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Articles from
May 2005
Advocate for Gifted Children
This week I began posting samples of articles that have recently appeared in Gifted Child Today, Prufrock Press' gifted education teaching and parenting journal. One of the articles focused on the topic of ways parents and teachers can use traditional public relations strategies to advocate for gifted education and gifted children.
The time for such an article could not be better. Gifted and talented programs are faced with budget cuts, and teachers of gifted kids are dealing with the damaging effects that the No Child Left Behind initiative is having on the educational opportunities for gifted children. In the article, Kevin Besnoy explains that, in order to stem the tide of the reduction of gifted education services, teachers and parents of the gifted must become advocates and employ public relations strategies to support their cause. The article goes on to explain how. You can download the article by clicking the link below.
 "Using Public Relations Strategies to Advocate for Gifted Programming in Your School" by Kevin Besnoy (Gifted Child Today. 28(1), 32-37, 65.)
Mr. Besnoy's article caught my attention because of its relevance to a recent blog entry I wrote in which I focused on the problems that No Child Left Behind has created for gifted programs.
Coincidentally, a couple of weeks ago, Dr. Joan Smutny called me to talk about some of the exciting things happening with the Illinois Association for Gifted Children (in addition to her many other accomplishments, Dr. Smutny edits the association's annual journal). During our conversation, the topic of advocacy came up, and Dr. Smutny mentioned a parenting book she had written titled Stand Up for Your Gifted Child: How to Make the Most of Kids' Strengths at School and Home. I had not seen the book, and Dr. Smutny had a copy sent to me.
Last weekend, I got a chance to read the book. It is a fantastic how-to manual on advocating for your gifted child. The book discusses how to tell if your child is gifted and helps you understand the problems your gifted child may face in school. The book focuses on knowing your rights as a parent of a gifted child and how to work with your child's school to guarantee that he or she is challenged. The book also talks about building a supportive home environment for your gifted child and how to find and network with other parents of gifted kids.
I really like this little how-to manual for parents who want to become better advocates for their gifted kids. I would have to agree with Dr. Jerry Flack who, in the book's foreword, writes, "I have never read a finer and more practical book on advocacy for gifted students."
Kudos to Dr. Smutny and the folks at Free Spirit Publishing for publishing such a great little book.
Textbooks and Gifted Kids
Last night, at one of my favorite Mexican restaurants here in Austin, TX, I got a chance to read the February/March 2005 issue of edutopia. This is a very slick, free teacher magazine published by The George Lucas Educational Foundation. I really liked one article in the issue titled, "No Books, No Problem." As with all of the magazine's content, the article is available online.
The article focuses on one teacher's choice to stop using his class' adopted textbook and focus on the use of many different sources of information to teach students. I especially liked one comment by the teacher: "Since textbooks are marketed nationally, they must comply with content standards for all states, resulting in ten-pound tomes that cover all topics superficially."
I think this problem is particularly true with teachers faced with the challenge of teaching gifted students. I used to get so frustrated with textbooks that try to cover everything without touching on anything in any depth. Teachers of gifted and talented students are often encouraged to increase the depth and complexity of the content they teach to gifted learners, but how are we supposed to do this with the current crop of textbooks out there. Julia Roberts, Ph.D., in her little booklet Enrichment Opportunities for Gifted Learners, offers all kinds of ways to extend the learning of gifted children, but it's tough to follow her advice in a classroom bound to the confines of a textbook.
In a follow-up article to the piece I mentioned above, edutopia includes a "How To" piece titled "Toss the Text". This article offers some practical advice for teachers wanting to move away from relying so much on a single textbook. It provides some sound advice, but I would like to hear more from you guys about this.
Is anyone out there using some subject-area textbook that you really like? If not, what are you doing to sidestep the issues involved (finding the materials you want to use, getting copies for your students, etc.) and expose your kids to really significant content?
Blogging with Parents of Gifted Students
I've discovered a really exciting way that teachers of gifted children can communicate with parents. After doing a Google search for school teacher blogs, I came across several creative teachers that are using blogs in a way I had not considered. They are using blogs to communicate with the families of their students. For example, in Mr. Wright's Third Grade Class blog, a teacher, Christopher Wright, is using his blog to keep parents up-to-date about his class at Wyman Elementary School (Rolla, Missouri). I think this is a wonderful way to use a blog. Mr. Wright posts all kinds of useful information on his blog:
- a calendar of class events (including field trips);
- a summary of what his kids are learning and what is going on in the classroom;
- the week's spelling list;
- pictures of the kids at work in the classroom;
- a reading log to be completed by students each week; and
- suggested web links that Mr. Wright would like his students and their parents to visit.
Mr. Wright also allows parents to post comments and ask questions about some of the activities taking place in his classroom.
Using a blog to communicate with parents can also be used by a school's staff to keep parents informed about school-wide matters. At Meriwether Lewis Elementary School (Portland, Oregon), the staff uses a school-wide blog to keep parents informed about important events and news about what is happening at the school. The staff at the school even selects books available at the local public library that families can read together that support learning activities at the school.
In the "Other Blogs" section on the left sidebar of my blog, you will find links to other teachers who are using blogs in creative ways. Not all teachers are using blogs the way Mr. Wright does. Many are using blogs to keep a diary of their classroom experiences, discuss teaching ideas, and share their views on topics. This is a more traditional use of a blog. I mention it here because I want to point out how flexible the blog format is.
The advantages of blogs are many.
- Blogs are free.
- Blogs are easy to use. Any teacher can set up a blog within a few minutes. Most hosting services have a help section that can be very useful to new bloggers.
- Parents can be automatically notified when you post new entries. Parents wishing to subscribe to your blog will be emailed whenever you post a new blog entry. That way you let parents know when you have new information available. Parents more familiar with using RSS and Atom feeds can subscribe using those subscription methods as well.
The easiest way to get a blog started is to visit one of the many free blog hosting services. I like Bloglines because the service makes it easy to set-up and maintain a blog, and it offers a simple method for tracking new postings to other blogs that you follow (I'm a fan of Macintosh computers, the Dilbert cartoon, and teacher blogs that are written like personal journals, so I use Bloglines to keep me posted whenever one of the 15 different blogs I like on these topics has a new entry). I've experimented with Blogger and had good experiences with it. Another big hosting service is TypePad, and I've heard good things about that service.
Blogging is free, easy, and fun. If you do start your own gifted education classroom blog, feel free to drop me a note with its address. I would be more than happy to post it as a link on this blog.
Creative Writing Activities for Gifted Children
Here is a fantastic, fun, and free activity that teaches about using figurative language (like alliteration -- get it?). Last summer, I wanted to launch a line of activity books for gifted children and advanced learners. Rather than approach professional education writers who commonly haven't set foot in a real classroom, I approached classroom teachers of gifted students and asked them to spend some of their summer putting together some of their favorite activities.
The result is a series of great little activity books that we released in January of 2005. Creative Writing: Using Fairy Tales to Enrich Writing Skills (Grades 4-8) is an exciting book in the series by Teresa Cannon Hackett. Teresa does a great job of teaching creative writing skills identified as important by the National Council for Teachers of English and does so in a fun and interesting way.
 Download a free creative writing activity from the book and use it with your students (the PDF file is about 600K so give it a few seconds to download). I added a footnote on the bottom of the activity sheets that gives you permission to reproduce the pages for classroom use. Let me know what you think. I'm always interested in getting your feedback.
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