Educator Webinar: Supporting Your Bright But Struggling Students

Didn't make it to the live event?

Do you have students with learning differences who struggle to show what you know to be immense strengths, leading to high anxiety?

Do you have talented or precocious students with unexpected behavior challenges who don't seem to respond well to traditional behavior techniques?

Do you wonder how to rethink your approach to supporting them while also meeting the needs of all the students in your classroom?

You might have encountered twice-exceptional (2e) learners! These students experience both high ability and learning challenges, which can lead to anxiety and behavior issues. Join this session for an inside look into these children’s experiences and specific strategies to help these kids—and your classroom—thrive. Hosted by Santa Clara County SELPAs, Palo Alto Educator Association, and REEL.

When: Monday, January 24, 2022; 3:30 to 5:00 p.m. PT

See the transcript here:

Leo Mapagu:

Okay, again, uh, just a quick introduction. Welcome everyone, uh, to our, uh, today's session on, uh, supporting your bright but struggling students. I am Leo Mapagu. I am the executive director for Santa Clara County SELPA, and I am excited to be here to partner with REEL, a non-profit organization working with, uh, our educators and parents to, where to raise awareness about twice exceptionality. Um, I think back in March, uh, 2020, Brielle, uh, reached out to me. It's, uh, it's almost a year, and, uh, finally we come to a product of that, um, of that new partnership. Um, and with our shared interest in collaboration to address the needs of our educators and our students with disabilities, here we are on our project one at least with, uh, with SELPA.

And I, I do want to state that I want to welcome everyone, but I want to make sure that we are here to recognize the importance of 2e. Um, I was asked like, "Why do you think it's important to hear, you know, this message, this information?" Um, the Council of Exceptional Children recently had a critical conversations webinar about, uh, minoritized to e-learners, and, uh, 2e has got, has gotten momentum on, on, on, on how we can try to, uh, marry, uh, 2e and students with disabilities. And it is important to recognize that we do have, uh, the two e-learners who are also students with disabilities. Uh, without further ado, I'm gonna, I'm gonna have to pass this torch to, uh, Terry Baldwin. Um, Terry, tag, you're it for now. Thank you.

Teri Baldwin:

Hi, I'm Teri Baldwin. I'm the president of the Palo Alto Educators Association, and I'm just so happy everyone's here. Thank you. This is an important topic, and, um, I've been kind of collaborating with REEL for a few years now, and they reached out to me, and it's been a wonderful collaboration. They've brought stuff into our schools and in Palo Alto, so I'm just very happy to have this working relationship with these great people. So thank you for being here.

Abby Kirigin: Great, thank you so much, Leo and Terry. Thank you to Santa Clara County Office of Education and to Palo Alto Educators Association for co-hosting this with us today. Um, just so you all know, we'd love this session today to feel as interactive as possible. Um, so we welcome you if you have questions at any time. You can use the chat or the QA function, um, to send us messages. And later on in the session, we are going to be actually asking you to contribute thoughts and ideas by using the chat functionality, and we will have an opportunity at the end of the session to discuss questions and have time to talk into Q&A. And also, as you know, you heard, we are recording. We're recording for distribution later, but we will turn off the recording before that Q&A session.

So, um, my name is Abby Kirigin, and I'm here today with Callie Turk and Yael Valek, and we are here today to talk to you about how to better understand your bright but struggling twice exceptional students. The three of us are parents who first learned about twice exceptionality through our own experiences with our own children, and then we really decided to dedicate ourselves to this cause. In fact, two of us are now doctoral students of education in this specialty area, and all of us bring our backgrounds as entrepreneurs, designers, researchers, and also teacher professional development creators to this work.

So just to give you a brief overview of what we're going to do today, we're just going to start by explaining to you a little bit more about who we are as REEL and what we do as an organization and a quick intro to twice exceptionality. Then we'll dig a little deeper into complexities of twice exceptionality, go through a few vignettes of individual students, and talk about, um, their experiences and how we can support them in the classroom and at home, and talk about some tips, and then have some time at the end for a reflection.

So as Leo mentioned, REEL is a non-profit organization. We strive to ensure that twice exceptional students, which is often referred to as 2e students, they thrive in school by raising that parent and educator awareness. So we provide tools, resources, events, services for parents and educators, and we do professional development workshops, speaker series, and everything we do is towards that ultimate goal of increasing the 2e student success in school and ultimately in life.

And as Teri mentioned, we, I thought we would give you a little bit of an example of some of our work we've done with the Palo Alto Unified School District. And so here are a bunch of pictures of things that we've done in the past. We have done learning differences simulations for, uh, classroom teachers and educators. We've done teacher professional development day workshops. We've had a learning specialist focused workshop. We sponsor Jonathan Mooney to come and speak to the educator community. We've also provided diverse neurodiversity books and math kits to the classrooms, and we've also sponsored a twice exceptional film screening for, again, for the teachers and educators in the district.

And for parents, we've done a multitude of things as well, such as parent engagement summit presentations, learning differences simulations for parents. We've co-sponsored speakers. We've put on our own speaker series, and we've worked with several partners, uh, in the area in addition to the Community Advisory Committee for Special Ed in Palo Alto, but also Parents Place and Parents Helping Parents and CHC. And we've got a bunch of tools and resources and a workshop menu for you. You can look on our website, which is reel2e.org. If you head over to the educators tab, you can see what we've got. We've got a bunch of different workshops that we can bring to your school. We would happy to come and present to your community to talk to you about twice exceptionality, do a learning differences simulation, talk about females in neurodiversity, or a variety of other topics.

So just a quick, um, brief introduction to what 2e is so we can all be on the same page as we move forward today. So 2e students have distinguishing strengths as well as complex challenges at the same time. So one thing that we found that's very helpful, um, to think of twice exceptional students, they're often called being green, which means that they've got what's kind of considered their yellow strength areas, their high potentials, their high abilities, and at the same time they've got complex blue challenges, which combine, combine together that blue and that yellow to make a green student.

So in your classroom, you might have a yellow student, you might have a blue student, uh, you might have some who have some at different times. Twice exceptional students are always in that green, and that interaction is a whole new experience all together from just those two things separately.

There's a very well known executive function and ADHD coach named Seth Perler, and as he says, "In a nutshell, if you have a child that you know that's smart or bright but who struggles to show it, they may be twice exceptional." And in fact, about five percent of kids are 2e.

