Saturday, June 16, 2012

What Jenny Taught Me


Late one night I received a phone call from a frantic dad. 
  
“Mrs. Douglas, would you please talk to Jenny?  She’s been working for hours on her English paper and won’t go to bed until it’s done.”  
 
I couldn’t imagine what the massive assignment could be for this was just the first day of the school year! So when she came to the phone I asked for details.

“Well,” Jenny said, “my teacher said she was going to base our writers’ workshop goals on this first assignment and to write the best essay we could.” 

Ahhhhh!  Perfectionism.  How do we help our gifted kids learn to match their efforts to teachers’ expectations?

As Judy Galbraith wrote in her 8 Great Rights of Gifted Kids:
#4 - You have a right to make mistakes and not do your best all the time.

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