Towards a Definition

I would like to take a moment to work on a definition of “Exceptional”, since I know that phrase might make some people cringe. There is a loud set of voices out there who object to the “over-exceptionalizing” of America’s kids. On the one hand, you have educational researchers condemning Howard Gardner’s theory of Multiple Intelligences as impractical and unscientific (people like this, for example). On the other, you’ve got English teacher (and son of the legendary biographer) David McCullough Jr.’s commencement address: You’re Not Special. And with a faltering economy, the standard line towards education and child-rearing has become: but will he get a job?

In a climate like this, someone like me had better have a good answer to the question: what do you mean by exceptional?

Fortunately, I think that I do.

My own school experiences involved a series of reversals as I tried to keep up with the standards of each academic institution. I attended the private elementary school where my grandmother taught. It was a great school and she was (and is) a great teacher, and I was a motivated learner. I won prizes for reading and writing and made academics a priority.

In the seventh grade, I transferred to the (well-regarded) public junior/senior high school in the small town where my family had recently bought a house. It was a good school with good teachers and a strong tradition, but within a few days there I sniffed out a change in values. The highly-regarded students here were athletes, not scholars. I shifted my priorities 100% to athletics and, over the course of about a year, became a “jock”.

I played football and track and was able to, more or less, fit in. Academics were a permanent afterthought. I took mid-level courses and managed to avoid any serious attention to my learning until the 11th grade, when I made exceptionally high scores on the SAT.

It caused a minor sensation among my friends and teachers, who had grown used to an image of me as a pleasant, academically unserious jock. Suddenly, I stood out. Admittedly, I liked the attention, but I had also been trying to avoid it and it was an uncomfortable time for me.

Many of the football players “did” Spring Track under the coercion of the coaches, who wanted us to be in the weight room and staying fit for the fall season. I was with the big boys, the “Tankers”, pretending to throw the shot put competitively but mainly just hanging out on the green grass in the middle of the track, enjoying the New England summers and watching the more serious athletes compete.

 It was much more of this: 

than this: 

 

One afternoon, shortly after my SAT scores were publicized in the local newspaper, I was at “practice”, sitting on a chair in the middle of the track. The school principal, a kind and slightly awkward man with an unfashionable beard for the time, showed up at practice. It was hot, in early June, and I remember watching him walk across the lawn in his suit and jacket, looking distinctly uncomfortable. As he made the long walk across the green oval, I had a sinking feeling that he was coming to see me. I remember how long that walk seemed, and how much I dreaded his attention.

He finally made it over and, when I realized that he was making it over for me, I got out of my chair and made a token effort to meet him. I don’t remember if we’d ever talked before, but he shook my hand and said he’d heard about my test scores. We had a few minutes of halting conversation before he said, with an ironic candor that I’ll never forget: well, considering how well you did on the test, maybe you should consider pursuing...that...rather than continuing on with [and here he took a hilarious, meaningful glance towards the shot put ring] this.

I didn’t know what exactly “that” was, but I had already come to the same general idea myself. I’d stopped pursuing opportunities to play college football and instead focused on finding a college where I could thrive academically. I was lucky enough to find one, and luckier still to be able to attend while accruing a student loan debt that has been only marginally crippling over the past eleven years.

In college I went to the other extreme, returning my focus to academics after a few months of adjustment during my Freshman year. Like in elementary school, I won academic prizes and took pride in my academic accomplishments. We were all Liberal Arts majors, there, though, and after four years, if you didn’t want to go on to law school or on to further academia, the world of work and commerce was still something of a cipher.

I got lucky, though. I responded to an ad in the Santa Fe newspaper for a part-time job at a boarding school for students who learned differently (I truly had no idea what this was) and got a call from the Academic Director, asking if I wanted to apply for a teaching job instead.

Still unsure that I wanted to be a teacher, I was convinced that I wanted to work at this school by the drive up. Nestled deep in the Pecos Wilderness outside of Santa Fe, with the Pecos River running along the road to school and across the front lawn of the school itself, this was truly one of the most beautiful spots I’d ever seen. No matter what the job is like, I told myself, I want to work here.

Of course, the job was terrific. The students had a grab bag of learning disabilities: attention disorders, dyslexia, dysgraphia, non-verbal learning disability, autism spectrum disorders, and more. Some of them didn’t have any diagnoses at all. What they all had, though, were incredible minds, personalities, and spirits. And I started to realize, even in that confused and confusing first year of teaching, that success for me meant finding ways to enable them to experience success. Which didn’t mean “dumbing-down” content to their level. It mean bringing the content to them in an appropriate package.

It meant letting the attention kids do something first, and then read about it. It meant giving the spectrum kids everything in lists and bullet points, and letting them utilize the same. It meant letting the dyslexic kids listen to everything the rest of us read and speak everything the rest of us wrote. It meant getting to know you, as a person and a learner, and finding out what information looked like to you.

Developing a method with these kinds of kids took years of experience and lots of exposure to great teachers and colleagues. One of the best things I did was take classes at the University of New Mexico with a woman named Elizabeth Nielsen, who taught her graduate classes by doing with them every single activity she advised them to do with their own students. Only after we tried something did we ever discuss the theory behind it.

I’ve worked with students who are learning disabled, gifted, and both. I’ve taught them English, Reading, Math, Science, Chemistry, Physics, and Biology. I’ve guided them through career searches and on river trips. I’ve had them in my home and visited them in theirs. There are not a lot of general descriptors you can apply to them, although there are some general strategies you can employ in helping them grow.

Etymologically, to be an exception means to stand out. These individuals may sometimes do things that are incredibly illogical. They may be, at times, frustrating, exhilarating, boring, petty, noble, stupid, and brilliant. But they are absolutely exceptional, they are absolutely special, and they absolutely stand out. Sometimes they are outstanding, and sometimes they are just “out, standing” (ha!), but this is the group of students who need extra attention. And they deserve it, too, because they’re also the group of individuals who will change the world.