Gifted and ADHD

As part of our Free Parenting Education Series co-sponsored and co-hosted by MAGE and Chicago Gifted Community Center, CGCC, we had a virtual workshop this summer to finish our 10-workshop series on Gifted and ADHD.

Click here for the overview presentation from this workshop. Below you will find the list of everyone who was on the panel, and their favorite books and apps on the topic. A summary of discussions was sent to all attendants. We are working on the 2020-2021 Parent Ed Workshop Series. Drop us a note with suggestions!

Here is the company info for everyone on the panel. We really do mean it. We do hope that you reach out to us for help if you need it. We are here for you.

Jessica Douglas, Ed.D., NCSP

Board Certified School Psychologist
Psychoeducational Resource Services, Inc.

www.prsinfo.net

jessica@prsinfo.net

Heather DeGeorge, MAT, PMP

Founder, illuminat-ED Coschool  (offering all core subjects up through high school!)
Coach, Fox Homeschoolers Science Olympiadwww.educatedadventures.com

Jordan Burstein

JJB Educational Consultants Inc.

www.JJB-edconsultants.com

Irene Gottlieb

MAGE

http://www.mage.education

Books we find helpful:

·      Stuck but smart, Thomas Brown

·      Delivered from Distraction by Ed Hallowell

·      This book is a good primer on non-medication avenues to explore.  It’s from 2008, but that means there are more—all of these are still relevant:  https://amzn.to/3e3MjuD


·      Kenneth Bock
Healing the New Childhood Epidemics

·      Executive Function Skills in Children and Adolescents: A Practical Guide to Assessment and Intervention by Peg Dawson and Richard Guare (2010) 

Apps we recommend for kids with ADHD

·      Routinist is a good one.  Try the free version first—it may be enough for your child.  It’s a timed task list for routines.


·      Pomodoro timers. 360 Time Tracker.

·      Trello is a great app for list tracking
Power Planner was the better planner app

FALL PLANS

Chicago Public Schools (CPS) had a Townhall virtual meeting today about their proposed fall hybrid program. Here is the result of a poll about how parents feel about this version of the plan. Where do you sit?

Now, if you have a child in a selective enrollment program or a lotto program, you feel trapped. You were able to witness first hand, how distance learning worked for your child and what they were doing/learning. If that worked for you, great. If you think the district will do more than this spring, you are probably incorrect. So, if you are a concerned parent of a gifted child who needs something different, keep on reading.

Now might be a good time to take a good look at MAGE.

Supplementation during/after school: Kindergarten through High School

If you know that your child will need supplementation, we can do that right. Sign up for our newsletter, to stay on top of our schedule when we announce it for the fall. Our classes are reasonably priced and high quality, and include things like Math Team, Robotics, Esports, and weekly play group, among with other enrichment.

Full day instruction: Kindergarten through High School

Do you have a selective enrollment seat or a lotto seat and are afraid to leave and lose your spot? No problem. Stay in your seat, but choose virtual instruction delivery. However, send your child to us. We will work around their 1-day a week “virtual instruction” schedule if you want, no worries. We will make sure they actually are learning the material and complete your district’s required busy work. We will also help you work out a way to cut out the busy work and teach your student instead if we see that it’s not a fit/not tailored to your child, with direct instruction that goes well beyond the rote.

We are a kindergarten through high school program that has in-person instruction with master teachers, and a tiny cohort. We are a “pod” by design, as it is, before COVID. If we shut down, the classes that you have continue virtually: small ability-grouped, dynamic reading groups and hands-on project, math circle and exploration groups, clubs, specials and electives, teams. We have 1:1 or small-group instruction in core subjects that goes at exactly your child’s pace and meets your child where they are for knowledge and moves well beyond common core. It doesn’t move at some pre-determined average student speed. It moves at your child’s speed. Instead of grades, you get reports on what has been learned. Instead of homework, we use the time wisely during the time your child is with us so that they have time to master their knowledge while they are with us, so that home time can be saved for family bonding, playing with friends, and pursuing personal interests.

• You can also study exclusively online, with a local cohort, though out of state students are also welcome, so you could still enjoy local graduation (gatherings as allowed by the government) science fair, and other local celebrations, or attend in a hybrid model a few times a month or a week.

• Relative safety: we will not enroll students who are, or who have siblings enrolled in a live pod at a public school, because those students share bathrooms, central air, hallways, and entryways with others and because many travel on public transport or bus, and bus routes are frequently shared with other schools. All students will be tested at the start of the school year, and so will their drop off/pick up caregiver. All students at MAGE arrive to school by private vehicle. No, we are unfortunately not yet equitable, and yes, the children that come here are privileged, because we are brand new and we haven’t figured out how to make our program available to every qualified family, only those that can afford our full-time tuition. No, we do not have financial aid, but we may have some limited merit scholarship available to top qualified candidates. Yes, we have plans toward becoming more equitable, but we are 1-2 years out.

