The longer I teach the more I am convinced we, and all of our students, are all "twice exceptional" in our own right. We each have areas of giftedness. We each have areas of deficit that we struggle in. We all love extra attention (my kids ALL vie equally for the attention of our awesome push in special education teacher) and we all both crave and deserve the opportunity to discover and grow our strengths through relevant, exciting, and just plain 'cool' learning activities. We also all crave and deserve help in our areas of weakness and scaffolding where we need it.
But only some get Individualized Education Plans.
The reality is, while every person has some area of weakness and struggle, there are some whose struggles are larger, or different. There are many students who will need my aid, as the regular classroom teacher. There are many who will need me to answer extra questions for them in some areas, give them extra time, prompt them and provide scaffolding for them. There are many I am fully equipped to do that for in the general education setting. However, there are some who need scaffolding larger than what I, as the general education teacher, can offer while still completing all other parts of my job. There are those who need more time, and more services than I can provide within the constraints of my general education classroom. And so, we have special education. Sometimes that teacher is able to push in, and when that works it is WONDERFUL. Sometimes pull out is required by nature of the need - think speech services, OT services, and testing situations for our regular push ins. Sometimes the needs are so great students thrive more in a self contained room. We meet the needs of those children. We don't stop meeting the needs of our other children who still have weakness and areas they need extra help in .... But we meet the needs of each differently.
The flip side of that is, every single student has a strength, a giftedness, if you will, that I need to nurture. But some students have more or a different type. There are many who need my nurturing as their classroom teacher. There are many who will need me to challenge them, to prompt them with questions, to provide extension activities for them. There are many I am fully equipped to do that for in the general education setting. However, there are some who need services bigger than what I, the general education teacher, can offer while still completing other parts of my job.
What we often forget about the truly gifted child is that the truly gifted child does not always present as academically, or socially, high achieving.
And so, there are those who need help relating to peers. There are those who need stimulation on a topic that will engage their brain. There are many who struggle to match up their adult like thoughts with their age appropriate emotions. There are those who need encouragement and opportunity to develop skill sets that are simply missing for them. There are many who are truly twice exceptional and whose scores may place them solidly in the gifted range and solidly on something else, such as the autism spectrum. There are needs they have that I cannot me within the constraints of my regular education classroom.
A "treat each child as gifted" mindset MUST be had by every teacher in every general education classroom. Neat and cool learning experiences must be offered to every student. Worthwhile extension activities must be available to all.
But a true gifted education curriculum is not merely neat and cool activities. A true gifted curriculum, written for the students who have been identified as needing such a thing, is tailored to their needs. What an IEP does for a child with a learning disability and a special education teacher does as an advocate, a Gifted Education curriculum should be doing for a student identified through the program, and the gifted teacher should do as an advocate. And just like many things serviced through an IEP, the needs are often best met through a pull out situation.
If we fail to meet the needs of the students with learning disabilities, ADHD, autism, giftedness, or any other special consideration, we run the risk of increased learning gaps that could have been avoided, and of eventual elevated dropout rates. That doesn't mean we stop servicing the needs of every child. It doesn't mean we can forget about every single child's strengths and need for authentic learning. It simply means that some students need different, more extreme, services.
Schools don't always have the perfect gifted program - but we don't always service IEPs perfectly either. Sometimes the identification process may need tweaked, and that can be said of both sides. Sometimes kids who 'we thought were' ... aren't. And sometimes, sadly, we miss kids. But most schools are trying their hardest to provide what each child needs - and, all the special needs must be considered in that.
I am certainly thankful to be in a district where every child is seen for their strengths and cheered on as they grow those strengths and close gaps with their weakness. Where every child is given everything the teachers have to give. Every child deserves the absolute best, most personalized education we can give them. "Every child" includes the outliers.
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