Issue # 63, 21st September 2021
Is your adolescent child anxious about going to school? Is your child deeply sensitive? Is your child fidgeting? Has your child sometime needed to just take a break and learn on his/her own at his/her own pace? Does s/he enjoy self directed learning? Does s/he enjoy learning ‘how tos’ and not necessarily discrete subjects? May be the child is anxious to perform? May be the child does not quite fit in? May be s/he has the abilities but can’t get around to showing them?
Sometimes we have to give up on structured curriculum. Give them a more democratic environment with voice and choice and find their own path. All children are gifted. We have to believe it, find out how to give them a positive sense of self-worth, help them realise their gift and bring it to the benefit of the world.
Don’t miss this week’s guest author Nancy’s article, on how she has continued learning from her gifted students even after her retirement as a teacher of gifted school and Heidi’s insightful talk. She was a gifted child herself and is now a mom of 3 gifted children.
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Three Images of the Week



Two Thoughts of the Week
“Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained.”
Marie Curie
“The winner’s edge is not in a gifted birth, a high IQ, or in talent. The winner’s edge is all in the attitude, not aptitude. Attitude is the criterion for success.”
Denis Waitley
One Video of the Week
Being “gifted” often feels far from a good thing, when you’re the one living it. And yet the myth persists that “gifted” is an elitist and privileged label in education. That “those kids” will be fine without any extra programs or supports. After all, what’s the worst that can happen – they get bored? In reality, many of our most vulnerable learners are those “gifted” kids who know they just don’t “fit it.” In our rush to identify and label children for purposes of funding and organizing our educational services most efficiently, we’re missing the ground level, actionable and everyday needs of an entire grouping of needy kids. Our most gifted, sensitive and creative students are our canaries in the coal mine; they are more sensitive to the world around them and the reactions we see in them can teach us what our education system needs to be, believe, include and stop. As is often the case, what is necessary for some is beneficial to all.
Heidi approaches our education system from multiple perspectives. First and foremost, she is the mother of three amazing, gifted, creative and/or highly sensitive children! Heidi also spent almost six years as president of the City of Coquitlam‘s District Parent Advisory Council, attending countless advisory committees and working to build relationships between parents and teachers. And finally, she has worked with many passionate educators as an edtech consultant – participating in technology planning, facilitating dialogue and implementing technology to support student learning, communication and relationship building. She is an idealist, geek and deceptively social introvert.
Guest Author of the Week: Nancy Devitt Tremblay, Toronto, Canada.
Teaching is an intensive and personal enterprise, whether we admit it or not. A sense of kinship is formed between teachers and students through years of cajoling and worrying, drying tears, facing fears and being silly. I’m referring to both the kids and the grown-ups here. But students graduate and we stay put. And teachers often don’t know what becomes of their students.
I never really liked that aspect of my job.
So I came up with a plan.
As I was retiring after twenty years of teaching English and facilitating a Gifted/Advanced Placement program in Toronto, Canada, I decided to find some former students and ask them how they figured out who they wanted to be.
I turned these wonderful conversations into a podcast series. It’s called “Teaching The Teacher” because that is exactly what my former students do. All under-30, they are experts in a wide variety of fields. To say that I’m proud of them can’t really cover the range of emotions I feel listening to their stories of success, failure, resilience and ingenuity.
I hope the podcast will be enjoyed by teachers and also offer encouragement and inspirational career advice to students and their parents.
Season 1 Highlights:
.And there are still more…
What was that school I worked in, you might be asking by now! Was it an elite private school? Oh no, not at all. My school was in a not particularly privileged part of suburban Toronto, an area actually disdained by some.
But I will admit my assignment as a teacher was a bit unusual. In Canada, a category of special education identification is giftedness. Students are given the label when they are about nine years old and depending where they live, they will be given intermittent or full-time enriched programming.
I was responsible for the gifted cohort in my high school. With my colleagues, we ran Advanced Placement courses, dozens of clubs and activities including a debating society, Model United Nations and robotics; we offered PSAT testing and developed personalised acceleration plans. We opened these opportunities to students who didn’t have the official gifted identification label as well. I wasn’t entirely sure what I was doing but I knew in my heart that these students needed these opportunities.
In 2016, the results of a 45-year longitudinal American study of over 5000 gifted learners confirmed my hunch. The SMPY study, published in Nature, showed that even small things: one AP course, writing a PSAT, accelerating in one subject seemed to make a difference in the life trajectories of the students in the study. More doctorates, more research papers published, more university professors, more patents…the list went on. This study confirmed for me that what we were doing in our school could make a difference.
My recent encounters with my former students for the podcast series provides anecdotal corroboration: offering enrichment to students who are hungry for it really does pay off – for the fulfillment of the person and for society at large.
But as much as I was glad we offered enrichment, I was never completely at ease labelling young humans gifted. First of all, the label can be offensive to schoolmates. Of course, everyone is gifted in their own way.
I also came to understand that wearing the label exacerbated anxiety and perfectionism. Further, it could be hard to reconcile when maths (or any subject really) suddenly became more difficult and required more work. I always needed a box of tissues at hand the week that half of the Grade 10’s failed their first quiz in quadratics because they hadn’t thought they’d needed to study! I’d invoke Carole Dweck’s theories about “growth mindset” but sometimes it took a few years before some of my gifted students started doing the hard work. It was easier to say “Oh, I didn’t study for the test” than it was to say “I don’t feel smart anymore.”
Some episodes of “Teaching The Teacher” explore what giftedness looks like in adulthood.
The bottom line is “Teaching The Teacher” is a sentimental journey revealing the deep ties that remain between teachers and students despite distance and the passage of time.
Find Teaching the Teacher on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, etc.
Go to the Teaching The Teacher Youtube channel for links to podcast platforms and short video trailers with each interview subject.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJBE_GITB09bhopYURlqx1Q
Follow @teachingtheteacher on Instagram for episode announcements, links – and to let me know what you think!
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Showcase of the week:

