National Association for Gifted Children Who are the gifted? How to pick a summer program.

Hoagies' Gifted Education Page . A treasure for parents and kids. Everything from links for kids and teens [artists, books, geology, physics and mechanics, planets and stars, stocks and bonds] to Internet investigations, contests and awards, speak-out where kids can share their work with other gifted children, magazines, movies, reading lists and software favorites. Includes a discussion of the characteristics of some gifted children:

Imposter Syndrome. I'm not really all that gifted, am I? Is perfectionism a problem or a gifted characteristic? Sensitivity. Theories of overexcitability and other gifted sensitivity issues Social and emotional issues of gifted children Underachievement. How to help the gifted child who isn't achieving at his or her potential? Visual-Spatial Learners. How to identify this learning style and teach to it.

College Gate (K-3) and College Academy (kids entering fifth through ninth grades). Three-week summer academic-enrichment programs conducted at several locations in the Boston area. Parents send bright kids here from as far away as Taiwan. Class size does not exceed ten students. Teacher recommendation required. This is the way school ought to be and, unfortunately, often isn't.

The Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth has been serving highly-able pre-college kids since 1979. There are year-round programs and valuablel summer sessions around the U.S. and the world.

Synesthesia -- Sometimes called enriched perception, enhanced perception or multi-sensory perception, synesthesia is a condition relevant to, but not exclusive to, many fast learners.

MIT Educational Studies Program . The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has several programs during the year for smart, inquisitive junior-high and high school kids. The best of these might be SPLASH, a [surprising inexpensive] fall weekend of classes and seminars at the Cambridge, Massachusetts, campus. SPLASH sessions have ranged from the computers, math and science you'd expect at MIT to poetry, sci-fi writing and non-linear thinking. There's also a ten-week Saturday program in the spring and a summer program, called HSSP, for middle-school and high-school kids.

In the session on non-linear thinking, seminar leader Josh Shaine said a majority of people process thought in a stright-ahead, 1-then-2-then-3 fashion. But

Straight-ahead thinkers often can't understand how these kids learn.

others -- including many gifted kids -- put their thoughts together differently. They could be more image oriented, and/or have colors attached to words and numbers, and process thoughts in a more pinball-game manner. More 3-then-8-then-1-then-5-then-2. So even if they learn faster, maybe better, their way of doing it can craze stright-ahead types, like many teachers and administrators [and parents]. That's because linear thinkers -- the majority -- often simply can't understand what's going on, can't understand why these kids won't respond just like all the others.

The boys and girls in Shaine's seminar learned that gifted children often just think differently. They learned that they aren't strange. Far from it. And at one SPLASH, there was also a lively and valuable Shaine seminar for the parents of gifted and talented children.