Blog

Young Entrepreneurs Unite!

Posted on by Suki

The Kids Craft Fair at the Boys and Girls Club

What if you could find a school that would teach your child applied creativity, organizational skills, project management, math, money skills, entrepreneurship, social skills, and marketing… all in three hours?

Look no further than the annual Kids Craft Fair at the Boys and Girls Club in downtown Santa Cruz the first Saturday of December. Each year this event draws kids from all over the county who make and sell holiday gifts and food.

And if you go as a shopper, don’t think of it as charity. These kids aren’t kidding when it comes to quality.

“All the bath products are great and really professionally packaged,” points out Rebbie Higgins, Operations Coordinator at the Club. “There are kids that make bath bombs, lip balms, soaps. They’re great for presents because they’re really attractive. The hand-dipped beeswax candles are gorgeous and make great gifts.”

“To be honest, things that look like they were made by a child generally don’t sell as well as things that look similar to what you might find at a adult craft fair,” says Heddi Craft, a local homeschool educator and crafter whose daughters have taken part for the last six years. “But there are people who will go around and buy something from every kid that’s there. It’s nice to see them support even the smallest kid.”

 

That entrepreneurial spirit

The approach to the fair varies from family to family, but most make it all about the kids’ entrepreneurial spirit. The parents invest in materials and act as support; the kids come up with the ideas, make the crafts, and sell them at the fair.

“I’ve talked with parents and they’ve had the conversation with the kids about, ‘you made the jewelry but you made me buy the beads, and you’re going to pay back for the beads’,” Higgins explains. “That’s an awesome opportunity for understanding how business works.”

Heddi Craft agrees, describing her daughters’ experience as “a mini-economy, complete with loans.”

“Molly has become much more aware of things like, how much am I spending on materials? How much do I have to set aside from this craft fair to have enough for next year? In the beginning I would front her the money, but she makes enough now to set aside money for the following year.”

Kids learn quickly that the successful sellers at the fair have created products that buyers would buy at stores—for higher prices.

“Some of the girls doing little embroidered Christmas tree ornaments—it’s stuff you would totally expect to drop twenty bucks on in one of the fancier artist shops in town!” Higgins says. “The prices are great, the kids know the value of their stuff.”

“All of Molly’s things have been very successful,” Craft says. “She makes Metal Clay jewelry, yarn dolls, things out of Sculpey and Fimo. She usually sells out by the end of the day. Erin found the most lucrative thing she did was last year when she sold sandwiches and lemonade. It’s kind of a captive audience. You have a whole roomful of people at an event that goes through lunch!”

 

Shop ‘til you drop

So if you’re planning to attend as a shopper, what might you find? For gifts, look for such items as beeswax candles, homemade soaps, bath bugs, potholders, decorative mason jars, handmade greeting cards, custom Lego sets, crystals, succulents in charming pots, seashell magnets, bookmarks, jewelry, sock snowmen, felt creatures, hand-sewn cloth bags, and wallets.

After that, you might get really hungry, so look out for the baked goods, peanut butter cups, hot chocolate, and coffee. (Sometimes there’s chili, too!)

Don’t go until you’ve checked out all the holiday decorations for sale, including cards, gift tags, ornaments, and wreaths.

 

Newly empowered kids

Amidst it all, be aware that you’ll be competing for the best stuff with the kids themselves, who, newly flush with their own earnings, like to support their fellow entrepreneurs.

“The most impressive thing is how empowered the kids feel,” Higgins says. “Usually you have to go and ask your mom and then she’s like, ‘no, you can’t have sugar.’ Unless the parents figure out something where they’re going to restrict the kids’ spending, it’s the kids’ money, they earned it!”

Craft points out that empowerment can turn into actual paying work. She knows of one child who went on to sell at professional craft fairs, and her daughter Molly received a custom order from a shopper who asked her to specially design a necklace for his wife.

The Boys and Girls Club celebrates its 50th anniversary next year. Higgins admits that no one is quite sure how long the craft fair has been going on, but lots of grown kids in town remember it fondly as the first place they learned the power of creativity.

 

The Kids Craft Fair

December 1, 2018 11:00 am–2:00 pm

Boys and Girls Club Downtown Clubhouse, 543 Center St., Santa Cruz

http://boysandgirlsclub.info/events/craftfair/

Note: This article is forthcoming in Growing Up in Santa Cruz

The value of creative writing: a spoonful of sugar

Posted on by Suki

One of the consistent misunderstandings I see amongst parents, other teachers, and even students themselves is how working on creative writing skills translates to improved skills in “serious” or academic writing. Most people seem to consider creative writing “extra-curricular” and therefore not academically important.

However, research has proven many benefits of “extracurricular” study, such as the link between musical study and improved math skills. Similarly, creative writing embeds important skill-building exercises like the medicine in Mary Poppins’s “spoonful of sugar.” Here are some of those lessons.

1. Any writing is good writing

Writing is a ‘practice.’ No matter what the task, whether it’s texting with friends or writing a poem, using words develops the brain just like lifting weights develops muscles. Exercise is a great metaphor because it’s something that many people detest just the way people detest writing. The common advice you see about getting more exercise applies to writing: find a way to make it social, do it in a location that you enjoy, chart your progress, reward yourself.

Creative writing is something that is attractive to many kids in part because of its social character. No one is going to want to read your book report on “Little House on the Prairie” (apologies to my third-grade teacher), but there’s an audience for your Pokemon fan fiction or your poem about autumn. And creative writing shows progress in a pleasurable way. My students have chosen to write everything from an encyclopedic description of sports cars to a NaNoWriMo dystopian novel.

2. Creative writing uses the same skills as academic writing

Good creative writing features specific, appropriate word choice. Good academic writing features specific, appropriate word choice.

Good creative writing features strong, varied sentences, clearly written. Good academic writing features strong, varied sentences, clearly written.

Good creative writing is well-organized and offers the right amount of information to lead the reader through a story. Good academic writing is well-organized and offers the right amount of information to lead the reader through an argument.

Good creative writing makes the writer’s world come alive in the reader’s brain. Good academic writing makes the writer’s argument come alive in the reader’s brain.

But while many students resist “working” on their writing, they are very open to developing their creative writing skills.

3. Creative writing opens the door

Pretty much every reluctant writer I’ve ever worked with has come to me after someone has “taught” them to write. Usually that someone thought that kids need to learn to write the way they learn to make a cake: Give them a recipe, tell them to follow the rules, expect them to enjoy the product.

But that’s not how writing works. For most people, writing isn’t inherently pleasurable, and introducing it as a bunch of rules to be followed to produce a bad-tasting result doesn’t work. It’s like asking a kid to make a cake out of overcooked broccoli—why bother following the recipe if no one is going to enjoy the product?

When kids are excited to share their work, that excitement translates to a permanent, solid base of enthusiasm that fuels enthusiasm for future academic writing.

Forget the work—let’s “play”!

Recently, one of my online creative writing students expressed great pleasure at the end of class for having spent an hour “not learning anything.” I let it slide, happy that he couldn’t see me at my desk, laughing at the success of my pedagogic deception. My students are learning—they just don’t know it.

My “Teaching Writing” series:

Living the California paradox

Posted on by Suki

The San Francisco Chronicle thinks I’m a paradox, but I think I’m just being sensible.

The Chronicle reported that California has a “split personality” when it comes to car buying habits. On the one hand, Californians are buying SUVs. On the other, Californians are buying electric and hybrid cars.

What Californians aren’t buying is old-fashioned, gas-powered passenger vehicles.

Excuse me, but I don’t see the paradox. Take my family, for instance.

Three years ago, we decided to shuck off the old paradigm—”his car” and “her car”—for a family-based car-buying approach. We wanted an electric car for in-town driving, and a gas car for long distance and for doing things like moving the kid into his college dorm. We leased a VW eGolf which had a range of 90 miles, and in three years, we only drove our van on longer trips.

We also hardly ever had to charge our car during the day.

It’s really not a paradox: when people actually consider their driving needs and habits, they respond to choices that fit those needs. And sometimes they change their habits.

Having a limited range electric vehicle changed my approach to driving. When we bought the car, we went to a PG&E plan that rewards nighttime use of electricity over daytime use. Our major concern was planning our driving so we didn’t have to recharge the car during the day. Also, we came to love the electric car so much, we started to plan our days so that our driving times wouldn’t overlap or we’d plan joint trips out in the car.

This summer we decided that the old van had done its service to the family, so we replaced it…with an SUV. Yes, the family that tries only to drive our electric car got an SUV. We did get the most fuel-efficient one on the market, but we recognize that we got this big car not for daily driving, but for specific functions: hauling a bike, moving a piece of furniture, or driving a bunch of people comfortably.

The lease on our eGolf came up, and because the available electric cars didn’t suit our needs (inexplicably, VW isn’t planning to put out the new eGolf until the end of the year), we got a plug-in hybrid. In the few months we’ve owned it, we’ve used the gas engine once.

I don’t call our family a paradox; I call us the new paradigm. Americans had a good, long love affair with the gas engine, and that’s coming to an end. We used to think of driving as entertainment, and that, too, is coming to an end. What starts in California almost always hits the rest of the country eventually, and I have no doubt that this wave will eventually make its way into the heartland as well.

Gifted Kids: The disconnect between input and output

Posted on by Suki

…and what you can do about it

It’s hard to educate a child who is profoundly asynchronous, as many gifted children are. While a young gifted child may have a high school level vocabulary, they may struggle to hold a pencil. And the disconnect becomes even more pronounced as the child grows and seems to become more mature. When a child can read and discuss a history text at a high level, we expect that they should also be able to write an essay at the same level. However, it’s an unusual gifted child of 10 years old that can write a coherent essay; even more unusual for a 10-year-old to want to write a coherent essay.

My students’ parents have been asking me this question for years: How can I accelerate my child’s writing to match their analytical abilities? My answer is a multi-step one. Hopefully this will be helpful both for homeschooling parents who are frustrated with their child’s writing output, and school parents whose children are being held back from accessing classes they seem ready for.

1) A disconnect between input and output is completely normal for gifted kids

For homeschooling families, this can seem like a personal struggle. You may not notice other homeschooled kids having similar difficulties, but the fact is, it’s extremely common (within our uncommon demographic), and will require some patience on your part.

If your student is in school, you may be frustrated that educators generally understand little about gifted children and may use this disconnect as “proof” that your child isn’t gifted. It certainly isn’t proof that your child isn’t gifted; however, it may be evidence that your child is not mature enough yet to access advanced courses which require high-level output.

2) Forcing gets the wrong result

One of the first instincts when homeschoolers and teachers sense a lagging skill is to push on it. However, issues of asynchronous development don’t go away if you push on them—they tend to be exacerbated. Especially in writing, it’s important to remember that good writing never comes from being forced. Students need to develop fluency in writing things they want to write before they can be challenged to write academically.

3) Focus on success

I borrowed my “focus on success” approach from teachers in Special Education. They have to accept that some of their students will never be able to function at a high level, so it doesn’t make sense to focus on the things these kids can’t do. Instead they focus on making the kids feel successful at the things they can do, then work on improving their lagging skills as best they can.

How this translates to gifted kids is that if you focus on the lagging areas too much, the kids start to think of themselves as having a problem to be addressed. Then they start to think that the problem “defines” them and they may start to try to avoid confronting it. Especially if they are perfectionists, which is common in gifted kids, they start to shy away from “working on” the “problem” because they don’t feel successful at it. Then they develop a block, and once that happens, you have a lot more work to do to get back to the place where they can work on their skills.

4) Remember that maturity is important

Our gifted kids can seem so mature, but that’s only because certain parts of their brains are developed beyond what is expected for their biological age. The other parts of their brain show age-appropriate (and sometimes lower) development. In some areas of education, you simply have to have the patience to wait for maturity to happen. As long as your child is progressing and is happy and healthy, you probably have nothing to worry about. Waiting for maturity is the right approach, as frustrating as it can be. (The exception is if your child is indicating the presence of a disability such as dyslexia or dysgraphia. In that case, you need professional help.)

