For parents of gifted children, school choice may be one of the more important decisions they will make. Public schools provide educational programs for the vast majority of children in the general student population. But sometimes they fall short in addressing the needs of children in special categories who may need more individual attention.
Private schools are able to set their own standards and requirements and may offer smaller class sizes and more individual attention for students. These schools may be more oriented toward secondary education and college preparatory needs. However, they may also fail to meet the needs of gifted children.
Private schools designed specifically for gifted and talented children do the best job of providing educational opportunities and should be considered as a prime alternative.
If parents feel that any school is not meeting their child’s academic needs, does not recognize their child’s giftedness, or doesn’t see the social problems being caused for their child, then they may want to consider homeschooling.
However, homeschooling isn’t for everyone. This choice comes with many caveats where several issues need to be carefully considered. Homeschooling is a lot of work and puts pressure on parents to fulfill educational needs for their children while also supporting the social and emotional needs that go along with them.
There are also issues related to the personalities of both child and parent. Can the parent handle the demands of time and finances, and does the parent have the patience to deal with emotional stress that can be caused in the process?
Here are a few areas that parents need to assess when considering homeschooling for their gifted children.
Time and schedules
Homeschooling takes a lot of time. Keep in mind that a school day is many hours long. One or both parents have daytime jobs. Does one parent have to give up a job to accommodate the homeschooling? And will this put a financial burden on the family?
The parent who does the homeschooling must do more than teach. He or she must find the materials and resources to be used in the instruction. And schedules need to be set up for different subjects. Children have many interests, and they have favorite subjects and unpopular subjects, but they have to learn both. Parents need to plan for both.
Schedules have to be flexible. A child who is working in an area of strong interest may want to spend an entire afternoon on that subject. Other subjects may need to move to the evening or to another day. Parents need to be flexible, too.
Temperament and emotional stability
Teaching gifted children can be intense. They can be passionate about some area of interest and highly focused. They are perfectionists and often get frustrated by not having all the answers or not knowing all that they expect of themselves.
This frustration can lead to temper tantrums and being upset with the parent. Can the parent handle these situations with a calm and steady hand?
Academic guidelines and curricula
There are standards and guidelines for school curricula in every state. Parents need to be aware of these and provide the structure to allow their children to develop proficiency in the required areas of learning. Some states may require parents to provide lesson plans before approving homeschooling.
Teaching gifted children goes far beyond having them memorize information and then asking them to recall the information with prompts and questions. Formal instruction involves following the educational principles of Bloom’s Taxonomy.
Bloom’s Taxonomy
Bloom’s Taxonomy is a classification of learning skills that teachers use to prepare lesson plans. It provides a hierarchy of learning that starts with simple acquiring of knowledge and proceeds to higher levels of thinking like understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating and synthesizing (or creating).
In public and private schools, more time is spent at the lower levels of learning, in the memorization phase. In private schools for gifted children – and for homeschooling parents – more time should be given to higher levels of learning.
You can think of Bloom’s Taxonomy as a pyramid with the base being wider for memory and recall, and the top being narrow for the creation of new knowledge.
For gifted children, the pyramid is inverted. Synthetization of knowledge is wider at the top, with memorization the smallest part of the pyramid. Gifted children do not need to spend much time on memorization. They want to explore and expand their knowledge and move into application areas.
Parents need to understand this order of information and be ready to move up the pyramid of learning with their gifted children.
Social aspects
Homeschooling is a two-edged sword regarding socialization. It removes the gifted child from an environment where isolation and depression may be present, resulting from lack of understanding of teachers and peers.
Other children may look at a gifted child as weird or antisocial. Teachers may see a gifted child as distracted or unmotivated rather than gifted.
While homeschooling eliminates these problems, it can also create its own isolation where the child does not have the opportunity to develop interactions with other children who have similar interests and abilities.
Parents can help their children socialize by getting them involved with outside activities like sports, theater, and music or art groups.
There are homeschooling organization and parent groups that also provide opportunities for gifted children to socialize with other children and build lasting relationships.
Legal requirements
Different states have different laws regulating homeschooling. Parents may be required to submit lesson plans or curriculum descriptions.
Other states do not have specific requirements other than the parents declaration that they will be homeschooling their children. And still other states ask for some combination of simple declaration and planned structure.
Parents need to look into the legal requirements for their own particular location to see if this affects their decision to homeschool. One place they can look is the Home School Legal Defense Association which is a nonprofit organization designed to help homeschooling parents with the education of their children.
Resources for enrichment
Finding the right resources can be overwhelming. There are textbooks being used in the local schools and they are libraries.
Parents can find innovative tools and programs at sites like GiftedandTalented.com or university sites like Northwestern University’s Center for Talent Development.
More resources including programs and online schools can be found at verywell.com. Talking with other parents and support groups can help as well. Parents can find out more at local homeschool organizations.
