Variations 2e Not all great minds think alike _No.1 Fall 2018

No. 1 Fall 2018

Not all great minds think alike

Discovering 2e everywhere

Educational Stories from Around the World From Parents to Champions | Individualizing for the Twice-Exceptional Learner My Story, My School | The Challenges of Identification | How to Create a 2e Movement

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BRIDGES 2e MEDIA

Variations2e - Not All Great Minds Think Alike is owned and published by Bridges 2e Media.

Publication and content copyright Bridges 2e Media 2018. All rights reserved.

CONTENTS 02 Letter from the Editor 03 Note from the Publisher 04 Discovering 2e around the World

PUBLISHER Carl Sabatino

MANAGING EDITOR Chris Wiebe ART DIRECTOR Heather Lembcke EDITORS Jon Baum Stuart Matranga

06 Australia Helping Teachers Reach 2e Students 10 Chile The Challenges of Identification

14 Spain The Making of Trisquel International

18 The Netherlands Transforming Teachers into 2e Specialists

20 Hawai’i Individualized Learning for the 2e Learner

24 New York What Kind of Curriculum Works with 2e Kids?

CONSULTANTS Patti Mangan Robin Schader

WEB PRODUCTION Jon Baum

SUBSCRIPTIONS Garrett Peabody memberships@2news.com 2enews.com

(818) 506-1091 All rights reserved

Photo by: Carl A. Sabatino

29 Bagatelles

32 Sea Cliff, New York: A 2e Village

36 Seeking 2e Support? The Cloud Reigns

38 2e Newsletter: Founders’ Dreams Come True 41 Book Reviews: Smart Books for Smart Kids 42 The Origins of a Field

48 Where Necessity Can Lead…

ABOUT THE COVER 2e is everywhere, even at a lifeguard station on Waikiki Beach. In addition to its scenic coastlines, Hawai’i is home to Assets School, which serves gifted students and students with dyslexia.

An article on Assets’ personalized learning program, Flex, can be found on page 20. For more information email info@assets-school.net

Letter from the Editor

Those who are fortunate enough to have twiceexceptional students in their lives are well acquainted with variations.

They are budding artists, scientists, engineers, creative writers, computer programmers, and scholars.

They are consumed by the world around them, learning everything there is to know about one thing, then leaving it behind to learn everything there is to know about another.

They take things apart and make improvements when they put them back together again. They write novels and treatises. They create precocious works of art that reveal a wisdom and intuition far exceeding their chronological age. They may be prolific in their area of gifts and flounder in areas outside their strengths. Their experiences and successes in classrooms often pale in comparison to their own imaginations and intellectual capacities. Though the passions and achievements of 2e students vary, what they share in common are challenges that can estrange them from a world unaware of their special needs and extraordinary potentials.

In the last decade there has been an explosion of research that explains variations in brain structures of human beings. In a 2014 paper, Jenny Gu and Ryota Kanai contend that brain architecture, which is linked to genetic and environmental factors, can account for variability in behaviors and cognitive ability, as well as mental and physical health. Gu and Kanai’s review of the literature shows that structural magnetic resonance imaging techniques have enabled modern neuroscientists to link a wide array of human behaviors to differences in brain morphology, grey matter, white matter, and other brain anatomy — differences that can impact factors as disparate as working memory, sensitivity to pain, political orientation, and moral values. With billions of brain cells communicating across trillions of synapses, it is no wonder that human beings have as many variations as they do.

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Our inaugural issue features articles about twiceexceptional educators and schools from around the world.

This issue also includes a piece written by Dr. Susan Baum, whose career in 2e education spans more than 40 years. Her article chronicles the history and origins of twice-exceptional education from early-1900s Europe to the present day (see page 42). Its sprawling and deeply informed portrayal of the field underscores the significance and importance of the 2e movement.

At its core, Variations2e is a celebration of twiceexceptional individuals, as well as the parents, educators, and other professionals who devote their lives to turning 2e students’ feelings of estrangement into confidence, efficacy, and self-realization. Coinciding with the release of Variations2e, we have also launched 2e News.com, the next generation of 2e: Twice-Exceptional Newsletter, which publishers Mark Bade and Linda Neumann started 15 years ago (see article on page 38).

We at Variations2e and 2eNews.com are grateful for this opportunity to continue Mark and Linda’s important work, carrying on a publication that means so much to the 2e community. We also are ever grateful to you, our readers and subscribers, for continuing to engage with us and one another to further the cause of 2e education.

Sincerely,

Chris Wiebe Managing Editor 2e News Advisory Board Ellen Rosen Susan G. Assouline Susan Baum Paul Beljan Dan Peters Kathi Kearney Deirdre Lovecky Marlo Payne Thurman Meredith Warshaw Kim Busi Linda Silverman

A Note from the Publisher

...a rose by any other name would smell as sweet Juliet’s memorable line from the second act of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet might be useful when thinking about 2e and other “names.” Shakespeare seems to suggest that the names of things do not really impact what they actually are unless we choose to make it so. A name is just a label to distinguish one thing from another. It has no intrinsic worth but that which we give it. Juliet reminds us that a name is just a name.

Twice-exceptional students go by many names: 2e, bright & quirky, neurodiverse, cognitively diverse, uniquely gifted, high ability & learning disabled, and many more. We choose the term that pleases our ear, tickles our fancy, or aligns best with our intellectual biases. But we do these extraordinary children a disservice when our need to define and label them eclipses our mission to educate them.

We know there are thousands of children around the world for whom standardized education simply misses the mark. We know even the most well-intentioned

research-based programs fall short, especially when superimposed over large populations without detailed consideration of neuro-cognitive complexities. And, most importantly, we know we share a passion to work in this critical educational space to help students discover their intrinsic worth, cultivate their gifts and talents, and create names for themselves.

As we engage one another in conversations online, in person, and in print, let’s celebrate the extraordinary Variations2e in people, practices, contexts, cultures, and names that comprise our diverse local and global educational communities.

Sincerely,

Carl A. Sabatino Publisher

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Discovering 2e around the world

2e is everywhere — from the East Coast of the United States to the coast of South America, from the island continent of Australia to the Netherlands on the southern edge of the North Sea. The articles in this section show the perspectives and achievements of forwardthinking educators and scholars whose work shares a singular mission: developing the talents, intellects, and potentials of twice-exceptional students. Their stories originate in a cathartic discovery of a unique population of learners with complex needs. For some, encountering a 2e student changed the course of their lives, even before the words “twice” and “exceptional” were paired in their vocabulary.

In one story, the parent of a 2e child reflects on her own formative years, discovering her own twice-exceptionality and opening a school to provide students with the learning opportunities and experiences that she never had. In another, the director of a teacher training institute recognized the need to equip educators with special skills to teach 2e students, bolstering her own program offerings in response. In these stories we often see the right article or the right book falling into the right hands at the right time. We also see serendipitous meetings between pioneers of 2e education and the teachers and parents who are searching for ways to provide experiences that support students’ needs while developing their talents and gifts.

Each story that follows is a testament to the importance of community and lifelong learning among educators. We deeply appreciate the willingness of these authors to share their stories with our passionate community of readers. In future editions, we expect to see more stories from remarkable people doing remarkable things around the world.

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The Golden Wattle National Flower of Australia

Australia: Helping teachers reach 2e students WORKING W IT H 2 e ST U D E NT S AT PE N RITH SE LE CT IVE HIGH S CHO O L

by Louise Holloway, with an introduction by Mark Long

Penrith Selective High School, located in the outer western suburbs of Sydney in New South Wales, is a diverse school comprised of 925 students from many cultures and socio-economic backgrounds. High schools in Australia cater to students from Years 7-12.

Selective high schools enroll gifted students and support their learning through strong curriculum and wellbeing strategies. Typically, to gain entrance into a Selective school, students take a number of skills-based exams and are accepted on merit only.

In January of this year, I had the privilege to visit 2e schools in the United States, meeting generous and 6

talented teachers, administrators, and scholars. The opportunity to discuss and share educational strategies is invaluable, especially within an international context. As the newly appointed principal at a school for highly gifted students, I was extremely interested in building upon the immense work we had done to redesign and differentiate our curriculum, develop strategies to promote wellbeing, and empower student voice.

Key to this work was understanding not only how to identify students at our school who might be twiceexceptional, but also how to build our staff’s instructional capacity to help students achieve their personal

bests. We wanted to make growth and flexibility our school ethos and part of our educational DNA.

As educators, we know that there is no silver bullet to initiate and sustain change. The senior leadership at Penrith talks regularly about how moving small levers each day is the best way to drive broader change.

This year, we have used a number of those levers to improve our collective understanding of 2e. For instance, we held our professional learning session in a movie-style format, complete with popcorn and chocolate. At “Penrith Goes to the Movies,” we screened Tom Ropelewski’s brilliant documentary,

2e: Twice Exceptional, which explores the challenges and successes of a group of 2e students in California. Our school’s developing capacity to support 2e students was further enhanced by the Suite of Tools, which the creators describe as connecting “the person in personalized learning.” These tools help teachers understand their students and develop strength-based and talentfocused opportunities. They also spur ongoing professional sharing across all the subject areas, increasing the expertise of the highly talented and committed staff at Penrith. Having had the opportunity to both lead and participate in professional learning activities, I found it critical that these new strategies could be applied by our staff, allowing for experimentation while focusing on practical examples.

My colleague Louise Holloway’s piece shows this process at work. ­ — Mark Long

A DYNAMIC GROUP OF

juniors in my science classes distinguished themselves a little differently than did average Penrith High School students. Standardized, skill-based diagnostics revealed little about their exceptionalities, learning styles, or cognitive capacities. To better serve these students, I used the Suite of Tools framework, comprised of questionnaires, inventories, and sketch pads that enabled me to better understand the students and plan for their success. This article details the profound impact of these tools.

In pre-testing, the students engaged in an activity called “Water Warriors,” a middle school design challenge that assesses students’ problem-solving and planning skills, as well as peer interactions and preferred learning styles. The students were a little underwhelmed. They appeared to be looking forward to getting into some real science. As Term 1 progressed, my colleague David Roach and I started

to feel like the lessons required more behavioral management than usual.

Students were not enamored with the assignments that usually drive the Year 7 chemistry curriculum.

After completing training with the Suite of Tools, I saw how new strategies could be implemented with this particular Year 7 group. Using the Quick Personality Indicator, I completed an assessment of the class that provided me with a framework for leveraging personality strengths for the benefit of learning. These categories are comprised of “People Persons,” who are students with a talent for human relations and interactions; “Creative Problem Solvers,” who are students who prefer to independently explore an idea and look for their own alternative methods to solve a problem; “Learned Experts,” who are students who have a talent for logic and expression, and prefer to conduct research before confronting a problem; and “Practical Managers,” who are students with a gift for organization and method.

Students were excited with their work, speaking with pride about their experiments, and taking ownership of their success.

I started to look for other opportunities to put these tools to work, adding the My LearningPrint inventory alongside the personality indicator over three class sessions to find out more about the students and create learning activities that would inspire them. I would use this information for a “Living World” learning module that began with a provocative video about the perils of plastic in the ocean.

Students were told they would have to create a response after watching the documentary. The aim was to engage the students and get them emotionally and/or viscerally engaged with the content. Students would learn about biological classification and ecology through the lens of the problem of plastic. At the end of the module, they would create their own response to the documentary, one that was scientifically informed and presented a scientific

I gave the students the opportunity to communicate their work in any “keepable” form to allow for different styles of learning and communication.

Given the dynamic students I had in my class, I was not surprised to discover that most of them were People Persons, Creative Problem Solvers, or a combination of the two. I started to structure their practical work as problem solving rather than skill acquisition. For each of the chemistrybased practical tasks, I created a context, quite often a little absurd, to attract the students’ attention.

I gave the students the opportunity to communicate their work in any “keepable” format to allow for different styles of learning and communicating.

outline of the impacts of plastics. As the module progressed, it was evident the students needed to move around a room, to communicate with their peers, to express themselves, and to be heard. Many were not necessarily linear thinkers and would prefer the creative problem-solving approach that the lessons offered. The students were moved to new groups based on the outcomes of the My LearningPrint assessment. Some students were exhausted by the process of responding to the questionnaire, but the data they supplied were valuable as a planning tool. One student identified that he

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Penrith High School science students wanted to learn how to make friends and that he found it difficult to learn when he could not easily relate to his peers, so he was grouped accordingly.

Some students had an affinity for mathematical thinking, or showed high interests in film and digital editing.

These factors also informed my instructional choices.

While I have not completely analyzed all of the data gathered using these tools, they have served as a starting point to make changes in the classroom.

For instance, I reversed the usual order of the Living World module to provide structure for People Persons and Learned Experts so as to streamline their communication and support their needs as they pursued a common goal.

Keeping the student who struggles with friendships in mind, I provided specific roles for students within their groups, questions they must ask, and 8

ways to know if they are successful. All work was inquiry-oriented and highly practical. This allowed the creative thinkers to apply ideas and think laterally. Some of the work afforded the students the opportunity to learn as they liked. I sourced novel items to support our context, such as albatross boluses from Hawai’i and owl pellets from the Blue Mountains. I dissected these as a demonstration, and as an opportunity for discovery, discussion, comparison, and extrapolation. The student who identified as interested in film and technology filmed the dissections that were projected to the data projector as we went, and shared them to the electronic classroom.

