Advice on College

I checked my DOE email today, which I rarely do, but I am hoping to hear from the Empire Awards (one way or another.) I got this email this morning which I found very interesting. I am going to share the email and my reply. I was really interested that this person found my name on the list from the 2016 Gifted and Talented Symposium. I was on a panel of educators speaking about best practices. It is interesting that this was useful even after the fact for someone to find me. Granted, this person asks about college so all the credit really goes to my mother because I teach middle school. So this parent was fairly lucky that my sister just happened to finish her associates degree this May after going through a long process of navigating the college experience as someone who is twice exceptional. I of course sent the email along to my mom to see if she comes up with similar advice. I have to hand it to my mom that although her training is as a social worker, she is a natural special ed advocate. They must go hand in hand. 

As a note, after reading this I did go check myself out on this website. I did make a point of saying I work with twice exceptional students. What a nice moment.
Symposium Bio

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From: Bonnie XXXXXXX
Sent: Tuesday, July 05, 2016 7:04 AM
To: Eck Elizabeth
Subject: Twice Exceptional College Student

Dear Ms.Eck,

I came across your name on the 2016 Gifted and Talented Symposium website.  I would greatly appreciate your insight as to how to help my son. He is gifted with learning disabilities.  He graduated from high school and has been struggling to stay afloat in College.  He was dismissed from Drexel for poor academic performance and is currently on academic probation at Hofstra University. He has about 1- 1 1/2 years worth of credits left to complete, but he is seriously considering calling it quits.  The emotional toll of these academic failures has been extensive. Please let me know if you have any suggestions as to how he can improve his academic abilities so he can focus on his incredible talents.  My son’s dream is to pursue a career in Computer Science. 

Thank you for any insight you can offer.

Sincerely,

Bonnie XXXXX

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Bonnie,

I appreciate you reaching out to me. While I work with middle school students, my sister is twice exceptional and just finished college after much struggle. I am going to forward your letter to my mother as well since she walked my sister through the whole process fairly recently. 

From my sisters experience, being autistic and gifted, her issues were about executive functioning. So she really suffered with organizing herself, setting deadlines, etc. Also, getting help and clarification can be hard. You would have to tell me more about your son's experience if you think it is something different for him. This takes management, but using a calendar like google calendar that has alerts can help, everyone procrastinates but sometimes exceptional students just need more reminder tools. 

Firstly I would look at what resources you are using at the school. Hofstra I believe has services and they are mandate to meet the IEP that he graduate with in high school. Of course, if you want the school to do anything, it means going in yourself to meetings because the counselors are extremely confusing and talk in circles which can be overwhelming. 

My suggestion is also to go part-time at least until he gets on his feet. My sister did this her entire experience, but it made it more manageable for her to deal with two classes at a time. My mom constantly had to keep track of her assignments and make sure she got to class (she was living at home.)

My sister was at a community college and they actually had classes on how to go to college. They were not really worth core credit, but taught into common problems I will address below. 

There are also the resources that are not obvious to twice exceptional students. So, going to the math or writing lab to get peer help. No one really wants to do this, but those students really know how to help you go over your work and the expectation. I think understanding the work expectation is one of the hardest things. For example you understand the topic you are writing about but then you have to apply MLA formatting or meet some other arbitrary criteria of citation. This can be frustrating and confusing. 

Getting a teacher to provide rubrics or criteria upfront is great. I don't think this is an unrealistic expectation as I do it for all my classes, so going to a teacher and saying, 'how will this be graded, can you give me an example and or a rubric?' Also, finding out the policy on resubmitting work. Most teachers will allow you to improve and resubmit work. Again, find out exactly what they want improved and when it needs to be in to improve the grade. This is probably easier than getting it right the first time. 

Finally, being savvy about signing up for courses. I think offices at schools are semi-worthless because they frustrate even me. However sites like ratemyprofessor 

They give reviews on who to avoid. So you can try and register for classes with more understanding and engaging teachers. Some teachers are just going to give you a hard time at the college level. 

Finally setting realistic goals, like passing and resubmitting assignments. Maybe balance your schedule to take an art credit along a class you find intimidating. I would talk to your son about what he finds difficult and try and pin point a few improvements you can make. It is also ok to take a little longer to get through college. It is better to take your time and be comfortable than drop out. 

I hope this was helpful. I will send any additional things my mom thinks of. 

- Betty Eck

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