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Baywood's campus 2007-2011 |
BLC
History
Baywood
Learning Center was founded by a mother desperate to serve the needs of her highly sensitive (gifted) child. An experienced
entrepreneur, Grace Neufeld was frustrated by the amount of time she was spending at a highly rated public school advocating
for her child's intense needs. She reasoned that by redirecting her time to home-school, she could achieve most of her
child's needs herself. While home-schooling she experienced driving long distances to find resources that would satiate
the voracious mind of her learner. Many of the techniques grounding the BLC model today were developed during this home-school
journey that began in 2004.
In 2007 Baywood Learning Center was officially launched with the
idea to create a central location to conduct high level education programs for gifted children. It took a few years
of trial and error to discover the quintessential education model for highly and profoundly gifted learners. Supported by top influencers in the gifted community, our initial guides were the legendary Dr. Annamarie Roeper, Dr. Linda K. Silverman, and Anne Beneventi, but it
was the learners themselves from whom the most clear direction was received. We honed and expanded on processes
that worked and eliminated anything that failed to support our students.
Word of our success was getting out and we were being deluged with enrollment inquiries. At about
that same time, late in 2009, our founder and director sustained a serious traumatic brain injury. After coming out of a coma, she had to relearn how to talk and walk... from scratch!
With daily
therapy she was finally able leave the wheelchair, walker and cane behind. She also relearned how to talk. Our program
closed temporarily while she recovered. Throughout her recovery time, enrollment inquiries continued to pour in through our
website.
In 2011 the decision was made to leave our small campus and
prepare for an expansion.
In 2012 we closed operations as a corporation and reopened under
a new but similar legal name: Baywood Learning Centers (plural) to reflect our new direction for multiple enrichment programs
and more community focus.
2012-2019 BLC continued to operate as an enrichment program serving
gifted home-school families and as a public school enrichment resource.
2020 When Covid-19 hit the world we prepared for the many families needing a new education system
for educating their children. In a way, it is a good thing that government schools closed, because parents need to be more
involved with their children's education. BLC is here to help parents create an education program that focuses on real
learning, talent development and family values.