As students complete their investigations, we only require one modality: writing. Otherwise, students are permitted to present their learning in a keepable format of their choice.

Storyboards are the current favorite.

At the end of Term 1 it seemed a possibility that the students would disengage with science. At the end of Term 3, however, the students are happy and engaged, demonstrating a robust and deep knowledge and understanding of the subject area.

Based on this work, I have learned three primary things: (1) Evidenced-based, professional learning with practical strategies is essential to help staff get started; (2) Finding time for staff to work collaboratively to both share and reflect upon their work means that change not only starts, but also can be sustained; and (3) 2e students can succeed when educators understand their needs and differentiate learning.

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The Spotlight on 2e Series

Eleven reasonably-priced informational booklets about many aspects of twice-exceptionality, including two authored by Bridges educators. From Glen Ellyn Media.

Visit glenellynmedia.com for more information.

Chile: The challenges of identification

PROV ID ING PAT HS , ADVO CACY, A N D S U PPO RT FO R 2 e ST U D E NT S & FAMIL IE S IN CHIL E The Chilean Bellflower National Flower of Chile

The authors run a research group focused on gifted education at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, located in the city of Viña del Mar, Chile. They work with minority groups, including twice-exceptional students and gifted girls, to formulate evidence-based practices to meet the needs of these special populations. Dr. Leonor Conejeros-Solar is a psychologist who works as a professor in the school of education, heading up the master’s program, special education teacher preparation program, and programs for the gifted. Dr. Katia Sandoval-Rodriguez has 18 years of experience preparing teachers at the university’s school of education and is the director of the Institute of Cognitive Development in Viña del Mar. Dr. Maria P. GomezArizaga is a psychologist with a Ph.D. in special education who currently works as an associate professor at the College of Education at Universidad de los Andes.

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by Dr. Leonor Conejeros-Solar, Dr. Katia Sandoval-Rodriguez, Dr. Maria Gomez-Arizaga

WHEN YOU SEE A MAP

of South America, you immediately notice a long and narrow piece of land on the west side of the continent. That country is Chile, and the lush expanse of its territory is matched only by its cultural richness and natural resources, which stretch from north to south and make the country an attractive destination for tourists.

Our education system, however, is less than ideal. Providing support for gifted and 2e students here can be difficult when there is a splintered educational system and a lack of awareness about giftedness and twice-exceptionality.

Though we have overcome many obstacles over the last two decades, we still face a critical issue: a highly segregated system that divides students according to their socioeconomic status. In Chile, we have three types of schools: public, subsidized, and private. Private schools, which represent only seven percent of the total number of schools, have

students from middle- to upperclass families and consistently produce strong results on national standardized tests. Public and subsidized schools, on the other hand, continue to fall behind, and gaps in academic performance are not closing.

It is important to contextualize the Chilean school system in this way to provide a framework for how giftedness and twice-exceptionality are understood. Before 2000, the term “gifted” was not regularly used among educators or members of the public. An ambiguous, stereotypical vision of giftedness resulted in isolated programs and activities.

It was not until the creation of the first university-based enrichment program for the gifted that the term was used correctly. Slowly, evidencebased services began to reach gifted students in Grades 6-12, mostly in public schools. These programs provided educational options to gifted students who otherwise would

not have had a chance to foster their potential.

TODAY WE HAVE SEVEN

of these programs throughout the country. They provide extracurricular enrichment activities for gifted students in all academic areas and, in some cases, teacher training. These programs are year-round, running from March to December with an intensive two-week period in January during the Chilean summer. Because of the extracurricular focus, the enrichment courses and workshops are based on students’ interests in different areas.

The teachers are university professors or school teachers who receive training about the cognitive and socialemotional needs of gifted children.

Programs like these only serve students outside of the regular classroom, however, reaching less than one percent of the gifted population in Chile, or about 3,000 students among a gifted population of 355,000. (This percentage is based on Dr. Françoys Gagné’s model, which projects the number of gifted students in a total population.)

Though we have moved toward better understanding and services for gifted students, programs are still small entities that work in isolation. Instilling and recognizing giftedness in regular classrooms is a challenge because gifted students are only informally identified, based on high grades or test scores. If gifted students do not distinguish themselves within these standard measures, they are invisible.

Another enduring problem is that giftedness is not part of educational policies in the country. The only economic support for gifted programs provided by the Ministry of Education is in universities, but it has not been consistent over the years. This inconstant variable disrupts the continuity in coverage of the few students the support serves.

Services for twice-exceptional students who attend the three types of schools in

Chile suffer in light of these variables.

Not only is the giftedness of many 2e students not revealed in traditional classrooms or on standardized tests, but twice-exceptionality is also not a term known by most educators.

Prior to our first research grant at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso — called “Niños y Niñas Doblemente Excepcionales: Identificación y Caracterización en los Contextos Escolar y Familiar y Aportes para su Atención Psicoeducativa” (Twice Exceptional Children: Identification and Characterization at the School and Family Levels and Contributions for Psychoeducational Services)(2015) — the concept was practically nonexistent here.

It is important to emphasize, however, that Chile has made great strides toward inclusion. As a result, 2e

those schools, teachers, parents, and administrators who willingly participated in the study, even if they had never heard about this topic; second, renowned investigators such as Dr. Susan Baum, Dr. Robin Schader, Dr. Megan Foley-Nicpon, and Dr. Thomas Hébert, who with their knowledge and experience were able to enlighten this path not only for us as researchers, but also for parents and educators. Our workshop for parents of 2e students, for example, ignited such a high enthusiasm that at the end the parents would not leave the room.

What our study found was expected, but also troubling: Most 2e students were having a hard time succeeding in a school system that failed to understand their particular needs, putting an excessive focus on their

Though we have moved toward better understanding and services for gifted students, programs are still small entities that work in isolation.

students do receive some support services to address their academic difficulties, but they are not commonly identified, nor distinguished by their talents or strengths.

As a response to this issue and others, we embarked upon a three-year investigation of 2e students in Chile, reaching out to parents, teachers, and students to better understand the experiences of 2e students in mainstream classrooms. We assessed 270 children in the Valparaiso region, ages 9-12, who had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or autism spectrum disorder (ASD), closely following 20 of those identified as 2e over an extended period.

This could not have been possible without support from many friends, collaborators, and stakeholders: first,

disability over and above their giftedness. Encouragingly, parents intuited that “something was going on” with their children beyond their struggles and therefore were taking extra measures to advocate for their needs. When parents understood what 2e was through our research, they were relieved and even recognized that they might be 2e themselves.

Our interviews with students addressed many topics, but most salient was the difficulty they had accepting who they were. They wanted to be considered normal and be accepted. In this context, their relationships with peers were crucial for a positive school experience. Their need to be understood by others collided with their difficulties with

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Research team for the 2e grant (left to right) Dr. María Paz Gómez Arizaga, Dr. Katia Sandoval Rodríguez, Mag. Pablo Cáceres Serrano, Mag. Solange Armijo Solis, and Dr. Leonor Conejeros Solar

socialization. They were particularly discouraged by classmates who were rude, loud, and did not let them focus and take advantage of the learning experience.

In the schools, we found that teachers were understanding, but most of the time only saw 2e students’ deficits and not their strengths. When told that their students were gifted in addition to their disability, they often felt nothing else could be done.

ON THE WHOLE,

our project resulted in new knowledge about the lives of these wonderful students and their families, building an awareness of the existence and needs of 2e students. We also generated educational materials for parents and teachers to identify and provide meaningful services for 2e students.

These two manuals are organized into three sections: the first contains theoretical information about

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What our study found was expected, but also troubling: most 2e students were having a hard time succeeding in a school system that failed to understand their particular needs.

twice-exceptionality (i.e., definition, characteristics), and the second provides a checklist to aid in the identification process. The third section has orientation and learning activities for teachers and parents to enhance 2e students’ potential and abilities.

Perhaps the most important achievement of the project was helping children learn about themselves, beginning a path to healing for themselves and their families. Our work earned us a three-year grant

for another project, working closely with teachers from special-education programs within schools to empower them to implement interventions with gifted and 2e students from a strengthbased model.

To learn more about our projects visit www.2e.cl

Spain: My story, my school ­— the making of Trisquel International The Carnation National Flower of Spain

The author is the co-founder and pedagogical director of Trisquel International School, a flexible and dynamic school that adapts to the needs of children and enhances their talents.

She has a degree in social education from the University of Santiago de Compostela and has had extensive training in Spain and in the United States in active and inclusive teaching methodologies. For the past several years she has been part of the Giftedness Department at the University of Santiago, training teachers from all over the world in diversity, gifted education, and inclusive schooling.

THERE ARE THOUSANDS

of stories about people who, despite their incredible intelligence and giftedness, struggled daily with some kind of challenge or difficulty. Many of these people, who we have come to understand as twice-exceptional, have changed history in different areas of the arts or sciences, made 14

E D U C ATO R HE L PS F E L LOW 2 e L EAR NE RS R EACH T HE IR POT E NT IAL

by Laura Reyes Quintela

important discoveries, or produced ingenious inventions. Their stories are told through their creations and their interpretations. We learn about them in books, on the stage, or on the big screen.

This is my story.

My name is Laura and I am 38 years old. Two years ago I made my dream come true by opening Trisquel International School in La Coruña, Spain. It is a fluid and progressive primary school that educates students through a strength-based approach.

We serve children who have specific needs for educational support. Students learn in multilevel classrooms grouped in clusters and workshops using the Schoolwide Enrichment Model, which was originally developed by Joseph Renzulli and Sally Reis. At our school, assessment is a learning and development tool, not an instrument to highlight mistakes as something to be ashamed of.

I decided to open Trisquel as a result of my early experiences in school when I was unfamiliar with my own educational needs. This lack of awareness and understanding held me back from reaching my full potential.

Had I better understood my learning profile, I would have known why I struggled in my history classes, which were taught traditionally through little more than reading chapters and filling out worksheets. If I would have known, for instance, that I was a visual learner, I would have understood that I needed to focus on timelines and to see the faces of history. It is not easy for me to study or memorize something that does not have any connection with something visual.

I also had difficulties with writing.

Though I enjoyed writing stories for my family when I was a little girl, I struggled with written assignments at school. This managed to pass unnoticed until it was time to prepare for exams for entrance into university in Spain.

I was so terrified that I decided not to take the test and instead spent two years in a vocational training program.

Seen from the outside, this might seem like a totally illogical decision. At the time, I thought it was cowardice on my part. I know now that my difficulty putting my thoughts on paper is related to learning differences and my twiceexceptionality.

I began to better understand twiceexceptionality when I met Dr. Susan Baum and discovered doble excepcionalidad had been my traveling companion all my life. Until then I did not know how to “label” myself, but everything started to make sense. It was also thanks to the assessment of my oldest son, who is also twiceexceptional, that I managed to discover the real Laura. As I better understood twice-exceptionality,

a need arose within me to serve this unique population of learners whose talents converge with their difficulties, coexisting in a duality that complicates traditional learning approaches. These unique students deserve accommodation for both sides of the coin as they pursue meaningful, individualized learning.

I found information in Spain about these types of learners to be absolutely negative: “double diagnosis.” Double diagnosis implies a double wrong.

When we sent reports about Trisquel to the department of statistics, national educational officials showed little awareness of 2e. They designated our students as either high capacity or learning disabled, but not both. These designations are part of why schools fail a lot of kids who are smart but viewed as lazy by their teachers.

Shifting the understanding toward the concept of twice-exceptionality helps 2e students and adults be seen more positively in their environment. This approach has been greatly supported

by Dr. Carmen Tomar at the University of Santiago, director of the High Abilities Department, who includes the Schoolwide Enrichment Model as a part of teacher training. Programs like this help to redefine 2e students. They are doubly exceptional people full of strengths, and they deserve to receive the attention they need to achieve what is integral to their development as individuals. Being twice-exceptional is a superpower.

I opened Trisquel two years ago with four students. Now we have 28 students in Grades 1 through 6. Our starting point is children’s strengths and interests, as well as the needs and

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Photos of Trisquel School Students photo project. Photo credit: Sam Ponsford, visiting teacher, and Laura Reyes Quintela, founder

expectations of their families. Before opening Trisquel, I researched many pedagogical approaches, methodologies and philosophies, such as Montessori and the Waldorf approach. Ultimately I settled on the Schoolwide Enrichment Model. As the model benefitted my own educational experience, I saw its enormous potential in driving the educational development of my students.

At the beginning of the year, we collect information about students’ learning profiles and then design an action plan. The curriculum has a strong social-emotional component and is “attachment-based,” meaning we promote a climate similar to that of a tribe in which all its members have something to contribute to the group.

The academic part of the curriculum

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is not divided into conventional subjects but is presented in the form of clubs that children attend to “learn by doing.” Mathematics and languages ​​ are studied individually or in small groups to customize differentiation and develop the potential of each student.

Evaluations respect their styles of expression, as students can choose the way they show new knowledge, whether it be through essays, drawings, murals, oral presentations, etc. Only in this way can we truly get to know what they have learned.

I see myself in a lot of my students.

When I see them worrying about something, or misbehaving, I always try to read between the lines: What is behind that behavior? What need is not being met? During my schooling I became very good at hiding my needs,

so I am very aware of what that looks like. At Trisquel we firmly believe it is essential that students come to understand how their brains work because with understanding comes calmness.

