Class, December the first, 2009

It's guest speaker day, apparently. That's okay. Not like movie day. Movie day is great.

Vicki Krugman is first. I think that's how you spell her name. She's the goto contact for all matters gifted in Clarke County. She has a swanky office at the board office. Sweet.

The first thing that happened, before Vicki appeared on the scene, is some folks handed out some . . . handouts. All four concern portfolio plans.

Srivistava. She's talking. Portfolios. The kid who uses Lilith as an alter-ego/avatar.

Here's my impression of what it means to do well on a portfolio: you have to care enough to keep on talking about your feelings. You also have to not care too much about other people possibly laughing at you. To create a good portfolio

a portfolio needs a good ten to fifteen items or artifacts they're called

you have to be willing to go on and on about the artifacts you have chosen. Your emotions must show through in the works you create. People might laugh at you because you have to, just as in any good metaphor, make an unnatural comparison between the artifact and what it means to you.

portfolios are not used a lot around the state of georgia

Why not? Because they're so difficult and time-consuming to create. Look like a booger to assess too.

it's useless to do a portfolio that is not in one of the student's strength areas

Sure. I'll buy that. Vicki just admitted that the most difficult area of portfolios to assess is the creativity component. Well, not really a component, but I like that word. There are three target areas for portfolios: achievement, creativity, and motivation. Going back to Srivistava's presentation of her student's portfolio, I would have sworn it was on creativity. Looked that way to me. Not true. It was motivation. Go figure.

Know what? This reminds me a lot of what we in the English department go through when we try to select kids for the English honors distinction around graduation. We want kids who are self-motivated, pursue their interests outside the classroom (reading and writing in the case of English).

Rapport. That's a funny word.

How much does environment play into portfolio development and the reality of the creative process. The third guest speaker, no clue who she is, but she seems attached to Vicki, mentioned a kid who would not/could not write a lick in writing class, but at home she was creating magnificent lyrical poetry (songs, I mean). I write different ways after reading different texts. One story I wrote sounded like Kafka. that's because I had just read several Kafka short stories. Read The Trial, too. That makes me cool.

Who is that third lady? She really seems to know what she's talking about. Has a great deal of information.

I'll be right back. I'm going to find a like to put in this blog.

Hoagies' Gifted Education Page offers some information on skipping a grade by using a gifted portfolio. It's an article by a woman named Sandy advocating for her fifth grade child moving directly into seventh grade. I wouldn't do that. Middle schoolers are cruel. That's a horrible age to be different from the people around you. Then again, it would really bite to be an overachieving sixth grader stuck in a sixth grade class.

Woman3 is still wearing her scarf and it's not that cold in here. Maybe she was bitten by a vampire. Stymie. She said stymie. Definition two.

My wife calls me a supersniffer. I blame my mother. She wore too much (and too much for me is any) perfume, Chanel no. 5, on car trips. Made me nauseous. I sit here in this new elementary school and can smell nothing but the New School smell. The carpet's too clean. The walls are too freshly painted. Too few bodies have gone through here. I dread the day I have to drive my own new car. Will I ever get one? Doubt it. I like used. But that's because I don't have enough money to buy a new car.

You know what I've missed through this whole thing? Why? That's what I've missed. If this portfolio takes up to a year and a half to create, why are the kids doing it and what do they get when they finish it that they could not get in other ways?

Outliers. Vicki made reference to outliers. I have a visual memory of the book. The link is to the author's own website concerning his book, Outliers. That title sticks with me.

three types of gifted services within the classroom: collaboration, advanced content, and cluster

Liberty County offers more models than we do. Go them. The pdf file does, however, offer pretty succinct definitions of the different models offered at the three educational levels (elementary, middle, high).