Some of the challenge, that challenges that 2e students might face are specific learning differences such as dyslexia or dyscalculia, ADHD, oppositional defiant disorder, anxiety, autism, or any of the 13 disabling conditions under IDEA, which can qualify as a challenge.

It's also important, um, to approach twice exceptionality through the lens of DEI: diversity, equity, and inclusion. Twice exceptional learners are really more likely to fall through the cracks than children who experience a learning difference without that accompanying asynchronous development. And their strengths, their challenges can often be misdiagnosed or are very difficult to spot given that dual nature of what's going on. And these twice exceptional students are really a subset of the broader neurodiversity community, and the neurodiversity, the neurodiverse community is really a group that deserves a seat at the table in any DEI conversation and discussion.

And it's also important to note that the challenges of twice exceptionality can often be further compounded if a student is a person of color. In that case, many people in the 2e community refer to these students as thrice exceptional because they live at that intersection of race, learning disability, and high ability.

And then before we really delve even deeper into twice exceptionality, I'd just like to let you know that everything we're going to be presenting to you today and discussing with you today is based on research, and these are three actually really great research references. So after our talk today, we'd really, you know, if you're interested in learning even more, we welcome you to come back, look at the slides, take, you know, go and check out these research references, or you can always reach out to any of the three of us for more references or more support. Thanks, Abby.

Callie Turk:

So, um, as Abby mentioned, we are all parents of 2e children ourselves, so I wanted to give you an example, uh, from my own son about changes that are possible in the classroom for students like him. So this is an example of something he made in third grade. He was exceptionally bright and engaging, but getting him to do class work was difficult if it wasn't in his area of interest. So that may already make you think of some kids in your own classroom.

And he started to show less and less enthusiasm for school. After I had a conversation with Oren's teacher about 2e students and their need, she changed the way she thought about classroom assignments. So here's an example where they were supposed to make a poster showing a law, and so that they were learning the differences between laws and rules.

Now, my son has a very vivid imagination, and he asked, "Can I please make a law for my imaginary bear land, Babalaya?" And the teacher's first reaction was, "No, you have to make a law from the real world." But then she thought about the 2e lens, and if the lesson is really about a rule versus a law, does it matter if it's from an imaginary land if that's what it takes to get him to participate? She allowed him to show this rule, and he enthusiastically engaged with the assignment, and he got the whole class excited making creative laws like this one against art fairs, which came up because mom dragged him to too many that summer.

So this is one small vignette, and we don't pretend that 2e students are easy to figure out. Believe us, we know what it's like as their parents. But when they are engaged, they elevate classroom discussions and become leaders in their areas of strength, and it's changes like these, both small and large, that made my son feel heard, helped him connect with his classwork, and also increase the engagement of the entire classroom. And so we hope that by sharing the same 2e lens with you that I shared with his teacher, you can feel this change in your own classroom.

So we're used to looking at bell curves when we think about students and where they fall, and of course no one is always at the 50th percentile on everything, but most students fall within a fairly narrow range of the middle. 2e kids display much more extremes on either end of the curve, and they do so regularly, not just in one math unit. It's who they are and how they show up consistently.

In this example, you can see this 2e student has a general intellectual ability that is extremely high, and so is their mathematical reasoning. However, their processing speed is low, and their writing is low. So although it's on the low end of the middle, there was a huge gap between these scores on the curve. This child's math scores show up as just above average.

So why is he having so much trouble completing basic assignments and having anxiety during math? Even scores in the middle can feel like a major deficit to these kids since their intellectual reasoning is so high. The disability is masking their gifted math ability, and the giftedness is masking the disability, making the student appear to perform average in math.

Because of this discrepancy, math can be both too hard and too easy at the same time. The child feels that math reasoning comes easily to him. He's ready to tackle more advanced concepts and feels bored, but he can't process information quickly or write a lot of answers, so he feels like a failure. He can understand extremely advanced math concepts but can't complete a repetitive worksheet on something simple.

Also notice where social skills and behavior lie on the curve. This is called asynchronous development. You may have a fourth grader who does math at a seventh grade level, writes at a second grade level, socializes at a first grade level, and reasons at a 12th grade level. Imagine how confusing that is for the child, let alone for their parents and educators.

This is just one example of a 2e bell curve. Every child has a different chart, which is another reason 2e students are tricky. A 2e child could also be super strong in writing and have no interest in math.

So 2e individuals are change makers in the world, and we're going to share some of them with you and some of the strengths that come with being a 2e to show why it's important to nurture these kids in the classroom. So people who make connections across disciplines like Steven Spielberg have advanced 3D spatial perspectives and thinking like Steve Jobs and are good at narrative reasoning, recalling stories, episodes, and concepts like Whoopi Goldberg. These can be traits of people with dyslexia.

Creative, out of the box thinking like Dave Pilkey, enthusiasm like Simone Biles. We want her enthusiasm and risk takers, adventurers, seek novelty and curious like Richard Branson. These can be traits of people with ADHD.

Knowledge, skill, passion, and motivation in interest areas like Sir Anthony Hopkins, intently focused on details like Dan Aykroyd, a logical thinker and honest like Greta Thunberg. These can be traits of people with autism.

So as you can see, these are all world change makers that we would love to nurture, but imagine what it must have been like for them to be in a K-12 classroom.

In addition to strengths, what you'll often see in the classroom is the struggles that 2e kids are facing. One of the toughest ones is masking. So masking is working hard to appear normal, and the kids are exhausted just surviving the day trying to blend in. This energy that's spent on masking creates a lot of anxiety and creates unexpected behaviors in the classroom.

You may also see a class clown. Some students cover areas of difficulty with humor, like maybe if they have trouble reading aloud and it's really time, you may see some joking happening.

You may notice sensory challenges and meltdowns. Some may come from when the classroom gets loud, when there's certain noises that are annoying to the student, sometimes from being touched or being in a crowded area, sometimes the lights can be too bright. And when you get the sensory challenges compounded, you can see some meltdowns.

You may see social challenges. Often 2e kids are the ones that are walking around alone on the playground or may have difficulty in group work.

You may see resistance, and it's often unexpected resistance to seemingly simple tasks where you just can't figure out why the student won't do them.

