Unexpected Gifts: Discovering and Nurturing the Strengths in Every Child

Today begins a historic week for our country here in the U.S. and for our world. To honor both tomorrow’s birthday celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the inauguration of President-Elect Obama on Tuesday, January 20th, I would like to share with you my dreams for transforming the educational experience for children around the world and find out about your dreams.

My first dream is for a world where every child can grow up knowing that he/she is a whole child (see my September 1, 2007 blog entry and wholechild@ascd.org). The adults around each student would respect and accept the differences that each child brings to this world and work to make sure each child is “healthy, safe, supported, challenged and engaged” in the learning process.

By accepting the differences in learning styles and interests, teachers and parents would celebrate each child for his/her uniqueness. Differences in a student’s readiness to learn would be understood and addressed by implementing a variety of strategies in classrooms and homes where the adults will have been equipped through staff/parent development training to teach necessary 21st century learning skills.

Secondly, I dream of a world where all children experience educational equality with access to books, educational technology tools and an opportunity to learn something new each day. In their schools, these children would be encouraged to recognize and utilize their strengths to learn and teachers and parents would work hard to remove any obstacle that would be a barrier to learning.

Finally, I dream of a world where teachers, administrators, parents and students would respect and value each other and strive to communicate effectively. They would all work collaboratively to solve problems, resolve conflict and create a educational climate that honors the diverse learning needs of every child.

I know that these three dreams are not mine alone. They represent the hopes of so many other educators and parents all over the world.

What are your dreams? Please share them here and with other parents and teachers at your school because I firmly believe that we all can help each other if we combine our vision and talents.

In sharing and combining our efforts, we might even be able to create a global network of like-minded people, people committed to global educational change. It is only by working together across racial and geographical boundaries and across cultures that we can have an impact we could have never dreamed possible just a generation ago.

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