​Designing a School for Gifted and Twice Exceptional Learners

• The Journey School of Houston grew from a question that had followed me throughout my work with students:

• What would school look like if we designed it around the learner, rather than continually asking the learner to adapt to the school?

• Again and again, I encountered bright, capable students who were struggling in traditional educational settings. Some were gifted learners whose abilities masked significant learning differences. Others had diagnoses such as ADHD, autism, dyslexia, dysgraphia, or anxiety that overshadowed their intellectual strengths. Many had experienced repeated frustration in school and had begun to question their own abilities.

• I founded The Journey School of Houston to create something different: a school intentionally designed for gifted, twice exceptional, and neurodivergent learners.

Why The Journey School

• Too often, students who learn differently are defined by what they cannot do.

• A child may understand complex scientific concepts but struggle to organize an assignment. Another may think deeply and creatively but have difficulty translating those ideas into writing. A student may perform years above grade level academically while simultaneously needing significant support with executive functioning, emotional regulation, or social development.

• These differences can be difficult to accommodate within traditional school structures.

• At The Journey School, we began with a different assumption: students could be both highly capable and significantly challenged at the same time.

• Our work was not about lowering expectations. It was about understanding the learner well enough to create the conditions in which meaningful learning could occur.

Building the School

• Founding The Journey School meant building far more than a curriculum.

• I developed the educational philosophy, instructional model, student support structures, and organizational systems necessary to create and sustain a school designed around individual learners.

• My work included:

• Developing curriculum and instructional practices

• Creating individualized learning pathways

• Recruiting, mentoring, and developing teachers

• Designing student support systems

• Building admissions and family engagement processes

• Establishing academic policies and organizational systems

• Leading nonprofit and strategic development

• Developing community partnerships

• Guiding accreditation efforts

• Creating a school culture centered on relationships, curiosity, and student growth

• Over time, The Journey School became both a school and a laboratory for understanding what happens when education begins with the individual learner.

The Journey School Learning Model

Know the Learner

• Effective teaching begins with understanding the student.

• We looked beyond grades and diagnoses to understand students' strengths, challenges, interests, motivations, developmental needs, and learning profiles.

• Knowing the learner allowed teachers to make thoughtful decisions about pacing, curriculum, instructional strategies, and support.

Build the Relationship

• Students are more willing to take intellectual risks when they feel known and understood.

• Relationships were central to our educational model. Teachers worked closely with students to build trust, recognize patterns, understand frustration, and help students develop confidence as learners.

• For many students who had experienced repeated difficulty in school, rebuilding that trust was an essential part of returning to learning.

Individualize the Path

• Students do not develop at identical rates, and learning does not always happen in a linear sequence.

• Instruction at The Journey School could be adjusted according to student readiness, strengths, interests, and needs. Students could move more quickly through areas of strength while receiving additional time and support in areas of challenge.

• Personalization meant more than assigning different work. It meant thoughtfully designing an educational experience around the learner.

Develop Executive Function

• Knowing information is different from knowing how to manage learning.

• Many of our students needed explicit support with planning, organization, task initiation, time management, working memory, emotional regulation, and self monitoring.

• Rather than viewing these struggles as a lack of effort, we approached executive functioning as a set of skills that could be understood, practiced, and strengthened.

Protect Intellectual Curiosity

• Students with learning differences can spend so much of their educational experience focused on remediation that their intellectual strengths receive little attention.

• At The Journey School, support and challenge existed together.

• Students needed opportunities to explore complex ideas, pursue interests, ask meaningful questions, and experience themselves as capable thinkers.

Develop Agency

• Ultimately, our goal was not simply to help students succeed within our school.

• We wanted students to understand themselves as learners.

• Students learned to recognize their strengths, identify the support they needed, communicate those needs, reflect on their progress, and gradually take greater ownership of their education.

Understanding Twice Exceptional Learners

• Twice exceptional students often challenge traditional assumptions about ability.

• A student can be exceptionally intelligent and struggle to complete homework.

• A student can understand advanced mathematical concepts and have difficulty organizing materials.

• A student can communicate sophisticated ideas verbally while struggling significantly with written expression.

• A student can require meaningful accommodations and still need greater academic challenge.

• When schools focus exclusively on either a student's strengths or their challenges, part of the learner is missed.

• The Journey School was built around the belief that both must be understood.

Research Into Practice

• My work at The Journey School was deeply connected to my research and continued study of how students learn.

• My doctoral research examined twice exceptional students, achievement, self efficacy, and the use of mobile technology in learning. That research contributed to a broader interest in how learning environments influence students' perceptions of themselves as learners.

• At The Journey School, research became practice.

• Our educational approach drew from work in gifted education, twice exceptional education, learning science, executive functioning, educational technology, self efficacy, social learning, and student motivation.

• The school provided an opportunity to continually ask an important question:

• How can what we know about learning actually change what students experience in school?

Building an Institution

• As The Journey School grew, so did the organization surrounding it.

• The school earned recognition for its work in gifted education and reached important institutional milestones, including accreditation through the Alliance of Psychoanalytic Schools and the Texas Alliance of Accredited Schools.

• These milestones represented more than organizational growth. They reflected the evolution of an educational idea into a sustainable institution with established practices, systems, standards, and a distinct approach to supporting students.

What The Journey School Taught Me

• Founding and leading The Journey School fundamentally shaped the way I think about education.

• It reinforced my belief that students rarely fit neatly into categories.

• Learning differences are complex. Motivation is contextual. Behavior communicates something. Relationships matter. Intellectual challenge and emotional support are not competing priorities.

• Most importantly, the experience strengthened a belief that continues to guide my work:

• The question is often not whether a student can learn. The question is whether we have created the conditions in which that student can learn.

The Work Continues

• The Journey School was more than one chapter of my career. It became the foundation for a larger body of work focused on gifted education, twice exceptional learners, executive functioning, educational therapy, school design, and the creation of learning environments where students can better understand and develop their own potential.

• The questions that led me to create The Journey School continue to shape my research, leadership, and work with students, families, educators, and schools today.