Parent &
Community
Nothing is fully
learned until it is
experienced by
the learner.
News
~George Betts
Network
May 2010
Focus on Autonomous Learners
Editor’s Notes
In the late1970s two young
Colorado teachers, George Betts and
Jolene Knapp (now Kercher) began a
program at Arvada West HS for gifted
and talented children. Their model of
teaching developed quickly, with the
help of input from the learners, into
what is now known as the
Autonomous Learner Model or ALM.
They describe an autonomous learner
as, “one who solves problems or develops new ideas through a combination
of divergent and convergent thinking
and functions with minimal external
guidance in selected areas of endeavor.” The goal to develop life-long
autonomous learners has been adapted
from the high school level for gifted
learners only, to all grade levels and
learners and to even to parenting.
The five-dimensional model,
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with emphasis on meeting diverse cognitive, emotional, social and physical
needs, consists of: Orientation,
Individual Development, Enrichment,
Seminars, and In-Depth Study. For the
purposes of this newsletter we are
going to concentrate on the first three
dimensions: orientation, individual
development and enrichment. Any parent, even without training in the ALM,
can provide encouragement and activities to develop these areas in their children.
In this issue you will find consoldated
excerpts from articles written by Karen
& Brian Larsen. High school sweethearts Karen and Brian were ALM students at Arvada West. They have successfully raised two gifted daughters:
Kyla, a teacher, and Brenna, a college
student and budding actress. They have
1
Table of Contents
1 From Your Editor
2 Parenting: Developing
Autonomous Learners
4 Important Dates
4 Contact Information
5 Need Advice?
5 Binding Breakers
5 Social Media
5 Facebook For Gifted
5 Starting and Sustaining
Parent Groups
5 Closing Thoughts
Parent and Community Network
utilized the ALM in their parenting that led to their
success as parents.
If you want more information about the
Autonomous Learner Model you can find it at
www.alpspublishing.com. And for an even more
enriching experience, I highly recommend you and
your family attend the ALM conference held annually
in June in Estes Park, Colorado. It is a great combination of an enriching conference and family vacation.
Families are welcome and participate in many activities. I call it “gifted camp” and have attended over 10
conferences, each time renewing friendships while
learning an amazing amount of information in a very
casual and beautiful setting. Dr. Betts also runs the
Summer Enrichment Program (SEP) for gifted children at the University of Northern Colorado, Greeley.
ing of “ We are all in this together”. There are many
free and inexpensive activities, such as simply playing
a board game together, that can serve as group building activities. We sat down as a family and brainstormed a list of activities we would like to do together. We cut the list apart, put the items in a can, and
drew out one item each week. These were relatively
simple, inexpensive activities (no trips to Tahiti here)
that we could do in a short period of time. Sample
selections: Go to the airport (it’s fun to visit all the
shops and see the artwork there), go for a bike ride,
have dinner in front of the fireplace, have a read-in.
The point is we have fun things to do together rather
than face the age old question “what do you want to
do?” “I dunno.” or by default spending the evening
in front of the television. The message we tried to
give our children was that we were making a conscious decision to spend quality time together. We
choose them over the television.
We are all on a journey trying to define who
we are and how we fit in the world. The TV was off
at our dinner table and we ate dinner together almost
every night. This time was valuable to us and we did
not sign up for activities that would interfere. It was
at the dinner table that we reconnected and discussed
the day’s events and how they affected each one of
us. Asking open-ended questions such as, “Tell me
about a new friend you have made at school, or what
do you think is the most difficult part of being in
middle school?” lends to more in-depth answers
instead of “How was school today? (fine)”. We made
a point to identify positive personal attributes of our
children. “Kyla, I really admire your choice of friends.
It seems you really know how to pick people who
value the same things you do.” or “Brenna, you have
the best sense of humor!” We asked them to tell us
what they thought they were particularly good at and
what they thought their sister was good at doing.
We all needed to work together as a team.
Both parents work full time in this home, so everyone
needs to pitch in if we are going to have time together. The girls had daily and weekly responsibilities such
as feeding the rabbits, folding laundry, making their
beds, dusting, making their own lunches and helping
with meal preparations. June Cleaver does not live
with us. Note from Karen: I could not be as good of
a mother if I had to do all the cooking, cleaning,
picking up after everyone and work full time. Brian
scrubbed toilets and floors, the kids did their part,
and we all had time together because of it.
Individual Development
Practically since our children were born, we
have been talking about college and career planning
with them.
