Wow! The eve of our enrollment lottery is upon us! And with that milestone it seems an appropriate time to reflect on how far we’ve come!  It’s been a while since I blogged, which can only mean we’ve been busy.  The Board of Directors and Nikki Myers (now our Academy Director- congratulations, Nikki!) have been working tirelessly on all of the “business aspects” of getting us ready for a successful year.  The hiring committee (on which I sit) has interviewed dozens of candidates! The grants committee has done an outstanding job of making sure we’d have the resources we need- and we’ve been awarded extra grant money!  Soon, our new home at Pike Elementary will begin to take shape as “AACL”.  Parents are getting excited, and teachers from far and wide have come to apply for a chance to teach at this remarkable new school.  We are on our way!

As my family entered into this journey, I wondered how many other families and educators “got it”.  Were we alone in our need?  Were there actually teachers out there who understood what we were trying to do? And would they apply to work here?  Others asked the same question, including, understandably, D-11, who so courageously took a chance on our idea.  After talking to parents, meeting kids, watching our enrollment grow by leaps and bounds, and interviewing countless candidates I can now say with joy, with pure astonishment, YES!  They get it!!!  Oh, do they get it! There really are families out there who have similar stories, and there really are teachers out there who have felt our pain, worried over kids like ours, and struggled with the frustration of not being able to teach the way they wanted to be teaching!

I’ve spent the last month or so working on the hiring committee. What began as a blank slate, an idea for a school, and an idea of what our staff should be like, has taken shape into a real location and is now taking shape as a remarkable group of real people.  It has been an honor to work with such hardworking, dedicated, and intelligent people on the committee.  But most importantly it has been a delight to help interview such passionate, creative, outside-the-box-thinking teachers!  I wish I could put in to this small space of words how much these candidates have impressed me!  Their knowledge of their craft, their excitement for the ideas behind this school, the vast array of talents and ideas they bring to the table is inspiring.  It has been a thrill to watch Nikki skillfully and thoughtfully begin to pull these teachers together in to what I believe will be quite simply an outstanding staff!

And so this “idea” is now taking shape.  Tomorrow night our rosters will begin to fill out and soon our staff will be hired.  We will move in to our new home and begin to become AACL. The culture of our school will crystallize as each child, each family, each teacher adds their uniqueness to the school.  I have a feeling this is going to be a vibrant, exciting, warm, collaborative place to work, to learn and to volunteer.  Thanks to all who have contributed to this journey…let the fun continue!

Happy New Year!

2010 begins with a new light of hope for many families in the Pikes Peak area, because a beautiful thing happened in December 2009.  A group of passionate, dedicated parents and teachers fought a seldom-won fight for the needs of gifted, creative and unique learners.  Around this country there is an astonishing number of these kids and their parents crying out for help, for recognition.  A deep need is going unmet in our schools, and slowly districts are beginning to acknowledge this.  Kudos and thanks to District 11 for taking a leadership role in acknowledging these kids who fall through the cracks and their parents who cry for them.  We now have a chance to pick these kids up, dry our tears, and offer these kids the education they need and deserve.

It is also a beautiful thing when children can see their parents advocate for them, see their parents work, sweat, and struggle for them- and win!  Our kids will take away the message that there are good people out there in the world who are willing to listen to you, to help you, to hear you, if you are willing to take the time and the chance to speak up.  Change is almost always hard-won, but with the resolve and commitment of people like these fine folks at AACL, change can, indeed come.

It reminds me of Dr. Seuss’s Horton Hears a Who- when we gather together and cry “We are here, we are here, we are here!” someone will finally notice us.  Families around the country take heart, for if enough schools like AACL and others like it form and are successful, we can help bring a higher-quality educational experience to even more kids. For one, if we create successful model schools and programs, the concept will likely spread.  Additionally, schools like AACL can give back to their wider communities by being learning labs, discovering best practices for working with these unique learners, and we can share that information with the regular schools, creating a ripple effect that will help so many, be they in or out of a unique environment like AACL.

So for 2010 there is much work ahead to meet deadlines, make choices, and race to the finish line.  But for many families, it is already a bright and happy New Year, a year of smiles and relief, and gratitude for a chance to make a difference in the lives of kids.

