On Giftedness

I have a secret passion for gifted studies. I’ve always been fascinated by the brain and education, but standing in a Barnes & Noble one day about ten years ago, waiting for my husband who was about to meet me for lunch, I found a coffee table book about giftedness. Having grown up in gifted programs, I’ve always been drawn to books on giftedness, as if it’s evidence of a secret club I once belonged to as a kid. You see, gifted programs end with high school, sometimes before, like the tree houses that say, “No girls allowed.” So evidence that it really did exist—this haven where there were others like me—is nostalgic. It’s nice.

But what I read in that coffee table book—hardly a deep analysis of giftedness—has changed my life. I knew that giftedness meant that I went to a special class like the special needs kids. I knew I went because I was smart in some kind of off-kilter way: I’d started school early and was always bored, but I was hardly the highest achiever in the class.

Beyond that, no one ever told me what it meant, this “gift.” We did logic puzzles once a week and extra work when we got back to the classroom. I loved it because it was a place I felt understood, and so it was worth the extra work, but other kids thought we were crazy to volunteer for such torture.

The book I skimmed at Barnes & Noble that day brought me to tears. On every page, it described every failure of my life in acute detail, as if it were an art book instead of a brag book for parents. This book knew already that it would take me seven years to finish my BA after transferring back and forth between nine schools and more majors than I can count. Instead of calling me a quitter, as my college guidance counselor did, it said I could do anything and was interested in everything. The book made it sound not so bad.

It described the way I would approach projects—with the vision and gusto of a person with clinical OCD—as if it had been there when I tried to paint the 8’x12’ mural of a street scene in France onto fabric for curtains for a closet in a single day, when I tried to build a life-size model of the Eiffel tower for an informational booth at church, when I decided my first sewing project would be an evening gown for a Christmas party the week of Calculus finals when I was nine months pregnant with my first baby.

And then it described the late nights and tears when my grand visions were realized for what they were: more failures, more lofty dreams. Dresses hemmed in duct tape, informational booths that everyone passes by, unfinished curtains and carpet stained in blue paint.

This book had seen inside my closet, too—all the unfinished projects, all the hobbies I have to maintain to keep the world more interesting. It knew that the world moved too slowly for me, that I hurt people with my impatience. But the book forgave me, because it knew that I was impatient with myself most of all.

The book knew that what I experience on the inside looks more like bipolar disorder than any kind of “gift”—there are the days when I can do anything, when I believe in my writing and my art and the education I am giving my kids. And there are the dark days. The book knew the statistics for suicide that I had always thought were just me.

The book knew that when I graduated from the gifted program and was thrust into real life, the odds were against me. It predicted the joblessness, frustration, and guilt, but it offered no advice. The book was written to parents. And so I stood in Barnes & Noble and tried not to cry. If only I had been told what the obstacles would be, I could have faced them better instead of being eaten up by the shame.

Because of that book—the name of which I don’t recall—I earned a master’s degree in two years, without changing majors or schools or adding on half a dozen minors. That degree has turned out to be almost as unprofitable as a liberal arts degree, but it represents a victory over myself, over my dark side. It’s a sign of normalcy that I can waive like a flag, even though my very self was the cost of that flag and lies buried beneath it.

The degree is in Education and was obtained so that I would never be unemployed again, a double whammy for a homeschooling mother in an economy that has put all of the local schools on a hiring freeze. I’d dreamed of an MFA in Creative Writing and a PhD in Literature so that I could hide in an ivory tower and think beautiful thoughts. Equally useless, perhaps, but if I’d known that that would be the case, I would have chosen the more beautiful path. Life is full of false starts for me, although I expect to have it figured out by the time my hair has lost its natural color.

