In career counseling, I learned that Laura Gottfredson created the theory of circumscription and compromise. I have created a slide presentation on how to incorporate it into a counseling session with an emphasis on gifted students. As an advocate for gifted and twice-exceptional students, I believe more and more information must be created to communicate to professionals about this population.
Here are my brain warm-ups in presentation form!
Happy Brain Warming! 🙂
Our class presentation this week included School and COVID. Amy Paige and Paige Martin had a lot of great information to present, so I am including it here. If anything it is history!
Effects during pandemic
○ Meals
○ Access to education (Not everyone has access to the same
Technology or help at home)
● Show me the Money?
○ Educational budget cuts
○ Economy
○ Financial strains on families
● Reopening
○ Platform, access to tech, precautions/procedures in place
Mental Health Response
○ Staff, students, parents
○ Resources
I saw a post on Facebook about podcasts and I decided to post my favorites here. For the past three years, I have traveled between two elementary schools as part of my teaching job. The two schools were 25 minutes apart and left time to listen to a podcast. I also like to listen to podcasts while I go for a walk or do a mindless task like painting the walls. If you are tired of books on tape or don’t want to mess with them, podcasts are really the way to go. Don’t like a podcast? Just click on another one! They are so much fun you want to just start one yourself.
How to listen to a podcast – Just download the Stitcher app on your android phone or Apple podcasts on iOS phones. The Spotify app also has many of these podcasts as well. I never had to sign in with an email for Stitcher. Note: In Settings, Make sure the battery background switch says “Allow background data usage” is ON. I had trouble podcasts pausing every 10 minutes, but changing this setting has fixed all of that.
Alright, so here are my favorite podcasts which include fun ones and educational ones.
#1 – Imagined Life by Wondry – This is my favorite fun podcast and actually got me hooked on podcasts. You listen to a famous person’s life and find out who you are at the end. The actor voices are fantastic, the writing keeps you coming for more and you will know all of the famous people. It is a mix of education and entertainment that puts this in my #1 spot. All of the podcasts are G or PG rating. If there is something that might be questionable, the podcast tells you at the beginning.
#2 History This Week – This is our favorite podcast to listen to as a family. I use this podcast to also teach my own kids about pausing, diction and public communication. The narrator is really, really good. You can also use this to delve more deeply into events you may have already known about or ones that you never heard of… like Operation Mincemeat. The interviews can help you really empathize with the people during that time and place which I think we all need right now.
#3 – Mind Matters – Short, but still in depth, this podcast by Emily Kercher-Morris interviews professionals in the fields of gifted education, special education and clinical psychology. Each episode has interesting information and there is a Facebook group as well for additional questions and/or support.
#4 Freakonomics – Oh I loved these books!! I can’t believe there was a podcast, too! I look forward to Freakonomics every single week. You always learn something new and he delves into the law of unintended consequences just like the Freakonomics book series.
#5 Revisionist History – I loved Malcolm Gladwell’s books so naturally had to check out this podcast after he mentions it in the latest book Talking to Strangers. I do not love every episode… and have skipped around. But there are some really good gems here: first, the podcast about how the rich LA golf clubs are paying real estate taxes based on pre-1978 land purchases. So those huge golf courses in the middle of LA that should be paying close to 9 million dollars in taxes? Yeah, they pay $200,000 per year instead. Second, “Dragon Psychology 101” discusses hoarding and describes it in a very interesting way…. I will let you find that out for yourself. But what also struck me (and Malcolm Gladwell of course) was that the MET in New York City was going to start charging people admission (unless they are residents of New York City) because the MET didn’t have enough money. Yes, you heard me. One of the largest collections of art in the entire world didn’t have enough money… because they couldn’t part with one painting.
#6 Teach Better – The Teach Better Team puts out a quality podcast on general education topics. I love their style where you feel you could go out and share a beer with one of them, you know? The facebook group is great and the blog… I contribute to the blog on Teachbetter.com… so I think it’s pretty good, too 🙂 Some recent and memorable guests include Kim Bearden and Sean Thompson.
#7 The Psychology Podcast – Scott Barry Kaufman interviews people in the field of psychology here in this podcast. I guess you can’t blame him for trying to promote his new book as well 🙂 My latest favorite is the interview he did with Martin Seligman. Here, they review positive psychology and the criticisms that have come against it. At the end, Martin gives his definition of creativity which segues into something we do not mention enough of in school – one criteria for creativity being “usefulness”. Is it creative if it is totally useless? Then again, many creative things weren’t “useful” at the time like frequency hopping developed for World War II, then it went away as useless because the war was over, and now millions (billions perhaps?) use it every single day!
#7 Critical Window – This podcast concentrates on taking research in education and applying it to middle and high school. I pick and choose the podcasts here, but when I do they are excellent. The latest one that I loved was “Lessons in Equity from Gifted Programs.” One recommendation that stood out to me was for high school teachers to have short “internships” during the summer (paid of course) where a math teacher, for example, would go to an architectural firm and learn how math is used there.
I wish I would have posted my Gifted Education assignments on a blog to keep them and my reflections on them. So, in response I am going to post my School Counseling assignments on the blog here!
Currently, I am taking Advanced Human Development and chose Middle Childhood as my life stage to present. I chose this stage because it is the age I have been teaching for the past 3 years and I also have a 9 year old and 13 year old. So I have lived it as a parent as well.
Click here for the slideshow that was created as a Conference Ready slideshow for Middle Childhood.
Click here for the audio presentation.
24 Game – This is a great warm up that can be used virtual or in person. Using any of the 4 math operations, including parentheses, creating an equation that will equal 24.
Teaches: Divergent thinking, mathematical flexibility, there is more than one answer (most of the time), Flexibility
Challenge Math – These books introduce WAYS of thinking and not just how to solve one type of problem. The problems go from easy to hard.
Teaches: mathematical and logical thinking
Visual Thinking Strategies – Of course my favorite
I currently teach the 6th grade accelerated math (known in other schools has honors) class and gifted education. After 10 years of parenting and reflection into my prior teaching practices, I came to the conclusion to add a candy jar but not for giving me the right answers. Students can earn a treat for asking a good question. It must be a question that requires more research, more reasoning, more discussion and not a question that can be answered by a simple google search.
Our greatest accomplishments started with a “what if?” — What if we could land on the moon? What if phones could go on the internet like computers? These accomplishments started with good questions, not good answers.
Sometimes the good answers even hinder what we can accomplish. Andrew Wiles solved Fermat’s last theorem but the answer was wrong at first. He didn’t give up and stop asking questions. He did solve it after his first presentation. In 2017, an 11 year old developed a better and cheaper way of detecting lead in the water. We had an answer already to lead detection and scientists have been detecting lead in the water for years. But she kept asking questions – is there a better way? Is there a cheaper way? And that is how she invented a new lead detection device that works over bluetooth that is cheaper and more convenient than current methods.
When your child gets home from school or students enter your classroom, ask for the good questions. Ask them what good questions they asked today. Not what they got right.
This is my new website to post items related to Gifted and STEM Education that are interesting to the world at large.
For our final week of class, our students were introduced to a new STEM Project. Our city is looking at building a new water park. The water park will need a wicked fast water slide! Your job is to create a water slide with 3 twists or turns, is at least 10″ high and no more than 18″. With limited amount of materials, here is what some students created to send 6 “people” down the water slide. We made sure all of our “people” signed waivers that we are not liable for their safety. 🙂
