Meet Joey

Maybe you also know her? Maybe you were her?

The best way to understand what it means to work with a twice-exceptional student is to actually work with a twice-exceptional student, but because I don’t have the superpowers to make that happen over Substack, I’d like to introduce you to Joey and her family—an amalgamation of all the magic, challenges, and experiences of the students and families I’ve had the honor of working with over the years. 

Joey, a wiry 10-year-old girl with thick red hair and large inquisitive eyes, joined one of my micro-schools after a disastrous career in her local public school. Her parents shared that she thrived in preschool and could not wait to go to the “big school with the big kids on the big bus.” Her trouble with conventional school began about halfway through her kindergarten year. Joey’s parents reported that she would complain of stomachaches when it was time to go to school and would often cry at drop-off. This was well into the school year, when most people would expect the anxiety of starting a new routine would have evened. 

The crying was a behavioral regression that Joey had grown out of one week into joining preschool. After kindergarten, she would return home in a bad mood, ready to melt down at the slightest frustration. She claimed school was boring and that no one, not even her teacher, liked her. Concerned, her parents reached out to the teacher who then shared that Joey refused to participate in whole class activities and played alone during free time. 

Her teacher described Joey as “defiant” and shared that she often disrupted the entire class to claim an activity was boring or too easy. The teacher was at her wit's end and had begun sending Joey out of class whenever Joey became “unruly.” Soon Joey was spending half of her days, sometimes more, hanging out with the secretary and reading books she brought from home. Her parents knew that she was ahead of some of her age-mates in terms of her reading and math skills but had not thought much about it when they signed her up for kindergarten. She had some quirks, but most people found her charming.

In first grade, it was suggested that Joey be screened for learning, attentional, or social disabilities as a step toward understanding why she struggled so much in school. From her WISC-V (a type of cognitive test that results in an IQ result), it was determined that her visual-spatial abilities were at 122/93rd percentile and her processing speed at 80/9th percentile. Joey’s GAI (general index ability) or overall IQ score was calculated to be 120, a qualifying score for giftedness according to many norms.  

At the time, Joey was also diagnosed as autistic. While her diagnosis was not clear-cut, her parents could recognize the traits in her to the degree that they believed an autism diagnosis made sense in the context of their daughter’s personality. Due to her GAI and the fact that she showed normal academic progress, Joey was not referred for any special services; it would be up to her teachers to determine and implement any behavioral interventions they felt were appropriate. 

Most upsetting was that Joey began speaking negatively about herself and her abilities. She would call herself “stupid” and “dumb,” despite that obviously not being the case. Needless to say, her parents were worried. When things had not improved at her school by the beginning of the second grade, her parents began looking for somewhere else to send their daughter. Somewhere she could thrive.

If you’d like to keep learning about the complexities of Joey’s twice-exceptionality and how to best support the Joeys in your life, Part II of this post will be released on Friday to all paid subscribers. If you’re not already a paid subscriber, click the button to sign up below.

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