Each Year I Give The Parents Of My Second Grade Students A Unique: Fill & Download for Free

I grew up in the suburbs of Los Angeles with my parents and two older sisters. As a kid, there were two things that I loved: drawing and reading. Not uncommon for a kid growing up in an Asian American family, I was enrolled in piano, art, and ballet classes among others. While I loved art, as mentioned, and ballet, because it was a unique expression of myself, I absolutely abhorred playing the piano. There were times when I would sit on the piano bench crying because I didn’t want to practice.Academically, I was a high achieving and straight-laced student. In the second grade, my teacher (and parents) encouraged me to simultaneously complete the 3rd grade. From middle school to high school I maintained a straight-A record despite hefty course loads.At the end of elementary school I discovered a website where you could feed your digital pet. When I wasn't earning neopoints or collecting avatars, I was bedazzling my profile, Neoshop and Neosignature “learning” HTML/CSS. At around the same time I got really into anime, manga, and video games, which I like to think strengthened my internet sleuthing, illustration, and problem solving skills.For college, I was accepted to MIT. By this point in my life, decision fatigue had already taken a pretty big toll on me and thinking about the future was scary. One of my sisters briefly mentioned that it would be cool if I studied Architecture, and that was that.I took my first Architecture studio the second semester of my freshman year and learned how little you needed to sleep and still be a functioning human being. Reconsidering my poorly made life decisions about one semester in, I was very attracted to the bling-bling lifestyle of finance and consulting. I attended a few talks and networking sessions, each of which I used as nap time. Though I had just started, there was something about architecture that bothered me. Rather than solving any problems, I felt like I was adding to existing problems. My sophomore year I decided to give a go at Urban Studies and Planning as a double major. While I liked the idea of it, I couldn't bring myself to attend a single class. The following year I attempted a double major with Mechanical Engineering, but dropped it a year later because classical mechanics was hard and felt too real. I wanted to be in a field that didn't always require physical solutions.I was a walking existential crisis and my indecision kept me stuck with Architecture, though I chose the Computation stream which let me take advantage of MIT's computer science classes (including User Interface Design & Implementation). I seriously considered pursuing a career as a computer graphics engineer or animator. I spent a winter building and animating a Unity game, took a Computer Graphics course, designed 3D experiences for exhibition spaces and web communities, and wrote my senior thesis on how lighting changed the perception of 2D and 3D space in video. I was obsessed with the idea of working at Disney or Pixar. My senior year I applied for an externship at the Walt Disney Animation Studios. I didn't get it but I was really really close, and that kept me motivated enough not quit and switch again. It was a good thing that I stuck with it because I was accepted for an internship at The Walt Disney Company in Japan via the MIT-Japan Program.From there I had a very fulfilling experience at the Disney Interactive Group in Tokyo where I worked as a Mobile Production intern. Somehow or other, the role gradually morphed into that of a design role. At the end of my internship, I approached the General Manager and asked for a referral to the Los Angeles team. Instead, I received a return offer as a UX Designer on the Creative team in Japan. I accepted the offer and moved to Japan to design very sparkly experiences for mobile products and services targeted to Japanese females aged 18-35. As the first UX designer in my group, I could tell my manager didn't know what to do with me. I had a lot of free time and I used it to read... a lot. One of the most inspiring and influential books I read was Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull.After living in Japan for a year I decided to move back to America mostly because I wanted a more exciting job, but also partially because I was homesick and have FOMO. After a month of traveling, a month home in LA, and then another month in San Francisco on my sister’s couch, I accepted an offer as a Product Designer at VenueNext where I designed their enterprise tools. While the work was interesting, I craved an environment where design had an established place in the product process.Leaving Venuenext after a year and a half, I joined Quora as a product designer in August 2017. Over the years, I had relied on Quora to motivate me as a designer and show me what it's like be on a design team. I am a strong proponent of the Quora mission and how design can help to further it, and I'm humbled and excited to be given the chance to contribute to this special community in my own way!

