Gifted Bulletin Board

Welcome to the Gifted Issues Discussion Forum.

We invite you to share your experiences and to post information about advocacy, research and other gifted education issues on this free public discussion forum.
CLICK HERE to Log In. Click here for the Board Rules.

Links


Learn about Davidson Academy Online - for profoundly gifted students living anywhere in the U.S. & Canada.

The Davidson Institute is a national nonprofit dedicated to supporting profoundly gifted students through the following programs:

  • Fellows Scholarship
  • Young Scholars
  • Davidson Academy
  • THINK Summer Institute

  • Subscribe to the Davidson Institute's eNews-Update Newsletter >

    Free Gifted Resources & Guides >

    Who's Online Now
    0 members (), 186 guests, and 29 robots.
    Key: Admin, Global Mod, Mod
    Newest Members
    Word_Nerd93, jenjunpr, calicocat, Heidi_Hunter, Dilore
    11,421 Registered Users
    April
    S M T W T F S
    1 2 3 4 5 6
    7 8 9 10 11 12 13
    14 15 16 17 18 19 20
    21 22 23 24 25 26 27
    28 29 30
    Previous Thread
    Next Thread
    Print Thread
    Joined: Oct 2018
    Posts: 4
    B
    bzeazab Offline OP
    Junior Member
    OP Offline
    Junior Member
    B
    Joined: Oct 2018
    Posts: 4
    I need guidance on how to best help my 9 year old son. Like all kids here, my son is gifted. But he is also 2e. Here are some details about him:
    FSIQ 134 (but VSI and Fluid Reasoning are: >99.9% & 95%; rest of subtest are high avg or superior). He has ADHD & a language disability (dyslexia, disorder of written expression, APD).

    He has not advanced academically for about 18 months. Grades have fallen in writing & math to BELOW GRADE LEVEL.

    He is sinking into depression, sadness, anxiety.

    He is in a public school classroom of 30 kids. He is being left behind & has little support (despite constant battle with the DOE).

    We need to find him an appropriate educational setting. However, none of the schools we have toured in NYC are geared for gifted visual spatial learners that have language & EF issues. Have any of you sought out help from Dr. Linda Silverman of http://www.visualspatial.org/? If yes, was she helpful in helping you put a plan in place for your child?

    What kind of school should I be looking for?
    Should I consider homeschool? If yes, what does each day look like for him and how do I set him up for success (I am not a teacher & know nothing about homeschooling).

    Thank you for any guidance that you can provide.
    D

    Joined: Apr 2014
    Posts: 4,051
    Likes: 1
    A
    aeh Offline
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    A
    Joined: Apr 2014
    Posts: 4,051
    Likes: 1
    Welcome, officially! (You and I have been in contact before, of course.)

    As a new poster, your posts may be hung up a few days until you have 5 posts, which is probably why you haven't seen any responses.

    Some posters here have consulted with Dr. Silverman. One hopes you will hear from some of them shortly.

    As you know, I do feel that homeschooling, temporarily or long-term, can sometimes be in the best interest of 2e children, especially when they are at the point where school is essentially a daily traumatic experience for them. Accomplishing a particular amount of curricular material is, under those circumstances, a fairly low priority. Healing emotionally, and rediscovering the joy of learning, are the principal aims. After that, it's finding a supportive, individualized approach to remediating the other exceptionality(ies), while freeing gifts to develop unrestricted. Conventional academic accomplishment is much more likely to follow then.

    On a practical level, this often looks like a few days to weeks of detoxing from school, spending his time doing whatever activities give him joy and help him to feel most accepted and most himself. Once you start up school again, homeschooling can look like self-directed/interest-led learning, or literature-based learning, or a collection of focused workbooks, or many visits to museums, parks, and libraries, or structured online schooling, or many other things.

    You might consider contacting a local homeschool organization, such as https://www.nychea.org/ (which is a secular group; if having a particular faith orientation in the group is of value to you, you should be able to find a group with a similar bent (e.g., Christian, Jewish, Muslim)). The community of homeschoolers is generally eager to help new homeschooling families acclimate.


    ...pronounced like the long vowel and first letter of the alphabet...
    Joined: Aug 2011
    Posts: 739
    P
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    P
    Joined: Aug 2011
    Posts: 739
    First - take a step back and breathe. I feel your pain - I've been there. The good news is a few years down the road I can tell you my DD is now thriving. It can take time, patience, thinking outside the box and determination but your son CAN get there.

    My DD has 11 diagnoses - every possible LD and processing issue. Public school was a nightmare for her - anxiety off the charts. Even with a supportive sped teacher she didn't make progress and regular classroom teachers were just in over their heads. Add in a horrible principal who didn't believe any of her challenges were real and intentionally antagonized her anxiety and it was truly awful.

