About Us
Education Reimagined
Mid-South Gifted Academy is a mastery-based school for intellectually gifted students in the Memphis area. We are committed to partnering with families to develop individualized learning goals that allow for challenge, acceleration, and enrichment. Our focus on engaging, integrated, project-based learning prepares our students for their future by developing creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, and communication. At MSGA, gifted learners are empowered to reach their fullest potential within a community of learners who support each other’s academic and social/ emotional growth.
Our Story
Parents in the Memphis-area were seeking educational opportunities for their intellectually gifted children to be appropriately challenged, explore areas of interest, and reignite their love of learning. They wanted their children to develop creativity, critical thinking, and grit, and they questioned if the traditional system was the best fit. A full-time gifted program is what their children needed, but none existed.
Our school was created to serve these families and those who have the same hopes and desires for their children.
Developing Innovators & World Changers
Our Mission
The mission of Mid-South Gifted Academy is to develop innovators and world changers by creating opportunities for children to discover and use their gifts, talents, and passions.
Dynamic, Joyful, & Challenging
Our Vision
Our vision is to create a dynamic, joyful, and challenging school experience for gifted learners that honors individual strengths and abilities, prioritizes strong relationships, and grants children the freedom to learn in order to fully develop their potential.
Our Promise
At Mid-South Gifted Academy, your child will:
- Be loved
- Be empowered to learn
- Experience joy and purpose in learning
- Learn to set and achieve goals
- Be appropriately challenged
- Have a sense of belonging as part of a collaborative learning community
- Have time to wonder, dream, think, and create
- Pursue passions and interests
- Learn to be a critical thinker and creative problem solver
- Develop grit and resilience by taking healthy risks
- Build confidence and self-efficacy
Who We Are
Our Beliefs
Our students’ academic, social, and emotional growth are of equal importance.
Our students flourish in a joyful learning environment that fosters a sense of belonging, significance and fun.
Our students thrive when given opportunities to learn at a personalized pace.
Our students’ abilities to create and innovate will positively impact their future
and the world.
Our Academic Focus
The academic focus of Mid-South Gifted Academy is the incorporation of standard school subjects (language arts, reading, mathematics, science and social studies) into personalized and project-based learning opportunities. Methods such as Reading, Writing, and Math Workshops, student blogging, personal goal-setting, Academic Choice, and Socratic discussions reinforce key concepts and allow for demonstration of mastery. With support from guides (teachers), our students also use the latest adaptive technologies for personalized learning at their own pace.
At MSGA, we believe learning should be active, relevant, and transferable. We strive to create a learning environment where kids have an abundance of time for reading, writing, researching, thinking, questioning, exploring, goal-setting, reflecting, designing, creating, drawing, painting, building, experimenting, wondering, collaborating, discussing, presenting, playing, coding, problem-solving, and persevering.
Utilizing the concept of Journeys and Explorations, students work on specific projects in 3 to 6 week blocks. Projects ask students to solve real-world problems incorporating aspects of past and future innovations and discoveries to help students understand that solutions happen within a social framework based on society’s needs. Each academic quarter, students complete a project presentation in front of parents and community members to demonstrate their learning. The project-based curriculum follows a historical progression of innovation and discovery beginning in the ancient world all the way to the modern world.
Students choose from a variety of methods during each project to fit their academic needs. Projects also involve community leaders, innovators, scientists, and real-world practitioners where appropriate. This reinforces the need for discovery and how it applies in solving problems in people’s daily lives.
Mid-South Gifted Academy uses an evidence-based approach to education called Responsive Classroom that focuses on the strong relationship between academic success and social-emotional learning.
