Gifted Jaguars and Eagles

On Friday, April 22nd students from Kennedy High School, including 7 Dimensions Academy High School students, met with a first year from Yale University to hear about what going to an Ivy League college, about the application process, and about what opportunities they would have at Yale specifically.  I loved hearing their questions!  Thank you to the KHS Career Center for letting me work with them on this event. 

I really enjoyed going to Mother Courage and her Children with the Honors 10 English classes at Kennedy High School yesterday.  The play was just as powerful in 2019 as it was when it was written.  Afterwards our students were lucky enough to discuss the play with the director and the cast! 

I had a great time in Josh Coval's classroom observing our resident spoken word artist from COMPAS work with our 9th grade Nobel cohort today.  See More Perspective did a great job getting our students to develop their descriptive and figurative language in their poems on the theme of things I do not miss from summer.  I particularly enjoyed hearing Kelly, Preity, Shawn and Jaida read their original works in class.  I look forward to hearing more poems on future visits. 

Spoken Word Conference Sophomores and Juniors in the Nobel program are invited to an in-school field trip to work with Guante on Tuesday, May 28th for the school day at Kennedy High School.   Kyle “Guante” Tran Myhre is an MC, two-time National Poetry Slam champion, activist and educator. His work explores the relationships between identity, power, and resistance, and has been featured on Upworthy , Welcome to Night Vale , Everyday Feminism , MSNBC, the Huffington Post , and beyond. Garnering over ten million views online, Guante has also performed live at the United Nations, given a TedxTalk, and presented at countless colleges, universities, and conferences. Whether deconstructing traditional notions of masculinity, challenging dominant narratives related to race and racism, or just telling stories about the different jobs he’s had, Tran Myhre strives to cultivate a deeper, more critical engagement with social justice issues, one based in both empathy and agency. An e...

I have been to the Hormel Gifted Symposium 2 summers in a row and it is an amazing opportunity for professional development.  Nationally known experts are brought to Austin, MN for three days in June to do in depth PD that I don't see at other conferences.  Unlike a usual conference where you sample in 50-60 minute increments at Austin you get 3 in depth sessions with the same presenters 3 days in a row so you really get into the topic with an expert and get to actually talk about your students and challenges.  I highly recommend it.  This summer creativity expert Patti Drapaeu is coming again and there are some good ones on Culturally Responsive Teaching too. http://www.gtsymposium.org/

This is a conference that promotes college attendance to Latinx high schoolers. There will be various workshops that students can attend throughout the day. The workshops are designed by Latinx college students with the purpose of answering some of the questions they had as high schoolers. All high school grades are welcome. 8:30am - 9am - check-in 9am - 10:15am - session 1 10:20am- 11:05am- session 2 11:10am - 11:55am - lunch 12am - 12:45pm - session 3 Workshops to Choose From! 1.Applying for Colleges- Learn what the college application process looks like. 2. Choosing a college- What should I look for when I am looking at colleges? Does it matter what college I go to? How do I know I am choosing the right college? This workshop will give you a lot of tips on how to go about choosing a college. 3.Choosing a Major- What is a major? How do I choose a major? Can I not know my major? Get these questions and more questions about majors answered at this workshop. 4.Getting Involved in Col...