Joe loves to take on an activity---if he knows he will be successful at it.

He devours books and racks up points by taking tests on the Accelerated Reader program. With a gift for gab~ he gets recognized for his work as the anchorman for the schools morning news. You definitely cant call Joe a lazy student.

However~ give Joe an assignment or task where success is not certain~ and it can be like slamming the brakes on a car. Complete stop. He grows anxious~ tries to...

1. As a teacher of US Government and Constitutional Law~ I am not an expert on the realities of operational daily events in DC. I am however a professional who toils in the day-to-day ideals of democracy. Pivotal to this week's learnings was the concept of compromise after reading selected Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers. The argumentsseem to be playing out in DC.
2. 

The famous Virginian who wrote the...

1. I am a teaching head of a high school. As such~ I seek opportunities to use the lessons I experience in class to serve as life lessons to the faculty. The hardest lessons these days are those resulting from social media. Students are indeed young~ make the foolish choices of youth~ and must again and again pay the price of public humiliation. Unfortunately~ the situation is exacerbated when parents attempt to rationalize bad behavior and poor choices by saying~ "But my child isn't alone...

Recently~ the school where I teach rolled out the Response to Intervention model (R.T.I.). My first thoughts were the same as they shared by advocacy groups such as the National Association for Gifted Children several years ago~ when R.T.I. went mainstream.

Where do gifted students fit into this model?

For those unfamiliar with the model~ R.T.I. involves using tiered-levels of support~ with the first and second tier using small-group interventions and...