GATE Academy is a place where Gifted kids thrive! It is a small, fully accredited, independent, pre-K to 8th grade school that has served academically gifted children for 25 years. Located in Marin County on the beautiful St. Vincent’s campus, families from the Bay Area enroll their curious kids at GATE Academy for its unique learning environment.

Gifted children have different learning needs. These include alternative curriculum delivery methods with individualized lesson plans, and grouping developmentally similar students together. To achieve this, GATE clusters motivated and cognitively gifted students in small classroom groups with their social, emotional and intellectual peers, providing them with an inquiry-based, accelerated, self-paced curriculum in a school environment that celebrates them for who they are.

Students learn to ask well thought-out questions, investigate possible answers to those questions, clearly organize, synthesize and analyze the information that they find and communicate their findings articulately to a diverse audience.

GATE explicitly includes social and emotional development and training, including
mindfulness practices, games-based team building, expressive movement, music, theater, physical education, art, and free-play based aftercare. Social/emotional benchmarks include safe interpersonal interactions, personal self-regulation skills, and successful executive functioning. Students learn to treat themselves and others in a caring, responsible and respectful manner, becoming integral members of the school community and creating a respectful space in which to learn.

Kids find GATE exciting and challenging because exploring their own questions, and creating their own research, writing, and art, is inherently self-motivating. The parents are happy too when their kids are thriving.

When curious kids are allowed to ask their questions, they dig deeper, reach farther, stay on task longer, retain more, spot contradictions better, and make conceptual connections faster. With inquiry-based learning, enrollees learn how to learn anything – and they learn to become creators of knowledge, rather than simply consumers of facts. GATE Academy’s unique learning environment allows its students to thrive, and become compassionate, curious and creative learners for life. Private tours are available by appointment.