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Minnetonka’s Navigator Program pushes students while building hard-to-learn skills. 

By Ann McMullan

This is part 1 of 2. Tomorrow’s story will delve deeply into the day-to-day tasks students complete in the program. 

The word navigator originates from the verb navigate. One definition of navigate is to direct (oneself, one’s way, etc.) carefully or safely. Visitors to the Navigator Program classrooms in the Minnetonka Public Schools #276 encounter students who find their direction within their own uniqueness as gifted students. These students are cared for by teachers and administrators—as well as themselves and each other—in a safe learning environment where they are strongly encouraged to leverage their talents to innovate, inspire, and excel.

Now in its seventh year, the Navigator Program in this Minnesota school district targets the academic, social, and emotional needs of the area’s most gifted students. Initially created by Superintendent Dennis Peterson and his leadership team, the program is designed to provide a safe learning haven for children who are at the top intelligence levels but often face challenges, boredom, and disappointment in traditional classrooms. Peterson and his team based their understanding of exceptionally gifted students on 80 years of academic research and their own observations. With their understanding of and compassion for these students, the program was created as a separate entity under the umbrella of the district’s High Potential programs.

“Many of our students thrive in the shelter this program provides for students with incredible potential but vulnerable personalities," Peterson says.

Meeting Students’ Unique Needs

Today, Diane Rundquist, the district’s High Potential Services coordinator, is the lead administrator for Navigator. Rundquist, who also has a child in the program, says she has discovered that given the right educational setting, and the use of personalized instructional strategies that honor a student’s giftedness, learning can be fun. All students truly can realize their own potential.

At the core of Navigator is a clear understanding of the needs of these students—all of whom have an IQ of 140 or above. “Highly gifted students need challenge and community,” Rundquist says. “Struggle is a basic human right. Struggling is how we learn about ourselves and how we become resilient. These students need learning opportunities that provide depth and complexity—so the work is interesting to them. They need to fail—so that they find out it isn’t the end of the world when they do. They need intellectual peers so others get their jokes. They benefit from being inspired by one another’s questions.”

To enter the program, parents must apply and students have to pass a simulation exercise where they are observed doing Navigator-type activities. During the simulation, teachers and administrators look for evidence of the following traits: focus in interest areas as demonstrated by a long attention span for the student’s age; intellectual curiosity; ability to delve deeply into curricular topics; intensity; big-picture thinking. It’s important to the Minnetonka staff that students admitted to the program achieve their highest level of success in this most specialized learning environment. Proof of prior academic achievement as reported on standardized test scores is not a prerequisite, though test results are used to assist in designing an individualized learning plan for each student. All students who qualify and for whom the program is a good academic fit are accepted.

Navigator runs at two elementary schools: Excelsior Elementary and Scenic Heights Elementary. Students are grouped in mixed-grade-level classrooms, which combine grades 2 and 3, and grades 4 and 5. Class sizes range from 18 to 25 students.

Several factors set the program apart from more typical gifted and talented programs. Unlike traditional gifted programs, which typically pull students out for a set period of time each week or differentiate instruction within a regular education classroom, Navigator students are immersed in a specialized approach to teaching and learning all day every day. Additionally, the program embraces the idea of going deep rather than simply accelerating content. Students follow a district curriculum, but time is allocated for students to dig deeply, and often collaboratively, into projects or problems that are presented within the context of real-world challenges.

Paying Attention to Social/Emotional Needs

As critical as the academic core of the program is, students’ social and emotional development is just as important. The framework at the heart of each of these classrooms is Art Costa and Bena Kallick’s “Habits of Mind.” These habits (perseverance, thinking flexibly, responding with wonder and awe, managing impulsivity, seeking accuracy, etc.) are woven into every lesson. The goal is to provide each student with multiple opportunities to build real-world skills and develop resilience. Mastering the skills within “Habits of Mind” doesn’t happen for these learners without deliberate design and intention because in typical classrooms they’re usually the best and fastest at everything they do.

Organizational skills can also be a major challenge to highly gifted students. Navigator includes elements that build essential skills such as planning, task initiation, pacing, and so on. Students receive multiple opportunities to develop these skills by planning their own work periods, prioritizing tasks, and taking on long-term projects.

In summarizing the overall impact of Minnetonka’s Navigator Program, Diane Rundquist explains, “I used to think that a program like Navigator may exist to “push” kids. Now I know it exists to feed them.”