Gifted students with learning disabilities: implications and strategies for school counselors

Professional School Counseling, Oct, 2001 by Adriana G. McEachern, Javier Bornot

Counselors can allow students to draw freely with limited structure, or they can ask them to draw specific objects, things, or events. For example, students can be asked to draw themselves, their families, homes, schools, and special events in their lives. It is important to listen and observe students carefully as they draw. Counselors will be able to gauge students' progress by observing the hostility and anger demonstrated while drawing or pounding on clay, or by the intensity and change in the colors of the paintings (Orton, 1996). The role of the counselor is to accept students' artwork and to encourage expression of feelings, problems, and conflicts based on the drawings. As the student tells the counselor what has been drawn, the counselor begins to draw out feelings, thoughts, and values by using a facilitative, person-centered approach such as that used in nondirective play therapy (Ryan & Wilson, 2000).

A problem-solving approach can be another effective technique to use in individual counseling. In this intervention, attention should be given to helping the student identify personal and academic strengths and weaknesses. Counselors can present weaknesses or areas for improvement as conquerable challenges that can be mastered (Silverman, 1989; Whitmore & Maker, 1985). In counseling, students can generate strategies and solutions to alleviate weaknesses. It is also for school counselors to help students focus on their strengths, talents, and gifts and ways to further develop them (Silverman, 1989). Therefore, counselors should seek out information regarding students' hobbies, interests, and extracurricular activities (e.g., sports, music, art) and should inquire about the relative progress made in these activities. Students who are not engaged in these activities should be encouraged to do so and should be provided with information on how they can participate. Gifted students with learning disabilities need to know that participation in sports and hobbies has been found to improve the abilities and academic performance of students with similar difficulties (Whitmore & Maker, 1985). If agreeable to the student, the counselor can, at some point during the counseling process, facilitate a conference between the child and his or her parent(s) to provide opportunities for sharing and discussing the options and solutions generated in individual ounseling.

Counselors can teach study skills individually or in groups to promote self-discipline and positive study habits. Information on effective methods for note taking, summarizing reading content, memorizing, and reviewing and studying for examinations should be provided (Van Tassel-Baska & Baska, 1993; Walker, 1982). Students with learning disabilities experience problems with organization, especially organizing for learning activities (de Bettencourt, 1987). Essential to the counseling intervention is a discussion of strategies to help students organize and later be able to retrieve information (Whitmore & Maker, 1985). Counselors should encourage the use of compensation strategies such as writing down all class assignments in a specific notebook that is color-coordinated by class, using worksheets and study guides, and checking for spelling errors before turning in assignments, (Baum, 1990; Skinner & Schenck, 1992).