The Meaning Behind Our Name

Welcome to the Vanguard Gifted Academy blog. We have been sharing about educating gifted children throughout this series. Now, we want to share with you a little bit about our name, Vanguard.

The “vanguard” is the branch of the military service that goes ahead in any military mission and prepares for the mission to be accomplished. Vanguard Gifted Academy selected that name because we feel we have moved ahead in gifted education. We have paved the way for parents of gifted children to say, wait a minute, maybe my child needs a different educational model. We're paving the way for gifted children to say, I know who I am, and I know how I learn, and I need a little bit of extra space, or I want to be engaged in something beyond what's being offered to me in a traditional model.

In paving the way for education, I hope that Vanguard lives on for a very long time. I hope other schools recognize the needs of gifted children and how this model can be very effective. As the founder of the Vanguard Model, I don't want it to come and go with me.

One thing that's really important in this very tenuous time is to think about the Vanguard Model and virtual learning. I want to share with you just a little bit about the virtual learning model that fits in with Vanguard learning. As we moved into virtual learning for the COVID pandemic, we did not want to change the model of giving gifted learners learning experiences based on who they were, giving them learning experiences that were conceptual, that went across domains and helped them really express and learn what they needed to learn. So we had a daily schedule. All students, from the youngest to the oldest, had times to check in with their teacher individually if they needed some help or some guidance or just a little pep talk. All students met for classes together with academic peers learning at their same level. All students had the opportunity to work independently on projects. We didn't end projects just because the students couldn't be at school; the structure of a learning day came into our families’ homes virtually.

We gave a survey at the end of the year, and we had a parent respond that it was so fun to be the fly on the wall as their child was learning the Vanguard way. It was so engaging for them to hear how we, as experienced teachers of gifted children, interacted with their child. One of them said it was almost like a little bit of coaching. They could see how we started with a big idea and then narrowed down to the nitty-gritty that needed to be learned.

We feel like Vanguard is such a great name because we're stepping forward and we're helping education and educators find a way of best serving gifted students.

I hope, if you have a chance, you'll go back and read some of the other blogs in this series. I want to thank you so much for taking your time to learn more about Vanguard.

Elizabeth Blaetz is Founder & Head of School at Vanguard Gifted Academy.