06.15.08
Posted in Fun Stuff at 7:22 pm by Angie
I love it when I visit a friend’s blog and find something neat to try out. My friend, Nancy (who just got back from the New Orleans Writing Marathon and is on my teacher blog list in the side bar as “Nancy”) keeps a great web log. She seems to stumble upon some cool little gadgets and Wordle is one. This is right up my alley! I’ve fiddled around with words and art on a page since my oldest was three months old. My closet is full of the school newsletters that I’ve done both with and without the help of technology. Oh yea, I remember when I had to type or copy, cut and paste clip art and articles to create attractive newsletters! (This is the new version of ‘I had to walk ten miles to school in a foot of snow’ story to tell my grandkids.) In any case, I used my del.icio.us bookmarks to create this.
Another thing I did that comes under the Fun category is setting up a MySpace page. Actually, I set up one way back during Spring Break and actually forgot about it until this evening as I was chatting with my niece in Arkansas. So here is the site address: http://www.myspace.com/teachagiftedkid.
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06.11.08
Posted in Random 'Munchings", Writing Entries at 8:31 am by Angie
I helped E find his ring! It may seem like a little thing to you but to E it wasn’t. The ring his grandmother gave him had flown off his finger onto the SW Colorado forest floor late in a “capture the flag” style game during our week long archeology field trip. Two classmates and I looked for about 20 minutes at dusk with no luck. I promised E that we would try again the next morning. It would be our last chance before returning to school. During this trip, it seemed that each student had their own ‘need’. For D, it was a slow reveal of his true self to others who think like him. For M, it was to be accepted by the crowd. For A, to show she was all grown up. For E, it was just to find that ring.
Most all the bags were packed and sitting by the bus parked in front of the lodge early the next morning when E reminded me about the promise I made the night before. He and I made our way up the path into the underbrush and looked for the marker we had chosen the night before and we began our search. Amazingly, I found the ring within about a minute of arriving. How we missed it, I will never know. E was relieved and happy. I could also feel his trust in me as his teacher had risen 100% that morning. He could tell that I truly cared about him.
This year, out of all the lessons coming out of the classroom, building trust with the class was the one for me. (Each year seems to have its lesson for the teacher.) Trust is wrapped up in the little things we do from day to day in our classroom. It’s fetching that special type of card stock paper for a project, remembering to bring in an ingredient for a recipe, smiling, chatting, following through with promises, and a zillion other things.
During a conversation the first week in May, a co-worker mentioned that sometimes it takes him nearly half the school year to build trust with his new class of students. It became clear that this was the issue in my class. This group of children was taking longer than most to develop that certainty that I was going to lead them, teach them and expose them to learning situations without embarrassing them, without stretching them too far beyond their needs or belittling them when something goes wrong. A big chore for any professional!
After some fits and starts, I can say it took well into February when the students began to trust me. Situations, attitudes, perceptions, stresses along with school culture and teacher experience all played a role in our slow development. The last part of the school year was the most productive for my students in many ways other than just in their class projects and assignments. We had quality discussions, inside jokes, playful fun. All these things the students will remember more than any lesson on grammar or ancient history that I taught.
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05.28.08
Posted in Random 'Munchings" at 12:11 am by Angie
It’s been a while since my last post. I’ve been spending most of my extra time in a car carpooling back and forth with my husband to work. It’s the time of the year in the field of education that one thinks about their plans for the fall. Should I continue teaching or not? For some, the decisions is pretty easy, for me it’s always a big decision. I elected to make education my field of choice and have all the credentials to be considered ‘highly qualified’. But with finding out I have been dealing with several mild but annoying health issues for the past 20+ years hasn’t helped make the decision any easier.
The other day I conferred with the new Principal at my school about the conundrum. I remember mentioning that I needed to ‘manage the stress’. My husband pulled up just as our meeting was over and we started our hour long journey back home.
