This month’s feature articles:

Regular monthly features:

This past spring I completed a book which details 48 skills that I taught to gifted students over 25 years. I believe it will be valuable to all concerned with giftedness. Looking at it more closely, it may be considered as almost a "gifted program in a can."

Facilitators in gifted programs and parents cannot and should not expect to keep up with young minds that absorb information almost faster than it can be provided. Regular school curriculum tends to emphasize knowledge and facts and that’s why school can be so problematic for gifted children. The provision of knowledge and facts is almost a disservice to gifted students who can handle more than that.

What is the most important thing facilitators and parents should be providing for their gifted children? I would suggest skills.

Skills empower people and equip them to become deeper, more independent, and self-directed learners. With the right skills, people improve all areas of their lives: physical, intellectual, spiritual, relational, and emotional. As the ancient Jewish saying goes: "Give someone a fish and feed them for a day. Teach someone how to fish and feed them for a lifetime."

My book addresses learning from a holistic point of view. The skills are detailed in 7 important areas: self-awareness, creativity, higher-level thinking, communication, leadership, spirituality, and researching. As a book, it is reader friendly and suitable for children and adults. Special needs and challenged people can also benefit from it greatly. With modifications, the skills can be taught to almost anyone at any age. It is also easy to learn the skills just by reading and practicing them a little.

I have been presenting the skills training concept to school staffs, meetings of the Association for Bright Children, home schooling groups in North America and am slowly moving it into the business/corporate world. The book will be the manual in skills training workshops. Empowerment is the goal.

If you are interested in a copy and/or engaging your work group in a skills training workshop, please contact me.

Eye halve a spelling chequer

It came with my pea sea

It plainly marques four my revue

Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word

And weight four it two say

Weather eye am wrong oar write

It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid

It nose bee fore two long

And eye can put the error rite

Its rare lea ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it

I am shore your pleased two no

Its letter perfect awl the weigh

My chequer tolled me sew.

-----Sauce unknown

Arts Week (book fairs, arts, festivals, tours, more)

Avenue Road Arts School (time to apply)

Cabbagetown Festival

Co-op Education (check in your school)

CLEWS (Community Leadership Workshops)

Debating – Ontario Student Debating Union (time to join)

Destination Imagination (start a project now)

Duke of Edinburgh’s Award (apply now)

Eden Mills Writers Festival

Encounters with Canada (1 week in Ottawa. Great courses. Sign up early.)

International Festival of Authors (famous writers meet at Harbourfront)

International Kite Festival (kiters from all over the world gather)

National Bridal Show

Ontario Universities Fair

Royal Canadian Institute Lectures (Free. Contact them for schedule)

Toronto Cricket Festival (world class cricket competition)

Toronto Star Investment Challenge (competing teams "buy/sell" stocks)

Word on the Street (annual literary extravaganza, writers, publishers, etc.)

University of Toronto Mentorship Program (apply as soon as possible)

September 6 – Labour Day, Canadian National Exhibition Closes

September 19 – International Day of Peace

September 22 – First day of Fall Autumnal Equinox

September 16 – Jewish Rosh Hashanah begins

September 18- Hindu Holiday Ganesh Chaturthi

September 25 – Jewish Yom Kippur

This is also Big Brothers Month and Arthritis Month

I remember my first day at our local public high school. My homeroom teacher wasn’t wearing a nun’s habit and we could see her body shape and hair. No more daydreaming about what she might have looked like. When we visited the gym changing rooms, I was shocked to find out that all the guys would have to strip naked in the same room to change into gym uniforms. I had never done that before. I had to accommodate to different subject teachers – from the downright nasty to the nicest - instead of just one that I was used to having in elementary school. The cafeteria and its smells were something new for me. I also didn’t know a single person in my homeroom that first day. It was a time of big change and a chance to mature a little more. – O.S.

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Shiatsu is an ancient Japanese method of balancing energies in the body. It is a treatment that combines pressure and massage to open the channels of energy, or meridians as they are called, throughout the body. Blocked and/or misdirected body energy lead to many ailments that western medicines sometimes can’t address. A trained professional may also use Accupuncture and other holistic methods.

At this time, treatments cost about $40-$70 per hour. Depending on the condition, a number of treatments are usually arranged.

