Five days after his birthday last year, Dr. King’s dream came true. On January 20, 2009 Barack Obama was inaugurated as the President of the United States of America– the first African-American in office. Over this past year President Barack Obama has received the Nobel Peace Prize in honor of his determination to have peace in Iraq. With President Barack Obama, Dr. King’s dream is very well alive!

by Javion R., 8th Grade
Managing Photo Editor / THE LION LEDGER

His parents were not aware of this.

“He’s doing what on Facebook?” asked Jonathan Woodlief’s father when a McClatchy Newspapers reporter called their home near Raleigh, N.C., on Tuesday night.

Then David Woodlief and his wife, Claire, got Jonathan, 14, out of bed. He came downstairs and explained just how he happened to become the leader of one of the fastest-growing viral movements online. The group was booming by more than 100 new members a minute on Wednesday.

Adding a twist, Jonathan just happens to be a dead-ringer for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, another social media whiz kid, who is only 11 years older than Jonathan.
Jonathan is the administrator of the Facebook group CHANGE FACEBOOK BACK TO NORMAL!!, which has exploded over the past six days in response to unpopular changes the site made to its News Feed feature. The feed now shows only those friends Facebook deems “important” to you.

Maybe innocence helps a cause. Jonathan added a note to the side of the group page that reads:

“Lets try and get 10,000,000 people to join! ”

Jonathan did not start the group, but joined it a day after it was started because he dislikes the changes. Poking around on the page, he noticed that the group had no administrator, the person who configures the page, allows posts, and makes rules for the group.

Believing in the cause _ and perhaps sensing an opportunity _ “I clicked a button to make myself the admin, and that was it,” he says.

Since then he has been inundated with messages and friend requests from around the world.

“We had no idea,” David Woodlief said after the situation became more clear. “He’s a smart kid.”

___
© 2009, The Charlotte Observer (Charlotte, NC)
Visit The Charlotte Observer online at: www.charlotte.com
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

by Jeff Elder
McClatchy Newspapers / (MCT)

MCT is a joint venture of McClatchy and the Tribune Co.

LEXINGTON, KY– Two professors of medicine at the University of Kentucky looked out an office window into an open courtyard two years ago to see a student staring straight up, transfixed by something.

It was the hectic break between classes and students were flying past her, but this student didn’t move a muscle, didn’t shift her backpack, didn’t breathe. The more they watched her, the more concerned they became.

Then, Dr. Darrell Jennings recognized the university student who was captivated by the tangle of butterflies just above her head. It was Kelsey.

Everything made sense then.

What 11-year-old girl can turn away from the unbidden gift of the flash of a dozen pairs of brightly colored wings?

On Saturday, three months after her 14th birthday, Kelsey Curd Ladt graduated summa cum laude from the University of Kentucky with a degree in biology with honors.

The first time she stepped onto the campus was six years ago, when she was shown around the university’s Hospital and its research labs after expressing an interest in medical research, specifically focusing on the brain.

She was just 8 then and had already completed elementary school.

By the time other students Kelsey’s age had completed fifth grade, she was graduating valedictorian of her high school class in Paducah, Ky., and simultaneously getting her associate’s degree from West Kentucky Community and Technical College. Everybody at the university had said she was welcome there even though she was 11 and, with braces and pigtails, looked it.

This was no ordinary child. Yet, she was.

The first time she met her biology professor and mentor Felix Akojoe at the community college, she had just climbed a tree on campus. He did not ask that she come down for a proper introduction.

She has done cartwheels on the lawn of the University of Kentucky’s William T. Young Library. (And in the process got others interested. They, unfortunately, lost their car keys in the doing, and she had to help look for them in the big grassy field next to the library.)

She has been in biology labs where latex gloves could not be found in sizes small enough to fit her.

All along the way in her so-far extraordinary educational journey, she has been required to meet every intellectual expectation of her academic peers and she has done so with aplomb.

But she has always been allowed to have the joy and spirit to be a child among them.
“It was the unexpected bonus of Kelsey,” says Jennings, at the University of Kentucky’s College of Medicine. “We have gained so much from having her. It has enriched us.”

