Thoughts on the Gift of Giftedness...

Sometimes it's difficult to remember that giftedness is just that...a gift. Sometimes it seems like a burden. After all, for parents a child's giftedness may require additional time for advocacy, extra effort to make sure you've got just the right teacher fit, and always working to make sure you child is being challenged academically. Students may sometimes struggle to find friends who understand them, might feel like the odd person out, be bored, or overwhelmed emotionally by things they understand about the world but can't do anything about. It can be difficult.

But in this season of giving remember - it is a GIFT. Having enormous potential and a brain that absorbs so much is a chance to really see and understand not just math and English but the universe. You have the ability to affect great change, if that's your goal, but you can also just take it all in and observe and meditate, if that's your thing. But it's there, and it's part of you, and when you embrace your talents and gifts you can enjoy and appreciate them more every day.

So don't let your giftedness weigh you down. Unwrap it, try it on, keep it - and don't even think about returning it. One day you might realize it's the best present you ever received.

Happy Holidays!

A Lifetime of Learning

As some of you may know, Dr. Kelly and Ms. Nan recently journeyed to Phoenix for the National Association for Gifted Children's annual conference. Kelly gave two presentations related to ATYP, one one how the program operates, and one on how we use the Talent Search to find eligible students. 

Yes, Phoenix was warm and lovely, but that's not why we went. The NAGC conference gives us our best opportunity to meet and learn from the greatest experts in the field of gifted education. We attend sessions related to the social and emotional needs of gifted students, how to discover and help more under-represented minorities, how to make our program more impactful and efficient, how to advocate for the gifted in our communities and with our legislature, and much, much more. 

This year, all of the key note speeches had something to do with STEM (science, technology, engineering & mathematics) education - robotics, inventiveness, and Google Education apps. All of the speakers gave us ideas to think (and blog) about, so be on the lookout for posts that originated at NAGC and thoughts on how what we learned can be of benefit to you, our students and parents.

This conference and others like it give us a chance to demonstrate the importance of lifelong learning. Even when you're as old as we are (and you students can stop laughing now), curiosity, inquisitiveness, and a passion for learning are a vital part of not just furthering your mind and your career, but making life interesting and worth living. When you stop learning, all of the fun goes out. It's like someone has turned off the lights, and you're just stumbling around in the dark.  

Keep your lights on! Make loving to learn a priority, not just in school, but every day in every way!

 

It's Recruitment Time!

Fall is recruitment season and one of the busiest times of year in the ATYP office. ATYP staff are on the road for the next three weeks talking to students and their parents about Northwestern University's Midwest Academic Talent Search (NUMATS), about qualifying for ATYP, and about what ATYP is all about. We meet many gifted children and families thinking about what it means to be gifted, to get challenging curriculum in the school day, and how to make the most of educational opportunities that might be outside of their regular school.

What would you tell your friends about ATYP - besides how much homework you have? Would you talk about how interesting you find the readings? How you're thinking about math in a whole new way? What about all the friends you've made from different schools? Is your instructor really cool? The work is challenging - does it push you to be a better student? What do you know about yourself now that you didn't know before you started? Respond below!

This is what we hear most from ATYP alumni, usually after they've had a couple of years to think about it - that ATYP introduces them to new ideas about themselves and their abilities.
We recently received a letter from a former student that said, "Every day I went to your class I felt that I was not nearly intelligent enough to belong there. Nevertheless, the year spent learning from you furthered my knowledge far more than any class I have ever taken... ." Many of our students think that somehow they have qualified for ATYP by mistake, and that they are not as intelligent as everyone thinks. When they stick it out they discover hidden strengths - and weaknesses. They learn to appreciate the former, and accept or address the latter. But they come to understand their gifts, which is an important step on the road to becoming the you that you were meant to be.

ATYP Homework - How NOT to Panic!

Welcome back!

We know that many of you are having your first experience with ATYP homework, or are coming back from the long summer break having maybe forgotten how homework works here. We know that for some of you this may be the first time you've had any significant amount of work outside of school - and that you might not know how to deal with it.

Even though we talked about homework tips at orientation, here is a breakdown of at least some of the strategies that seem to work best.

First, let's look at what a typical schedule might look like for an ATYP student:

The student has ATYP class on Tuesday (in green) and regular school on the other afternoons (blue). Say the student has soccer practice from 5:00-6:30 Tues-Thurs (red), and a game Saturday afternoon (purplish). Piano lesson on Thursday from 3-4, and youth group Sunday evening from 5-6. You want to take Friday night off to go to a football game. You take all of those things that take up time in your week and put them into a graph like this that visually represents your week. Then you look for blocks of time where you can focus on your ATYP work. Seeing the holes helps you to create a schedule - and lets family and friends know when you need to be focusing. And notice that we've blocked off time on Sunday to go to help session.

