Agenda & Sessions

Keynote Speaker: Holden Thorp

Description: What does it mean to lead as a neurodivergent person in today’s world—and how can we better support one another in doing so? In this session, Holden Thorp will share lessons from his own leadership journey, as well as insights gathered from some of the most influential neurodivergent thinkers and advocates around the world. Together, we’ll explore the unique strengths and challenges neurodivergent leaders often navigate, and how the autism community—and broader network of allies—can collaborate to promote shared success.

Whether you’re neurodivergent yourself, work closely with students who are, or are simply curious about inclusive leadership, this session will offer practical tools, new perspectives, and an inspiring call to collective progress.

Speaker: Jennifer Hartstein, PsyD, Nancy Tarshis Legacy Fellow 2026

Description: No one likes to see children they care about suffer. When we do, we want to swoop in and provide assistance. Unfortunately, this frequently backfires, especially when we end up doing things FOR the child or removing obstacles they must endure. In those moments, we are over-accommodating. Over-accommodation occurs when an adult overly adjusts their behavior to prevent a child’s distress, which enables avoidance. This can happen in parenting and also in the classroom. 

While over-accommodation helps in the short term, it prevents children from developing much needed coping skills, often worsening their anxiety or dependency. Indeed, it is a way parents and educators can manage their OWN anxiety, although it doesn’t help build confidence or competence in the children with whom they are engaging. 

This workshop will focus on defining over-accommodation, highlighting its risks and providing ways in which parents and educators can shift their behaviors and interactions to be more supportive, while less protective, to help children thrive.

Panelists: Dana Baker, Rebecca Sime Nagasawa, Katie Travia

Description: What would a truly inclusive school-to-career pathway look like if it were intentionally designed—start to finish—to support every kind of mind? This panel examines how Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and proactive workplace design can create seamless, supportive transitions for neurodivergent individuals from K–12 education through college and into long-term employment.

With perspectives from educators, clinicians, and corporate partners, the session will highlight how UDL principles can be applied not only in classrooms but also in internships, onboarding processes, early-career roles, and professional development. We will discuss practical strategies for designing flexible, predictable, and choice-driven environments across both school and workplace contexts, creating systems where neurodivergent learners and employees don’t have to mask or adapt to rigid norms but can authentically thrive.

Speaker: Dr. Claire E. Hughes

Description: Twice-exceptional educators are increasingly tasked with teaching students how to use AI thoughtfully while continuing to design instruction that supports challenge and access. For many 2e learners, creativity is the most effective entry point to engagement, regulation, and advanced thinking. Inverting Bloom’s Taxonomy—beginning with creation and intentionally working backward—offers a structure for both instruction and student use of AI.

In this session, participants will explore how to teach students to use AI as a cognitive partner rather than a shortcut. Lessons begin with authentic creation, then guide students in using AI to support analysis, application, and knowledge development. Teachers model this same process in planning, making thinking visible and supporting executive functioning, metacognition, and ethical decision making.

AI is positioned as a shared tool for intentional learning design: supporting idea
generation, organization, feedback, and extension without increasing cognitive load. This approach avoids false divides between enrichment and intervention, allowing students to experience support and challenge simultaneously.

Participants will examine examples of inverted Bloom’s lessons that integrate student-facing AI use in 2e classrooms. Educators will leave with practical strategies for teaching students how to use AI effectively, along with a clear framework for designing learning experiences that support, stretch, and honor the complexity of twice-exceptional learners.

Speaker: Matt Zakreski, PsyD

Description: But it's not perfect yet! Perfectionism can be a major aspect of being anxious, especially if you are gifted and twice-exceptional. This presentation will define perfectionism as an aspect of anxiety and how it manifests in and outside of the classroom. It is important to understand the personality factors and reinforcement patterns that maintain perfectionism in gifted individuals. We will also give practical solutions for managing these feelings and related behaviors.

Learning Objectives:

• Participants will be able to identify perfectionism as an anxiety disorder and delineate between adaptive and maladaptive perfectionism.
• Participants will be able to identify the social, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral elements of perfectionism and develop the skills to help their clients to realize how these behaviors connect to perfectionism.
• Participants will workshop strategies to help their clients identify systemic challenges that maintain their perfectionism and remove them.

