Where gifted, profoundly gifted, and 2e students thrive
Custom education for students who crave academic challenge,
and a full playful childhood
Discovery-based learning for ages 8 - 18, one-to-one and in small groups
Accredited full-time, part-time, and enrichment programs
LIVE ONLINE
Enroll anytime, year-round, anywhere in the world
Custom journey
In our self-paced, mastery-based environment, gifted and 2e learners come alive as they follow their interests and curiosities. Our experienced teachers meet each student exactly where they’re at, partnering with a family to custom-design a learning program, in any subjects—live online over Zoom, 1-to-1 and in small groups, with asynchronous options also.
Teachers create original student-centered coursework, catering to one’s unique goals and gifts. We can take any approach to standards, empowering a family to choose what works—whether a focus on state or national standards, or an enrichment or unschooling approach. Most choose a middle path: standards alignment, yet driven by student choice, and optimized for engagement.
Wrap-around support
Eclipse Academy provides wrap-around services designed especially for gifted, profoundly gifted, and twice-exceptional (2e) learners and their families.
With full-time and part-time enrollment options—for course credit, enrichment, or tutoring—students attend sessions live online, over Zoom, on a custom class schedule that ‘wraps around’ what’s already working for them, such as appointments with a therapist or beloved longtime tutor. We’re eager to collaborate with any professionals in service of our students.
Our team can assist you in identifying the right supplements to our online program, wherever you may live—such as a part-time nature school, homeschool science meetup group, soccer league, or dual-enrollment in your local school district.
Holistic growth
With a holistic approach to the academic, social, and emotional dimensions of giftedness and twice-exceptionalism, our students thrive. We get to know what success looks like to your family, and adjust our approach to match. All elements are up to us: together we’ll craft learning goals and chart a unique course, while accelerating, enriching, and remediating learning, as relevant.
Schedule a Zoom or phone call with Ashley, our founder and Head of School, who can recommend a constellation of services—à la carte—such as accredited or enrichment coursework (grades 3 to 12 and college), live Zoom class sessions, executive-function and social-emotional supports, tutoring and test prep, and academic and college counseling.
Addressing the unique needs of profoundly gifted and 2e learners
Our teachers know how to address the unique academic, social, and emotional needs of gifted, profoundly gifted, and 2e learners, for instance by pairing advanced learning resources (like The Atlantic magazine, or an ASU online college course) with playful, inquiry-based teaching approaches—like being a “time detective” solving history’s mysteries by inspecting photographs and primary documents for context clues. With our strengths-based approach (dual differentiation), students can deepen or accelerate their learning as relevant, often working several grade levels ahead in some subjects while remediating in others.
Socially, our small-group classes offer safe and structured opportunities to practice collaborating with 2-to-6 friendly peers, grouped by ability—often a first for gifted and 2e students, who have long searched for a learning community that feels like home. We use Michelle Garcia Winner’s social-thinking framework to guide peer interactions and encourage genuine social connection.
By practicing mindfulness and expanding their social-emotional vocabulary, our students develop self-awareness and a growth mindset, and find a balance between challenging themselves and offering themselves grace. Students who identify as being gifted can benefit from learning that perfectionism can be limiting, an insight we foster through playful, low-stakes, academic experimentation. We believe it’s important to learn the discipline of coloring inside the lines—and also to develop the creativity and courage to eclipse the lines.
With discovery-based learning, students come alive
In our discovery-based environment, students actively explore and investigate topics, solve personally relevant problems, and construct their own meaningful understanding. Students use inquiry, critical thinking, and hands-on experimentation as they learn, practicing both autonomy and collaboration.
With our mastery-based approach, we avoid high-stakes, high-stress assessments. Instead, students are encouraged to keep exploring, discovering, studying, and creating—at their own pace—until they fully understand a topic, answer a question, or refine a project.
As experienced educators, we understand that learning extends far beyond the computer screen. While Eclipse Academy class sessions happen online over Zoom, teachers seek out opportunities for students to apply their learning to the material world. Our science students venture into backyards, collecting specimens like moss and insects for terrariums. Music students attend and give local performances. Robotics students build contraptions to ease daily chores, and mechanical engineering students learn small-engine design and welding for go-karts. Culinary arts students make dinner for the family. Social studies students capture local oral histories of daily life, and present their research at the library. Across subjects, teachers devise hands-on projects and authentic activities that reinforce and expand upon prior learning, and which demonstrate evidence of student learning and growth.
Older students pursue career shadow days and professional internships, with the guidance of their Eclipse teachers, and integrate their workplace experiences into custom-designed class projects, earning course credit towards graduation and college admission.
Supporting families, building a global community
With a family-systems approach, we advocate for the student’s wellbeing above all else. We support the student and their family in setting appropriate expectations and boundaries around schoolwork, and in refining best practices for study and executive function.
Among our students we foster a growth mindset, self-awareness, social-emotional vocabulary, non-violent communication, and healthy accountability.
In our parent education program, we share strategies for supporting gifted and 2e children and teens, especially on the interplay of giftedness and 2e traits like anxiety, avoidance, perfectionism, ADHD, Autism, and processing and executive function challenges.
While we’re best known for our 1-to-1 class sessions, we’re also building a thriving learning community at Eclipse Academy—a diaspora of gifted and 2e peers, from California to Toronto, and Singapore to Costa Rica. Though separated by continents, they meet on Zoom regularly to learn and laugh together. With live online class sessions, our students and teachers really get to know one another and develop genuine rapport and friendship. Several of our students and their families, from around the world, stay in touch, even traveling to vacation together.
To foster our global Eclipse Academy community, we host in-person retreats annually each summer for our students, their families, and our staff. Our retreats are typically scheduled to follow and dovetail with other in-person events; our 2024 summer retreat followed after the Profoundly Gifted Retreat (PGR) in the Hocking Hills of Ohio, while our 2025 retreat is scheduled to follow the Davidson Institute Summit in Reno this June, where our founder and Head of School Ashley will be presenting.
Gifted students deserve a full childhood, too
At Eclipse Academy, we believe that every student has a right to an intellectually challenging, limitless education—and also a right to a full childhood that’s joyful and developmentally appropriate.
These two goals—profound academic achievement, and an unhurried childhood—need not be at odds. In fact, it’s our mission at Eclipse Academy to unify the two.