So let’s roll up our sleeves now that the holidays are past us and work hard to bring this beautiful dream to reality.

Many gifted kids are extremely sensitive people. The world of peer pressure and always-changing social situations, coupled with feeling different can leave these bright, sweet kids emotionally exhausted. It’s hard to focus on doing well in school when you’re busy trying just to fit in. These kids need a place to be themselves. As they grow up, they’ll find their way—they’ll choose careers and set up their lives in ways that are user-friendly to their natural needs—but why make them wait to find somewhere to fit in? Why not offer them that opportunity now? Some people just don’t fit in the box. Why force it? Even college offers more freedom and flexibility than a long day in a standard school program.

I am the mom of one of these unique kids. I have a child, now 12 years old, who started reading at 21 months. In kindergarten and preschool, for fun, she did 2^nd grade math problems when she was bored. She had an enormous vocabulary at age three.

My daughter is Twice-exceptional—she is gifted and yet has Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder which makes the daily routine of a regular classroom extremely difficult for her to navigate.

She spent three years in public school Early Childhood programs. She had a few wonderful teachers, with no training in her difficulties, and no training in gifted education. They wanted to help, but couldn’t challenge her at all or meaningfully address her issues.

When she entered kindergarten I had high hopes that she would finally fit in. I was wrong. It was a terrible year with no help, no challenges, just my child feeling like a fish out of water. She wanted to talk about world affairs, current events, and science, but the other kids just wanted to be kindergarteners. She had no one to talk to on her level, no peers that said “I get you.” And the teachers had no idea what to do with her, so they just slid her through. Her intellectual strengths countered the OCD enough, and on paper she looked flat. But by third grade my spunky, charismatic child was a depressed, anxious little person with no hope.

Despite nearly straight A’s and a zest for learning she was never admitted to TAG—she didn’t have the right test scores. And by then end of 6^th grade last year she was done. Done with trying to fit in with kids that just don’t get her. Done with teachers who just didn’t have the time to really accommodate her. She felt she was drowning in her efforts to “fit in.” This year she is not in a Pikes Peak area school district. She is enrolled in the Colorado Virtual Academy through Adams-12.

The truth I have finally come to accept is that teachers do not have the time, resources, or even the energy left after all that is already expected of them to address the needs of complex kids like mine.

SO what would an option like AACL have meant for her? It would have meant greater self-esteem, chances to soar academically, more emotional stability, having people and friends to challenge her and inspire her, not keep reinforcing the “you have to change, you don’t fit in” message. This is not a slam on the school districts of the area as they are—just an acknowledgment of a current reality. Until that reality changes someday, somehow, in some future time when we value education enough to fund and staff it like we should, AACL is offering our area a way to address the needs of complex learners like my daughter.

She will be in eighth grade next year, but I will gladly put her in AACL for one year—because that one year could be the anchor, both emotionally and educationally that lets her come to truly feel that there are people in this world who get her, who appreciate her—one year to make her believe that she can find her niche in this world.

And for the record, I have a 4^th grade son who’s a lot like his sister, and he’s hoping for the chance to attend AACL as well.

The following times have been scheduled for community meetings, and everyone is welcome to attend and bring their questions!!!!

Sunday, October 18, @ East Library, 4:00-5:00pm (large meeting room)

Monday, October 19, @ Rockrimmon Library, 7:00-8:00 pm
Sunday, October 25, @ Penrose Library, 4:00-5:00 pm
Thursday, October 22, @ Cheyenne Mountain Library, 7:00-8:00 pm
Thursday, October 29, @ Monument Library, 7:00-8:00 pm
Thursday, November 5, @ Old Colorado City Library, 7:00-8:00 pm

If you’re planning on attending a particular date, you’re welcome to let us know at board@academyacl.org… if we know we’ll have a particularly good turn out one night, we’ll send special invitations to District 11 personnel/board members for that time as well, so that they can hear right from parents who have been looking for this program.

Mark your calendars for DECEMBER 9… when we present to the D11 Board, and DECEMBER 16, when they will vote. We’d love to see you there in a show of support as well. (We believe that it will be 6-8 pm at the D11 Admin building, but we will confirm that and post it for you again).

On Thursday, October 1st, around 2:45 p.m., the Steering Committee submitted our application to District 11.

