The 2005 AEGUS Conference in Denver

June, 2005

From the Higgins and Nielsen Keynote

Elizabeth Nielsen asked audience members to “imagine you got what sounded like the perfect job. The money was great and it sounded too good to be true. When you eagerly report for work on the first day, you find out that job entails everything you’re not good at. How would you feel and what would you do? The options would be: flight, fright, or fight – just what school’s like for 2e kids.”

Educators Nielsen and her husband, Dennis Higgins, explained that it’s important to really think about what it feels like to be twice exceptional, to talk about it with students, to use analogies to help them understand, and to use empathy when you interact with them. They described the four Cs of empathy:

• Competence. Find their gifts and focus on them, either in classroom or at home. Whatever the talent is, it’s up to us to give the child every opportunity to use it.

• Choice. Offer options to choose from.

• Connections. The two kinds of connections that are vitally important for these kids are friendships with peers and the connection between the teacher and the student.

• Compassion.

   The speakers urged audience members to celebrate these children and find ways to make these things happen.

Quotes from Rachel McAnallen, Ms. Math

• Math is questioning the answers. Arithmetic is answering the question.

• My opinion of the education system in the US – it’s really screwed up. We have to ask ourselves what we want for the year 2025 because that’s what we’re educating for. It worries me. I think we’re educating nonthinkers.

• The way we teach math is an educational immorality. It should be taught as a language, as art, music, dance.

• They want kids to know the math facts fast and I’ve never known why. Do we do that with anything else? What matters is not that kids know their math facts fast, but that they know how to get them.

Temple Grandin, Keynoter of the Autistic Persuasion

With high-functioning autism, people get hung up on the social issues. The result is that schools focus on the disability rather than on the students’ talents and abilities.

The brains of people with autism are not as interconnected as other people’s, so individual areas of the brain specialize. Three kinds of specialist brains among autistic individuals and others with certain learning disabilities are:

1.    Visual thinking, which tends to be poor at algebra

2.    Music and math

3.    Verbal logic/language translation, which tends to be poor at drawing

People with these kinds of brains often display skills that have a value in the workplace. You can find people with autism spectrum disorders all over in the business world enjoying success. They tend to do non-routine work with things, rather than people, such as computer programmer, graphic artist, draftsperson, auto mechanic, computer repairperson, equipment designer, photographer, physicist, engineer, or language translator

People in these careers have developed their talents. Often, they had mentors both in school and in the business world.

We need to get kids to start thinking about work skills by 10 or 11 years old. We can help them learn about careers by stocking the school library with magazines from different industries and by taking them to visit the workplace. We can teach them to create a portfolio of their work and to sell their skills because people in the business world respect skill. 

Keynoter Professor Susan Baum

The single most important thing with twice-exceptional children is to focus on their talents. I always talk about that. What I don’t talk about is that the journey from novice to expert is challenging. There are bumps in the road along the way. They are predictable. Four main bumps to watch out for are:

1.    Identification. This is a major problem. These kids often get misdiagnosed.

2.  Balanced services. Sometimes we only give them part of what they need. 2e kids need talent development, academic support, and targeted remediation.

3.  Identity issues. These children have a hard time figuring out who they are – with whom to identify. Should they be with the talented group? With achievers? They usually don’t identify with the athletes. They often thrive in small group settings where the focus is on the individual, and they often need counseling. Depression is an issue for many of them.

4.  Acceptance. These kids have to accept that they are twice exceptional. The sooner they come to grips with that, the more likely things will improve for
them.    

For more coverage of AEGUS 2005 conference sessions, see these articles:

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