This month’s feature articles:

Regular monthly features:

A number of people have expressed interest in what a gifted program should look like at the secondary school level, so here are some reflections, suggestions, and ideas based on my 25 years of experience working with gifted students and facilitators. As the new school year begins, it is worthwhile examining what gifted children are getting or should be getting from the Boards of Education. This is of course not the only way to go.

New gifted students to a school should meet with their facilitator as soon as possible. This helps keep the continuity of their programming in place and students can be made aware early of the special educational opportunities that will be available to them.

A facilitator can and should become a guide, "guardian angel", mentor, mediator, confidante, and/or understanding friend to his/her gifted students for many years. Most secondary schools should have at least one - or more - trained facilitator. In many schools, gifted students are about 10%+ of the school population, so the need is there.

During the year, a facilitator can assist in many ways. He/she can help to differentiate the curriculum for gifted students (custom-design courses and work loads based on individual needs) This should always be done in consultation with subject teachers, often with parents, and always include the student. Subjects may be partially modified or enriched, new skills can be taught or introduced to enhance new or existing interests, mentorships and volunteering positions can be made available. Exciting opportunities to attend conferences, take special courses, engage in business activities in the city and more can be arranged. In these ways, gifted students can be exposed to new and challenging learning that will expand interests and knowledge.

Gifted students – and others too - can earn university credits while in high school, through courses offered by Advanced Placement, for example. There are also many leadership development opportunities that facilitators should be passing on to students. Interesting contests (math, writing, photo) can also be offered. All gifted students should have access to these kinds of activities over their high school years to bring out their best. (see "Activities Database" on the DT home page)

With regard to in-school activities, gifted students usually carry a full load of courses and many should be assisted in fast tracking and/or taking specialized evening credit courses. They can often be guided to become leaders or creators of school clubs, become yearbook editors/staff, tutors, teacher assistants, web site developers, newspaper editors/writers, student council members and more. These do not have to be free!

Some people think that gifted students have it all and don’t really need any help. Money, time and teachers should be going into more needy areas. In response, there is an obligation to nurture skills, potential, and excellence in ALL young minds. If we have formally identified children that are recognized as more advanced and who have tremendous potential to add greatly to our society, should we not feel obligated to nurture them? Imagine the extras that gifted students could potentially have available and ready to provide for the world.

At one graduation in a high school where I taught, 28 of 39 achievement awards were given to the gifted program students of the school. That shows what gifted students can do when nurtured effectively despite limited time with them. We value excellence in our schools and in society. Let’s value and nurture the gifted people who can potentially contribute to society more than many of the rest of us.

One of the qualities that makes us more emotionally intelligent is gratitude. Science shows that choosing to generate feelings of gratitude reduces damaging stress hormones and results in a happier state of mind. It also increases resilience so that when the challenges of life befall us, we have an easier time bouncing back. Think you have nothing to be grateful for? Try looking for something anyway and seeing how it feels to be grateful for it.

Try this: Each night before you go to bed, think of three things you are grateful for today. If you can think of more, go for it. Make it a daily habit to think of things for which you are grateful. Try it when you are grumpy. It is more difficult but still do-able. See if it doesn't shift you to a more positive state of mind.

Christmas Gift Show. This is usually a big one at the International Centre, Toronto, held in early December. If you want to be an exhibitor contact 416-213-1035.

Contest: Art of the Automobile Competition

Canadian Aboriginal Festival

Centennial College Health Fair

Contest: Mathieu Da Costa Awards Program

Vanier Cup (university football championship)

Winter Festival of Lights in Niagara Falls (concerts on weekends)

Contest: Young Canadian Women Writers Festival

Contest: Youth-Only Wood Art Competition

African Drums & Art Crafts (visit anytime)

Air Cadets (always looking for new members)

Amnesty International (care enough to get involved)

Auction Sales (check papers)

Bancroft Mineral Collecting (check if available late into Fall)

Beach Blast Indoor Volleyball Centre (birthday party place?)

