Why a boarding school?

I'm often (and by often, I mean about one time) asked, "Why a boarding school?" After all, there are many who believe that boarding schools are horrible, abusive places where the students are deprived of any form of basic human dignity. While I suppose that may be true at some boarding schools, and was likely more true in the days of old, that certainly isn't true for most boarding schools today. A good boarding school staff will make sure that the students are well cared for during their time at the school.

So, why do I love boarding schools and why would I like to see Golden Tree be a boarding school? I've listed some of my personal reasons in no particular order.

1. I can get to know the kids too a much greater degree than I possibly could in a day school.
2. I can more fully help the students develop into mature and responsible adults than I can at a day school.
3. The group activities are tons of fun.
4. Nighttime tutoring sessions are an absolute blast
5. More good memories are made in a month than can be made in a year in a day school.
6. I have spent more than half of my professional education career in boarding programs.
7. Helping students by caring for them when they are sick, comforting them after a particularly difficult day, etc., provide intrinsic rewards that could never be obtained in a day school
   

I'm sure I could think of many more reasons, but these are the 7 reasons I've thought of off the top of my head. I'll post more as I think of them.

Almost every school I've encountered, day or boarding, claims to educate the whole child - physically, intellectually, emotionally, and socially. However, I really haven't seen this in practice at the day schools. In jr. high and high schools, teachers are with students approximately 45 minutes a day. Not really much time to get to know them, or do anything except the standard academic development. In boarding schools, staff who are committed, and truly love what they do, can finally educate the whole child. It is these staff, those who will fully embrace the boarding school lifestyle, and take on the very challenging but very rewarding work of caring for the whole child that I would love to see at Golden Tree Academy.

It's all about the effort

For those of you who have young (i.e., 4-10 years), intelligent children, take a look at this pretty good synthesis on the topic of effort in Scientific American. In short, it states that children who coast through grade school, being highly praised throughout those years, will often struggle in later years as they have not learned the benefits of effort. Once something gets hard, the student begins to think they are not capable, and like a domino effect, effort declines substantially. This lack of effort reduces overall motivation and grades. The simple solution - emphasize effort over non-essential praise.

At Golden Tree, we search for students who are willing to put in their utmost effort. Sure, not all students will come to us willing to put in that effort, but we'll try to help them along. As far as the material being boring? Well, unfortunately, most of the stuff that students are mandated to learn in middle school and high school is boring, whether the child is gifted or not. As a private, independent school, we can do more than the traditional school, and mix in some interesting into the mix of mandated boring, but sometimes useful, curriculum. Just a few things Golden Tree will be known for include frequent educational trips, night time lessons, appropriate and interesting electives, and enriched academics, spotlighting the topics the students deem interesting.

Happy News

Our application for federal recognition of not for profit status has been submitted to the IRS. Let's hope they approve it. To celebrate, here are some happy links.

Autistic Basketball Player

The National Anthem of the United States - when things go wrong, then magnificently right.

Safety and Helmets

Safety has always been a huge issue for me. At the summer camps I have worked at, I have often had to disagree with others who wanted to do certain trips due to safety reasons. Fortunately, even when I lost out, no accidents have happened, and most of the time, they won't. But it's that one time that the accident does happen that can become a problem. I hope that day never comes while the students are under my care.

At the boarding school I previouslly worked at, the rules for riding a bike or skateboard were simple, wear a helmet. While staff always did a good job to make sure kids wore a helmet, I often had concerns about the actual fitting of the helmets. The straps were always very loose, and none of the other staff took the time to show kids how to properly wear a helmet. Kids would complain that I was the only dorm parent that made them tighten the straps of their helmets. I always had to show them how easy it was for that helmet to come off with the way they wore them. I'm sorry I had to do this, but I think it was important. I will explain why.

My mom's life was probably saved by a helmet after a nasty bike spill. My cousin's life was probably saved by wearing a motorcycle helmet. In both instances, the helmets were substantially damaged due to impact, but they did their job. I've, sadly, had two others in my life who were not wearing helments and who have not been so lucky - one a bike accident, the other a skateboarding accident. Had my mom or cousin not been wearing their helmets properly, they could have easily come off during the fall, thus leading to major head injury, or even worse.

