and .

In the fun and inviting setting of Udacity鈥檚 offices, Scholars had lengthy discussions with our hosts about course design, the technology behind online open courseware, business models, career preparation, work environments and the future of education.

Bloom Energy was a haven for our chemistry and physics enthusiasts. We toured the facility and learned about the clean, renewable energy they are developing. Discussions ranged from how their fuel cell systems are made and operated to why a new energy source like Bloom Energy鈥檚 is necessary and how it will change the world.

Udacity and Bloom Energy encourage innovation and out-of-the-box thinking. They are driven by the unique makeup of their employees, all of whom bring different perspectives to the table. These are the types of workplaces our Scholars will need. These are the environments that will allow them to thrive, and we were thankful that the Scholars were able to see companies like these in action.

Stress response 鈥� and why we should limit it

Saturday night, Dr. Robert Sapolsky delivered a fascinating and highly entertaining talk about the stress response and how it affects our bodies. Dr. Sapolsky is The John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Professor of Biological Sciences and Professor of Neurology and Neurosurgery at Stanford University. He is also a research associate at the Institute of Primate Research, National Museums of Kenya. Many of us were amazed to discover the variety of ways in which the stress response 鈥� biologically designed to keep us alive in threatening situations 鈥� negatively affects our bodies over time as we experience chronic psychological stress. Relaxation techniques provided in a Sunday breakout session were in high demand after hearing Dr. Sapolsky speak!

If you want a glimpse of Dr. Sapolsky鈥檚 expertise, take a look at the videos and . We highly recommend these!

Let鈥檚 continue the discussions鈥�

We are always amazed at the caliber and depth of discussion at the Seminar. Adults and students alike ponder challenging personal and global issues. These discussions among future thought leaders provide a foundation that builds confidence, tolerance, and personal growth.

Over the weekend, we reflected on our own personalities and how knowing ourselves in more robust ways can help us relate to and work better with others. We thought about and discussed the implications of our personality types as well as the impact of stress on our lives. 鈥淪omehow, you made it possible for me to meet tons of fascinating new people, learn so much about myself and how I interact with others, and gain an insight into how startups work in the Silicon Valley, all in one, short weekend,鈥� explained one Scholar.

Reach out and support a bright young mind. Teach them to think. Help them embrace who they are and all that is possible.

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Lisa is the mother of 3 gifted children and lives outside of San Francisco.

I just received my first grade as a parent. I got an 鈥淎.鈥� How do I know I got an 鈥淎鈥�? U.S. News & World Report said so.

My oldest son earned me this grade by getting into the University of Chicago. I know that sounds awful. But the message I received from other parents over the last 18 years suggests that I am responsible for my children鈥檚 achievements. The ultimate achievement in our community is enrollment in an elite university.

No one told me directly that I was being graded, but I saw how my neighbors reacted when we made educational choices for our children that were different from theirs. They took it very personally. They behaved as though my husband and I were implying that what was good enough for their child was not good enough for ours. I remember one difficult dinner when our guests insisted that our move to a local independent school was not only unnecessary, it was opportunistic. Private schools were only good for helping students develop business contacts for the future. If a child had the strength of character and family support, he could achieve success in a public school setting. His proof? He went to a public school and ended up teaching at Stanford and working at a large biotechnology company.

We all went our separate ways, with no common rubric to judge our progress鈥攗ntil now. It鈥� time for our children to go to college.

It seems wrong to take credit for my son鈥檚 accomplishments, and I鈥檓 not even sure U.S. News & World Report can measure them. So I asked my husband what role he thinks we play in our children鈥檚 accomplishments. He said that he would not give himself credit for our children鈥檚 success but would take credit for not messing them up. I thought we deserved a little more credit than that. I decided to evaluate my parenting skills by my ability to help them find the sun.

My children are sunflowers. If I let them act instinctively, they will turn towards the sun by finding the people and places that feed their love of learning. If something gets in the way of the sun, they wilt. I know this is a silly metaphor, but it helps me visualize my role in their lives. My job is to clear away any obstructions so that they can find the sun. They faced a lot of obstructions over the years. Sometimes, it鈥檚 been me.

It鈥檚 hard to see yourself as an obstruction. But I learned, with my husband鈥檚 assistance, that my 鈥渉elp鈥� was not always helpful. So, I returned my red pen to my son when my college essay edits robbed him of his voice. I remained silent when my son eschewed the Calculus AP exam in favor of 鈥淐ircus鈥� class. I bit my tongue when he told me that he wasn鈥檛 going to apply to a particular Ivy League school because the admissions officer stressed the accomplishments of the student body and he didn鈥檛 want to achieve anything in college; he just wanted to learn. I believed that my son has good instincts. I was determined to let him find the college that best suited him, and that meant I couldn鈥檛 get in the way.

I think parents of gifted children have a particularly hard time establishing the right grading policy for themselves. Most of us begin by assessing our ability to find and deliver the appropriate curriculum and social and emotional support for our child. Our efforts are often handicapped by teachers who think our children don鈥檛 need accommodations and parents who see our requests as elitist. Even with our best efforts, our children may still disengage in the classroom and . Given their abilities, we are tempted to see anything short of extraordinary achievement as our failure (and theirs). Our final grade, by my neighbors鈥� standards, may not reflect our efforts. We may not even agree on what constitutes an 鈥淎.鈥�

My son decided to go to the University of Chicago because it had interdisciplinary classes like 鈥淢ind鈥� and 鈥淧ower Identity and Resistance.鈥� The school has a Circus Club and the world鈥檚 largest scavenger hunt. He liked the admissions essays and heard that the kids watch Dr. Who. Its motto is 鈥淟et knowledge grow from more to more; and so be human life enriched.鈥�

I dropped my son off last week. As we walked through the leaf strewn quad, he said, 鈥淚 don鈥檛 think I will ever do anything in my life that takes advantage of everything this place has to offer.鈥� My son turned toward the sun, which turned out to be in Chicago. Maybe if I stay close to him (but out of his way), I will feel some of its warmth, too.

What role do you feel you play in your child’s accomplishments? Please share in the comment section below.

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