How To Provide Twice Exceptional Students

It is by no surprise that throughout a teacher’s career he/she will encounter a multitude of students that will walk through his/her classroom door. These students will come from different socio-economic backgrounds and from many different ethnicities and cultures. Some of these students will be intellectually gifted, have average intellectual ability, or have below average IQs. Others will have learning deficiencies ranging from mental, physical, or emotional that may impede his/her learning. Finally, there will even be some students that fall into multiple categories and are classified as twice exceptional students. “The gifted disabled” are one such group of “individuals with exceptional ability or potential who are capable of high

There are many debates going around about gifted education. Should we fund it? Should we not? Should we support it, or shouldn’t we? Many articles that I’ve read are on both sides. Everyone has their own opinion to whether or not we should support it. But in my opinion I think we should support both sides of the education system, the low-achieving and the higher-achieving students. Gifted education classes can help students challenge themselves and their peers around them.

Both children with and without exceptionalities learn with and from each other. Also, since both children with and without exceptionalities are expected to learn to write, read, and do math; higher expectations can be set and with good instruction children with exceptionalities can excel in these academic skills.

Adams County public school system’s current program doesn’t seem to recognize any minority or poor students who could be considered gifted. Educators in this district and committee members seem to lack any motivation to include diverse learners in their program. The fact that Adams County only recognized three out of four hundred thirty-eight over a five-year span is appalling. I feel Adams County need some major changes to extend their idea of giftedness. It needs to start with intensive and in-depth teacher training along with community outreach and awareness programs to help educate parents about giftedness. For instance, parent could learn ways to better support their children and help identify their child’s areas of giftedness.

Because of school-wide issue such as, funding, space, and staff availability, this may be the maximum amount of time that they can physically provide for pullout enrichment for gifted students. This is common, and in these cases, it is important to “ensure that the curricular and instructional experiences within the general education classroom are appropriate for the advanced needs of gifted students” (Brighton and Wiley, 2013, p.192). We know from the Lackland description, that their students are not receiving these educational opportunities in their general education classrooms because many of the students are displaying a lack of

Ford, D. (1998). The underrepresentation of minority students in gifted education: Problems and promises in recruitment and retention. The Journal of Special Education, 22, 4-14.

Each school, because of government mandate, has to provide services for exceptional students. The textbook Human Diversity in Education defines exceptional students as “those eligible for special educational services” (Cushner, McClelland & Safford, 2011). There are several categories for exceptional student but they all fall under the Ability/Disability continuum. Some of the categories for exceptional students are the: intellectually gifted, specific learning disability, emotionally handicapped, hearing impaired, visually impaired, mentally handicapped, and physically handicapped. In this paper the specific type of students that will be discussed, fall under the disabled side of the continuum. As one can see from the list above there

The term twice-exceptional refers to an individual who is gifted in one area and yet suffers from a emotional, physical, sensory, learning, or developmental disability (Assouline, Foley, & Huber, 2006). The term gifted student refers to a student who has an exceptional capability (2006). Over the years there have been numerous myths about gift learners. One such myth is that these students are lazy or underachievers (2006). Another myth is that a student can be gifted and also have a learning disability (2006). This kind of thinking has led to numerous amounts of students being misclassified and not receiving the services and interventions they need (2006).

The need to reform the special education system is a topic agreed on across the board by scholars, but they do not all agree on the same aspects needing to be reformed. Baldwin, Baum, Pereles, & Hughes concentrate their research in developing a single accepted definition for twice-exceptional students. The authors created a timeline of what they consider the development of the history of twice exceptionality. The authors argue critics of Twice-Exceptional students do not accept the existence of a group of students gifted and disabled because there is not substantial proof (Baldwin, Baum, Pereles, & Hughes, 2015, p.211). The authors examine different approaches for establishing a unified solution to the gap in the education of twice-exceptional students. The premise of the author’s arguments are based on the acceptances of gifted students and disabled students, but not both combined. The revision of IDEA in 2004 began to open the door for the acceptance of the twice-exception field. “Significantly, the mention of students with disabilities who may also have gifts and talents was noted for the first time in the priorities for funding” (Baldwin, Baum, Pereles, & Hughes, 2015, p. 210). The authors use legal, educational and social lens when establishing their arguments. VanTassel-Baska’s focus is much the same as the previous authors. VanTassel-Baska examines the history of twice-exceptional students. The author suggests, “That gifted education policy is not coherent across the country, is controlled by state legislatures, and subject to annual scrutiny for continued and new funding” (VanTassel-Baska, 2018 p. 98). The author stresses the lack of coherence across the United States. The author suggests the issues surrounding twice-exceptional students are left to state level policy, therefore differ. The author further argues

