Alisha Kowsky
Alisha Kowsky is an Executive Function Coach for Beyond Booksmart. She currently lives in South Carolina with her husband, two children, and their dog. Alisha received a Bachelors in Elementary Education from the University of Central Florida in 2009 and spent five years teaching before earning a Masters degree in school counseling from the University of North Dakota in 2014. Alisha is certified in elementary education, reading education, ESL and counseling. She has practiced as a school counselor for the last five years. In those five years, much of her experience has been devoted to children with special needs as well as children who are highly gifted. In this time, she has had the opportunity to put a specific focus on executive function skills for these children. Alisha has spent her time in several different environments including public school, charter school, and online education. No matter where she is working, she loves watching her students grow and change not only academically, but socially and emotionally as well.
Did you ever notice that September, the beginning of the school year for most students, shares something in common with January, the beginning of the calendar year? Both present a great opportunity to start anew, wipe the slate clean, and make positive changes. For some of us, these starting points might inspire setting goals for fitness, knowledge, or skills we’d like to acquire. For students, the new school year offers opportunities to reflect and to set their own goals for how they’ll improve their approach to schoolwork. And like many of us, those goals we set often start off strong - but without a real plan for how to attain them they sink to the bottom of our priorities and rise again the next year as the very same goal. How can parents - as well as students - start off strong and persist in seeing our goals through?
School should be easy for a child who is gifted, right? On the surface, that's a simple answer: "Of course!" But if we take a closer look at a typical school experience for a gifted child, we often see some version of the following scenario...