You can fill these holes by saying "I'm going to work on my ATYP homework for a certain amount of time," or by deciding "I'm going to finish a certain amount of work" (a specific number of sections for math, or a specific assignment for English). Different strategies work better for different people. You may go back and forth until you figure out what's effective for you. 

Here are some other tips:

• Try to have at least attempted all the math by Sunday, so you can get help at help session, and to have at least thought about all of the English prompts, so you can get feedback about ideas.
• Post your schedule of what you're doing where your family can see it - they can help you to be accountable.
• Reward yourself when you have accomplished what you have set out to do. Rewards can be any small thing you want - a gummy bear, ten minutes of texting with your friends, or a funny cat video on YouTube. 
• Make it a goal to have finished all of your homework by two nights before class - if class is on Tuesday try to be done Sunday night, for example. That way if an emergency comes up you have extra time built into your schedule.
• Use your study period at school wisely - either work on ATYP work that is easily transportable, or get other schoolwork done so that you have more blocks of time available at home.
• English students - review all of the prompts early in the week, so you can be jotting down ideas for what to write about as they come to you. Nobody likes staring at a computer screen trying to think about what to write about. Give your brain some time to generate thoughts. 
• Think about writing a really detailed outline of longer papers (weekly writings, unit essays), including selecting quotes on one day, and then working on actually writing the paper another day. Once you've got the outline done and all of those ideas have percolated, you'll be amazed at how much faster the actual writing goes.
• If you get stuck, move on and come back! For math students, skip the problem that is giving you trouble and come back to it when you finish that section. For English students, re-read the material that the prompt comes from and then go to something else. Give yourself time to process!
• Check out the resources in your book - there are a lot of them! For math students, you have access to online videos and help on homework problems. There are also answers in the back of the book for odd numbered exercises. For English students, there are sections on how to start writing, how to create an outline, how to write thesis statements, etc. 
• English students should start on your revisions now! Waiting until the last minute causes much grief and takes a lot longer. Doing revisions now will help you learn from the comments that the teacher has made on your papers. Then you won't have to make those same corrections over and over.
•  If you continue to struggle, ask for help! Teachers, parents, other students, and the ATYP staff all have ideas that might work for you. We are here to help you figure it out! Utilize the contact information given to you by your teacher.

Communication is the key to solving homework issues, and getting your homework done on time is the key to being successful in ATYP. We want you to have fun and learn from your assignments - not be anxious about them. So talk to someone and come up with a plan that works for you!

Summer To-Do List #2

We spend a lot of time - both here on our blog and in our classrooms - talking about "habits of mind." What are "habits of mind?" Usually we mean things like study skills, confidence, persistence, determination. When asked how you develop these skills, we recommend trying something you find really difficult, and sticking to it. And keep sticking to it.

Most of us like to find things that we're good at and develop those skills until we're even more fabulous, which is great. It's how you become exceptional at something. But if this was a talent you were really good at to begin with, then becoming great, even if it's a lot of hard work, might not be the type of activity we're talking about. Try something you suck at. Seriously.

If you're not very musical, or lack hand-eye coordination, try learning to play the piano. If you're not athletic, take up tennis. Lack the human translator gene? Learn to speak Italian. Or German. Or Vietnamese. 

Here's the difficult part. Keep trying. Even if you know you're not good, even if the people in your family cover their ears whenever you get close to the piano, even if the other tennis players laugh, just keep going. Because you might never good at these hobbies, and that's okay. The point here is to work on getting better, and knowing that sometimes better is good enough.

Even when you're doing something that you have a natural gift for, eventually you're going to hit a point where it's not as easy, where you have to dig down deep. When you've spent time trying to improve a skill that doesn't come easily, you've built up the muscles in your brain that will help you work through when something gets tough.

So that's your second assignment for this summer - find something you stink at. And go be stinky at it. If people laugh at you, tell them you're developing a smell.

What Did You Do on Your Summer Vacation?

Hopefully we all do a lot of fun activities over the summer - vacations, trips to the beach, summer jobs, hanging with friends, roasting marshmallows. But what can you do over the summer to really make a difference in your world?

First, use this time to discover your passion. Sometimes gifted students have a tough time figuring out what they really care about because they like everything! But you never know where or when you might uncover a subject that becomes central to your life. You might find that you love birds and bugs and dirt by hanging out at the Kalamazoo Nature Center, either as a camper or from just hiking in the woods. You might find that you love planes or flying or aerospace engineering from a trip to the Air Zoo. You might explore painting and photography and sculpture at the Kalamazoo Institute of Art. Your options are endless!