It took three home printers, two office printers, and a printing company (thank you, LX Printing!); nine adults sorting each section; lots of paper, binders, and organizers (thank you, Office Center!); pizza, Pepsi, and gas for a four-car cavalcade to travel down to the Admin building to deliver 30 copies, but we made it!

We look forward to responding to comments and questions from the District 11 committees, continuing to meet with families and spread the word about AACL, and inviting every possible supporter to attend District 11 Board meetings on December 9th and 16th. On the 9th we will present to the Board, and on the 16th they will vote. Typically, meetings are scheduled from 6-8 pm at the Board Meeting room in the Admin building, and we will confirm that and let everyone know.

Community meetings will be scheduled as soon as possible!

As I consider the push in education toward best practices, and the need to give children a framework from which to connect facts, skills, and content from subject to subject in a coherent way, I think about the thematic units that will do just that for AACL students.

We are privileged to have input from a high school history teacher who has worked for District 11 and a local private school for 25-30 years and has taught numerous AP history courses, a high school history teacher from the Denver Public school system who has recently written curriculum for national publication, and an instructor in the history department at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs who are willing to look through our social studies units and help us create exactly this framework- a framework based on Colorado State Standards that enables students to meet and explore the people and places of the past that have created so many situations for us in the present.

I am excited to think about our students studying social studies through the big ideas of globalization, exploration, transportation & technology, culture & conflict, and democracy & citizenship. I am looking forward to units such as Colors of the Centennial State as students dig into Colorado history, Diversity of the Rainforest as students consider environmental changes, or Legacies from Colonial America as students consider the role of culture and the impact that previous ideas have upon today’s society- and the way some ideas stay, and some change.

I’m also intrigued by the way that these thematic units will be utilized in every subject area so that students can view the facets of an idea from the perspective of an artist, a musician, a scientist, a writer, et cetera. Consider the article on ArtScience at http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/imagine/200904/artscience-is-big-idea for some other ways to consider the need for creative people in all disciplines.

Nikki

Today I was introduced to the Optimist’s Club, the West Side Chapter, at little El Rodeo restaurant off West Uintah. The Optimist’s Club is “an association of more than 3,000 Optimist Clubs around the world dedicated to ‘Bringing Out the Best in Kids’.”

Scott, Alan, and I were invited to attend, and we were privileged to hear Dr. Nicholas Gledich, the new superintendent of District 11, speak to the group. He gave us a brief summary of his introduction here to Colorado Springs and the way that he has ‘hit the ground learning’. One of the interesting notes was that, in order to get a feel for Colorado Springs, he visited the local malls on Friday nights to watch kids interact, and he visited a variety of grocery stores to see a cross-section of people.

He mentioned that the book Execution: the Discipline of Getting Things Done (Bossidy, Charan, and Burck) has been very instrumental in shaping his view of leadership, and he used elements from that book in his core statements about his leadership for D11.The book sounds intriguing and I’m looking forward to reading it.

We were also delighted to meet Bob Null, a member of the District 11 School Board, and introduce ourselves and our charter idea, and talk with the Kenyon Jordan, owner and editor of The Westside Pioneer newspaper (http://www.westsidepioneer.com/) as well.

As a mom, and an aunt, and a teacher, I’m very appreciative of how many people are interested and investing in the lives of our children. I appreciate the wide variety of populations that District 11 serves, and I am also glad when I hear, as I did today, that it’s about the kids, that the people who invest their time and effort and skills towards education are keeping the needs of the kids at the forefront of what they’re doing.

As a mom, and an aunt, and a teacher now concerned about the need for a program that uses the following five categories of best practices…

• a student-centered approach that is challenging, authentic, experiential and developmental
• a cognitive approach that is reflective, constructivist, expressive and developing
• a social approach that is democratic and collaborative
• a differentiated approach that provides for a variety of student need
• a brain-based approach that utilizes neuro-scientific research

… I’m an optimist, too. I believe that the kids in our community can accomplish amazing things, and that some of them need this type of program to do so… and someday I may just have to think about joining an Optimist Club  myself.

