Curriculum

In my years of homeschooling, I noticed what I call 'reoccurring seasons'.  I'm sure you've noticed too.  Our thoughts, focuses and conversations with other homeschool families seem to go through seasons of focus.  The New Year comes to us with new inspiration and dedication, then we move into portfolio time and what goals we're going to need to set aside and which need our focus.  The home stretch of spring where we find ourselves staring outside longingly with our children, just waiting for summer to come.  The school year ends with a look at what we'll be doing in the fall and what we should keep doing over the summer.  Then, with the beginning of fall comes excitement, and at times apprehension, over the curriculum we chose in the spring or the areas of study we still haven't found the material for.

It's a big decision for every family, weighing the child's interest, learning style, learning outcomes and academic or spiritual goals.  With this we much also consider how much time it will take, how independently the child can work on it, can it be done in the waiting room during their siblings piano lessons, and how it will fit in the families overall plans and commitments.

Our gifted kids add a new element to it all with their levels of intensity, varied interests and abilities, along with their unique way of learning.  I recall many hours of research into material at higher levels while considering the written output or age appropriateness of the content.  All the while wondering if this will be another topic 'devoured' quickly by my child or if it will be the focus point of our dinner conversations for many months to come.

Its a significant task to take on and is best shared with friends.  With that in mind and in honour of the countless times I've asked and been asked, I repeat the question to you;

"So, what curriculum are you using this year?"

Grab a coffee and join the conversation

Over the past few months, a few of us have been talking about how we can provide more support to families with gifted kids and it’s had me reflect back to my family’s experiences and what I needed most in those more challenging seasons of parenting and homeschooling.  Ideas on what to do in specific situations or which curriculum to use, parenting advice, someone to celebrate a success with, words of encouragement and a listening ear have meant so much to me over the years!  I’ve been blessed in having family and dear friends to pray with me and for me and I’ve cherished that most of all.  These memories flood back and inspire me to attempt to create a community support for you as well.

I’ve found that community is vital in keeping one’s sanity and raising kids.  Especially our unique kids!

My desire is to create a place for dialogue and get us sharing our experiences, wisdom and questions.  We can learn so much from each other and we will be stronger together.  You may just have the answer to the question another has been asking! 

I’ll open a conversation and get things started, and then I’d like you to take a few minutes to respond by sharing your experience and perspective.  We’ll keep things short, I know you’re busy!  But, I think that we can learn a lot from each other, whatever stage we are in and I believe that it will help us see things from a new perspective or give us direction. 

So, please, grab a coffee and join the conversation!

Gifted as Sensitive Quote

"The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: 

A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. 

To him... 

a touch is a blow, 

a sound is a noise, 

a misfortune is a tragedy, 

a joy is an ecstasy, 

a friend is a lover, 

a lover is a god, 

and failure is death. 

Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create - - - so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating." 

-Pearl Buck- 

This quote struck me as being very apt.  I have often described the sensitivity of gifted students as though their skin is peeled back and all their nerve endings exposed - physically, emotionally, spiritually. The above quote is a much nicer visual. Carmen


Source: www.ri.net/gifted_talented/character.html

Modern Day Slavery - an Article by Robyn Hearn

Here's an article written by Robyn Hearn along with a link to the local newspaper that showed up at the event she was a part of planning and also an article written by one of her youth pastors that mentions the event.  Young people doing great things - love it!

PQNews article: http://www.pqbnews.com/community/159468965.html
Pastors Point: http://www.pqbnews.com/opinion/160763215.html

According to www.ijm.org, there are over twenty-seven million slaves in the world today, a higher figure than any other time recorded in history.

We’ve all learned about the history of slavery. We know of the millions of Africans being shipped and sold around the world for free labour until slavery’s supposed “abolishment” in 1833. Still, though, so few of people are aware that slavery is still going on today.

While William Wilberforce and the British Legislature succeeded in illegalizing the practice of one human owning another, this certainly did not rid the world of forced labour.

Today we define slavery as “people forced to work against their will under violence or threat of violence and are paid nothing.”¹ While slavery, historically, was mainly limited to Africans being owned by Caucasians, slavery, today, has moved across to include all race, age, and gender. In fact, slavery takes place all over the world, including North America, and it’s estimated that 40-50% of slaves are children.²

This forced labour includes work in rock quarries, rice mills, sweatshops, brick kilns, fisheries, as well as prostitution. One becomes a slave either through violence or deception. In the case of deception, a family is typically doing very poorly financially and is desperate. Maybe a “friend of a friend” offers to loan some money in exchange for a bit of work; the family agrees and is completely unaware that they just sold themselves, or their child, into slavery.

When I first heard about modern day slavery, I was overwhelmed, shocked, and upset, but I also knew that just feeling bad wasn’t enough. I needed to do something more. Since then, I’ve started a fundraiser at my youth group in Parksville, Pym³. I’ve been so blown away by how willing people are to get involved once they’ve heard what’s going on. There are several organizations that are physically freeing slaves, and we’ve chosen to fight slavery through donations to International Justice Mission².