• We will hold outdoor classroom instruction daily, if weather permits.

• We have safety measures most schools don’t have, can’t afford, or can’t enforce. Our families understand the importance of following protocols and they can afford to take time off to stay home with a sick child and not send them to school if they are showing COVID symptoms.

• We have an hour of recess daily, and field trips (outdoor ones, meaningful and also providing social emotional time and bonding for students and their families, not just educational enrichment, which is what we did all of last year WITHOUT COVID.)

• We take care of your students social, emotional, and academic needs in a completely individualized way. We provide like peers and like-minded families. Imagine being in a community of other engaged parents and actively working together to make the school amazing for their kids.

• Maybe your HS student can sit and work on their AP classes alone and pace themselves through. But if not, perhaps you need us to keep an eye, while you are at work. Not only that, but they will be with other kids, and top qualified teachers, and we also have an optional college counseling program for gifted kids, that sometimes starts as early as middle school when they reach certain milestones, since these students are ready for the academics of college early and will be eligible for top schools.

We have just had our prospective student free shadow day, and may have another in 2 weeks, depending on the rate of acceptance and the number of open seats that remain after this week. Our next Admissions Coffee is on Saturday, August 2, at 10AM, virtual or in person, your choice. Our application is free, and you can use your SEES letter, PSAT/SAT/ACT/BESTS/COGAT/ or even NWEA MAP to qualify (for now), besides IQ testing. Come find out what we are all about, or drop us a note, or sign up for our newsletter.

GIFTED+ADHD: FREE VIRTUAL PARENT WORKSHOP, JUNE 14, 2020, 12-1PM

GIFTED+ADHD: FREE VIRTUAL PARENT WORKSHOP, JUNE 14, 2020, 12-1PM https://tinyurl.com/y9pt4t9n

Midwest Academy for Gifted Education and the Chicago Gifted Community Center are excited to bring you a Free Gifted Parenting Education Series, centrally located in the City of Chicago. The format of each event in the series is a 30-minute expert panel presentation on the topic, followed by a 15 minute questions for the panelists and a 15 minute mingle. The idea is to bring together a parent of gifted child, a mental health professional, and a gifted educator, for different perspectives and ideas around solutions. 

Does my child have ADHD? How do you tease out the Dabrowski psychomotor excitabilities vs. ADHD? How do you know if they are energetic, or engrossed in their favorite things, or if it’s medical? At what point do you need to look for support, and what kind of support is out there for your family? Does it actually work? Who can help? Medication is scary but has been brought up to you, how do you learn more? What are strategies to help your child? Gifted characteristic traits overlap with ADHD. How do you know what side of the line you’re on?

COVID-19 Certification

As we have moved into Phase III reopening in Illinois, we have updated our wellness policy to include COVID-19 guidelines. Our facility has been emptied, the floors have been refinished, and it has been repainted and professionally deep-cleaned. We are changing all of our furniture prior to our anticipated in-person reopening in July for Camps to create a setting that will be in compliance with all the government standards and still allow our students to safely collaborate. We have completed the COVID-19 certification for the City of Chicago and we look forward to seeing everyone in July.

Coronavirus STEM: Part 4

We have been sharing some math activities around coronavirus. Some fresh problems:

Problem 1. It takes, on average, 4.5 days to develop symptoms of coronavirus from the time the person is infected and the person may already be contagious before showing symptoms. It takes about 14 days to recover from the time you show symptoms. The person continues to be contagious for up to 2 weeks after all symptoms are gone. How long is a person with coronavirus contagious from the time they are exposed to the virus, and should practice social distancing?

Problem 2. The federal government has limited every federal site to 250 tests per day in Illinois. We have 3 Federal sites. How many tests is the federal government making available in Illinois daily at this time?

Problem 3. Using the current doubling rate, use the graph below to estimate the number of cases in one week.

Problem 4. Using the communicability rate of 2.2 infections for every infected person, how many people will the currently ill people will infect? Compare that to the answer from problem 2 and discuss the similarity or difference.

Coronavirus STEM: Part 3

Here are some fresh Coronavirus STEM problems for you, in order of difficulty.

Problem 1. 4-digit subtraction word problem. You can increase the difficulty of this and choose to make this more of a science/language arts project by a. having the students find the data online themselves or reading the article without having the data component pointed out to them.

In the latest article from Crains, the following data is available. “As of today, 63 percent of the 2,589 intensive care unit beds in hospitals across Illinois were occupied, as were 59 percent of medical/surgical beds and 32 percent of ventilators, which are used to help patients with severe COVID-19 symptoms breathe, according to data from the state’s Department of Public Health. The state has slightly increased its capacity of beds and ventilators since March 16, when 73 percent of the 2,578 ICU beds and 40 percent of the 2,144 ventilators were in use.“

Use the previous Crains article for this data.

