The Secret Garden of Talents

Howard begins his journey upon the event of him being chosen last for his neighborhood soccer team. He longs to develop his sporty potential and strongly desires for his other talents to be respected and honored. His coach encourages him by offering a new way of thinking about developing his potential. As Howard ponders this on his way home, he encounters a mysterious withered garden that seems to be lifeless. Even though the garden appears to be frozen, Howard experiences an eerie feeling that life is still present. He senses the garden's potential.

Inspired by Howard's innate sensing and validation of the garden's potential, Fairy Gardner appears so that she might share the story of the history of this great garden with someone who is hopeful, open, and sensitive enough to believe in potential. Together Howard and Fairy Gardner go on a quest to discover the garden's characters and their unique learning talents. He also learns of the bullying-type character Prunehilda the Paralyzer and the paralyzing words and actions that she demonstrated to freeze and paralyze the talents that shut the garden down in the first place. Fairy Gardner shares the kind words and actions that spark new life within the garden, and Howard pledges to help nurture its growth as well as use his new understandings to nurture his own potential development.

This children's story uniquely parallels the main character's quest for understanding his own learning potential to a garden with personified characters representing learning qualities, types, and talents. Howard journeys through the secret garden's story of what makes it wither, dry, and freeze as well as the positive words, actions, and mind-sets that made it thrive and nurture its growth. Designed to help learners discover their own learning strength and preferences, this story also assists in suggesting the catalysts that spark and nurture growth in learning as well as negative strategies that tend to hinder the growth of learning potential. A mind map of this story is included to assist parents, educators, and leaders in their own quest to help learners become aware of metacognitive strategies and facilitating discussions about learning qualities and domains. This story is designed to entertain children's curiosity about their own learning as educational stakeholders continue to reimagine and weave the new learning threads of the future into the tapestry of making education meaningful in the future.