Interesting Career (2): Automobile Salesperson
(This article is especially for females - from an article by Ken Show, Toronto Star)

Are you good in forming long-term relationships with customers, a good communicator? Can you learn mechanical and technical specifications and information about cars? Check this out! The automobile industry is screaming for female automobile sales reps! Customers are asking for female sales help but aren’t getting it because there is such a shortage. The Ontario Motor Vehicle Industry Council records show that there are only 2,338 female salespersons in Ontario, Canada today, out of 22,110 registered salespersons. What an imbalance!

Studies show that women purchase about 50% of all vehicles without male involvement. Women influence about half of the other 50% of the purchases made by men.

Why aren’t women getting into this lucrative career? The most common responses are: hours, commission structure, nature of the car culture. Women tend to see the car industry as a male environment that doesn’t welcome women.

In reality, hours are similar to other retail/sales jobs. Commissions can be from minimum wage to thousands a month. In the showrooms, women are a minority and therefore more closely watched but that can change.

What are some of the perks? – company demonstrator vehicle, regular training, support, company benefits. Dealerships are seriously in need of female sales personnel!

Georgian College’s Canadian Automotive Institute in Barrie has a Bachelor of Applied Business in Automotive Management degree (only one in Canada). About 20% of the graduates are women.

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Fiction Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides.

Non-Fiction A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Power.

Poetry Moy Sand and Gravel by Paul Muldoon.

Biography Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert Caro. He also wrote The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

Drama Anna in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz. A romantic play set in Florida, 1930.

History An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943 by Rick Atkinson

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(from an article in the Toronto Star)

• You add one minute to you life for every minute you exercise. When you are 85 you will be able to spend an extra five months in a nursing home at $5000 a month.
• My grandmother was getting out of shape so she started walking five miles every day when she was 60. Now she’s 97 and nobody knows where the heck she is.
• I joined a health club last year. It cost $400. I wondered why I didn’t lose any weight until somebody told me I had to actually go there.
• I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me.
• I have flabby thighs but fortunately my stomach covers them.
• When you exercise every day, you die healthier.
• If you want to start X-country skiing for exercise, start in a small country.
• I had to give up exercising because it made the ice jump out of my glass.

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"Broke is a state of wallet; Poverty is a state of mind." - McZen

"Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go." T.S. Elliot

"The first step in making your dreams come true is to wake up." - Paul Valery

Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows that it must run faster than the fastest lion, or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows that it must outrun the slowest gazelle, or it will starve to death. It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle, when the sun comes up, you had better be running.

He who knows not and knows not that he knows not, he is a fool…shun him. He who knows not and knows that he knows not, he is a child…teach him. He who knows and knows not that he knows, he is asleep…wake him. He who knows, and knows that he knows, he is wise…follow him.

"Excellence is the result of caring more than others think wise, risking more than other’s think safe, dreaming more than others think practical, and expecting more than others think possible. – Anonymous.

A Blonde walks into a bank in New York City and asks for the loan officer. She says she is going to Europe on business for two weeks and needs to borrow $5,000.

The bank officer says the bank will need some kind of security for such a loan, so the Blonde hands over the keys to a new Rolls Royce parked on the street in front of the bank. Everything checks out, and the bank agrees to accept the car as collateral for the loan. An employee drives the Rolls into the bank's underground garage and parks it there.

Two weeks later, the Blonde returns, repays the $5,000 and the interest, which comes to $15.41.

The loan officer says, "We are very happy to have had your business, and this transaction has worked out very nicely, but we are a little puzzled. While you were away, we checked you out and found that you are a multimillionaire. What puzzles us is why would you bother to borrow $5,000?"

The Blonde replied, "Where else in New York can I park my car for two weeks and have it fully protected by bank security for $15.41?"

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Some things to ponder...

Who was the first person to look at a cow and say, I think I'll squeeze these dangly things here, and drink whatever comes out!"

Who was the first person to say "See that chicken there? I'm gonna eat the next thing that comes outta its' butt"

Why do toasters always have a setting that burns the toast to a horrible crisp, which no decent human being would eat?

Can a hearse carrying a corpse drive in the carpool lane?

What do you call male ballerinas?

If Wile E. Coyote has enough money to buy all that Acme crap, why doesn't he just buy dinner?

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Courtesy of DiscoverTeenergy.com
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