Every school year teachers have to encounter students with exceptionality. According to the United States Bureau, there are 54 million individuals with a disability and only 6% of them receive special education services. In that large number, there are 32 million students who are considered as gifted or talented. Many of gifted or talented students may not receive any services. To be considered exceptional means that a child differs from the norm. They are required an individualize program of special education that fully benefits their education and needs. Gifted and talented students are defined as having extraordinary abilities in more than one area. Intellectual disabilities are required to students with learning disabilities, emotional disturbance, or any physical and health impairments. Children should not be labeled because of their disability. Other tend to accept different disabilities more than others. For example, a person may have more empathy to a person who is blind, rather than to those with emotional disturbances. Researchers have also proven inside of an education setting, classmates display negative attitudes towards peers with intellectual disabilities.

My experience the past two school year has disproven these two myths. Gifted students are not always high achieves and are not always welcomed addition to a classroom. They can have the same socially and emotional limiting problems and less than desirable characteristics as non-gifted peers. The bottom line is that gifted students are individuals with their own personalities and environmental influences. Their giftedness does not take these

They also reported this same familiarity with their state’s stance on RtI for special education. When groups of participants were compared, “respondents were (understandably) more familiar with guidelines specific to their professional identity” (Foley-Nicpon et al., 2013, p. 175). For example, psychologists and special education teachers were more familiar with RtI and special education guidelines than general education teachers. Gifted education teachers were more familiar with gifted education guidelines than the other groups surveyed. Few were familiar about RtI as a model for gifted education, even though it is becoming more prevalent in the field; gifted education teachers were more familiar with RtI for gifted students than general education teachers. It is vital for all professionals working with twice-exceptional students to be familiar with both gifted and special education guidelines since twice-exceptional students have both gifted and special education

Students with learning disabilities (LD) are the largest groups of students with exceptionalities in the classroom today (“Fast Facts,’ 2013). LD students have held this ranking since the 1980’s. The numbers for the next leading group of exceptional students in the classroom (speech/language impaired students) are almost half that of LD students (“Fast Facts,’ 2013). Students with learning disabilities may not seem that different from their neurotypical peers. They may have trouble learning in some academic areas, even when provided highly effective instruction, but do fine in others (Fuchs, Fuchs, Mathes, Lipsey, and Roberts, 2002). The unevenness in their academic development is a main characteristic for LD students (Torgesen, 2002). Other typical characteristics that might be found include low achievement rates, easily distracted, lack of social skills, lack of motivation, and difficulty with information-processing (Rosenberg, 2011, p. 142). Of students

If a student were gifted in math, they should be able to join the advanced math classes to continue to challenge them. There is absolutely no reason for these gifted students to be forced to stay with the curriculum provided to those that require an alternate education. In order to solve this problem, change in the curriculum for these students needs to be implemented in order to help prevent students from being bored in certain subjects and have them continue to grow and expand their knowledge or instructors need to be educated on how to cope and teach to students that have learning disabilities. Of all the students that enter the Teacher Education field, only twenty-four percent of them enroll in special education courses. This means that approximately three-fourths of the future educators will not know how to reach out and teach students with learning disabilities. If more future educators were to enroll in special education classes, more of these students would be able to attend public schools which would have a major impact on them both academically and socially. With these little changes, students like Robert would be able to expand on their knowledge and determine what path they want to take for their

Educating academically and intellectually gifted students is harder for their teachers, parents, and friends. The educator has to teach higher levels of education to those who are gifted in the academic portion. The parents have to push