Genius

I'm cleaning up the room and sorting out a bunch of stuff. Yes, still trying to get caught up with the grading! But as I'm doing this I have a DVD on of three short films about Martha Graham. And I was just struck, and almost as if I had been really whacked on the head, when Graham said, "Everyone is born with genius. The tragedy is that so many hold on to it for such a brief time." She continued to say that we lose our genius because we are not willing to be disciplined, to focus and concentrate and develop our talents.

I'm so discouraged as the GATE coordinator at this school by our endless obsession with separating the sheep from the goats, discerning who are really "gifted" from those who are not. Instead, I wish we would approach all our children as gifted, though perhaps gifted in different ways, and challenge them to hold onto their "genius" and to develop it with hard work and passion. What a better school, what a better world we would have if we did so.

Homework: CAREFULLY and THOUGHTFULLY do page 325 in the math book. Try to really understand what remainders are and what they mean, not just get the procedure for dividing with remainders.