And Finally…

Dear reader,
I have been a research scientist, a journalist, and an educator for over 3 decades. I read and, I write. With this weekly newsletter, I intend to share what I read, learn and, experience while I engage with students, parents, and teams of teachers across K-12 schools, higher education institutions and, ed-tech organizations.
3-2-1 Tuesdays with Ms. Niv is a newsletter for you to subscribe to and enjoy your learning journey with me.
This Newsletter is supported by:








Issue # 56, 3rd August 2021
Definition of Feedback : The return of information that is provided following an activity or process. or. The process in which part of the output of a system is returned to its input in order to regulate its further output. In fact, feedback is ubiquitous.
This would mean that feedback is actually feedforward right? Why do we then hesitate in giving it? Importantly, why do we fear receiving it? What can we do to give and receive feedback better and, improve ourselves. We can possibly teach this to our children/students at a young age so as they grow older, they get better adapted to the process of feedback.
Here are some ideas for you. Don’t miss subscribing to this news letter by just entering your email here.
Three Images of the Week



Two Thoughts of the Week
“The biggest problem is that Facebook and Google are these giant feedback loops that give people what they want to hear. And when you use them in a world where your biases are being constantly confirmed, you become susceptible to fake news, propaganda, demagoguery. ” Franklin Foer
“We all need people who will give us feedback. That’s how we improve.” Bill Gates
One Video of the Week
What if getting feedback wasn’t a source of fear, but joy? In this personal talk, speaker/author Joe Hirsch makes a passionate case for sharing “feedforward,” a new view of human potential.
When feedback draws others closer to their future selves, they experience the joy of self-discovery that leads to positive and lasting change. Joe Hirsch specializes in helping schools and businesses master the art and science of high-performance feedback. An award-winning educator and instructional leader, Joe has spent more than a decade in the K-12 and higher-ed markets training, coaching and empowering teachers and school administrators for success.
Based on his 2017 book, The Feedback Fix, Joe has shown clients like the Gates Foundation and members of the U.S. armed forces how to boost creativity, foster collaboration and deepen self-awareness. His work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Inc., Educational Leadership, and other major outlets.
Showcase of the Week
![YuviPep One day workshop Course Details [25]](https://niveditamukerjee.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/yuvipep-one-day-workshop-course-details-25.jpg)
And Finally…

