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Articles from
May 2008
Gifted Homeschoolers’ Forum
Not every school is a good match for every child. Homeschooling can be an ideal academic alternative for gifted children because it provides an education tailored to individual intellectual, social, and emotional needs. The flexibility of homeschooling allows children to set the pace of learning and work from a wide variety of educational materials. It also allows more time to pursue interests not covered in the classroom and to find experts willing to share their specialized knowledge. All of these attributes are beneficial to very bright children.
Gifted Homeschoolers Forum (GHF) is a non-profit, all-volunteer organization that works to support, educate and advocate for families choosing alternative educational paths for their gifted children. It was originally founded to support gifted homeschoolers in California but, because of technology, is now able to make its information available to everyone. This Web site has many resources that are beneficial to parents who homeschool their children. Links include the following:
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Favorite traditional and non-traditional curriculum resources
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Information about twice exceptional (2E) kids
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Blogs
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Organizations
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Mailing lists
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Books and publications
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Nationwide distance and short-term residential programs for gifted children
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Regional resources
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Articles about homeschooling
If you are considering homeschooling your child or you already are a homeschooling parent, you will likely find lots of helpful information at this Web site.
Gifted Gab—The Art of Rhetoric
Do you have a student who is preparing a graduation speech right now? Do you have a gifted student who wants to work on his or her verbal skills, especially public speaking?
American Rhetoric is a great resource. It has a database of and index to 5,000+ full text, audio, and video versions of public speeches, sermons, legal proceedings, lectures, debates, interviews, other recorded media events, and a declaration or two. They are great examples to watch, listen to, and learn from.
In addition to great examples of speeches, there is a compendium of more than 200 audio (mp3) clips illustrating 40 different rhetorical devices. These devices, or stylistic figures, are techniques used in both writing and speaking. For each rhetorical device, there are definitions and examples, both written and audio. Audio examples are taken from public speeches and sermons, movies, songs, lectures, oral interpretations of literature, and other media events.
This entire Web site is a great teaching and learning tool.
Gifted Student College Application Rejected
There was an interesting interchange this past week on the Washington Post Web site. In What to Do With Gifted Students?, staff writer Jay Mathews talks about a letter he received from a mother of a very gifted student. (The boy was reading a college-level book in third grade.) Mathews admits that he has not been very sympathetic with parents of gifted students, but this one is an exception. In fact, he was so sympathetic, he invited readers to respond.
In a nutshell, the student in question had received rejections from a number of colleges/universities. The parents had focused on learning, not grades. The boy’s standardized test scores were very high and he had taken many advanced courses and scored very well on final tests. However, his grades were not great. He often didn’t do all of his assigned work, so received zeros. The classes didn’t move fast enough for him, so he did different work on his own and handed notes to the teacher and classmates.
After college rejections, the parents and student found out that many schools of higher learning do not look at things like AP scores until after students are admitted. (The boy had so many high scores on AP tests, that he would be qualified to place out of about a year of college.) The fact that his GPA (3.275) was low, in the minds of the admissions department, indicated to those decision makers that the boy is lazy.
In retrospect, the mother wishes that she had homeschooled her son. If he had been homeschooled, the colleges would have looked at the same scores that they now ignore.
The conversation of reader responses to this dilemma is worth reviewing. Since the staff writer who put all this together selected the responses to include, he was able to offer a variety of ideas by articulate people. You will not have to wade through a lot of the same comments written in a poor fashion. This article and letter responses would make a great discussion point for a group of parents, educators, or graduate students. I highly recommend that you read it.
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