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December 29, 2019 8 Comments

Athena’s Ten Year Anniversary Reflection

by Dr. Kirsten L. Stein, Athena’s Founder

January 2020 marks a milestone at Athena’s. Although Athena’s began before 2010, our first official Athena’s Advanced Academy online classes commenced in January of 2010. One of the reasons I started Athena’s was to help parents of gifted children educate their children.

Like many parents of gifted children, I found myself floundering when it came to educating my children–despite my educator training. I had taken time away from teaching to raise my children when they were young, and I had planned on them entering the United States school system when they reached school age. But those plans were changed when it became obvious that the traditional school model would not work for them.

When my children reached preschool and kindergarten ages, I enrolled them in school. Although years apart, my son and daughter made it only to Kindergarten before it was clear they were not being challenged. I had gone to great lengths to locate schools that could work with their gifts. However, none of my hand-picked schools fully challenged either of them. Through a series of events centered around these school experiences, I decided to homeschool.

Although homeschooling is not a prerequisite to attend Athena’s classes, it was through homeschooling my children that I discovered online learning. Thanks to the Internet, I was able to gather information and piece together curricula for them. At the time, I had not yet gotten my doctorate, but I did have my bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education, so I used that knowledge and experience to educate my children at home.

This worked very well—both children were learning and were enjoying the process. My family was able to tap into the local homeschooling community to find classes, co-ops, and companions. However, I found that this was not enough. They were missing a connection with like-minded peers who shared their passions and curiosities. So, I reached out to other parents of gifted children online.

As I connected with more parents in the gifted community, I became aware of the struggle that many of these parents were experiencing in educating and challenging their gifted children. I also realized that many families were also seeking a broader gifted community. Athena’s was my solution to both issues—educating students and connecting gifted students with each other.

The first order of business was to properly educate and challenge my students at Athena’s. As the only instructor at the time, I started with a handful of courses. As Athena’s grew, I watched our Athena’s community take shape in the Social Forums and during webinars.
Before long, Athena’s began attracting educators and parents who were interested in teaching through our program. This allowed us to expand to more subject areas, challenge more students, and strengthen our community.

I’m so proud of how far Athena’s has come in the last decade and I am looking forward to watching how our community grows and improves—both in the next decade and in decades to come.

Whether you’ve been here from the beginning or are just now becoming a part of our community,
thank you all for joining us on this journey!

December 22, 2019 Leave a Comment

New Nazca Lines Discovered!

by Campbell Starr, Athena’s Student Reporter

Have you ever flown in an airplane and looked out the window at the land below? It is really cool because you can see so many things from a different perspective. From an airplane I have already seen houses, rivers, and all sorts of things, but I really want to fly over Peru to see the Nazca lines.

I have wanted to do this ever since I took Dr. Kirsten’s Story of the World class at Athena’s where we learned about the Nazca lines. She explained that these geoglyphs were huge drawings on the earth created a very long time ago, some in the B.C.E. era! Some of the shapes the people created are over hundreds of meters long and can be best seen from the air, which is why I want to see them from an airplane!

As Dr. Kirsten said, we do not know everything there is to know about these lines and researchers are still working to uncover the meaning behind the Nazca lines. Scientists are still working on learning more about the lines and have used artificial intelligence (AI) to help to solve some of the mysteries. In doing so, researchers recently discovered 143 new Nazca line geoglyphs in Peru.

Photo Credit: Yamagata University, IBM Japan

In addition to all of the other geoglyphs that the researchers already knew about, they found some geoglyphs that look like humans, some that look like animals, and some that look like scenes. The scenes resemble ones you would usually see in Mayan artwork. My favorite is the “person” pictured in these two pictures. It was discovered using only AI!

Here you can see what the geoglyph looks like from the air and then how AI depicts it. It’s really cool how people can get a better picture of what the Nazca lines used to look like long ago by using AI.

My hope is to go to see the Nazca lines as soon as I can. I am looking forward to seeing all of the images from the air and then look at one from the ground. Until then, I will be looking on the Internet for more information on them!

Photo Credit: Yamagata University, IBM Japan

Dealing With Procrastination: A Student Guide

by Dylan Norman, Athena’s Student Reporter

Procrastination can be a terrible fiend, stealing away precious hours of your time. More importantly, it takes away time from what you need to do. For me, as a student athlete with the need to manage competing priorities, procrastination is something I need to get a handle on.
While working late to finish an assignment or occasionally forgetting a deadline might not seem too large an issue, it becomes serious behavior when your efficiency, happiness and self-esteem suffer as a result. Some students might think they have a severe case of procrastination, when they can actually have ADD or Attention Deficit Disorder. Procrastination is not to be confused with ADD.

According to Merriam Webster, procrastination is “To put off intentionally, the doing of something that should be done.” It’s kind of strange to hear such a large portion of my life taken down to a single sentence, but at the same time, it’s not just me. According to Doctor Piers Steel, procrastination effects 80 to 95 percent of college students who do coursework. A definition and a percentage might make us feel better, since it helps us realize that we are not alone when we procrastinate. Fellow procrastinators like me know that the general population generally consider procrastination to be something that you can just bypass, but if it were that easy, writing this article would have taken much less time! Procrastination isn’t as simple as just telling yourself to go focus on what you need to do, because it is all too easy just to ignore yourself, or to simply say “I’ll do this tomorrow.” For procrastinators, tomorrow never comes.