Years ago I did not take a university admission test because I was so afraid of writing. Here I am now writing this story for you with the calmness I had writing stories for my family when I was a little girl.

Evaluations respect their styles of expression, as students can choose the way they show new knowledge, whether it be through essays, drawings, murals, oral presentations, etc. Only in this way can we truly get to know what they have learned.

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The Netherlands: Transforming teachers into 2e specialists FLOU R I SH IN G TRA IN ING PRO GR AMS E XPAND TO IN CLUDE 2e CU R R ICU LU M

by Drs. Eleonoor van Gerven

The author is the managing director of Slim! Educatief, a Dutch private teacher education institute at the postgraduate level. She specializes in teacher education courses in the field of educating able learners in an inclusive environment. She has published more than 15 books about educating able learners and developed a digital toolkit for teachers, which is currently in use in more than 30 percent of Dutch schools.

During her 25 years of experience in teacher education, she has trained with 4,000 teachers. Van Gerven also is the recipient of a Mensa-award for lifelong contributions to education in the Netherlands.

WHEN I PUBLISHED

my first book on gifted education in 1999, I was surprised to see it sell out within three months. Teachers were interested in gifted education.

In the following years, the topic rose to the Dutch educational agenda, and the Dutch government began

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to invest substantial amounts of money in projects for the gifted in the Netherlands.

As schools improved their ability to understand and respond to the needs of gifted students, another population emerged — gifted students who were not served through standard intervention options. This group can be divided in two: gifted underachievers (or “gifted underlearners,” as I prefer to call them) and twice-exceptional students. Dutch specialists trained primarily in gifted education were not fully prepared to serve this unique segment the gifted population. In my work as managing director of a postgraduate teacher education institute, Slim! Educatief, I noticed this trend and sought ways to bolster our continuous professional development offerings (CPD).

The institute, which opened in 1995 and translates roughly as “Smart Education,” trains primary school

The Tulip National Flower of the Netherlands

teachers in gifted education. Although twice-exceptionality was a topic in the institute’s Specialist in Gifted Education curriculum, this course of study seemed to fall short of providing the broad range of information and skills that help teachers serve gifted underlearners and twice-exceptional students. I approached a colleague, Annemieke Weterings — owner of “Weterings Onderwijs op Maat,” a private teachertraining institute for CPD — and we developed a Specialist in TwiceExceptionality program. When we first announced the course in 2013, we had a group of 25 teachers enroll within two days. Since then, twice-exceptionality — or “double exceptionality” in Dutch parlance — has become a hot topic in the Netherlands.

Prior to the addition of this course to Slim! Educatief’s offerings, I edited Manual for Gifted Education, which included three chapters on twiceexceptionality: giftedness and autism spectrum disorder (ASD), giftedness

and dyslexia, and giftedness and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). These chapters were the first substantial publications in Dutch on this topic and attracted some attention to 2e, but the idea did not pick up steam until Slim! Educatief started its training in 2013.

The Specialist in Twice-Exceptionality program is designed to make teachers more knowledgeable about the needs of gifted and 2e students. It supplies them with skills that help them respond meaningfully to their students’ needs.

The course is unique because it focuses on what can be accomplished on a daily basis in a regular classroom, where children in the Netherlands spend 90 to 95 percent of their school hours.

Though there are pull-out programs for gifted education during limited time periods each week, not all schools have special gifted programs. Further, there are no schools in the Netherlands specifically designed for 2e students.

Special-needs schools focus their attention on students with all kinds of profiles, but a focus specific to 2e is not one of them. Being 2e at a special-needs school in the Netherlands means being excluded from peers, based on the fact that their intelligence still makes it possible to achieve at a higher level than their classmates.

The course is unique because it focuses on what can be accomplished on a daily basis in a regular classroom.

The Slim! Educatief program equips teachers with the ability to see particular learning opportunities for 2e students. During the first year, teachers develop in-depth knowledge on 2e topics, starting with the unique educational profiles of 2e students.

They talk about the concept of 1+1=3, which refers to the idea that being 2e leads to new and complex behavior that is not present when the child is either just gifted or just has a learning or developmental disability.

The intense interaction between ability, disability, and ecological responses present 2e students with a number of atypical needs.

Since most 2e students have issues with executive functioning, teachers in the program learn strategies to help students build executive-functioning skills. The program also addresses topics about gifted students who have dyslexia, dyscalculia, ASD, and/or ADHD. In the second half of the program, each teacher takes on an independent research project, developing an educational design for a 2e student.

Inviting teachers to spend an entire year formulating a plan for a single student builds the understanding, skills, and procedural knowledge to

meet the educational needs of a gifted student with learning disabilities or differences. At the end of year two, every teacher documents his or her research project in a videotaped “Pecha Kucha,” which is a concise, fast-paced slide presentation (20 slides, 20 seconds of comments per slide, with a maximum duration of six minutes and 40 seconds). A video of their presentation is added to a database of successful intervention strategies for teaching 2e students in the classroom.

The overarching goal of the program is teaching teachers how to become successful by implementing microinterventions based on their already existing teaching skills. Their video presentations are a celebration of “tiny triumphs,” and we can only hope that the approach can become a smashing success for all 2e students and their teachers.

Detailed information about the Specialist in Gifted Education and Specialist in Dual and Multiple Exceptionality programs can be found at: www. slimeducatief.nl 19

Susannah Johnson, M.Ed.

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The Yellow Hibiscus State Flower of Hawai’i

Hawai’i, USA: Individualized learning for the 2e learner STUDE N TS FORGE T HE IR OW N PAT HS

by Susannah Johnson, M.Ed.

The author is a four-time presenter at the Schools of the Future Conference and received her Master of Education degree in 2016. Following many years in the business world, she found her way into the classroom 11 years ago and discovered her true passion.

Philosophically, Susannah sees her role in the classroom more as a learning facilitator and co-worker than a traditional teacher. She believes that when students drive their own education, they undergo a dynamic journey of lifelong thinking and learning.

She continues to evolve her educational strategies, using her own global explorations to build ideas that drive individualized curriculum in critical thinking for students in Grades 9-12.

ON THE FIRST DAY

of school at Assets in Honolulu, Hawai’i, while other teachers are handing out syllabi, going over rules, or engaging in get-to-know-you activities, students in the Flex program are thinking about what they need in order to work productively and what makes it difficult for them to learn. They write each of their ideas on a Post-It note.

By day two, they are amassing their ideas and categorizing them within the concept of a coworking space, using the first few steps of Hoshin Kanri’s planning process. Then they create a visual concept with a few peers, finally moving the room around to suit their learning needs as a collective group.

Developing the coworking concept

initiates the key thinking behind 100 percent individualized learning— students leading their own learning, which is the fundamental aim of the Flex program.

Most days, when students walk into the space it is up to them to determine what they will be working on for the day. They also keep track of timelines and set their own homework assignments. For instance, one student working on an integrated photojournalism project would set forth questions and make a plan for expected outcomes in a day, then he would leave campus to take photos, writing about his work that evening.

This same student, a true minimalist

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in conventional classroom routines, would text when he was done for the day, often working as late as 8 p.m.

As described in our mission statement, Assets “serves gifted and capable students, specializing in those with dyslexia and other languagebased learning differences. We provide a strength-based program, complemented by outreach and training, that empowers students to become effective learners and confident self-advocates.” Toward that end, students find a genuine interest in learning and devise a learning plan that best suits their learning needs, styles, and preferences.

At Assets, all classrooms include differentiation, personalization, and some degree of individualizing by meeting students where they are; the Flex program opens up individualization to curricula, content, time, and space.

Flex is one of many components of our highly differentiated practices. The program is in its second year officially, but individualized learning was built over many years working with 2e students. At the apex of inspiration, they are labeled “gifted,” yet they do not fit completely into that box, and are also labeled “learning disabled,” which does not fit them either. As a result they have difficulty in standardized educational settings of any kind. Understanding the frustration that results from trying to fit students into these separate categories and meet their respective expectations means that, before a 2e learner can learn, we have to unlock the gifts by working through and around the challenges. Tapping into personal passions supports curiosity and lays an additional foundation for ownership of learning.

The Flex program — sparked eight years ago by a particularly complex, creative, busy student — found ways to balance challenge and support for 2e learners to catalyze individualized learning. One current student, Chris, 22

was already exceeding expectations as a freshman in many of his classes and clearly desired more challenge.

However, he had difficulty with longterm focus and investment when he did not feel connected to the content and the nuanced complexities of his own thinking. In addition, he grappled with peer interactions and working with

Students find a genuine interest in learning and devise a learning plan that best suits their learning needs, styles, and preferences.

others. His first year of individualized work started with a creative writing project with a character borne out of his imagination, developing a plot through critical-thinking questions about values and philosophical traits.

He responded well to being in charge of his work, appreciating the autonomy and flexibility as well as being able to dialogue with like-minded peers and me when needed.

Seeing one of many students doing well with heavily individualized work within a regular course, we forged Flex. Through his second year, and the pilot year of Flex, Chris drove his own growth and learning, pushing his own skill set to take on more realistic writing, and moving on to studying psychology as a means to build richness in characters through human understanding.

As a senior, Chris, inspired by the work of a peer, began developing more of a

photojournalistic approach to his work.

While his writing and comprehension growth is evident, what stood out in his learning journey was his increasing capacity for critical thinking. Logic, purpose, implications, points of view, intellectual integrity, and courage are at the forefront of his endeavors each day. He readily applies critical thinking by supporting peers, especially those new to the process, something he was reluctant to do three years ago, growing as a human and as a learner as he drove his own learning.

As students in the Flex program build their individual curricula, the teacher’s role shifts to process and logistical support partner, helping students to plan and think critically about individual work as they provide ongoing feedback, ensure credit requirements are being met, or point to specific resources and templates.

Along the way, students are developing essential skills in setting deadlines, determining what “A” outcomes will look like using personalized rubrics, and asking essential questions related to their work.

Critical thinking is the only “core content” that all students share as they practice direct strategies based on the Dr. Richard Paul’s work, The Foundation for Critical Thinking, and Bloom’s Taxonomy, which is used for guiding thinking within coursework as well as peer-to-peer critique sessions.

Depending on the learning styles and skill development of 33 students working on 42 types of curricula, the program enables students to seek credits in English, social studies, science, and electives, working on online courses and college credits. The program also naturally incorporates service-, project-based, inquiry-driven, problem-based, place-based, and culture-based learning.

Flex stretches traditional notions of time and space in a school setting, as some students leave campus to work on projects, meet with experts, or head to college classes a couple of

days a week, using their days in Flex to do the necessary work. Students regularly meet one-on-one with the supporting teacher, reflecting upon and self-assessing their work, and are continuously reaching toward what is next in their learning. The relaxed environment creates a safe space as well for the disquietude or trepidation that many 2e learners feel. In the reflective words of students:

“I have discovered that this type of individual course works really well for me. I successfully accomplished my goal and learned some aspects about myself of which I was previously unaware. I improved my time management skills and became more comfortable with self-direction. In conclusion, I feel like this Flex program was a great learning experience and has given me an advantage when it

comes to how well I understand my learning style.”

“I really hope more people get to do this. It was nice to feel like I’m in charge of my learning.”

“I believe the critical thinking tools helped everyone’s project because they are universal. Class reflections also helped a lot. We were able to get peer feedback in a constructive and respectful manner. Assets Flex was the best class experience I’ve had.”

The sighs of relief that come from 2e learners when they realize the pressure is off for them to learn like everyone else or how everyone else thinks they should learn are the greatest reward of Flex. As an educator, and now a coworker in learning, I could not ask for higher praise. Moving forward, we

are looking at the success of Flex as one of many options to provide education that is more connected, meaningful, and reflective of our growing global community. Essential questions and problems of practice center primarily around how we best demonstrate learning or mastery when meeting each student where they are and progressing from there. Personally, I look forward to continued relationships with such independent, critically thinking, selfaware, supportive, and flexible humans throughout their lives as lifelong learners.

“Share & Support” peer critique protocol based in Elements and Standards of Critical Thinking

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The Rose National Flower of The United States of America

New York: What kind of curriculum works with 2e kids?

THE QUAD SCHOOL IN NEW YORK CITY

by Kristin Berman, Ph.D.

The author has been Head of The Quad Preparatory School in New York City since 2016. She received her Ph.D. at the University of Connecticut in Educational Psychology with an emphasis in Gifted Education. She was formerly an associate professor at the College of New Rochelle in the graduate school specializing in differentiated curriculum and instruction, enhanced teaching methods, gifted education, and arts integration. She has also written curriculum for gifted programs for both public and private schools using an integrated framework of science and humanities. Kristin taught in elementary and middle school classrooms for over 20 years, and later served as director of enrichment and talent development in New York City Public Schools. She is a speaker, consultant, and professional developer for teachers, administrators, and parents throughout the United States, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa. Kristin is on the board of the Association for the 24

Education of Gifted Underachieving Students. Among other publications, she co-authored with Kim Busi a chapter in Scott Barry Kaufman’s 2018 book, Twice-Exceptional: Supporting and Educating Bright and Creative Students with Learning Difficulties.

AT THE QUAD PREPARATORY School, prospective parents come to us worried that their child may never write, or focus long enough to sit through a lesson. Older students can come with trust issues and low selfesteem. How do we approach this?

With an integrated (psychosocial and academic), high interest, strengthsbased, and flexible curriculum.