By how how many units did the state increase ICU and Ventilator Capacity in Illinois in the last week?

Problem 2. Multiplication/percentage problem: Same as above for data, but with a % increase.

Problem 3. For students with more skills, same as above, but use our previously posted data under this category to update the chart to see how many days it will be before the state will run out of these two resources given any available rate for ICU and ventilator use.

Problem 4. Building on problem 3, by how much will we be short of scarce resources by March 30 and April 6? You can find rates of ICU, Ventilator and Hospital Bed use in our previous post article links. Now, compare this data to the latest Governor update, and write a sentence about your findings.

Problem 5. Using the data on the City of Chicago Web site, compare the rate of hospitalization for coronavirus to the rate of hospitalization globally. What do you notice about the rate of hospitalization in Chicago, vs. in China, or the world, etc? Why do you think the numbers are same/different? Use the previously posted articles and sources if needed, and here’s another good source of data. Use the hospitalization rate in Chicago (pls note that more people will be hospitalized for coronavirus but not counted in the hospitalization number because only some of those people are tested, so these are not accurate as we are not testing everyone that should be) to estimate the real number of Coronavirus infections in Chicago. If you make the assumption that the numbers of under or over-estimation of cases evidenced by your answer are mirrored in the rest of the state, calculate a more realistic number of cases of coronavirus infections statewide, using the Illinois Coronavirus State Dept of Public Health data.

Coronavirus STEM: Part 2.

If you are following along, our students have been doing some basic collecting and modeling of Illinois Coronavirus stats. We recently created a petition for shelter-in-place a part of our study of civics, and of course, we claimed “victory” as the shelter-in-place was achieved.

If you read our previous article here with some Coronavirus Math problems, here is a sample current graph. The data was collected from the Illinois Department of Public Health which relies primarily on the Federal Coronavirus Test and has just recently started to report some private test facility data, with a lack of clarity as to the completeness of that integration.

Some possible facts:

We should run out of ICU beds on 3/30 at latest, unless capacity has been expanded in the last week.

We should run out of ventilators on 4/3 at the latest, unless new ones have been purchased by IL hospitals.

Take the shelter in place to heart, people. Even if you don’t get coronavirus with complications or pass it to someone who is vulnerable, if you have some serious injury, there may not be space for you for whatever else that may befall you, like normal flu complications.

As the number of cases increases, the number of available supplies such as ICU beds and ventilators runs out, and then the death toll starts rising more rapidly.

Coronavirus Math+Civics+Science+ English+SEL all in one!

Moving class online for the outbreak does not remove the need to discuss the outbreak. Students really want to understand the purpose of social distancing. Students are worried. Students want to know how long before things return to normal, are they going to catch the virus, and is anyone they know going to die. Some students are too sensitive to talk about their strong feelings in the classroom, yet others need the classroom as a safe space to explore their strong emotions.

Our students are very interested in the progression of the outbreak, and they want to feel like they can do something about it. And they can! They are launching a petition to help stop the spread of Coronavirus. They have been asking all sorts of questions and have been doing some very cool math based on current events and articles. We want to share some of these with you and we wanted to share your students’ cool Coronavirus math with us. It is terrifying, and it is terrible, but talking about their emotions while processing the complex information about the virus in a cross-disciplinary approach is powerful, and provides a creative and appropriate outlet. They are reading the news anyway, and they are already concerned, and this gives. them the outlet to manage these concerns and information.

The data and information coming in about the pandemic is rich in opportunity for a multidisciplinary study. Here are some examples:

Problem #1. Calculate infection or death doubling rate in your state and graph it. Our state is Illinois. Our state has now reported 16 days worth of data here. The way the data is reported, is that you can’t see it. You can mine it from the press releases the state publishes daily, but mostly you have to copy it daily. This is something that even the younger students can do at 3PM Central Time for the day, or the next morning here in Illinois and could easily be done with regular math students in 5th grade and up completely, and the graphing can be done with even the younger students, if you are following US Common Core.

Problem #2, building on Problem 1. How many days before the infection rate in your state reaches 1 million at the current doubling speed?

Problem #3, building on Problem 1. Using the articles in citation below, and the doubling rate from Problem 1 (feel free to use your state/country data instead):

• How many days before we run out of beds in ICU, assuming that patients using the beds have not died and have not gotten better (are continuing to use the beds).

• How many days before we run out of ventilators, assuming that patients using the ventilators have not died and have not gotten better (are continuing to use the ventilators).

• In 30 days, what magnitude fewer will there be available equipment vs. need?

• Civics bonus: what can/should be done about this?