Parenting: Developing
Autonomous Learners
by: Karen and Brian Larsen
While at Arvada West High School in the late
70’s, we were fortunate to be students in the
Autonomous Learner Program with Dr. George Betts
and Jolene Kercher. (Yes, we were high school sweethearts!) As students, we found this to be a great
model for learning.
As the parents of two now-grown daughters,
we feel that the Autonomous Learner Model (ALM)
is not only a great model to use in the classroom, but
it also works well as a parenting tool. We used the
ALM in our everyday parenting. While we are far
from perfect parents, this model helped us to develop
the whole child.
The five-dimensional model gave us opportunities to guide our daughters and helped enable them
to become autonomous learners and choose career
paths that suit them well. Here are some activities that
we did as a family to support the first three dimensions of the ALM.
Orientation
We encouraged our children to try out a wide
variety of activities. How do you know what you are
good at if you have never tried it? If you try something and like it, great! We’ll support you in that. If
you try it and don’t like it, no problem, try something
new. A caveat here: if you sign up for a set of lessons,
you are committed to that set of lessons, but don’t
have to take another set of lessons. Hint: rent equipment! We also limited the number of activities so that
we still had time to be together as a family.
Group Building activities help foster the feelNAGC | www.nagc.org
2
Parent and Community Network
“What do you want to be
when you grow up?” is a question
children hear all the time. Our oldest child told people when she was
three years old that she wanted to
be a buggy pusher at King Soopers,
a cooker at McDonald’s and a doctor. (Can you tell how we spent our
days?!). Our youngest insisted that
she was going to be a scientist
writer - what ever that meant.
Karen wanted to be a ice cream
truck driver - ice cream and music
in one job!. Brian always wanted to
be a police officer. We understand
that in order to make appropriate
decisions that a variety of factors
needed to be considered.
We visited college campuses
when we traveled. We talked about
positive aspects of college, talked
about financial planning and what
expenses we would cover and what
we would not be covering. We
talked about the cost of college so
they understood it is a big investment.
Kids today will have at least
3 different careers and more than
10 different jobs. The average job
duration now is three years. Gone
are the days of the company man
retiring with the 35 year gold
watch, so they must learn transferrable skills.
Enrichment
As parents, we felt it was
important to model volunteerism.
Brian coached soccer and served on
boards for various non-profit
organizations. He also helped with
Habitat for Humanity, although he
decided not to give up his day job
for electrical work! Karen also
served on non-profit boards, both
local and national, as well as on
many, many school committees and
helped out in the classrooms. We
performed these functions because
we felt a need to give back to the
community. A side benefit was that
our children saw how volunteerism
is an important part of our lives.
The person who volunteers
NAGC | www.nagc.org
gets rewards back: a sense of
accomplishment, being involved in
life, making a difference in the
community, the chance to take on
other roles outside of your vocation. You never know, a volunteer
activity may just lead to a new
career.
As a family, we looked for
opportunities to make volunteerism
part of our every day lives. For
example, every night when we went
for a family walk, we always took a
grocery bag with us and tried to fill
it up with trash. Sometimes we had
to point out the trash to the kids,
but they were pretty good about
picking it up on their own understanding the consequences of littering!
We encouraged the children
to take on their own volunteer projects. At school, both girls volunteered to be conflict managers and
served on the student council. At
home, Kyla always had a deep concern for homeless animals. She collected cans and saved her allowance
to buy pet food to donate to the
Humane Society. For her 13th
birthday, she asked her guests to
bring a can of dog or cat food to
the party instead of presents. We
took a whole trunk full of food to
the shelter when others heard
about what she was doing.
These days, every article
you read in magazines tells you to
“Just Say NO” to taking on volunteer projects. It is common for people to scale back the amount of
time spent on helping others in
order to have more time for the
family. But by getting the whole
family involved in a volunteer project, it is possible to combine quality
family time with a volunteer activity. Volunteering opens up your
vision of the world.
“The Adventure Trip” is
perhaps our family’s favorite component of the ALM. Travel is a
shared family passion at the Larsen
household! We have two large maps
hanging in a room in our home.
3
One is a map of the United States
and the other is a map of the
world. Each family member has a
different colored set of dots to
place on the maps to mark the
places visited.
We began traveling with the
children when they were infants.
Our feeling is the earlier they are
exposed to new people and new
places the better they would be at
adapting to new situations. It’s difficult to learn proper restaurant
behavior if you never go to a
restaurant.
Adventure trips can be very
short in duration ie. one hour , or
can span a normal two week family
vacation. The difference between a
regular vacation and an adventure
trip is the amount of input the children have in each. In a typical family vacation, mom and dad select
where they are going, make all the
arrangements, do all the packing
and then tell the kids where they
are going. We have all seen the
results of these types of trips with
parents yelling at the kids, “Now
quit fighting and HAVE FUN!!!”
