Teaching strategies for twice-exceptional students.

For many years, parents and teachers have been perplexed about youngsters who have dramatic learning strengths in some areas and equally dramatic learning weaknesses in others. These students appear to defy accurate labeling: Are they gifted or learning disabled? Finally, the debate has stopped, and educators are now recognizing these students as "twice-exceptional." Rather than trying to use evidence from their weak learning areas to prove they are not "truly gifted," savvy teachers are now learning how to allow these students to experience the same opportunities available for gifted students when they are learning in their strength areas. When students are learning in their areas of weakness, teachers are learning to provide the same compensation strategies used by other students with learning disabilities. This article offers specific instruction to empower teachers to effectively teach twice-exceptional students.

Can you visualize the well-known Far Side (Larson, 2000) cartoon that depicts a boy pushing a door with all his might to get into a school for the gifted? The problem is, the door is clearly marked "PULL." Many in my audience laugh when I show this picture. Some nod ruefully, recognizing themselves or a child they know. In gifted education over the years, students like this have caused great frustration for their teachers and parents because their obvious exceptional abilities in some areas of learning seem overshadowed by their painfully apparent weaknesses, particularly in the areas of organizational or social skills and just plain common sense.

At the workshops I present for teachers, I often hear statements of extreme frustration with students who seem to defy accurate description. In some ways, their clearly exceptional abilities are apparent. But in many other ways, their learning deficiencies seem to make it nearly impossible for learning success to occur, even in their areas of greatest strength, because they often skip important steps as they make intuitive leaps toward answers or problem solutions. Sometimes, these students impress their teachers and peers with highly creative stories and scenarios, but when their teachers ask them to write their great ideas, the students contend, "I can't write!" Teachers are caught between belief and disbelief, as they wonder if the student actually cannot do a task or simply is "too lazy" to exert the required effort. Teachers have often used evidence of the student's learning weaknesses to prove to a parent or administrator that the child is not "truly gifted," by which they usually mean gifted in all learning areas. Sometimes, students' learning difficulties depress their gifted potential into very average performance. Teachers may wonder how the parents of such kids could claim their children are exceptionally capable when their perfectly average performance should satisfy.

When we add to these facts the reality that some gifted students are extremely active and nonconforming, we can predict that many of them have been or will be diagnosed as having an attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or a learning disability (LD), and they probably will not receive services in gifted education during their years in public school (Webb & Latimer, 1993).

Slowly but surely, educators have come to acknowledge the dichotomy of abilities that characterize students we now refer to as twice exceptional: youngsters who have clearly exceptional abilities in some areas and weaknesses in others. Sadly, most classroom time and attention is focused on student weaknesses, with little or no attention to their remarkable strengths. Are these kids gifted? Do they have learning disabilities? Yes ... and yes!

Working together, educators in gifted and special education are discovering ways to create and maintain optimum learning conditions for twice-exceptional students. More important than understanding how each specific learning challenge manifests itself is that educators encourage twice-exceptional students to use proven strategies that will allow them to compensate for their areas of weakness while simultaneously experiencing opportunities gifted students appreciate in their areas of learning strength. Twice-exceptional students cannot improve by simply "trying harder." Their learning challenges often emanate from a series of neurological twists and turns as messages try to make their way to the brain from the original stimulus. By the same token, many students already labeled as having LD do not actually have neurological implications. Such students would better be labeled as "learning strategy disabled" because their academic outcomes can improve dramatically when they learn to use appropriate compensation techniques. This article describes specific teaching and learning methods that ...