Christa's Gifted Kids Blog

As I recently posted on our Facebook page, Discount School Supplies has been running a 10% off all in stock supplies sale for the start of the school year.  That sale ends on September 3rd.  Use "BTSWDSS" as the coupon code in your shopping cart to get the discount.

The Teaching Company also has some good coupon codes ($10 off, $20 off, and all high school courses on sale) that expire at the end of this month.  Their coupons are too numerous to list out here, so I'll just direct you to the bottom of the coupons page where there is a list of priority codes and coupon codes.  You can combine one coupon code with one priority code. 

I recently ordered my hubby some audio CDs from them to listen to on his long daily drives to and from Wyoming.  Since I know that he doesn't read my blog, I'm not ruining his anniversary present ;-)!  What I found out, though, was that you can often get a better discount if you put in the coupon code first and then the priority code. 

For instance, I was using a priority code that took about $10 off each of the CDs I was ordering.  Before I used that priority code, my total was over $100 -- qualifying me to use a "$20 off $100+ purchase" coupon.  I put the coupon code in and it took $20 off the total.  Then I put the priority code in and it took the additional discount off the cost of the CDs. 

If I did it the opposite way, though, the priority code put the total below $100 and it wouldn't let me use the coupon code unless I bought more items.  I hope that this makes sense!  Let me know if not.

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As I recently posted on my Examiner column, we had been hoping to make a public 5th grade class work for our youngest this year.  Due to a number of factors which seem likely to impact both our daughter's achievement and self image, I am feeling less and less comfortable with that option, however.

I am definitely planning to attend the Northern Colorado Homeschool Association meeting next Monday at the Council Tree Library.  I have heard in the past from a few parents of younger kids who are interested in a cooperative.  I hope to meet some parents of kids more similar in age to my youngest there as well to see if I can quickly get something off the ground.

In the meantime, I will be exploring any other options I can come up with!  Spam me with ideas :-)!

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Parents of middle school aged children may want to be aware that the national MathCounts Foundation has changed the rules for homeschoolers this year.  MathCounts provides an opportunity for 6th through 8th grade students to compete in academic problem solving and mathematical competitions. 

Students either participate in the local, and possibly national, competition as part of a team or  they participate in some components of the competition as an individual.  For instance, some portions of the competitions, such as the Team Round, require competitors to be part of a team.

For this upcoming school year -- 2010-2011 -- homeschooled students are no longer eligible to form teams.  They may still participate as individuals, but the national office decided to ban homeschool teams due to what they felt was an unfair advantage among homeschool teams.  Apparently there have been instances of math tutoring centers forming teams of "homeschoolers" who may or may not actually be homeschooled students.  Additionally, MathCounts felt that homeschoolers had the advantage of being able to draw from larger geographical areas to form what they are referring to as "super teams." 

Since homeschoolers account for a very small portion of MathCounts teams, they felt that the easiest route was to just ban homeschool teams.  Anyone with concerns about this is urged to contact MathCounts' program manager Chris Bright at 703-299-9006 x 104 or chris@mathcounts.org.

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I occasionally get contacted via e-mail by local moms who are interested in my co-op idea although they always seem to have much younger kids than mine.  At this point, it's pretty much on hold for the next year.  I really don't have enough people to get anything off the ground but am going to reevaluate for the 2011-12 school year depending on how things are going for my girls.  My oldest will be turning 13 that school year (yikes!) and heading off to high school.  There is a local public high school she wants to choice to and we're inclined to go that route unless something changes. 

I did hear from a mom recently who, aside from being interested in a co-op, had a lot of useful information to pass on.  In case anyone else is interested, I'll put it out here as well.

The Northern Colorado Homeschool Association has been around for some time, but I had, apparently incorrectly, believed that they were somewhat inactive at this point.  They seem to be actively up and running, though and they have a tween/teen sub-group. Their new website is  http://ncha.squarespace.com/ and the first meeting of the school year will be held on August 23, 2010 at the Council Tree Library at 6:30 p.m.  
 
Apparently, Thompson School District is also trying to get in on the homeschooling supplement action.  A few districts and schools already do this.  The school gets partial funding for the students and the students come just a few days a week for supplemental instruction.  Thompson's program is called the "Innovation Lab" and will be opening this upcoming (2010-11) school year with 50 kids enrolled. 

There will be a series of meetings held about this Innovation Lab school with the first on Wednesday, 8/11, at 7 p.m. at Barnes & Noble/Centerra in the Starbucks area.  The Loveland Reporter Herald had a recent article on the Innovation Lab with more information which is available online.

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I was recently directed to a commentary by Jim Delisle regarding the definition of giftedness.  Entitled What Gifted Educators Can Learn from Sarah Palin, Delisle's commentary was originally published in Education Week in March of 2010.

I found myself nodding in agreement over and over with what he had to say.  The very term "gifted" has been suggested for revision by many in the field because it can be considered offensive, elitist, and polarizing.  However, it is also appealing.  If it weren't, there wouldn't have been such a push over the past 30 years to broaden the net and define such a large group of children as gifted.

We've tried a variety of schooling options for my children including schools in two different districts, homeschooling, and a charter school.  My kids have never attended a school where fewer than 15-20% of the kids in grades four or above were identified as gifted in some academic area.  Some identify so many kids as gifted that it becomes a real challenge to meet the needs of even a moderately gifted child in a GT class.  He has few true peers there. 

According to my state, gifted can include anything from leadership qualities to high achievement in any one subject area to aptitute in the visual arts.  Even if we are looking solely at children who are identified as gifted in an academic area, few of them would meet the original definition of gifted.  Gifted and high achieving are not the same thing and the gifted child often does not thrive in a peer cohort of high achievers.

Whether one wants to argue that gifted is 1%, 2% or 5% of the general population, can we all at least agree that it isn't 20 or 30% of the general population?  I loved this quote from Delisle:

"With giftedness having no precise and concise definition, politicians who control the purse strings, and administrators who allocate a school's resources, are unsure of which children they are being asked to support. Are they superior in their intellect? Merely above average? Possessed with a multiple menu of linguistic or kinesthetic intelligences? No wonder public support for gifted children is so easy to ignore: The field's leading experts can't even agree on which children would qualify to receive it."

This brings me back to wondering about the recent vote in the Senate to eliminate the only federal funding for gifted education: the Javits Gifted and Talented Student Education Act.  Does the way that we as a nation are defining the term gifted have anything to do with that?  Does it leave our children vulnerable because we are trying to be egalitarian?

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