ACCOMMODATING HER ‘SPECIAL NEED’

The only concession ever made for Kelsey’s age while on campus was a small one.
Early on, her advisers decided she needed a smaller peer group to work with. At the university, there’s a group of students who are in an accelerated course of study for 18-year-olds who are certain they want to be doctors. Thus committed, they get through college and medical school in seven years, instead of eight. The group meets at 5 p.m. Fridays.

During the winter, the group finishes up after dark. Pretty soon, it was clear to Jennings and others that they couldn’t “turn Kelsey loose in the middle of the medical center campus” at night before her mother came to pick her up. So they arranged for people to take turns waiting with her.

“We would do the same for someone deaf or blind,” Jennings said. “We would expect them to live up to our academic standards but we would help accommodate their special needs.”

This was her special need: She could chew you up and spit you out in Calculus III but not necessarily otherwise until she got a little older.

IN A ‘TWILIGHT’ ZONE

Today, Kelsey and her parents are leaving Lexington to settle into new surroundings in Bethesda, Md., so Kelsey can start a year of research at the prestigious National Institutes of Health. From there she will apply to programs across the country that combine medical and doctoral degrees in a seven-year course of study. She will begin in spring 2010.

Her heart’s desire is to be a researcher and a clinician, to solve the problem of sickness and to cure the individual, to touch them in the doing.

Last summer, when Kelsey was just 13, she spent her days at the NIH in an internship program that had her using transcranial magnetic stimulation in neurological research aimed at understanding what influences our decisions.

At night–at least one night–she found herself third in line at a Bethesda Barnes & Noble with what seemed like every other teenage girl in Maryland waiting for the midnight release of “Breaking Dawn,” the third volume of the teenage heart-throb vampire saga “Twilight.” Kelsey had to know if Bella Swan was going to marry Edward or Jacob. She was, she says, “on Team Edward.”

She read the book quickly between soccer games and basketball and church group and softball, things her mother couldn’t help but sign her up for the minute she hit town.

“Her parents put a special focus on her socialization,” says Kelsey’s longtime mentor, Joy Navan, director for gifted studies at Murray State University. “They enrolled her in every sport. She had sleepovers, lots of friends her age. They wanted her to be seen for who she was and not for what she could do in the classroom.”

Kelsey wears flip-flops with peace signs on them. She won’t let anyone photograph her room. She likes the rock band Panic at the Disco.

Navan explains that close tabs have been kept on Kelsey since she was 5 to make sure she was neither stressed nor hurried in her intellectual development.

Still, to her mother, there is this: “Kelsey’s greatest gift is her heart, not her mind,” she says. “She has always been full of compassion and empathy toward others. Not only has she raised funds for charitable organizations since she was 8, she meets individual needs as they arise, sometimes anonymously, sometimes directly.

“As an example, this past summer, we made the mistake of visiting a popular hamburger restaurant in Bethesda the day it had a big write-up in The Washington Post. It was so hot, and we were so hungry. After waiting an hour and a half in line, Kelsey took all of her food to a man who was looking in the trash for food.”

It is part of the Ladts’ core belief: Kelsey must be a good steward of her extraordinary intellectual gift. To hear all those around her tell, she is the one least impressed by it.

RECOGNIZING HER POTENTIAL

Vickie Ladt agrees that all parents think their kids are gifted. Still, when she and her husband, Ric, had to hire someone to play school with their 2-year-old daughter–to teach her Spanish and sign language because the usual stuff you do with toddlers wasn’t all that fascinating to Kelsey–they didn’t think too much about it.

“Our frame of reference was Kelsey,” Vickie Ladt says.

So they bought workbooks for preschoolers and took her to two preschools–one in the morning, one in the afternoon–to keep her engaged.

In kindergarten, the school allowed Kelsey to get a library card and let her give herself comprehension tests on the books she read while the other kids in the class were putting “L’s” on their left hands and “R’s” on their rights.

When Kelsey was doing third-grade math before most kids had counted to 100, it was time to get the child’s IQ tested, they were told.

First, they went to Murray State’s Navan, who performed IQ and grade-placement tests on Kelsey. Further testing was done by Linda Silverman at the Gifted Development Center in Denver.

