Neurodiversity in the Classroom

I recently went "home" for the summer to visit my parents and took the opportunity to watch the last season of the Netflix show, Atypical.

Now if you haven't seen the show I highly recommend it. It's essentially about a high school boy on the autism spectrum who's navigating how to become more independent and form relationships (specifically find a girlfriend). Personally I think Kir Gilchrist does a fantastic job of portraying someone on the spectrum. His mannerisms remind me A LOT of my best friend's brother who is on the spectrum as well. The show does a pretty good job of inclusive casting as well, but I'm not here to talk about that.

The reason I mention Atypical is that right at the end of the school year, a student of mine, we'll call her Emily, mentioned that she had started watching the show with her mum. Now this was really exciting because I had spent nearly the entire year trying to convince the parents (mostly mum) to have Emily tested for ADHD. Mum started the year very reluctant, and was now discussing neurodiversity issues with her daughter. What a transformation!

Emily had been at my school for several years and within a few weeks of teaching her, I recognized classic signs of ADHD (Did you know that girls are often undiagnosed when it comes to ADHD? Learn more here). Namely, Emily constantly needed to be in motion and had a really hard time waiting her turn to speak. She often spoke over her peers or forged ahead with work without listening to instructions. Surprisingly, Emily had never been flagged at my school before and when I mentioned my concerns, her mother would just say, "Oh, not that's just Emily."

My school does a really great job of educating teachers on neurodiversity issues. Every year, members from the ADHD Foundation in the UK lead workshops to help us recognize signs of neurodiversity and also to help us understand how to lead inclusive classrooms. The learning I did through their workshops really helped me advocate for Emily and communicate clearly with her parents.

The real challenge with Emily was that her academics seemingly weren't affected by her behavior. However, as I pointed out to the parents, part of this was because Emily had devised her own coping methods. In fact, before I even mentioned ADHD to the parents, Emily came to school and said she had taken a quiz online with a friend that said she had ADHD. Her siblings constantly told her she had ADHD and she embraced it (without a diagnosis).

Emily always chose a chair in the classroom that allowed her to move (either a wobble stool or a computer chair she could spin in). I ignored the movement as did her peers. She also began carrying a "doodle notebook" which she would draw in while discussions were happening in class. She said it helped her focus and not talk over other people. She came to school with fidget toys and through trial and error we found the ones that helped her focus. Nearly all of Emily's personal goals for the year were to work on socializing (she struggled retaining friends) and letting others have a turn, because she recognized that this was hard for her. For an 11 year old Emily was amazingly self-aware and reflective. All of this lead to her success at school despite her struggles.

In fact, Emily was so self-aware that when it came time to complete her personal project, she spent 8 weeks learning about neurodiversity in an effort to educate others. Her work was beautifully created and she shared such an innocent look into what it's like to manage your ADHD while being at school and just trying to succeed in this world. She gained so much confidence in herself and became a great advocate for others. She learned how to have conversations with her mum and I think this started her on a path of greater successes. It was truly remarkable.

Now there were some delays in testing due to COVID, but in the last week of school we got the results that everyone expected. Emily displayed clear signs of ADHD but it was not affecting her schooling (yet). I had a long conversation with the parents on the last day of school. Similar to conversations I had been having all year about the modifications we had been making for Emily, we talked about the importance of her school knowing the results as well as learning how to support her as school became increasingly more difficult.

Being able to speak to the school counselor, the head of support for learning, and having yearly professional development on neurodiversity has helped me become a better inclusive teacher. Emily was not the only neurodiverse child in my classroom. I had another child diagnosed with ADHD who was completely different (THIS article made me think of him. It took me three solid months of praise to really get him on board), and another with such severe anxiety that she didn't want to come to school by the end of the year.

Neurodiversity comes in many forms. It is called a spectrum for a reason. The challenge is understanding what it means to be neurodiverse and figuring out how to support students. As educators, it is our job to help all students. Sometimes it's very straightforward. Sometimes it takes a whole year to get there. In the end, finding the right path for the student is all that matters, and seeing them succeed through all the trials and tribulations will stick with you forever.