100,000 new people are getting out of poverty every single day. By the time you finish reading this answer 100 new Indian families would have climbed up to the middle class. That's why India is not revolting. They are busy climbing.The college where I studied my undergrad is in a poor region. Being a government funded institution it is primarily populated by students from abject poor conditions. Poverty you cannot imagine. [I once accidentally broke the plastic plate of my roommate and he was so sullen. I never knew a Rs.10 plastic plate for eating was unaffordable for a few. Still he refused to take my offer of buying him a new plate.] If not for the government, many of them would not be even able to buy a bicycle. Barely a few feet away from my window in the Comp Sci class, farmers would be tilling their dry lands with oxen.One of the roommates in hostel is among the poorest of the poor. His father was a coal miner and his remote rural hamlet didn't even have a pincode and house didn't have a number either. His father probably earned about Rs. 800 per month ($0.40/day). He didn't study English in school. And he comes from a discriminated caste.He never complained about all the injustices life did to him. Rather, he would spend all his nights studying. He was upbeat, positive and humble. Any time I saw him, it was with a book. Day after day, he would spend 20 hours studying. And he teamed up with a guy from a totally different ethnicity and equally discriminated. They both shared not a word in common and spoke completely unintelligible languages with no link language.​Outside my class. They are classmates of mine who have all drastically climbed the ladders of poverty and are now literally perched at the top.Not the exception, but the norm.By the end of his 4 years of study, he got hired into CDAC developing supercomputers earning 200x his father and grown into their Senior Technical staff. But, that is not the amazing part.The amazing part is that his story is the norm rather than an exception. Another classmate is the 8th son in a family of farmers in a remote village. None of his whole extended family went to high school. Today, he would rank in the top 20% bucket in the US in salaries. He makes in one year what his whole family of 20+ made in a whole lifetime. Let that sink in for a moment.I can tell you hundreds of stories from my LinkedIn network of such classmates who are building operating systems, search engines, databases, rockets and supercomputers. My own paternal grandfather came back as refugee from Burma joining a press as uneducated manual worker. Two generations ago, almost everyone in my large extended family was around poverty line. Now, none of the 200+ are. This is true of almost every urban middle class family in India - two generations ago we were all poor.Here is an even more inspiring story: Shuba Swaminathan's answer to How do I turn my life around as a teenager?And the kids of various maids (used to be called "servants") we had are all well qualified engineers who are traveling the world. The abjectly poor ball pickers in the tennis court are making big bucks here in the east coast and earning well above US average.Indian Americans are now the most educated & highest earners in the US.What is a revolution anyway?Revolution as popularly imagined is the adult version of throwing tantrum. Despite it being glorified by a lot of propaganda machines, it seldom leads to positive outcomes. Let's suppose you are writing a poem and you don't get ahead at all with your words. You will get angry at some point and tear apart the paper. That's what happens in a revolution - society is torn apart when people don't get ahead. On the other hand, if you have gotten your rythm and have finished the first stanza, you will be more motivated and will be less likely to tear apart the paper - even if you know that you have many more stanzas to finish.The revolutionaries with books in hand and marks in mindEach one of them is changing their whole community around them. The illiteracy in their whole extended family ends instantly as soon as one of them gets out of the vicious cycle of poverty.None of them talked of revolution or system change. None of them ever talked of violence. None of them took shortcuts of alcohol and drugs. None of them whine about their condition. They took positive steps. All of them are revolutionizing India.We are having millions of such new revolutionaries not with the trigger of a gun, but with the keypad and LCD screen. Yes, India's poor people are "revolting" and getting