This region is full of places (some unexpected) to explore subjects you think you might be interested in, and become REALLY interested. Excited. Passionate. Find something creates some sparks? Dig deeper! Say you go to Binder Park Zoo and fall in love with a giraffe. Consider going to a zoo camp so you can spend more time with the animals. Sign up to volunteer, or help them to fundraise. Still love the animals? Look into a degree in wildlife biology. More interested in the animals' habitat or making sure the environment stays clean for them? There are ecology classes available at the Nature Center. You can follow that idea, that tiny spark, down any path it takes you - you never know where you might end up.

Laying by the pool is great - finding something that brings you joy is even better!

Staying Connected: What You Can Learn from ATYP Alumni

Every now and then we like to ask our alumni how they're doing, what they're doing, and what they see as their next great adventure. We keep up with some of them by following their blogs. Here are two created by former ATYP students that highlight their current endeavors:

Kaitie Janecke

University of Michigan student and ATYP alum Kaitie Janecke works at the U of M Museum of Zoology and Research. Kaitie works with an extensive collection of bird skins, skeletons, and other specimens. She inputs data regarding these specimens and comes across a variety of species ranging from tiny and rare humming birds to large Victoria Crowned Pigeons. If you are interested in zoology, ornithology, museums, or data collection, you may want to check out Kaitie’s blog, “http://lifewithdeadbirds.tumblr.com/” - which sounds weird but is actually really interesting.

Spencer Lenfield 

 Another alum, Spencer Lenfield, is currently attending Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship. He blogs about classic literature, traveling, and being adopted. Spencer has a lot of insight into the larger world and writes with humor and compassion. Besides which, being a Rhodes Scholar just seems really cool! You can find his blog at http://loosesignatures.blogspot.com/.

We encourage you to follow these individuals in order to expand your personal learning network. Furthermore, if you are involved in something fascinating please do not hesitate to share. Building a community and staying in touch is important - we would love to see what life is like for you now and after ATYP!

Preparing Yourself for a Job at Google X

I recently heard a piece on the radio about Google X Labs, the facility run by Google that the company says is "dedicated to making major technological advancements." You know - Google Glass and self-driving cars. Google encourages X Lab employees to come up with "moonshots" - outrageous ideas that may have only the remotest chance of every coming to fruition. Evidently nothing is too crazy to be considered. Only the smallest portion of the ideas people come up will ever come close to being designed or manufactured, so the failure rate is exceedingly high. Do you get that? They listen to and discard hundreds of ideas, looking for one or two to pursue. Would you be able to stomach that as an innovator? Constantly having your ideas rejected? 

Google knows that in order to find the truly great ideas they might have to let go of some that are just okay, and sometimes the projects they do green light might seem crazy to the rest of the world. Working for them might mean that you get the chance to work on some of the most world's greatest inventions - but it also means that a lot of these outrageous ideas will crash and burn, or that you will have to be prepared to fail and try again, and fail and try again, over and over. Do you have the heart for that?

Bottom line, to do anything great you have to be prepared to flop. Like Edison, who discovered hundreds of ways not to make a light bulb before creating one that worked, you have to be able stomach defeat in order to be victorious. 

So when you're struggling, remember - you're preparing for the future. You could be Google X's next great employee! 

ATYP Book Review

The Mysterious Evaluation of the Mysterious Benedict Society

by Marysol Millar

3 1/2 out of 4 stars

           

The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart is a suspenseful novel in which three orphans and a runaway are drawn together by a suspicious ad in the paper. The add reads “Are you a child looking for special opportunities?” There are tests hard enough to make adults cry. Only the four children pass and meet Mr. Benedict.

Mr. Benedict is a man who lives with narcolepsy. He makes the children secret agents, and things go loopy. The Learning Institute for the Very Enlightened is a haven of memory erasing evil. The kids discover a plan to take over the world and all of the government agents who had “retired” One day the children receive a message and realize why they were only orphans and runaways. They may never come back from the institute.

“Wow!” “Outstanding!” Readers use these words to describe the thrilling mystery. It is a mind-warping book. This novel will keep readers up past their bedtime to find out what will happen next. 

What makes ATYP great?

In these difficult financial times for education (both K-12 and universities), ATYP is dedicating a great deal of time and effort to making itself self-supporting. Social media, brochures, and grant-writing are all part of this plan, and we could use your help in making these as descriptive and attention-grabbing as possible. Is there something you can add to our campaign?

ATYP alum Emerson Talanda-Fisher wrote about our program, “It taught me that I could do anything I set my mind to. I learned to challenge myself, and that I could get through any challenge I faced if I worked hard enough.” We would love to hear from other alumni (and parents) what they learned from their ATYP experience. What was most meaningful to you? When did the benefits become apparent - in a changing mindset? In other high school classes? In college? 

Give us your comments on what makes ATYP some a special opportunity - we would love to hear them! And follow us on twitter @atypwmu, or look for the hashtag #atypstudentsareawesome.