When children awaken to a sense of their rights

Mr. F is a teacher, an avid reader, fond of conversation, and a believer that all children must be empowered to set a course of success in life.

He described one of his summer reads, and I, having lacked such conversation with my own parents, listened attentively. You see, inside I am a young person wanting to learn, and always appreciative of opportunities to do so.

Frederick, a slave, was barely taught to read by one of his mistresses/owner. Her husband stopped such efforts because he feared a slave who could read would be empowered to revolt against his life of servitude. Frederick understood then that he must do exactly what his master did not want him to do. His biggest early feat was to teach himself to read. His life was changed.

Stories of brutality, mistreatment of humans, and the failure of those who can to allow the less powerful to be all they can be always cause pain and revolt in me. I think I will remember Frederick's story and use it as affirmation that all I have taught myself will serve me right.

All I really need to know I learned in Kindergarten

(a guide for Global Leadership)

All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand pile at school.These are the things I learned:
Share everything.
Play fair.
Don't hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don't take things that aren't yours.
Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
Wash your hands before you eat.
Flush.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
Take a nap every afternoon.
When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.
Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die. So do we.
And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned - the biggest word of all - LOOK.
Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.
Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would be if we all - the whole world - had cookies and milk at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.
And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out in the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

[Source: "ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN KINDERGARTEN" by Robert Fulghum. See his web site at http://www.robertfulghum.com/ ]

Touched by nature

Literally and figuratively. I rejoice when my daughters go on nature quests.

Creative writing

It's inspiring! I'm giving it a try.

Inspired by an elementary drum group

Two girls listen attentively to a local elementary school drum group.

Frida

"Frida imitates no one in her style. Her paintings are like nothing else."

This is a beautiful book about an inspiring woman, Frida Kahlo.

What do you know ....

"The future isn't something hidden in a corner. The future is something we build in the present." --Paulo Freire

Being different

"I think the biggest thing I would make all School Psychs do is to be forced to take a class for an *entire* semester with students of a 65 IQ or to actually live in a house for Down's Syndrome Adults for the entire semester.
I would make it a requirement that they attend the house activities and that they eat their meals and do the food shopping with the house "family", everything would have to be that they were assimilated into the group. I would require this so that they could experience *first hand* what a PG person goes thru in living their everyday lives. Yes, people with 50 points less IQ are kind and considerate and have worth and can be fun to play ball with and run races and watch tv. But there cannot be a deep conversation most likely. The 115 IQ person or 105 or whatever, WILL feel like an outsider, WILL feel bored when made to sit in the class day after day after day while the other students are learning to carry decimal places for checkbook balancing or whathaveyou. This is the best way to have someone of average intelligence understand what it is like to be a person of much higher IQ. It can be fine and fun some days, but some days it can be excruciating and not worth getting up for. Then, I would have that same person be allowed for 2 hours, once a week, to be with same IQ peers, but ONLY for 2 hours (to mimic a pullout class). I think this would be the best experience for anyone going into gifted education or psychological counselling for the gt and especially anyone who will be responsible for the educational decisions of a gifted population." - AL

Wisdom

"My dear young fellow," the Old-Green-Grasshopper said gently, "there are a whole lot of things in this world of ours that you haven't even begun wondering about yet." --Roald Dahl, "James and the Giant Peach"

No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson