Programs for Students

Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) Program: Intermediate (Students)

This is the follow up program to the GATE beginner series. You can have the intermediate program start after the completion of the beginner series, or it can be scheduled for the following year as your students move up to the next grade level. Two of the programs, The Leadership Advantage and Secrets of a Super Memory, will be familiar to your students as they learn new skills in these areas. The Enrichment series adds a new dimension to the Intermediate series.

• The Leadership Advantage: Intermediate series
• Secrets of a Super Memory: Intermediate series
• Enrichment Series

Based on decades of research, Jim's multi-sensory approach includes storytelling, slide shows, custom games, original songs, puppets, magic, high-tech devices, and loads of hands-on interaction. The Intermediate GATE package is 12 meetings (2 hours each).

The Leadership Advantage: Intermediate

As a graduate of the Leadership Advantage: Beginner series, your students know that true leaders first learn to lead themselves. They also know how to turn goals into reality, how to power praise others, and how to walk away from the T’NACI monster. They are now eligible for the next level, The Leadership Advantage: Intermediate series. This is the next step for students who are developing the character-enhancing skills they need to lead themselves. Building on the foundation laid in the beginner series, this intermediate program takes students up the leadership ladder.

Topics covered in this program include:

• How to build an optimistic personality
• Developing your emotional intelligence
• Playing the “solution game”
• Advanced star chart goal-setting practice
• The fastest way to change your behavior––Positactics

When you can build your own life in positive ways, then you are on the path towards helping guide others. These intermediate classes in leadership have a tremendous reinforcing effect on the positive habits started in the beginner series.

Class Schedule: This is a four part class, two hours per class.

Secrets of a Super Memory: Intermediate

This class picks up where the Secrets of a Super Memory: Beginnerseries left off. In the first series, you learned 3 memory techniques: pegging, chaining and substitution. In the intermediate series we cover up to 9 memory techniques and practice using them on academic subjects:

• Learn how to use VAKing to learn geology
• Expand your SAT vocabulary rapidly with a cartoon memory technique
• Practice memory techniques for remembering a script
• Find out how numbers can be remembered at the genius level with a simple code
• Discover a method for holding large blocks of data in memory and use it on interesting law cases
• Learn how to have phenomenal recall for what you read

Secrets of a Super Memory: Intermediate is interactive. Again you will learn by playing. Walk in on the program and you might see students acting, distributing game cards to learn vocabulary, or passing rocks from the "quarry" to blindfolded geology students. The skills gained in the Secrets of a Super Memory: Beginnerseries allow us to look at more sophisticated memory techniques, like how to memorize a book. This is a big step towards becoming memory literate.

Class Schedule: This is a four part class, two hours per class.

Enrichment Series

The enrichment series offers your students a unique opportunity. In this motivational series your students will see the connection between what they learn in school and what it takes to do the amazing things in life. These programs cover topics that include writing, geology, biology, animal behavior, botany, anthropology, physics, and chemistry. Pick 4 topics from the following list.

• Adventures in Writing: Award winning columnist, author and illustrator, Jim shares skills used by professional writers to create dynamic stories and articles. Discover why English might be one of the most important classes you take.
• Sea Monsters I Have Known: An introduction to marine biology. Using stories and slides, a former marine biologist introduces students to the behavior of a variety of sea creatures from sea anemones to jumbo squid and great white sharks.
• The Science of Survival: Come along with Jim as he is marooned on an island off the coast of Canada. Biology, physics, anthropology, marine biology, botany and psychology are woven into this story of survival.
• Plants Your Mother Never Told You About: The author of Edible and Poisonous Plants of Northern California gives kids a hands-on experience with botany.
• Mysteries of the Mayan Underworld: Join a group of cave diving explorers as they descend into a strange and mysterious underworld through cenotes, portals to massive subterranean river systems.

Sea Monsters I Have Known, The Science of Survival, Plants Your Mother Never Told You About, and Mysteries of the Mayan Underworld are programs that Jim also presents at the California Academy of Sciences, in San Francisco, California.

Class Schedule: This is a four part class, two hours per class.