Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Teacher doesn't get 2e

Ugh. DD's teacher just does not seem to get 2E. She is okay with DD getting a B+ in writing because her mechanics "balance out" her content.

One thing I asked the teacher to do was grade DD's spelling tests personally. She had been having the kids correct each other's spelling tests and told them if there were any errors, they should let her know. Well, DD can't really tell if there are errors because she doesn't see letter reversals. So several times she has brought home tests where she had spelled something correctly but the other student grading it had marked her wrong. DD didn't notice the error.

Also, on spelling pretests, the teacher has the kids correct their own spelling tests. DD cannot perform that task with any kind of accuracy. So she thinks she knows words that she actually doesn't know!

The teacher was also telling me that she is having a hard time getting DD to indent her paragraphs. I pointed out that DD still can't even do proper letter and word spacing because she doesn't perceive the words on the page normally. That her letters are all different sizes and she gets printing mixed up with cursive.

Finally, I said, "Have you heard of dyslexia?" The teacher said she had. I said, "DD has dysgraphia. It's like dyslexia but for writing." That isn't precisely the diagnosis that DD was given, but the teacher seemed to get the analogy...said she would talk to the resource teacher for some strategies. I hope she does! Arg.

How frustrating! I'm sorry. Did the teacher not know ahead of time that your DD had dysgraphia, or did she just ignore it because she didn't understand it? I hope she goes to the resource teacher too.

I met with her and the principal two months ago to share the results of DD's assessment. So I thought she understood, but I guess not.

I have to admit, I really didn't know much about dysgraphia beyond the fact that it affects writing. I just looked it up on wikipedia, and it seems like a clear descripton of it (if it's accurate). There are also suggestions for teachers and parents. If these seem at all helpful, maybe you could refer the teacher to that site or another maybe more medical site? Maybe she just needs some saturation to learn what dysgraphia is.
wiki entry on dysgraphia

(Cathy A Now that I think about my response, I want to let you know that I don't think you didn't already give her lots of info. I'm sure you've already given her loads of information on this, and my response probably sounds stupid. I'm just thinking that if she's scatterbrained like me, maybe she doesn't have good recall about your DD's disability, or maybe she's not a "file" reader, and maybe getting some reminders such as websites she can peruse might help. I hope I didn't offend.)

Dottie, another problem with the peer editing thing is I shudder to think what DD is writing on the other kids' papers!

SPG, I don't think your idea to give her information is stupid. I'm just afraid it won't be well-received (or understood). I am hoping she will get info she can use from the resource teacher.

2E seems to be a really hard concept for the teachers to grasp. I was sitting in our IEP/PT conference recently and was suddenly struck by how grateful I was that the Emotional Support Teacher, Special Needs Coordinator and Gifted teacher were in the room for the conference with the main teacher. If it had just been me and the teacher, I think I would have been very frustrated. I really don't think that they main teachers pay much attention to IEPs. The comments and concerns that were raised were addressed by the "experts" right then and there. When I made a comment one of them usually chimed in with suggestions for me or the teacher that we could all discuss and make sure could be implemented before we left the room.
In fact, for the first time ever, I was the one saying hey we need to watch out here, this is still just a 9 year old boy and I think he is close to the overload point.

Good Luck!

Well, I think the teacher should admit there's an issue when DD is receiving 1's (on a scale of 1-4) for mechanics on her writing. She showed me a sample where DD misspelled "these" as "theas" (among many other misspellings). I know that DD could spell it orally.

And even more frustrating is the but he is getting above average grades so why are we discussing this comments...

I can see how it might be hard for teachers to understand 2E if they had no personal experience with it. At times it has been hard for me to understand how my son with motor dyspraxia and dysgraphia can have so much trouble with some things and not others. How can he manage to play Rock Band II on the hard level, but not be able to do other things that require good motor skills very well. And it is really hard to explain why your kid can do something reasonably well one day and the next day, he can't.

It is hard for them to understand because he just sounds so smart. It is hard for me to understand why he and I can listen to a story on the news or a science or history show and if asked to give a summary of what he heard, my son does a much better job of this than I can. It is embarrassing sometimes because I am very aware of the fact that my son sounds a lot smarter than I do. Because of the way he talks, people sometimes ask me what his IQ is. I don't think anyone ever asked my mother about my IQ. The strange thing is that I can do well on things like freerice.com but when it comes to using a higher level vocabulary in my speech I can't do it. I think it is like this for him with his motor issues. The part of his brain that controls speech and vocabulary and making up jokes works so much faster than mine, but the part of his brain that controls motor learning doesn't work so well. His motor memory is deficient, but every other kind of memory seems way high. Even for numbers. A few days ago, when I was paid for something with a credit card, the sales clerk asked for the last 4 digits of my credit card number and before I could look at my card, my son told him the number. He said he just remembered it from another occasion when I had been asked for these numbers--months ago.

He remembers how to spell words, especially since we focused on this last year when he was preparing for a state spelling bee. But if asked to write the words, there is always the chance that he will write a letter backwards. It really slows him down and he gets tired. Last year, he didn't mind spelling 100 words a day for me orally, but it would have been a totally different story if I had asked him to write the words. I found it funny that the educational psychologist that tested him several years ago tested his spelling ability by having him write the words, even though possible dysgraphia was one of the reasons we took him to see the developmental pediatrician. The spelling score was not accurate in my opinion, because my son could have orally spelled at a much higher level, but he quit writing words after his hands got tired. I wondered at the time if the educational psychologist really got 2E.