And you may see unexpected underperformance. So when you're talking to the student, it can be clear they have a high level of understanding of what you're teaching, but then they just can't seem to get it down on paper, and it's, it can be very confusing.

And all of these together, the masking and the social challenges and the academic challenges, can lead to a high level of, of anxiety, and often that's what leads parents or educators to seek more evaluation to understand what's going on with the student.

You may also see disengagement. You may see the child reading a book in the corner or writing the most minimal answers that they can and just losing engagement in the classroom. And then ultimately, a lot of this can lead in the older grades to school refusal where you just can't get the 2e student to school anymore.

So how do you know if you have a 2e student in the classroom? Maybe some of this has sort of, you know, sparked something, and you're thinking about someone in your classroom. So here's some tips, maybe finding someone, identifying them in your classroom.

So you'll notice that there's high cognitive ability but lower than expected achievement, even if they're grade level. You'll see that they excel and participate well in areas of high interest, but they appear unmotivated or lazy in areas that they're not interested in. You'll see that they may participate well in class discussions or be very verbal talking about some of the subjects with you, but then they don't follow through with implementation and actually completing the project.

They may be very humorous to cover up some of their challenges, or they're just a very funny kid, and they may resist demonstrating their weaknesses or use avoidance tactics. 2e students often thrive on complexity, and they have difficulty with rote memorization. They may understand concepts very easily or quickly and then are frustrated that they have to show them repeatedly or have to produce specific output.

So maybe hearing this, uh, will make you think of someone that you've, one of the students in your classroom or that you've encountered.

So we really love this video, which was created by the Aurora Public Schools in Colorado about a bright six-year-old who's struggling with math. It's a very powerful video because you'll hear from educators, parents, and Riley himself and how they all work together to support him. You may want to grab a tissue.

[Video content - various speakers discussing Riley's situation]

"It's hard for people to understand like, oh, he's so smart, he should be able to," and it doesn't work that way. There's no should, you know. Often their disability can pull down their area of strength so that they look just average in a classroom. They look like they'll do fine, uh, with general classroom supports.

"The teachers thought that he moved around too much and everything in class, and he didn't pay attention, but then the teachers would ask him after they went over, like they would read a story, and he could tell you all the details in the story, and he could give you the sequence of what happened in the story, but he was, it just seemed like he was not focused."

"And sometimes their gift and their disability mask each other, and so, um, it's really hard to untangle, and the most we got usually was like, you know, it was he was a behavior issue. And so it's like, well, what's going on because he's not a bad kid, you know? So there's got to be something more to this."

"And the most important piece to remember is that we have to identify their strengths and program for that first. That's how a student will feel valued, engaged in the classroom, and like they have a piece of the community that they fit into. And then we can accommodate and plan for their area of disability."

"We first assumed giftedness and that maybe there was some boredom and maybe this was the behavior challenge, and so, um, we asked to have him tested, and we didn't know at the time that he also had the autism diagnosis."

"I've realized that Riley isn't limited in math just because he can't read the questions. He, you know, as long as I can read to him, I mean, he can understand and, you know, do all of the work that everybody else in that classroom can do."

"For Riley in particular, that's opened up just so much in terms of him feeling like he has strengths and he has things to bring to the table, which some of our kids and IEPs don't realize just because they struggle in one aspect that doesn't mean that that's the whole kid."

"Writing, you gotta like write a whole summary for like a few days, and math just takes like, you answered, answer the questions. That's like all you got to do."

"When we have a good team and we have people that are listening to us, it's night and day, like we go from, you know, meltdowns and school refusal and, you know, withdrawal, like where we don't even see him around the house, to like this kid that's just blossoming and wants to be a part of the family and is excited for every day and has friends. And I mean, this is, I didn't know if you would have friends, you know? Kids with autism a lot of times don't connect, and he's got great friends here, you know."

"So that's because we know the stuff that they think are challenging, you can help them with it, and the stuff that you're challenged with, they could help you with that too, so it's a team effort."

All right, I have to say that ending always gets me. Ah, that, that Riley, he's so cute.

Um, so I'm Cali, and I'm just so grateful all of you have joined today. I know we've had quite a few people join since, um, we began, so thank you very much for coming. We're actually entering the slightly more interactive part of the session, so I hope you get your fingers loosened up, and you'll be ready to do some typing with us.

Before we jump into some vignettes that we've put together to bring all this, all to life even a little more, we did put together quite a few resources for you, and the best way for you to access those is to go ahead and go to this tiny URL, which is tinyurl.com/realselpaJan2022. And I'm sorry, Terry, I just was running out of room, so I didn't put the P-A-E-A in there, and I should have, so my apologies.

So if you go to that link, you're going to find a wide range of materials there. You'll be able to link back to these slides so that you can refer to them in the future. You will be able to access our, um, 2e, you probably can't see this because I have my background on, but there's a 2e, uh, one pager that if you flip over onto the backup or go to the back of it has a lot of great information about specific challenges that you might face in your classroom and possible solutions.

We also have included is the child twice exceptional checklist. We also have an excerpt from the Fairfax County Public Schools 2e handbook that you might want to refer to as we go to the vignettes. And then we have a couple of other pieces of information that we'll refer to as we go through, and the link is in the chat if that's an easier way for you to get to the information.

Sorry, let me just go back and say a couple other things. If you scroll down, then you'll see we're going to work through a vignette on a student named Ben and a student named Kendra, and those have blank spaces that you can either make a copy of and fill in on your computer or you can print out later and write your notes in. And we also have provided you with a completely blank vignette so that if you would like to create a vignette for one of your own students in the future, you'll have a resource to do that.

And if you keep scrolling down the page, you'll see that we have these answer sheets, but please no peeking. But we just want you to rest assured that you will have something that has all the different parts we're going to discuss today.

So, um, you know, the vignettes we're going to go through, they are composite versions of real life students and situations here in Silicon Valley. The vignettes, we want to just acknowledge like that we are definitely all human. The reactions that we're gonna present in the vignettes are really natural ones that we've all had, whether we're parents or teachers. And, um, you know, so we just want to make sure you know that we know that being a teacher is really tough, and we cannot capture all the nuances of what you face in your classroom in any vignette.

So we really want to honor you and all that you do and just recognize that the things that we are going to talk about and the solutions we come up with, they're just possibilities. There is no one right answer. There is no perfect answer. We're all just doing our best.