Due to my experiences with knowing people who have worn helmets, thus preventing major head injuries, and seeing the tragic results of those who haven't, I must continue to insist that whenever I am in a supervisory position with kids, that I am able to require the proper use of helmets when they are riding a bike or skating. Should Golden Tree ever become reality, one of my requirements will be just this, proper use of helmets. If the student can't, then the student will have his or her bike, skates, scooter, skateboard, etc., taken away. They might not like it, their parents may not like it, but I'd rather have them angry at me than injured.

Accidents happen. They are part of life. Please, when you are out biking or skating, reduce your risk of major injury by wearing a helmet. Make sure your loved ones do as well.

Today, while making my normal rounds on the Internet, I stumbled across two articles, written by elementary students, about boarding school. The articles can be found at:

• It's great being at boarding school
• I'm going to boarding school

Both these articles are about life at boarding school, and the fun that goes along with it.

I know many people picture boarding schools as a place more akin to a prison. And, in fact, some of the schools for troubled teens are a bit like prisons. But for the most part, they aren't. Golden Tree Academy is designed around the needs of the kids. Not only will they need to work hard for their classes, but they are expected to play, interact, socialize, etc., just as all kids in normal schools do. The difference? At boarding schools, your friendships can become extremely tight.

Sodas in Boarding Schools

I'm addicted to soda, pop, or coke, depending on which part of the country you are from. It looks like soda is the preferred term in all the boarding school areas. Seriouslly, I tried doing without soda today. I gave in, and wound up drinking a soda for dinner. But that was going to be my only soda for the day. By 8:45 pm, I had to have another soda! I tried just drinking water, but I couldn't do it. I don't know why I'm addicted. It's not the caffeine. I can do just fine with caffeine free soda. I just need the soda.

At one of the boarding schools I worked at, students were not allowed to have sodas on campus, unless provided by the school for special events. Students were able to purchase sodas during town-time and on weekend trips, but those had to be consumed before coming back on campus. Needless to say, many kids snuck soda onto school grounds. The other school I worked at did allow soda. They even had a soda machine on campus. None of the students were excessive with their soda drinking, as far as I know. Mostly one or two cans a day.

If and when Golden Tree Academy becomes operational, we will need to decide on a policy for sodas. Should we allow sodas on campus? If we do, we would have to monitor consumption to ensure that some kid isn't drinking too much. If we don't, students will still get it, but hide it, but they probably won't have as much access to it. Oh decisions decisions. What is your opinion? Should a residential school for mostly middle school aged students allow sodas on campus?

Am I Stupid?

My friend, Paul Zietz, who just returned from teaching at MathPath, says that being stupid is part of the human condition. We all know only a certain amount of stuff, and there's always room to learn more.

What's my point? Nothing really, other than it's important that all of us come to the realization that we don't know everything. There's always room for improvement. Keep learning!

Til next time....
Bryan

Other Blogs of Note and Points of View

I've looked for awhile for good blogs on gifted and twice-exceptional topics. While the search engines provide many links, most are one post blogs that haven't been posted to in years. However, I have found a few exceptions. The following blogs are worth noting:

Prufrock Press has a blog for gifted children and seemingly, twice-exceptional children, as some of their posts relate to Asperger Syndrome.

Gifted Exchange is written by the coauthor of Genius Denied: How to Stop Wasting Our Brightest Young Minds.

Twice Exceptional Kids discusses issues related to Twice Exceptional Students.

I don't necessarily agree with everything that is posted in these blogs. But that's what makes blogging great. One can see different perspectives, and even comment on them. I think it's an absolute must that students, especially gifted students, learn to look at different points of view. From these differing perspectives, students can critique those points of view or learn from them, incorporating new knowledge into already held beliefs, assumptions, and prior learning. Doing such can greatly enhance thinking skills.

I wish schools would provide such opportunities for developing thinking skills. This would be great for social studies or literature classes. Kids should be able to discuss current issues, and respectfully listen to other points of view. Kids should be able to watch presidential debates and critique the various points of view presented at the debates. Kids should be able to compare and contrast different points of view effectively. If they are not given these opportunities, the ability to compare and contrast will be lost, and the students will not be able to make informed decisions later in life, and in the end, will lose the capacity to think for one's self.

Til next time....
Bryan

Bullying and the Gifted

I was in the gifted program throughout my elementary and middle school years. During high school, there was no gifted program per se, but I was in the highest level math and science courses available for the grade in which I was in.

I was also bullied as a child. Heck, I've even been bullied as an adult. Bullies! Evil things they are!