When I talk to people about my procrastination, the common response is for them to simply say, “Just do your work first,” or “stay focused and only do things you need to do first, then you can do what you want to do.” Sometimes I try to tell this to myself to, so what is going wrong? Why am I still procrastinating? Is procrastination just an inability to concentrate, a need for immediate gratification, or is it a form of avoidance? Or is it something else entirely? To really work on the problem of procrastination requires one to truly understand what it is. Often times procrastination is confused with laziness.

The_procrastinating_student_-_panoramio wikimedia commons — Image Credit: TumbleCow – Wikimedia Commons

I heard a quote recently from lifehacker.com, and it summed up my issues with procrastination quite well; “It’s not that you have a problem saying yes to the thing you’re supposed to be doing right now, the problem is you can’t say no to everything else.” This makes a lot of sense, especially when procrastination is not laziness. The definition of laziness is a disinterest in putting in the work. The difference between the two is that procrastination is choosing to do something else. That is, it’s a more active form of avoidance.

In my experience, however, there have been some techniques that have worked better than others. For instance, breaking down a task, called chunking, and then setting a clear deadline for each step to be done is useful. If you have a long-term project, giving yourself a chunk of it to do every day can help. If you plan out your work, you might see how little time you actually have for everything. Regularly reminding yourself about your limited time can help, especially when you have trouble saying no to everything else that invariably comes along during an already packed day. Yet what I find works best for me is setting a timer for a break at the end of a work period. It might sound like the opposite of what you should do if you deal with procrastination, but giving yourself clear breaks can help. Often times, if you procrastinate your breaks are not clearly defined. In other words, you might simply take a break whenever you feel like it. But if you give clear, time restricted breaks set to a timer, and make yourself work solidly for an hour, you might actually get more work done.

I think Psychology Today explained how massive an issue procrastination is. “Twenty percent of people identify themselves as chronic procrastinators. For them procrastination is a lifestyle, albeit a maladaptive one. And it cuts across all domains of their life. They don’t pay bills on time. They miss opportunities for buying tickets to concerts. They don’t cash gift certificates or checks. They file income tax returns late. They leave their Christmas shopping until Christmas eve.” Procrastination is maladaptive, and it can easily take over your life, but one of the most important things to remember is to not give it more power. In my experience, procrastination becomes an even harder foe to defeat when you start to believe that it has more power, more control, over your actions than you do.

Bibliography:

“Procrastinate,” Mirriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/procrastinate. Accessed November 18, 2019
Novotney, Amy, “Procrastination or Intentional Delay,” American Psychological Association, January 2010, Page 14, https://www.apa.org/gradpsych/2010/01/procrastination. Accessed November 18, 2019
Ravenscraft, Eric, “You Don’t Have a Procrastination Problem: You Have an Impulsivity Problem,” Lifehacker AU, March 2, 2016, https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2016/03/you-dont-have-a-procrastination-problem-you-have-an-impulsivity-problem/. Accessed November 18, 2019
Estroff Marano, Hara, “Procrastination: Ten Things To Know,” Psychology Today, August 23, 2003, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/200308/procrastination-ten-things-know. Accessed November 18, 2019

Photo Credit:

Attribution: TumbleCow – Wikimedia Commons

November 16, 2019 Leave a Comment

The Redesign of Athena’s Quill

by Marisa Katsianos, Athena’s Student Reporter

The Athena’s Quill, containing stories from the creative writing class students at Athena’s releases two issues per year. However, the Fall 2019 issue will be different than the rest, because the Athena’s Quill is being redesigned!

Prof. Suki, the teacher of creative writing classes at Athena’s, says that in the new Athena’s Quill, each student who is contributing to the Quill will be able to design their own pages of text. According to Professor Suki, “They have complete freedom to do whatever they’d like. For example, they could create a page of hand-drawn artwork with a poem hand-written on it. They could create a painting, take a photo of it, and include it in a document with the text of their story.” Prof Suki also says that the students will be able to create a page of text using whatever font they want. In other words, the students are free to be creative!

This new redesign to the Athena’s Quill will also impact the efficiency of organizing it for both teacher and students. The students will be able to use their imaginations to create a page that they would like to see with their story, and for Professor Suki, instead of having to lay out all the text and artwork for the journal will get to see all of the creative wonders that the students will post. The students will submit their pages, with their stories, and with their own personalized artwork, and Professor Suki will combine all the files into one downloadable document that will be posted into the Athena’s Quill Forum.

The aspect of the Quill that will remain the same is the logo. Professor Suki says that until a better one is designed, the logo will stay in the Quill.

The Quill’s Fall 2019 issue will be released as soon as webinars end. The direct link to the Athena’s Literary Journal Forum (where the Quill will be posted) can be found in the Social Forums.

Students of Athena’s: Make sure to check out this Fall’s Quill and the creative designs that will be posted!

November 15, 2019 Leave a Comment

Our Tenth Anniversary!

Beginning Spring 2020, Athena’s Advanced Academy is celebrating our tenth year educating gifted and talented children like yours!

We are so grateful to all of our families who support our efforts to create a stimulating and engaging educational environment that challenges gifted and talented students, one that promotes learning in a positive and rewarding atmosphere.

Because of you, we have had the privilege of teaching students from all around the world and are looking forward to many more years to come.
Thank you!