The school, founded five years ago with three children, is now beginning its sixth year, with 113 children from Grades K-12. We have implemented a curriculum framework that has grown and developed steadily in response to children’s interests and needs.

INTEGRATION

Our model is founded on principles and practices from psychology, speech pathology, occupational therapy, and education. We seamlessly integrate psychosocial and academic program elements to maintain a campus presence that supports students’ intellectual and emotional needs. In the Upper School, academic teachers and psychosocial teachers team up to plan curriculum in pairs so that a variety of perspectives can be presented. Psychosocial teachers and clinicians actively participate in group classes to address social and emotional issues in real time. Psychosocial teachers also model social skills and academic behaviors by participating in discussions, taking notes, and supporting students’ executivefunctioning skills.

In the Lower School, the psychosocial teacher is an integral part of a self-

contained classroom of 11 students.

The academic and psychosocial teachers work together on the curriculum and identify important concepts that can address social/ emotional perspectives while developing content-specific learning outcomes. Each month one of these concepts is highlighted with lessons from both the psychosocial and academic teachers. Concepts include: community, which is present in both the classroom agreement and in science and cultural studies; cause and effect, which is seen in relationships, as well as history and science; or courage, which resonates on a personal level as well as in biographies of historical figures showing perseverance in the face of difficulty.

EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONING AND CURRICULUM

Twice-exceptional children typically encounter challenges with executive functioning. We have created an integrated system that develops these habits at a young age, establishing order in the environment to help children develop organizational skills of their own. We create strategic classrooms, which are spaces arranged purposefully to enhance learning taking place in groups, one-on-one sessions, and independently. Systems

and routines are created to support the concept of daily order, a place for everything, and tools that can help children to achieve these goals. Our clinicians have created an Executive Functioning Toolkit that is used for both explicit instruction of specific strategies as well as guiding adults in the classroom to model processes and support students with scaffolding as needed. The Toolkit promotes practice and reflection as well.

ACADEMIC CURRICULUM FRAMEWORK

Our children love science and want to know, “Where did this come from?” or “How does this work?” The academic curriculum framework Origins (Berman, 2015) is based on the premise that these big questions show us that a young child needs to first see the big picture to make connections between prior and new knowledge.

To facilitate this, instructors can begin with an anecdote or early activity that highlights a broad topic such as the universe, the solar system, or the planets. By approaching the study of the world around us from a chronological and spatial perspective, we create groundwork upon which learning progresses in a sequential, logical pattern. For example, learning about the life cycle fits into a narrative of the

bigger picture of the development of life on the planet. Likewise, the food chain is not an isolated concept but a logical pattern in the story of the progress of life on Earth and the systems that sustain it.

We then follow a spiral curriculum model (Bruner, 1960) in which concepts that are presented at a general, impressionistic level in early grades are revisited in later grades, progressing into more depth and breadth at middle and high school levels. Figure 1 shows the progression of universal development that gives birth to all other knowledge and areas of thought. Herein the timeline of the universe becomes a series of more focused timelines of the Earth, life, humans, and civilization, and then of all human innovations. Study of geography from Pangaea to today’s continents, countries, states, and cities becomes a living history of the Earth and its changes. Exploring the origins of language, writing, and mathematics gives a basis for the ongoing movement of history and answers that question of “Where did this come from?”

Natural curiosity is strong in a young child, and by nurturing that curiosity, we find our biggest ally in working with 2e children. Putting science at the center of the curriculum not only gives

NOTE FROM A FIRST-YEAR TEACHER I was unrolling a 300-foot black ribbon and telling the story of the formation of the universe from the Big Bang until the appearance of humans on the planet, represented by a one-inch span of white at the end. The children had done basic experiments to have exposure to the concepts of “matter attracts matter,” centrifugal force, chemical reactions, and the states of matter. We had also built a “million cube” with base ten blocks and then imagined the size of

a billion cube along with some other relative time activities. The children were enraptured with the universe story, which I had practiced so carefully, charting the geological eras and their happenings. They were encouraged to act out the movement of the elements in the formation of stars and solar systems along the way. When I got to the classfavorite Mesozoic Era, I accidentally called it the “Mesozoic Period,” at which point I was quickly corrected

by an eight-year-old. “No,” he said emphatically, “This is the Mesozoic ERA, it’s the CRETACEOUS period!” As I was absorbing this, another seven-year-old quickly remarked, with his not yet outgrown lisp, “Yes, this is the era when the dinosaurs became extinct leaving a void for the mammals to rise.”

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Figure 1: Timeline of Universe Big Bang

Formation of Elements

13.8 Billion Years Ago

+300,000 Years

Birth of Physics

Birth of Chemistry

us an area of high interest, but also helps us to develop the thinking skills necessary in all content areas.

Figure 2 shows the connections between disciplines in terms of skills that are universal to critical thinking.

Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS, 2016) has provided a very useful framework for making crossdisciplinary connections. A scientist must learn to observe just as an artist must. A scientist must find evidence for a hypothesis, just as a reader does in finding text that supports an idea. A historian must make inferences from available data, just as a scientist does.

Children can learn core knowledge while also experiencing the practice of real engineers, mathematicians, and the myriad of science disciplines from biology to chemistry to physics.

Some twice-exceptional children have

Formation of Solar System and Earth

Appearance of First SingleCelled Life

Appearance of Hominids

Birth of Earth Science

Birth of Biology

Birth of Social Science

4.5 Billion Years Ago

3.8 Billion Years Ago

a propensity for verbal language.

Scientific vocabulary poses little challenge for most while offering an opportunity to develop language skills in a very useful way. An important part of our English Language Arts (ELA) curriculum introduces words that are deconstructed into the Latin or Greek roots. This not only gives the exercise a fun twist, but provides an awareness of the structure of words in general: a gastro/pod (snail) can be deconstructed to “stomach foot,” and trans/port to “across carry.”

In ELA, we look at many different genres of literature and place the study of creation myths alongside the examination of creation from the scientific lens. Storytelling begins each year in ELA for all ages up to high school. This skill arises from the oral tradition that preceded writing, giving

Figure 2: Science Serves as the Hub of Curriculum

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3.2 Million Years Ago

Agricultural Revolution & 1st Civilizations 10,000 Years Ago Birth of Culture

a sense of how prehistoric knowledge was passed down as well as helping students to organize thoughts without the struggle of writing them at the same time.

As the students are learning content, working on projects, or creating their own entrepreneurial ventures in academic disciplines, they are working at building the skills that may be difficult for them due to learning challenges. Products take many forms such as artwork, dramatic presentations, debates, written pieces, formal presentations, and authentic projects. Teachers must be creative, know their students well, and be prepared to make adjustments, like the teacher who created a graphic organizer in the form of the periodic table for a budding chemist but reluctant writer, or the teacher who taught a year of fourth grade mathematics to a “math-o-phobe” through a restaurant project. He thanked her at the end of the year and said he was not afraid of math anymore. Students gain experience in many modes to show what they know.

This empowers and prepares them to tackle increasingly complex material, problems and issues as their basic skills develop.

When twice-exceptional children are able to feel acknowledged for their strengths and to work on curriculum that they can become engaged in, they begin to thrive. The final ingredient in a successful curriculum for 2e students is the teachers. A successful 2e teacher is willing to be flexible, ready to learn new material, and able to acknowledge that sometimes the children know more about a topic than they do.

They also excel at collaboration with professionals from all disciplines in the school who are integrated into the work of serving all the needs of these special children. No matter how strong a curriculum, it takes very special adults to bring that roadmap to life and engage in learning along with their students.

Resources: Berman, K. (2015). Origins: A curriculum framework for gifted students. Unpublished manuscript prepared for Mount Vernon ATLAS program.

Bruner, J. S. (1960). The process of education. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.

Next Generation Science Standards (2016). www.nextgenscience.org

Strauss, A. A., & Lehtinen, L. E. (1947).

Psychopathology and education of the brain-injured child. Oxford, England: Grune & Stratton.

Middle School students in Biology lab

Amelia Lanza’s Upper School English Building Identity Through Community and Literature

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bagatelles BAGATELLE ABOUT BAGATELLES Well, they can be a board game, a pastry, or a short piece of music.

In any of its uses, it usually refers to something amusing, on the small side, light and mellow in character. Music dictionaries define bagatelle as a “short, unpretentious, instrumental composition of a light style with no specific form,” with the term dating back to 1717 and baroque composer François Couperin. However, Beethoven probably wrote more bagatelles than anyone else.

We can’t compete with Beethoven, but we will do our best to be unpretentious. We at Variations2e are pleased to bring you a few bagatelles of our own. Enjoy … but only a little!

They’re just bagatelles.

LESSONS FOR THE AGES The King’s School in Canterbury, England, thought to be the oldest continuously operating school in the world, opened its doors in 597 AD on the site of an abbey founded by Saint Augustine. The oldest working teacher in the world today perhaps is Eleanor Sokoloff. No, the piano instructor was not the founder of the King’s School, nor did she ever teach there. She was only 104 at last count and has spent most of her life teaching in Philadelphia. When teaching is a true passion, inspiring young people to find their muses can make you want to go that extra mile, or year, or century.

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PUPPY POWER Is there anything more adorable than a puppy? It’s hard to hold a puppy and not smile and feel good. Dogs have been used for therapeutic purposes for many years. According to the American Society of Animal Studies, playing with dogs releases the feelgood hormone oxytocin, which also helps increase feelings of bonding, and the stress-reducer dopamine. These are powerful influencers in a person’s well-being and health. Some schools have implemented puppy therapy for their students. Puppies are brought to school campuses so kids can play with them during the day to de-stress. They also are useful during exam and midterm time to lower anxiety. Yale Law School and the Harvard Medical School have resident therapy dogs available to be rented like library books. Raising and caring for our furry friends on a school campus can transform the school environment and community.

A little puppy love goes a long way!

HIP-HIP HYPATIA Probably the first major female mathematician, Hypatia was the daughter of Theon, a member of the Library of Alexandria. She collaborated with her famous father on commentaries of classical mathematical works, translating them and incorporating explanatory notes, as well as creating commentaries of her own, and teaching students from her home. While none of her major works, survive, Hypatia is referenced in many sources as a highly-respected mathematician, philosopher, and teacher. But I think historians should spell her name Hip-patia, one of the first women to drive her own chariot. We bet she often cruised downtown Athens with mathematical moxie.

AI IS ABOUT TO GET REAL The image above is not quite an example of the future of classrooms, but researchers say that AI could help regular teachers in the classroom by grading papers, administering one-on-one tutoring, providing interactive search experiences, and more. AI is already here and about to go ballistic, becoming commonplace in schools.

We think we will name our AI assistant HAL — because that’s not creepy at all.

HOW PLANTS WILL SAVE US Tropical rainforests cover a small percent of the Earth’s surface yet provide huge amounts of botanical resources. Thousands of medical compounds prescribed by doctors are derived from plants. As importantly, plants provide clues to the design of new drugs. With overpopulation and food production quickly becoming the world’s most pressing issues, we might find our salvation in the chemistry of the forests. Worldwide, approximately 4,000 plant species have been shown to have natural contraceptive properties. Food resources may be boosted by the discovery of a chemical reaction in certain potatoes that produces sticky substance to trap and kill insects, enabling us to get rid of pesty bugs and even pestier pesticides.

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PERSEVERANCE VS. OBSTINANCE Perseverance means different things to different people. Depending on one’s point of view, it can have both positive or negative connotations. You can be determined, dogged, persistent, tenacious, obstinate, and stubborn. But repeating the same behavior over and over and expecting a different outcome can be construed as foolish, idiotic, even insane. Where does one draw the line?

POWER OF FAILURE Harland Davis Sanders — aka Kentucky Fried Chicken’s Colonel Sanders — reportedly pitched his fried chicken recipe to more than 1,000 restaurants before finding a buyer. Thomas Edison attempted 1,000 experiments before he saw the light — the electric light bulb, that is. “I didn’t fail one thousand times,” he famously stated. “The light bulb was an invention with one thousand steps.” Henry Ford went bankrupt five times before founding his famous motor company. In the world of twice-exceptionality, students are encouraged to stay in the struggle, develop that all-important skill of resiliency, to have grit. As life becomes more complicated and problems more complex, great world-changers learn that their innate giftedness can only get them so far.

They learned to persevere, despite the fact that the mathematical odds were often against them.

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BABBLING ON ABOUT LANGUAGE Papua New Guinea probably has the greatest number of spoken languages — at over 800. In Indonesia, there are more than 700 active languages; Nigeria and India have more than 400. Aside from challenges of small talk on the street, how do cultures with so many languages see and communicate their experience?

Linguistic relativity is a fascinating topic. Can the words we use, their varying shapes and sounds, influence the way we perceive the world? This idea was popular in the 1960s, and sort of died away in the 1980s. We really don’t know enough about anything to really come to any solid conclusions — that is, until the 2016 movie “Arrival” came along. Time itself could be perceived differently through language! Is that what that movie was about!? We got sort of lost.

ba gatelles

PRAYING TO THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM There is a lot written about what success is and how to achieve it. People have been writing about it for thousands of years.

Some students in Thailand pray to the god Ganesha for success on tests, and with good reason. Ganesha’s unusual physique and the symbolic items he holds in his hands tell the story of success quite well, long before Covey, Sternberg, and Dweck chimed in. Ganesha’s large ears convey that he will always hear the prayers of the faithful; he’s a good listener. His elephant head on his human body intimates a connection between the reality of human earthly existence (Maya) and a higher purpose (Atman).

