Wise Ones Australia

International Womens Day

I’d like to honour two women who had a significant effect on my life and therefore on WiseOnes.  Australia’s first saint, Mary McKillop, founded a teaching group of women with the vision of educating the poor.  I once visited a remote aboriginal community,  in a stony desert area in West Australia, as far from anywhere else as you could get, and there were two of her group, living in an ancient caravan and running a  school so the influence of Mary McKillop three quarters of  a century later was still felt. For me another amazing women was Sr Edmund, probably born after Mary’s death, but who was filled with Mary McKillop’s vision and with a great sense of humour.  Sr Edmund taught me in Grade 5, recognized my potential, organized free psychological assessent, coached me for free after school towards gaining a scholarship.  I passed the scholarship that year so missed grade 6 and also Grade 7. After a very hard year doing grade 8 , I gained a government scholarship and completed years 9 to 12.  For several years only one  other girl from my primary school at Frankston completed year 12. I found out later that my parents had gone without food to pay my train fare to secondary school.  Yes, I do appreciate that parents make sacrifices to provide the WiseOnes program for their fast learners.

  So now you know why all WiseOnes Education Managers agree to provide a scholarship, from their own resources, to poor families with fast learner children. In the 12+ years so far that would be one scholarship per term per school for all WiseOnes schools, or 49 times the number of schools, well over 1500 scholarships and still going.  Thank these two amazing women teachers, Mary McKillop and Sr Edmund, whose passion for justice and equity in education and in opportunity for the future, combined with disciplined hard work and self sacrifice still lives on.  Mary has been dead for over 100 years and I’m sure Sr Edmund must be dead too, but their influence is still here.  There must be many others, inspired by their ideals, who are doing great things in our communities.

I’d like to express my appreciation of all the wonderful teachers who have worked and are workng with WiseOnes. Their contribution to the welfare of those who are difficult to provide for in schools,  ought to be recognized.  There is  a  great deal of unusual preparation in the work of a WiseOnes teacher but also great satisfaction and pleasure.  Please thank your WiseOnes teacher this week.  Pat Slattery

MySchool reports

I averaged the Victorian ICSEA  scores of all schools that has the WiseOnes program in 2009. The average was 1095 with a range of 1005-1194. The two extremes of the range were both in the outer east of Melbourne. I wonder how much help we have been to these schools in assisting their fast learners to be happy, confident and able to achieve good results. Many would anyway, but confidence in being your own true self certainly helps and the extra, advanced general knowledge and advanced learning skills must make a difference.  We do hear of children who are in WiseOnes getting scholarships but have no means of tracking them later.  I am keen to make the program available in schools with lower scores, as school leaders tell me it makes a difference, but parents can’t afford it and schools can’t afford it.   I am seeking a big corporate sponsor that we could work with as a partner. Our ethical nature would need to be satisfied as one of the criteria. Pat S

Master Speller Mentor

We are very pleased with our first Master Speller Mentor.  Her adult son has an intellectual disability and has not been able to spell before.  Now , using the method accurately, he is learning two words a week when he comes to vist his parents. It is very exciting for all of us. The Mentor is not a teacher but a determined mother who is good at English.  Contact us  info@@wiseones.com.au if you think we could help you.

Commencing 2010

Welcome back everyone.  Term dates for Victoria:- most schools start the WiseOnes program the week commencing February 8th. Make sure your fee is paid at the start of the school year to confirm your child’s place in the program as we have to prepare everything for the correct number of children. We do not use any of the school’s materials or resources other than a space.   As term 1 is so short most schools will have two sessions at the start of term 2 then start that term’s unit straight after. In a couple of schools the teacher has negotiated finishing all 8 sessions in term 1 by holding a double session occasionally.

Im NSW the term goes a week longer so most will be able to complete the unit in term 1.  Easter Sunday is 4th April.

Remember that your gifted child needs to enrol in the ‘hard” units as well,  in order to learn to fail, to ask for help, to oversome perfectionism, to see that risk taking to learn is OK and to learn to make wise decisions about the effort that is required to attain the result they want at that time, for that work.  In this way WiseOnes helps them cope with their gift,  to prevent stress and to avoid later complications that often arise from the very nature of being gifted. We are not an academic enrichment program but a differentiated personal development program with Academic, Intellectual, Moral and Social aims specifically to help the gifted child from our own educational learning and the  shared wisdom of our team of wonderful educators.    Pat S

Happy Christmas

To all teachers, students and parents associated with WiseOnes in all of the schools in Victoria and New South Wales, we say thanks for your commitments during 2009. All WiseOnes Education Managers and teachers as well as the Directors wish you  time of peace, solidarity and fun with your families.

 We had a lovely weekend in Ballarat with our 5 children, 5 sons and daughters-in-law and 14 grandchildren as well as  the first “boyfriend” of the next generation. We have reduced the commercial links with the feast of Christmas to a large extent and emphazize the love we all have for each other. We threw hoops, played mini golf and jumped on a huge inflated “pillow’” as well as  talking a lot. We had two birthdays as well.  The distance that stops us all getting together for most birthdays does not stop us at Christmas.  All 5 children and their families have sponsored children overseas and we give scholarships in WiseOnes programs at schools, so giving is a normal part of all our lives.  Interestingly our children value this family link over higher order promotions overseas.  I am wondering about this as an intellectual exercize.  Are we, collectively,  stunting them in reaching their potential or are we helping them be the happiest people. They seem very happy and have great family relationships themselves. From our senior point of view it is interesting watching what happens as gifted children grown into gifted adults and then have gifted children themselves and so on.

