Academic Advocacy for Gifted Children: A Parent’s Complete Guide

(formerly titled Empowering Gifted Minds: Educational Advocacy That Works)

By Barbara Gilman, M.S.

This completely updated, definitive manual on gifted advocacy guides parents and teachers from documenting a child’s abilities to providing reasonable educational options year by year. The necessity for daily accommodations in regular instruction (not just enrichment pull-outs) is emphasized by the children themselves—in case studies and their own accounts.

Winner of the First Place Legacy Award—Parent/Family category

and

Foreword Magazine Silver Award for Parenting

Learn about the problems and solutions for gifted students:
The Experience of Giftedness
What Do We Mean by “Gifted”?
Testing Considerations
Curriculum and Instruction
Underachievement: When a Child is Too Advanced for the Educational Program
Underachievement: Gifted Children With Learning Disabilities or Other Deficits
Successful Programs for Gifted Students
Models of Advocacy for Parents
Teachers of the Gifted
Charter Schools—in Principle and Practice
Planning Your Child’s Program—Year By Year

“This is the critical information we share with parents and teachers in our consultations at the Gifted Development Center, but wish we could cover at greater depth.” Barbara Gilman

Introducing Quinn O’Leary. Quinn offers unforgettable observations on the inner experience of giftedness.

Here’s what readers are saying:
“All the priceless information that it took me years to collect, all in one easy to read book! Barbara Gilman pulls together the collective wisdom of decades of parents, and professionals, from identification to accommodations to acceleration and beyond… This is the manual we all wish came with our gifted children!”

Carolyn Kottmeyer, Hoagies’ Gifted Education Page and board member of SENG

“This is the best book I've ever read about advocacy for gifted children.
Gilman provides us with a refreshing nitty-gritty reality, equipping parents
and teachers with specific skills to advocate for real children in real
schools, rather than the idealized versions so common in most educational and
advocacy literature.”

Kathi Kearney, M. Ed., Nationally recognized expert in curriculum for gifted students, homeschooling, and assessment of gifted children

“Author Gilman has given us a much-needed guidebook for getting gifted children through school unscathed, and even better, educated. She manages to get inside the thoughts and emotions of these children with her stories of their experiences with school and with growing up. What makes this book such a treasure is that it provides the advice parents need in moving their children’s education forward, based upon her professional background and training, as well as her own experiences as a parent of highly gifted boys. I found the advocacy chapters especially rewarding; the chapter devoted to teachers is among the best I have seen in print. If the advice of this book is followed, one could almost guarantee a rewarding education for a gifted child, in which the child’s talents and gifts would be fully developed.”

Karen Rogers, Ph.D., Professor of Gifted Studies, University of St. Thomas and author of Re-Forming Gifted Education

‘I liked this book because it was about kids like my kids but I loved it for the expert information on advocating for them at school. For children who learn fast and differently, motivation to learn at all can be lost, if held to the slow pace of regular classrooms. Why we must advocate becomes clear through poignant examples, both dark and hopeful, and powerful and evocative writing by the children themselves.”

Ken Arenson, activist on education of exceptional learners, trial lawyer, sometimes woodworker, and always father of fast/different learners

Buy One for Yourself and One for Your Child’s Teacher!