Both experts soon sat down with the Ladts and, in effect, said, “You need to get her into college as soon as possible.”

“We were the proverbial deer caught in headlights,” says Ric Ladt. “Where do we start?”

Everything that happened next was just plain godsend. The McCracken County, Ky., school district, with its 27,000 students, reevaluated Kelsey’s educational program and moved mountains to make it work. Teachers taught her everything they could in a grade until they were out of curricula. If a community policy had to be changed, the community changed it.

She was home-schooled during the middle school curricula by mutual agreement of the school and the Ladts, for Kelsey’s security and well-being. The process was anything but expected, anything but parent-driven.

“Unfortunately, it was faith,” says Vickie Ladt. “We didn’t want her leaving the nest early. She’d come home from school and say, ‘I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to skip a grade.’ Or, ‘I’m afraid you’re going to have to home-school me.’ Kelsey was happiest with her academic peers,” says her mother. “With our fingers crossed and a lot of prayers, we’ve held on.”

They have done more than that. Ric Ladt has gone on to be president of the National Association for Gifted Children and is on Kentucky’s Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence, in hopes of improving education for all the state’s children.

When she was accepted into the University of Kentucky, they made the difficult but necessary choice to live apart four days of the week. Ric Ladt stays in Paducah, where he is president and CEO of PEBCO, a powder and bulk solids equipment handling company. He drives to Lexington on Thursday nights and stays through Sunday.
Vickie Ladt has her own human resources consultancy and can work from anywhere.

“I would, like any parent, like the opportunity to be with my family all the time,” says Ric Ladt, with tears in his eyes. “But Kelsey has given up a lot, being with her friends and family. If she’s willing to do it, I can do my part.”

FEWER THAN 1 IN 6 MILLION

Kelsey’s parents prefer that she be called “profoundly gifted.” But just how gifted is she?

Murray State’s Navan explains that estimates are imprecise, but the likelihood of having Kelsey’s brain power is something less than 1 in 6 million. Kelsey’s “rage to know,” he says, and the help she has received that accelerated her learning have only amped her potential.

Kelsey also has a very clear goal of who she wants to be and what she wants to accomplish. Jennings, of UK’s medical school, explained that Kelsey’s greatest advantage might be that she will be finished with her formal training–with a medical degree and a Ph.D.–when she has just turned 22, a time when most students are only starting medical school.

“Not to put pressure on Kelsey, but historically most major conceptual revolutions in science have been conceived by those with profound insights when scientists were in their 20s.”

He gave the examples of Einstein’s theory of general relativity, Marie Curie’s work with radioactivity and James D. Watson’s discovery of DNA. The question seems to be “are we expending the most creative year of researchers’ lives in training? If so, Kelsey may get to skirt that.”

UNDERSTANDING IT ALL

Asked to talk about how her brain works, Kelsey, always polite and yet luminous, demurs. “I just think of myself as just a little faster processor,” she says. “Otherwise, I’m a typical teenager.”

One who has, at last, found her intellectual level and is working at it. She must study, she insists now. And yet, there is this: “If there is something I see that I don’t know, I want to understand it.”

Like film, for example. So she took a film class at the community college and can talk about symbolism in film noir now. Like scuba. She was 11 and had to wait until she was 12, legal age, to learn. Like what free radical attacks proteins in the cell membrane that is preventing cell regeneration in spinal cord injuries.

She is working with Dr. Joe Springer and others in his lab on this and is writing a paper with his help on the topic.

Or like butterflies. She continues to study them. Every chance she gets.

___

© 2009, Lexington Herald-Leader (Lexington, KY)
Visit the Herald-Leader website at: www.kentucky.com
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

by Amy Wilson
McClatchy Newspapers / (MCT)

MCT is a joint venture of McClatchy and the Tribune Co.

For this 12-year-old, the youngest student ever to attend FIU, college is a long-awaited challenge and a daily adventure.

“We have fun here,” he said as he prepared to start a work sheet on pistons, gases, and pressure with his lab partners.