Black Film & Video Network (specialized cultural activity)

Bloor Cinema (cheap night out with friends, see oldies but goodies movies)

Canadian Authors Association (visit to find out more about writing and getting published)

Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine (find out about alternative health care)

Canadian Football Hall of Fame in Hamilton

Canadian Ski Federation (join a club?)

Canadian Snowboard Federation (lessons?)

CBC Museum (visit for an interesting history of broadcasting)

Hockey Hall of Fame (history?)

Holocaust Education and Memorial Centre (on Bathurst just north of Sheppard)

In 2 Print (magazine for kids to contribute to as journalists)

Junior Achievement of Canada (become an entrepreneur and set up a business with other students. Any age.)

Kitchener Farmers Market (wonderful visit, see the Mennonites)

Model Railroad Club of Toronto (huge layout of trains and scenes)

Mousetrap, The Play (longest running play in Toronto history)

North York Harvest Food Bank (help out)

Ontario Archaeological Society (interested?)

Personal Computing Club of Toronto (designed for family participation)

Readers’ Digest (submit jokes, stories, etc. and get paid)

Royal Astronomical Society (see the real stars)

Royal Canadian Institute (RCI Kids) (for interests in science)

Royal Ontario Museum (Remember: FREE FRIDAY NIGHTS!!)

Studio Audience Participation Listings (sit in on the taping of some of your favourite shows. Take your family and friends. Usually free)

Toronto Bonsai Society (miniature trees – some 50-100 yrs. Old, how to nurture them)

Toronto Camera Club ( smile!)

November 5 – Royal Agricultural Fair Opens-Toronto

November 11 – Remembrance Day

November 24 - Hindu Holiday Diwali

November 26 – night of the full moon

November 25 – USA Thanksgiving Day

This is also National Diabetes Month.

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In this job, you will be looking at the impact that various kinds of pollutants have on the environment, make recommendations and suggestions as to how to solve the problem. For example, most dead cell phones - loaded with arsenic, cadmium and lead - go into the garbage where they slowly leak their poisons into the water and ground. Environmental stress and pollution are the kinds of problems getting worldwide attention. Increasingly more devastating pollutants: computers, plastics, cars, small batteries, electronic toys, tires, etc.

You might end up working for a government agency such as the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council in Ottawa or perhaps for a university such as the University of California Irvine’s School of Social Ecology.

There are several ways to prepare yourself for a job like this. Emphasis will have to be in environmental science, toxicology courses, chemistry, statistics and mathematics. You can be of most value by fostering partnerships between industry, governments and non-governmental organizations. These three must work together to solve the problems.

Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry Positions Available

There are thousands of people who have great ideas who just don’t know what to do with them. You would learn the laws governing inventions, patent and copyright and registration regulations and how to market inventions.

It would be good to have a law degree, marketing and sales experience and a great network of people that could be tapped for help.

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(from Gannett News Service)

Although American statistics, many of these probably apply to Canadians and other nationalities too.

Eighty percent of American adults save their loose change rather than spend it on a day-to-day basis.

One pound of dimes has the same value as one pound of quarters.

Eighty percent of Americans will still stop to pick up a penny on the street.

Thirteen percent of Americans will not pick up a penny that is heads-down because it is considered unlucky.

The life span of a coin is approximately 30 years.

More than half (58 percent) of Americans own a piggy bank.

It is estimated there is more than $10.5 billion in coins sitting idle in people’s homes in the United States. On average, that is about $99 per household.

Of the American adults who save their change, 38 percent store it in a glass or plastic jar. Thirteen percent use a piggy bank.

The average person tosses $5.50 in change into their "cointainer" each week.

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(by O.S.)

Just what is going on in our society when people die? There seems to be an attitude that the dead person was somehow everybody’s close relative/friend and that everybody has to grieve for the deceased.

In past years, a death in the family was a private affair. Only close friends and relatives attended services. Strangers paid their respects from a distance. Since the death of Princess Diana, that has changed dramatically.