Citations:

1. Guan WJ, Ni ZY, Hu Y, Liang WH, Ou CQ, He JX, et al. Clinical characteristics of coronavirus disease 2019 in China. N Engl J Med. 2020. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa2002032.

2. Coronavirus threatens health system capacity, STEPHANIE GOLDBERG, Crains Chicago Business, March 17, 2020

Please, send us links to your math problems and solutions below. We will update this shortly with our graphs and answers.

5 Fun Online Class Community-Building Activities

Did your classroom suddenly find itself immersed in online instruction? Your students are starving for social interaction. Your academic instructional success is now even more dependent on building community and shared experience. It’s the glue that will hold your classroom together and bring cooperation and respect during this stressful time. Time to roll out some fun.

1. Break up your week with show-and-tell. Your students will forever try to wave items at the screen as they get used to the new normal. Tell them up front that they will have a certain number of minutes on a specific day to show and share instead. They will look forward to that day and save up their sharing.

2. Run a remote class project: civics, yearbook, or cookbook, dance-off.

3. Yoga and mindfulness. Focus your students at the start of the school day with this 2-minute, 5-finger breathing technique (and 4 others bundled in). You can start building your students mindfulness and meditation with this fun and easy entry-level activity. For tomorrow, send a note to the parents to ask them to find a thick blanket or yoga mat for the use of their student. Pro-tips: Don’t let your students do this on heights, join them, and remind them that trying something new is hard, and every body can do different things, especially the first time. Tomorrow, you can level up with some Harry Potter Yoga. For older kids, try grown-up yoga options.

4. Students can play students remotely with some old-fashioned battleship. Draw your own grid board on a piece of paper, you need not have more.

5. Themed days: crazy hair, pajama day, favorite literary character, and so on. Just because you are online, doesn’t mean that you can’t do it.

About MAGE: We are a not for profit, parent-and-teacher-volunteer founded private gifted school in the City of Chicago. As a school, we have been hard at work on Blended Classroom option for our fall term, due to demand from down-state and out-of-state students within day-trip driving distance who need acceleration. Suddenly, we had to implement our plans 7 months early! This took some creativity and hard work, but we thought we’d share some of our successes and lessons learned with you as you are going through this hard time. Our full-time program, including the new online option has open enrollment. Students must qualify as per our Admissions Criteria that can be found here. There is a parent interview and a required shadow, along with a teacher recommendation component and a qualifying test document submission. Our process is slow because of our all-volunteer admissions team but we are working to streamline the process.

Pam Katz joins MAGE Advisory Council

In January, MAGE welcomed a new Advisory Board Council member, Pam Katz. Pam is a practicing Licensed Clinical Social Worker for over 20 years. Pam developed her passion working with individuals with educational, social, and emotional needs when working as a school social worker for 15 years. During her tenure as a school social worker, Pam helped develop and implement social emotional learning curriculum with students and support staff in the delivery of these programs. Pam also worked with students with varying learning needs including students with learning disabilities, gifted students, and twice exceptional students. 

Pam transitioned to her private practice 7 years ago, where she works with children, adolescents, adults, and families. She specializes in working with individuals with anxiety, depression, ADHD, learning differences, and trichotillomania. Pam tends to use Acceptance and Commitment therapy as her theoretical framework, and actively serves on an international and Chicago board in the larger Acceptance and Commitment Therapy community. Pam is also a trained educational advocate, having attended two summer institute programs as William and Mary Law School and earning a certificate in special education advocacy. Pam has provided trainings to organizations, schools, and parent groups on topics related to advocating for children, anxiety and emotional management. Pam has lived in the Chicagoland area all of her life, and is the mother of three teenagers, included a twice exceptional child.  

Pam will sit on the Social Emotional Committee of the Advisory Board. To learn more about the MAGE Professional Advisory Council, please click here.

Finally, CPS Publishes Whole and Subject Acceleration Applications

The Chicago Public Schools application deadline for Selective Enrollment High Schools and Selective Enrollment Elementary Schools closed on December 13th. However, the application for whole grade and single subject application is finally open, and will stay open until February 7, 2020.

• CPS kept saying they will share the information for the last 6 months and they finally did, HERE.

• The application for early K and early 1st grade is now closed. However, it appears that there will be another window to apply for this over the spring or summer. Great news! Follow us and CPS to not miss it if you need it.

• If you were assessed for early K and early 1st and didn’t make it, you are not allowed to re-apply for reassessment until next year. However, it’s also great news that this is going to be allowed.

• CPS added more info to their early K/1st area of their site.

• Application for single subject (you can apply for 2 subjects, actually! either English or Math or both!) or whole grade acceleration is a paper form and must be turned in by February 7, 2020 to your school. You can’t switch schools and receive acceleration right now in CPS.

• There is no sign of Phase 2 yet, that would allow multiple years of acceleration, or acceleration not within your school building. There is still no acceleration for grades 1-2 or for grades over 7th.

