I am a 2E adult from Illinois (Red on the map
), and have decided to go back to school and become a teacher specializing in 2E students. This is a decision many years in the making and it is not going to be easy. I just can not let what happened to me continue in the next generation, where 2E means being lost and drifting through life at best.
Ultimately I may have to leave my home state for one that is at least trying a little bit (I need a head/wall emote here).
I do not expect it to be easy, in fact I am determined but more then a bit terrified. I know I need a viable combination of accelerated and remedial teaching. I know I need prerequisites waived almost across the board, to test out of things, audit classes before I take them for real, get life credits. School has never taught me, not really, I have been forced to teach myself. Maybe it will be different, it has been years but I have to try. The only way I can help others is to *somehow* get credentials. The need is *so* great, 2E outcomes are horrible, and mediocre lives are considered good.
Knowing the status of my state explains so much about my frustrating childhood, of course there was no gifted education for me and no functional LD support either. I was lucky enough to be identified, they knew I was gifted-disabled in fourth grade when the special ed kid they automatically put in the lowest reading group (because they assumed LD=dyslexia) scored in the 90 something percentile and was reading at college level. They still did very little for me, they had dyslexic kids not strong readers with other disabilities in mind.
I'm one of the huge gap between verbal and performance IQ types, with all sorts of confusing subset strangeness. Massive coordination problems, no sense of time, spacial perception, etc.
I don't know my exact profile (other then obvious 2E) as the terms did not really exist when I was younger and definitions are still a mess out there.
I'm trying to arrange updated testing for myself, that I can actually afford, but its going to come out Dyspraxia/Developmental Coordination Disorder/NVLD/Executive Function Deficit of the *ADD* rather then Autism spectrum subset, provided the tester actually understands the distinction and 2E (Head/wall icon...sheesh I could write my own eval here but bring on the "experts" and their "credentials".).
Everywhere you look defines the terms differently and tries to mash together multiple populations that only have certain things in common. So is there an actual split between a parent cognitive disorder and autism spectrum and ADD/ADHD like types or are there multiple populations that don't go under the same umbrella at all...its hard to say. I know I see a situation where if you use one umbrella you get a huge population containing various people with multiple profiles that are only partially similar. i.e. Person 1 is A-C type, Person 2 is B-D type, Person 3 is A-D type, Person 4 is B-C type and so on. But every single one of these terms can not claim 75% percent of the population here and also claim to be different. Nor does it function when various people using the same term can not even agree on which on the overall group they are claiming and which should go in a different box.
To make this even more silly in many places the child has to be placed on the autism spectrum diagnostically to actually get help even when everyone knows its not a true fit...where is that head/wall emote
It would be naive to say I can change the world but I am sure as hell going to try and accomplish something on some scale.
You can call me, 2ETeach