But I told you that my passion for giftedness is secret. I have rarely told even a friend that I fall into these ranks, much less internet strangers, because I know the dissension wrapped around the word. People think that those who are gifted brag about this glamorous state or that their parents brag about them. They think that “giftedness” is an indictment of the rest of the world, that it is nothing more than academic prowess. In fact, giftedness does not always even mean success in school, and in practice, it looks much more like something one would medicate to make it go away rather than something someone would embrace, much less announce. One is more likely to look around for a limb to sever, another part to bury so that she a few more moments with the Normalcy flag for a party or other social obligation—anything big enough to hide the truth.

Tonight I am longing for the OCD eyes to give way so I can sleep, but instead I am sitting at my computer at 2:30 in the morning, surrounded by books and papers and filled with the irony of ideas and creativity and grief, wondering again if I can bury myself beneath a flag of normalcy or if the sacrifice is ever worth it.

Like a Little Child

"To not know history is to remain forever a child." Or something like that.

The kids finally asked the question--WHY study history. I was eloquent; Landon quoted famous quotes like the one above.

8yo said, "But doesn't the Bible say to remain like a child?" Uh......

On the Cusp of 3

Sitting here overseeing school, explaining singular and plural in Latin and 6 blue marbles plus 4 red marbles times 5 bags and why you can't pick your nose at the table, & I overhear my little one in the background making truck noises and saying, "That will be a good idea," pronouncing "good" like it rhymes with "food."

My 4yo starts cleaning up, & 2yo cries because she's only picking up his toys. I tell her to quit it & tell him she's sorry. She does, & I hear, "I forgive you. It's not time to pick up—that's not how we play." And the truck noises start again.

I think everyone should always have an on-the-cusp-of-3yo in their house. It's like having a beautiful garden and a song and a philosopher who helps you see what's true and what's small and what's big. It's a reminder that tears are for more than tragedy and rejoicing is for less than a new job. It's the birth of hyperbole and faith. It's never being bored or smelling quite right.

This morning, I am thanking God for these years.

This Moment

He steals grapes. He sneaks apples. But he can only manage to get the apple on one side, so I find the Other Halves stashed...in the playroom, the sofa, my bed...

I've been promised that one day I'll miss the surprises.

Eschewing Obfuscation in Academia via Kinesthetic Jargon-Elimination...

or "Learning Vocabulary"

Sometimes when I’m writing lesson plans, I have an epiphany, and I realize that my kids’ attention spans are no longer or deeper than my own. If I have not managed to retain the definitions of stomata, xylem, and chloroplasts from our reading…they probably haven’t, either. And if a review of the terms simply makes my eyes glaze over…then I know that their “study skills” leave something to be desired, too.

Science vocabulary in particular has always eluded me: it seems an obnoxious way to weed people out who might very well understand concepts but get tongue-tied when it comes to names. I’m the same way with meeting people at church, reducing them to layman’s terms: “Talking Man” and “Meat Sandwich.” (The latter was the unfortunate result of a lady trying in vain to help people remember her name: she’s the wife of a guy named Pat, and in Sunday School, she’d sit next to a girl named Pat. She said she was the middle of a “Pat Sandwich.” She also said her name, but I forget that part. I do know it wasn’t Pat.)

Looking again at the mysterious vocabulary, I began to work to make the mental pictures that allow me to remember faces, if not names. I pretended to care, and the result was the following lesson plan:

Vocabulary: phloem, xylem, leaf, root.

Method: Put on a play.

Name tags are passed out to the audience, including “Flower,” “Bud,” and  “Stem.”

Play opens with Mrs. Root sitting in a blue laundry basket. Leaf is cooking in the kitchen, wearing an apron that says, “LEAF the cooking to the cook!”  Phloem and Xylem are dressed as waiters.

Leaf: “Soup’s on!”

Phloem takes his tray to the kitchen and loads it up with food.  Then he carries it out to serve to the audience.  (This could be play food or snacks.)  He also takes a plate to Mrs. Root.

Xylem takes his tray to Mrs. Root, where he fills it with cups of water.  He serves those to the audience members.  He also takes a cup to Leaf.

The End.