Taken together, the theoretical and practical experiences suggest wisdom. Some scholars argue that his trunk represents the cosmic Om and the alignment and synergy of wisdom, purpose, and attainment. In his upper right hand, he holds a goad, which helps him propel mankind forward and remove obstacles from his way. The noose in his upper-left hand captures all difficulties.

The broken tusk that Ganesha holds like a pen in his lower right hand symbolizes sacrifice, and the rosary in his left hand tells us that the pursuit of knowledge should be continuous. Of all of Ganesha’s success symbols, the big belly is especially important.

It represents generosity and acceptance, a wonderful context for why and how we become successful.

G-FACTORS While were on the subject of Ganesha and success, what are the G-factors for success? Have a goal bigger than yourself, find earthly practical approaches, muster the energy to move forward tackling all obstacles, expect a little sacrifice along the way, and keep your ears open and listen to others. Sounds like good advice.

G

PONDERING THE POLYGLOT What is going on inside the brain of Ziad Fazah. Ziad was born in Liberia, brought up in Beirut, and has lived in Brazil. He might be the world’s greatest living polyglot, speaking a total of 59 world languages. Some linguists are interested in the impact of language on world views and perspectives. Guy Deutscher’s Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages is a thought-provoking book. It might not go anywhere conclusive. But like bagatelles, they don’t have to.

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SEA CLIFF, NEW YORK: A 2e VILLAGE

By Melissa Sornik, LCSW

The author is the co-founder and president of Twice Exceptional Children’s Advocacy (TECA) and has been working with uniquely gifted children, adolescents and their families since 2003. A licensed clinician, Sornik maintains a family-centered private practice providing support and programs for gifted and 2e individuals and their families. Sornik is also an adjunct professor at Molloy College in Rockville Centre, New York, where she teaches undergraduate students a systems approach to working with children with special needs and their families. She has lived in Sea Cliff since 2001, where she raised her own 2e child.

THE VILLAGE OF SEA CLIFF IN NASSAU COUNTY,

New York, has been my home for 17 years. With a population of about 5,000 people, Sea Cliff is also the home of my clinical practice and talent-development center for twice-exceptional children, adolescents, and their families. It took me 43 years and the experience of raising an incredibly bright and creative son to find just the right, left-of-center place to call home. That place is Sea Cliff, which I have come to think of as a 2e Village.

Sea Cliff has a number of unofficial landmarks and endearing oddities, one of which is a meeting place that locals call the “wall of procrastination.” This three-foot-high wall spans one side of the the library and typically plays host to at least two or three idling villagers who converse as traffic goes by. The town clock and random street signs stand wrapped in cozy crochet. Some villagers describe Sea Cliff as a “spirit portal” or “energy vortex.”

But how might a place be described as 2e? Thanks to the work of 2e education pioneers Sally Reis, Susan Baum, and Edith Burke, there now is an operational definition of twice-exceptionality. It describes a combination of specific strengths and potential disabilities that result in a learning profile that masks both intellectual gifts and specific areas of challenge. My professional experience with 2e individuals does not take place in an academic setting. As a clinician, I observe and work with the social and emotional challenges of 2e children and adolescents, experiencing their unique personalities, interests, and gifts outside the confines of a classroom. 2e individuals do not fare well when they are asked to conform to

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Sea Cliff, New York

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inflexible environments, which can include school, home, or community.

When we focus on their gifts, we see that 2e individuals have greater opportunities for self-actualization in flexible environments where they can maintain their uniqueness. This sense of belonging explains how a onesquare-mile Victorian village located on Long Island’s north shore might be described as a 2e town.

THE HISTORY OF SEA CLIFF

begins with a departure from the “sameness” of the suburban villages and townships that surround it. In the 1800s, Sea Cliff was initially the site of a Methodist campground.

Accessible by steamboat, the village’s beach, boardwalk, and terrain attracted New York City residents to vacation there during the summer months. Seaside cottages, Victorian homes, and tasteful hotels eventually replaced the campground — with the exception of the tabernacle, which became a summer theatre for the arts.

Incorporated in 1883, the Village of Sea Cliff became the vacation spot, summer residence, or permanent home of many notable individuals— many of them actors, musicians, and playwrights, including Cole Porter, poet William Cullen Bryant, poet and journalist Alfred Lansing, and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Robert Olen Butler. Often considered a “haven for the arts,” Sea Cliff continues to attract unique and creative individuals, helping it to maintain an individuality and uniqueness of its own.

Like some other families with young children, we left New York City for the less-crowded neighborhoods, smaller schools, and grassy outdoors of the Long Island suburbs. I had not considered that the change might not be a good match for me or for my son.

I am a creative person and leaving the city for Long Island was a Wizard of Ozlike experience, departing the colorful and vibrant Emerald City for a lessstimulating world of grays. I gradually lost the heightened sensations that fueled my creativity. I felt jammed into 34

a round hole of conformity, which was exacerbated by the rigid environment my son was experiencing in school.

I grew disappointed with our new community and became increasingly aware of how much effort we were putting forth to fit in.

Five years after the move to Long Island, I visited Sea Cliff for the first time. I immediately became aware of a vibe that felt natural and more comfortable than what was then my home. As I was taking in Sea Cliff and its charming inherent inconsistencies, I realized how much I had been struggling with sameness. Here was a place with paved sidewalks, slate sidewalks, or no sidewalks at all. There were missing street signs, houses of all shapes, sizes, and ages. Tiny cottages sat beside larger Victorian “painted ladies,” some freshly painted, some worn and weathered, but all charming

Sea Cliff residents are as eclectic as the village itself. Some were born here, and others, like myself, were drawn here by its personality. A typical Sea Cliff resident, if there is such a thing, may be one or more of the following: an artist, writer, inventor, musician, craftsperson, banker, lawyer, corporate worker, tradesperson, or entrepreneur of some sort. At the end of a 9 to 5 day, it is not unusual for a business person to exchange work attire for jeans and a T-shirt, pick up their guitar, and head to one of the local bistros, the beach or Memorial Park, also known as “Hippie Park,” to perform solo or with their band.

Sea Cliff is a village where differences of opinion may be challenged, but differences among people are accepted and appreciated.

No one has to try to fit in. In fact, there’s nothing to fit into; everyone belongs.

There was what might be perceived as a randomness to it all. But in actuality all the pieces fit, like the last few oddshaped jigsaw puzzle pieces that seem mistakenly placed in the wrong box, only to fit right in at the end.

in their own ways. Contained and manicured gardens neighbored peeling picket fences overgrown with ivy and wisteria. Homes and storefronts were decorated with any combination of peace signs, tie-dye, wind chimes, mosaic art, historic landmark plaques, and unusual weather vanes and statuary. There was a randomness to it all. But in actuality all the pieces fit, like the last few odd-shaped jigsaw puzzle pieces that seem mistakenly placed in the wrong box, only to fit right in at the end. That is the feeling I had about Sea Cliff.

In 2001, I moved to Sea Cliff feeling confident that we could be ourselves, not unlike the nine-year-old child who donned socks and sandals in midwinter, gelled his hair into three red points, and walked through the center of town drawing nothing more or less than a friendly greeting and a smile from the storekeepers and residents.

My son was in good company in a place where the mayor was known to ride a skateboard through the streets.

therapist, helping her clients achieve balance in their bodies and lives. She is also an artist, designer, healer, dog watcher, mother, and grandmother with a flair for cooking and gardening, as well making things around her more beautiful.

Iris Targoff, Sea Cliff resident

Among some of our exceptional residents is Iris Targoff, who has lived in Sea Cliff for more than 40 years.

As a teenager in a neighboring town, she discovered Sea Cliff accidentally while she was out for a drive and found herself on Cliff Way, one of the residential roads that winds its way down the cliff from town toward the beach. She recalls thinking, “I want to be the kind of person who lives in a town like this.” That person is creative and empowered, and that is exactly who Iris is. She designed every inch of her magnificent Victorian home in her own style with great care to preserve the original details. Iris attended NYU for a short time and was a B-plus student “without even trying.” In a hurry to experience life, Iris traveled across the country with her musician husband, settling in Northern California for a while before returning to the East Coast, where she eventually became a Sea Cliff resident. Earning a master’s degree in developmental psychology with highest honors, Iris is a polarity

My dear friend and business partner, Mark Hagan, fondly known as “Hippie Mark,” is one of Sea Cliff’s most beloved residents. Mark has lived in Sea Cliff since 1984. In school he followed his older, conforming, and overachieving siblings until he decided, in his words, “to stick to who I was.” Mark is a gifted writer with a passion for Charles Addams cartoons, frogs, the Beatles, Godzilla, and all the Universal Pictures monsters. He did not care much for school, though he connected with teachers who understood and appreciated his creativity. He hated gym. The librarians always liked him because he put the books back where they belonged. Today he lives in the center of town with Heidi Beck, an acupuncturist, and their pet, Luci the Wonder Bunny.

WHAT MAKES SEA CLIFF

a 2e village is its acceptance of differences and the invitation to all who live there to be themselves and belong to something greater than the sum of its parts. As I was writing this article, I asked one of my 2e clients, a 12-yearold boy who has participated in my programs in Sea Cliff for several years, if he had any thoughts about the village.

“It’s calm. It’s different. It’s easy to be here.”

I couldn’t agree more. This square peg of the one-square-mile Village of Sea Cliff, like a 2e child or adult, is comprised of odd and unique puzzle pieces that come together in surprising ways to form a magnificent whole.

Mark “Hippie Mark” Hogan, Heidi Beck, and Luci the Wonder Bunny.

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S EE KIN G 2e S U P P O RT? T HE CLO U D R E I G NS RE SOURCE S A BOU ND IN T HE D IGITAL S PHE R E

by Jon Baum

WHEN IN DOUBT, GOOGLE IT. Or, if you prefer, ask Siri or Alexa.

The idea that the answer to any and all queries can be found online has become deeply ingrained in our culture and day-to-day lives. So it comes as little surprise that with increased access to internet resources — for both publishers and consumers — comes ever-increasing availability of resources in the 2e world.

Though research related to twiceexceptionality dates back decades, the term “twice-exceptional” itself did not come into prominence until the mid-to-late 1990s.

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With information about twiceexceptional students often being hit and miss depending on one’s district, state, or country, more and more parents and educators have sought out 2e-related online communities to provide and receive support. In fact, many of these resources have been built by parents who themselves had been seeking information about how to support their 2e children.

Jen Merrill — author of If This is a Gift, Can I Send It Back?: Surviving in the Land of the Gifted and Twice-Exceptional — was seeking resources for her son in around 2005 after he was identified as twice-exceptional in Colorado.

“That’s the first time twice-exceptional came up and I remember hearing this and going, ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’” said Merrill, who blogs her experiences with twiceexceptionality at laughingatchaos.com.

“I had never heard twice-exceptional ever … and there wasn’t a whole lot out there other than email groups like Yahoo! Groups.

“I remember reading these and freaking out about these parents of twiceexceptional kids and how they bounced around in schools — in school, out of school, home school, private school — and thinking, ‘Oh god I hope that’s not me!’ There was not a lot in the way of

RESOURCES

resources when we first were thrown into the deep end of 2e, so I had to do the hunting for resources on my own. It wasn’t easy to find.”

There also are more and more events bringing together educators, researchers, and parents in the online space. Clinical therapist Debbie Steinberg Kuntz (see interview on page 48) started her own support groups and hosted the Bright and Quirky Online Child Summit earlier this year.

Julie Skolnick — founder of With Understanding Comes Calm, a support and information hub for 2e parents, children, and adults — is hosting a 2 Days of 2e virtual conference, which took place in October and remains available on-demand through April, 2019. Both events provide opportunities for parents to directly connect with leading voices in 2e.

“With Understanding Comes Calm started with me supporting parents of what I call a gifted and distractible kid,” said Skolnick, who also produces Let’s Talk 2e interviews with leaders in the field.

Skolnick’s 2 Days of 2e Virtual Conference gives attendees the opportunity to watch presentations from some of most well-respected leaders in the field. For those who watched the pre-recorded sessions “live” when they were released, many presenters also answered attendee questions in a live chat.

These types of opportunities are key for parents and educators for whom “real-world” conferences aren’t readily available.

“Parents of 2e kids are spending all day long thinking about working on advocating for learning about their 2e kids. Who has time to go to the conference?,” says Skolnick, herself a parent of 2e children. “They’re googling all day long trying to find out what the heck is fill in the blank. What is my

kid doing? Fill in the blank. How do I handle it? What’s the best strategy?”

Virtual resources, particularly conferences and seminars, provide parents access to the answers to some of those questions.

In addition to providing parents, educators, and clinicians with valuable resources, the virtual interfaces also allow for experts and facilitators in the field to reach a larger audience more effectively — and therefore help more parents and kids.

“Let’s get more and more resources out there and more accessibility out there,” Skolnick says. “I can’t go and change the school system, but I can talk to [parents and educators] about what it means so that they can advocate.”

Merrill concurs.

“In a lot of ways the biggest problem [parents] face is not being believed and not being trusted as an expert on their child,” she says.

“There are more resources online than there were even a couple of years ago.

The number of blogs has exploded to the point that I am constantly surprised when I stumble across another one.

For a long time it was me and maybe a couple of others and now there are so many.”