• At our Free Chicago Gifted Resource Fair on January 12, you can learn about Accelerated Placement during a workshop ran by Illinois Association for Gifted Children that made the Accelerated Placement Act a reality in our state.

Did you find this article helpful? Sign up for our newsletter for free using our Contact sheet at the top right of this Web site.

Local Davidson Events

The Davidson Academy in Reno, Nevada, serves profoundly gifted students in grades 6+ for FREE with residency local to them. They also have a paid online school. Davidson Young Scholars is a free program that supports PG kids and their families also run by the Davidson Institute. Joining DYS requires IQs over 145 or equivalent achievement, roughly, and they now take the PSAT scores as well as SAT. You can find out more about talent searches from Northwestern CTD at our Free Chicago Gifted Resource Fair on January 12!

Davidson will be at our our Free Chicago Gifted Resource Fair on January 12, but if you are missing the events, you can also go see them at these two alternatives:

• Friday, January 3, 4:30-7 p.m. at Capital One Café, 3435 N Southport Ave, Chicago, IL 60657

• Friday, January 10, 4:30-7 p.m. at Panera Bread, 25 Rice Lake Square, Wheaton, IL 60187

If you are interested in attending, please RSVP at bit.ly/2020daoopenhousereg.

They also have virtual open houses.

Why are we, a local gifted school, plugging other schools? Because there are enough gifted kids to go around, and then some - there are not enough seats anywhere for all of them and not enough services. If we can’t meet the needs of your student, we sure hope someone will and are happy to help you find that path. More options is great for all! We are an option for gifted students in grades K through 12, with both full and part time, live and in person classes at all grade levels, running in January. We are the only gifted K12 private school in Illinois, and we are the only 130+ one as well. In fact, we specialize in HG+ students whose needs can’t be met in the regular classroom and who routinely need many years of acceleration in one or more areas. We are grade and homework free. We focus on fostering the love of learning. We do not measure compliance. We believe in encouraging students to follow their unique interests. We are low pressure - the gifted put enough pressure on themselves as it is. We believe that young students, especially, benefit from daily social interaction with intellectual peers and an in-person teacher. We also believe that because these kids learn so quickly, there is time in the day for proper recess, and time in the week for some fun. Each of our students has a unique individual learning plan developed in a team approach between teacher, student, and parents. You can come learn about us, or Davidson, or Northwestern at the Chicago Gifted Resource Fair. The more resources for the gifted, the better!

Gifted Legal Rights

Recently, a Gifted Legal Rights Workshop was presented by Matt Cohen, top gifted and 2e attorney in Illinois. MAGE was honored to host and co-sponsor this free Parent Education Workshop, a part of our Free Parent Education Series, with the Chicago Gifted Community Center, CGCC. Mr. Cohen went through relevant case law and discussed the recent Accelerated Placement Act. He also described guidance papers that help clarify gifted legal rights that the federal government issued to State Departments of Education with regard to gifted and 2e students. A collection of those guidance papers can be found here. Included is a key idea: it is illegal and is a denial of FAPE, it is against IDEA to deny evaluation for special ed services to students based on their high performance on test scores, good grades, etc.

Some popular questions we had, followed by answers:

-does the accelerated placement act apply to private school: no

-do special ed laws/IEP/504 apply to private schools? Again, no - unless you can prove that they receive Federal funds for anything. State funds do not count, unless you can tie them back to Federal funds directly.

-if my child will be distraught without academic acceleration/enrichment, can I use SPED laws to do anything about it? No. SPED laws are reactive, after there has already been impact on the child. They do not kick in proactively. 

In order to further your child’s rights in school, we recommend the following to stay proactive:

• join our mailing list (for free), join IAGC ($50 to help the association be well resourced to continue to educate and advocate on gifted needs and rights), and CGCC ($25). That way you will not miss important local gifted ed news and useful information, or opportunities to have your voice be heard - if you scroll through our blog you will see plenty of past opportunities and some current ones to be engaged with the local governments to make change. 

• Stay active and involved and assure that your school or district (even if your child is not enrolled in the public school there) has an accelerated placement policy, is reporting data around serving gifted to the state via the school report card. 

The other way, which is reactive, is show evidence of negative impact on the child/necessity, for the child’s emotional and social well being. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to receive an appropriate and equitable education for gifted kids in Illinois because we only talk about appropriate and equitable in the special ed law. In Illinois there is a tie to meeting the minimum grade standards, making modifications to help a child make those minimum standards. It is not possible in our state law to claim that what is appropriate for a child is acceleration of any flavor just based on IQ or achievement scores. In other words, if a child doesn’t learn anything new if they are above grade, no law is broken unless this creates emotional and social consequences for the child with the burden of proof on the family.

