Leonardo Gifted School is partner or member of: ECHA - European Council for High Ability, WCGTC - World Council for Gifted and Talented Children, AERO - Alternative Education Resource Organization, BPLUSA - Big Picture Learning Design USA, University of Bucharest - Faculty of Phychology and Educational Sciences, University of Connecticut - Neag School of Education, Simon Fraser University - Faculty of Education

Why?

What makes us really different? Different is Great!

What makes us really different? Different is Great!

Leonardo Gifted School is designed to serve the needs of highly intelligent children, from preschool through the second grade (3 to 12 years old). We are an alternative school with international curriculum, and our aim is to attract the most intelligent children from Romania and from abroad. We understand the education and counseling needs of gifted children and their parents.
What makes us completely different than any other school is that we are offer: 14 years of expertise with gifted, more than 24 differentiators, one of them being over 330 graduates and an unprecedented 4500 hours of expertise and experience of direct work with gifted children and parents. We work to become better and closer to the needs of children with every interaction.

  • Alternative Specialized Romanian school with a focus on English and international curriculum for highly gifted children
  • We are working towards BSO school accreditation (British School Overseas)
  • Emotionally safe and tailored-made environment for gifted
  • Enrichment curriculum designed to cover the needs for gifted, all in one place
  • We start from the children’s perspective, we do not teach for the system. Here the child can be still a child, play, laugh, have fun or negociate his involvement in a subject or his teaching materials as we do not teach for “diplomas” or for grades
  • Children are vectors of learning, and the teachers are facilitators because we follow the perspective of the children. So children are fully involved in the learning process. We facilitate interaction of gifted students with the curriculum to achieve learning.
  • Human Intensive. We offer a very high staff to student proportion (All classes depending on size, have one Class Teacher and one Teaching Assistant (TA), plus 1-2 volunteers and partially, a School Counseling Education Specialist – a licensed psychotherapist in the room for 15 kids max). We all work around the child to suit best his/her needs
  • Policies in place are here to give everyone one of us a secure, predictible environment. One of the policies is the AntiBullying and Good Behavior Policy. An Education Psychologist is the responsible Officer for situations arising around bullying. All our staff is trained to understand and use this policy, also, it is made known to all parents and children. Rules are simple and easy to follow. It is very important to feel emotionally safe so that learning can happen, especially for gifted children. And from this follows the well-being of your child.
  • We facilitate and create an Individualized Curriculum starting from multiple curriculums
  • An Individual Educational Plan per child is closely followed by the Director of Education and the parents because every child is responsible to learn at the minimum every subject, but he can
    easily out-perform or accelerate in several fields of interest
  • Our personnel follows Law 17/2007 which means long hours of debriefing each session with all involved, forums where we debate each child’s performance and what is needed from our side to give support, and a 60 hours minimum of trainings in differentiated pedagogy for gifted
  • We offer a specialized Parental School (included in the fee) which is also correlated to helping the child achieve his/her development objectives. We can succeed when parents are on the same side. There is tremendous joy when we see how all fits in one place for the child when there is support from school, and from parents.
  • We create a school partnership with parents to follow as a whole including at home, and larger social life, the Individual Education Plan with specific objectives for the child
  • English intensive each day 1 hour with a native speaker to prepare children for IB PYP. Children graduating Leonardo who wish to return to the state system are enrolled in the age-appropriate class and they give differences from the previous year, so that they get that matriculation sheet (that no one needs). Please read art 125 of ROFUIP which states the exact procedure. Our intent is to develop classes to a college level.
  • Enrichment and Kinest
    Enrichment gives your child the chance to experiment exactly what she/he wants to explore in one place; 3+ sessions of Kinest every day; this will balance brain hemispheres and develop body intelligence. Kinest is an assigned school trainer to work body intelligence so that your kid integrates his mind to his body, a very important aspect of well-being and brain neural integration
  • We work outdoors in nature so that your kid at 5 o’clock has taken the sun and the weather in his life and made enough exercise to come home and to get the necessary rest
  • We offer on demand support with choosing the right food for kids with alimentary particularities
  • An Education Psychologist is your advisor for issues arising regarding your child.
  • It’s nonprofit so we make no compromise to our admission criteria
  • Academic approach, grass-roots organization. Our Learning Facilitators have 14 years of direct expertise of working with gifted.
  • We are not a commercial school with some fancy marketing. It is a grass roots organization developing an academic school from a high expertise
  • We create an individualized curriculum, and we are using multiple curriculums to prepare for an international diploma, recognized in Romania, such as Cambridge IGCSE, GCE AL, based on choice. We do not teach for exams, we facilitate learning, so that children choose to develop their potential and not be forced to sit for exams. They have the choice, and parents have the final say on what is going to be exam. We offer counseling covering exam type, and at what age.
  • We use the Cambridge curriculum, the William and Marry College curriculum for gifted, the National Curriculum of England and Wales, Mensa for Kids lessons, Renzulli Learning, etc, as core curriculums from which we choose. We individualize and create our lessons while we offer an educational foundation for our children  – a sound, mature, international curriculum to give them a global view on the subjects while developing their own independent thinking around the subjects.
  • The curriculum is recognized by universities worldwide and is an evidence of academic soundness and ability. For example, the National Curriculum of England and Wales has been the result of a consistent work of the Department of Education, in United Kingdom, based on its numerous years of studies and on constant, yearly update, to respond to the needs of children.
  • The curriculum is taught in Romanian with individualized lesson plans; we also teach the Romanian Geography, History, Science, Grammar and Literature, and other subjects.
  • We teach intensively English, each day 1 hour with a native speaker.
  • We have to our hearts the Christian values and ethics and apply them in all we do.

Learn more about How do we make Gifted Children Happy

Learn more about Why a Gifted Education School

See how a Leonardo Gifted Class looks like

More on Our Differentiators