Have you ever had to overcome ...?

Creative and imaginative people are often not recognized by their peers.  In fact, they are often not recognized in school by their teachers either.  History is full of illustrations.  Consider some of these:

* Einstein was four years old before he could speak and seven before he could read.

*  Isaac Newton did poorly in grade school.

*  Beethoven's music teacher once said of him, "As a composer, he is hopeless."

*  When Thomas Edison was a boy his teachers told him he was too stupid to learn anything.

*  F.W. Woolworth got a job in a dry goods store when he was 21, but his employers would not let him wait on a customer because he "...didn't have enough sense."

*  A newspaper editor fired Walt Disney because he had , "...no good ideas."

*  Caruso's music teacher told him, "You can't sing; you have no voice at all."

*  The director of the Imperial Opera in Vienna told Madame Schumann Heink that she would never be a singer and advised her to buy a sewing machine.

*  Leo Tolstoy flunked out of college.

*  Verner von Braun flunked ninth grade algebra.

*  Admiral Richard E. Byrd had been retired from the Navy, as "...unfit for service," until he flew over both poles.

*  Louis Pasteur was rated as "mediocre" in chemistry when he attended the Royal College.

*  Abraham Lincoln entered the Black Hawk War as a captain and came out as a private.

*  Louisa May Alcott was told by an editor that she could never write anything that had popular appeal.

*  Fred Waring was once rejected from high school chorus.

* Winston Churchill failed the sixth grade.

This gives new meaning to determination and perseverance.

SPARK is Calcasieu Parish's academically gifted program.  The elementary program focuses on enrichment and students participate in this pull-out program one day a week.  In middle school and high school, the gifted classes are offered in various academic areas such as English, math, social studies, and science.  These classes are held daily and are part of the student's regular schedule.

The following is adapted from the work of Peter Rosenstein, National Association for Gifted Children (1994)

Who Are The Gifted?

Gifted children are reflected in every ethnic, racial and socioeconomic group.  They come in all shapes and sizes, with differing strengths and ability levels.  Gifted children are as diverse as humanity itself.  Generally speaking, gifted learners possess high levels of intelligence, creativity, critical and creative thinking, and intellectual curiosity.  They may require fewer repetitions to process and understand information than traditional learners.

Characteristics Related to Potential Giftedness

(by Elizabeth Hagen, Identification of the Gifted)

*  Student's use of language

*  Quality of student's questions

*  Quality of examples, illustrations, or elaborations that a student uses in explaining something or describing events or in telling stories

*  Student's use of quantitative expressions and quantitative reasoning

*  Student's ability to devise or adopt a systematic strategy if it is not working

*  Special skills students exhibit that are unusual for their age or grade

*  Student's innovative use of common materials in the classrooms or outside of it

*  Student's breadth of information

*  Student's collections of materials or hobbies

*  Student's persistence on uncompleted tasks

*  Student's absorption in intellectual tasks

*  Extensiveness of student's exploratory behavior

*  Student's criticalness of his or her own behavior performance

*  Student's preferences for complexity, difficulty, and novelty in tasks