I’m up at 2 am in the morning with a neck and back ache writing this entry waiting for the medicine to kick in. The reason: the five car collision that Dave and I was in right after the meeting with the Principal. It was on the feeder road just before entering the Interstate. We were completely stopped, the car directly behind us was completely stopped. I don’t know the status of the third car, but the fourth car hit the third, third to second, second to us. By the time the momentum got to us, we just got a good bump with no damage. The car behind us got a back dent in the fender area. The other three cars were totaled and had to be towed.
I just sat in the front seat of our car after the accident and marveled at the thought that anyone could manage stress.
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02.23.08
Posted in Gifted Education, Random 'Munchings" at 7:52 pm by Angie
I just checked the stats on my website through Google Analytics which I do periodically. One of the keyword search phrases that someone used to find information regarding gifted was, “how to make my child gifted”. Wow! That is one for the books! Just to clear the air on this one - you don’t make your child gifted after they’re born! You can expose them to lots of learning very early which many people do, but research wavers on whether this makes one smarter than their age peers or just stresses out the child.
There’s not much you can do except contribute your X’s and Y’s early on and do your best to nurture your child as they grow and develop. Without going into much detail (and knowingly without exact references), I’ve read/heard somewhere that researchers believe that the gifted brain is just wired differently. It functions more efficiently and it absorbs information at a faster rate. And it will develop if given the opportunity to.
Have you ever spent any time reading about the lives of gifted individuals who lived in the past? You will find that some came from highly affluent homes, some came from very poor settings. Some endured hardships such as child abuse, others were mentored and cared for every step of the way. The book Cradles of Eminence gives excellent examples of individuals from all walks of life. http://www.gt-cybersource.org/Record.aspx?NavID=2_0&rid=12825
I’m far from the expert on this topic but I’m pretty sure you can’t ‘make your child gifted’. Before you wish you could make them gifted, be sure to do your research on the down-sides of being gifted such as perfectionism, out of balance development(asynchronous), being under-challenged, boredom, feeling alone, just to name a few.
…..and that’s all I gotta say ’bout that…..
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02.20.08
Posted in Random 'Munchings" at 4:43 am by Angie
My husband and I are just about to close a chapter to a portion of our life. We’re moving out of our downtown Houston apartment and putting everything in our house in Magnolia. This might sound insignificant to you but to us it means the last of our ties to Hurricane Katrina.
We had ’set up shop’ in the apartment just two weeks after Katrina hit so my husband could work in Houston while I stayed in Mandeville for eight months to finish my teaching contract and my Masters Degree. We traveled back and forth between Mandeville and New Orleans repairing our house and looking for a new one. Stressful times, now that I look back on it.
There are still many out there who were directly affected by Hurricane Katrina waiting to close their chapter. There is still much to do to undo what one large storm did to one large area in Mississippi and Louisiana.
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12.31.07
Posted in Random 'Munchings", Uncategorized, Writing Entries at 6:21 pm by Angie
It’s holiday time and I’ve caught another cold (fourth since Thanksgiving). This really puts a damper on all my plans to be so productive during my holiday break from teaching. Reading and sleeping have been about the only productive thing that I’ve done the past two days. I’m halfway through a huge novel called “The Pillars of the Earth” by Ken Follett. Being plopped right smack dab into the early middle ages following the building of a stone cathedral is much better than dealing with a cold!
Just today, I felt good enough to sit down to the computer. I’ve been just cruising around, visiting some favorite blogs, trying out some new blogs. I even visited my own (leaving your own blog alone so long in cyberspace is not good) and I noticed a comment left by Michelle at http://www.michellehix.blogspot.com/. She has a really cool site with a few neat widgets on it. The best one is Shelfari and, of course, with me being a teacher of English, I could not pass on it!
I have to get my son to figure out why the widget won’t load up in my sidebar. It’s probably something very simple but it’s New Year’s Eve and I don’t want to bug him. He’s out with friends getting ready to celebrate the new year. My daughter is out in Jackson Square in New Orleans, my husband went to our friends in SW Houston, my sister is in Times Square and I’m sitting in front my laptop with my box of kleenex. I’ll have to wait until tomorrow.
Another interesting toy that I’ve had time to play with is Google Reader. Now, I can keep up with the news and actually have something interesting to add to casual conversations without becoming a news-junkie like a few people I know.
