Young Scholars Program

Mini Courses for Students in 
Grades 2-8

Gifted and Talented

Phyllis Aldrich
Coordinator for Gifted/Talented Programs
27 Gick Road
Saratoga Springs, New York 12866
Voice: (518) 581-3585/746-3585
Fax: (518) 581-3589/746-3589
E-Mail: paldrich@wswheboces.org

The WSWHE BOCES G/T resource center is committed to seeking out and nurturing gifts and talents in K-12 students. We promote the development of those children defined by NY State as "children with outstanding talent who perform or show the potential for performing at remarkably high levels of accomplishment when compared with others of their age, experience, or environment. They exhibit high performance capability in intellectual, creative, and /or artistic areas, possess unusual leadership capacity or excel in specific academic fields." They require services not ordinarily provided by schools.

BOCES offers a range of services to help highly able students, their teachers, administrators and parents. The Gifted Education Resource Center assists schools in developing programs that are tailored to the specific needs of their most advanced students. We offer training to strengthen the differentiation skills of classroom teachers so that they can provide a rich learning experience for all levels of students. We provide after school enrichment for over 2400 motivated students as well as a full range of arts-in-education and exploratory enrichment. For those students with extreme needs for enrichment, whose reasoning abilities place them at least four grades above grade level, BOCES provides a one day per week Young Scholars program with an advanced humanities and science curriculum. During 2002-03 this office has assisted more than 1,000 parents and teachers through individual telephone calls and formal training sessions.

• Young Scholars Program  involves more than 680 students from 32 school districts.  Young Scholars teachers are located in 24 different schools to provide challenging and rigorous curriculum one day per week to identified students. 
• Mini-courses for students in grades 2-8 in diverse topics and skills are offered in the spring and the fall at several sites. Courses range from " Shakespeare’s Greatest plays" to "Chemistry Concoctions."
• Gifted & Talented Itinerant services are available to districts who want to share teaching staff who provide challenging activities that promote high –level thinking, research, problem-solving in advanced academic areas.
• Consultant Enrichment Teachers are available to help classroom teachers develop skills in providing learning activities that will challenge their most able learners in a differentiated classroom
• Odyssey of the Mind is an international problem-solving program in which students on 70 teams from 16 area school districts compete in critical and creative thinking challenges.  Winners go on to State competition, and those winners go to World where students compete from 26 countries
• Talent Unlimited. Since 1985, WSWHE BOCES Office for Gifted Education has published an annual literary/art magazine of work by students in grades 4-12. Talent Unlimited features outstanding poems, stories, essays, photographs, paintings, and graphic designs selected by a jury of professional artists and writers.
• Clearing house for Gifted and Talented information and professional references for G/T events and professional references.