It's a bit surprising to me that there is so little scientific research on the topic of bullies and giftedness. There is the stereotypical view that all super smart kids are bullied. I think most of us realize that isn't true. At a school (now defunct) for gifted children that I once worked in, very few of the kids were bullied. However, I say this with a bit of reluctance. In some grades, none of the kids were bullied. In other grades, there were many kids that were bullied. It all just depended on what kind of kids were in the classes. If there were bullies in the class, then there were kids that got bullied. If there weren't bullies in the class, then the other kids in the class didn't get bullied.

One of the most noted and most recent studies on bullying and the gifted comes from Jean Sunde Peterson and Karen E. Ray from Purdue University. A survey was given to 432 8th grade students identified as gifted. Contrary to my hypothesis that most gifted children are bullied, only 67% of these students indicated they were bullied sometime between Kindergarten and 8th grade. 54% of the males and 38% of females said they were bullied in 6th grade. Numbers declined slightly for males in 7th and 8th grade and held steady for females. 14% of the male students and 8% of the female students reported being repeatedly bullied in 6th grade. I would have been in this category from 6th grade through 10th grade, although I doubt I would have admitted it on a survey.

While 67% may seem high, another study conducted with students of all abilities, revealed that 75% of students had been bullied sometime during their school years (Hoover, Oliver, and Hazler, 1992). Yet another study among students with all abilities showed that 89% of elementary school children had been the target of at least one agressive attack (Orpinas, Home, and Staniszewski, 2003). While each of these studies are conducted a bit differently, the trend seems to be a higher percentage of the general population is bullied than the gifted community. This is opposite the stereotypical perception, and my original hypothesis.

I would like to see this study on bullying among the gifted replicated and enhanced. To enhance this study:

• Get more school districts involved in the study. 34 school districts were contacted, only 16 participated. Of those 16, the researchers already had connections with 12 of the districts. I'm going off on a tangent from the subject here, but I do think more schools have to start participating in studies on gifted children if we are to accurately educate them as well as support them socially and emotionally.
• Get more participants from each school. The study indicates that between 8% and 80% of eligible students at each district participated. 80% is pretty good, but 8%? That is not significant. Do some children choose not participate due to embarrassment of being bullied? Do some children choose not participate because they have never been bullied and thus feel they survey is lame? What are the reasons 20% to 92% of the students in each district did not participate?
  
• Get surveys from homeschooled gifted students. Through my experiences, I have met many homeschooled students that were pulled out of their schools, both public and private, due to bullying. None of these kids were able to participate in this study.
• Get surveys from as many gifted camps as possible. Gifted camps have students from a wide variety of backgrounds. 2% of the participants, or about 26 students, in this study were from camps.
  
• Provide a break down of students. What are the percentages from students in dedicated gifted programs? How about those that have no dedicated gifted program? What is the percentage of students bullied at private schools? Schools for the gifted? Homeschooled? What about those who are twice-exceptional, having ADHD, Asperger Syndrome, or any other outside-the-box thinking and behavior patterns?
  

Based on my on prejudicial experiences, I believe that gifted kids, in traditional schools, do often get bullied. At a boarding school I worked at, I saw most all of the gifted kids get bullied. Some weren't bullied only by students, but also by teachers and administrators. As one who supports the gifted kids, this drove me up the wall. The staff wouldn't bully them directly, but during staff meetings, they would often make condescending remarks. When the discussion of a kid getting bullied come up, the response would often be they deserved it. In one of these cases, one student was physically assaulted by another student. I was never made aware of any discipline provided to the person who assaulted the other student. From what I could tell, there was none. Now, I understand many parents don't want their children disciplined by the school, but I do believe we have to have some sort of order so that future attacks could be prevented.

At Golden Tree Academy, I hope to be able to provide an environment that is free from bullying. I want the students to feel safe, secure, and cared for. If a student does bully another student, I expect the administration, teachers, and parents to all work together to help the student and to prevent the student from bullying again in the future.

Til next time....
Bryan

Land

It looks like the land that we were considering for the development of Golden Tree Academy won't be available. Something due to the coal rights belonging to someone other than the current owners of the land and owners not being able to come to agreement on terms. This saddens me, as the price was right and it had spectacular views, small ponds, flat areas for buildings and fields, and hilly areas for landscaping, sledding, etc. Because this land won't be available, I looked online for land today. Unfortunately, there's no good search site like realtor.com for land. I also looked for commercial properties, such as hotels, retreats, and campgrounds, which may be able to be converted. Again, there's little out there for properly searching these types of properties. What is out there is sorely lacking in information and, in general, costs money to access full listings. Nothing struck my fancy enough to cause me to pay for the full listings.