My oldest enjoyed practicing the play so much that he wrote an extended version of the script.  It was simple enough that my two-year-old and three-year-old played the extra parts.  We performed it for our homeschool open house, passing out cookies and punch to Granny (“Flower”), Grand Dad (“Bud”), and Aunt Pat (“Blossom”).

Now it’s easy for all of us to remember that Phloem and Xylem are the “waiters” of the plant.  Which is which?  PHloem serves the Food.  (It alliterates.)

My husband was a Biology major for a semester in college.  There was only the one class before he switched to World History, but from that experience, his conclusion is that learning the vocabulary is half the battle.  In other words, it’s worth some creative effort to help your kids learn the obnoxious terminology—the jargon—of academic fields.

An added benefit?  As the vocabulary becomes more manageable and familiar, the concepts become less foreign, too.  Before you know it, you’ve learned a lot more than vocabulary.  (And your kids have, too!)

Plato & Games

There was a public debate between two of my professors in college regarding whether or not movies were the fulfillment of Plato’s “cave.” We sit in the dark, watching images on the screen, one argued, and all of our conversations revolve around those images, waiting eagerly for the next shape to appear.

The professor who argued against movies profoundly misunderstood the ancient philosopher, I audaciously believe. Plato was complaining about fiction, about “making up” things that are not true and are thus far removed from the Form—the essence of Truth. He illustrated his objection…with a story, a fiction about people living in a cave.

Plato liked to trap his interlocutor with false dilemmas and misleading assumptions, and if we fall for those traps, we too will be left laughing at the mindless crowds who pack themselves into movie theaters with overpriced popcorn.

Instead, I think Plato wanted us to see the value of story. He uses these fictions to convey his ideas about Truth. Nathan the prophet did the same thing when approaching King David about his sin with Bathsheba. And when God became Incarnate, He spent the precious time He had with His disciples…telling stories. Parables.

I learned about the Russian Revolution as a high school English teacher teaching Animal Farm. I have never since been able to look at communism without hearing the echo of the horse’s insistent voice, “I must work harder.”

History texts are written about kings and conquerors. Stories give voice to the unnamed peasants who suffered the change…or lack of change that came with a new regime, a natural disaster, a plague.

I’m an English teacher—of course I believe that stories are important and powerful. Recently, though, I have come to see stories woven into games. As my husband and I play with our children and each other, I have noticed that we are weaving a narrative. We know from years of playing Risk, for example, that Madagascar is a fierce island off the coast of Africa that absolutely cannot be defeated, even if one brings all the power of Rome against the tiny island.

We understand from Axis and Allies the geographical reasons that America had great resources but a difficult time applying them to the problem. There is a force at work, invisible, beneath the board of Gobblet, spinning pieces round like a spider’s web trapping its prey.

There’s a living memory in shared games. We know that the yellow pieces in Risk cannot win—they are cowards and klutzes and fall on their own weapons. We know that gold fever can wreck a sailor’s ships in Seafarers.

When I was a child, I could not add 75 and 75 very quickly, but I knew six quarters were a dollar fifty. I am terrible with geography, but I know Madagascar is off the eastern coast of Africa and Irkutsk is in Russia. I can only spell ‘Mississippi’ when I let the jump rope chant run through my head.

Most of us can put information on a short term go-cart ride from the text to the test, but I believe stories help us move information from the short term go-cart track to long-term neural pathways we’ll keep with us. Historical fiction and playground rhymes are great ways to build these neural highways.

Telling the stories ourselves, though, has an even greater impact on long-term learning, understanding, and making cross-curricular connections. Games allow us to tell the stories ourselves, to interact with the decisions and disasters that faced our predecessors, whether that be a world war or making change from $500.

If Plato had lived in this century, I think he would have argued against movies….and I think he would have made his point via film.

Should School be Fun?

Some homeschooling friends are debating this question right now, vacillating between guilt that their kids aren’t having enough “fun” homeschooling and conviction that too much fun in the early years will lead to an inability to concentrate and work hard later on.