Speaker: Dr. Claire E. Hughes & Debbie Troxclair

Description: Twice-exceptional (2e) educators know that talent and challenge are not competing narratives, but intertwined realities that must be addressed simultaneously. Still, even in 2e-friendly spaces, instructional decisions are often pulled toward false binaries—intervention or enrichment, accommodation or challenge. The Trellis & Blossom model offers a shared framework for providing both simultaneously.

In this session, participants will examine the Trellis as the set of responsive supports that remove barriers to learning without constraining growth. These include strategic scaffolds, flexible structures, and instructional strategies that reduce barriers while preserving cognitive demand. Paired with this, the Blossom represents deliberate opportunities for talent development: advanced content, creativity, complexity, and authentic intellectual engagement. Finally, Roots provide specific adaptations for individuality. Rather than operating in parallel, Trellis and Blossom are designed to work in concert, shaping environments where support fuels growth and challenge remains accessible.

Using classroom and program-level examples, this session invites 2e educators to move beyond managing tension toward intentionally designing learning spaces where twice-exceptional students are supported, stretched, and recognized for the totality of who they are.

Speaker: Pooja Patel, MA

Description: Participants will learn how to make the writing process explicit and accessible for both teachers and students through the six stages of Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD), developed by Karen Harris and Steve Graham. This session introduces practical, easy-to-use mnemonics that simplify writing instruction and support students in developing strong self-regulation skills. Attendees will leave with concrete strategies they can implement immediately to help students write independently, communicate their ideas with clarity, and use their voices with purpose.

Speaker: Dr. Debbie Troxclair

Description: Twice-exceptional (2e) learners often grow up navigating two distinct worlds: one shaped by advanced cognitive abilities, and one resulting from a co-occurring disability. This session explores how these dual experiences influence the complex process of identity development. Drawing from emerging research and clinical insights, we examine why forming a cohesive sense of self can be uniquely difficult for 2e learners who frequently encounter asynchrony, inconsistent feedback from their environment, and limited opportunities for authentic psychological identification with others. 

The session highlights barriers that may hinder identity development, such as social misunderstanding, ecological mismatches, and limited peer connection, and it provides practical techniques educators can use to reduce these barriers. Attendees will leave with concrete approaches to help 2e learners integrate their dual worlds and move toward self-actualization with confidence and clarity. Participants will be introduced to Connective Literacy, a framework integrating avatars, bibliotherapy, and collaborative storytelling to support the developmental tasks essential to healthy identity formation.

Through these creative modalities, 2e learners can explore who they are, envision who they may become, and construct a positive, realistic self-image. These strategies offer safe, engaging pathways for perspective taking, emotional expression, and problem solving, while honoring both exceptional strengths and lived challenges.

Speaker: Peter Shankman

Host: Nicole Cavaliere, MEd

Description: ADHD brains are not broken. They are just wired differently, and they thrive on progress, not perfection. This fireside chat breaks down why big resolutions usually fail and how small, specific goals help students actually get started and keep going. Designed for parents, teachers, and students, this conversation offers practical ways to turn “I’ll do it someday” into “I did it today.” When we focus on small wins, we build skills, confidence, and habits that add up to big results over time.

Speaker: Kimberly Alexander, PsyD

Description: Anxiety frequently shapes the daily experiences of twice-exceptional and neurodiverse individuals, often in ways that are subtle, misunderstood, or misattributed. This session invites attendees to explore how anxiety can manifest across academic, social, and emotional contexts, and why a neuroinclusive lens matters when supporting these learners. Participants will leave with a broader understanding of the role anxiety plays, how neurodivergent students experience it, and considerations for creating environments that better support regulation, engagement, and well-being.

Speaker: Kelli Suding, MEd, CPACC

Description: When learning environments are designed for variability, access becomes built-in rather than added later. This session highlights how UDL principles combined with accessible materials, assistive and inclusive technologies can open literacy and content access for a wide range of learners. Participants will leave with concrete tools and design approaches that shift instruction from accommodation to proactive accessibility.