What Makes Steppingstone Special?

In our educational philosophy and teaching methods, we recognize that gifted children are wonderfully made, are diverse and complex, and are on a unique developmental cycle. Therefore, we nurture and educate them in a way that unlocks their special qualities.

The Steppingstone Approach

We treat each student as an individual with understanding and compassion. Unfortunately, many gifted children are not identified or understood, especially at preschool and early elementary school ages. As a consequence, many of these high-potential learners don’t reach their potential.

We provide a safe place to be smart and to be with intellectual peers; we provide a place where the gifted child can have friends; we provide a place where excellence is accepted as normal and intellect and creativity are rewarded.

Academically, we have developed a student-centered, differentiated curriculum. Our program is designed around the characteristics of the gifted/high potential learner, which includes accommodating their academic, social and emotional needs. Merely varying the degree of difficulty, increasing the pace or just giving a student more of the same work does not yield a differentiated curriculum. Because of the diverse cognitive, social and behavioral nature of the gifted child, we use a variety of instructional, and support methods. Based on the needs of a student, we apply these methods in any number of combinations including the following:

• acceleration
• compacting
• variety
• remediation
• reorganization
• flexible pacing
• advanced or complex concepts and abstractions