Twice-Exceptional Case Study

The Dilemma

It was the first day of school. The new GRT checked his mailbox and found that he had 18 identified gifted students to educate of this year. He noticed four of the names had purple italicized text next to each name. Twice-Exceptional. His insides felt unstable. The classes offered at his college included a Special Ed course, but now these children were right there in front of him. He would be responsible for their individual successes for an entire year or more. He had five In-Service days to get to know the building, all of the teachers, the administration, and understand how uniquely different each of his Twice-Exceptionals were. There were also 14 other children. He knew his identified students would be asynchronous learners.

In a classroom with one or more Twice-Exceptional children, this task can be overwhelming and unsuccessful at times for teachers that are not equipped with research based strategies to meet their specific individualized needs. It is imperative for classroom teachers and GRTs to understand the roles and responsibilities of their school districts, strategies that are best suited for the explicit disability, and the most current research in the

They have been termed as a group of underserved and under stimulated youth by most localities. Brody and Mills [1997] argue that this population of students "could be considered the most misunderstood of all exceptionalities." This occurs because it is difficult for educational professionals to reconcile the twice-exceptional learner’s extreme strengths with their noticeable weaknesses. A GRT should seek to understand the roles and responsibilities that their school districts have documented. This can be extremely challenging because each district may have varying viewpoints as well as each school. “Federal regulations do not exist for gifted education services. Overall guidelines for school divisions to identify and serve gifted students are provided in the Virginia Regulations Governing Educational Services for Gifted Students at 8VAC20-40-10 et. seq. Each school division provides its own identification of and services for gifted students in accordance with its local plan for gifted education. However, the gifted education regulations acknowledge the underrepresentation of students who are culturally different, have disabilities, or come from low socioeconomic backgrounds in gifted education programs. As a result, school divisions are encouraged to make an effort to identify for gifted education services students with disabilities and