In recent weeks I’ve had a surge of “twice exceptional” (2e) students, a relatively new addition to the education lexicon. These kids are living contradictions: gifted yet disabled. Teaching them not only presents special challenges but also confronts our notions of traditional education.
Gifted, according to The Elementary and Secondary Education Act, are “students, children, or youth who give evidence of high achievement capability in areas such as intellectual, creative, artistic, or leadership capacity, or in specific academic fields, and who need services and activities not ordinarily provided by the school in order to fully develop those capabilities.”
Their gift is the first e in twice exceptional.
Learning disabilities, according to the Learning Disabilities Association of America, is an umbrella term for neurologically based disorders that “may manifest as difficulty: (1) processing information by visual and auditory means… (2) prioritizing, organizing, doing mathematics, and following instructions, (3) storing or retrieving information from short- or long-term memory, (4) using spoken language, and (5) clumsiness or difficulty with handwriting.”
Their affliction is the student’s second exceptional quality – the two in 2e.
Whether it’s dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, ADD, ADHD, autism, brain injury, or aphasia, 2e students suffer neurological conditions that offset their giftedness and hinder them from reaching their potential.
“Reaching potential” is a key phrase, because “grade level” is too low a bar for twice-exceptional learners. Though all students have special talents, 2e pupils are not just really smart. These are kids who rank in the 99th percentile of intelligence and aptitude tests, hall-of-fame minds among their peers.
They need to be challenged intellectually yet coddled emotionally. What does this look like in real life?
It could be a boy who can solve a long division problem easily in his head but struggles to show his work on paper. Or a girl who can dictate a well-structured, well-argued essay, yet can’t write a grammatically correct simple sentence.
It might be a fifth-grader who reads at the 12-grade level but can’t consistently spell animal. Or a second-grader with fifth-grade math skills who can’t ride a bicycle or keep friends.
The development of 2e kids is uneven, or asynchronous. Intellectual growth outpaces emotional and physical growth.
The Teacher’s College of Columbia University defines giftedness as “asynchronous development in which advanced cognitive abilities and heightened intensity combine to create inner experiences and awareness that are qualitatively different from the norm.
“This asynchrony increases with higher intellectual capacity,” the College notes. “The uniqueness of the gifted renders them particularly vulnerable, and requires modifications in parenting, teaching, and counseling in order for them to develop optimally.”
Which type(s) of modifications differ from student to student. Many need ambient adjustments – softer lighting, noise-canceling headphones, fidget tools, etc. Most need reduced workloads (quality over quantity). Almost all benefit from scribes and technological assistance.
But often twice-exceptional kids need even more. They need adults who can help them organize their thoughts, model expected behavior, help and reassure them during the course of the day. They need alternate ways of demonstrating mastery. And above all, they need educators who engage and celebrate their giftedness.
Twice-exceptional learners typically struggle with transitions – between home and school, between classes, during recess and lunch. Something as innocuous as a small change in class schedule can be enormously upsetting.
As tutors, teachers, and administrators, our challenge is to embrace these students and find a way to help each reach his or her immense potential.
How?
A good starting point to learn about 2e kids is “Boost: 12 Effective Ways to Lift Up Our Twice-Exceptional Children.” This 96-page guide gives a succinct overview from a former Elementary teacher – Kelly Hirt – who learned on the fly after discovering her own son was a 2e learner.
Hirt tells the story of being summoned to school concerning an owl her first-grade son had drawn in class. The teacher was frustrated because the lad had completed his drawing in 10 minutes. It was identical to the owls other students had drawn in 40 minutes by following the teacher’s step-by-step instructions.
Rather than praising the boys’ ingenuity, the teacher shamed him for finding a quicker path.
It began to dawn on Hirt that public schools couldn’t provide the type of learning her son needed. So she began homeschooling him.
She also started a blog, My TwiceBakedPotato.com, for parents of other 2e kids to virtually meet and chat.
More horror stories have emerged. A student sent to the principal for trying to show his math teacher a quicker way to solve a problem. A kindergartner reading at the sixth-grade level who cries daily because she’s forced to sit through lessons about identifying letters and sounds. A 6-year-old gifted in science called “spoiled” and “lazy” because he hates to write.
The list goes on, unfortunately.
Hirts’ first Boost strategy is Educate, and that’s probably where most teachers are at the moment. I sure am.
One thing, though, is already clear. Teaching twice-exceptional kids demands recalibrating conventional strategies.
While there are some general accommodations that work well with most 2e students, there is no cookie-cutter template for teaching any given twice-exceptional child.
There is an old saw in the 2e community, Hirt relates: “If you’ve met one 2e kid, you’ve met one 2e kid.”
I’ve recently had the privilege of meeting several, Check back for updates on how it’s going.
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