This blog was born out of a desire to reach gifted students and their families and teachers in the “way” of the future – online. I believe that in a world of such fast pace now, we often don’t look behind the surface and ask the question, “What is really happening here? Is there something I have missed?”
This year, I am going to move this blog’s content beyond the “gifted” (although I remain passionate about their cause) and focus on thinking ‘beyond the square’ to life in general. There will be some categories you can read that apply specifically to your cause. There will be other comments that talk about my walk through what I believe will be a very challenging, but most rewarding, year ahead.
I have just returned from Samoa where my husband has been working for over a year now trying to raise the online awareness of the 2009 tsunami-stricken “Pacific Paradise” to boost tourism numbers again after such a damaging wave of destruction! He has worked with the local village people to share his creative ideas to raise the ‘palangi-appeal’ of their local areas (read – what do European tourists expect?). Now, he has finally reached the ear of the Prime Minister, Tuila’epa, and 2011 looks a promising year for progress.
My husband is a creative-gifted man, with passion and intensity that often alienates him from others around him. It had been a challenge to learn to live with this, but hence my passion to help our gifted kids learn about themselves, and others to learn about them, too!
I want to start by introducing you to some projects that kids with passion have started around the world. Free the Children was started in 1995 by a 12 year old, Craig Kielburger, who visited India to see what child labour meant first-hand. Our gifted kids have the passion and intensity to do alot more than they are often given credit for in their early schooling years.
What might this boy have looked like as a 5 year old – just seven years earlier? Might he have been fidgety on the mat, quick to expect justice in the classroom, uninterested in mundane copying word activities? People who make a difference in the world can often be shunned because of their ‘differences’ by the very people who are in a position to positively effect a far greater outcome.
Parenting and teaching is a mighty responsible task – are we serving our kids respectfully? Just a thought … online.