Mentorships: The Value of Strengths-Based Virtual Relationships for Engaging Twice-Exceptional Students With Anxiety

Abstract

Twice-exceptional, or 2e, learners present with both giftedness behaviors and one or more learning challenges that impact the expression of those behaviors (Baum et al., 2017). Often, these learners are misdiagnosed or missed in diagnoses completely leading to negative educational experiences, chronic anxiety, and overwhelming frustration as the learner perceives the discrepancy between their strengths and learning challenges (Hébert, 2020; NAGC, n.d.). Ultimately, these students suffer from a lack of engagement in learning, school refusals, and high dropout rates (Maddocks, 2018; Renzulli & Gelbar, 2019; Rubin et al., 2007; Webb et al., 2016; Wentzel et al., 2004). Twice-exceptional learners benefit from a strengths-based, talent-focused approach to education as it has been shown to improve social, emotional, and cognitive growth (Baum et al., 2014). While some schools can cater to the specific needs of twice-exceptional students by using these approaches, the availability of such schools is limited, and most traditional schools find it challenging to meet the unique 2e learner needs within the classroom (Baum et al., 2017). Mentoring is a strategy frequently used in gifted curriculums to support the pace, rigor, and topics of interest of gifted students (Siegle et al., 2015). Yet, the literature suggests that mentoring may be an overlooked opportunity for providing a strengths-based, talent-focused educational approach for twice-exceptional learners. This study explored how virtual meeting-based mentorships provide positive strengths-based, talent-focused relationships that expand the geographical reach of support and foster engagement for twice-exceptional students struggling with chronic anxiety. Findings from this study revealed the following themes: mentorships provide individualized attention, mentors use their knowledge of 2e to facilitate engagement, virtual meeting-based mentorships expand access to 2e support, and virtual meeting-based mentorships create intangible benefits. The strengths-focused virtual meeting-based mentorships were shown to be valuable for twice-exceptional students with anxiety as they enhanced engagement and well-being in the mentees.