Public school kindergarten is cool.  I was a star.  That was my glory days.  Then off to St. Peter’s Catholic grade school for first grade.  St. Peter’s was an extremely traditional school at that time.  The nuns sat us down and made us quietly practice making our letters of the alphabet.  Wamp!  Out the window my gaze went and I checked out.  Now my problems with school attention were my own, but I think that parents should be willing to accept that very traditional schools do not work for some.  Some kids are more project oriented.  I remember one such wonderful project very well.  The teacher sat us down and had us draw a map of our neighborhood.  Most of the kids, as per instruction, just drew their immediate subdivision, with Jimmy’s house here and Sally’s house there.  I, on the other hand, was on it!   With all of my wandering and exploring, I was developing a reasonably accurate map of the entire city of Kirkwood complete with detailed diagram of the watersheds and drainage systems.  I was totally absorbed, working as quickly as I could while asking the teacher for additional sheets of paper and tape so I could keep adding on.  Despite my intense focus, I detected my teacher take notice of what I was doing.  She left the room and came back with another teacher.  They looked at my ballooning map and were clearly surprised.  They went off to a corner for a short little conference, came back, and told me I had to put the map away and start practicing drawing my letters of the alphabet.  It’s amazing how beautiful the trees are, swaying in the wind outside.