When I first set about on this project, I was hoping someone who had a gifted or twice-exceptional child would donate land and/or buildings to help start the school. This is how boarding schools are often started - a donation of land. With such a donation, the donor would be eligible for naming rights, scholarships, etc. However, after four years, there have been no such offers. I have had one offer in regards to leasing land. It was a very weird offer. The person wanting to lease the land wouldn't tell me anything about location other than a general metro area, or about costs. In addition, there were likely no suitable buildings, so we would have had to build. Needless to say, we didn't go with this.

I figured if no land was donated, we could buy 20 or so acres at about $5,000 an acre. While there is property for this price and less, they lack infrastructure, and may not even be able to be built upon. Nearly all land available is not connected to a municipal sewer system. In addition, most haven't been perk tested to determine the feasibility of a commercial grade septic system. It's hard to justify the expense of perk testing land that likely wont pass and thus won't be suitable for the school. Once land is found, a septic system will have to be designed and built. The estimated cost of this is $300,000. This would be the largest expense, followed by proper commercial well systems, and bringing in general utilities.

I'm still looking. Something has got to turn up.

If you, or anyone you are aware of is interesting in selling, leasing, or donating land for the construction of a school, please let us know. Again, naming rights and possible scholarships are available for such donations. In addition, donating would lead to a good tax write-off. Land would need the following:

• 10 or more acres
• Municipal sewer hook up, commercial grade septic, or, at minimum, perk tested for commercial grade septic
• Municipal water or sufficient water to feed a commercial grade well
• Within 2 hours of major airport
• Within 30 minutes of retail
• Within 30 minutes of hospital
• Fits within our budget - which varies based upon what infrastructure is already in place

Til next time....
Bryan

The Joy of Taxes

Tonight I'm doing something different; probably nothing that you would notice. I'm writing this blog entry late at night, before I crawl in to bed and go to sleep. I hope I'm awake enough to compose this entry with some semblance of readability. Before I move on, however, I need to introduce this post by stating that tax guides for corporate taxes (e.g., Form 1120) are no where near as complete as those that are developed for personal taxes (e.g., Form 1040).

I wrote about my taxes a few days ago, focusing on the topic of deductions and accountants. Since none of the accountants I have tried to contact have responded to my requests for assistance, I decided to claim zero deductions. This has made the federal tax form easy, all zeros. The state tax form, however, is a six page behemoth that also requires the attachment three federal forms, even if you didn't have to fill them out for the federal taxes. Needless to say, I didn't have to fill out these forms for federal purposes, but will for state purposes. Thus, making the state taxes even longer. I'm glad I have accounting fees established in the budget for the school. There's no way anyone but an accountant would be able to figure out the state taxes, and even the complete federal taxes, once income and expenses become an everyday occurrence.

In regards to the deductions, I took none. I'm hoping I can carry them over to future years. Since we will be applying for federal exemption soon, we might not even have to worry about that, since in general, our income will not be taxable. It's also likely that our expenses will equal or exceed income (remember, we are not for profit - therefore expenses should match income), thus we won't even have to worry about carrying forward the current deductions.

This will probably be the last I write about taxes until they become due again next year, unless they spot some errors or have questions. I hope they don't!

Til next time....
Bryan

Making Site Known

I just performed some sort of check on the school's website which gave a score of search engine optimization. The website got a score of 85%. Sounds like a nice, solid B. I did the test on some other sites as well, and they all scored lower, so I can live with the 85%. All the major search phrases that I can think of related to the school have Golden Tree come up on the first or second page - mostly first. I'm pretty happy with that. Results do seem to be better with MSN's Live and Yahoo! than with Google, but I assume that's due to Google indexing more sites.

