Gifted Education Boot Camp for Educators Fall 2025

Join us for a dynamic, research- and evidence-based professional learning experience designed to deepen your understanding of gifted education and talent development. Whether you're a classroom teacher, gifted education specialist, or administrator, this boot camp equips you with the frameworks, strategies, and tools you need to better identify and serve advanced learners at the classroom level and within your broader school system.

This 15-hour online course blends asynchronous learning with optional live sessions, allowing you to engage with content at your own pace while connecting with peers and experts in gifted education. ISBE Professional Development Hours are available for Illinois teachers. Certificate of Completion available for educators outside of Illinois. 

What You Will Learn

Grounded in the talent development framework, this boot camp explores:

• Foundations of Gifted Education: Explore paradigms, particularly talent development and giftedness through an opportunity-based lens and national standards. 
• Assessment and Identification: Learn how to use data to identify learning needs, align instruction and determine services needed, including enrichment and acceleration. 
• Curriculum and Instruction: Use tools and approaches to modify instruction for rigor and complexity without starting from scratch.
• Acceleration and Levels of Service: Explore the most effective, research-supported strategies for meeting the needs of advanced learners using an MTSS-like approach and including opportunities for acceleration.
• Psychosocial Skills: Understand the role of mental skills, academic behaviors, and executive functioning skills in talent development and strategies for teaching these skills. 

Each module includes practical tools, discussion prompts, and roadmaps to guide your learning. 

Tools and Takeaways

Participants will leave with

• A framework for talent development applicable across roles and settings.
• Strategies for differentiation, acceleration, assessment, and curriculum design.
• Insights into psychosocial development and how to support it. 
• A Capstone Project tailored to your role, helping to identify a "next step" for improving your practices. 

Boot Camp Dates, Fees and Registration

Fall: October 2o - 31, 2025

This Boot Camp session is an online program with mostly asynchronous activities. Three, hour-long synchronous sessions will be scheduled at times determined by the cohort (encouraged, but not required). The remainder of the activities are on-demand so as to allow for maximum flexibility and personalized learning.

Instructors: Susan Corwith, CTD Associate Director; Melissa Hinshaw, CTD Assessment Coordinator; Eric Calvert, CTD Associate Director

Cost: $495 per person; $395 per person for groups of 3 or more registered from the same school or district; $395 for current CTD instructors; $395 for current SESP students

Questions: Contact ctd-school-services@northwestern.edu.

Boot Camp can also be offered locally for groups of educators from a particular school or district, making use of online, in-person, or hybrid approaches.

Register for Boot Camp