Diana’s death seems to have started a somewhat alarming trend. Strangers grieved openly and hysterically as if they were immediate family. Most people knew virtually nothing about her yet wept bitterly. What were they crying so profusely? Her death became a public spectacle after a prolonged period of constant news coverage of every detail. The whole thing turned into mass hysteria. Tons of flowers were placed on anything and everything that Diana had visited and on the most trivial things that had her name on them in many countries. Even the royal family was chastised for not participating and grieving appropriately in the "big show," the way the audience expected them to. Ask yourself this: If Diana had been in her 50’s, rather plain and kind of dumpy looking, would people have made the same fuss? Diana had low moral standards as evidenced by her adulterous relationships (does Harry look like anybody else in the immediate family??), did not have a job, lived a lavish, wasteful and extravagant lifestyle as do many royals. So what was it that drove people into mass mourning for her?

It was ironic that Mother Teresa died shortly after Diana. Perhaps it was meant to emphasize differences. She got far less attention around the world. People were saddened but did not go into the same mass grieving hysterics that surrounded Diana’s death. Perhaps they had poured it all out for Diana? The big show was over and people were tired. In her life, Mother Teresa was a far better role model and set an example of loving and compassionate living in our society. Diana, on the other hand, was far more romantically exciting, sexually exotic, offered us greater entertainment value and provided lots of juicy scoop-ettes for the tabloids. Was that why she seemed more important?

Grieving seems to have slowly become a business without controls. For thousands of years people knew how to handle and get over death. Don’t we know how to do it on our own any more? The media tells us who is worthy of group grieving and who isn’t by the amount of airtime they give. We call upon psychologists and advisors to get us through calamities – instead of family and close friends. One of the most curious and puzzling approaches is sending in grief counselors – total strangers - into schools after the death of someone close, instead of letting people handle it themselves. (It suggests people need experts to tell them what the right emotions are to feel and that people are incapable of doing it themselves.) People contact gurus and life coaches to tell them what they should feel and when – because they don’t trust themselves and their feelings. Whatever happened to common sense, inner wisdom, intuition, spiritual insight and strength of character in times of trouble? Mourn losses but let’s not get into the fake, mushy sentimentalism that so many people are starting to show when total strangers die. A death is not the time to have a community "feel good" experience. Is locating every single death on highways with religious symbols, teddy bears and plastic flowers as a memorial showing respect for the dead? Is it appropriate that thousands of strangers congregate to cry outside a church for only select people they didn’t know?

Would you want thousands of strangers around your family and every detail of the funeral and life of your loved one broadcast around the world all day for days on end? Should the mayor of a city, premier of a province or other important government officials attend the death of every child - not just the ones whose tragic deaths get extra media attention? In the past, only people who meant something to the deceased usually attended the funeral. Who are these people who "muscle" in on family grieving and claim it as their right too?

What do we do? Stop making deaths a community event. Don’t turn it into a "feel good" moment for yourself. How about grieving from afar, the way we used to? How about feeling sorry and empathizing, but leaving the death as something for the immediate family? We cannot continue to fool ourselves into thinking that somehow an unknown person who died means so much to us that we go into equal grieving with the family. The family doesn’t know you, probably never will and your sentiments are misplaced. It is not your place! Sometimes distancing and lack of participation are actually more respectful. If the person is important, you are still there in spirit and the surviving family can sense it.

Life is tough. Suck it up and move on. Exhibitions of public grieving are just plain wrong when they are misplaced.

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(from an article in Now Magazine)

Consumerism and the compulsion to shop are very strong in our society. So strong, in fact, that it caused some people to get together in a counter-culture way. They were tired, burned-out and sick of old politics. They wanted the bureaucracy to know that they were tired of being puppets of the business world that wants nothing but money, money, money.

Why do we consume more? Because we rely less and less on our imaginations and communities to enrich us. We foolishly try to satisfy our needs with manufactured goods instead. We are losing more and more of our ability to develop our own vibrant personal selves and depend on the local store to provide it for us.

