Allene Nichols


I'm interested in using the arts to help twice exceptional students develop a language about themselves that is currently missing from academic and public discourse. Broadly speaking, a twice exceptional student is a gifted student with a second exceptionality such as a learning or physical disability, poverty, or in some cases, race or gender, which may mask the giftedness or present learning challenges. The language of giftedness is a language of hyper-ability while the language of the second exceptionality is often one of disability. The mutual exclusivity of these languages places the twice exceptional student in a discursive vacuum that must be overcome if appropriate learning challenges are to be presented. The arts can help such students develop an identity and communicate the identity and its attendant needs to others.

 

I'm interested in using comic books as one means of teaching twice exceptional students. I used X-Men:Gifted in a high school English class once to talk about positive and negative responses to difference. I think it went well, but I also think it's only the most obvious application of comics to teaching and I'm looking forward to learning many more.

 

As a kid, I read everything I could find and probably spent many happy afternoons reading through the comic collection of one cousin or another, but I don't remember any specifics. When my son started reading comics like Spiderman and the X-Men, I started to read along. It was a lot of fun. We created our own superhero personas and powers. If I can remember mine, I'll post it here. At one point, I also read Hellboy in Spanish to improve my language skills.