There also are many Facebook groups focused on 2e, with membership ranging from a few dozen people to more than 10,000.

“I am so grateful for [the resources] because we all have a story to tell and people learn through stories,” Merrill says. “Online is the best place to look.”

*Parents of Twice Exceptional Children (2e) has 11,000 members (www.facebook.com/ groups/158474124337015)

*Twice Exceptional/2e Network International has 2,000 members (www.facebook.com/groups/2E. Network.LA) *Twice Exceptional Teens (Parent Support) has 500 members (www.facebook.com/ groups/1754451788117091/)

*Twice Exceptional Kids Group has 1,400 members (www.facebook.com/ groups/twiceexceptionalkids/)

*Familes with Gifted * 2e (twice exceptional) kids has nearly 450 members www.facebook.com/groups/ twiceexceptionalkids/ *Background Noise: Books for Gifted & Twice-Exceptional Youth has nearly 450 members (www.facebook.com/groups/ backgroundnoisebooks) *The Gifted Homeschoolers Forum page, which addresses issues beyond twice-exceptionality, has 62,000 likes (www.facebook.com/ GiftedHomeschoolersForum)

Resources also are available from groups such as National Association of Gifted Children (NAGC) should be mentioned before Hoagie’s, SENG, TECA, etc. [www.nagc.org/ search/node/twice%20exceptional] Hoagies’ Gifted Education Page (www. hoagiesgifted.org/), SENG (Supporting the Emotional Needs of the Giftedsengifted.org/), and TECA (Twice Exceptional Children’s Advocacy — www.teca2e.org/). TECA runs online support groups for parents of 2e kids of various ages, and TECA and SENG also offer webinars on various elements of 2e.

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Linda C. Neumann & J. Mark Bade 38

Photo: Mark and Linda Bade

N EWSL E T T E R FO U ND E RS ’ DREAMS CO M E TRU E CR EATIN G A NE W PATH INS PIR E D BY T HE IR CHIL D REN

by Stuart Matranga

Driving to school was often an occasion for lively family conversations with J. Mark Bade, Linda C. Neumann, and their two sons, Brenton and Jarrett.

The boys liked to discuss fission versus fusion, how to assemble their own calculators, and other topics way beyond their grade level. Brenton and Jarrett were inquisitive, curious, and deeply engaged with the world around them. The trouble happened once they got into the classroom.

“We couldn’t understand why our bright boys were not thriving,” Linda says today. “During much of their schooling, neither of our boys seemed excited or enthusiastic about school.

We always got the message from teachers that ‘they could do better if they would just try.’”

Mark and Linda reached a breaking point when a private school for gifted students discouraged them from reenrolling after they requested simple accommodations for one of their sons.

“That was a defining moment,” Mark recalls. “It made us realize that most schools didn’t get it when it came to high-ability students who learn differently. We had to do something to make a difference.”

Mark and Linda made a difference, not only for their children, but others like them, launching the most influential publication on the world of twiceexceptional education. Fifteen years and 90 issues later, Mark and Linda are passing 2e: Twice-Exceptional Newsletter on to new hands and looking back fondly on how it began — and how far it has come.

The couple met and married in the 1970s while working for a data processing training company near Chicago and went on to freelance corporate writing careers. As their sons encountered challenges in traditional schools, they came to understand them as “twice-exceptional” soon after the term was popularized in 1997.

“Until we understood the concept of 2e,” Linda says, “we were puzzled about how they could be so engaged out of school and so unmotivated in school.”

After years of frustration with unresponsive educators, Mark did what many great people do when faced with an insurmountable problem.

He took a nap.

“When he woke up,” Linda says, “he said he dreamed we started a newsletter about twice-exceptionality and told me that he’d even seen the logo in his dream.”

Giving proper credit to his couch for the inspiration, Mark laughs, “We had to go forward after that, right?”

At this time Mark and Linda were suffering financially, along with the rest of the country, in the wake of the dotcom crash, and the freelance writing gigs were drying up. Motivated by their sons’ experiences and struggles to get their needs met in school, they put out the first issue of 2e Newsletter in October 2003.

“It was unawareness of 2e that really led us to start the newsletter,” Mark says.

They worked at home, each in their separate offices and communicating by frequent emails to each other.

Linda handled most of the editorial responsibilities, while Mark applied his skills to the production and distribution of each issue. They both regularly wrote articles for the publication.

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“Linda also let me sweep up extraneous commas off the floor and keep the hyphenation machine loaded,” Mark jokes.

Humor and dedication kept them going in those early days when twiceexceptionality had low recognition among parents and educators.

“Shaping public awareness takes time,” Mark says. “You can expedite the process if you’re flamboyant, gladhanding, outgoing people, but we aren’t.

Parents understood what we were doing quickly, but we would still hear stories of obtuse schools.”

Mark and Linda set out to help parents advocate for the needs of their 2e children. As the newsletter’s influence grew, recognition of 2e issues became more universal and the publication grew beyond its initial audience.

“I thought that we would help to educate parents and give them ammunition to fight for what their kids needed in school,” Linda says. “I didn’t expect educators and psychologists to embrace our publication as they have.”

“One of us would get a gracious comment, share it with the other, and that would keep us going for at least another week,” Mark says. “We also thought maybe we’d get filthy rich, but that didn’t work out.”

What did work out was clearly defining what we mean when we talk about 2e.

OVER THE YEARS leading experts in the field of twiceexceptionality have contributed to the newsletter. Susan Baum, lead author of To Be Gifted and Learning Disabled, has written or co-written many articles on practical classroom strategies based on years of experience, as have other educators, including Beverly Trail, 40

Dennis Higgins, and Elizabeth Nielsen.

For teachers as well as parents, these articles have been informative and inspirational. Bobbie Gilman, Deirdre Lovecky, Megan Foley Nicpon, Dan Peters, and other psychologists have shared assessment techniques as well as their wisdom in working with anxiety in students and parents.

When he woke up, he said he dreamed we started a newsletter about twiceexceptionality and told me that he’d even seen the logo in his dream

The newsletter reaches close to 2,000 subscribers every issue — in places as far away from the Midwest as Australia, New Zealand, China, India, and South Africa — maintaining an international forum for conversations about how to support 2e students in the classroom and beyond. Despite this broad influence, Mark does not lose sight of the original spirit of the publication, which arose out of a puzzling discrepancy between their sons’ innate curiosity and the dampening effect of formal education, and then hearing their own perspectives echoed around countless kitchen tables and carpool rides.

“In most cases,” Mark says, “it’s people with a very personal stake — such as a child who is 2e — who are the people who make a difference.”

They would like to see the broader educational community recognize the pervasiveness of twice-exceptional students and apply specific educational strategies developed for this population to support its needs. With the publication of the newsletter morphing into an online and print magazine under the aegis of Bridges 2e Media — and with both their sons having launched into their own lives — Mark and Linda will continue their work in a series of booklets called Spotlight on 2e. These materials provide information and perspectives to change for the better the way children are educated in the United States and, increasingly, around the world.

“I’d like to see training in giftedness and twice-exceptionality become a standard part of the education of teachers, psychologists, and physicians,” Linda says. She senses that twiceexceptionality is more commonplace than once thought and predicts that a better “understanding and acceptance of the concept of neurodiversity — an expansion of our concept of what is normal — will become widespread.”

Confident that the strides made by the 2e Newsletter will continue on as more people advocate for needs of the twiceexceptional, Mark quotes a well-known adage: “One person coming to school to ask for something is a fruitcake; two people are a fruitcake and a friend; three people are troublemakers; 50 people become a powerful organization. In the 2e community, we have thousands, who, if they engage, can truly change local and national viewpoints on twice-exceptionality.”

SMA RT BO O KS FO R S MART KID S

MIRROR BY S U Z Y L E E A book review by Bob Seney

I have just returned from Dublin, Ireland, where I did a presentation at the Conference of the European Council for High Ability (ECHA), the European equivalent to the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC). The topic was nurturing and supporting Dabrowski’s overexcitabilities through literature. When I address this topic, I usually have a wagon-load of books, but travel to Ireland precluded bringing them along. Instead, I selected just two to use as examples.

One of the books was Susan Bosak’s Dream: A Tale of Wonder, Wisdom & Wishes (2004, TCP Press – The Communication Project). This book deserves and will get its own review in a future column. The second book was Suzy Lee’s Mirror (2010, Seven Footer Press), a book that I reviewed in an earlier column in the November, 2011, issue of 2e Newsletter.

This column will revist Suzy Lee’s work, Mirror, in its context as a single title in a trilogy.

In conversation with a good friend and colleague, Dr. Myra Garces of the National Institute of Education, Singapore, I was reminded that Mirror was part of a trilogy featuring the same little girl. Upon returning home, I dug through my library to find the other two books Wave (2008, Chronicle Books) and Shadow (2010, Chronicle Books). All three are wordless and thus allow for the creativity of each reader who interacts with the book.

In re-reading the three books together, one easily detects a unifying theme of creativity, joy, and the power of imagination. Lee illustrates each of the three books in a similar way, with great simplicity of line, dramatic movement, and the use of just two colors. Her use of white space and lack of defining borders help create the drama of each illustration and add to the overall effect of the books.

Looking at the books in the order they were published, we begin with Wave. Here we have the story of a little girl and her day at the beach. We will call her Suzy since the character, the same in all three books, is not named. A flock of seagulls follow Suzy as she runs and dances with the waves. She chases the sea as it ebbs and runs from it when it surges back. She laughs with delight as she plays with the sea. As we page through the story, we follow her dance of joy and laughter. The use of blue transforms the sea into an animated character whose role in the plot is equal to Suzy’s. In short,

Wave is simply delightful! It was named the New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Book of 2008.

In Mirror, the book which introduced me to the author, Lee creates a very different mood. Again, she uses white space and only two water colors. In the opening pages, we find a rather sad and lonely Suzy huddled on the floor in front of a mirror. Then, discovering her reflection, she begins to explore and dance together with it. All is well, until the reflection takes on a life and movement of its own, making Suzy angry.

In a fit of temper, Suzy breaks the mirror and again she is left alone and sad. This is a powerful story that reminds us that our actions have consequences. Once again, we find that the genre of picture books is a powerful literary tool.

In the third book of the trilogy, Shadow (2010, Chronicle Books), we have an interesting and unique stroke of genius.

The format of the book itself plays an important role. The book is designed to be read by turning it sideways and flipping the pages from bottom to top. On the top page, we have Suzy’s world, in which she begins to play shadow games and make shadow images. The bottom page shows the reflections — the shadow figures that Suzy creates. In effect, the book becomes the room itself! What’s really fun is what happens when the light is turned off and Suzy is called to dinner, the only words in the book.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen this technique used before, and it makes Shadow magical. As I have pointed out many times, the genre of picture books is becoming more and more sophisticated. Lee’s use of illustration and the stylistic technique of using the book itself is just one dramatic example.

Picture books are a dynamic genre of literature, and textless or wordless books take the genre to its pinnacle. These books prompt the reader to an interaction that is unique in all of literature. I have had so much success with learners of all ages as they “write” their own version of the story. Teachers have also shared with me their successes, especially with our 2e students. But on top of all that, wordless books are just fun!

Happy reading!

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THE ORIGINS OF A FIELD A BRIEF HISTORY OF 2e

by Susan Baum, Ph.D.

The author is the director of the Bridges 2e Center for Research and Professional Development. Susan is widely published in the field of gifted education, including her groundbreaking book, To Be Gifted and Learning Disabled, which was honored as the 2018 NAGC Book of the Year in the practitioner category and is in its third edition. Her expertise in twice-exceptionality has earned her many awards including the Weinfield Group’s Lifetime Achievement Award, Connecticut Association for Gifted’s Friend of the Gifted Award, and Distinguished Professional Alumni Award from the University of Connecticut School of Education.

Albert Einstein did not speak until he was four nor read until he was seven, causing his parents great concern about his intelligence. The family maid referred to him as der Depperte — “the dopey one,” according to Einstein: His Life and Universe (Isaacson, 2007).

Pablo Picasso hated school. Not only did he have difficulty reading because the words kept dancing on the page, changing their form as he read, but he also had behavioral problems and often was sent out of the classroom. During those times, he took out his sketch pad and spent his “punishment time drawing” (Pablo Picasso, 2018).

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Both of these people had extraordinary talents and suffered from learning issues. Indeed, stories of individuals with this profile have existed for a long time. Today we would call them twiceexceptional — an idea that has spread like a giant wave crashing down on the proverbial shores worldwide.

This relatively new field of twiceexceptionality has an interesting history with twists, turns, and milestones. It was born out of research and policies associated with the psychology and education of students with disabilities (one exceptionality) and the psychology and education of students with gifts and talents (the other exceptionality).

The story of the development of each of these fields reveals much about how students can have both gifts and disabilities simultaneously and why neither of these fields, on their own, are sufficient to address the complex needs of students who are twice-exceptional.

This article will trace separately the history of both fields — students with disabilities and students with gifts and talents — explaining how they merged and how this merger developed into a bona-fide field, well poised to meet the needs of the next generation of Einsteins and Picassos.

ORIGINS OF TWICEEXCEPTIONALITY 1900-1980

Since early times, psychiatrists and psychologists sought to understand human differences, mental disturbances, and abnormal behavior.

