Reflection: Neurodivergent Teacher Trauma

I know I’m a good teacher. I know I don’t have to control everything. Yet, I always feel a need to prove myself. I see every disagreement as a challenge to my knowledge and skill. (And that fear, which is what it is, is exacerbated when I know I have current research on my side.) I know full well that, to my frustration, I do not have the social skill to make people see my way of interpreting the evidence. Trauma and fear means I often give in to avoid the situation when the other person presents a reasoned argument. For years, I have marveled at the people who are able to say exactly the same thing I just said and get people to agree with them. It’s a skill I don’t have. Body language? Tone of voice? Social rapport building? Probably a combination. Whatever it is; I don’t know how to do it. That’s a problem when you have a social communication disability and you’re being evaluated on your ability to coordinate a cohesive team unit. The problem is even worse when not everyone is coming from the same background/approach. (And the problem is only exacerbated by the experience of administrators who invalidated my voice in the process, or who flat out told me they didn’t believe I could do it. I haven’t learned better strategies, only more fear.)

I feel safest in a very silo-ed approach. I feel most comfortable if there is allowance for disagreement in approach among team members, but we all can do what we believe is best. I believe students benefit from multiple approaches, and that’s part of it. The other part is that because I don’t feel threatened, I’m able to work more cooperatively/productively with everyone on the team. But that model is not acceptable in modern special education. Consistency is the name of the game. We all must be on the same page, defined as taking the same approach to everything: lock stock and barrel. That makes me very uncomfortable. I’m neurodivergent; I simply don’t think the same way as everyone else. 

I tried working in an ultra-“consistency-is-everything” environment back at the beginning of my career. That experience marks clearly the start my education-system related trauma. Back then I totally drank the kool-aid. I believed in the system completely. Unfortunately, that school quickly and explicitly showed me that my brain didn’t respond to stimulus the same way. Purely by virtue of being neurodivergent, I was physically unable to live up to their standard of consistency. That experience has colored my feelings and approach to the whole concept ever since. (I’m not sure I was explicitly aware of it until I just typed that sentence. I knew the trauma was effecting me emotionally, but I’m not sure I understood how it was effecting my work until now.)

I’ve known for several years know that my trauma and my neurodivergence were causing most of my stress at work. I knew I was part of the problem (everyone has a role in a social interaction problem.) I knew my trauma stemmed from the reactions I’ve received over the years to my neurodivergence, but I always focused on the ableism in special education as the root cause. Special Education is incredibly ableist, but in reality I’m quite good at navigating that aspect of my chosen field. This trauma is pedagological. That’s why I have never been able to figure out how I could be successfully accommodated. I still don’t have an answer for how that can work in the future, but now at least I’ve started asking the right question.

A Part Time AAC Using Teacher in an AAC Classroom

I’ve been using AAC a lot at home recently. It feels really good. It feels comfortable in a way that mouth words don’t. Mouth words are stressful even in non-stressful situations. They tend to tumble out of me unbidden and uncontrolled. Ensuring that the correct words come out in the correct order with the correct tone at the correct time.... I can usually manage most of that, but rarely all of it, and it’s a lot of work. And don’t ask me what I said. I rarely have a clue.

Still, although I often text across the classroom or across the building for communication access, I’ve never seen AAC as a viable communication tool in the classroom. What’s frustrating is that it’s not for any practical reason.

It’s feeling like I owe people explanations I don’t want to give for why I’m doing things differently than I used to. I don’t owe anybody any explanation I don’t want to give. “I can communicate clearer this way” is enough. I say that. I’m not sure I believe it.

It’s feeling like I’m sending mixed messages or like I’m not providing a good model for my students and staff of the expectations for language modeling or AAC device use because even when I’m using AAC, I tend to mix it with mouth words. I’m a part time AAC user and that’s hard to explain. (It’s also different from my students who are primary AAC users or my students who use AAC for communication repair.) I understand the difference. I’m still afraid others won’t.

I know the answer, like all the accessibility tools I’ve tried incorporating into my classroom routines this year, is “try it and see how it works for you.” I don’t know why this one feels so different from using mobility aids. Maybe it’s because we teach students to use AAC and we don’t teach students to use canes? Really, that should be all the more reason to do it.

Maybe I’ll try on Monday. Assuming we don’t get snowed out.

Communication Badges: A More Nuanced Approach

I’ve written about Autistic Communication Badges before. My first attempt to implement them in the school environment was a total bust. (I couldn’t find a way to functionally implement it that was both safe and useful.) Quite similar to my first attempt at creating a classroom-wide communication accommodation actually. That one also failed spectacularly.

I’ve also written a lot about trying to teach self advocacy and body autonomy to students with significant needs. I’ve generally been impressed with what my students have been able to learn and demonstrate. But, by a chance of circumstances, I got to see what happened when one of those students left the environment where the staff was trained to respect body autonomy and to support self-advocacy. If those skills remained, they weren’t recognized or respected. I learned that my students did not have the skills to stand up to authority who tried to take away their rights. I also learned that they needed clear, unambiguous tools to use in their own defense.

So, when September starts, I am planning to reintroduce the Communication Badges, with one significant difference. This time, I’m creating a whole class set for teachers and students. For teachers: It will help students understand who is available to ask for help. It will help other teachers/specialists know who is available to talk to (or who needs help). For students: It will help teachers and peers know who is ready and who needs more time. It will let teachers know who needs more support and who needs to be left alone. 

These are skills we need to teach. One of the biggest challenges, especially when working with students who have difficulty with expressive communication and who express emotion in non-standard ways is to find a way to bridge that communication gap so students can find the support they need and reject the support that is unhelpful.

It’s not a cure, but communication badges might just be a start to helping bridge that communication gap in a way that respects all communication.