Wishing you a very Happy Christmas and a great year to come in 2010.

Pat & Bernard Slattery, Directors

Mel Levine

Many thanks to those who sent  information about Mel Levine. I have contacted ACEL and given them the link to the New York Times article. Probably the information does not invalidate his expertise in the field of learning but we would not associated with him again, in case. Pat

ACEL says the Victorian Education Department had checked and provided ACEL access to Dr Levine for the 2 sessions he gave.  Feedback from participants was very positive and I found the learning to be good.  See the overview on the website.

12th year almost completed

When we started WiseOnes there was nothing like it anywhere. We did not know how it would work out.  All we knew was that there was a big need for specialist gifted programs as many children were not totally enthusiastic about school.  Having many grandchildren in all different systems and independent schools showed us that it was a general need everywhere.  Learning at the World Gifted Conferences showed us that it was a world wide problem.  Having been a creative problem solving Principal, I knew that there were so many hindrances in the way of schools being able to do enough,  that a support program that took no money, no special teacher time, no resources and was a parent choice program could work. After 12 years I have set a new aim so that all the gifted children can have access to the program in spite of family finances.

Bernie and I and our Education Managers,  most of us “retired” teachers have been financially supporting families for the whole 12 years but one per school is not enough.  If you know any business that would pay the fees for one family for a year we would only need $800 per year( 4×200) each from 1000 businesses in each state to make a huge difference..  WiseOnes is not a big business. It has no employees.  It is a differentiated business with self-responsibility for leadership at all three levels of commitment- directors, educators and teachers.  Then, I think that micro and small businesses that will one day depend on these children for leaders may like to support one child each.  I think that professional people and self employed tradespeople could do it- sponsor a child.  What about it? If the funds went to each school directly it would probably be tax deductible but I am not an accountant. Someone may like to comment on that for us.

I wish all those who are in contact with WiseOnes a very Happy Christmas and a time of rest and recreation after a hard working and challenging year.

Pat Slattery, Principal

Strengths and deficits in children

On 24/11/09 I attended a seminar given by Dr Mel Levine, Rhodes scholar, graduate of Harvard, Professor of Pediatrics at the University of North Carolina. Dr Levine taught us about Neurodevelopmental Constructs and Functions. His special interest is in children who are not doing well at school. Quite a few children are gifted and also have developmental deficits. Dr Levine does not believe in labels such as ADHD or Aspbergers. He says we must look at the strengths of each child and help use them to find a way around the weaknesses. I was interested in one of his books “The Myth of Laziness’ as one of my own gifted children was always accused of “laziness”. No teacher recognized him as gifted and he was not sure until he was tested as an adult.

The 8 Constructs are:

• Attention, which is mental energy, alertness, mental exertion, Sleep/Arousal balance. He said up to 18 years they need 9 hours sleep a night and we can teach them “wind-down” methods. Dr Levine is very concerned that we take the moral condemnation away and look at the facts.  Every person has strengths and weaknesses. I discovered some I did not know I had and I’m a  grandmother.
• Temporal Sequential ( time)ordering such as serial order, short term memory overload, giving too many instructions at once, procedures, narrative order, complex decision making
• Spatial ordering ( space) such as visualization, aesthetics, recognition, non-verbal concept forming, non verbal reasoning, seeing the whole picture and all its parts. I notice this weakness in quite  few children doing WiseOnes try-outs. Some cannot make a picture from the information yet we remember in pictures.
• Memory – short term, active working memory, long term memory encoding, long term memory access and recall, automated processes- tables and writing habits and courtesy habits matter
• Language –receptive where we gain our inputs –phonics, morphemes, semantics, sentence comprehension, discourse processing.  And Expressive language where we communicate with others- articulation, prosody, morphology application, word retrieval, sentence formulation, discourse production, verbal elaboration. He says every teacher must insist that the children answer in sentences and then elaborate with phrases and clauses as they grow.
• Neuromotor functions (physical)- gross such as large movements and fine. Also graphomotor functions.  The way the child holds the pen does matter very much.  It must allow the other fingers flexibility so it is held between the thumb and first finger, resting on the joint of the first finger. A pencil is better to learn or re-learn as it has more friction on the paper.
• Social cognition- verbal pragmatics. We have many small cues that we use- implicit communication(raised eyebrow, know who did the action) tone, affective matching, code switching, topic selection, conversation exchange and humour and then there is social regulation where we set up our own self image, market ourselves, respond to social cues, collaborate, resolve conflicts, initiation techniques, shake hands , stand apart distance and gain political acumen.
• Higher Order Cognition  includes conceptualization and mental representation, evaluative thinking, complex decision making and applied reasoning.

These constructs come in clusters so a child who has a deficit in one is likely to have other deficits as well.  Dr Levine has a special website for parents to help them assess and help their children. It is

www.allkindsofminds.org   and another one   www.BringingUpMinds.com

Angela Katsos schools

General notices

Easter is in late March. This may affect the weeks on which the program operates in Term 1 and 2 , 2010

Viv Byrnes schools

General notices

Easter is in late March. This may affect the weeks on which the program operates in Term 1 and 2 , 2010