The "More" Child
Extreme giftedness, re-forming education, homeschooling, parenting and more…as
seen from the Washington, DC suburbs.
Living a smART Life
June 7, 2010 by SwitchedOnMom
Do you remember commenter Rockzana? I first corresponded with the MCPS middle schooler back in
January, when she wrote to alert me to her school’s advocacy page in conjunction with the then looming
threats to magnet transportation. [Update: Magnet and special program busing is safe for another year.
It's just the Superintendent's failsafe way to rile parents up, and persuade them to lobby on behalf of his
budget. Works like a charm.]
Anyway, I got an email from her mom this evening. She wrote:
I know my daughter Rockzana (Roxy) has been emailing you off and on…
I thought I would let you know that she gave her Keynote Speech “Learning in and Through
the Arts” at the Cultural Arts for Education Conference last week to a SRO auditorium (they
were actually sitting in the aisles). At the end she received a standing O! As part of her speech
she created a video and so many of the attendees wanted to have a copy of it that I today I
posted it up on YouTube. I thought you might like to see it.
To really appreciate the video you need to know the intro for it (she had graphics to go along
with this as well):
“If I had a magic wand and could grant each of you a wish right now that would magically
change your life, how many of you would take that wish? What would you change about life?
Would you move, change how much you weigh, how tall you are, the color of your hair, change
your job, or maybe even your significant other? Ummhmm…
Well as for me, right now, my life is just fine. And yes, you may think it’s that way because I do
acting and modeling and get to travel and meet famous people. However, it really is due to the
fact that for the past three years I’ve been Learning in and Through the Arts. I’ve been living a
smART life. I want you to take a look at this presentation I put together and see what a smART
life is like from a student’s point of view.”
And here it is. (Middle aged person warning: you might want to turn down the volume.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTn07wepUi8
Roxy is lucky that she literally won the lottery and is happy at her school (I’m making the assumption
here that she is not an in-boundary student at Loiederman, but rather put her name into the lottery to
attend.) C. wasn’t so lucky. Call me a whiner, but on some level I feel like she’s been denied an
appropriate education by MCPS. I would love for her to love her school, to be with friends. I guess
we’ll just have to hope for high school.
http://themorechild.com/2010/06/07/living-a-smart-life/