The Fort Bend ISD Gifted and Talented Academy provides challenging learning opportunities and instructional strategies to differentiate for the academically gifted. Instruction is designed to enhance self-awareness, self-efficacy, problem solving, and the development of critical and creative thinking skills to empower students to make meaningful connections through problem-based learning, interdisciplinary study, and self-directed investigation. The GTA leverages a conceptual and thematic framework to foster students' ability to expand learning across separate content areas, encouraging real world connections and realizations via the curriculum. It also offers a uniquely supportive environment for GT-identified students in the form of like-minded and motivated peers and teachers with special expertise in the teaching of gifted and talented children.