SQRT Exceptional
I have a friend - someone I knew in college years ago - who I know is endeavoring to start up her own grade school. Her name is Nancy, well not her real name which is Micaela, but the name I'll use here. The school I believe will open for classes in a few weeks. The weblog portion of the 2e newsletter indicated things were on track for a fall opening as of mid spring
2e: Twice-Exceptional Newsletter: From the Week of March 1. I don't know a lot about this. Most of what I know comes from conversations a year and a half ago at an earlier point of planning, and a few emails since then. Plus a delicate shake of the internet tree a few weeks ago. The school will be in Brooklyn where she lives.
The impetus of the project was to create an decent educational environment for her own son where she perceived none existed. I have met this boy a number of times and believe her perception is correct. He always struck me as being extremely intelligent, but what was going on around him needed to be on a certain wavelength with him otherwise he tuned it out, and turned his attention elsewhere. Most schools - the ones I remember - just let this happen. Starting your own school; though, this is an impressive undertaking to say the least. Nancy was always the sort where if she decided something needed to happen, it happened.
The early period of this endeavor led her through the thicket of alternative education the white board jungle: Montessori and Sudbury schools - democratic curriculum schools. Trying to find a method and philosophy that gave structure and opportunity, but not rigid and reflexive structure.The direction my friend Nancy seems to have gone with is to set up a school following principles grouped under the term twice-exceptional children or 2e in briefer form. To create a comprehensive curriculum and learning environment around such approaches. To have her tell it in her own words: the Lang School. Named after, I believe I read, her favorite teacher from Walter Johnson high school).
The article Bordering on Excellence
EBSCOhost: Bordering on Excellence: A Teaching Tool for Twice-Exceptional Student [Sara Jeweler et al. Gifted Child Today. Spring 2008 vol. 31 no.2) gives a definition of twice exceptional as students identified as gifted and talented, but also identified with a disability defined by federal or state criteria. A similar description of 2e exists in the first paragraph of the wikipedia article
Twice exceptional - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
- 2e, is commonly applied to high-ability children who have learning difficulties [...2 to 5 percent of all gifted children]
- A 2e child may be one who is diagnosed with one or more disabilities such as dyslexia, visual or auditory processing disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, sensory processing disorder, Asperger syndrome, or Tourette Syndrome.
- The child might have a diagnosis of attention deficit disorder, with or without hyperactivity, or diagnoses of anxiety or depression.
- Some 2e children have no formal diagnosis, but do have learning differences of other kinds, such as in learning style or preference, that make it hard to function in a traditional classroom.
There seems to a sense among some, that many of the issues facing 2e children are not formal clinical disabilities as much as learning difficulties or challenges. And much of it reflects a reality that traditional instructional methods and environments will only ever be appropriate and effective for a certain percentage of children, and simply not for others. Best Practice notions have held that education of 2e students should occur with other average to high achieving children rather than in a strictly remedial setting. The goal it was felt was to keep them at their true cognitive level. This is often called differentiated instruction within integrated classrooms. The Bordering on Excellence article's frame instruction tool represents a teacher's organizing guide for such differentiated teaching. A sheet for each type of instruction. (writing in the example) four columns border an empty space (teacher notes) listing possible stumbling blocks, teaching methods, instructional materials (classroom materials), and assisstive technologies that may ameliorate disabilities. All this is meant to occur within the frame work of traditional schools: made inclusive through IEP's (Individual Educational Plans). Double Tracked and doubled-down. Montgomery county is an example of this approach. They pride themselves on how well they've been able to make it work, and have recently been the subject of a Harvard Business School case study on management in a school system
Leading for Equity (the Post reviewd this somewhat:
6 Lessons From Montgomery County Public Schools That Mostly Missed the Point - washingtonpost.com). My sister Susan, who was during the previous two years head of the PTA at my nephew's school Kennsington-Parkwood Elementary in Montgomery county, pointed out there are some drawbacks to this approach as a practical matter. It places a great burden on the teachers dealing with multiple multitrack individuals in the classroom, not all teachers can make it work well. During periods of budget tightening the infrastructure and professional assistants which aid teachers in managing differntiated instruction are often cut or eliminated first, increasing the burden further. As well there is no way to keep the children from become acutely aware of differentiated instruction among them, which may create hard to control dynamics among them as peers. The new idea is a partly separated approach. To have whole schools for 2e children. To have all the resources of the school directed towards them. I had never heard of the 2e concept [ERIC] before this. My sister could not recall the specific term either, though she was familiar with what it represented. She asked some other parents and found some who were familiar with it, and they mentioned that there is an existing 2e school in Washington DC, the Lab School, already. One of my nephew Grant's friends exhibits some of these characteristics. A thirteen year old, he has an intense comprehensive knowledge of many subjects, a sharp but somewhat brittle confidence. He has hyper-interest in airplanes and flight, and a fair amount of apptitude going with it. He spent part of the summer at a flight camp in Oshkosh, and is resolutely set towards a career as a pilot at the moment.
My own education experience; call it the Square Root of Exceptional. A non-distinguished life beset by various in-abilities and dis-congruities. Education, all experience really in the end is a matter of challenge to the individual and it is the child individual who must respond. My eductional experience to the extent I can remember any of it now - more a half life remembered - was a painful clueless struggle between myself and various environments. Between adaptation and separation, assimilation and infiltration. I don't recall ever having that sense of being on the cusp that is the mark of 2e individuals. Of encountering barriers that present themselves at the tipping point to success or high achievement. Possibly I had rolled well under the curl of that tipping point in the six or seventh grade without any idea I'd permanently wiped-out on a wave of seemingly trivial quizes and writing assignments. Looking backward, I see you are either in AP classes and college bound, or you are not.
I read a book recently, written in the half year after the end of world war ii by a man who was educated and an occasional college professor. Reflecting on matters in his hometown (which was the point of his book), he questioned primary education's adequacy for college preparation. A study had come out indicating colleges increasingly were turning their first year over to matters that in an earlier generation a prep school would have covered. He noted that the high school/public school system's critical role in the new late-phase industrial post-war world. A world of K-12 +4 education, may not have been fully explained to them (small town school boards) and represented in modern parlance, an unfunded mandate. Schools were accustomed to their previous simpler role of generally preparing individuals to live in society productively and satisfactorly. This now grew with little warning logarithmically more complicated. The post-industrial world has little use for semi-skilled labor - use maybe, but not attention or concern. I can testify to this. School for me was a balancing act not successfully managed. Ending in terms never agreed to. Eloquence of language and reasoning not attained.
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