impatient. But, with a book in hand and grades in mind.Wealth is trickling faster than everMy college experience is a remarkably life changing experience for me, just for the sheer amount of changes I was seeing in my friend's families. That is what gives hope for me about India. Millions of Indians are climbing out of poverty every year. They are transforming whole communities and showing up in aggregate statistics.Last year, I was at Niagara on a chilly morning. I saw 3 busloads of school kids. I spoke with the kids and they turned out to be from the same city as I was in India. I am quite familiar with the school not too far from my Chennai home. These kids whose parents were poor not too long ago are now traveling the US for a 6th standard school trip!And it is not just engineers who are going rich. The wealth is trickling rapidly to the surrounding ecosystems. I will quickly recount the story of a dude in my area - Krishnankutty. He once accosted me at the neighboring temple and started randomly explaining his story. He was a tailor in a poor hamlet 30 km south of Chennai. In the 1980s, he got the urge to buy marginal lands in his region. A few in my family held plenty of lands there and they sold to him, apart from many others. He illustriously started merging them. It so happened that Chennai started building its tech parks in that region. He offered huge plots of contiguous land and he got super rich. He now owns in excess of $60 million (Rs. 350 crores) by helping the tech companies setup their sprawling offices. This erstwhile illiterate tailor now calls himself Dr. Krishnakutty by spreading some of his own wealth around. I see plenty of such real estate & manufacturing millionaires. Plenty of new jobs have been all around that region now.This story is not unique to Tamil Nadu but is happening all over India.Maharashtra: Benz makes history as Aurangabad gets 150 Mercedes cars at one goGujarat: Farmers' new mantra: Got cash, get car!A new person added to the middle class every secondThe dark spots below are where middle class is having a sizable growth and these are spread all over India although some parts like UP & Bihar could have more of these spots.Page on cgdev.orgIn the next 10 years, India's middle class is projected to grow to about 550 million from about 250 million now. India's middle class population to touch 267 million in 5 yrs That is an addition of 30 million (3 crore) people to the middle class every single year. In other words, we are pulling 1 lakh people out of poverty every single day. That is at a gargantuan scale that no country other than China has done in the whole history of the world. Open your eyes to the revolution, dammit.Of course, we have a long way to go and we can do way better than what we are doing: How can India become a developed nation? Where are we lagging now?Lot of clueless people whine and crib about India being poor. They say we are crawling. I know my one year kid cannot talk, walk or run. But, I know what it was 6 months ago. And with my own eyes I can see the transformation. And with this transformation, I can clearly see its future. And I'm so excited about this child. 20 years ago, we had no hope. Now, we are sending rockets [built by poor kids like my classmates] to Mars and creating a flurry of startups in the valley. We are creating new roads and new jobs.We are sending stuff to MARS at bottom basement prices.If you are going to complain about my kid and his development without knowing all he has been through, get out of my sight ASAP. Of course, a lot of India's enemies would want our poor to revolt & riot, hampering our growth. But, our poor are not going to take the bite. They are smarter and recognize that their way out is education. And that is why I'm so passionate about education - it is the key to India's future.Do I believe India is changing? Yes.Do I think India still has a lot more problems to solve? Yes.Do I believe we could do the development a lot better and faster? Yes.Do I have ideas and suggestions on how to do better? Yes. Head over here: India Dreams CollectionEpilogue.Last week, as I was leaving my parent's home in Chennai, I went to a small temple in a nearby slum. A very poor, old woman known to my parents was selling flowers outside the temple. I had a smalltalk with her and told her about my work. She was talking about her nephew who just got to Boston.Her future was just about to change. It welled my eyes. I profusely thanked the resident of that temple. India is in a state of revolution. India is changing right in front of my eyes.

