If you think that the art of puppetry is a simple subject, think again. Like any niche subject, there is a great deal more to learn than initially meets the eye.

 

Puppetry can be incorporated into any subject, it can be a study on its own, or it may become a lifelong hobby. It may even lead to a profession (think Jim Henson).

 

Learning to make puppets and stage puppet shows can be done at many levels, from very simple to very sophisticated, and incorporates a variety of skills, including math, language arts, art, advanced problem solving, and creativity. Many gifted kids will find it exciting and compelling.

 

Here are some puppetry websites that will help you as a teacher, a parent, or a student.

 

The Puppetry Home Page presents a wealth of information about the art of puppetry.

Puppeteers’ Cooperative Home Page contains instructions for making 68 different puppets that are very large.

 

YouTube—Search on “Puppet Making Tutorial” for many options to learn how to make puppets.

 

Puppeteers Unite is a blog for current and future puppeteers that provides information detailing puppet performances, building techniques, and positive business practices.

 

You may want to start searching on the Internet for puppet camps for this summer. Start with a search such as “puppet camp” combined with the name of your city.

 

I recently was privy to a conversation that some well educated and well-to-do parents had about their two high school children who were trying to gain admission to several highly selective colleges. Their students had high grades, high test scores, were active in many extracurricular activities, came from privileged backgrounds, and had parents who had actively supported their years in school. Despite all of this, the parents still felt that it was necessary to hire a college coach to guide them through the process of admission. I couldn’t help but think about how extremely difficult it must be to come from a family who doesn’t know all the ins and outs of choosing and getting into a good college.

 

Too few bright young people from underrepresented groups, particularly those from lower-income families, receive the support and preparation they need to be highly qualified applicants for selective colleges. The Next Generation Venture Fund (NGVF) is working to change that by offering financial help and academic resources to qualified students, beginning in eighth grade and continuing throughout high school.

 

NGVF is a joint venture of:

In addition, The Goldman Sachs Foundation and other companies, foundations, and individuals provide financial support for the venture. An investment of approximately $22,000 is made in each student, providing a five-year program consisting of:

The nation’s three major university-based Talent Searches at Duke, Northwestern, and Johns Hopkins and the Center for Bright Kids in Colorado recruit eighth graders from schools across the United States based on high test scores, financial need, and motivation to succeed. Region-based contact information is provided so that you will know what institution to contact for your area of the country.

 

Parents and teachers should be aware of this program so that they can make certain that their schools are participating in the talent search.

 

Teachers and parents alike often turn to online learning options in order to supplement and/or accelerate gifted students' learning. Does your young person have a strong interest and ability in mathematics, physics, computer programming, literature, writing, history, or foreign language? Does she want to take Advanced Placement (AP) classes that are not offered at her local high school? Or, does your student need a flexible schedule because of family circumstances, work responsibilities, or health issues?

Are you in a school district where your young person’s needs and abilities surpass the available curriculum? Do you homeschool your child, either full-time or part-time, and, as a result, need solid educational resources? Or, do you have a student who doesn't necessarily want to earn credit for extracurricular classes, but instead just wants to expose himself to different topics in order to see if any really interest him? If so, then you may want to introduce your student to the wide range of opportunities available through online learning.

For years, I have been writing about the virtues of distance learning for gifted kids. Over the past few years, the distance learning field has continued to expand. As the technology becomes more sophisticated, many distance learning programs are beginning to use not only computers for their programs, but also everyday technologies, such as cell phones.

Kids are often more comfortable with these technologies than adults. This may be one reason why traditional schools are often unable to adjust to and incorporate these new technologies into the traditional classroom. Adults (both parents and teachers) sometimes lack the expertise that young people have already learned at an early age and use every day. Perhaps it is time for adults to stop fighting these new developments and, instead, embrace them and incorporate them into student learning. Online learning is one good way to start.

If you are interested in learning more about the opportunities available to gifted kids, there is a great deal of information available at the Davidson Institute for Talent Development website and at the Distance Learning Programs page of Hoagies’ Gifted Education website.

 

Recently on the website for the Alliance for Excellent Education, there was a great article titled, Online Learning in U.S. High Schools: Lessons Learned From . . . Snow Shoveling, by the former Governor of West Virginia, Bob Wise. The article provided an analogy that compared working efficiently during a paralyzing snowstorm to providing a good education for high school students. While caught in the snowstorms that blasted the Eastern part of the United States this winter, the author was able to use technology to work on and finish projects, communicate with others, shop, do research, and share photos. He was able to do all of this while working around the necessities of shoveling snow.

 

How does this relate to student learning? As Wise states,

 

“Similar to those of us who were isolated from the outside world during these recent snowstorms, there are millions of American students facing a variety of barriers often isolating them from receiving a quality education. Our urban students may live in the shadows of great education and economic institutions, but far too many still attend high schools where graduation is not the norm. Rural students may have to travel fifty miles across a mountain to visit a museum or other off-site learning experiences. Perhaps a suburban student has a particular course of study that her school is simply not able to meet. Or the limited availability of qualified Chinese instructors restricts motivated students from studying one of the world's newly dominant languages.”

 

Although it is impossible to get high-performing content teachers into every classroom, online learning programs can unite high-quality content and instruction with a teacher in the classroom who effectively guides the students. World-class education can come literally from anywhere in the world and be blended with effective pedagogy.

