Getting Started

I have never written a blog before, so I am not sure how this project will go, but I am passionate about teaching English, and so I am not worried about coming up with content. As I see interesting research or encounter a difficult student problem, I hope to share my thoughts here.

Recently I have been reading books on twice exceptional children - that is, gifted kids who have learning disabilities. I was surprised to find out that one-sixth of the gifted population have learning disabilities"Uniquely Gifted: Identifying and Meeting the Needs of the Twice-Exceptional Student" Edited by Kiesa Kay.

We tend to think of gifted kids as being globally advanced, but many of them have weaknesses that prevent them from performing at their intellectual potentials. A fine motor weakness can make a writing assignment so frustrating they can break down into tears. A visual perceptual weakness can render it impossible for a bright student to interpret the data in a graph accurately or understand the quantitative relationships of numbers. Uniquely Gifted shows many case studies as well as details up-to-date research on twice exceptional issues.

Kids who are 2e are so smart that they can compensate in school to the point that they appear to be performing at an age-appropriate level, but their fluid intelligence might be working at a level many years beyond their peers. The emotional toll that their disabilities have on them, however, can be seen in their apathy, their anger, their depression. These are not easy kids to have in your classroom.

These kids are under served in schools that fail to appropriately engage their early abstract reasoning abilities in their delivery of graded, piecemeal information, or hold their amazing memories hostage with pedantic repetition . Early identification of these kids is vital to providing interventions that address their emotional needs and their unique learning styles.