So, um, we know that if, if a, an educator or a parent is doing the best they can with a 2e child, then that's going to make a big difference. And also that I, we hope what you'll notice is that the solutions that we suggest and come up with, um, they really are usually good for all students. So when we think about our 2e kids, we try not to come up with ideas that are so, you know, out there crazy that they only work for that one child because we know that's not realistic, that you need solutions that are really going to support everyone in your classroom as much as possible. So, so just know that that's kind of the aim that we're going with.

So the first, uh, one we want to talk about is a kiddo called Ben, and I'm gonna read a little story about Ben, and we're gonna then dive into some, some tips and strategies for working with Ben.

So Ben is in the fifth grade, and he is gifted with autism and ADHD. He loves Minecraft, and he will discuss it in great detail to anyone who will listen and even those who won't. He has an uncanny ability to connect ideas that sometimes really stuns his teacher. His memory surprises other students. They came to him in fourth grade to hear facts about the missions when they were studying them, and he really loves to ham it up when he gets to act out class projects.

He came into the fifth grade with Smarter Balanced test results showing that he is performing above grade level in math, and he received an 80% on the pre-test for the new math unit on volume. He keeps asking for harder math. Math was scheduled just before lunch last Friday. During lesson time, Ben refused to sit on the rug, which led to a power struggle with his teacher. He was messing around all during math work time, doodling and reading books, despite reminders to stay on task.

Just before lunch, the teacher told Ben, "I noticed you didn't make good use of your time. You're going to need to complete this work either at recess or as homework in addition to the regular math homework. You ask for harder math, but I can't give you harder math if you won't complete the basic math first."

Ben got mad. He yelled loudly, threw his math book on the ground, and stormed out of the classroom.

So in this scenario, the teacher's seeing quite a lot of strengths. He has a very high math ability. He has an amazing memory for facts. He makes really wonderful idea connections, and he really is great at showing mastery in creative ways. But he's messing around a lot instead of working. He's yelling and throwing books. Sometimes he won't sit on the rug, and sometimes he even storms out of the classroom.

So this teacher may not know a lot about twice exceptional learners yet, and so their perspective before they learn about 2e might sound something like this:

"Hi, I'm Ben's teacher. You know, Ben just seems to be lazy. I gave him so many reminders, and he still didn't do his work, and he has a behavior problem. I'm tired of his blow-ups. This math should be easy for him. I don't know why he can't just get it done. I can't give him harder math before he shows me he can do the basic math. Right now I'm very frustrated. On a scale of one to ten, I would give it a nine.

"I think that what I'm going to do is tell Ben that his behavior is unacceptable. I'll tell him that this should be easy for you, why can't you just get it done? I'll have him try to complete his work during recess, and I will not give him any more advanced math."

So in this situation, Ben is likely to continue tuning out for math. He's probably going to keep having meltdowns when he's pushed, and the teacher is probably going to keep feeling pretty frustrated with the situation.

So before we talk about how we can rethink this child's situation and how to work with them, we really base a lot of our work in terms of reframing and how we're looking at the child that we're working with and really adopting that approach that Ross Green suggests that kids will do well if they can and that a lot of times what's going on with our 2e kids is that it's not that they won't do something, but they can't do it yet. And what we have to do is really change our own mindset as the adults in their lives and just become a lot more curious about what is going on with the child.

So instead of assuming that a child won't do something, start thinking about what might be happening that makes it so that the child can't do something yet. So we shift from being more judgmental to being a little more curious. We change our view of the child from maybe someone who's being willful or defiant to maybe someone who has too many stressors in their life or a skills deficit or maybe a sensory issue. Something is going on, and I, you know, understanding that there's something with this child that, uh, is making this difficult for them, and that helps us with our thinking.

We move from like thinking about they just want attention or they're lazy or they're obstinate to what is getting in their way? How can I be someone who can help this child? And that really helps us then have a different response to the child.

So instead of kind of offering rewards and punishments and, and just sort of more simplistic ways of trying to get the child to cooperate, what I'm really trying to do is figure out what the barriers are for the child, remove those barriers much as possible or work with the child to figure out how we can work around some of the barriers. And this changes the child's experience completely. They move from feeling frustrated, guilty, ashamed, embarrassed to really feeling like they are in a supportive relationship and that this is an adult that they can trust.

Now I want to acknowledge before we move on that this all looks very easy in this lovely graphic, and it sounds super easy on paper, um, and it's hard to do. And I think one of the things we want to acknowledge is that we have to be able to care for ourselves, and we have to make sure that we're walking into a situation within as much emotional regulation as we can so that we can help them, kind of like putting on our own air mask to help the one who needs the help.

So just know that you'll do better or worse with this on certain days depending on your own emotional regulation, and that's okay. You're human, and our, our goal here is to raise these kids into full-grown humans, and it's good for them to be working with humans and see the true human experience.

So, so now let's think about what Ben's perspective might be because in our story, we really didn't get a clear enough view on what Ben's perspective is.

"I'm Ben. I'm tired, and I'm hungry for lunch. It's been a long morning. I don't like sitting on the carpet so close to everyone. It's making me feel uncomfortable. I already know this math, and I still have to do so many repetitive problems. Writing is hard for me. I can't write that many answers. I'm stupid. I can't even pay attention to easy math, even though I wish I could do harder math that's more interesting. And now I might miss recess, and my body needs to run around, or I might have extra homework on top of regular homework, which is already very stressful for me."

So we can see that with Ben, his ADHD and his autism are causing experiences for him in the classroom that maybe aren't as obvious on the surface in terms of the sensory issues on the carpet, in terms of the need to move that move his body. His strength in math is making it harder for him to really want to do a lot of repetitive problems because he has some writing challenges. It might be daunting to think about having to write so many different answers for something he already knows a lot about.

So now we have a better understanding of what's going on for Ben and his experience. We've been able to reframe our perspective based on understanding Ben better. So what might be the teacher's thoughts now that they have this twice exceptional perspective?

"Oh no, poor Ben. He's really having a hard time. He couldn't hold it in any longer. He must feel really bad inside for having to react that way, and he was having a hard time focusing. I bet he's getting hungry and didn't want others, you know, he didn't want to touch others on the rug. He's really had to work hard today. He must be tired. I wonder if this math is too easy for him and he's frustrated, but at the same time, writing is difficult for him. Maybe the worksheet has too many problems on it, and so it's a little overwhelming for him right now. I'm, I'm still a little bit frustrated, but I'm on a scale of one to ten, I think I'm about a three."

