LEARNING OUTSIDE THE BOX (To The Best Of Our Knowledge)(PRI)

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LEARNING OUTSIDE THE BOX
Jonathan Mooney is president of Project Eye-to-Eye, a nonprofit mentoring and advocacy organization for students with learning disabilities. He's the author of "The Short Bus: A Journey Beyond Normal"
Formerly of the rock band, The Del Fuegos, Dan Zanes is children's singer/songwriter. His latest CD is called "Dan Zanes and Friends." He collaborates with other musicians, such as Natalie Merchant, The Blind Boys of Alabama and the Kronos Quartet.
Matt Hern is an advocate for alternative education. He's the author of "Field Day" and editor of "De-Schooling Our Lives."
Michael Piechowski studies the inner lives of gifted and talented children. His book is called "Mellow Out, They Say. If I Only Could."
Sherman Alexie wrote a book to teach his kids about war.

Listen

The first segment is very good, very profound, and very relevent to us. I really hope you'll go to the trouble to listen. You'll need a RealPlayer.

Thank you for the link.

I downloaded the show but can't get it to open, but that's ok because I found heaps of good stuff on the net about Matt Hern in particular at:

http://riseoutcenter.wordpress.com/2005 ... matt-hern/

http://www.straight.com/article/activis ... -and-learn

http://www.educationrevolution.org/matthern.html

and his own site, at:

http://www.mightymatthern.com/everywher ... etime.html

Thank you very much for the reference.

I looked at Jonathan Mooney's "Project Eye-to-Eye' site aswell, at:

http://www.jonathanmooney.com/frames.pl ... toeye.html

On the Resources page there is cheerful/optimistic advice to children labelled learning disabled/ADHD about taking schooling into their own hands; what changes can be made to the school environment/activities/approach if they keep at it, are full of courage and determination, and refuse to be sidelined by teacher/school methods..... the sort of thing I have always found particularly difficult to do while remaining calm.

From home page:

I thought this was quite funny, because it's like a roundabout way of describing homeschooling.

But, to be more serious, I do realise that many "labelled" children do not have parents who are AS/ASD/ADHD/Learning Disabled in any way, and so I can see that for them this program would be very useful.

I was following up the reference to Michael Piechowski, and found this:

http://www.gt-cybersource.org/Record.aspx?rid=12310

"Gifted Children, Not Emotionally Immature But Emotionally Intense ?".

It's a wonderful article because it "reframes" overexcitability, "oversensitivity", and "inappropriate", "excessive", "exaggerated", "obsessive", etc reactions of the most creative, original, sensitive, children, as being the passionate reactions to life inseperable from the giftedness. That feeling so strongly, sensing and responding so intensely to life is a "tool", a kind of thermometer which registers the finest changes.

And it rejects the attitude which treats such sensitivity as immaturity.