Gifted learners come in every size, color, gender, age, and shoe size! Every child is amazing, wonderful, and a precious gift to the world. However, that term "gifted" causes confusion, because it is used differently in common conversation than in the field of education. In education, "gifted" is the term used to recognize that some children exhibit advanced, asynchronous (out of sync) development that doesn't follow the baby books or child development and typical education guides.

These children are intense, have unusually long memories for areas of interest to them, and exhibit several common characteristics while still having a wide variety of personalities, interests, and levels of ability. They may have difficulty finding other peers who also demonstrate this unusual development, and they need to work with specially trained teachers, just as children do who are in the field of special education for learning problems. Teachers who are trained to work with gifted children understand how to modify curriculum to reduce repetition, add complexity, cultivate specialized interests, and support unique social-emotional needs such as perfectionism, insatiable hunger for a particular topic, and the ability to self-advocate positively.

Because there is otherwise not a local school that focuses from Kindergarten through eighth grade on these learning needs, AcademyACL has been designed to fill that niche.

Do students have to be "gifted" to attend? No. (see question #3 here).

Some learners may exhibit all the characteristics of "gifted" but not test well, and other learners have typical learning needs but are ready to dig into advanced, accelerated content and are comfortable with high level vocabulary and discussion of ideas.

Researchers Betts and Neihart (1988) have suggested the following profiles of gifted learners, for the sets of characteristics they may demonstrate in educational settings, depending on the way the school responds to their needs:

1.	Successful: these children know how to navigate the system, produce high quality work, and function well in most school settings; they need to be challenged to still attempt new learning challenges and stretch themselves.
2.	Challenging: these children like to think 'outside the box' and frequently question the systems and world around them, suggesting changes they think would improve upon the current ideas, and often demonstrate advanced creative thinking.
3.	Underground: these children have hidden their abilities to fit in with their peers and/or to resist being identified as different or required unfairly to do more work than anyone else.
4.	Drop-Outs: these gifted children either drop out of high school physically, or have mentally dropped out, sometimes at much earlier ages, because the school environment has failed to recognize and cultivate their strengths and needs.
5.	Double-labeled: these children have both gifted strengths and one or more areas that create additional challenges for them. They are more recently identified as 'twice-exceptional,' which is another term that creates confusion among the general population. It is simply 'gifted + something else' that they have to work through, such as needing to work slowly and carefully but at a very high level, or move around, or they have dyslexia... an additional challenge on top of their hunger for advanced work. (Concerning the needs of 'double-labeled' learners—we have planned for a full-time special education teacher on our staff, and will contract out for other services as required by the federal Individualized Educational Plan process. Please contact us with individual questions so that we can discuss our unique school design with you.)
6.	Autonomous: these children have been supported and encouraged, and are now self-directed learners who are eager to take on new challenges and use their skills creatively and successfully. The development of this confidence and skill should be the goal of every gifted program.

An additional group has been suggested by Bevan-Brown (1999) to include 'culturally diverse' gifted learners who may be overlooked in identification for gifted programs because their cultural background causes their gifted characteristics to surface in different and unique ways (such as story-telling, an advanced sense of humor or excellent skill in navigating social situations and peer groups) or a language barrier prevents them from demonstrating their skills.

While we are excited about our program and believe that many elements can be adapted for other settings with a wide range of learners, our goal is to support our community in raising happy, healthy children who are also educationally ready for the 21st century! Our unique program connects advanced learners to the specialized training that they need, and we talk with parents around the community about the variety of local resources that are available to them. We seek to provide as much information as possible so that they are able to make a well-informed decision on whether or not this school is a good fit for one or more of their children's learning needs.

Here are some questions you might consider, as the decision to enroll your child is yours. We have an open enrollment, open welcome policy!

•	Do you have one of the above types of gifted learners?
•	Do you have a child who might be a more typical learner who is ready to dig into advanced content?
•	Is your child comfortable in an environment with advanced vocabulary and less repetition than most programs?
•	We use a more non-traditional approach, with less direct instruction and more small-group and hands-on instruction than many programs. Does your learner thrive in that type of setting?