Trellis, Blooms, and Bees: Creating a Twice-Exceptional Teacher Education Program at Cleveland State University

Webinar slides

Twice-exceptional children are gifted children who also have disabilities that can include autism, dyslexia, or ADHD. However, explaining who they are and what they need from others can be difficult.  Using a metaphor, twice-exceptional kids are like bees. 

Until recent times, scientists did not understand how bees fly. Their wings are too small for their bodies and according to the rules of aviation, they should not be able to fly. It turns out that bees follow their own rules of flight and spin their wings in unusual ways to achieve lift-off.  Just like bees, twice-exceptional children have challenges that appear to limit them along with tremendous talents and abilities.  Unlike bees, twice-exceptional children need teachers and adults to teach them how to use the wings that they have to fly. Without creative teaching and supportive adults, twice-exceptional children can get lost in the educational system.    

This Lunch & Learn will highlight the online program at Cleveland State University which is the first in the country to offer a Twice-Exceptional Teacher Education program: one that integrates the development of talent and strengths from gifted education while providing support for learning and social challenges from special education. Using the “Trellis and Bloom” model, the unique needs of this population will be highlighted, along with the multiple sets of standards that structured the process by which this program was created. Developing new programs can be challenging and yet the needs of the students and the teachers who serve them are too significant not to serve.   

Speaker:  

Claire E. Hughes, Ph.D. 

Professor of Gifted, Special and Twice-Exceptional Education 

Cleveland State University 

Claire E. Hughes is a professor of special, gifted, and twice-exceptional education at Cleveland State University.  Previously, she was a professor of elementary and special education at the College of Coastal Georgia, faculty director of special education programmes at Canterbury Christ Church University in the United Kingdom, and a Fulbright Scholar to Greece.  Winner of the Gifted & Award from NAGC in 2022, she is president-elect of the Association of the Gifted for the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC-TAG). Her research areas include twice-exceptional children — particularly gifted children with autism — generational studies, the use of AI in education, and international education.