Welcome to the world of Sky, who is taking a full course load of physics, calculus, and Chinese language classes at the university _ and still finds time to play pool and table tennis in the game room at the West Miami-Dade, Fla., campus.

A home-schooler who has a third-degree black belt in tae kwon do and is fluent in Korean, he is dual enrolled and officially finishing high school at the end of this semester.

When he starts classes in the fall as a full-fledged college student, he’ll have as many credits as a sophomore.

The Pembroke Pines, Fla., preteen, who is classified as “profoundly gifted,” started taking classes there when he was 10.

“I felt really, really small,” he said.

But Sky, whose given name is Sebastian Hanul Choi (his father is Korean, and his middle name means “Sky” in that language), says college is a good fit _ even though he has to rely on rides from adults to get to and from campus.

Middle school, he said, “would be painful. It just wouldn’t be any challenge.”

“He’s really happy,” said his mother, Dana Choi. “It’s made it so much easier because I know he’s being challenged, I know he has room to grow.”

EARLY INDICATIONS

She always knew her son wasn’t average.

When he was 3, he asked to leave a party so he could finish a math workbook.

Then there was the time he memorized the multiplication tables in one day.

When he was 4.

When he started fifth grade, Sky’s parents pulled him out of private school, where he had already skipped a couple of grades, and home-schooled him. He took classes online, used home-school curriculum, and went to Sunshine Learning Center in Margate, Fla., which caters to home-schoolers, for some high school-level classes.

“When you have an 8-year-old begging you to go to college, you wonder: How could that be?” his mother said.

And when Choi, an attorney with Miami’s Holland & Knight law firm, learned that Sky could pursue dual enrollment with a university in Miami-Dade even though the family lived in Broward, Fla., she met with a representative from FIU and handed in Sky’s test scores.

He took his first class _ Chinese language _ at 10. The next semester was Chinese and pre-calculus. He added more the following semester, and now he’s taking 14 credits. His GPA is 3.83.

Before Sky took an introductory physics seminar this semester, he e-mailed this to the professors: “It seems like I’ve been waiting a long time to finally get to study physics in depth. As you can imagine, it’s not easy to get the necessary math courses and high school science courses when your age is in the single digits.”

SENSE OF HUMOR

“That’s the one that stopped me,” said Caroline Simpson, associate professor in the department of physics.

Simpson said Sky introduced himself like this before giving one presentation in the course: “Hi, I’m Sky. I’m 12.”

“And the whole room just cracked up,” Simpson said. “That’s kind of his attitude. He doesn’t have any problem with it.”

His professors and classmates don’t appear to have any problem with it either.

“He’s actually pretty popular in our school,” said Alex Brieto, 20, one of Sky’s lab partners. “I mean, when have you seen a 12-year-old kid in college?”

George Walker is a theoretical physicist who serves as dean of the university’s graduate school and senior vice president for research development and graduate education.

He said he has seen many talented young scholars in his more than 50 years in the field.

“But I have not seen any that would exceed the promise and the interest that Sky has at this stage,” Walker said.

‘INSATIABLE NEED’

Students who are profoundly gifted are known to learn at a rapid pace and understand complex ideas at an early age. They fall in the 99.9th percentile or higher on standardized and IQ tests.

The Davidson Institute for Talent Development, which serves those youths, has 1,400 “Young Scholars” between the ages of 5 and 18 around the country, including Sky.

Although the institute doesn’t track the number of young teens or preteens in college, it estimates that approximately a quarter of the students in the Young Scholars program take college courses.

“They just have this insatiable need for constant mental stimulation,” said Jill Adrian, the institute’s director of family services. “Which can make it tricky as a parent and an educator of these students.”

‘COMFORTING’

Sky plans to graduate from FIU with a bachelor of science in physics and mathematics when he’s 17. In addition to the double major, he also plans to minor in astronomy. He could finish earlier, but his family isn’t in any rush for Sky to leave home for graduate school. He’s set on the California Institute of Technology.

For now, his college experience seems to be everything he was hoping for.

“It’s a comforting experience,” he said. “Almost like a routine. It feels like I know the place.”

After school, Sky trains and teaches at Team Taekwondo in Doral, Fla., which his father, Byung Sam Choi, owns and operates. On Thursdays, his mom takes him to Aventura, Fla., to play Go, a strategy board game.