Dear reader,
I have been a research scientist, a journalist and an educator for over 3 decades. I read and, I write. With this weekly newsletter, I intend to share what I read, learn and, experience while I engage with students, parents and teams of teachers across K-12 schools, higher education institutions and, ed-tech organisations.
3-2-1 Tuesdays with Ms Niv is a newsletter for you to subscribe and enjoy your learning journey with me.
This newsletter is supported by:
Issue # 54, 20th July 2021
Online learning continues! learning from mobile, youTube, free videos, paid classes, everyday learning, course learning, hobby learning… In this issue, I am sharing some quick and easy lesson plans for online teaching. Don’t miss the ted talk of Sal Khan of Khan Academy – my go-to place to learn any and many things online.
Three Images of the week :


Two thoughts of the week :
“You can’t teach people everything they need to know. The best you can do is position them where they can find what they need to know when they need to know it.” – Seymour Papert, MIT mathematician, educator, and computer scientist.
“Instructional designers need to run, not walk, away from classroom-based thinking and get to the point of providing short, quick business-focused learning points that are easily accessible when and where our learners need them. This means leveraging new technologies to deliver non-traditional instruction.” – Karl M. Kapp, Professor of Instructional Technology, Bloomsburg University.
One video of the week :
Salman Khan talks about how and why he created the remarkable Khan Academy, a carefully structured series of educational videos offering complete curricula in math and, now, other subjects. He shows the power of interactive exercises, and calls for teachers to consider flipping the traditional classroom script — give students video lectures to watch at home, and do “homework” in the classroom with the teacher available to help.
In 2004, Sal Khan, a hedge fund analyst, began making math tutorials for his cousins. Twelve years later, Khan Academy has more than 42 million registered users from 190 countries, with tutorials on subjects from basic math through economics, art history, computer science, health, medicine and more. Salman “Sal” Khan is the founder and chief executive officer of Khan Academy, a not-for-profit with a mission of providing a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere.
Khan Academy started as a passion project in 2004. Khan’s cousin was struggling with math, so he tutored her remotely and posted educational videos on YouTube. So many people watched the videos that eventually Khan quit his job at a hedge fund and pursued Khan Academy full time. Today Khan Academy has more than 100 employees in Mountain View, California. Khan Academy believes learners of all ages should have unlimited access to free educational content they can master at their own pace. Its resources cover preschool through early college education, including math, grammar, biology, chemistry, physics, economics, finance and history. Additionally, Khan Academy offers free personalized SAT test prep in partnership with the test developer, the College Board. More than 42 million registered users access Khan Academy in dozens of languages across 190 countries.
Khan has been profiled by “60 Minutes,” featured on the cover of Forbes, and recognized as one of TIME’s “100 Most Influential People in the World.” In his book, The One World Schoolhouse: Education Reimagined, Sal outlines his vision for the future of education.
Khan holds three degrees from MIT and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Showcase of the week:
![YuviPep One day workshop Course Details [25]](https://niveditamukerjee.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/yuvipep-one-day-workshop-course-details-25.jpg)
And Finally…

Dear reader,
I have been a research scientist, a journalist, and an educator for over 3 decades. I read and I write. With this weekly newsletter, I intend to share what I read, learn and experience while I engage with students, parents, and teams of teachers across K-12 schools, higher education institutions, and ed-tech organisations.
3-2-1 Tuesdays with Ms. Niv is a newsletter for you to subscribe and enjoy your learning journey with me.
This newsletter is supported by:








