Tell us a little bit about yourself. Where did you grow up? Were you identified as gifted when you were young?
I was born in Detroit and moved to Chicago when I was in 4th grade. In those ‘olden days’ there were no gifted programs. When I registered for high school, they were experimenting with testing freshmen into advanced math classes and skipping the basic classes. I had never liked math nor had I felt particularly good at it, but I was put into the program.
How did you get interested in your subject area? What is your favorite content to teach?
I graduated from college with a double major: Spanish and Music. I taught music for several years and was frustrated by not being able to spend much time with students—I saw them only once or twice a week. I got the extra courses I needed to teach language arts in middle school, because I enjoyed the challenge of working with preteens and teens. I enjoy reading and writing—and thinking. I began each school year sharing with my students the study of brain development and multiple intelligences before we went on to language arts studies.
Tell us briefly about your favorite teacher.
He was that math teacher in whose class I was placed. He was a stickler. He called me aside one day and said: “Carol, if you keep on fooling around and chatting all the time, people will never know how very smart you are.” Wow. How wise he was. I have never forgotten what he said that day.
Tell us about a satisfying teaching experience.
I introduced my classes, and eventually our whole school, to Northwestern University’s Online Collaboratory. We began with the study of my project, Brainy Matters, which had won the Best Project award that year.
What is it like working with gifted kids? Describe the energy in your classroom.
When I retired after 40 years of teaching, I began teaching the Online Writing Workshop (OWW) for GLL. My one fear about teaching online was that I would not be able to get to know my students and establish a bond of trust with them. I found that relationships did grow during our online chats and discussion of their writing over the 9-week period. I found teaching online to be both satisfying and fruitful, and my favorite way to begin each new class was to welcome back some students who had registered for a second/third/fourth, experience in OWW.