“The Common Core standards have been adopted in the majority of states, to our relief or disappointment, depending upon our understanding of the standards. My impression is that some of the negative reactions to Common Core have not so much to do with the standards themselves as with how they are interpreted or implemented.” – Michael Clay Thompson

“As we seek support for educating gifted students, we must accept the fact that our advocacy efforts have been largely unproductive. We need a persistent and convincing effort to change our environment. Our job is to get the decision-makers to want to help gifted students and then to provide them with a path to do that.” – James J. Gallagher

“Venn diagrams have become a staple of ‘analysis’ exercises. However, it is not the Venn diagram but the questions that accompany the Venn diagram that determine whether or not an exercise engages students in analysis. A lesson must have a goal beyond simply completing the diagram; the diagram must serve as a stepping stone to a new insight.” – Dr. Shelagh Gallagher

“I am sometimes asked, ‘What are we supposed to do with this? Just read?’ It is true: my curriculum is different, particularly in its philosophy of assessment. I think we must change the terms from what students can FIND to what they can THINK after careful reading.” – Michael Clay Thompson

“We must include the formal study of poetics as one of the core components of language arts. Using the sentences of great novelists as their models, students can begin to experiment with poetic devices, not only in their own poems but in their own prose sentences.” – Michael Clay Thompson

“For gifted children, the development of verbal talent is among the deepest joys and most critical preparations of life, but the talent will not develop on its own. If we provide access to books, enlightenment about grammar, and enthusiasm for words, then children will move forward into exciting experiences in language that will be catalysts for the development of verbal talent.” – Michael Clay Thompson

“The exciting thing is how far we are able to extend learning. None of the extra material included in Michael’s books is on the test. That is not why it is there. It is intended to expand our children’s horizons so that they can make themselves more knowledgeable about things that interest them and so that they can be better educated about the civilizations that produced their world.” – Dr. T.M. Kemnitz

“The primary pedagogic purpose of ‘Caesar’s English’ is to teach vocabulary—the academic vocabulary that children will need to succeed in education and in professional life. But the classical education editions have a wealth of additional content. They are everything we want textbooks to be.” – Dr. T.M. Kemnitz

“The ancient Greek and Roman civilizations provided the inspiration for the classical education editions of ‘Caesar’s English.’ There is a difference between good and great; we are determined to bring to you what is truly great, and we will use the best that humankind has created to fire the imaginations of children.” – Dr. T.M. Kemnitz

“A teacher told me, ‘I think everyone is gifted in their own way.’ It is only when giftedness is discussed that someone feels the need to make it a universal attribute; someone may not be gifted—everyone must be. But just as everyone is not tall, even in their own way, everyone is not gifted, even when we twist the idea by saying ‘in their own way.'” – Michael Clay Thompson

Michael Clay Thompson has won the prestigious Richard W. Riley Award for “superior services to the gifted community.” The award reflects the unique place that Michael’s language arts curriculum has come to have in gifted education.