So with that reframed perspective, the teacher's stress level has gone down, and also the teacher has that better understanding of what it might take to actually help Ben. But before we jump into brainstorming, and now that we've reframed our thinking, what can we actually do to help the student? Like what are some of the top tips and strategies for actually working with these kiddos?

So the, the first one we always give, and if you only remember one thing from this presentation, this would be it, and that is to do all you can to connect with these kids. These kids thrive so much better in a classroom where they are known and cared for and really believe and trust in their teacher. So, you know, really taking that time to get to know the child, whether you have time to talk to them outside of class like at recess, or you can do little one-on-one meetings with some of the students, doing strength-based activities throughout the year, learning about their interests and learning preferences. These are all things that will help you establish that relationship, and they really do rely on that trusted bond with their teacher for motivation. And you will get so much more out of them, even in their area of challenge, if you have that really strong bond with the student.

And one of the things we also have really learned, especially as we've gone through the pandemic and parents had to spend a lot of time at home with their children for a while, is actually parents know even more about their kids now and their learning preferences and what motivates them and demotivates them than probably ever before. So, uh, you know, really creating that strong triangle between the teacher, the parent, and the student is helpful. And even more helpful is getting out of the mode of just talking about what's happening now and maybe what the challenges are now, but really getting everyone to think about what could be for this student, what would just be a fantastic outcome, a goal, something this child would love, who this child could be, and have everyone working towards that. Really elevates the conversation and, and deepens that connection, um, that, that there will be between these three people.

We have other top tips that really are very important as well. The first is for our 2e learners, it is so important that they get to have time in their day where their strengths and their passions shine. They spend so much time thinking about what they are not good at, but they really will engage best if their passions and strengths are woven into their schoolwork. So maybe the child doesn't like math but loves Pokemon, so maybe there's a way to do some Pokemon math problems. Or maybe the child doesn't like to write but is passionate about sharks, so how about giving them the choice instead of doing the regular assignment to research sharks and make a PowerPoint presentation to the class? There are so many different ways that you could work on strengths and passions. We could do a whole other workshop just on that, but just even thinking about it and looking for those ways is super helpful for these kids.

You know, part of that reframing that is so important is just around the curiosity and empathy, and there is almost always some kind of logic to frustrating behavior. They don't tend to give teachers and parents a hard time just to give a hard time. Usually they are having a hard time. So one trick that Y'all learned that I thought was very interesting was have them maybe rate the different parts of their day using animals they like, like I really like sharks but I don't like snails. And if you have the chance to go through and rate their day on that kind of method, then if you notice there are too many snails, you might notice there are more meltdowns, and it gives you some clues about why that's happening and maybe how to balance things out. So there's lots of ways to really think about being curious and empathetic, and you all will find your own, but that's just so important that we continue to want to learn more about these kids and don't close the doors on them.

And then we talked about the asynchronous development before, and this is just something that it can be very hard for us to get our heads wrapped around, but there is can be such a wide difference in a child's skill level if they're twice exceptional, and we have to be able to be flexible in our minds about that. So they might be excellent at math and really struggle with writing, or they might have an amazing imagination but then not be able to actually produce anything because they have some kind of other writing difficulty. They might be someone who has an amazing imagination, but they can't read very well yet, which because they might actually have dyslexia. So it's just really important that we are remembering that these are children who are experiencing exceptional strengths and great difficulties, and so we need to really be able to adjust around that, which takes some time, some mental gymnastics.

And a lot of this leads into just adopting flexible approaches as much as you possibly can. So a lot of school districts in our area are adopting Universal Design for Learning, which really integrates a lot of these concepts, giving kids multiple ways to enter into a unit, whether that's reading or watching a video or acting something out or doing a simulation. And then thinking about different ways that the child can exit out of a unit. Is there a way for them to show mastery that maybe is a little different than what you expected? Can you give them choices in how they do it? Could they, could they write an essay or put on a play or do a presentation or design something or create something or build a Lego set? There are so many different ways that we can let kids show their mastery.

Of course, there are times when the child has to show you they can write, and it's always a question of looking at the unit and saying what is the goal of the unit? If the goal of the unit is to show something written, then that needs to be the goal of that unit. But perhaps every unit does not need to have writing embedded into it if that is a struggle for that child, for instance.

And then we talked about that connection and that importance of the connection between the parent, the student, and the teacher. Usually these students actually also have a much broader team that is part of their system. So what we want to be able to do is also connect with the other people on their team to generate ideas, to integrate strength-based approaches, to introduce the flexibility. So whether it's an OT, a speech and language therapist, could be a reading specialist, there are all different kinds of people who they may be working with, the school counselor, the school psychologist, and we want to make sure we're really working together as a team to come up with solutions.

Uh, one of the resources we wanted to make sure to point out to you that you can access later that might be helpful is, um, the, uh, these are what we are calling the eight strength-based activities to kick off the school year, but they really can be used at any time. And if you want to access this blog post, you'll find a list of activities that can really help you get to know your kids.

Now what I want to say about this is some teachers really do a great job of taking time to get to know what their kids' interests and learning preferences are. What is the level up step is when you actually use that information throughout the year in your curriculum design and in your classroom. So we do hear some, um, some people will say, "Oh, my teacher got to know me, but they didn't ever use it." So please try to find ways to actually use the information you gather throughout the year, and we do have some examples of how people have done that if that would ever be of interest to go deeper.

So let's get back to Ben. Let's start thinking about some strategies that could help Ben, and this is where we were hoping you all would hopefully get in the chat and suggest some ideas you have now that you know more about Ben. You have that reframed perspective. You have some ideas of the top tips for working with these learners. You can actually refer to, like I said, the back of the 2e fact sheet. I'm going to have to change my video so that you can actually see it. Let me move this so it looks kind of like this on the back. And that's still not great with blurring, is it? But I can't show, I can't show you my background right now right now. And then there's the Fairfax County one. Those might have some ideas for you.

So any ideas that you can put in the chat that you might suggest in terms of helping Ben, who's having a hard time, who got very upset, who doesn't like sitting on the carpet, who was hungry, who the math is too easy but the writing is too difficult?