Somehow, I feel like the little kid who got all these toys for Christmas but ended up playing in the cardboard box that the new washer came in. These two ‘toys’ were free (actually not quite free. I ((my husband)) paid for the internet connection, the electricity, the kitchen table, the lemonade in the Pizza Hut Fred Flintstone glass we bought when we were going out together 25 years ago….I think you get the picture.)
Anyway, here’s wishing everyone a Happy New Year and lots of new ‘toys’
Angie
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09.29.07
Posted in Fun Stuff at 6:51 pm by Angie
We’ve been preparing for a school play “The Jungle Book” in the Disney version. I decided to dig out the classic by Rudyard Kipling and conduct a literary circles with various selections with the two groups. Interestingly, neither the younger group, nor the older group knew that the Disney version was not the original (except for one or two younger students).
This whole time, I’ve been recalling the cartoon version of “Rikki Tikki Tavi” narrated by Orsen Wells, wondering if I could ever locate it. Instead of doing the dishes this evening, I’m watching the cartoon online at this site. I apologize for the advertisements and such. I hope you enjoy a stroll down memory lane if you remember watching this cartoon as a child. (
Posted Dec 10, 2006
Narrated by Orson Wells, this animated cartoon is an adaptation of a short story titled “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi” from The Jungle Book (1894) by Rudyard Kipling.
I hope you enjoy it!
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09.18.07
Posted in Gifted Education, Random 'Munchings" at 6:33 pm by Angie
It’s been a busy 3 weeks. I’ve set up a classroom, read through pages and pages of curriculum and designed a program for students who range between 8-13 years in age. Their abilities range wildly, too. All the differentiation research that I’ve done over the past year will come in handy.
It will be some time before my next weblog entry. I need to rethink the purpose of it. Meanwhile, continue to check out the Gifted Education news and the educational sites that I will continue to add.
Most importantly, keep me posted on activities/programs designed for the gifted child in the Houston and surrounding area. These students are very deserving!
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08.08.07
Posted in Writing Entries at 4:14 pm by Angie
I was reading through one of my favorite magazines, “Discover” and ‘discovered’ a few interesting things about September. My birthday, this year, is the Autumnal Equinox and also a national holiday in Japan. Cool! I share the month with these other fascinating celebrations such as the Beef-A-Rama in Minocqua, WI. Can you envision 1,200 pounds of meat parading down main street? There might be some issues if the beef people get with the chicken people in London, KY where they are celebrating the origin of KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken). Their proud achievement is cooking 600 chicken quarters at the same time in a huge frying pan. September is such a meat lover’s month with the Roadkill Cook-Off in Marlinton, WV. The list of featured recipes sounded clever and disgusting.
My little holiday sure seems out of place, now that I come to think of it.
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07.31.07
Posted in Random 'Munchings", Writing Entries at 8:04 am by Angie
I’ve been to several blogs lately that have an entry regarding the latest release of the Harry Potter books. The blog entries all read just about the same: “you won’t be hearing from me for a while, I’m reading Harry Potter” or “don’t spoil it for me”. I hate to admit that I joined the ranks. But I am happy to report that not only did I read and finish the book this past week, I did several other things at the same time.
Amber’s home from France now and we’ve been preparing her for her final year at Tulane. We went through the house looking for things she can use in her first apartment and we decided to refinish some old furniture that we had been saving in hopes that one of our kids would need it. She’s the lucky winner! We’ve sanded and painted several pieces and now I have the job of making new cushion covers while she is gone once again (France for 3 weeks). We also went to New Orleans to see her new place and visit with old friends in Mandeville. I did not read in the car, but I did read every minute of free time that I had.
I’ll forever connect Harry Potter and the St. Louis Hotel on the corner of Bienville and Royal now. I finished the book on Sunday morning. Just like everyone else, I feel just a little sad that the story is finished. I find myself thinking about the story and the characters as I go about my everyday activities. And I do have a few questions which may be enough of a motivation to start reading the series again from the first book. If I do, I’ll let you know because you won’t be hearing from me for several days!
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