Now, how do I get this blog known? I did a search on "Golden Tree Academy" and this blog didn't show up in the normal Google search. It did, however, show up in Google's blog search. I would have been surprised if it hadn't shown up there since Google owns Blogger. But how does one really make a blog known? There are literally millions of blogs out there. I've heard of, maybe, a dozen. I suppose I'll just tell all my friends about the blog, and they can tell their friends, and they can tell their friends, and so on, and so on, and so on. Hah! If it were only that easy. I guess it doesn't matter too much, since it's the main site I want people to visit, and from there, take an interest in the project - providing encouraging words, filling out the initial application form, doing some volunteer work, and what not. (What does "what not" mean, anyway? I think we'll have to spend a good 30 minutes on that phrase in 6th grade English.)

Research Triangle

I had all these ideas about things to blog about. That was yesterday. Today, I can't remember what any of these ideas were. What's sadder is that one of Golden Tree Academy's areas of concentration is to develop the student's use of executive functioning skills. One of these skills would be to jot ideas down. Yet, here I am, not having written any of my blogging ideas down. I'll do so for now on. In fact, I made a list on this page, somewhere on the right.

Today, I would like to talk about the Raleigh-Durham area, now sort of known as the Research Triangle. I really know very little about this part of the nation. However, I hear nothing but good things about it. One of my friends from high school now lives in that part of the country. I haven't spoken to him for a long time, perhaps I should try to get in touch with him. My general research on the area has been positive, and all the city ranking things always list the area.

So, I thought to myself, what about setting up a day school there? Unlike Western Pennsylvania, I don't think we could afford a large amount of land. Even looking at areas an hour or two away from the Research Triangle, I found that land was expensive. I looked into some leases, but couldn't find anything real suitable. I found one nice building, but it had no land. That wouldn't help us much for physical education or holding a class outside. But, I'm still considering it, as well as some other locations, which I'll blog about at a future date.

Doing a bit of research, there are about 30 independent (non-religious) private schools within 50 miles of Raleigh. They range in size from 10 to over 1,000 students. I have no interest in a school of 1,000! Ideally, I would like to see Golden Tree be a boarding school for about thirty students. As a day school, I can see, maybe, 50. However, with the costs of running a school in the region, I'm not sure that 50 students would be sustainable.

According to Hoagie's Gifted, there are only two schools for gifted children in the area. One doesn't even mention gifted on their website, so I'm assuming they are really just a traditional school that has a program or two for gifted kids. If the program is simply putting a kid in a higher grade level class, then it isn't gifted at all. The second school is a public elementary school. This school would serve as competition if we decided to enroll elementary school students. However, a place like that could be a good feeder into the 6th through 8th grade programs at Golden Tree.

So, what do we have? We have an area with over 100 private schools (including religious schools), meaning that people in the area do look for private education. We have only two schools that are even mentioned for gifted, one of which isn't really gifted, the other which is elementary only. Hmmm. Strange that a place filled with technological talent would have so few gifted school opportunities. Something like this may actually be able to work there. If you have any leads for land or facilities in the area, comment to this post.

Plant a Seed

I've been trying to put together my tax reports for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2007. This is our first tax report since incorporating on August 9, 2006. It has been quite the challenge, to say the least.

There are a few major issues that I have not been able to figure out. The biggest issue is trying to find an accountant who will help me. All I need is a little bit of tax consulting, but no one seems to want to begin such a small accounting relationship, even though, if the school does become reality, it could be a big accounting relationship. The other issue is related to filling out the forms.

Even though we are incorporated as a nonprofit, we do not yet have federal tax exemption. Forms for this will be sent to the IRS after our first annual meeting in August or September. I guess this is unusual, as neither QuickBooks or my local bank know how to handle this situation. I find it strange that this is an issue, since in order to receive corporate tax exemption, you have to be incorporated first. Due to this situation, I don't know for sure which form to fill out. I've filled out the 1120, corporate tax return, assuming that will be correct.

The income portion of the form was simple. All zeros. However, there have been quite a few expenses, which have been funded personally by me. Thus, Golden Tree Academy is currently in debt to me. Since I have no income, I would like to carry these items, which would be deductions, over to the next year, but I can't figure out how to do so. Perhaps I just fill in zeros for deductions this year and carry them over to next year without making any type of notation for this on the tax form itself. However, it seems like the IRS would want this documentation before hand. What type of documentation would they want if I claimed it next year?

Anyway, that's it for my first post on this new blog. I'm hoping to develop the blog as a casual conversation piece about the development of Golden Tree Academy. However, there may be times that I go off on a tangent and write about completely unrelated issues. I may also write about some gifted & twice-exceptional issues from time to time.

Til next time,
Bryan