[Chat responses from participants:]

"Give choices." Yeah, yeah, can you think of some specific choices or choices you might offer?

We were thinking, um, in this case, you know, like in terms of choices, um, we know that that Ben tested out, he tested out of 80% of the content, the content and the pre-assessment. And so maybe there are parts that he could skip because he's already shown mastery of those parts.

Yeah, "less busy work."

Oh, I love that. "Opportunity to help appear with math."

Yeah, "speak text-to-speech." That's great.

"Snacks available and a plan in place for when he is hungry so that is not an issue."

Yeah, "quality over quantity."

"Getting to know the student, collaborating with him to decide how he wants to submit his writing."

Oh yeah, that's great.

Yeah, "allow him a menu of different activities that will show his strengths, and then he can choose what he wants to do."

Yeah, that's great.

Does anyone think of like a specific unit or lesson that they do where they could, they could build something in like that? Like, um, we had an idea around volume calculations, something around volume problems and what his interests are.

"Centers with different strategies and activities."

Yeah, we were thinking you could tie the volume problems into Minecraft volume calculations, maybe have Ben show other kids how you think about volume using Minecraft since he loves Minecraft so much.

Yeah, "volume and real life experiences."

Yeah, that's great.

Just so you know, we always love these ideas. And yeah, "menus and choice boards."

I think too, um, Danielle, hello, um, one of the things too like that's fun with choice board sometimes is like that kind of gamification a little bit, you know?

Yeah, this is awesome. This is awesome. All right, Ben is in good hands here.

Yeah, Ben is in good hands with you all. I'm gonna, um, go through some of the strategies we came up with, but please keep, keep throwing your ideas in, in here because we keep collecting more ideas for Ben.

So, you know, one of the key things we always say is ask Ben why was he so frustrated and problem solve, like actually sit and chat with Ben. And then, you know, you can say, "I need you to show me that you know this math, so what can we do so that it's not so overwhelming for you for next time?" So that could be part of that choice board too, or part of, part of that coming up with what's going to be on that choice board, or, you know, how he's going to show what he knows, what, which strategies that you came up with make the most sense to Ben, which is a great thing to do because these guys usually have lots of ideas.

Um, we talked about, you talked about this too, different ways that Ben can show mastery than a worksheet. So that was something you all, you all came up with too.

Um, fewer problems, or if you know that he's mastered a lot of the work, what kind of extensions could you give Ben instead of the rep, the repetition? We find that a lot of, uh, power struggles end up happening because, um, the, the setup is that the child has to complete the basic work before they can get to the extension work. But if we already know the child's mastered the basic work, can we just move to, to the extensions?

So we talked about this too, skipping the parts you pre-tested.

Um, how about just allowing him to take breaks between problems and maybe talk to him about, you know, rewards that are valuable to him that he might look, uh, look forward to?

We talked about tying the volume problems into Minecraft volume calculations.

So you all, I think I, I think I got through all of the ideas you all said in the chat, and we can certainly, um, I think you should like just check in your chat. I think you should be able to chat to everyone, but if you can't, we'll make sure everything is noted. And I think we went through all of your ideas, and I think we covered this really well.

And so let's just say to wrap this one up and move on to our next vignette, um, you know, what really happened in this situation was the teacher did some joint problem solving with Ben, really got to the root of the problem around that need for movement and the sensory experience and the desire for more interesting work. And they'd agreed on solutions to try the next time. And because of that, Ben really developed a great deal of trust in his teacher, and he felt really connected to her.

So Ben was having fewer meltdowns and really a lot more excitement about math. And because of this, the teacher and he decided that he would start actually a Minecraft math club, and that really got a lot of the kids in the class more excited and to work with Ben, which really helped then also with his social skills. And it made math more interesting for everyone.

So that is Ben. And before we move on to our next vignette, which is going to be around Kendra, we just want to make sure everyone, when you put ideas in the chat, please select everyone in the chat instead of just host and panelists, and then everyone can see them. We believe that everyone should be able to do that, um, because we have someone here who did that, and we want to, we're going to copy and paste all of the people's ideas that you guys had into the chat for Ben. And then as we move into Kendra, please feel free to weigh in in the chat.

Yael Valek:

Okay, so next we're going to talk about Kendra, and Kendra is a very interesting, uh, interesting case. Not as obvious. Ben had more obvious behavior challenges in the classroom. Kendra's behavior experiences are not quite as obvious. So I'm going to share Kendra's story with you.

So Kendra is a bright eighth grader. She appears to be doing fine in school, but she's quietly struggling. She was diagnosed with dyslexia in fifth grade, so three years ago. She has deep knowledge and interest in science and math, but she finds it terribly difficult to express herself through writing and to keep up with all of the required reading, especially as she's going through these more advanced grade levels.

She misses points on assignments that have a lot of writing or that require students to explain more, and even when she's given more time, she sometimes can't think what to write and often doesn't come up with more than one sentence. Sometimes she feels a little bored in math class because she grasps the concepts there very quickly, but then she goes to English, and she feels really stupid and very discouraged.

Her English teacher is nice and often lets her off the hook by letting her write less than other students or even skip assignments, but this doesn't feel great to Kendra because she does really feel like she can meet the same expectations as the other kids if she just had a little more support.

She's mature enough to hold it together at school, but she is exhausted when she gets home. No one at school knows that when she comes home, she often is in her bed in the fetal position for the rest of the night.

Kendra's mom tells her teachers that Kendra is like a duck. On the surface, she seems to be doing well, but she's paddling furiously under the water just to keep up.

Kendra spends the majority of her weekends focusing on homework so that she won't have to struggle to keep up with everything during the week. When a teacher adds a last minute quiz or unexpected homework, she becomes very dysregulated.

Kendra's mom tried to talk with a teacher about the situation, but the teachers just don't really see the problem because she seems pretty happy and well adjusted to them. But for Kendra, it really seems never-ending, and life just doesn't look that great.

So for Kendra, you know, she seems like a pretty happy and well-adjusted student. She's working hard. She really likes STEM. She's very advanced in math, and she loves science. She's involved in quite a lot of school activities. So on the whole, she seems like she's okay. But her mom says she's really struggling to finish the homework, and her teachers do notice that she has pretty poor spelling and some incomplete writing assignments. And given how strong she is in other things, she's really getting much lower than expected grades on many of her written assessments.