After months of searching for a way to express themselves, the activist group that started it all decided that they would have a "Buy Nothing Day." Putting their campaign on the internet made it an instant international event. It is now held every November and celebrated in over 60 countries around the world. People all over the world suddenly realized that they felt the same way too. The idea was to have people go on a consumer fast, and think about their lives and the culture they live in. It was also suggested that people find out how hard it is to suppress the impulse to buy.

Activists have come up with some pretty amazing shenanigans to celebrate the day. Here are some of them: credit-card burning, people go to Wal-Mart and fill up carts and leave them without being any of the items, some go and buy stuff and then take it all back again, and more.

Why take this holiday? You might want to spend some time pondering the sad fact that 25% of the world’s population consumes 80% of the material resources and owns over 80% of its wealth. Another reason might be to prove to yourself that you could live for 24 hours without a cash transaction.

Ok, what do I do instead? Here are some suggestions: collect signatures for a campaign, write letters, drop off clothes at a charity, make a music tape for a friend, swap junk with friends, learn to make something new, plant something, go to the park and talk to somebody, make a Xmas present, take a hot bath, fill shopping bags with stuff and label them "Buy Nothing Day" and walk around malls, read a book, listen to music, go for a walk, talk to your family members, make phone calls to people you haven’t seen for a long time.

How do I reduce my shopping over the whole year? Ask yourself these questions: Do I really need it? Could I borrow it? Will I really use it? How long will it last? Am I able to repair, maintain, or clean it myself? Will I have to dispose of it? Are the resources in it renewable? Do I already own a substitute for it?

All right, let’s have everybody get involved this time.

101 Things to Do on "Buy Nothing" Day

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• Survey results showing people who attend weekly religious services: 1946-67%, 1986-28%, 2001-20%. People who presently have no religious affiliation at all: (14 and under ) - 23.1%; (ages15-24) -16.2%; (ages 25-44) - 35.0%; (ages 55 +) - 6.3%; (ages 65 +) - 6.2% (Statistics Canada)
• the most popular colour selected for cars in 2002-2003 was medium dark grey. The most popular colour for SUV’s was white.
• Britney Spears’ chewing gum was bid to almost $500 on eBay at the end of August, 2004. It is in an airtight container and her teeth marks are clearly visible.
• More than 1 billion of 6 billion people on earth drink unsafe water and more than 2.6 billion (about 40% of the world’s population) have no access to basic sanitation according to UN agencies.

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University of Toronto graduates who have made impacts in the world of writing wrote the following books:

Mouthing the Words and The Petty Details of So-and-So’s Life by Camilla Gibb. Humourous and gut wrenching about mental illness and child abuse. Winner of the City of Toronto Book Award.

Some Great Thing by Colin McAdam. McAdam has been compared to James Joyce in his writing. This story is about a plasterer and a city planner in Ottawa in the 1970’s trying to find their place and themselves.

The Delta Sisters by Kayla Perrin. Three generations of women become enmeshed in secrets and lies after an unsolved murder.

"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift." -Albert Einstein

"The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice. It's conformity." Earl Nightingale

God, grant me the senility
To forget the people
I never liked anyway,
The good fortune
To run into the ones I do,
And the eyesight to tell the difference.

Never think that God’s delays are God’s denials. Hold on; hold fast; hold out. Patience is genius.

It’s not the stuff you know about (that causes problems). It’s the things you think you know about, but don’t." – one of the people involved in the construction of Wild Fire Canadian rocket seeking the X Prize.

"In a negotiation, you have to know what you want before you ask." – Mark Cuban

Reporters interviewing a 104 year-old woman:

"And what do you think is the best thing about being 104?" the reporter asked.

She simply replied, "No peer pressure."

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The nice thing about being senile is you can hide your own Easter eggs.

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Courtesy of DiscoverTeenergy.com
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