neighborhood comedy night!

You have really missed out on one of life's most inspiring experiences if you've never put your heart into coaching a child.  As coach, you carefully observe a player's beginning point, and do all you can to help that child become the best he/she can for the game/task/speech at hand.  The rewards are immediate for the striving child and for you.  When coaching for a specific event, take small, gentle steps with our young people as you quickly decide on two or three skills that can show results everyone can see, and the child can feel inside. There results a boost of confidence in the walk, and energetic delight in the eyes.  Try offering, with heart, your experience to help a child grow; you'll love it!

Coaching as small groups and individually, last night I had the pleasure of working with six young leaders (grades 3-7) as they prepared for tonight's comedy night get-together at home.  The children had a broad range of speaking experience backgrounds. Each one performed and then listened well, sometimes indulging me with specific gestures and staging.  Each child diligently - and some gleefully - tried on new ways to use the voice, choosing how to assimilate them to fit the text he/she has chosen.

By the end of our practice-and-refine session, we felt the warmth of accomplishment and laughter in the air. Thanks to one of the thoughtful young moms who organized the rehearsal and the event, several families will tonight enjoy their neighborhood comedy night.  There will be laughter, pride, and more laughter!

NY Times: Sluggish Cognitive Tempo Disorder?

I'm wondering how the concept of this new type of ADHD is moving ahead, or not?  In support of individuality,  June

Sluggish Cognitive Tempo -- Anyone Have an Opinion on This?

Mark Bade

Co-Publisher at 2e: Twice-Exceptional Newsletter

Top Contributor

Article in today's NY Times about adding another type of ADHD. nyti.ms/1qpmy9L

4/20/14

June Pecchia

Owner at Teaching UP: Unlimited Potential

What is the standard speed to which "Sluggish" is being compared? Our children deserve time to daydream, certainly. Wish we had better teacher-to-student ratios in public schools, to address individual pacing. A less expensive alternative would be professional classroom aides to also give individual attention, and to offer the teacher alternative insights about each child. Children are individuals; for best outcomes, we need to help them along with some tolerance of variance in pacing.
If you are the kind who worries about the public expense, won't you at least consider our children as our truest form of capital?

• Ellen D.
  
  Ellen D. Fiedler, Ph.D.
  Educational Consultant for Wings for Education, Inc.
  Good points. And, what about time for thoughtful reflection and contemplation? When do bright kids have opportunities for in-depth thinking? Too much of what goes on in schools prompts superficiality. 
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• Mark
  
  Mark Bade
  Co-Publisher at 2e: Twice-Exceptional Newsletter
  Top Contributor
  Lots of aspects of SCT vague at this point, at least to us. There are possibilities for misdiagnosis (my interpretation), as Ellen suggests. The lack of data, as June says. (Although it looks as if June's wishes would face lots of legislation and financial battles, good as they are.)
  I was daydreamy as a kid, and look at me now -- trying to adjudicate SCT, a losing proposition. Let me tell you about my favorite childhood books and my daydreams... :-) 
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Corin

Corin Barsily Goodwin
CEO & Executive Director, Gifted Homeschoolers Forum
My biggest concern is that there are few clearly determined boundaries for any of these things... diagnoses suggest a binary on/off, "you have it or you don't" switch. In reality, we're all operating on a spectrum of some kind - lots of gray - and a lot of professionals seem to misunderstand that "normal" (such as it is) is a moving & highly individual target. I'm not saying we shouldn't have diagnoses or labels or whatever - they are very useful tools for understanding - but I suspect that this one may be a good example of pathologizing perfectly OK behavior.

Day one?

Welcome to a spot where I'll share ideas and resources for helping children meet their own highest potential.

Are there concrete proposals you could make to improve the education system in your country?

My response to an NEA (National Education Association; a nationwide teachers' union) International survey that came to me via email:

6/21/14

What would you need to teach better lessons?

TIME to collaborate with colleagues and mentors.  ANOTHER ADULT, could be a professional aide but credentialed teacher is preferred, to spend time with my same cohort of students so together we could assess their needs and develop services.  SUMMER TRAINING and practice for using the latest technologies in the classrooom.  ADMINISTRATIVE SUPPORT for discipline; students acting out need a place to go other than a corner of the room or another teacher's classroom.  At that time, they also need a qualified adult to talk to them and problem-solve their issues whether they are personal or academic.

           

26. Are there concrete proposals you could make to improve the education system in your country?

1.    Teaching is a delicate and interpersonal art.  The unmeasureable aspects of success as a teacher matter as much as the measureable.  TIME must be available for teacher and student to know each other.  On Saturdays, the (PAID) teacher could set up appointments of 30 minutes or more to be with each student as an individual.  After the initial meeting, the students could rotate to meet with the teacher on subsequent Saturdays, so that the teacher would have at least one 30-minute one-to-one encounter with each student each month.

2.    ALL school administrators– up to and including the Superintendent and Board of Education – need to have taught a minimum of 3 years in the classroom before taking the step of managing teachers. In addition, this essential connection to the child in the classroom should continue to occur a minimum of 3 days during each school year.  Why not save the district a little money by having the credentialed administrative staff be the first choice to cover planned absences for teachers?  This could initiate many invaluable interactions between administrators and teachers, and between administrators and students.

3.    Students need more than one trusted adult – this is usually classroom teacher – to rely on at school.  Teachers need more than their own life experience and professional perspectives to see each child more completely and fairly, so team teaching should be the rule.

4.    To this end, classes of 15 or greater should have two teachers.  To make this more economically feasible, a ratio of two teachers to up to 36 students could work.  Team teachers should teach together, meeting the needs of groups or individuals, 50% or more of each day.  The remaining 50% the class size could be split in half, with each group spending time with with one team teacher or the other.  This would allow each one of the teachers to specialize and provide better service to the students.  With the level of curriculum we are teaching elementary schools in the 21^st century, it is unrealistic to expect that one teacher can be expert in all academic subjects. One teacher may excel and have the greatest inspirational energy for math, science, technology, for example.  The other could be the best to teach language arts, visual arts, and P.E., perhaps. With team teaching, students would get the level of expertise that is required even in the kindergarten class these days.

5.    A student must have a basic level of health in order to learn well. Any school where student access to professional health care providers in the community is difficult NEEDS an onsite school nurse R.N., who is also knowledgeable about that school's population, and preferably can speak at least the two dominant languages of the community.

6.    USA is based on a lovely salad of cultures and languages. Like any people, our students have a vast array of capabilities, proclivities, preferences, weaknesses, and needs.  To allow each child to continually become his or her own “personal best”, some degree of academic tracking is necessary.  A student with the highest innate intellectual and academic abilities is just as needy of specialized instruction – and grouping with peers who meet and challenge them – as a student at the opposite end of the special needs spectrum, and just as needy as the mythical “average” student.  Without “Gifted and Talented” programs, we allow our future pathfinders to languish and become lazy, last-minute producers of work that is the best in the class, yet woefully short of the work they could produce.  Every American school needs education specialists to help GATE students.

7.    For the English language in America to have some continuity and predictability, teachers who teach English should be native speakers of the language, or at least have acquired articulate native proficiency with spelling, conventions, and pronunciation.  Ideally, all teachers would be speech models of standard American English. (Understandable accents add flavor and are acceptable, but a teacher with a limited vocabulary and facility with English grammar cannot help students gain the proficiency they need.

8.    English as a Second Language learners need to learn basic academic English before and/or in conjunction with learning subject matter. NEA survey, June 2014