I remember starting out as a new teacher, full of ideas and enthusiasm, excited to guide students, and ready to solve problems. I wasn’t so naive as to think I’d get everything right, but I was still surprised to find myself in many situations feeling anything but prepared.
Many of these involved trying to understand why a seemingly bright student was struggling to show evidence of strengths in school. For example, one student had a strong vocabulary and ability to describe vivid, creative scenes, but he couldn’t get his ideas down on paper. Another had exceptional logical reasoning and problem-solving ability, but she struggled with basic math skills. Often I felt I was doing the right thing, but reflection has shown otherwise. The more I continue to learn about supporting twice-exceptional students, the more incredulous I am about the gaps in my early training.
Teachers of the gifted, and especially of 2e students, recognize that many teacher education programs do a huge disservice to the teachers they train and the students they will serve. Little attention is given to gifted or special education, let alone twice-exceptionality. Many teachers are at a loss when encountering students who appear to be exceptionally bright and capable but struggle to make adequate progress. Lack of knowledge, awareness, and training can leave teachers unable to meet their students’ needs, and many of these students suffer frustration and low self-concept throughout their school experiences.
Identification of twice-exceptional students is complex, but recognition can be the first step to understanding, which paves the way for more effective teaching. The National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) defines twice-exceptional students as “children who have characteristics of gifted students with the potential for high achievement and give evidence of one or more disabilities as defined by federal or state eligibility criteria” (Twice-Exceptional Students, n.d.). This definition serves as a starting point for understanding, but a more nuanced definition, such as the one that appears in
Twice-Exceptional: Supporting and Educating Bright and Creative Students with Learning Difficulties, offers a more complete picture:
Twice-exceptional individuals demonstrate exceptional levels of capacity, competence, commitment, or creativity in one or more domains coupled with one or more learning difficulties. This combination of exceptionalities results in a unique set of circumstances. Their exceptional potentialities may dominate, hiding their disability; their disability may dominate, hiding their exceptional potentialities; each may mask the other so that neither is recognized or addressed (Kaufman, 2018).
In building my own understanding of twice-exceptionality, I find myself reflecting on my teaching practice and many of the students who could have been better served — students who seem to fit the above definition. Included here are two who, in spite of my lack of understanding at the time and questionable instincts, managed some level of success.
Joseph is my favorite success story, and is the student whose achievements marked my first and most powerful lesson in the value of a strength-based approach with twice-exceptional students. His success almost didn’t happen due to my good-intentioned efforts to support his learning. Joseph was a kind, open, inquisitive, thoughtful, and hard-working student. He was more mature than his peers in many ways, and demonstrated high intelligence in conversations, but this did not translate into academic success. Joseph struggled to keep up academically, especially in reading and math, and didn’t seem able to retain new information.
He had been a student in my third-grade math class, and during his fourth-grade year, I was asked to coach a new competitive robotics team at my school. Joseph submitted an application and I decided that he would not make the team. Team practices would be time intensive — two hours after school on Thursdays and three hours on Saturdays — and participants would be required to complete intensive independent research. I knew that just getting through his usual workload was a challenge for Joseph. I thought it would be unfair to put him in a position where he would struggle with an increased demand on his time and energy, and I expected it would negatively impact his academic progress. It seemed allowing him to participate would be setting him up for failure.
[perfectpullquote align=”left” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]The common belief is that remediating deficits should take place before attention is given to what a student can do well or where their interests lie; however, this does a great disservice to students. Focusing on strengths and interests can lead to academic success, as well as an increase in confidence and higher self-concept.[/perfectpullquote]
When Joseph’s mother called to ask questions and get more information, I discouraged her from the idea of his participation. She held firm and asked me to reconsider. She advocated strongly for him based on his interest and told me how excited he was about the robotics team. She said if he made the team she would make sure he finished his assignments for the research project and didn’t fall behind on homework. Against (what I thought was) my better judgment, I reluctantly put him on the team, and, still convinced that the extra hours of practice and independent work would be too much, added a requirement to the team contract stating that students who fell behind on classwork would be put on probation and risked dismissal from the team. I’m embarrassed to admit to all of this now and can’t believe how short-sighted I was.
We had our first team practice, where students were tasked with assembling their robot kits, and it took me all of five minutes to realize how foolish I had been to consider excluding Joseph and to realize what an asset he would be to the team. Lego robotics entails assembling a robot from a basic kit, necessitating that students follow visual instructions to put together about 600 small pieces of plastic in just the right way. An error in any of the dozens of steps would prevent a functioning robot from being built. Joseph sped through his assembly with ease and had a working robot with basic instructions programmed before the majority of the team was halfway through. He then demonstrated his superior ability to visualize complex 3D shapes by troubleshooting and giving helpful suggestions to other students as they got stuck or their finished robots didn’t work. At one point, Joseph showed me how one tiny piece deep inside someone’s robot was positioned upside down and needed to be adjusted. We argued whether each end of the piece was different and if the way it was facing mattered (he was right, I was wrong), and then he showed his teammates how they could reposition that piece in a few steps without backtracking and redoing the entire robot over again.