For instance, Cesare Lombroso’s book, The Man of Genius (1889), explored the personalities of geniuses and concluded that all of them eventually go mad, causing individuals to fear rather than to embrace their potentials.

With the advent of the first intelligence test at the start of the 20th century, psychologists turned their attention to categorizing humans by their levels of intelligence to offer a more empirical way of looking at differences. Because of that, this story begins with the early 1900s, when these fields began to forge different paths.

MEASURING INTELLIGENCE

During the early 1900s, the French government was faced with a financial crisis in their ability to educate all children and turned their attention to understanding the impact of intellectual differences on learning. To address this problem, they commissioned Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon to develop a test that would provide information about which students would be capable of succeeding in school. Their work resulted in the development of a test

that would measure factors teachers felt related to school success, such as memory, vocabulary, and mathematical concepts. This test, published in 1905, used the idea of ascertaining a child’s mental age to compare it with their chronological age. Those students whose mental age fell far below their chronological age were felt to be in need of a different kind of education.

In short, the initial purpose of the test was to identify students whose mental abilities were inferior.

Intrigued by this test, Lewis Terman, an American psychologist from Stanford University, translated and adapted it for use in America. His version was called the Stanford-Binet Test of Intelligence.

Rather than use the idea of mental age, the test revealed an IQ score or intelligence quotient, a term coined by William Stern from the German term “Intelligenzqotient,” which was based on dividing a person’s mental age by their chronological age and multiplying that score by 100. Unlike the French, whose main concern was identifying mentally deficient students, Terman was interested in students whose scores were in the top 2 percent of the population. This divergence of purposes is a jumping-off point to describe the development of the two fields of exceptionalities.

THE STUDY OF DEFICITS: STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES, 1900-1980

Early studies of deficits or deficiencies in the 1900s focused on understanding why individuals had difficulty learning.

For American psychologist Henry Goddard, low IQ scores negatively impacted students’ ability to learn. He coined the term “feeblemindedness” to describe these students and advocated for them to be segregated from “normal” children and receive special education. Eventually, these students were labeled “mentally retarded” and were placed in special education classes where expectations were low, curriculum watered down, and remediation offered.

Many psychiatrists, however, did not agree that students’ levels of intelligence sufficiently explained why they had difficulty learning. For instance, during the late 1800s, German physician Adolf Kussmaul introduced the concept of “word blindness” to describe individuals who had the intellect, eyesight, and the power of speech but could not read. Word blindness later came to be known as dyslexia, a term introduced by Rudolf Berlin in 1887. Cooccurrences of capability and deficiency were further explored by American psychologist Leta Hollingworth, who noted in her book Special Talents and Defects: Their Significance to Education that “occasionally, a very intelligent child is found who does not readily learn arithmetic and on the other hand there exists children whose ability at calculations far exceeds expectation from other performances.”

interests who used pedantic speech patterns, showed impairment during two-way interactions, engaged in repetitive and stereotyped play, and seemed unaware of environmental demands.

Other researchers, such as Strauss and Lehtinen (1947), noted “disturbances in perception, thinking, and emotional behavior either separately or in combination. These disturbances prevent or impede a normal learning process,” even among children with at least normal intelligence.

By the 1960s it was clear that many more children needed support that was not provided in classes designed for students with learning “disturbances” or children with physical disabilities. Some began to realize that special education may need to be expanded to include services

The Man of Genius (1889) explored the personalities of geniuses and concluded that all of them eventually go mad, causing individuals to fear rather than to embrace its potentials.

Other professionals were also finding that some highly intelligent youngsters exhibited a unique set of seemingly incongruous behaviors. For instance, American psychologist Leo Kanner (1943) published a paper in which he described 11 youngsters with high intelligence as displaying “a powerful desire for aloneness” and “an obsessive insistence on persistent sameness.” He named the condition “early infantile autism.” Similar observations were documented by German scientist Hans Asperger (1944). The cases he reported were all boys who were highly intelligent with specific obsessive

for students whose behaviors were not due to low levels of intelligence.

For example, Cruickshank, Bentzen, Ratzeburg, and Tannhauser (1961) investigated students who exhibited neurological deficits such as increased motor activity, poor organization of behavior, deficits in perception and memory, inordinate distractibility under ordinary conditions, persistent faulty perceptions, persistent hyperactivity, and awkwardness/ consistently poor motor performance.

Described at the time as “minimally brained-damaged,” “neurologically impaired,” or “hyperactive,” these

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students’ deficits resulted in the their failure to read, write, and spell. Unlike programs for students needing special education, strategies for these kinds of students included minimizing distractions, highlighting areas of text to help students focus on the page, and allowing more movement in the classroom — in other words, interventions that modified the environment in ways that could circumvent their learning issues. In developing these teaching methods, Cruickshank et al. noted that many of the sample also possessed superior intelligence, but their suggestions for programming did not address these advanced abilities.

This deficit-based approach was bolstered when Kirk and Bateman (1962) offered an alternative hypothesis as to why these students with at least average ability were having difficulties in school. They argued that the root of the problem was the result of underlying language and learning deficits that stemmed from perceptual and cognitive processing difficulties as opposed to other neurological issues. Kirk coined the term “learning disabilities,” which steered focus away from the behaviors of hyperactive and distractible students toward other factors associated with learning difficulties. Interestingly, the intellectual profiles of those they observed showed peaks and valleys — strong abilities in some areas and problematic weaknesses in others — which distinguished this group from below-average students who presented a more even pattern of abilities.

By the 1970s, more and more educators and scholars were recognizing the need for specialized services to support the learning issues of students who struggled in school. To answer the need, federal government passed the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975. The law mandated a free and appropriate public education for all children with disabilities, ensured due process rights, and mandated 44

Individual Education Plans (IEP) and placement of students in the “least restrictive environment,” meaning that students with disabilities should remain in mainstream classrooms as much as possible. The IEPs identified learning issues and opportunities for remediation, but did not incorporate cognitive or intellectual prowess into their strategies. In this mandate, students with specific learning disabilities were defined as exhibiting:

a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or using spoken or written language. These may be manifested in disorders of listening, thinking, reading, writing, spelling or arithmetic. They include conditions which have been referred to as perceptual, motor handicaps, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia and developmental aphasia.

[They] do not include learning problems which are primarily the result of visual, hearing, motor handicaps or mental retardation, emotional disturbance, or environmental disadvantage (United States Public Law 94-142, Section 620).

Rarely, if ever, were students who were classified as learning disabled also identified for gifted programs, even though they often possessed IQ scores in the superior range of intelligence.

THE STUDY OF ABILITIES: STUDENTS WITH GIFTS AND TALENTS, 1900-1980

The interest in individuals with advanced intellectual abilities began in 1916 when Lewis Terman began his longitudinal study of a sample of 1,500 gifted students who scored in the 98th percentile on the StanfordBinet Test of Intelligence. In 1947, he and colleague Mary Odin published the second edition of the Genetic Studies of Genius, where they argued that gifted students were healthier, more popular, and better adjusted than their peers in general. They reported that such

individuals were highly successful in school and needed no support. This research influenced the conceptions of giftedness for decades that basically equated popularity, achievement, and accomplishment with giftedness (Terman & Odin, 1947). During this same period, Leta Hollingworth presented a contrasting view. She saw great need in this set of students to have a learning environment especially designed to meet their “brilliance” and introduced the idea of enrichment as a way to meet the needs of gifted students. To this end, she began the Special Opportunity Class in a public school in New York City for gifted students, where she offered educational experiences that we would describe today as enriched, multidisciplinary, project-based learning.

Although some gifted programs emerged during that time, there was no larger national impetus until the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik compelled educators to scrutinize how they were developing mathematical and scientific expertise within schools in the United States. Over time this concern about developing the nation’s talent eventually brought about in 1978 the Gifted and Talented Children’s Education Act. Its provisions included the establishment of the National Leadership Training Institute and the Office of Gifted and Talented, and defined gifted and talented as children who are identified at the preschool, elementary, or secondary levels as possessing demonstrated or potential abilities that give evidence of high-performance capability in one or more areas. These areas include intellectual domains, creativity, specific academic areas, leadership ability, and performing and visual arts.

Note that this definition of giftedness established specific domains, as opposed the more generalized, conservative notion of a gifted person as one who scored in the top two percent on IQ testing. Unfortunately, this legislation included no mandate for

“The scale, properly speaking, does not permit the measure of the intelligence, because intellectual qualities are not superposable, and therefore cannot be measured as linear surfaces are measured.”

- Alfred Binet identification or services for highly able and talented students, but programs did begin to emerge that focused on enrichment, acceleration, and talentdevelopment experiences. However, identification criteria and procedures for gifted programs often excluded bright youngsters who already were receiving special education services.

GIFTED EDUCATION MEETS SPECIAL EDUCATION: THE BIRTH OF A FIELD, 1980-2000

As both fields emerged, educators began to notice that some students identified with specific learning disabilities were very advanced in other areas. For instance, some showed talent in the arts, filmmaking, and engineering. Others had a passion for science or skills in debating. But their jagged profiles — a discrepancy between their high full-scale IQ scores and lack of high performance in

their areas of challenge — prevented them from being identified for gifted programs. The single focus on fixing their problems often led students to feel like failures and stop trying (Baum, Schader & Owen, 2017). Meanwhile, some students who were identified primarily as gifted and talented began to have more and more difficulty completing school assignments as they reached middle or high school. They began to exhibit behavioral problems, or experienced periods of depression and hopelessness. Because they were often viewed as lazy and unmotivated, they were not referred to special education for evaluation of a possible learning disability (Baum et al., 2017).

Awareness about these bright but challenged students spread with the publications of several books that looked at students who were both gifted and disabled. The first book, Providing Programs for the Gifted Handicapped (Maker, 1977), described

gifted individuals who had physical and learning disabilities and outlined the components of programs that would meet their needs. In 1980, Joanne Rand Whitmore published the results of her research in classrooms for gifted underachieving students in Cupertino, California. Her book, Giftedness, Conflict and Underachievement (1980), showed that many gifted youngsters had undiagnosed learning disabilities that required a more project-based curriculum. Other professionals were also becoming interested in this unique population of youngsters. To capture what was occurring, Lynn Fox, Linda Brody, and Dianne Tobin published a comprehensive volume, LearningDisabled/Gifted Children: Identification and Programming (1983). Their work was instrumental in creating awareness about the needs and characteristics of students who were both gifted and learning disabled. In fact, during the 1980s there was a surge of innovative programs designed to meet their needs.

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By the 1990s, “gifted learning disabled” seemed too narrow a descriptor to encompass the various categories of gifted students who could be dually identified. Several factors contributed to the expansion of the framework.

First, in 1988, a federal initiative in the United States called the Jacob K. Javits Gifted and Talented Education Act was instituted. This act provided research and program development grants for the purpose of addressing the needs of underserved students, including gifted students with disabilities.

Second, the American Psychological Association added diagnoses to their editions of Diagnostic Statistical Manual (DSM) that were particularly relevant for high-ability students.

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), for instance, appeared in the DSM III (1987). In 1991, the federal government included autism as a special education category, and in 1994, the DSM IV included diagnostic criteria for Asperger’s syndrome, which, more recently, is beneath the umbrella diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

By the year 2000, notions of gifted students with learning disabilities included specific diagnoses such as ADHD, and autism and Asperger’s syndrome. Therefore, when the term “twice-exceptional” was used more and more to describe this population, the field embraced its use. It was first used in 1986 by James Gallagher as the title for one of the first Javits grants to serve gifted students with disabilities, “The Twice-Exceptional Child Project” (Nielsen & Higgins, 1988).

By 2000, the field of twiceexceptionality was a vital aspect of the educational landscape. Inspired and funded by Jacob K. Javits Gifted and Talented Education Act, the field saw an increase in research projects and innovative programs to serve these students. Research findings concluded that twice-exceptional students could be identified, and that they benefited from appropriate programs that met 46

their dual set of needs. In a welldocumented review of literature on gifted students with learning disabilities, Brody and Mills (1997) concluded that these dually diagnosed youngsters had needs that differed from their gifted peers without disabilities and their learning-disabled peers with average cognitive abilities. They argued that this population of youngsters could be considered the most misunderstood of all exceptionalities. They also charged educators to develop programs where these students would receive attention to their gifts, support for their deficits, and counseling to help them cope with the duality of their needs.

WHERE ARE WE NOW? WHERE ARE WE GOING?: 2000-2018 AND BEYOND

With a foundation established, the past 18 years saw an explosion of accomplishments and continuing growth of the field of twiceexceptionality. Numerous initiatives and research studies are solidifying the field, as well as advocacy and legislation that help shape policy. There also are a plethora of books that offer practical strategies for program development for twice-exceptional learners.

The future of the field of twiceexceptionality is promising. Just this year, the 2e Center for Research and Professional Development at Bridges Academy has identified 95 2e-friendly schools worldwide in both the public and private sectors. Concurrently, more and more professional and parent-led groups, conferences, and organizations are taking on the mission of spreading awareness of 2e and advocating for twice-exceptional learners.

The impact can also be seen in schools, which are increasingly open to 2e research and advocacy and energized by the positive psychology movement’s emphasis on appreciating and accentuating the strengths, talents, and gifts of individuals with neurodiverse

minds (Archer, 2015; Armstrong, 2012; Eide & Eide, 2011). Schools are embracing a more balanced approach: focusing on developing students’ strengths, interests, and talents in addition to helping them overcome their challenges.