In the state accelerated placement law, there is very little to protect gifted children. This needs to be put in. One simple way of doing this could be a small change to the AP act. We are going to be working on this little change next. You won’t want to miss that one - sign up for our newsletter to be the change too.

If you missed the workshop, that went deep into legal and case history, there is another useful workshop ahead for you: during the Chicago Gifted Resource Fair, Illinois Association for Gifted Children (IAGC) will present about accelerated placement. We don’t know the next time we will repeat this workshop, most likely it will be 1-2 years.

And that's a wrap for our first term!

Yesterday, we wrapped up our first term of enrichment classes in our first commercial space. A big thanks to all of our students, supporters, and teachers, for making it all happen, we couldn’t have done it without each and every one of you. What a year 2019 has been! Not bad for an organization that will turn 2 in March.

We have done so much! We have participated in a bunch of math contests, including AMC, for the first time as an organization. We have started 3 teams - Lego/Robotics, Odyssey of the Mind, and Math. We have ran several free Parent Education Workshops, including Gifted 101, “What is 2e”, and Gifted Legal Rights. We held free elementary math circles for grades 1-4. Students learned Latin, how to build a fire and an outdoor hoop house, stood on the continental divide and identified prairie plants, fished, made an arrowhead, ran in the woods, searched for fossils, cleaned up a beach, participated in mathematical research, and created amazing comic books.

We are back on January 11th with auditions for Hamilton, January 12 for the Chicago Gifted Resources Fair, and then on to our second term of enrichment starting on January 13th.

In addition, January 13th will bring us to another extremely exciting milestone - our first day of full-time school, Elementary through High school. We didn’t think we would have all 3 - Elementary, Middle and High school running in our very first full term, but that’s how our enrollment went. We do have plenty of room still at every grade level as we are still brand new. Our programs are catered to and built around our admitted students.

Is your gifted child ready for a change? January 8-12 are the last days to have family admissions interviews if you would like to not miss that first day of school on January 13th, 2020. On on, MAGE! Adventure awaits.

Admissions is standing by the phone to help answer any questions that you might have. (312) 600-5571.

November blues-part 2

Our phone has been ringing off the hooks with - “it has been so hard!,” “wow, we just can’t go back,” or “I don’t know if we can make it even to winter break.” Welcome to the week after Thanksgiving. We just wanted to share that you are not alone. If your child’s school is not a fit and we had to rank the hardest weeks of the year in school, this would be the second hardest week of the entire school year.

What happens is this. The other, regular children, may have had a great start or not, to the school year. By October, everyone mostly settles in to their classroom. The gifted child, especially with new hope in a new school, may have had a great time for 1-2 months. But now the honeymoon is over, and they are going out of their minds from boredom and infinite busy work.

In September, gifted children hear: “you will get to learn after assessments in 2 weeks.”

In October, when they ask again, they hear “we will start differentiation in November, after everyone has settled in.”

In November… well that’s when it all falls apart. The empty promises, the holding it together while doing busy work, are about enough. Behavior and emotional turmoil start escalating leading up to Thanksgiving break, and on the other side of the holiday, kids start to really flip.

You are not alone. We are here to help. Whether it is helping you find the right language and resources to advocate for your child in their school, finding enrichment options to make the lack of learning in school more bearable, or giving you a fresh new school option focused exclusively on the needs of gifted students all the way through profoundly gifted and or multiple years ahead in one or more subjects, we will pick up the phone and help you if you call. If you have to leave a message, then please be patient, we are probably helping another tearful parent. November sucks. But if you don’t fix it now… The second week of January is coming and it’s a whole lot worse. We know because we’ve been there and that’s why we created MAGE.

What’s at risk is the child’s self image, love of learning, and their emotional state overall. What’s worse than unwanted behavior in the classroom? Shutdown. Depression. What may be fun and enjoyable for neurotypical children can amount to nothing short of torture for the gifted. If you don’t have a strategy, now’s the time to call. (312) 600-5571.

Weekend, evening, and home-schooler winter enrichment enrollment for is now open!

MAGE January Term weekend, evening, and homeschooler enrichment enrollment is now open. We have a unique line-up of programs that will surprise you. Hands-on Archaeology, Hamilton the Musical, Robotics and Math Teams, Latin, and much more. With over 30 options to choose from, we are here to support your child’s unique interests. Of course, full-time admissions for January are still an option, should your child be experiencing a mismatch and you find yourself ready for gifted education.

A full list of programs is here.

View winter schedule at a glance here.

View fall schedule at a glance here.

Accelerated Placement Act Policy and CPS

The application and registration for the 2020 school year is in full swing in Chicago Public Schools. Almost.

• A reminder that paper applications for early K and early 1st grade close on December 6 2019 for the 2020 school year.

• Everyone applying to selective enrollment schools needs to do so by December 6th as well.

