The Value of K-8 Education
Why K-8 Education for gifted students at Helios?
We deliberately designed Helios as a K-8 school for our gifted students rather than K-12 for the three following reasons:
Middle School as a Time to Value
At Helios, middle school is its own distinct culture, a place where the children challenge themselves intellectually, and get to know how they think and work. We don’t consider them junior high schoolers, we consider them middle schoolers doing high level work. Middle school is a time of tremendous social and emotional growth, and our focus on this age at Helios allows us to continue guiding them through this transition.
A Tight Focus
Focusing on K-8 allows us to direct our energy towards the academic and social needs of K-8 gifted children. School wide professional development and extracurricular resources focus on the K-8 needs, rather than the resources needed to run a high school.
Older students naturally take on true leadership and mentorship roles within the school community. Our 7th and 8th grade Herons guide and teach younger students, building their own confidence, social responsibility, and leadership skills. Current programs include the Dragons (recess peer mentoring), Conexion (our enrichment program at Connect Charter School) and co-leading color groups (our cross gradeband all-school groupings) They learn that respect is earned and that performative service learning is never successful. The opportunity for leadership and earned respect transforms a stage of life that is often full of awkward tension and discomfort into a time of agency and well-deserved pride.
Evolving interests and social emotional needs
Parents may have an idea of what their child's K-12 experience should look like, but by the time their child actually reaches 8th grade, the ideal high school may be very different from the one planned for years ago. By 9th grade, children want to add to the close circle of friends they have known since kindergarten. And their interests have evolved, too. Who knew the middle school speech and debate club would become their child’s driving passion in high school? Or water polo?
Our students gain the maturity and understanding of themselves needed to make the choices of school culture that are right for themselves. Working with our high school counselor and their family, they decide what they are looking for in a high school, and the deliberate and student-centered high school application process ensures that our 8th graders go to a school that meets their specific needs. Helios has sent its 8th graders to 41 different high schools – we matriculate confident individuals, and we are proud to see them succeeding in the settings they have chosen, in high school and college.
The K-12 model has its simplicity, but Helios students are complex. Our K-8 model allows us to focus on what our gifted children need, honoring them for who they are now, and setting them up for future success.