So what would a teacher who hasn't had any training on twice exceptional kids possibly think in this situation?

"Hi, I'm Kendra's teacher. I just don't know why Kendra's mom keeps bugging me. Other kids are struggling way more than her. I don't believe it's taking Kendra as long to get her homework done as, uh, she and her mom claim. Uh, sure, Kendra does seem to have some trouble getting her ideas on paper, but that happens to a lot of kids. And if there really was a pro, were a problem, I think Kendra would self-advocate more and send me an email when she's working on that homework. I don't hear from her, so I think things must be okay.

"Like other kids with dyslexia, Kendra just has to get through school. It'll be hard, but she'll be fine in the long run. Sure, she's not the best student, but she's doing okay. I don't see what the problem is. Um, you know, on a scale of one to ten, I would say my stress level about this is kind of a five.

"So what I think I'm going to do is I've already let her not have to write as much as other kids, and I can require even less of her, and probably she'll be okay. And I'll just keep deflecting Kendra's mom and remind her that Kendra's doing just fine."

So in this situation, what's likely to happen is that with no one at school to recognize the struggle she's having, Kendra will keep having to mask her academic challenges, and her anxiety will increase, and she probably will spiral downhill. Her emotional well-being may be compromised to the point of school refusal or worse.

So now let's do our reframing. It's like with our 2e hat on, and let's learn a little bit about what's going on with the child on the inside.

"Hi, I'm Kendra. I have a lot of ideas, but it's so hard for me to get them on paper. I'm worried my friends will think I'm stupid because I write so much less than they do. I could do more if I had more help. I need to email my teacher, but I'm afraid they'll see how awful my spelling is. I'm so embarrassed. I hate my life. All I do is work on the weekend so I can make it through the week, but I'm exhausted every night. There's no end in sight."

So with that reframed perspective, assuming the teacher has had that chance to be curious and really work with Kendra a little more and talk to Kendra's mom some, what would the teacher's 2e perspective be?

"Wow, I learned a lot from talking to Kendra's mom. I had no idea school was impacting her mental health so profoundly. I see that with more support, Kendra could work at a much higher level and feel more accomplished, and that seems like something that's actually really important to her. She knows she can count on me to help her stretch and grow in a safe way. Kendra has a lot to offer to our classroom. It'll be tricky to focus on her strengths without creating that stress, but I feel confident if we work together as a team, we can make progress. My stress level now on a scale of one to ten is about a two."

All right, so now that the teacher has been able to reframe and have that curiosity and empathy and really partnership with Kendra, what are some of the responses that we might take? How might we design learning environment and strategy to help Kendra? Please put your ideas in the chat, and make sure you've selected everyone.

[Chat responses from participants:]

Yeah, Christine says, "Provide graphic organizers to support writing assignments, helping include all parts. Provide supports in class like small group check-ins and writing conference to make sure she is on track and see what support she might need."

Yeah, "help with a spell check."

Yeah, that ability to, yeah, always be using the computer if possible and accessing all of those tools that can help.

Yes, Danielle, that casual conversation with Kendra, talking to everyone except the student is not a good way to go, especially with one who's 13 or 14 and more likely to engage actually with a teacher than with a parent sometimes.

Yeah, "working, conferring with her regularly."

Mm-hmm. What about other ways to show what she knows? Does it always have to be writing? I mean, sometimes we think about, you know, as kids get through middle school and high school, or just the writing ramps up. Are there other things she could do?

Yep, "typing instead of handwriting."

How about anything we could do to, um, yeah, "showing through video clips, presentations, iMovie."

Yes, remember some of our dyslexic, uh, strengths are, you know, really how that creativity and how can we bring some of those dyslexic strengths to work and to, to play to bear.

"Poster work, video games, scribe for written work, dictation, speech to text."

Yep, this is stuff you can get in Google already.

Um, "comic books."

That's a lot, that's something we hear from a lot of people. I mean, and no one thing works for everyone. We can't say this is always going to work for someone who has dyslexia or dysgraphia, but comic books are often, um, something that work, giving that kind of option to do something different or something that's more pictorial.

Yeah, this is great.

All right, well, you can keep adding your ideas into the chat, and I'll go through some of the ideas we came up with.

So one thing is helping that can really help is providing that sample work, you know, and the really clear rubric so that she knows what she's aiming for. She's someone who's really trying to plan ahead and get our work done. And sometimes, sometimes 2e kids, because they like complexity, they might like, come up with like, like a very complex project in their head, but then they can't execute it as well because of their learning difference. And sometimes if they actually see a work product that's just kind of what you're typically aiming for, it helps them understand what they're aiming for and reshape their expectations.

And that's another thing we often tell teachers is don't always show like the best product, like sometimes show like the expected product, like this is what I would expect you to be able to do, not necessarily what last year's star student did after, you know, putting in 100 hours of work. So that, that can really help too, just because sometimes the 2e mind wants to do something amazing and complex, and they're just not quite ready for it.

We talked about this checking it, you guys came up with this one, checking in frequently, make sure that she's asking questions. We know that she's a little bit embarrassed right now. We have to help her work on her self-advocacy, advocacy skills. We can't expect eighth graders to actually know how to self-advocate quite yet. We have to put in that scaffolding and show them how to do it.

Um, you know, we talked about this too, choices and how to showcase their learning: videos, skit, comics, drawings, slideshows.

Going back to the, um, the checking in frequently too is, you know, sometimes kids as they're starting to develop their own self-advocacy skills, they will come to you and try to make that a positive interaction. Like if a child is working on self-advocacy and they're just shot down when every time they come to, come to someone, then they stop advocating for themselves. So we always talk about, you know, even if you can't give the child exactly what they want, you know, find, uh, find something that gives them that sense that positive reinforcement that talking to the adults was a good idea.

We talked about other school-based professionals we might want to bring in, either for instructional strategies or support, because she's having a lot of anxiety and depression. We might want to think about can we access the school psychologist or the counselor? Uh, would, would have learned, even though Ken, sexy, Kendra may not qualify for an IEP, but she's still having struggles because she has dyslexia. What tips might the learning specialist have that I could integrate into my classroom?