Best Practice, Third Edition by Zemelman, Daniels, and Hyde (Heinemann: Portsmouth, NH): 2005

Best Practices in Gifted Education: An Evidence-Based Guide, by Robinson, Shore, and Enerson (National Association for Gifted Education, Prufrock Press: Waco, TX): 2007

Enriching the Brain: How to Maximize Every Learner’s Potential, by Jensen (Josey Bass: San Francisco): 2006

What’s the job of a ‘Boot Camp’?

Some might say that a good one whips you into shape, dumps you into the language, vision, and perspective you need to have for success, pushes you to the limit, tests your commitment, and ultimately inspires you to be all that you can be.

The Boot Camp for Charter Schools was a great one.

Organized and presented by the charter school division of CDE (Colorado Department of Education), CSI (the Charter School Institute), and “the League” (of Charter Schools), the degree of commitment and cooperation between these three entities on behalf of best practices in education was both inspiring and encouraging. The representatives of these entities and the other presenters that they included have been on the front lines of charter schools, and in our shoes, many times before. They have done this not to ‘hurt’ public schools, but to be schools that drive education forward and inspire everyone to examine and implement best practices in a variety of ways.

Scott Marcy, Alan Worster, and I sat through three days of presentations that highlighted the various components of an excellent charter application, various pitfalls of starting schools and ways to avoid them, how to set up an effective business office, how to develop an effective board, and a whole host of other topics.

We were delighted to discover that several of the people we had already identified as ‘people in the know’ for our situation were there, including Peak to Peak Charter School with its high student achievement, commitment to excellence, and the person we had already had a conference call with last January. In addition, we met several new people who are eager to help us make this the best possible situation for our students and families, including the commitment of the League to give us two thorough reviews of our application before submission.

The resounding theme throughout these three days was consistently “This is about the kids.” We can personally attest to the fact that we are not pursuing a charter school just because we can… we are pursuing this because, for this particular group of children, we must. Consistently, the word from these presenters was that this is about filling a need… and we look at each other, and we review the stories of the parents to whom we’re talking and the children we see, and we recognize that call to action.

In Colorado Springs, we need a place that will encourage, support, and challenge students to their personal best, however high that might be and even higher than they suspected! We need a place where every teacher has extensive professional development in how to monitor student progress, address any difficulties, and most of all, move each student higher and higher and higher. We need a place where children have the opportunity to dig their hands deep into ideas, to meet community experts who can inspire them to press on in a particular field of interest, and who can analyze ideas from critical, logical, and creative viewpoints. We need the Academy for Advanced and Creative Learning to be a place of inspiration for advanced, creative, gifted, twice-exceptional and typical learners ready for that opportunity. Furthermore, we need the Academy for Advanced and Creative Learning to be a resource center that supplements the work of other local programs and connects people in need to each other.

And so now… we need letters of support from our community, including local leaders and experts and ‘laymen and women’. We need letters of intent to enroll from families who recognize this as a fit for their children. We need people with various areas of expertise to join us in researching and analyzing the various parts of our application, to join us in writing grant applications, to join us in reviewing curriculum, to spread the word about this program, and in just a few months, once the application process is complete, to join us in transitioning to a board of directors with a variety of professional expertise and with a shared vision for what this school and resource center needs to be.

The representatives from CDE said that CDE employees from other departments have commented on the enthusiasm, excitement and inspiration of charter school ‘folks’. Since we have now entered this camp of folks, we’d have to agree. It was said that application authorizers look for ’skin in the game’… they look for people involved with this process who have children, who have to stare into those young eyes every day… We have that. I hear the questions from parents of children that I teach, we see the eyes of the children we live with, the eyes of parents we meet who have looked everywhere else,  we hear the stories, and we know that this is needed. We know that districts and individual schools are trying to meet a vast amount of needs with limited budgets and are trying to train their staffs, but getting everyone up to speed takes time… and there is currently no local program where every staff member (and yes, we mean even the janitor!) in the building is trained to meet the unique needs of these learners.

We want this program to be not just an academic home for these kids, but also a chance for other schools to catch that inspiration… that regular public school teachers, private school teachers, other charter school teachers can come and see what we’re doing to address the unique needs of gifted, advanced and creative children, and to take those ideas back to their schools and spread that inspiration around a little bit more.

We’re building that fire. We’d love to have you join us.

Nikki

So you’re a teacher?

Yes.

Where do you teach?

Well, I was teaching at Renaissance Academy, a small private school for gifted children, that closed this fall, and I teach in an adult teacher training program at a local college.