But what’s happening with the new stuff, Whole Grade and Subject Acceleration policy? Well, not much.

• Applications for whole grade acceleration were supposed to open from November 1 until December 6, but this didn't happen. The alarming thing was that the new timeline was different from the January timeline communicated during Parent Forums and board meeting last spring and summer. We were concerned that people would miss the deadline as no one was expecting it in December.

• CPS UPDATED their site on Nov 1 to say that the info will now be available November 15th instead of November 1. On Nov 15, the site wasn't actually updated again.

• As of this post, on November 23nd, the site shows new deadlines, that the application and that "information will be available November 15, 2019 with the deadline of January 24, 2020". At least the deadline for the sign up has been extended to overlap with CPS original commitment, making it less likely that people will miss it. Click to see for yourself. A little embarrassing. We hope they update their page soon. Now would be a good time for you to call and ask CPS for an update.

• Need help with advocacy in CPS or elsewhere? We don't care if it's public or private school and we are happy to help. Check out our December Advocacy free Workshop: Legal rights and and services for gifted and 2e. 

Illinois State Gifted Ed News

Yesterday, the Illinois Department of Education held their budget meeting at the James Thompson Center in Chicago, and today, their board meeting. At the board meeting, we asked for the following things:

• Restore pre-2003 levels of gifted ed funding in the state.

• Dedicate full-time designated staff member at ISBE to oversee gifted education and challenges such as getting the student info report cards actually submitted and the data published, and compliance with the state Accelerated Placement Act, as well as to support professional development.

• The Illinois report card law has been in effect for a few years but the data is not coming in and not being made available. This data is very important as it will highlight the educational options for gifted and talented students in Illinois. Send a guidance reminder to districts about compliance with the new report card requirements as to gifted and talented students in March.

• Fund professional development for teachers working with gifted students as there is none right now, and ask for gifted and talented funding. At a minimum, fund training in differentiation to benefit all students.

YOU can still participate in gifted advocacy in 2 ways on these issues right now:

• attend and present your expierience with gifted education at 12/18/2019 ISBE board of Ed meeting in Springfield .

Submit public comments here toward the state budget hearing, using the points below. When you click the above link, you will want to select the circled option. You can then include whatever total you wish, from the points below.

• $120K Full Time dedicated position at the state level to oversee gifted education including IL Report Card, Dual Enrollment, and Accelerated Placement Act Implementation.

• There are approximately 40,000 gifted students in Illinois schools using population statistics. If we assume that they are in a classroom of 30 students, they will require 1,300 teachers. It would be nice if 10% of those teachers could receive resources from IAGC, the Illinois Gifted Children's Association, for $50.00 per teacher. $65,000 would cover those professional service vouchers which existed prior to the state removing the funding in 2003.

• Gifted and Talented students in the state do not get adequate support or opportunities for learning. Schools use budget concerns as the number one reason to not adequately support the gifted and talented students. But, like all students they deserve equitable learning. We think that this can be achieved with $32,000,000.

• Fund the allowance provisioned by the new state law for the report card to give schools $13 per served gifted student, up to at least $1,000.000.

• Total here is $33,185,000.

For your information, the School Report Card to collect data about gifted children in schools is here.

Don't forget, IAGC has several scholarships for both teachers and students - a great opportunity if you need help to afford a MAGE class.  Applications are due end of the month!

In other state news, mark your calendar for January 15th if you seek to receive Empower Illinois credits toward private school.

November blues

“Give it until October,” say most teachers, experts, experienced parents. Your child will settle into their… new school, classroom, routine, etc. Funny thing though with gifted kids. They are actually frequently fine in September, and October. But come November - they’ve had it. That’s when our phone starts ringing. Now’s a good time to be one of those callers, if you need advice or to make a change. If you are hurting, we are here. The other time when sometimes it gets hard, is half past January. The longer you wait, the more school damage there will be for us to undo. Usually, our first priority is to help your child feel safe, decompress, and get them back to having self agency and a desire to learn. Once kids are burned out, it’s very hard to engage them. Some shut down, some show other ways to express their anxiety and or depression. We are here to put the fun back in school. We will pick up the phone and it’s ok if you cry.

What is 2E? Is my child/am I 2e? And if so, what's next?

Have you ever felt like there was a disconnect between what your child was doing and what you knew they were capable of?  So maybe they were reading by the age of 3 but now at 7 they can’t even write their name legibly. Or they can reproduce something they see or hear nearly to perfection but they can’t seem to follow directions?  The combinations are endless.

Most children have some form of “asynchronous development”--which means that different parts of their brain (and the corresponding skills) develop at different times.  An educator in the documentary “2e: Twice Exceptional” describes it as “the 5-10-15 rule” where a child may be 10 chronologically, 15 in some abilities and 5 in other abilities or lagging emotionally or socially.  

