Twice Exceptional: Supporting and Educating Bright and Creative Students with Learning Difficulties

In an educational system founded on rigid standards and categories, students who demonstrate a very specific manifestation of intelligence flourish, while those who deviate tend to fall between the cracks. Too often, talents and interests that do not align with classroom conventions are left unrecognised and unexplored in children with extraordinary potential but little opportunity. For twice-exceptional (2e) children, who have extraordinary strengths coupled with learning difficulties, the problem is compounded by the paradoxical nature of their intellect and an unbending system, ill-equipped to cater to their unique learning needs.

Twice Exceptional: Supporting and Educating Bright and Creative Students with Learning Difficulties provides cutting-edge, evidence-based approaches to creating an environment where twice-exceptional students can thrive. Viewing the 2e student as neither exclusively disabled nor exclusively gifted, but, rather, as a dynamic interaction of both, leading experts offer holistic insight into identification, social-emotional development, advocacy, and support for 2e students. With chapters focusing on special populations (including autism, dyslexia, and ADHD) as well as the intersection of race and 2e, this book highlights practical recommendations for school and social contexts. In expounding the unique challenges faced by the 2e population, Twice Exceptional makes a case for greater flexibility in our approach to education and a wider notion of what it means to be academically successful.

Table of Contents

About the Editor

Contributors

Introduction

Scott Barry Kaufman

Part I: Identification

1. Finding and Serving Twice-Exceptional Students: Using Triaged Comprehensive Assessment and Protections of the Law - Bobbie Gilman and Dan Peters
2. Using a Positive Lens: Engaging Twice-Exceptional Learners - Susan Baum and Robin Schader
3. Finding Hidden Potential: Toward Best Practices in Identifying Gifted Students with Disabilities - Edward R. Amend
4. Misconceptions About Giftedness and the Diagnosis of ADHD and Other Mental Health Disorders - Deirdre V. Lovecky
5. Knowns and Unknowns about Students with Disabilities Who Also Happen to Be Intellectually Gifted - Steven I. Pfeiffer and Megan Foley Nicpon

Part II: Supporting Twice-Exceptional Students

6. How We Can Recognize and Teach Twice or Multi Exceptional Students - Susan Winebrenner
7. 2E and Social-Emotional Development: One Label, Many Facets - Judy Galbraith
8. Advocating for Twice-Exceptional Students - Rich Weinfeld
9. It Takes a Team: Growing up 2e - Mary Ruth Coleman, Lois Baldwin, and Daphne Pereles
10. Educating the Twice-Exceptional Child: Creating Strong School-to-Home Collaborative Partnerships - Kevin Besnoy

Part III: Special Populations

11. Attention Divergent Hyperactive Giftedness: Taking the Deficiency and Disorder out of the Gifted/ADHD Label - Charles Fugate
12. Appreciating and Promoting Social Creativity in Youth with Asperger's Syndrome - Matthew D. Lerner and Rebecca M. Girard
13. The Spectrum of Twice Exceptional and Autistic Learners and Suggestions for Their Learning Styles - Richard O. Williams and Jeffrey Freed
14. Visuo-Spatial Skills in Atypical Readers: Myths, Research and Potential - Maryam Trebeau Crogman, Jeffrey Gilger, and Fumiko Hoeft
15. Gifted Dyslexics: MIND-Strengths, Visual Thinking, and Creativity - Susan Daniels and Michelle Freeman
16. Being 3E, a new look at culturally diverse gifted learners with exceptional conditions: an examination of the issues and solutions for educators and families - Joy Lawson Davis and Shawn Anthony Robinson
17. Where the Rubber Meets the Road: Supporting the Educational Success of Twice-Exceptional African American Students - Renae D. Mayes, Erik M. Hines, and James L. Moore III

Part IV: Models

18. Bridges Academy: A Strengths-Based Model for 2E - Carl Sabatino and Chris Wiebe
19. Integration and Dynamic Adaptation in the Formation of a Novel 2e School Model - Kimberly Busi and Kristin Berman

Index

"Scott Barry Kauffman has revitalized the ongoing intellectual discourse on twice exceptionality, bringing great minds together in this useful and timely anthology."
- Kiesa Kay, BSJ, MA, ACFI; editor of Uniquely Gifted: Identifying and Meeting the Needs of the Twice Exceptional Student

"Finally, an excellent thorough science based guide for the parents, teachers and therapists of the one in five children who struggle with a learning disability and have gifted potential. Scott Barry kaufman has assembled the worlds experts in twice exceptional children to inform the way families and schools can educate with an eye towards maximizing potential and minimizing struggle. A long needed and excellent resource."
- Gail Saltz, MD, Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry, The New York Presbyterian Hospital, Weill Cornell School of Medicine; author of The Power of Different: The Link Between Disorder and Genius

"When it comes to understanding people who learn differently, Twice Exceptionality (2e) is perhaps one of the newest and most important concepts available to us right now. In recent years, Scott Barry Kaufman has emerged as one of the nation's most potent voices for those who learn differently, so it is fitting that through his unique lens and under his leadership, this first of its kind volume would find its way to our bookshelves. He has thoughtfully assembled some of the most essential minds from the fields of giftedness and intelligence to help us better understand 2e people of all ages and backgrounds. And, in a world where multiple intelligences inevitably converge with multiple identities, this diverse compendium on Twice Exceptionality is important and timely reading that will help steer educators, families, advocates, policy makers and the generally curious into a place of deeper compassion for those who learn differently-something we especially need as we move into the next decade of the 21st century."
- Marc Smolowitz, Independent Filmmaker