GiF's main purpose is to bring like minded parents, children and professionals together through our meetings, workshops and community events. Our aim is to help you make better decisions and choices by bringing you a range of information needed to understand the gifted and twice-exceptional population.
SUPPORTING PARENTS AND PROFESSIONALS
Parents and professionals have come together to attend numerous webinar screening and presentations on a range of topics including Gifted 101, Misdiagnosis, Creativity, Anxiety, Twice-Exceptional Learners as well as parenting gifted children.
SUPPORTING CHILDREN
Over the years, GiF's activities and workshops for children have included the Little Mad Scientists' Club with Matt Black as well as countless workshops on creativity, photography, and science experiments often hosted by parents contributing their expertise to the group.
SOME OF OUR ACTIVITIES
THE PARIS SPELLING BEE
An American-style spelling bee, modelled after the National Spelling Bee in the USA, is an English-spelling event that has involved over 100 children from 30+ schools. The annual event ran for 8 years and offered the community language comes to life activities at the library, a movie-screening, preliminary written round and the oral final event. We hope to bring this popular event back in the near future. Please contact us if you would like to help support, sponsor, or volunteer.
FRANCE BRAIN BEE
France Brain Bee is a neuroscience competition for high school students and an affiliate of the International Brain Bee (IBB). Students in grades 9-12th (3ème- terminale) are eligible to compete in the annual event. In addition to inspiring careers in neuroscience, the global mission of the brain bee initiative is to teach students about the brain, its functions, and to dispel misconceptions about neurological and mental illnesses. Our partners include the ICM Brain and Spine Institute who is the official sponsor and host and the American Library inn Paris. Visit our website: francebrainbee.org
Science Workshops for Children
Our inquiry-based science meet ups, like the Little Mad Scientists' Club, instills and encourages children's innate curiosities and helps them make friends.
Information Sessions for Parents and Professionals
Parents and professionals gather to learn and share research and best practices about gifted children and twice-exceptional children (children who are both gifted and learning disabled).
Community Presentations
Is our educational system inherently flawed and outdated?
Gifted in France and collaborators such as American University in Paris and the American Library in Paris co-host presentations and events to explore this question.
These presentations explore the emotional and psychological toll on children from long school days, endless amount of homework, and intense pressures experienced by students in public and private schools. In the end, our one-size-fits-all system often fails not just gifted children but countless others as well.
Race to Nowhere (Screening): This documentary has brought global awareness to the high stakes education and the negative impact of long school hours, and endless homework that often takes over a child’s life on weeknights, weekends and during school vacation. The screening, hosted by the American University of Paris, was followed by a panel representing the OECD, and education activists from the community.
Happiness and Education - How Do We Get There?: Learning in a French classroom all too often is a passive activity and highly stressful. It can sap the self-confidence of even the brightest children.This community event was hosted by the American University of Paris. Journalist Peter Gumbel and gifted expert Wenda Sheard joined efforts to debate the state of education in France and what concerned parents with children in the French system can do to compensate for and counteract the difficult classroom culture.