As with all such questions, what it is like having a child who has any attribute varies with the child and the way that attribute manifests.Each child is unique. I am answering this as the parent of two children (1 boy, 1 girl) tested by experienced psychologists; and as counsel for 25 years to parents interested in improving the education of their children. Among the latter group (I estimate over the last 25 years), less than 1% were found to be highly gifted, and about 5-10% were found to be gifted. The difference between the two is a standard deviation apart (20 IQ points).Classic symptoms of giftedness which parents notice include:ceaseless questionsearly awareness of complex materialparents feeling they need to do more research on their own in order to answer the questionsdemands for materials or lessons that seem unusualdetailed, deep knowledge about subjects that interest them, along with demands for more materials and answers to more questions.a quality of alertness or awareness that makes a child seem more alert and awake and aware than one would expect.deep focus on subjects of interest.the feeling that it is exhausting trying to meet the needs of insatiable curiosity.anger and hostility when they don't understand something.So that I don't embarrass my own now adult children too much by invading their privacy I am going to describe a bunch of kids* who tested as gifted or highly gifted and will try to describe parental impacts;Katie was four years old and puzzled her parents because she didn't particularly like books. She loved going to the local mall's perfume counters, and enjoyed collecting samples of perfumes in little glass vials. She engaged and charmed the salespeople, asking about the 'notes' of each sample. She memorized whatever she was told, sniffed her collection of samples regularly at home, and by age 5 was an expert in everything including the ingredients in various perfumes.Then she became interested in sushi and did the same detailed analysis (source of fish, how it is caught, handled, prepared, cut, presented, served, and eaten).Then she did the same research and survey thing about blue jeans, including finding the best textile mills (Japan, which she said purchased Levi Strauss' 1940s denim looms handling the finest, strongest cotton denim thread), and selling blue jeans to customers who paid over $500 per pair aided by her expertise about cut, fit, design, and cloth quality.Josh* was a Wizard of Oz expert at the age of four. At the age of three, after watching UCTV or Bill Nye on PBS, he asked his bewildered parents what the difference was between a photon and an electron. He loved reading, taught himself to read, and consumed adult physics textbooks at the age of five. His mother phoned a local university's graduate school to find a physics tutor for him; nobody took the request seriously.She finally found a hungry graduate student with a newly minted MBA, who was creating a local start-up to solve computer problems. In exchange for room and board, this recently graduated MBA student agreed to provide 20 hours of childcare per week with the proviso that he teach the kid everything the kid wanted to know about computers. He was encouraged to take the kid along to every problem solving event at a client's place of work. This plan worked out well.Murray's sister had a tutor to improve her reading fluency and comprehension. At age two, Murray was furious that he didn't get a tutor for himself. His parents told him no, and said he was too young. He tantrummed and carried on, demanding to be taught to read. He loved books and stories and felt deprived not to have access to print as his big sister did. His parents relented. He learned to read at a second grade level in eight weeks, coming twice a week.Samantha was very angry and unable to focus. She was at the bottom of her second grade class and was diagnosed with dysgraphia and ADHD. Her behavior was intolerable for her parents. They could not handle her, and she was often rude and disrespectful. She didn't recognize her letters nor their phonemic sounds and refused to learn.Samantha was bored, lonely, and needed human connection. Connection was achieved by giving her a fountain pen and playing and drawing with it. Seeing the ink flow onto the paper she began drawing her thoughts and later, (with accompanying verbal instruction) copying letters from calligraphy charts.Soon her handwriting was beautiful. And she began demanding to know how each letter she wrote sounded alone and when combined with other letters. She taught herself to read using calligraphy, and in two years was at the top of her class in reading, history, and science. Her parents were surprised and had her tested. She is in an appropriately enriched academic setting, and is no longer angry.David* was driving his immigrant (and non English-speaking) parents crazy. In the fourth grade, he was angry and hanging out with the fifth grade kids known as the 'bad boys.' His parents and teacher wanted a tutor to intervene and come to school twice a week for an hour to teach him two hours weekly. He was angry and bored and hated reading. His reading was at a first grade level, four years below where he should be.His teacher was in charge of the public elementary school's GATE program. She said he was gifted but he couldn't be tested because he spoke an unusual language and was an English Language Learner. His parents and teacher didn't know how to handle him.It turns out his anger was the frustration of not being able to communicate or learn information due to language deficits so profound that he felt "stupid" -- and he internalized that label. He spoke in monosyllables and didn't seem to comprehend very much.In two years of tutoring him even during the summer vacation months (at his request!), he caught up to his class -- and then the third year he jumped way ahead of his class. His parents were hugely relieved and ecstatic.Today he is a medical resident, having graduated from a top tier medical school. He is on his way with a research goal of finding a cure for a disease which is now thought to be incurable.2017 March Edit: today he is Chief Resident in a prestigious hospital. His residency is almost over.2019 April Edit: he is now a neurologist.In each of the above instances, it felt overwhelming to parents who were trying to meet the needs of their gifted or highly gifted children. The parents were tired, sought solutions outside the box, and were presented with problems and issues which were hard to identify, expensive to solve, and time consuming and bewildering to implement. In each case the parent did whatever was necessary so their child would thrive.*all names are changed to protect privacy.