Um, we always say too, it's really great to have classroom routines for all the students so you can complete writing assignments in class as much as possible, more so than as homework. And that way the child doesn't see it as also weighing on them when they go home, and they can access the teacher if they need help. So things like, you know, giving, giving prompts for all the kids, helping break down writing assignments into smaller chunks to guide their writing, really encouraging drafts and rewrites, um, so that they know that first one doesn't, whatever they turn in first is not supposed to be their best work.

One of the things we have seen work is like a parent homework pass. So rather than you as the teacher always like saying, "Ah, you don't have to do that assignment, or just do this little part," you can actually give the homework pass to the parent and child, and so that way the child can say, "I think I need to pass on this one," but they know that they're not going to necessarily get a pass on everything, especially because that child may want to show what they know.

Um, and then definitely like not just offering the text-to-speech tools, but offering quiet places that students can go to do that and offering those tools to everyone in the class, letting everyone use speech to, text-to-speech, um, I mean, did I have that backward there? Text to speech, speech to text, speech to text, I think we have it backwards here, so that we're normalizing the approach. Because part of what happens with these teenagers is they don't want to seem different from anyone else. So if it's just something, you know, we let a lot of people do, and it's just something normal that anyone can access when they need it, they're more likely to take advantage.

And then building on her strengths, let's look for ways maybe to get her to be a mentor to younger students, maybe working on a science challenge or start some kind of STEM-focused club, so that we don't forget that that Kendra has a lot of strengths that she'd like to bring to the school environment and not always working on her deficits.

So what happened in this situation was that, you know, once Kendra's teaching team understood that she really was masking most of her struggles when she was at school, they found ways to work with Kendra and her family and other members of the team to implement a lot of these instructional strategies as well as relationship building techniques that really helped Kendra have a better outlook on school.

She started mentoring younger students who were struggling with science projects, which really built her confidence that she had something to offer, and she was able to show more of her strengths and became a better self-advocate with this new trusting environment. And the strategies that the teacher used to help improve Kendra's experience and performance really, many of the students started to take advantage of, and it was just a better experience for everyone in the, in the classroom.

If you really want to go deeper on supporting struggling writers, we hosted an event in November with Dr. Susan Baum, who's one of the leading experts in twice exceptionality and working with students in the classroom, and this was a very powerful presentation, and the link to it is in your resources, and I highly encourage you to check it out if this is a problem, um, that you, you find you're facing a lot. We find that anxiety and writing challenges tend to be very pervasive across the twice exceptional community.

Uh, before we shift to questions and answers, we know that quite a few people who are attending today are actually, um, coming to us from the special education world, and thank you so much for what you do. We know right now it is a very difficult time to be working in special education, so thank you for that.

And sometimes people will think that twice exceptional kids cannot or don't qualify for accommodations or direct services, and that's actually not the case. They can be eligible for remediation, accommodation, and services based on the data and assessments that the district is using and what information you've uncovered about the child and what they need. And we really also encourage that in, if a child does qualify for these accommodations or services, that their strengths are woven throughout, that it is not something that is just about their deficits.

Uh, some of the kinds of accommodations we've seen in 504s are like we've talked about, alternative ways of demonstrating mastery, having access to challenging activities, really minimizing the repetitive tasks, giving them choices. These kids often struggle with group work. They have so often have social challenges, and they need that scaffolding and support to really learn how to work effectively in a group. And then leadership opportunities actually are a great way for them to develop skills and, and work on some of their challenging areas.

And then in terms of the IEP, again, driven by the assessment data that you have, you know, they might qualify for counseling, some social skills development and support, behavioral support, OT, all the assistive technologies we've talked about. We should not keep assistive technologies from a child that has a learning disability, even if they're working at grade level or above. Um, they often need help with their executive functioning, and they, especially if they have dysgraphia, dyslexia, or dyscalculia, probably will qualify for some kind of specialized academic instruction in math, reading, or writing.

One other little tip I wanted to note before we go on is like please try your best to the extent it's possible not to pull kids out of class during the time that their main class is working on their strengths. That is a common thing that people will do. "Oh, you're good in math. We're going to pull you out for, you know, this other thing during math time." But that is really, really hard on the child. That means all day they are only working in their deficits, and they never get the chance to have those moments of joy.

And in, in the middle, in high school, we say if it's possible at all, try not to replace their elective time with their remediation and intervention because that's when they can shine. That's when they're going to be able to develop the skills that they really, that are going to make them the person they're going to be. So that's not always possible, and we know that, so we're just saying do your best, please, and keep it in mind. And also think about ways to integrate their strengths and interests into the services that they have.

So, um, that's, that's those are just some tips we have around accommodations and IEPs.

So before we move into our Q&A period, we wanted to close with some sage words from Seth Perler, who is an executive function a coach and ADHD expert, about why it's so important that we support these kids.

"Way, finally, we really need, literally, I'm not trying to be cheesy here, the world needs to eat kids. We need them to develop their strengths. They have a very, very, very unique perspective and approach to life, to thinking, to problem solving. We need them to develop their strengths and their talents and their passions and their interests. We need them to feel good about who they are. As a culture, as a world, we need them. But also just for themselves, to have a great quality of life, to be able to self-actualize, to be able to feel happy and successful. That's what we really want for our kids."

Abby Kirigin:

So we always think it's important to set aside time at the end of any workshop a little bit of space for you to have a moment to think about an action step that you might take next based on what you've learned today. And recognizing that we don't all process information at the same speed, and some of you may need more time than others to think this through, there's no pressure on you to share what you might do is your next action step. But if you'd like, we'd love to hear about it in the chat, what you think you might, might do next.

If we were all together, we would give you a postcard. We'd give you a chance to write down what you think you would do, and then we would send it to you in a month just as a little, little reminder of our time together. But since we're remote, we won't be doing that today.

So if you don't mind just taking a moment, and then as people are reflecting on their action step and hopefully someone will share one with us, um, just so you know, at the end of the presentation, in addition to all of the links we have in the resource document, we have the links to our website and to the different sources that we source materials that we used in this presentation, so that hopefully will make it easier for you if you want to share any of these resources with your own teams.

And that's it for us and what we have to present. We'd love to hear any questions you all have if you, you can put them in the chat.

Um, I love that "attending a meeting for twice exceptional student, will share the resources and strategies."

I'm actually going to stop recording now. There we go.