Well, I don’t know if my child is “gifted”… but he/she is reading one/two/three grade levels ahead in school, and he’s/she’s bored all the time. The school just said he didn’t qualify for services, but I know there’s something going on with him/her….

What kinds of things do you notice with him?

…..And from there, the conversation rapidly picks up speed as the parent begins to describe either a typical learner who enjoys tackling new things but could use more challenge in school or more hands-on projects and a little more individual attention, or a student who also has some or many markers for “giftedness”… intensity, sensitivity to various emotional or environmental stimuli, substantial advancement of developmental milestones, a preference for older friends, a insatiable desire to learn everything about a particular subject, a sense of self that is not just ’strong’- it’s more like ’steel’,  an advanced sense of humor for his or her age, reading books at home that are one or more grade levels ahead of instruction in class…

And then, I hear:

• She didn’t want to take the test that day, so she didn’t even try, but her test scores say she doesn’t qualify for gifted services.
• The school says they have higher standards here so they won’t accept these test results from another school.
• The school says grade-skipping is a terrible idea because he’ll be overwhelmed in middle school and all his friends will be older.
• The teacher is really trying, but she has so many different levels in the same class that she’s told me there’s just no way to do all that she wants to do to provide challenge.
• This teacher doesn’t refer any of her students for gifted services ever.
• The teacher said, ‘everyone gets bored sometimes.’
• All I got was a piece of paper saying he doesn’t qualify. He’s having melt-downs at home every night- what do I do?
• He/she qualified for special educational services for a learning disability, and gifted services based on the battery of assessments they gave, but then they said his/her CSAP score wasn’t high enough for gifted services…. in the area of the learning disability! How do I help him? He’s so frustrated!

(For an interesting list of characteristics of giftedness, the Rhode Island State Advisory Committee on Gifted Education has one available at http://www.ri.net/gifted_talented/character.html, and Colorado has another great one available at http://www.cde.state.co.us/gt/download/pdf/gt12TraitsGiftedness.pdf.)

My response?

Many schools and teachers are trying to help advanced learners. They really are. However, there’s quite a ways to go. For a long time, gifted specialists didn’t have to have an endorsement on their license or special qualifications to fill that position. New mandates are in place, and districts are trying to get all of their people up to speed and this takes awhile. Many teachers receive very little training (one study found that 61% receive none! see NAGC link below) for working with gifted learners in their undergraduate programs, and myths abound among the general public and teachers as well concerning the needs of these kids (for a list of some of these myths, visit http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/eric/fact/myths.html, http://talentdevelop.com/articles/NMATG.html, and http://www.nagc.org/index.aspx?id=569).

In the meantime, there is a lot of research available in the field of gifted education to help you. And we’re creating a new charter school that will enable these students to have the opportunity to work at an appropriate level of challenge with the necessary support and guidance. This program will also serve as a learning resource center where we invite staff from other programs to come and see some of the best practices in the field at work so that we can facilitate the flow of information and improve learning for all students. In many instances, many of the best practices in gifted education, so very critical for the gifted, are also very beneficial for other types of learners.

These conversations happen frequently, in both likely and unlikely places, as parents seek to find a program that will provide the opportunity for students to dig more deeply and move more quickly than typical programs, with a rare degree of support for social-emotional needs such as managing perfectionism; utilizing skills in leadership, empathy, and creativity; and setting and managing challenging personal goals.

There is no perfect program, and we won’t be ‘perfect’ either. We’re not trying to ‘take all the good students’ out of other programs; all learners are precious, and we are grateful that other programs do what they do. We simply recognize that some learners think very differently and have very different learning needs than typical learners their age, some learners are ready for more advanced work, some learners need time to be really creative, some need both advanced work and extra support in a particular area, and each deserves to work in his or her own learning zone and feel the stretch and satisfaction of conquering new horizons. Tests and ‘labels’ can communicate some information to us about how a student learns, but they’re only one piece of the puzzle. For us, it’s not about a ‘label’ or a test score… it’s about meeting the needs of kids in a unique way, and we’re building a school that will do just that.

These are the conversations that I’m having. How about you?

Nikki Myers, M.A.

Board and Steering Committee Member, Academy for Advanced & Creative Learning