An Adventure Trip experience is where the children have as
much say as possible in the trip.
Once we told the girls the time
frame of our trip and how much
we had to spend. They researched
and chose the destinations and
were responsible for the route planning. They met with the representative from AAA Travel. The man
from the agency was wonderful. He
helped them design and map out a
“trip ticket” which showed the
entire route. He discussed the merits of quickest route vs scenic
routes and suggested several side
trips we hadn’t thought of. Their
main goal was to go through as
many states and provinces as possible to put more dots on our maps!
Our car trip took us through
Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota,
Wisconsin, Ontario, Manitoba,
Saskatchewan, North Dakota,
South Dakota, Wyoming, and back
Parent and Community Network
home to Colorado. The kids had
made reservations at all the motels
Dates to Remember: we would stay in along the way and
helped plan and outline what we
could do in each location. A 3700
Webinars on
mile car trip could have been one
long whine fest, but we all had a
Wednesdays
great time and saw parts of the
world we might not have ever seen.
(WOW)
The plains of Canada were breathtaking with fields of bright yellow
May 19
cannola on one side of the road and
Summer Strategies: Summer
fields of purple lavender that went
on as far as the eye could see on the
Reading Choices
other.
The benefits of letting the
That Make Sense
children have input in planning an
by Susannah Richards &
Adventure trip include:
* No “how long before we get
Laura Beltchenko
there” comments.
* You stay within budget when the
May 26 FREE
kids are keeping track of the money.
Making Your Case: 10 Ways to Several times they chose to go to a
local supermarket to get food items
Boost Your Gifted Program
rather than going out to eat.
* We have the best mileage records
Sally Krisel
that we have ever kept with the kids
June 9
traking what we spent on gas and
figuring out what our mileage was at
Setting Your Course for Fall
each stop.
* We saw and did things we probaSuccess: Using the PCM
bly never would have thought of
Professional Development
doing. Since the kids were more
willing to gather information they
Materials
were informed consumers.
* While we retained the right to
Cindy Strickland
veto any suggestions, we never had
June 16
to use it.
Connecting for High Potential: * Quarreling was never an issue as
they were very invested in making
Parents and Teachers Partnering this a successful trip.
Our behavioral expectations
for Successful Outcomes
for an Adventure trip include:
Keri Guilbault
June 23
Summer Strategies:What Web
Resources Work for High
Ability-Learners
Brian Housand
Sign up at www.nagc.org
NAGC | www.nagc.org
*We are creating memories on this
trip. Do you want our memories to
be of sibling bickering, whining,
and complaining, or do you want
our memories to be of a great time
together as a family
*Treat people with respect and
kindness - we are ambassadors of
our country/ city / family and treat
your travel companions the same
way.
4
*Stay with us or if we do separate,
be where you are supposed to be.
We don’t want to spend our vacation in a panicked state. We taught
the children what to do if we get
separated. Each child carries with
her at all times a typed itinerary with
phone numbers including where we
are staying, flight numbers, emergency contact information and photocopies of their passports, if needed, along with a small amount of
cash.
*Part of experiencing a new place is
trying new foods and being respectful of the people who made those
foods. Our expectation is that you
politely try the new food and then if
you don’t like it, don’t make a big
deal about it, just quietly don’t eat
it.”
Our children learned many
skills: map reading , budgeting,
research skills, and more importantly, how to appreciate other people,
cultures, and places. Travel memories are treasured by the parents and
children and are an important part
of what makes us a family.
Parent & Community
Network
Chair:
Pauline Bowie
paulinebowie@mac.com
Chair Elect:
Christy McGee
cmcgee@bellermine.edu
Newsletter Editor:
Kathy Jones
gimajones@gmail.com
Parent and Community Network
Need Advice?
AskA Zoe
student of Tamara Fisher
has created an advice website to
address the issues children and adolescents have. Who is Zoe? According to
her website: I'm a teenager who's been
through some of the tough social situations in
life. Now, I'm using my experience to help
other kids.
If your child has questions
they want answered from sibling rivalry to friendships to pet questions and
the like, just Ask Zoe.
www.askzoe.tripod.com
Binding
Breakers
Do your children want ideas
on what book to read next? Check out
the student-created webskite called
Binding Breakers. Their mission....In a
society that finds more value in how students
take tests, rather than helping them discover
the love of learning: we want to promote the
reading of books.
http://ops.esu8.org/~jenniferbauer/B
indingBreakers/Home.html
Social Media
Revolution
Has social media and social
networks become intrinsic to our
lives? Watch this YouTube video and
see what you think.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lF
Z0z5Fm-Ng
Facebook For
Gifted
Here are just some of the
pages and groups on Facebook where
you may network with others interested in giftedness and gifted education.
