When I first began teaching, I told myself that I never wanted to teach gifted courses. Today–and really for quite awhile now–I see how naive that thought process was. I had at one time convinced myself that I would become exhausted by students claiming they already knew everything and they would be unteachable, but the truth has been far different. The truth is gifted students are truly extraordinary and my initial disdain was out of ill begot notions that reflected my own insecurity as a teacher. But today a few of my gifted students put a beautiful, genuine smile on my face yet again.

I had the classes reflect on the quote that Bradbury places at the beginning of his classic novel Fahrenheit 451 by Juan Ramon Jimenez–“If they give you ruled lines, write the other way.” Below are a few of the papers I received back from them:

Beautiful, isn’t it?