[Ohiogift] Gifted Services is like baking cookies

[Robin Y Retzler]

I'd like to bake the Ohio Department of Education some chocolate chip
cookies.  Everyone loves cookies.  I want the cookies I make to be the best
cookies that any one has ever baked.  How will I know that these are the
best cookies ever?  I guess I'll let ODE set some sort of test and then I'll
wait until the cookies are finished to see if they pass the test.

 

Let's see, what should I put in my cookies?  I don't really need a recipe,
because I'm only interested in people thinking that these are the best
cookies after they're finished.  So, I guess I'll use a cup of salt instead
of sugar, because I have a lot of it handy, its fairly inexpensive and there
is already some of in the cookies. Flour costs way too much money, and I
have some dirt in the backyard that I can use instead.  And someone gave me
some money for eggs, but I spent that on a new coffee machine, so I'll just
use the mayonnaise that I have in the refrigerator - it's made of eggs, so
it should work just fine.  

 

What?!?  The salty, muddy, mayonnaise cookies aren't the best cookies you've
ever tasted?  You think maybe I should use a cookbook next time?    Perhaps
I should have used that egg money to buy actual eggs.  Perhaps I should have
used sugar instead of salt, even if it is more expensive because it will
make the cookies taste better.  And I'll skip the dirt, and use some flour.
I might have to go to the store to figure out what flour I need, but it will
make the cookies taste much better.  And to top it off, I'll search for the
best chocolate chips that I can find, because I want these to be the best
cookies ever.

 

Moral of this story:  the correct input really does determine the best
output.  You can't get a good output without making sure that you have a
recipe with all the exact ingredients as input.  

 

This is much like gifted education.  We know that the general output should
be the maximum growth of our gifted children; but we need to make sure that
we have a recipe with the correct ingredients to make this happen.  And the
better the ingredients, the better the output!

 

 

Robin Retzler

 

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