Parent Gifted Education Boot Camp: September 2026
Get to Know Gifted Education and Talent Development
At the Center for Talent Development (CTD) at Northwestern University, we believe that every child’s potential deserves to be understood and fully developed. Our Gifted Education Boot Camp for Parents is designed to empower you with the knowledge, tools, and community you need to confidently nurture your child’s talents—both in and beyond school.
You may be asking: Am I doing enough? What’s the right path? How do I support my child's needs beyond what their school provides? You are not alone—and you don’t have to navigate these questions on your own. Your child does not need to be participating in gifted education programs or to have been identified for you to join us and benefit from the resources.
In this program, CTD brings more than 40 years of research, practice, and partnership in talent development directly to you. Through the lens of CTD’s Pathways approach, you’ll learn how academic opportunities, psychosocial skill development, and purposeful guidance work together to help young people thrive over time.
You will:
- Build confidence as an advocate and guide, with practical strategies grounded in research talent development
- Understand the full range of pathways available—including enrichment, acceleration, and out-of-school opportunities—and how to thoughtfully integrate them
- Learn how to support both achievement and well-being, recognizing that talent development is a lifelong process that includes social-emotional growth
- Gain tools to take meaningful, positive next steps, no matter your current school context
- Connect with a community of parents who share your questions, experiences, and commitment to helping their children flourish
Whether you are just beginning to explore or looking for ways to deepen and extend your current knowledge, this Boot Camp will help you move forward with clarity and purpose.
Boot Camp Topics
- Foundations: understanding talent development, giftedness, how abilities present themselves in different ways
- Identification: how to spot and nurture talent or advanced abilities, common identification practices and tools used in schools
- Services and Programs: In-school and supplemental programming, what programming can look like at each stage of talent development, resources and networks to explore as you plan for talent development
- Psychosocial Skills and Social Emotional Development: importance of these skills, role of parents in teaching and reinforcing these skills, resources and guidance
- Advocacy: local, state, national and international organizations; relevant policies and laws; developing proactive and collaborative relationships with schools and educators; finding parent networks
Facilitators
Susan Corwith, CTD Director; Melissa Hinshaw, CTD Assessment Coordinator; Tammie Stewart, CTD Outreach Manager and Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Young Scholar Liaison.
Format and Schedule
The Parent Boot Camp is offered as an online program with mostly asynchronous activities. Though the Parent Boot Camp takes place over a two week period (time frame in which the program content will be actively moderated by CTD facilitators), participants may access content and complete activities where and when it works best within their daily schedules. Content in each topic area may include short videos, audio recordings, articles, and slide shows followed by a discussion or brief activity, which encourages interactions among participants and the CTD facilitators. Two optional, 60-minute live, online sessions facilitated by CTD staff are also available to interested participants during the two-week period. Participants have access to Parent Boot Camp resources for 3 months following the session. (After the initial two-week period the site discussion boards and activities will not be actively monitored but content can still be accessed.)
September 8 - 18, 2026
Participants may access the Parent Boot Camp site as early as September 7. The site discussion boards and activities will be actively monitored by CTD staff through September 18. Hour-long (optional) synchronous discussion sessions will be held on Wednesday, September 9 and Wednesday, September 16 at 7 p.m. (Central Time). The remainder of the materials and activities are on-demand so as to allow for maximum flexibility and personalized learning. Participants will have access to the materials and resources through December 2026 (though discussions will not be actively facilitated after September 18).
Cost
$75 per registrant.
Questions
Contact ctd-school-services@northwestern.edu.