This is how today’s 2e students will become tomorrow’s leaders.

Building 2e Awareness and Community 2018 Annual Conference

A full day of workshops, panel discussions and networking for parents and caregivers of 2e kids, and the professionals who work with them.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 9TH

MOLLOY COLLEGE, ROCKVILLE CENTRE, NY Featuring:

Keynote Dr. Michael Postma

T ECa

twice exceptional children’s advocacy

Archer, D. (2015). The ADHD advantage: What you thought was a diagnosis may be yourgreatest strength. New York: Avery.

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. Waco, Texas: Prufrock Press.

Berlin, R. (1887). Eine besondere art der Wortblindheit (dyslexie).

Wiesbaden: J.F. Bergmann.

Brody, L. & Mills, C. (1997). Gifted children with learning disabilities: A review of the issues. Journal of Learning Disabilities 30(3), 282-296.

National 2e expert and educator

Dr. Lois Baldwin

and a special screening of the documentary film 2e2: Teaching the Twice Exceptional hosted by its award-winning director Tom Ropelewski For more information or to register visit us online at teca2e.org, email info@teca2e.org or call 347-889-6333

REFERENCES: THE ORIGINS OF A FIELD

Armstrong, T. (2012). Neurodiversity in the classroom: Strength-based strategies to help students with special needs succeed in school and life.

Alexandria, VA: ASCD. Asperger H. (1944). Die Autistisehen Psychopathen im Kindesalter.

European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience, 117(1), 76-136.

The Incovenient Student

Cruickshank, W. M., Bentzen, F. A., Ratzeburg, G. H., & Tannhauser, M. T. (1961). A training method for hyperactive children. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.

Eide B. & Eide, F. (2011). The dyslexic advantage. New York: Penguin Group.

Gallagher, J. (1986). The conservation of intellectual resources. In A. Copely, K. Urban, H. Wagner, & W. Wieczerkowski (Eds.), Giftedness: A continuing worldwide challenge. New York, NY: Trillium Press.

Hollingworth, L. S. (1923). Special talents and defects: Their significance for education. New York: The Macmillan Co.

Isaacson, W. (2007) Einstein: His life and universe. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Kanner, L. (1943). Autistic disturbances of affective contact.

Nervous Child 2, 217-250.

Kirk, S. A., & Bateman, B. (1962).

Diagnosis and remediation of learning disabilities. Exceptional Children, 29(2), 73-78.

Lombroso, C. (1891). The man of genius. London: Walter Scott.

Maker, C. (1977). Providing programs for the gifted handicapped. Reston, VA: Council for Exceptional Children.

Neilson, E, & Higgins, D. (1988).

The twice exceptional child project Washington, DC: US Department of Education.

Pablo Picasso (2018). retrieved from http://dyslexiahelp.umich.edu/ success-stories/pablo-picasso

Strauss, A. A., & Lehtinen, L. E. (1947).

Psychopathology and education of the brain-injured child. Oxford, England: Grune & Stratton

Terman, L., & Oden, M. (1947).

Genetic studies of genius: The gifted child grows up: Twenty-five years’ follow-up of a superior group, Vol. 4.

Stanford, CA.: Stanford University Press.

Whitmore, J. (1980). Giftedness conflict and underachievement.

Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

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WHERE NECESSITY CAN LEAD… PARENT, TH E RA PIST FI ND S BR IGHT & Q U IR KY S O LU T I O N

by Robin Schader, Ph.D.

As a young mother, Debbie Steinberg Kuntz was working for InfoSpace, the search engine developer. When her division was eliminated, she was provided with career counseling, including testing for a potential fit in different professions. The top three of 50 possibilities included litigator, teacher, and psychologist. She now recalls that she definitely did not want the lifestyle of a lawyer and didn’t know if she could summon the patience to teach kids. Fortunately, she has always liked to read books about the brain and how human beings function, so she decided to return to graduate school for a master’s degree in clinical psychology.

This year, after nearly a decade as a licensed marriage and family therapist, Debbie created and produced the April 2018 the Bright and Quirky Child Online Summit, an event that drew more than 15,000 registrants from around the world.

Debbie emphasizes it was “My kids!”— her two teenage sons — who led the way into the puzzling and frustrating world of 2e. She started “seeing those signs” of differences in her eldest son when he was a toddler. He could name songs after just a few notes but could not keep his mind focused. In preschool, her son was the one running around the circle of others who were sitting quietly. During her first parent-teacher 48

conference, she was told he was having trouble with “leaky margins,” a phrase that has become part of her ongoing vocabulary.

After many years of “signs,” they discovered her son had ADHD and was also very bright. It had been difficult to figure out because in some situations everything was fine and “it was different every year.” For example, he had a first-grade teacher who knew he needed more movement and would send him on errands when he needed a break before he could re-engage. That year he was sent on a lot of errands around the school, but also did very well in the classroom, both behaviorally and academically.

It was a quite different story during the particularly difficult following year.

The second-grade teacher expressed that her son did not have ADHD. He had “behavioral challenges.” The thirdgrade teacher suggested medication.

Finally, in the fourth grade, he received a full neuropsychological assessment.

Interestingly, whether or not he looked like he had ADHD depended quite a lot on the teacher he had.

“So it was, as you know, such a hard path to figure out what was going on, to find out what kind of help to get,” Debbie says, “and I thought, if I’m in this profession and it’s hard for me to

figure out and know where to turn, it’s got to be difficult for other people.”

Even with her increasing knowledge about educational disparities, it was not until middle school that her younger son also was diagnosed with learning differences and ADHD. Debbie recalls the emotions these revelations evoked. “I talk to people all the time about diagnoses such as ADHD, and anxiety, and autism, but to be on the receiving end — I had no idea of what that internal experience is like. I went through the stages of grief, even though the diagnosis was not a major disability. It really shocked me, this process of grieving and of the expectations I had in my head of who my children would be. I had to do a major reset. And that process of acceptance, I don’t know if I ever would have understood that sitting in a therapist’s chair.”

Looking back, Debbie also recognizes instances of undiagnosed learning disabilities and “2e-ness” in her family, particularly with her father, whom she believes was undiagnosed with ADHD. “He really, really struggled,” she said.

Several of the families in her practice include “gifted kids who don’t fit neatly in a box.” Outside her practice, she gives talks at local schools and, after

her presentations, it is not unusual for parents to line up to talk with her, some with tears streaming down their faces.

“I just know the barn is burning for them,” she says, “They are really struggling.”

Knowing the power of support groups, Debbie started two for those parents, inviting guest speakers and branching out through videoconferencing applications such as Zoom, to bring in speakers from further afield.

The light-bulb moment came as she noted the transformative effect in her families week after week.

Quirky Child Online Summit. “Many parents that I work with have never heard the term ‘2e’ when they come in.

I wanted to pick a name where parents go, ‘Oh, that’s my child.’ I’m not into splitting hairs about IQ numbers. So, with ‘Bright’ I leave it up to the parents to define, and many parents understand that there are many kinds of ‘quirky.’”

Debbie describes four main takeaways, or “ah-ha” moments, from the Bright & Quirky online conference experience.

The first came from hearing the stories of now very successful adults who had been 2e students.

“There was a common thread among all of them,” Debbie says. “They each had an ah-ha moment in their lives when they realized they needed to be a change agent in their own lives. Each became a ‘self-scientist’ or a ‘selfhacker.’

Debbie Steinberg Kuntz, marriage and family therapist

What if she could connect world-class experts with people in their homes around the world? As a therapist, she bases her work on providing families with tools and information that will empower them. How could she extend that empowerment and understanding to those beyond driving distance? She already knew the power of good online training and had benefited from it in her own professional development.

With her background in the dot-com world, Debbie thought it would be possible to create a five-week parenting series with a different expert each week. She put together a “dream team” list of 25 experts, and all but two of them said yes. Suddenly she was doing an online summit. The timeline was extremely short. The idea had jelled in mid-February, and Debbie knew the event needed to be held before people checked out for the summer. She settled on April, thinking she might be able to reach around 400 people.

In a flash of inspiration, Debbie decided to call this gathering the Bright and

49

“I remember Ned Hallowell’s discussion in the summit when he said that untreated ADHD can be a disaster because there’s so much that can go wrong. But when you take responsibility for having the sort of brain that you have and make choices based on what helps it work the best, you can have really, really good outcomes and it can be your greatest asset. It opens you up to so much creativity and out-of-the-box thinking.

But you need to learn how to drive your unique brain.”

that we don’t have the answers for. My personal motto is ‘Everything is figureout-able.’ The way you figure it out is through research. You run these little experiments. Now, after the summit, the way I talk with my kids is different.

I say, ‘Okay, that’s a great idea. Let’s try it. How long do you want to try it?’ It’s part of becoming a self-scientist.”

The final ah-ha was that it went viral.

There were more than 15,000 people from around the globe taking part, 90 percent of them parents.

We’re going to help your child go from a caterpillar to a butterfly by recognizing their strengths and by strengthening their challenge areas.

The second takeaway was acceptance.

“I think a lot of us fight it,” Debbie says.

“I heard this from so many parents who participated in the summit. They talked about all the time they spent trying to make their child fit in and be ‘normal.’

Presenter Jessica McCabe had her ah-ha moment when she realized that she wasn’t a ‘failed version of normal.’ She realized she is okay.

There is this transformation in the belief of who you are as a person and what kind of brain is in your head. It’s perfectly okay not to be mainstream.

You can have a great life and realize your promise. But you are the one making the choices.”

The third big takeaway was the idea of action research.

“We’re not going to have all the answers no matter how much we learn and how much we study,” Debbie says “There are things that are going to come up 50

“Ever since the event,” Debbie says, “I’ve been getting emails from Australia, Europe, South Africa, and all across the U.S. They write that other people ‘don’t know what I’m talking about. They don’t get my kid.’”

The Bright and Quirky Child Online Summit brought this “tribe” together, “especially those who have not received a diagnosis and don’t know what they’re dealing with,” Debbie says. “To be able to say, ‘We can take an approach of action research; We’re going to help your child go from a caterpillar to a butterfly by recognizing their strengths and by strengthening their challenge areas. It’s really a beautiful thing and here’s the most interesting part: at the beginning of our in-person 2e support groups, I asked people their top challenges so I could use that information to help me decide the themes for the Summit. In the after Summit survey, the responses were almost identical.”

From these common threads, Debbie has developed “A 2e Roadmap with Six Stages”: First: A parent starts seeing signs of differences in their child and wonders if they should be concerned.

Second: A parent goes for an assessment to discover how their child’s brain works.

Third: Parents look for strengths, which is a really new piece for a lot of people.

What does my child or student like to do? Those strengths and interests will be an important piece of keeping the child engaged and learning.

Fourth: The whole family experiments with solutions.

Fifth: The family looks for good educational fits.

Sixth: The family helps the child become a self-scientist (or self-hacker) to discover what works for his or her particular brain.

What are the next steps?

“We’re planning another summit,” Debbie says, “and we hope it will be an annual event that will be earlier in the school year. I am so grateful to be in a position to be able to steward this idea of connecting struggling parents with the people who can help them.”

Debbie’s blog can be accessed at: www.brightandquirky.com

AMAZING OPPORTUNITIES FOR IN-DEPTH LEARNING IN 2019 STUDY WITH THE MASTERS July 21-26, 2019

Spend five days learning from experts in the 2e field through keynote addresses, workshops across three focus areas, and daily advanced group seminars with a “master” of your choice.

Focus areas include: Leadership for 2e-friendly schools Curriculum and instruction for 2e learners Understanding the complex minds of 2e learners Limited to 36 participants. At Bridges Academy in Studio City, California

VISION AND LEADERSHIP IN 2E EDUCATION October 11 – 13, 2019

The 2e Center for Research and Professional Development will hold its third biennial Symposium, at the Garland Hotel in North Hollywood, California.

Meet the 2019 2e Hall of Fame honorees at the induction dinner Listen to keynotes by leading experts in 2e education Participate in stimulating “Issues and Answers” forums Query panelists on best practices and research in 2e education Interact with other participants who share a strong interest in 2e education worldwide

Visit bridges.edu for more info. Questions? Contact Kim Vargas at kim.vargas@bridges.edu

BRIDGES 2e CENTER

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23RD BIENNIAL WORLD CONFERENCE

A World of Possibilities: Gifts, Talents, & Potential JULY 24 28, 2019

“I found the entire conference challenging and useful, and immediately applicable to my classroom environment.”  ROBERT BAITON AUSTRALIA

“The content of the conference sessions was quality and the opportunity to interact with around 600 GT colleagues from 30 different countries who share great commonalities all provided a memorable experience for me.”  JOYCE MILLER UNITED STATES

“As a doctoral student it was a great investment in myself, and a unique experience to meet scholars from all over the world, improve my knowledge about the field, and make networks. I came back home with great ideas and very excited about enhancing gifted education in Brazil.”  RENATA PRADO BRAZIL

The 2019 World Conference will be held on the campus of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Vanderbilt University is located in the heart of downtown Nashville.

There are several hotels along the perimeter of Vanderbilt University that are offering reduced rates for conference attendees. The university is only 12 miles from the Nashville International Airport. After you are on site, you can walk, catch a bus, or take an Uber/Lyft or taxi to nearby attractions, restaurants, museums, and live entertainment.

worldgifted2019.com

World Council for Gifted and Talented Children