CHARITY WORK

And he devotes about two weekends a month to a charity he started called The List Kids, which supports children who are refugees from Iraq. His mom represents refugees through The List Project to Resettle Iraqi Allies, which aids those who are endangered because they helped the United States.

“Here he is doing something that few others are doing and he’s doing it as a leader at such a young age,” said Kirk Johnson, founder of The List Project.

Sky’s age, and the difference between it and that of his fellow students at FIU, is not something that he dwells on.

“Doesn’t even cross my mind,” he said.

FITTING IN

That’s not uncommon for profoundly gifted students, said the Davidson Institute’s Adrian. Often, they get along better with “mental-age peers” than people their own age.

Back in the game room at FIU, Sky fit in like one of the gang when he joined a pool tournament with his lab partners and then squeezed in some table tennis before Calculus II.

Student Aleks Mihailitchenko, 25, met Sky in the tournament for the first time. He thought at first that the 12-year-old was there on a field trip, but was impressed when he found out Sky’s story.

“Maybe he’ll cure cancer or solve the energy dilemma,” Mihailitchenko said.

For now, Sky doesn’t know what he wants to do as a physicist. He just knows the job would answer a lot of questions.

“When you learn physics, you know what’s going on in the world,” he said. “I’m very curious about how everything works.”

___
© 2009, The Miami Herald.
Visit The Miami Herald Web edition at: www.herald.com
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

by Hannah Sampson
McClatchy Newspapers / MCT CAMPUS

[this story is made available to you from our partnership with the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) and McClatchy-Tribune Information Services, using their "MCT Campus" newswire service for school newspapers]

MCT is a joint venture of McClatchy and the Tribune Co.

The extra second is also known as a “leap second.” You’re probably thinking, haven’t you heard something like that before? Yes, it is similar to a leap year which is the extra day we add to February every four years. (2008 was a leap year).

So what can people do with just one extra second in their lives? You can read just one more word in your chapter book before going to sleep, maybe stay up later than usual for one more second. There are many possibilities.

Just kidding. You can’t really do much.

But we do know this. Everyone who celebrated 2009 at 12:00 midnight on January 1st celebrated too early. “5, 4, 3, 2, 1… Happy… oops, wait, okay, now! Happy New Year!!”

by Saba Kinfe, 5th grade
Editorial Assistant / THE LION LEDGER

Some people say that long ago, when Abraham planted a tree to remember God’s covenant, it stuck with us over the centuries. That’s a religious reason for the tradition.

A cultural reason would be when German settlers arrived in America, they brought their traditions with them which people followed. The tree gave them hope for a new start during the Winter because it was evergreen, and the other trees lost their leaves.

In Britain around the 1800s, the royal family put up Christmas trees in their home, because their family members in the past also had that tradition. The royal family was so popular that whatever they did, everyone else in Great Britain did also.

They say that a picture of the royal family with a Christmas tree in the background got reprinted in a magazine in the United States, and now even the Americans wanted Christmas trees in their homes too!

There are other stories on how Christmas trees became a holiday tradition, but too many to tell here. But one thing is for sure– you can’t have a Christmas without one!

After all… where would Santa put the presents, in the pantry? Happy Holidays!

SOURCE: Wikipedia entry– “Christmas Tree”

by: Zyhir Brown, 6th grade
Associate Editor / THE LION LEDGER

In Russia, they have Christmas in early January instead of December. Santa doesn’t visit, but instead it’s Babouschka, which means grandma. Like Santa, she delivers presents to kids.

In Germany December 6th is St. Nicholas Day. You may have heard of this before, where children put their shoes out and St. Nicholas brings them treats if they were nice, and twigs if they were naughty.

When we think of December we think of Winter and cold weather, and in some places even snow, but in Australia December is the middle of Summer!

Now we’ve all heard the story of the birth of Jesus and how Mary and Joseph had to ask around and look for a place to stay. Did you know that in Mexico they celebrate “Las Posadas” which is a recreation of the event? The celebration is nine days long!

