Gifted 7th-Graders Pop Biggest Questions to Big People

A 13-year-old kid sitting in a junior high school classroom has heard lots of advice. Parents give it away free; teachers are doing their job.

To a 13-year-old, it all tends to sound alike--blah, blah, blah boring. Be a good kid, stay out of trouble, finish your homework and clean up your room .

Yeah, right.

Donna Judd, a teacher of gifted seventh-graders at Fullerton’s Ladera Vista Junior High, thought up a new approach. No cramming anything down a kid’s throat. She sparked her students to hunger for advice, the good kind, from people they respect.

The kids wrote more than 100 letters to successful people of their choosing--in sports, politics, business, the arts and you name it--asking for advice about life’s big questions. Most of the big shots--some well known, others not--responded in turn.

The students also enclosed a brief questionnaire with the title: “A successful person’s advice to a 13-year-old.” Later they filled out the same questionnaire themselves--as if they, too, were at the pinnacle of a successful life.

Hanh Huynh, for example, wrote at the imaginary age of 43 that she was a scientist. The advice she would give to a 13-year-old?

” . . . Always remember that life can be unfair but don’t let that stop you from what you want to do. Never give up, always keep trying, have patience, and above all else, think with your head, but always follow your heart.”

Mark Osborn, projecting ahead to the age of 25, said he was a cop and offered this anecdote about a time when he didn’t follow his own advice:

“I was helping cover a house that was overtaken by some gang members. The captain told me and a few other guys to go in. Well, we did. When we got in we split up. I went upstairs into a big room. I heard some rustling in another room.

“I told myself that I should go get some reinforcement, but then I thought, ‘Forget it, I’ll go in.’ So I did and I ended up getting shot in the arm, leg, chest and got grazed by a bullet in the head. But before that I got one guy in the thumb. I look back and think, ‘What a dumb risk, I could have gotten killed. And all I did was get a guy in the thumb.’ ”

Donna Judd called the exercise Project Success, but I say it’s gone way beyond that. It has helped students understand what success is all about, what it means to others and how to attain it.

And it was fun.

“Dear Isaac Asimov,” Lian Jue wrote to the famous science fiction writer in a letter embellished with her original drawings.

“Science is my favorite subject. Sometimes I feel kind of embarrassed because I have all these Einstein posters stuck up in my room and all my other friends have George Michael.”

Kyle Mason wrote Los Angeles Lakers guard Byron Scott, telling him that he was the best shooter in the NBA with the best form he has ever seen.

“I don’t just admire you for what you do on the court but also for what you do off the court,” Kyle wrote. “I would also like to know the name of your favorite charity. . . . I would like to donate some of my allowance money to it. My parents said that whatever I give, they will match that amount. When I become a famous basketball player I will also donate money to help people. I’d like to get a head start on that now.”

Scott wrote Kyle back to tell him that his greatest professional achievement was winning the NBA championship in 1985. On a personal level, the honor stems from the birth of his daughter.

“You can become anything that you want to be,” Scott said. “But always remember to treat people the same way that you want to be treated and your life will be a success.”

Among the prominent people who wrote the students--far too many for a complete list here--were author Ray Bradbury, former Speaker of the House Jim Wright, wheelchair tennis champion Brad Parks of San Clemente, vertebrate paleontologist James Jensen (a k a Dinosaur Jim), Nancy Reagan, Michael S. Dukakis, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles creator Peter Laird, popcorn mogul Orville Redenbacher, CEO Carl Karcher of Carl’s Jr. and former president of Cal State Fullerton Jewel Plummer Cobb.

Abigail Van Buren, better known as Dear Abby, wrote student Gina Dolbee exhorting her to “read . . . read, read! . . . Everything I am. . . . I have learned through reading.”

As to what success meant to her, Abby wrote: “No one said it better than Robert Louis Stevenson: ‘If a man loves the labor of his trade, apart from any question of success or fame, the gods have called him.’ The same can be said of women--and I can truthfully say, the gods have called me.”

Sportswriter Frank Deford, editor of The National, said his greatest personal achievement was “writing a book about my daughter who died of cystic fibrosis--it helped the cause.”

Wrote swimmer Janet Evans, a three-time Olympic gold medalist: “I realized the value of the advice I had been given about being your best when I got home from the Olympics and received numerous letters from other swimmers telling me that they had improved on their times because they had worked hard just as I had said.

“It made me feel good to be able to help some other athletes reach their dreams.”

And ballerina Ashley Tuttle, the youngest dancer to join the American Ballet Theater, wrote this to aspiring ballerina Amy Klockgether: “Believe in yourself and that you are special, even when you don’t feel that way or when you feel you have been beaten, that is the time to work that much harder.

“Set very high goals and never lose sight of them. If you really want something enough, you will achieve it.”

The kids in Donna Judd’s class at Ladera Vista have gotten that message. And then some.

Dianne Klein’s column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Klein by writing to her at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7406.