When Mary White was a little girl learning the rudiments of arithmetic, her teacher would ask her to answer a simple question say, two plus three and Mary would reply: “That depends.”
That depends, she would say, thinking of the numbers on a ruler, whether you’re looking at two where it borders one, or two where it borders three. Likewise for three.
She remembers her teacher becoming exasperated. “Just answer the question,” she seemed to be saying. “Like any normal kid.”
But Mary was not “normal” — in the “normal” sense of the word: She was extraordinary, and it took a prescient fourth grade teacher named Rich Weinfeld, to see that beneath her sloppy handwriting and run-on sentences, her misspellings and creative punctuation was an exceptional mind.
Twice Exceptional, to be precise. In this month’s ASBJ l look at what some innovative districts are doing with these children, who have both extraordinary gifts and serious disabilities like ADHD, dyslexia, and Asperger Syndrome.
Mary, now in her 40s, was lucky to have a perceptive teacher like Weinfeld. She went on to become an attorney, poet, and teacher of special education students.
The story looks at districts, such as the Montgomery County (Md.) Public Schools, that have innovative programs for twice exceptional students. It’s an issue that has underscored, for me at least, the importance of meeting students “where they are” and paying close attention to their strengths, whatever they may be, rather than simply expecting them to fit into predetermined categories.
Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor
