Ultimate Back-To-School Hack: Find Your Community
This month, we'll discuss the importance of finding and prioritizing your community, to help you be the best you and best Gifted Guide you can be.
Hello Gifted Guides!
We’re so glad you’re here.
How are you doing?
We’d like to give a special welcome to all of our friends from the American School Counselor Association conference! It was great meeting new friends and reconnecting with old friends!
As July ends, the end of summer inches closer. This can be a bittersweet time, when you are savoring the last few weeks of summer vacation, yet the realities of the school year are starting to creep back in. Maybe, despite your best efforts, you find your mind wandering to concerns about IEPs or 504s or the classroom dynamics that lay ahead for you and your learner(s) this 2025-2026 school year. All of that is natural.
Around this time of year, we typically talk about ways to mindfully prepare for the new school year, without overwhelming yourself or getting lost in a stress spiral.
July is a good time for this, because by this point in the year, you are likely in a position to reflect on what went well last school year (and what didn’t go so well), in addition to what has gone well this summer (as well as what didn't go so well). You can use your knowledge about what strategies and supports worked (and which didn’t), as your learner grew and evolved through out the last year—and within the last few months especially.
You and your learner have both grown and changed. You are not the same Gifted Guide you were this time last year. Even if you don’t feel like anything monumental has happened to you in the last year, you have changed. Simply by the function of being a human navigating the world you have taken in new information, met new people, and had experiences that have influenced you—your ideas, your needs, your approaches to supporting your gifted or twice-exceptional (2e) learners.
As such, around this time of year, we often urge you to reflect on what strategies, supports, routines, or rhythms have been working for your learner, asking you then to consider how you can incorporate this knowledge into your Gifted Guide work this Fall.
And that still remains a solid suggestion if we do say so ourselves!
However, this year, we would like to urge you to go a step further and consider how the communities you’re a part of help support you through those strategies, routines, and rhythms.
The core values of the Davidson Institute are indelibly focused on community. Neither educating nor parenting happens in a vacuum. Being a Gifted Guide is, in large part, a team sport. Supporting neurodivergent learners is a multidisciplinary pursuit that requires the efforts and collaboration of many different people along the way.
It’s easy to assume this collaboration includes teachers, parents, and other professionals like neuropsychologists, counselors, occupational therapists, and many others. Those are some of the experts that often get named in articles talking about how to support a gifted or 2e learner.
We'd like to explore who else might be in your community, who you may be collaborating with to support your gifted or 2e learner without even realizing it.
Thank you for being a friend...
Advocacy is community work. So, let’s talk about who is in your community—even if they don’t seem directly tied to or involved in your advocacy efforts.
Do you have friends or neighbors that can somehow always make you smile or chuckle, even on a rough day? Who do you find yourself wanting to talk to when you just need someone to “get it”--without overexplaining or defending yourself?
Who feels like home? Like comfort? Like a breath of fresh air, or an exhale of relief after a long day? Like you can be your true self with them?
The folks you’re thinking of in response to these questions are part of your community. And by seeing and understanding you in the ways they do, they are helping you on your Gifted Guide journey.
These might not be people you see every day. They might not even be people you necessarily talk to a lot about your gifted or 2e advocacy. They are, however, people who make you feel seen, supported, and understood in one way or another.
How can someone you don’t discuss your advocacy with be a support to you through your Gifted Guide work?
That’s a great question—to which there are many answers.
The people in our lives, with whom we’re in community, shape us. We learn from them. We are influenced by them. People we care about and are in community with contribute to our worldview. That shapes how we learn, love, and advocate.
If all this is true, then it is probably worth taking some time to reflect on what routines, rhythms, and supports have worked for you this summer—even, and perhaps especially, if they didn’t have anything directly to do with your Gifted Guide work. What activities or schedules helped you to feel rested, restored, and resilient? What has helped you feel curious and energized?
Based on your answers to those questions, what can you take into the school year with you? What parts of these routines or activities can you find time for during the school year so that you are supporting yourself, while you’re supporting your learner?
The time will pass anyway...
So often, parents, teachers, and others who also fall into the Gifted Guide category can find themselves deferring their own needs in order to support their learner. There can be a sense that once our learners get settled into the new routine of the school year, or after XYZ activity or sport season has ended, or once we make it to a school break, we can spend time on ourselves.
In theory that could maybe work (that’s what we tell ourselves anyway), except for the fact that learners still need care and support during those times. Being a Gifted Guide doesn’t have an easily accessible “off switch,” even if we’re convincing ourselves that things will slow down in a few more weeks or that we just have to make it to the next long weekend.
The time will pass whether you take time to nourish yourself or not. That much is true. But if the time will pass either way, could it make sense to spend some of that time making sure you’re not neglecting yourself in service of someone else?
Is there a way to be a good advocate and Gifted Guide while also meeting your needs?
We think so!
Take summer strategies back to school with you!
As you’re starting to make your back-to-school plan, you’re likely thinking what will make the back-to-school transition work for your learner. How many activities are too many? How many is just enough? Are there certain activities or routines you are planning to prioritize for your learner?
We bet there are.
But are there routines and activities you’re prioritizing for yourself?
These priorities don’t need to be set in stone. If you decide going to monthly book club meetings is something that really brings you joy, or if setting aside uninterrupted time for a pick-up basketball game or the newest episode of Grey’s Anatomy (yup – we're still watching it too – you're not alone!) is a release valve on your week, consider consciously and thoughtfully working these things into your regular routine.
Sometimes, schedules will change. And in those moments, maybe you’ll have to watch the latest episode of Below Deck later, or you might show up having only read half of a summary about your book club book, or you might feel like you have to skip your morning runs for a week. That’s ok.
Because if you’re keeping this activity or routine as a priority, you’ll likely be able to find your way back to it, even if there is a disruption to your typical routine.
Also, demonstrating the fact that you are prioritizing a preferred activity and being flexible when circumstances require it models important flexibility and planning skills for your learner.
Flexibility does not mean sacrificing everything that helps make you the thoughtful, curious person you are. Flexibility means the balance of your routines and rhythms will ebb and flow from time to time. Keeping your priorities in mind as you practice flexibility will help you to return to the people, activities, and rhythms that nourish you and help you to be yourself—even in the hardest or most stressful of times.
Conclusion
Maintaining priorities even when you’re stressed and your obligations pull you in a million different directions is not easy to do. It’s even harder to do if you forget to ask your community for help.
Earlier in this issue, we asked you to think of who makes up your community. Who helps to bring you back to yourself? Who helps you grow and evolve into your truest self? You’ve already started to think who is in this community for you.
We’d like to add ourselves to that list. As you work to be a Gifted Guide and to advocate and support your learners, know that the Davidson Institute is always here to help how we can.
If you’re in one of our programs already, you know there are lots of resources for you to access via our private, member’s only website.
If you’re not currently participating in one of our programs, there is still a wealth of information and support available to you. Check out our Resource Library or our free resource guides, or any of our other curated resources (like our Spotify and YouTube playlists or our Bookshop.org reading lists).
We are honored to be part of your advocacy community, and we can’t wait to dive into back-to-school with you next month!
What’s New at the Davidson Institute?
Apply to Young Scholars! 2025 Application Open Now!
If you’re interested in joining the Young Scholars program, you can learn more and start your application today! Get started by visiting our How to Apply page!
Testing Opportunities – JOIN THE FALL WAITLIST
Through our partnership with Northwestern University’s Center for Talent Development, throughout the year, we are able to offer low cost, remote testing for students in grades 3-10.
This testing can be used to apply to the Davidson Institute’s Young Scholars program, along with the Davidson Academy, Reno and Davidson Academy Online.
Be the first to learn about Fall test dates, join the Fall 2025 waitlist. Fall test dates will be announced later this summer. Be sure to join the waitlist so you can be the first to know when new dates are available!
To learn more and join the Fall 2025 waitlist, check out our Eligibility Assessment page today!
More Ways to Connect with Davidson...
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We’ll see you next month. Stay well, Gifted Guides!