I did what any responsible educator would do: I asked my kids.

Should school be fun? “Of course,” they agreed. “Why wouldn’t it be?” So I told them that some teachers thought that might not be a good idea, and their jaws dropped.

First, they think fun is good. They suggested that school is often as fun as playing. I think the key here, though, is not necessarily offering chocolate chips for every worksheet completed, as my nine-year-old suggested, but in teaching kids to enjoy learning. Instead of making up games to make reading seem fun and broccoli taste good, we should be finding good books and great recipes.

Of course, I try to keep the competition at a minimum, too: television and sugar can stunt perfectly good taste buds.

Second, my kids pointed out that even if you enjoy school, there will still be other things in life that you have to do that aren’t fun, like chores, which are mostly not fun.  Of course, if you’ve been taught to enjoy things, sometimes even chores can be a little fun.  Sometimes, you actually get more chores done by racing Mama or playing soldier, with the mess being enemy combatants.  Learning to make unpleasant tasks more palatable might just be an important life skill, a first step on the path to self-discipline.

Finally, my kids think that they’ve retained more information because they enjoyed the process of learning it.  When education is fun, you find yourself thinking about wars and grammar rules even when no one’s making you do it.  The information sticks better when it becomes part of your private thought-world.

Education that makes you think, makes you interact with ideas and information, can’t help but be fun.  I’d be willing to guess that most of the time, if learning is not fun, it’s because the student is not being challenged.  This does not necessarily mean he needs harder work–sometimes it could be quite the opposite.  Building a skyscraper would not challenge me; it would be too far over my head to even begin!

On the contrary, challenging kids assumes working within their range of ability with a little stretching.  Instead of more math problems or harder ones, then, a kid is challenged, I believe, when he is invested in his work.  Counting money for Monopoly is a lot more fun than counting black and white money printed on a worksheet.  Counting money from a jar of coins in order to buy something yourself is even better because it’s relevant.  One allows you to play a game; the other allows you to buy a game.

Right now, my kids are in the other room arguing over rules to a game that they’re designing themselves based on the sea battles of World War I.  My eyes glaze over when people start talking about battle ships versus cruisers, different kinds of ammunition, and various war planes, but suddenly, for the sake of designing a strategy game, I’m fascinated by the details and capabilities of each.  As we work together to balance simplicity and complexity, we see the problem of supplying troops.  The battle ships that the books said were big, are Really Big.  They fit in our hands, but they can cross several tiles of water and take out every cruiser in their way in one turn.  That’s relevant.  That gets our attention.

We will go back and read again about the Bismarck when we’re done, and instead of another battle, another general, another page, my kids will see a brilliant military strategist.  Then they’ll probably try to copy the strategy and beat me at my own game.

I think that asking if school should be fun might be the wrong question.  One of us hears “fun” and thinks “entertainment” while another one thinks “engaging.”  One of us hears more work for the teacher while another imagines more responsibility for the student.  I think with different phrasing, we’d probably agree on the latter.

There’s also the concern that if kids don’t learn to do things they don’t enjoy now, then they won’t have the responsibility to do them later.  I’ve been thinking about this argument especially.  I imagine Office Space.  My kids under fluorescent lights, carrying cups of burned coffee to their cubicles, swiping time cards for lunch breaks.

That happens to some of us.  Sometimes life puts us in places where we have to do things we don’t want to do, but it’s necessity that enables us to do them, not discipline.  Those with a good education and strong self-discipline end up in jobs they love more often than the rest of the world.  If you want to do more of what you love, if you want your job to be “as fun as playing,” as my kids described school, then you have to learn how to enjoy things that others see as hard work.  You have to learn to care about what you do, so that it will be relevant.  Then, if you do somehow end up on Office Space, at least you won’t be the guy hiding out in the break room protecting his red stapler.  Maybe instead, you’ll look around the office, chuckle, and write a great movie.