 

Online education can be used to take classes that are not available locally, including Advanced Placement (AP) classes and International Baccalaureate (IB) classes.

 

Online courses can help students work around issues such as inadequate schools, family situations, poverty, and limited course offerings. These classes can be accessed any time of day, making them available when it fits into the student's schedule.

 

The classes can be taken exclusively by attending a virtual school, as a supplement to traditional school, or in partnership with a real-time teacher in a traditional school. The possibilities are limitless.

 

For a very long time, our country has maintained a hodgepodge of educational expectations for students, often not even coming close to the standards of other developed countries. You may have read recently about the proposed national standards for math and English, which have recently been released. They are part of the Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI)—a panel of educators convened by the nation’s governors and state school superintendents who are working to create benchmarks to bring all areas of the country in alignment with the same expectations. As reported by The New York Times, these are not without controversy. Alaska and Texas declined to participate in the standards-writing effort, arguing that they should decide locally what their children learn. After viewing the proposed standards, some states, like Massachusetts, may oppose the proposed national standards because state educators feel that they already have higher standards in place and may want to keep those.

 

Although the implementation of high academic standards is probably a good thing for our country in general, we must also be careful that the standards (if accepted) do not limit the learning of gifted students. It would be impractical to set a unique set of standards for the gifted population because these students fall on a long continuum of abilities. Instead, it is best to think of any national standards as a baseline of expectations, allowing more capable students to progress much more quickly and in greater depth.

 

Are you aware that back in 1998, the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) developed and released the Pre-K - Grade 12 Gifted Program Standards designed to assist school districts in examining the quality of their programming for gifted learners? These are standards for creating and maintaining effective gifted programming in schools. At the very least, these gifted program standards should be implemented in addition to the national educational standards. The NAGC standards include:

While national educational standards are probably a good idea for the general population, they should only be considered as minimal expectations. Students who are capable should not be held back by these proposals, but allowed and encouraged to move beyond them. Pairing the proposed national standards with the NAGC program standards is a good option for able students.

Salman Khan and the Khan Academy are back in the news, having recently being featured on NPR and PBS. At the Khan Academy website, there are more than 1,100 free instructional videos, each 10-20 minutes long, that range from basic arithmetic and algebra to differential equations, physics, chemistry, biology, and finance. The videos cover concepts that, as a student, Sal felt were poorly taught through lectures and textbooks. Each video explains the concepts covered in the lesson in a comfortable, relaxed manner that reflects Sal's own easy understanding of math and doesn't compromise rigor or comprehensiveness. Sal also has included several hundred videos devoted to the SAT, GMAT, and other standardized test problems. 

Since I first wrote about the Khan Academy back in December 2008, Sal decided to quit his day job and devote himself full-time to expanding his library of instructional videos. Eventually, he plans to add even more academic subjects to the website.

The videos at the Khan Academy website can be used by a wide variety of students, including:

The videos can also be used in a variety of venues, such as the classroom, home, and around the world. Those who live in areas where an advanced class is not available, or those who are homeschooled, would particularly benefit from viewing Sal's videos.

I highly recommend that you take a good look at the website. View some of the instructional videos yourself and take a look at some of the videos explaining more about Sal Khan and his plans for the Khan Academy. The website is a wonderful resource and it is free.

You may have noticed that the format of this blog changed a bit recently, and I want to make certain readers understand the search possibilities available. This is the 120^th weekly blog that has been posted in more than 2 years, so there is a lot of information here. There are two ways to search.

·         Categories—In the left column of the web page, you will find a section titled Categories. Within that section, you will see a list of more than a dozen subjects. If you click on any of these, all the articles that fit into that grouping will appear.

·         Search—You can also search for words, phrases, or topics you do not see listed under Categories. With the new format of the blog, you will need to sign in to use the search function. There is a section on the upper right where you can register. Your user name and password are case sensitive.

 

Example—You might want to search on “underachievement.” To do this, click on the word Search either at the bottom of the Categories list or near the top of the page. Once you do this, a number of boxes will appear and you can fill in the appropriate information. (You do not need to fill in all the boxes.) Click on Search, and all of the articles will come up that meet the criteria you entered.

 

These are great tools, so make sure you take advantage of them.

 

 

 

 

Gifted education in metropolitan communities can be difficult, but it has the potential for much greater challenge in rural areas where the options may be more limited and funding even more restricted. Nevertheless, some small, isolated communities are able to move past those hurdles and provide excellent opportunities for gifted students.

 

When consulting with school districts in rural Colorado, I was always very impressed with the caring communities of teachers, their willingness to recognized real strengths and potential in individual students, and their efforts to see that the needs of these students were met.

 

According to the article The Challenges of Being Gifted in a Rural Community, rural communities may actually have advantages over larger communities because:

Although many of these advantages can also be viewed as disadvantages, specific strategies can be used to overcome negative aspects. Technological advancements make many of these strategies even more viable. Many of the hurdles that rural communities face have the same solutions that should be heeded by metropolitan areas. They include:

Parents can have a strong influence on the quality of education for their own children and for the school as a whole. Much can be accomplished when parents offer positive feedback and assistance to educators and work with other parents.