{"id":777,"date":"2011-02-14T22:27:25","date_gmt":"2011-02-15T03:27:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.old.caraghobrien.com\/book\/?p=777"},"modified":"2011-02-14T22:28:28","modified_gmt":"2011-02-15T03:28:28","slug":"advanced-kids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/miscellaneous\/advanced-kids\/","title":{"rendered":"Advanced Kids"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I was in sixth grade, the Visitation nuns sent me to seventh grade Literature, which meant I had to go up the stairs to the junior high hallway and sit with older girls who didn\u2019t like me much.\u00a0 I was scared of them and intimidated by the teacher, so I picked one of the desks closest to the wall, kept my knees together and my feet under my chair, and didn\u2019t say much. We read David Copperfield, Treasure Island, Evangeline, Uncle Tom\u2019s Cabin, Wuthering Heights<\/em>, and Jane Eyre<\/em> that year. \u00a0The teacher handed out a dozen questions for each chapter of assigned reading and collected the answers the next day.\u00a0 Every day.<\/p>\n

\"\"I thought that\u2019s what Literature class was and I liked the stories, so I read everything, answered all the homework questions, and prayed the teacher wouldn\u2019t call on me.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t occur to me until years later that those books were a bit advanced for a twelve-year-old.\u00a0 When I was twelve, I didn\u2019t question much.\u00a0 I did what I was told.\u00a0 None of us had any idea then that reading would become central to my life, or that I would turn out to be a writer, a writer who writes for age 12+, no less.<\/p>\n

For many, many reasons, I can\u2019t imagine putting a sixth grader today through what I experienced in the 1970\u2019s, but I\u2019m intensely grateful someone had the savvy to recognize that I was a kid who needed a challenge and advance me in whatever way was available.<\/p>\n

I am not advocating for a throwback to out-dated reading lists.<\/p>\n

Instead, we need to support and expand our enrichment programs in elementary and middle schools.\u00a0 The weird, quiet kids with unusual strengths who don\u2019t dream of advocating for themselves need to be nurtured just as much as the kids who are trailing behind, endanger schools\u2019 test score rankings.\u00a0 For lack of a better word, \u201cadvanced\u201d kids deserve to live up to their potential, too, and we, as a society, need for them to thrive.<\/p>\n

Some other stories I liked as a kid outside of school:<\/p>\n

Captain Blood
\n A Girl of the Limberlost
\n The Princess and the Goblin
\n Anne of Green Gables
\n The Call of the Wild
\n The Phantom Tollbooth
\n A Sword in the Stone
\n A Little Princess
\n <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was in sixth grade, the Visitation nuns sent me to seventh grade Literature, which meant I had to go up the stairs to the junior high hallway and sit with older girls who didn\u2019t like me much.\u00a0 I was scared of them and intimidated by the teacher, so I picked one of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[55],"class_list":["post-777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous","tag-school"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=777"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":780,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777\/revisions\/780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}