In Iceland, Christmas is called Yule, but it’s not Christmas. They have a tree, give out presents and a big meal just like we do in America. If you’re wondering how Santa Claus gets out all the presents in one day, maybe “yule” need to move to Iceland.

They don’t have just one Santa Claus, but are you ready for this? 13 Santas. Wow!

As you can see there are so many different ways that people celebrate Christmas and they’re all great! The few examples given weren’t even half as much as there really is.

Your culture may have different traditions than others. However you celebrate it, in the end they all mean the same thing. For most, it is a time where everyone comes together as a family, and celebrates the birth of the baby Jesus.

SOURCE: “Christmas Celebrations of the World”

by Andrea Granera, 8th grade
Editor / THE LION LEDGER

If you watched the news a few days ago, you would have seen the video on the wildfires that were burning in Los Angeles last weekend. Now, what would you do if you were put in the same situations as the people who were in L.A.?

What would you do if you walked out of your house on a windy day and saw black smoke and a blazing fire just a few blocks away from your house? Would you scream? Would you run into your house and stay inside to hide?

PHOTO CAPTION: Imagine this same shot looking up into the Oakland Hills, taken last month, but 17 years ago… and instead? Heavy smoke and dark skies, with ashes falling down from above. (Looks kind of like L.A. too!). People living in Oakland and Berkeley faced a wildfire right in their front and back yards, and needed to escape fast!

Many people were put through this same type of situation on October 20, 1991.

A big fire spread around the northern hills of the Oakland area and southeastern Berkeley. It started around 10:30 a.m. and took up to three days to get the fire cooled down. The actual fires weren’t put out until the next morning.

If you were at St. Leo’s church on that Sunday, you would have been able to see and smell the smoke from the fire a “few” blocks away (not really, that’s why it’s in quotes) since our school is near the area where the fire was burning.

Sadly, the deadly fire killed up to 25 people, and injured 150. Over 3,000 homes were lost and about 1500 acres of land destroyed. Last month was the 17th anniversary of the disaster.

Almost every firefighter in Oakland and Berkeley showed up at the fire scene. It was so big that Alameda, San Francisco, and other cities around the Bay Area and even the state came to help fight the fire.

(Source: Wikipedia.org Entry- “Oakland Firestorm of 1991“)

Semhal G., 8th grade
Editor-in-Chief / THE LION LEDGER

We all know about the Democrats and the Republicans, but did you know there are four other political parties that were part of this year’s election? Who are they and why aren’t they noticed, and why aren’t they as popular as the other two?

Well, it turns out that the other parties don’t get support from corporate America. It’s a “two-party system” so unfortunately the other parties are not recognized as much, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t learn about them!

Some of these “third parties” include the Green Party, the Reform, and the Libertarian. These are just a couple of them, there are many more you can learn about.

Probably one of the only times that there has been a third party candidate who was well recognized was back in 1992. His name was Henry Ross Perot. Who??

This was pretty epic because normally all people hear about is the Democratic and Republican parties. Perot was in the Independent party. President Bush (our current president’s father) was the Republican and Governor Bill Clinton was the Democrat.

Governor Clinton won the election and was the President until the year 2000.

Take a look at these websites and learn more about these third parties! Who knows, maybe you might find that you like what they believe in, and when you’re old enough to vote, these other parties will be more recognized.
Check out these links! (The websites below were also sources/resources for this story).

“Elections the American Way: Party System”
http://rs6.loc.gov/learn/features/election/partysys.html

“The American Presidency Project: Political Party Platforms”
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/platforms.php

“Wikipedia.org Entry: 1992 Presidential Election”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Perot#1992_presidential_candidacy
by Andrea Granera, 8th grade
Editor / THE LION LEDGER

So, you think only adults read the newspaper? Wrong! (You’re reading this right now, aren’t you?). Here are some interesting facts from the Newspaper Association of America in regard to teens and newspapers. It is in condensed form, shortened from the original form.

FACTS

• Male teens are just barely bigger daily newspaper readers than females, 53 percent vs. 52 percent.

Full article by Mort Goldstrom at this link:
http://www.naa.org/Resources/Articles/Advertising-Tens-Teens.aspx

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