Letter from the Publishers

August, 2005

In this issue we focus on teaching twice-exceptional students.

About the cartoon at the bottom of the page – it’s from a strip that’s one of our favorites because it often makes us laugh out loud as we read it. This particular cartoon is reprinted here with the kind permission of its author and United Feature Syndicate.

A little background for those who don’t read Frazz. The woman is Mrs. Olsen, teacher at Bryson Elementary. The man is the free-spirited janitor Frazz, also friend and confidant to the kids at school. The subject under discussion is eight-year-old Caulfield, one of Mrs. Olsen’s students, a bright young man with an independent streak when it comes to following instructions in the classroom; he spends a lot of time in the principal’s office.

One “aha” for us in the strip was Mrs. Olsen’s commendable question in the second panel: “He’s so good at learning. Why is he so hard to teach?” All of us who have been around 2e kids have, at one time or another, asked that question. Frazz’s response to Mrs. Olsen is only one of a spectrum of possible reasons why Caulfield, and students like him, are so hard to teach. Reasons might include things under Mrs. Olsen’s control (not teaching to strengths, not offering differentiated instruction, not accommodating any existing and recognized learning difference) and things not under her control (untreated AD/HD, undiscovered processing disorders, or unaddressed psycho-social issues).

Another “aha” comes in Frazz’s final statement. These children are not only different in the way they learn, they are often different in the rewards they seek from learning. The way 2e kids measure success may be different from how their teachers and other students measure it – not in high grades, neat well-organized papers, or coming in first in competitions, but simply in learning what interests them on their own terms.

For our readers, we offer this issue as another step in the process of figuring out how the Caulfields in our lives can become, through our own insight and skill, easier to teach. 

FRAZZ ã Jef Mallet/Dist. by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.

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