Saturday, August 29, 2009

Welcome to GiftedGalaxy!

My name is Chuck, and my wife's name is Lori; welcome to our site!  Probably the first thing you should know about us is that we're parents; we have two wonderful gifted children.  Recently we completed a successful navigation of primary and secondary school and our youngest started college this past week.  That means we have two in college: our son Darrah is a junior majoring in Computer Science, and Catie is majoring in English with the long term ambition of earning a law degree.

The second thing that you might want to know about us is that Lori's a teacher.  She's taught for 14 years now, and for 9 of those years she's been teaching gifted students.  She has a Master's degree in Gifted Education, and for her, teaching--especially gifted children--is a mission.  While she teaches gifted children at the elementary level, her certification also allows her to teach at the secondary level.

Rearing a gifted child can be an unexpected challenge.  Most people don't really get this, but if you have a gifted child in your house, then you know what we're talking about.  Unlike what most people think (that gifted children automatically make good grades and win scholarships), gifted children pose a unique set of challenges, from maintaining a high level of motivation and intellectual challenge, to answering questions that are, well, hard to answer.  On top of this, there are different kinds of intelligences and different ways of being gifted.  As a parent, you want to support your gifted child, challenge them, and encourage them, so you ask teachers for advice, you devour books on the topic, and you scour the Internet.

We found that the absolute best advice usually came from other parents who had been through it before and who were willing to share what they had learned and the resources they had discovered (the really good resources on gifted children are actually not so easy to find).  So with that in mind, we decided to create this blog and share not only what we've learned in bringing up our own gifted children for the past 20 years, but also to share what Lori, as a professional educator of gifted children, knows, learns, and experiences every day with her nearly 100 students each year.

We hope you enjoy our blog and we hope that it helps you to challenge and encourage your gifted child!

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