Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion If you could move anywhere for a year...

My wife and I have sabbaticals coming up and we can basically go anywhere with an internet connection. I would love to go somewhere where our HG+ DS6 would be really stimulated and challenged.

So, just for fun, where would you go in the USA (or the world, really) with an excellent public magnet school or self contained classroom for elementary kids in the 99th %tile. Oh, and here's another wrinkle: there can't be a residency requirement prior to the beginning of the school year.

Thanks for playing.
-Ultralight Hiker

Wow! Honestly, if it were me, I would probably instead choose a really interesting foreign country, where she would be exposed to a new language, and not worry so much about school.

Hmmm I am still new to the forums, but I was going to give my energetic and standard answer of "Nice, France" of course!!

But... I don't know about educational opportunities there for gifted kids. I'd just love the experience of not focusing on that for a while and instead, just having the focus be on living abroad, with all of that language, culture and lifestyle learning.

We just switched from private to public school and most of the schools I know of in our area require residency even if its not called a residency requirement because they won't accept testing from other districts and they wont DO testing until you are IN the district. meaning you have to be IN their district long enough to request testing, be tested and get results before you get the "choice seats."

IMO its really really tough and makes moving for a program (or moving back into a program) unnecessarily difficult.

What does your DS get excited about? If I had the time/money, I'd visit Africa, or live somewhere in Europe. Instead of looking for a school, I would probably homeschool so we had the flexibility to travel. If your family is interested in helping out and/or living in a third world country, I recommend Ecuador.

I'm with Somerdai - if I had a year where I could take off and live anywhere, I'd take my kids to another part of the world, somewhere where they could learn about how other people live, other cultures, perhaps somewhere where we could help make a difference in the world.

polarbear

ps Somerdai - I have a friend who lived in Ecuador for several years serving as a missionary - I'd second your recommendation

Thanks for the ideas! Keep them coming. We will definitely travel and experience some place new, and that will be a huge part of DS's education that year. My wife and will need to be working full time while on sabbatical, so full homeschooling is probably not an option. International schools are very pricy and often too small to have a dedicated GT classroom. DS has never met an intellectual peer his own age and we'd love if that happened in our sabbatical year.

Have you checked the Hoagie's web page for lists of gifted schools?

http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/schools.htm

Some gifted magnet type schools (part of a public system) might have testing you could do without a residency requirement as long as you could prove residency by a certain date of the school year starting. You'd probably have to go to the place for testing though. Downside is that a qualifying child based on their scores might go into a pool for a lottery.

Private schools that concentrate on G/Ts might be expensive but you could compare to the international schools maybe they look better in comparison. I have no clue, I'm just throwing ideas out based on how I'd think about it if I had such a cool opportunity.

Another idea is to pick a place that has a high population (greater the chance of a higher IQ kid in the pool...) of diverse people with lots of enriching things to do, and sort of hover around the areas where G/T or otherwise unique and interesting kids would frequent (museum classes and things). For example, the Hunter College Elementary School in Manhattan. If your DS can't go there because K is the only entrance, you could sort of fan out to where the non-accepted kids go (their cut-off is pretty high so kids who don't make it are still very bright).

That's just one example...I know NYC and area are pretty expensive.

My DD was remarking yesterday about a picture and something about so much sky. I realized she's always lived someplace where you mostly just have to look up to see the sky above the buildings and the trees. Except when at large bodies of water... I think if we had the opportunity to do something different for a year, I'd take my DD to a very wide-open place for a change.

I think some public schools have an Independant study option that you could use. If you're going to return to your current school talk to your principal and see if they can provide the work for the year. Maybe.
There's also virtual k-12 public school, free to many districts. Your kid can do their school online anywhere with an Internet connection. Maybe that would free you up to travel. You would just have to ensure that it got done. You wouldn't have to teach or come up with lessons. I don't know if that's still available if you travel overseas.

Obviously everyone's experience varies, but we've travelled extensively with our 8 year old and honestly she just doesn't remember most of it. I think they get more out of it when they are a bit older than 6.

Having said that, I think it could be really amazing to spend a year in DC, or NYC, at least for education outside of the classroom. If it were purely lifestyle we were going for, then I think Hawaii or California could be pretty amazing.

Unless you have dual nationality you'll probably find its quite difficult, if not impossible to live for a year in a foreign country without having a work visa sponsored by a local employer. If that's not an issue for you, I'd definitely recommend Sweden, which has an amazing lifestyle, and you can get by to an extent without learning the language.

(From the mention of "sabbatical" I'm guessing the OP's wife is an academic, which will make this straightforward IME.)

Sweden's great, but in your place I'd rather think about Finland. Helsinki is one of my all-time-favourite cities. Finland's school system is legendary - and famously inclusive, so I don't think you're going to find a self-contained gifted classroom, but you can expect to find really good teachers. Apart from anything else I'd love to hear a first-hand report of what Finnish schools *are* like for HG+ children! Fascinating and very beautiful language (non-Indo-European), but as K&K said, practically everyone speaks good English too (so much so that as adults, you'd have to make serious effort if you wanted to speak Finnish, but your DS would learn it at school I expect). Easy access to Tallinn (we travelled there from H. by ferry, and it's amazing - 14th century city walls etc.), St Petersburg, etc.

If you're going to all the trouble of uprooting everyone, switching schools etc., it would seem a bit odd to me to do it just to go somewhere else in the same country! But now someone will tell me that I just have no idea how diverse the US is, and they're probably right ;-)