After I got the family on the road after lunch, I had some time to work before the Jazz Ensemble concert.
Today I started work on a column for Grant Wiggins’ Big Ideas website. Go ahead, click the link. I’ll wait.
Pretty astonishing, ne-c’est pas? The first time I went to the site, I was astonished. I wrote for them last year, and then they went on hiatus as they reorganized and rethought the website, so I was flattered when they got back in touch with me to write for them again. But I had no idea that I’d be featured quite so prominently.
So anyway, it’s time to produce again, so I pulled up my list of topics: “highly qualified” teachers; educational technology and the Red Queen; a national curriculum; or teaching about the Iraq war. Hmm.
Since I had forgotten that a column was due because time operates differently here in the Land of PDM, I suggested to my editors that I write a column about the LoPDM. They were intrigued and agreed.
This is harder than you think. How do you compress into a rather smallish column everything that GHP means to those who experience it? Worse, how do you make it interesting to those who haven’t? Even worse, how do you do it in your signature style of snark?
But at least I got a start on it. I’ll finish it tomorrow, with any luck.
I was just sharing with Becky the other day regarding my experiences at Tennessee’s Governor’s school (once upon a time) and the significant role they played in my outlook on life. The funny thing was, the changes the experience brought about in me had little to do with higher math (my supposed major) and considerably more to do with ethics, social interaction, and a sense of belonging.
Cheesy it may sound, but I’ll never cease to be grateful to the tax payers of Tennessee for the experience.
Yours is the overwhelmingly common experience for all participants in any of the 21 similar programs across the nation. Marcie McHugh, our German teacher, is working on her doctorate in gifted education, and she recently published an article in the Journal of Secondary Gifted Education, a literature review, in which she examined the studies that have been done assessing the impact on the emotional lives of governor’s school participants. It’s universal that the main benefit of these schools is a cadre of extremely gifted students who now know they are not freaks and that the phrase “leaders of tomorrow” is something they can actually seek to become.