Being “twice exceptional” or “2e” is an exaggeration of this naturally occurring situation.  In the case of a 2e child, they may be 10 chronologically, 30 in their ability to learn and understand in some domains, and have dysgraphia--which is a neurological problem that inhibits their ability to write, placing them significantly behind their age-peers in this specific domain.  Or perhaps they have some other disability or significant challenge. Slow working memory, visual processing problems, sensory integration, ADHD, autism spectrum disorder… the list of challenges is long and the symptoms of issues overlap formal labels.

Children who are so advanced in some domains are presumed to be capable of managing in all domains of their life.  In fact, many manage to find coping mechanisms to compensate for their challenges. They may not even realize they’re doing it--it’s just how they figure out how to navigate life the way they see others moving through the world.  For some, they are completely unable to find coping mechanisms and move through the world with ease. Often, the adults around them don’t understand. Children are naturally unable to express their confusion about their inability to figure the world out.  Let’s be honest: adults aren’t always great at articulating their specific challenges, either! The frustration of the situation and the inability to articulate it or self-advocate can sometimes exacerbate the problem--creating emotional issues that are secondary (they only exist because of the frustration). 

Getting help for these children can be a challenge.  For one, advanced students capture content quickly and “check out”.  That can manifest in behavior problems or simply not tuning in to hear something important that comes up during the teacher’s process of instructing the students that are still working.  Other issues are that gifted students will often opt out of work that is “too simple to matter” or too boring. Parents will often say that students need to learn that not everything is going to be fun in life, but when brain development continues through the mid-20s, that’s a hard thing for students to see--even at high school level.  

Gifted students also do not always perform as well on tests--which are targeting a different level of thinker.  When a 2nd grader could make a case for two test answers being correct on a standardized test because they are thinking like a teenager and the test creators never accounted for that level of thought and logic--and the student picks the “wrong” answer multiple times on a test, their score isn’t going to reflect their abilities.

Schools often see either these students advances and assume they will “figure it out” or they only see the challenges and try to move them into behavior or special education programs with no regard for the need to address cognitive or academic abilities.  Neither of these situations is addressing the whole child and this affects their overall growth, development, well-being and long-term productivity and happiness. Children whose challenges are not addressed are building a shaky foundation for the future. Children whose strengths are not grown and challenged are not learning how to persevere to learn and grow because things are always easy--which could later turn into self-worth issues when they face a learning challenge that doesn’t come easy and are completely unequipped to face that with no experience, tools or resources to do so.

Finding environments and learning leaders to help these children become their best selves means parents need to become advocates for their children in a culture where challenges are the focus of interventions in the education community and students who are performing at the expected level of their grade are ignored in terms of being challenged.  Being challenged appropriately is seen as “gravy”. In the school’s eyes, they’ve done their job getting the student to the expected norms.

It can be difficult.  Parents and students need to find their people in this world and get the information they need to help move forward together.  It can be chaotic and frustrating for all involved. Take a breath, refocus on loving one another first, and connect with community.  After that, the rest becomes more manageable. 

Click here to learn about our Free Parent Education Workshops. December 15, 2019 is our next workshop, and it will cover legal rights and services for gifted and 2e. Click here for more in-depth information and resources, including local and national organizations to support your family through identification, learning, and building community.

Come to our Gifted Resource Fair on January 12, 2020 to have an immersive experience and learn about all the local support there is for your family. There will be several useful workshops on topics such as dyslexia and testing/identification.

MAGE has just held a Free Parent Education Workshop in Chicago, in partnership with CGCC. For those who couldn't make it, we thought we would summarize some thoughts and resources shared at the workshop.

Helpful books - PLEASE USE THIS LINK FOR THEM, SO THAT CGCC COULD GET CREDIT THROUGH AMAZON SMILE, as a thank you for this workshop and for their work in the gifted community so that they can continue doing it:

• Misdiagnosis and Dual Diagnosis of Gifted Children and Adults by Webb?

• Mellow Out, They Say. If I Only Could: Intensities and Sensitivities of the Young and Bright by Piechowski

• The Dyslexic Advantage by Brock and Fernette Eide

• The Secret Life of the Dyslexic Child by Robert Frank

• Upside-down Brilliance by Linda Silverman

• Understanding Creativity by Jane Piirto (yup, double i)

• If This Is a Gift, Can I Send It Back? by Jen Merrill

Organizations specifically helpful for Dyslexia:

• Local resource: Everyone Reading Illinois

• International Dyslexia Association: https://dyslexiaida.org/idas-free-webinar-series/

• The Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity https://dyslexia.yale.edu/

• Dyslexic Advantage https://www.dyslexicadvantage.org/

• The dyslexia font https://www.dyslexiefont.com/en/typeface/ or https://opendyslexic.org/

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