Excerpts from The Salad Bowl

Chew on This !
Thought Provoker

 Student Motivation as a Factor in Achievement

 Some students come to school ready and motivated to learn in school.  Others may not have had experience or have a world of other interests and disengage.  Often, knowing little details about our students can change our relationships with them for the better and enable us to reach some whom we think are unreachable.  Research from the Minority Student Achievement Network indicates that by tying in what students already know with what we want them to know and making our knowledge relevant to their reality, we can increase the successes of all of our students.

Check out our website for the famous dropouts - someone believed in them even though they may not have been good students.  Someone found a way to motivate them and tap into their gifts however annoying or unconventional those gifts may have been.

Our efforts to connect will make a difference.  Talents, special abilities and gifts are easily recognizable in some students.  For others it seems that we must dig very deep, but we can’t give up on them.  In the end it will be worth the effort to these kids and for our society to which they will contribute.

Famous Drop Outs

Thomas Edison - Self-made multimillionaire American inventor
Henry Ford – American engineer, industrialist and automotive pioneer
Philip Emeagwali - Supercomputer scientist; one of the pioneers of the Internet
Hiram Stevens - .American engineering inventor
Anton van Leeuwenhoek - Dutch microscope maker; considered to be the world's first microbiologist (he discovered  bacteria, blood cells, and sperm cells)
Isaac Merrit Singer - American inventor of the sewing machine and self-made multimillionaire (elementary school dropout)

Business

W. Clement Stone - Self-made multimillionaire (elementary school dropout; later attended high-school night courses and then some college)
Bill Bartman - Self-made billionaire American businessman
Kemmons Wilson - Self-made multimillionaire American businessman; founder of "Holiday Inn" hotels
Carl Lindner - Self-made billionaire American businessman
J.R. Simplot -.Self-made billionaire American agricultural businessman
Robert Maxwell - Self-made billionaire British publisher
Anne Beiler - Self-made multimillionaire American businesswoman; founder of "Auntie Anne's Pretzels"
Vidal Sassoon - .Self-made multimillionaire British businessman; founder of "Vidal Sassoon" hairstylingsalons, academies, and hair-care products; British author
Richard Branson - Self-made billionaire British businessman; founder of "Virgin Atlantic Airways," and"Virgin Records"
Walt Disney – Cartoonist, producer and self-made millionaire

Educators, Authors & Political Leaders

Arthur Ernest Morgan - Flood-control engineer; college president; author; appointed by President Roosevelt to be director of the TVA public works project; left high school after three years; later attended The University of Colorado for six weeks
Daniel Gilbert -Harvard University psychology professor (GED)
Walter L. Smith - Former president of Florida A & M University (GED) 
David Walter Nash - New Zealand Prime Minister 1957-1960

Challenge the genius within each child.
Sometimes we can see it and sometimes we can’t.

Directors, Actors, Artists, & Musicians

Ray Charles - Singer-pianist; Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee
Cher - Oscar-winning actress-singer
Maurice Chevalier - Oscar-winning actor-singer; French Legion of Honor inductee/Medal recipient
Pierce Brosnan - Actor
Ellen Burnstyn - Oscar-winning actress
Raymond Burr - Actor