Although, in the past, slaves were freed by simply buying them and releasing them, abolitionists have learned from previous mistakes and seen that this actually grows and stimulates the slave trade. “IJM lawyers, investigators and aftercare professionals work with local officials to secure immediate victim rescue and aftercare, to prosecute perpetrators and to ensure that public justice systems - police, courts and laws - effectively protect the poor.²” The biggest advantage to working this way is that we’re not only holding perpetrators and officials accountable, but we’re also helping to prevent future cases.

Our goal is no longer to just free one or two people, but rather to actually eliminate the modern day slave trade from our world.

If you would like to get involved, you can make a donation at www.ijm.org or contact Pym’s fundraiser team at robalyn@shaw.ca.

¹www.freetheslaves.net

²www.ijm.org

³www.pym.ca

ByrdSeed - Gifted (classroom) WebSite to Check Out

As we head back into September, and start thinking about formalizing the learning process once again, a colleague of mine, Gord, who teaches the Immersive Technology courses at HCOS, sent me this link and I found it worth passing on (and adding to my top sites).

Ian states that ByrdSeed (www.byrdseed.com) is a place "dedicated to gifted education. Learn new ideas, share what you know, and grow as an educator." As parents in a home learning environment, you are the teachers and the information he has on his site would be helpful to you in how to create an environment and activities that will inspire and challenge your kids. There are lots of fun ideas here - check it out!

Gifted Adults

I had the honour of attending the Symposium on Gifted Adults in Boulder, CO this spring and heard this essay read aloud. I thought it well worth the read and wanted to share it with you. Many of the gifted students I am working with are young adults and this has some good insights into the life ahead. Many of the parents I work with are gifted adults themselves and I think you would also find this information beneficial and interesting. Enjoy! Carmen

FOR THE SYMPOSIUM ON GIFTED ADULTS

Annemarie Roeper

March 5, 2011

A gifted adult, of course, develops out of a gifted child. The gifted go through a number of emotional experiences that differentiate them from others. This is more puzzling when they are young.

All of their lives, the gifted live with a sense of isolation because of their greater intellectual power, greater awareness of why things are happening, and greater capacity for logical conclusions that don’t always coincide with the way other people see reality.

Their ability to predict certain events frequently meets with general disbelief by others. Often they realize that some plan is bound to end in failure because certain aspects are not being considered, but their environment won’t accept it. People have a tendency to think in terms of one cause and one effect, but don’t know that everything has many causes and many effects and that one positive action may result in a number of negative by-products.

Gifted adults do not make decisions easily. With every step they take, they are aware of a multitude of available alternatives, as well as the possible unexpected consequences that could occur because of their decision. They rarely feel absolutely certain of doing the right thing or of the right answer to a question, because the available alternatives are endless.

The gifted are aware of the enormous complexity and total interdependence of all living things. The more gifted a person is, the more he or she realizes this fact. They penetrate more deeply into that which they experience. A person with good hearing ability can hear an airplane long before other people do, long before the others even know it exists. This, I think, is symbolic of the experience of the gifted adult.

Gifted adults think faster and with more complexity. They draw conclusions at a faster rate. Their horizons stretch beyond those of others. It could be called greater emotional and intellectual eyesight or else insight. Often, a gifted adult will interpret what others say in a more sophisticated manner and have a broader understanding. The gifted learn more quickly, they react more quickly—or sometimes more slowly because they have to consider so many factors. They have a drive to invent, a drive to explore, a drive to understand, a drive to go beyond that which we already know. I suspect that it is the gifted who have created the world in which we live, not only with their inventions but also with their actions and behavior and insights. This could have both positive and negative consequences. A gifted adult with a background of anger can use the same insights in a negative way and the same resources to make others suffer. The gifted adult, like the gifted child, can be a very inventive teaser, with the ability to tantalize others to the point of cruelty. Manipulation and deception are two other qualities that may come with giftedness.

Many people think that giftedness can be identified by only an IQ test, but there are other aspects of giftedness which may not be represented by an IQ test. There is emotional giftedness that might be called wisdom, which represents the quality of feelings that many people have. I think it is very akin, if not identical with, sensitivity. There are those people who can sense what goes on inside another person and they react not to what the person says, but to what they know the person feels. There are also people whose giftedness is purely intellectual; for some reason, the entrance to emotions is closed. Sometimes people are aware of this fact and feel it as a painful lack.

The gifted may have more anxieties than others because they are more aware of dangers but they also may know of more means to counteract their anxiety. The gifted adult deals with the complexities of the world, which include the negative as well as the positive. Their ability to predict and sometimes prevent events is often awe-inspiring. Gifted adults are usually driven by the need for action and invention and sometimes have difficulties finding appropriate outlets for their drives.

