Grace Neufeld, Founder, Board President

Grace Neufeld has been working in the nonprofit sector since 2001.  She has been very involved in community organizing and is currently Executive Director of a 501 (c) (3) public charity organization she founded.  Ms. Neufeld serves on the Board of MEPS, is a former member of the Oakland Alameda Home-school Learners and Family Village Home-school group and 4H.  Ms. Neufeld is married and has one daughter.  The Neufeld family lives in Oakland.

 

Anne Beneventi, Vice President

Anne Beneventi trained for many years with a leading authority on gifted children, Annemarie Roeper. As a practitioner at Roeper Consultation Service, she evaluated children for giftedness, and in 2002 was certified as a Master Practitioner of Qualitative Assessment for Giftedness. Previously, she worked at Bay Area Gifted and Creative, a program for families.  Ms. Beneventi taught at Nueva School for the Gifted and was their drama specialist.  She was also the Director of Nueva’s summer program.  As an educator, she co-founded Kaumeya International School in Alexandria, Egypt, and Roeper West School for the gifted in Berkeley.  She currently has a private practice consulting with families of gifted children and conducting teacher training.

 

Susan Taite, Treasurer and Secretary

Susan Taite is a real estate broker and entrepreneur who operated a private home school for her two children who are both now in college.  Ms. Taite has an interest in education and continues to support education and opportunities for youth.  Susan lives in Oakland with her family and runs a new produce store in Oakland called Taite Estate Farm and Produce.

 

Joan Wenters, Ph.D., Board Member

Dr. Wenters is a clinical psychologist who specializes in developmental and behavioral pediatrics at Children’s Hospital in Oakland California.  She specializes in the assessment, diagnosis and treatment of ADHD, learning disabilities and other learning-related problems in children and adults. Dr. Wenters overcame her own dyslexia to complete medical school and is dedicated to helping children who face similar struggles in school.  Dr. Wenters also has a private practice in Albany, California.

 

John Yokela, Educator, Board Member

John Yokela has a California Lifetime Teaching Credential. He has been a tutor, a teacher and an administrator in private schools for 20 years. Mr. Yokela has been trained in the Slingerland teacher-training program at the Stellar Academy for Dyslexics.  He holds a BA in Economics from UC Berkeley and 85 units in special education from UC East Bay/Hayward. Prior to his career in education Mr. Yokela was in the insurance business.

I pulled my daughter from a very good public school after a series of headaches and stomach aches culminated in what appeared to be a nervous break down.  The school told me she had a nonspecific learning disability.  I spent two years trying to get her a diagnosis so I could know how to help her.  One day I had the opportunity to speak with the renowned Dr. Linda Silverman. I told her that my daughter had a learning disability and I was trying to find out what it was. After I described it to her, Dr. Silverman told me that it sounded like my daughter was just gifted and probably did not have a learning disability. She urged me to have her tested for IQ and check her vision at a special eye clinic.  After much research and testing we discovered her "problem" was that she is highly gifted and had a visual tracking problem.

As I have come to discover, much of the gifted population is too sensitive for regular school, whether public or private. They are not liked by teachers and are generally shunned by their peers. They are subjected to intense bullying, and inappropriate teaching styles, and they are profoundly ill equipped to bear the stress of either. 

 

I am on a mission to help these children and their parents.  I often get calls from parents who are in tears; their children are in pain and they don't know how to get help. I hear from parents who have put their children on medications, or into therapy - one child was suicidal at the age of 11!  Almost all of this grief was caused by inappropriate educational environments.

There is an appalling lack of awareness about gifted children's needs.  Like most people, I once held the mistaken belief that being gifted simply meant an ability to excel in school and get good grades.  Now I realize, being gifted is so much more complex.  While it does mean an individual possesses a high degree of cognitive ability, this does not necessarily translate into doing well at school.  The "gift" of high cognitive ability is almost always paired with OEs (overexcitabilities), intensities, and sensory integration issues. The more highly gifted a child is, the more likely they will have these issues. Some gifted children have additional problems such as hypotonia, vision problems, dyslexia and dysgraphia to name a few.

Teachers often mistakenly place bright, compliant students into slots that should be filled by gifted children for which GATE programs are intended. Because of the wide spread misconception of the true characteristics of high IQ, many low-income and minority gifted children are never properly identified.

So basically, what we have is an unrecognized population of highly vulnerable, special needs children who desperately need help, yet are woefully under served and are at risk of developing serious emotional problems. Paradoxically, this high potential population may very well hold the answers to the most difficult problems the world faces today. 

The parents of these high maintenance kids have few support systems, yet the need to download is great.  One minute you are joyful about their extraordinary abilities and the next moment you are feeling sad and helpless because they have no friends or because you realize they are too sensitive and vulnerable to go to summer camp, or you can't even find socks they will wear. You are tired and stressed all the time, because frequently these children need less sleep than you and their vulnerabilities, intensities and demands for learning keep you in a state of constant vigilance and searching endlessly for appropriate educational opportunities. No one seems to sympathize with your angst unless they also have such a child. After all, isn’t your child “gifted”?

While learning seems to come naturally to gifted children in easy leaps and great bounds, they are in equal degrees exceedingly difficult to teach.  What I mean is, that as long as they are pursuing their own intellectual interest, they will excel quickly and be self directed and motivated. However, directing a gifted child to learn something in which they themselves have perceived no value is an impossible task, like the old saying "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink!"

 

Forcing gifted children to spend their time doing anything that is not, in their opinion, interesting or of value, usually backfires with unpleasant and unintended side effects such as refusal to do the work, sudden stomache aches or headaches, complete loss of interest in learning, a battle of wills, or even an emotional breakdown.  Recovery from this trauma is slow and the time lost is indeed unfortunate.  And what have we truly gained if we have lost the trust and enthusiasm of the child?

 

Gifted children have their own agenda. You will get much farther with them by understanding their agenda, supporting it, becoming their partner and easing the other things you think are important around it.  I have seen this work wonders.  That is a "win, win" scenario.  At Baywood Learning Center we nurture and value the strengths of each child. At Baywood Learning Center, we take the time to learn each child's agenda and work with teachers and parents to achieve a blending of goals that secures a buy-in from the child, the parent and the educational advisors.

Baywood Learning Center is a nonprofit, public charity, nondenominational education center. Our goals include: