Category: Education
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A conference for people who work with kids with special needs
I spent the weekend at the California Association for the Gifted Conference in Sacramento. This isn’t a conference for people who doubt what “gifted” means, though I would guess that most people at the conference dislike the term as much as I do because of its implication of a value judgment. The conference focuses on…
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Learning to read
I have a vivid memory of how reading was taught in my son’s first grade classroom. His teacher had returned to the classroom after working as a homeschool teacher, and had brought some pretty unusual (from the perspective of public school, that is) ideas back with her. One of those ideas was the given the…
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What is gifted? And why?
I was talking to a friend recently about my work on Examiner.com concerning gifted children. What is gifted? she asked. A very reasonable question, and one that no one has completely defined yet – to my satisfaction, at least. I’m planning an article on Examiner.com about all the various definitions of “gifted,” but here I…
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Big cats, little cats, wild cats
When I heard that there was a wild cat show at the Rio Theater, I thought about how much I love cats, I thought about how busy we were, and I thought about how there was some incident… Then the publisher of Santa Cruz Parent asked me if I wanted tickets. What can I say?…
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Standards for everyone!
I didn’t need any more convincing that Alfie Kohn is one of the clearest thinkers about education out there. When my son was in first grade, his teacher handed out a copy of his article on why homework is unnecessary. I’ve been a fan ever since. A friend pointed me to this article that he…