“Dara was the buzz word of the conference”

Dara School was very well received and generated a lot of local and global interest at the 22^nd Biennial World Conference of the World Council for Gifted and Talented Children World Conference in Sydney during the recent school holidays.

Dara School offered two lively presentations. The first was entitled “You’re here, why are you here?” Counselling the gifted and talented and presented by our school counsellor, Wendy Stewart. The other Dara School presentation, entitled The trials and tribulations of establishing Australia’s first fulltime school for gifted children, was delivered by Lynda Simons, Chris Grzesik and Danielle Copini. Lynda spoke about the complex process prior to opening a school and the grit of the people involved in this complex process. Chris highlighted the way in which the Australian Curriculum is delivered at Dara. Danielle stole the show with the DVD she had made of our students sharing their thoughts about Dara School.

Local and global experts in gifted education were both impressed and deeply moved by what our students had to say. People were amazed at what has been achieved by a group of people who are passionate about gifted children’s education. Someone was overheard to say, “Why South Australia?” Our answer is simply, “because that’s where the group of passionate people are!” Sharing Dara School with the world was a real celebration of our first six months.