There has been much discussion about overexcitability in the gifted. There is definitely an emotional overexcitability, which might express itself in nervous behavior. The highly gifted are often difficult for other people to take, because their mind moves so fast and so easily from one subject to another that it is tiring to participate with them in a conversation.

Everything in the gifted adult’s life relates to his or her particular depth and complexity of experiencing the world. Nothing seems simple, particularly when it comes to the questions of right and wrong. There are so many levels at which we can experience the correctness of our conclusions and behavior. The gifted have a need to qualify what they say by limiting it with, “maybe,” “it looks like,” “by all appearances,” etc. They are reluctant to make a statement that is absolute. In fact, that may be an outstanding quality of giftedness – the realization that there is not absolute right or wrong. Finality is a difficult concept for the gifted because they can always find something that would disqualify the very statement they made.

At this point I need to say that many gifted people are also very goal oriented and driven to reach the goals they passionately pursue. I believe that this is a clear contradiction if we desire to understand the gifted. All of it is true, but nothing is 100% true. For this reason, it doesn’t happen infrequently that gifted people are seen as wishy-washy or undetermined because their extended complexity of view does not allow an absolute answer. Yet, their emotional astuteness will often make them aware of an absolute moral truth. The whole question of morality becomes much more complicated for the mind of a gifted person than the more average person. Things are simply never clear-cut and obvious the more we become aware of unexpected factors involved in the decision. It is like a mobius strip that ends up exactly in the opposite direction that it starts out. I think understanding the gifted mind works like the mobius strip. It might reverse what we start out with.

As we get older, we experience certain declines and changes with the same complexity and awareness as we experience the growing up years and adulthood and a new kind of pain enters our feelings when we realize so strongly our physical changes and deterioration. I am now 92 years old and observe myself as well as other old people. Some deteriorate emotionally, but I am also under the impression that there is asynchrony between physical ability and the emotional and intellectual awareness of one’s own deterioration. This has both advantages and disadvantages. I now notice that since I am insecure in my movements I have to watch them intellectually more carefully. It takes careful thinking whenever you put down your foot. Many old people fall and break an arm or something because they forget to be careful. I have learned that watching your own movements is a requirement of old age. The discrepancy between the body and the mind keeps on growing. I think that as they age, gifted people have more alternatives, but even for them there is a limit. I think gifted people are more lonely or isolated in general, but a lot of it depends on the temperament or constitution of the individual.

Now I would like to end this with a brilliant statement, but I have become overcome with senility and I can’t think of one. I am so sorry that I was not able to be there in person, but send my wishes for a successful symposium!

Most is taken from her newest book, Beyond Old Age.

Annemarie Roeper, Ed.D., is an educational consultant with more than 50 years of experience specializing in the psychological and educational needs of gifted children. In addition to hundreds of articles, she has published Beyond Old Age, Educating Children for Life: The Modern Learning Community and My Life Experiences with Children. In 1941, she and her husband, George Roeper, founded the Roeper School in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan; they also co-founded the Roeper Review Journal. She developed the ANNEMARIE ROEPER METHOD OF QUALITATIVE ASSESSMENT and practitioners are now being certified throughout the United States in this methodology. She was the first person to be filmed for the Legacy Series of NAGC.

Parents Can Identify Giftedness in their Children

At HCOS, we don't always test to see just how gifted a child is, and rely a lot on anecdotal evidence from parents and teachers. (We are freed from having to test because we don't have funding attached to testing. That's a positive spin on the fact that at present we don't get direct funding for our gifted students).

I was heartened, therefore, when I recently read the following, by the esteemed Linda Silverman,

via the Gifted Development Centre, who does a lot of testing and research. Linda points out the following:

"Parents are excellent identifiers of giftedness in their children: 84% of the children whose parents say that they fit ¾ of the following characteristics score at least 120 IQ (the superior range). Over 95% show giftedness in at least one area, but are asynchronous in their development, and their weaknesses depress their IQ scores."

• Reasons well (good thinker)
• Learns rapidly
• Has extensive vocabulary
• Has an excellent memory
• Has a long attention span (if interested)
• Sensitive (feelings hurt easily)
• Shows compassion
• Perfectionistic
• Intense
• Morally sensitive
• Has strong curiosity
• Perseverant in their interests
• Has high degree of energy
• Prefers older companions or adults
• Has a wide range of interests
• Has a great sense of humor
• Early or avid reader (if too young to read, loves being read to)
• Concerned with justice, fairness
• Judgment mature for age at times
• Is a keen observer
• Has a vivid imagination
• Is highly creative
• Tends to question authority
• Has facility with numbers
• Good at jigsaw puzzles

http://www.gifteddevelopment.com/What_is_Gifted/characgt.htm

So there you go. It helps to answer the "Is my child gifted?" question. Now I can reply with authority..."Well, you tell me!"