Beyond his impressive robot-building skills, Joseph also demonstrated intelligence, emotional maturity, compassion, and problem-solving ability in team conflicts. During one particularly rough practice, where disagreements were becoming increasingly heated, he watched the growing tension for a minute, and then casually said, “Hey, Ms. Ashleigh, do you mind if I take care of this?” I had never had a student ask to solve what seemed like a behavior-management/conflict-resolution issue before, so I shrugged and told him to give it a try. Within minutes, everyone was calm, satisfied, and back on task. Through this experience, this child who in spite of his good nature had been seen mostly as a student unlikely to be successful, became a leader. Actually, he had the leadership skills in him all the time. What he got was a chance to show it.
Having Joseph on that robotics team was the best choice I could have made. It was a great year — the students had fun, learned a lot, and had successes to celebrate. The common belief is that remediating deficits should take place before attention is given to what a student can do well or where their interests lie; however, this does a great disservice to students. Focusing on strengths and interests can lead to academic success, as well as an increase in confidence and higher self-concept (Baum et al, 2017). The biggest success for Joseph, and the biggest lesson for me, was that sometimes a student has gifts and talents that no one has seen and deserve to be nurtured. Having the opportunity to demonstrate his talents made all the difference for Joseph. It changed the way his peers and teachers viewed him, and the way he viewed himself.
I’d love to say that after Joseph, I suddenly had it all figured out and never made another mistake with another 2e student. I did not have it all figured out, and I did make more mistakes, but each one was an opportunity to learn from exceptional students whose gifts didn’t fit the expected mold.
Mason was an imaginative and curious third-grade student. He was often the first student in the door in the morning, and I looked forward to our conversations as I prepped for the day. He was funny and a deep thinker, and he often said interesting things that stayed with me. Mason was also inattentive and experienced a great deal of social conflict, especially due to difficulty understanding personal space and controlling his body, and a tendency to make a lot of noise in the classroom. I loved Mason, but his constant movement and excessive noise often challenged my patience.
One day, as Mason was stomping up the stairs on an exhausting day, and as his steps echoed too loudly in my ears in the stairwell, I caught myself on the verge of a sharp reprimand. But without realizing or consciously deciding to do so, I suddenly found myself instead pausing and asking him, in as friendly and casual a tone as I could muster,
“Why do you like to stomp your feet on the stairs?” He didn’t have to think about it; he knew exactly why. He smiled a smile that I can best describe as blissful, and said, “It’s like a massage for my feet!”
[perfectpullquote align=”right” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]A teacher should never, under any circumstances, hold hostage an interest-based activity in a strength area in the hopes of motivating a student to succeed in an area of struggle.[/perfectpullquote]
I suddenly understood Mason. The problem wasn’t with Mason’s active body, but rather that Mason’s environment did not meet his needs. This was a boy who craved sensory feedback. All the months of fruitless redirection and frustration on both our parts, and all it took was to pause and ask
why? Mason and I were able to work out a plan for a texture board under his desk and to expand his flexible seating options. We experimented with different textures and materials until we found one that satisfied him (reversible sequin fabric, the kind that when you rub it, the sequins flip and the color changes). Always deferring to Mason’s feedback and preferences so he could feel a sense of ownership, we played around with the best place to put it under his desk, the right distance from the edge, the right orientation, and we experimented with different tools and options. Mason continued to encounter some struggles, but the texture board, expanded options, and ownership of the process of discovery made a big difference for him. Having a better understanding of his needs and the motivations behind his actions put me in a position to better support him.
I love these stories because these successes had nothing to do with any insight on my part or conscious effort to put best practices in place. I had been so completely wrong, and had the opportunity to learn just how ridiculously wrong I had been. I love these lessons because in these stories, I am the fool.
It was only through reflecting on the mistakes I made with my twice-exceptional students that I became equipped with strategies to support them. But had I had training in 2e early in my career, I would have known that a teacher should never, under any circumstances, hold hostage an interest-based activity in a strength area in the hopes of motivating a student to succeed in an area of struggle. In addition, an awareness and deeper understanding of 2e students from the outset could have prevented me from drawing inaccurate conclusions about students with sensory issues.
By listening to a mother advocate for a chance for her son to pursue an interest and then seeing him for what he can do; by listening to a child express in his own words what he gains from his actions and behaviors; and by reflecting on the mistakes you will inevitably make, you can uncover strengths and see children grow in productive, positive, meaningful ways. With reflection, my accidental successes have developed into purposeful successes with 2e students.
Postscript: Joseph’s mother keeps in touch. He is now in 11th grade and doing very well. Though he didn’t continue with robotics, he did get into music soon after that experience. He showed tremendous talent there as well — he has been playing guitar professionally for a number of years and is planning to study music in college. He still has challenges and benefits from support for academics, but he is a confident, successful young man, and his teachers and peers view him as a bright, talented, exceptional student. Joseph’s mother loves that story as much as I do, but she gives me far too much credit for the outcome. Most of the credit goes to her tireless advocacy, and to her son, who made himself seen when the opportunity arose. I will give myself credit for one thing: I was able to listen. I listened to the parent, I listened to the student, and I allowed my decisions to be shaped by reflecting on what I heard.
References
Baum, S., Schader, R. & Owen, S. (2017). To Be Gifted and Learning Disabled: Strength-Based Strategies for Helping Twice-Exceptional Students With LD, ADHD, ASD, and More. Prufrock Press INC. Texas.
Kaufman, S. B. (2018).
Twice exceptional: Supporting and educating bright and creative students with learning difficulties. Oxford University Press.
Twice-Exceptional Students. (n.d.). Retrieved June 28, 2020, from https://www.nagc.org/resources-publications/resources-parents/twice-exceptional-students
