In this updated 3rd edition of Being Smart the authors provide current views on gifted education and on nurturing children's and adolescents' abilities. They discuss equity and diversity, creativity, assessments, homeschooling, neural plasticity, social-emotional issues, and more. Drs. Matthews and Foster address questions and concerns, and share resources. This book is for parents, grandparents, and teachers who want to foster high-level development and meaningful learning opportunities.Being Smart About Gifted Learning, the third edition of this book, emerges out of our decades of personal and professional experiences with giftedness, and also from a shared sense of the joys, challenges, and uniqueness of every child. In this book, we discuss ways to nurture children's learning and well-being across many dimensions of their lives.We've written Being Smart About Gifted Learning with parents in mind, but also for grandparents, teachers, and others who want to encourage children's and adolescents' optimal development. One of the themes running through this book, as with the first two editions, is that there's no single formula to follow. The best place to begin is by reflecting on your child's uniqueness. Consider their emotional, social, intellectual, and physical interests, strengths, and challenges, and learn to empower them to engage more meaningfully with a wide range of learning opportunities.

The book presents practical strategies to identify and nurture exceptionally high ability in children. These authors promote the "mastery" (rather than the "mystery") model of gifted education and challenge several common practices and assumptions.

A lively read from a working teacher offers practical engagement strategies for students with attention challenges If learning is a motor, student engagement is the key. But when teaching students with ADHD and other attention challenges, sometimes even the most finely tuned classroom can sputter. Teach for Attention! is your tool belt of teaching strategies for students with ADHD, low self-confidence, distraction, and other attention challenges. Dozens of true classroom stories show the strategies in action. It’s all about making simple fixes so you can reach every student without changing your approach or revamping your curriculum. Carry these ideas with you like tools on a belt—the right one will be there when you need it!

From two internationally recognized experts in the field of gifted education comes this timely exploration of how best to nurture a child’s unique gifts, and set them on a path to a happily productive life — in school and beyond. What is intelligence? Is it really a have or have not proposition, as we’ve been led to believe? Are some children just destined to fall behind? Dona Matthews and Joanne Foster answer those questions with a resounding “No!” In Beyond Intelligence, they demonstrate that every child has the ability to succeed — with the right support and guidance. But how can parents provide that support? Matthews and Foster proceed from the assumption that knowledge is power, offering parents an information-packed guide to identifying a child’s ability, fostering creativity, and bolstering effort and persistence. Using case studies and anecdotes from their personal and professional experience, they explore different ways of learning; the links between creativity and intelligence; and how to best to provide emotional and social supports. They offer critical advice on how to work co-operatively with schools and educators, and address how to embrace failures as learning opportunities. Drawing on the latest research in brain development and education theory, Beyond Intelligence is a must-read for today’s parents and educators.

A Field Guide to Gifted Students is a practical manual to the unique characteristics of gifted and advanced learners. Presented as a concise 32-page, full-color booklet available in sets of 10 print copies or a single eBook copy, this resource: Can be used in teacher workshops and other group professional learning settings. Assists educators in understanding and meeting the academic and social-emotional needs of gifted students. Includes a companion online facilitator's guide. Features practical tips based on current research and best practices. Is packed with illustrations, checklists, space to write notes, and a glossary of terms. School can feel like the wrong fit for many gifted learners, but through learning how to notice and support gifted students' diverse traits and needs, educators can build ideal classroom climates for student success. Readers will understand how to identify giftedness and related traits, including twice-exceptionality, introversion and extroversion, perfectionism, sensitivity, and intuitiveness. The online facilitator's guide includes everything workshop leaders need to conduct a brief course for classroom teachers, coordinators, counselors, or even parents.

Named one of Vulture’s Top 10 Best Books of 2020! Leftist firebrand Fredrik deBoer exposes the lie at the heart of our educational system and demands top-to-bottom reform. Everyone agrees that education is the key to creating a more just and equal world, and that our schools are broken and failing. Proposed reforms variously target incompetent teachers, corrupt union practices, or outdated curricula, but no one acknowledges a scientifically-proven fact that we all understand intuitively: Academic potential varies between individuals, and cannot be dramatically improved. In The Cult of Smart, educator and outspoken leftist Fredrik deBoer exposes this omission as the central flaw of our entire society, which has created and perpetuated an unjust class structure based on intellectual ability. Since cognitive talent varies from person to person, our education system can never create equal opportunity for all. Instead, it teaches our children that hierarchy and competition are natural, and that human value should be based on intelligence. These ideas are counter to everything that the left believes, but until they acknowledge the existence of individual cognitive differences, progressives remain complicit in keeping the status quo in place. This passionate, voice-driven manifesto demands that we embrace a new goal for education: equality of outcomes. We must create a world that has a place for everyone, not just the academically talented. But we’ll never achieve this dream until the Cult of Smart is destroyed.

Previously published under title: The gifted kids' survival guide: a teen handbook.

Do you long to drive a Ferrari at top speed on the open road, but find yourself always stuck on the freeway during rush hour? Do you wonder how you can feel like "not enough" and "too much" at the same time? Like the rain forest, are you sometimes intense, multilayered, colorful, creative, overwhelming, highly sensitive, complex, and/or idealistic? And, like the rain forest, have you met too many chainsaws?Enter Paula Prober, M.S., M.Ed., who understands the diversity and complexity of minds like yours. In "Your Rainforest Mind: A Guide to the Well-Being of Gifted Youths and Adults," Paula explores the challenges faced by gifted adults of all ages. Through case studies and extensive research, Paula will help you tap into your inner creativity, find peace, and discover the limitless potential that comes with your Rainforest Mind.

A groundbreaking manifesto about what our nation’s top schools should be—but aren’t—providing: “The ex-Yale professor effectively skewers elite colleges, their brainy but soulless students (those ‘sheep’), pushy parents, and admissions mayhem” (People). As a professor at Yale, William Deresiewicz saw something that troubled him deeply. His students, some of the nation’s brightest minds, were adrift when it came to the big questions: how to think critically and creatively and how to find a sense of purpose. Now he argues that elite colleges are turning out conformists without a compass. Excellent Sheep takes a sharp look at the high-pressure conveyor belt that begins with parents and counselors who demand perfect grades and culminates in the skewed applications Deresiewicz saw firsthand as a member of Yale’s admissions committee. As schools shift focus from the humanities to “practical” subjects like economics, students are losing the ability to think independently. It is essential, says Deresiewicz, that college be a time for self-discovery when students can establish their own values and measures of success in order to forge their own paths. He features quotes from real students and graduates he has corresponded with over the years, candidly exposing where the system is broken and offering clear solutions on how to fix it. “Excellent Sheep is likely to make…a lasting mark….He takes aim at just about the entirety of upper-middle-class life in America….Mr. Deresiewicz’s book is packed full of what he wants more of in American life: passionate weirdness” (The New York Times).

What would make a dedicated public school teacher decide to homeschool her own children? In her new book, "Educating Your Gifted Child: How One Public School Teacher Embraced Homeschooling," Celi Trepanier shares her journey from a top teacher in traditional schools to a disillusioned parent struggling to get an appropriate and challenging education for her gifted sons. How is the current educational system failing our gifted and twice-exceptional students? How can parents fight for the education their children need and deserve? What options do parents and their gifted children have? Celi addresses these concerns and more in "Educating Your Gifted Child."