    We went the route of Out Of District Placement at a special ed school. No the peers weren't really appropriate but she could get solid remediation for her LD issues and they were used to dealing with anxiety. Most importantly they embraced radical exceleration in her area of biggest strength. (They placed her in an 8th grade English class as a third grader and started a HS curriculum 1-1 as a 4th grader. All using audio books.) It was like pulling teeth to even get her to read at a kindergarten level. She had a fabulous reading intervention teacher though and made HUGE progress once we got really good vision therapy. By 5th grade she was reading at grade level, by the end of 6th grade she was reading at an adult level. It. Can. Be. Done.

    Once she outgrew what the special ed school could do for her we faced a difficult decision of where to place her. PublIc school was way too chaotic for her processing issues, no special ed school could meet her high level needs. Regular privates couldn't meet the LD needs. I found a few interesting things that could potentially be helpful for you.

    Eagle Hill in Greenwich, CT might be a good option if you can get him there. They specialize in language based LD so could probably meet his needs. Might be worth a phone call at least see the if they can make any recommendations in pNYC.

    I have had less than good experiences with schools that market themselves as being designed for 2e students. I have also found hidden gems that serve this population - have gifted and sped programs that can overlap - but don't shout 2e so not necessarily easy to find.

    We are now in our second year of non-typical programming. Not really homeschooling but instead a combination of school and nonschool programs that meet her 2e needs. One day a week at a nature program that uses experiential learning to explore science, agriculture and environment. 2 days a week getting 1-1 special ed services (paid for by our school district) in areas like speech, assistive technology and math. And 2 days a week taking regular academic classes at Fusion Academy - a chain of schools that offer 1-1 classes in a sensory friendly environment. (There are branches in NYC but don't start until 6th grade.) This gets the onus off of me trying to figure out how to go about homeschooling but still giving her all the flexibility that it would bring. Spaghetti and aeh do a great job above spelling out the benefits.

    So I guess my advice is keep turning over rocks and you may find the school you are looking for. Contact those that seem close but might not work due to locatation or grade level to see if they can recommend an option that could work. Stay flexible. It might be that homeschooling could work but you don't want to forget about remediating the disabilities. You might be able to bring in a program from Lindamood Bell to help with that but it might be hard to do yourself without training.

    I hope some of this helps. Good luck! I know there are some powerhouse folks here from NYC so hopefully they will chime in or pm you with specific recommendations.

    Joined: Jan 2012
    Posts: 100
    S
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    S
    Joined: Jan 2012
    Posts: 100
    Hi I don't have any 2e experience to share, but I agree that you need to find a school that's a better fit, the setting he is in now its clearly not helping. You may want to look into Flex School. Its a school for 2e students. I don't know anything about them though, perhaps someone else does. They seem to be new or fairly new and will be opening new campuses close to NYC. http://www.flexschool.net/

    There are also some other schools I have heard of over the years, like Windward, Quad and Lang. Again I have no experience or personal knowledge of these schools, but you can look into them.

    https://www.thewindwardschool.org/
    https://www.quadprep.org/
    https://www.thelangschool.org/


    Joined: May 2009
    Posts: 647
    K
    Kai Offline
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    K
    Joined: May 2009
    Posts: 647
    Regarding your question about considering homeschooling, my answer is a resounding yes.

    My now adult son is 2e with dyslexia (he also has other diagnoses: APD, ADHD, SPD, vision issues, even Asperger's, though that ended up being wrong). He is HGish, in that his GAI is high, but not quite in the HG range. However he presents as HG with high creativity, and this has gotten more and more apparent as he has gotten older.

    I started homeschooling him in 2nd grade. Homeschooling allowed us to remediate his weaknesses while letting him fly with his strengths. It even allowed us to turn what was a perceived weakness (math) into a strength.

    I honestly don't see how 2e kids, especially HG 2e kids, ever get appropriate remediation in a classroom. My goal was not only to get his academic skills up to average for his age, but to align them with his ability. In other words, instead of targeting the 50th percentile for his age (or, worse, the 16th percentile, or whatever it is they target in schools), I was shooting for 99+.

    The thing about homeschooling is that it can be all consuming, and with a 2e kid, you're probably not going to get a curriculum in a box that works. Everything needs to be customized. So, you really need to be on board in order to make it work.

    Joined: Aug 2011
    Posts: 739
    P
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    P
    Joined: Aug 2011
    Posts: 739
    Originally Posted by stemfun
    You may want to look into Flex School. Its a school for 2e students. I don't know anything about them though, perhaps someone else does. They seem to be new or fairly new and will be opening new campuses close to NYC.

    If anyone is considering Flex School you may want to pm me. See my comment earlier in this thread...


    Moderated by  M-Moderator 

    Link Copied to Clipboard
    Recent Posts
    Testing with accommodations
    by blackcat - 04/17/24 08:15 AM
    Jo Boaler and Gifted Students
    by thx1138 - 04/12/24 02:37 PM
    For those interested in astronomy, eclipses...
    by indigo - 04/08/24 12:40 PM
    Powered by UBB.threads™ PHP Forum Software 7.7.5