Once you have an account, just run a
search for them.
NAGC; Parenting Gifted Children;
SENG; GE 2.0; PHP; Parenting Gifted
or Advanced Children; Chamber of Gifted;
Center for Gifted Studies; Gifted Kids
Network; Gifted Homeschooler’s Forum;
Our Gifted Online Conferences; Hoagies.
Note that just because the
word gifted is used in a title of a page,
the content may not be related to gifted education. The sites I have listed
are legitimate but are not all inclusive.
NAGC | www.nagc.org
There are many sites that state affilitates have created and more sites
being created nearly daily.
Starting and
Sustaining Parent
Groups
Dear Parent & Community Network
Members,
NAGC, the Parent Advisory
Committee and the leaders of our network are working on an exciting addition to NAGC’s list of advisory
books, articles, etc. This 32 page
ebooklet entitled “How to Start and
Sustain a Successful Parent Group”
will be ready for dissemination at our
2010 national convention at Atlanta.
HOW YOU CAN HELP
Below you will see the proposed content of the booklet listed in
8 categories. I know you have stories,
examples, vignettes, testimonials, etc.
that would give the reader real-life
examples of how to accomplish each
category. Under each heading I have
suggested ways our members might
contribute, but please, you are not limited to what I suggest. Remember, this
is a condensed booklet so we will not
be able to use everyone’s suggestions.
CONTENT:
This useful guide for parents
and caregivers of gifted and talented
learners will be jam packed with
vignettes and testimonials, practical
case studies, and checklists addressing
the following topics and others to be
determined:
1) Why start a parent group and what
makes these groups successful?
Reasons you started your group, what
one or two things did you do that
made it work?
2) Setting up and running an effective
parent meeting, do's and don'ts.
Stories of effective meetings and
funny stories of the not so successful
ones and why.
3) Working with like minded organizations within your community. Who
really helped your group get started,
what organizations did you look to for
models or help?
4) Getting organized: your group as a
legal entity--what should you consider?
What hints do you have for beginners?
What “issues” did you run into that
5
were unexpected?
5) Leadership roles and responsibilities
within the group. What roles were the
most important to your group? Who
needs to do what and why?
6) Resources at your fingertips--what's
available to help you? What were your
best resources? Were there any hidden
jewels that helped you to survive?
7) Building a strong community outreach program
8) Suggested meeting topics for consideration What were your best topics?
Funny stories about topics that
“flopped”.
9) Stories from the trenches: What's
the best aspect of your parent group
and why? And always those heartwarming, funny, and even disastrous
stories that you lived to tell about.
TIMEFRAME FOR COMPLETION:
We are working on a tight
timeline for the book to be ready by
convention. Please send your suggestions, stories, resources, etc. to
me, Christy McGee, at mcgee@bellarmine.edu no later than June 1,
2010.
I look forward to hearing about your
support groups.
Thanks,
Christy McGee, Parent & Community,
Chair-elect
Closing
Thoughts
“To our children: At last we are begin-
ning to understand you. We realize
your beauty, your ability, your potential. A lifetime of excitement, joy,
involvement, creativity and passion
awaits you. But first we must nurture
you. We must give you the opportunity
to accept and value your strengths and
your differences; to accept and value
the strengths and differences of others; the opportunity to actively pursue
your passions, your areas of adventure
and your dreams.; to help make our
world a better place in which to live,
where, as you choose, you may
become the explorers, the inventors,
the artists, the poets, the leaders of
tomorrow. But most importantly, we
must help you to become your true
selves; to withstand the pressures from
outside and to listen closely to your
hearts so that you may develop your
potential and become what you truly
can be, what you truly are.”
~ George Betts
Parent and Community Network
The NAGC Mile Marker Series
Your Road Map for Supporting Gifted Children
Think of it as your GPS for the world of gifted
and talented education.
More than a map or tour book, the NAGC Mile Marker Series is an
interactive guide to the best resources for supporting gifted children.
With this tool, you’ll be able to easily target the information you need,
right when you need it.
You’re the driver. Take the route that makes sense for you.
Whether you have questions about giftedness in general, or specific
concerns about programs and services, or want ideas to build
advocacy efforts, this easy to use CD-ROM provides answers and
resources all in one place.
Begin your journey...order a copy today!
Order today at the NAGC Web site
www.nagc.org
or call 202/785-4268