There is nowhere I have noticed the importance of maturity more than in developing academic writing skills. Even my best, most fluent creative writers balk at writing essays before they are mature enough to see the need for them. Sometimes the change is almost as sudden as flipping a switch: A child who refused to do any academic writing is suddenly a teen who writes, edits, and takes pride in a serious academic essay. Sometimes the process is slow—and it often happens too late for the comfort of parents and teachers.

5) Input almost always develops before output

I have heard of kids who love to write before they can read, but this is extremely unusual and not necessarily something you should want. Avid young readers who resist academic writing are simply not ready for it, and pushing them won’t help. If input is what they are enjoying, and if their output is keeping pace with their biological age, then you’re doing fine.

6) Adapt as much as you can so input progresses while output develops naturally with maturity

While you are waiting for maturity, you can help foster a love of writing by not pushing writing assignments that are meaningless to them. As long as writing is meaningful, most students will want to do it. Read “Approaching Formal Writing” for tips on how to work on writing skills in age-appropriate ways.

As I explain in my article “Adapting Curriculum,” there are many ways outside of formal writing to continue to engage with advanced materials while not expecting advanced output. For example, if you are reading college-level literature, you can:

  • Have lots of verbal discussions about the book
  • Make it social by taking part in a book group
  • Make creative projects based on the book—visual art, videos, creative writing, comics
  • Ask your child to dictate their ideas while you type or use dictation software
  • Watch movie adaptations and do comparative analysis
  • Go on field trips related to the book’s subject

You can do these sorts of activities for pretty much any subject. Don’t discount the importance of creative output in demonstrating a child’s understanding of a text—this is a natural way for children to interact with their studies.

7) Be patient and realize that much of maturity is biological

No matter how advanced our kids are intellectually, they are still, like all of us, one with their biology. In time, their bodies will grow, their hormones will mature, and it will all sync up. Remaining patient and trusting the process is one of the greatest challenges in parenting gifted children. We need to keep our eyes on the goal: producing happy, healthy, productive adults.

My “Teaching Writing” series:

The value of the personal touch….online!

Posted on by Suki

This photo is of a group of students who met for the first time. They are members of a long-running writing group and it was as if they were old friends…because they are even though they’ve never met IRL.

In my summer off from teaching online at Athena’s, I didn’t stop working. I read books, updated my classrooms, emailed with students and parents, consulted with our wise Athena (a.k.a. Dr. Kirsten), and sat in a circle on a lawn with some of my longtime students.

Wait, don’t I teach online? Isn’t online teaching all about being separated from your students?

Yes! And No!

Teaching is about connecting

One of my most important jobs as an online teacher is finding ways to connect with my students personally even though we are not in the same room, the same state, and even sometimes the same country. It’s a tricky part of online teaching.

This summer I got to see the fruits of my labor when I was hired to speak at a conference that, it turned out, a good number of Athena’s students would attend. I declared a time and place for the meeting and then, well, decided I’d have to wing it.

30-some homeschoolers meet on a lawn…

If I’d been a classroom teacher, I would have had physical memories to draw on: I could have brought familiar items from the classroom or done activities we’d already done together. But what would we do in an outdoor space?

The first challenge was to get everyone to make a circle. School is very good at teaching kids how to form geometric shapes. Homeschool, not so much!

Once we’d done it, though, I felt like we were back in our Blackboard classroom (which had developed ninety-degree weather, well-watered grass, and slices of watermelon being passed out by a parent). All the eager hands; those familiar voices chiming in with their creative, intelligent, and wacky ideas; and the smiles, though this time they were real rather than emojis. 😊

And then we connected

Here I am presenting at the conference.

When I asked the students what they liked about Athena’s, they pointed out everything that we teachers hope to convey: a safe space for all kinds of kids; a place where they could express their ideas; a place where they could explore a wide variety of topics with teachers who love what they teach and other passionate students.

I noticed that Dr. Kirsten had to wipe away tears!

Online education fills a need

The fact is, yes, we teach online. But no, we aren’t disconnected from our students. Online learning will never replace physical get-togethers, but it it fills a need that many students have. Our students feel that they are part of a community of kids and adults who share values and passions.

For me, the experience was one of the most memorable of my teaching career. Nevertheless, I’m happy to be back in our webinar room….though it is BYO sunshine, grass, and yummy watermelon.

Now available