Teaching While Autistic

To the outside world, I’ve had an incredibly successful 10 year career as a special education teacher. (You could argue 20 year career, if you count the time I spent working in residential services before getting my teaching certificate.) But under the surface lies a deeper struggle. A struggle not just with trying to reconcile my professional identity as a special education teacher with my personal identity as an autistic person, but to try to figure out how to survive as an autistic person in the incredibly ableist educational environment.

Part of my problem was, because I wasn’t diagnosed until I was 30, I had no experience requesting accommodations. And since most people still think “wheelchair” or maybe “blind person” when they hear “accommodations” my supervisors had no idea what to do either. (Even at schools for students with autism! Especially at schools for students with autism!)

And so my journey progressed from “how are you going to help yourself” to “We’ll help you” without any clear understanding on anybody’s part (mine included) as to what that “help” was going to look like, or exactly what I needed “help” with.

Should we be surprised that those positions didn’t work out?

So before I try again, it’s obvious there’s something I need to make clear to myself and to my prospective employers. I need to know, in concrete definable terms, exactly what I need from them in order to be successful in the position they are hiring me for. And if we cannot define clear, concrete supports that will make the position successful, either because what I would need to be successful is too abstract or because we are unclear on what would be required, then the position is not a good match for me and I shouldn’t apply.

I’m tired of hiding and trying to pretend there isn’t an issue here. I’m tired of supports that are really just attempts to recognize and fix things after the fact. I love what I do, and I’m not going to give up on my career. But it’s time to find a place where I can do it without pretending to be someone I’m not.

Coping Strategies

One of my personal projects recently has developing a system to track and analyze my energy regulation. I’ve been trying to figure out if I can predict and even out the highs and lows I’ve been having lately with more better self accommodation. The jury’s out on whether I’ve made any significant breakthrough (and that’s a different post) but as always it brought me back to the question of instruction.

I wrote about my emotion-based instructional curriculum a couple of years ago and what I’ve been doing hasn’t changed significantly in the intervening time. But thinking about it from this perspective, there’s an obvious piece missing. There’s an obvious ableism embedded in that curriculum that I didn’t even notice. Nothing there teaches students to recognize the coping strategies *that they are already using.* Nothing there teaches them to understand how they might need to modify their current coping strategies to function more effectively in a neurotypical society. (Which, like it or not, is the one we live in.) It assumed that the student didn’t have any coping strategy (not very likely for my older teen students!) and tried to teach them the ones that neurotypicals thought were a good idea. Yet we know that the  best teaching is building on skills *that are already there* not trying to build new skills without a foundation.

It seems so obvious when I say it like that, doesn’t it? Time to put it into practice!

Autistic Life Skills: Noise Blocking Headphones

Disclaimer: I receive no financial incentive to write this post. I don’t generally post product links because I assume you know how to use google. Sometimes I do, just to make my point clearer. I don’t get any compensation if you make a purchase using those links. The point of this post, as with all of this blog, is simply to share my experience in the hope that it will make education better for the students who come next.

Probably the most common association with autism and sensory challenges are the over-ear noise blocking headphones that many children and adults wear due to extreme sounds sensitivity. I’m not generally sounds sensitive (which is a very good thing since to say my classroom is loud would qualify in the runnings for “understatement of the year.”) However, I do get sound sensitive when I have a migraine or when my anxiety is very triggered. So, after a bit of research on the difference between noise cancelling and noise blocking headphones (I found this article particularly helpful) I decided to invest in a pair of Pro for Sho noise blocking headphones. (Primary positive attributes: under $20 price point and they came in purple!)

They worked exactly as advertised. My husband was able to watch Game of Thrones in the living room while I went about my life in the rest of the house without my being bothered by it in the least. (I may be the only person in the world, but I really don’t like Game of Thrones.) But they also had two other benefits that I didn’t expect, which are the point of this post.

The first was that wearing it seemed to have the effect of dampening all of my senses, not just my hearing. I assume that has to do with the way in which the sensory system is all interconnected. However, I was able to do several cleaning tasks, which are usually very draining due to the onslaught of tactile and olfactory input, and barely notice the effect.

The second, and this was the real surprise, is that I almost immediately started craving the input they gave. (I’m a very strong sensory seeker.) I wore them later in the evening when I was alone in the quiet house just because I liked the way they felt on my head and made the world sound.

I did not anticipate that this type of sensory support would have the same type of psychological benefits as stimming, but it does. I haven’t seen anyone writing or talking about that benefit before, and I think as parents and professional begin to understand the benefits on fidgeting and stimming on the neuro-atypical brain, we need to explain the other use of sensory interventions with that same model. I know it will be part of my explanatory arsenal going forward. (And those purple headphones are going to find a permanent home in my bag!)

Autistic Life Skills: Toothbrushing

Full Disclosure: I don’t get any money for telling you what products I use, like, or don’t like. My opinions are just that, my opinions. There are no product links on this page. I assume you know how to use google.

My goal, in this “Autistic Life Skills” series is simple. To, hopefully, provide a more comprehensive understanding of the complexities of developing skills that incorporate sensory challenges, so that other teachers and parents (and other autistics who struggle with those same skills) might find some guidance to approach the teaching of these skills with less frustration on everyone’s part. Hopefully, a way to end the episodes of “wrestling a crocodile” (as the parent of one of my students describes their nightly toothbrushing routine.)

As a child, I was lucky that toothbrushing was never a battle my mother chose to pick. I thought I was very clever in the ways I hid the fact that I wouldn’t do it from her. I wasn’t; she just chose not to fight me about it. Through the luck of good genetics and floride in the water, I never got a cavity, but that luck certainly had nothing to do with my (lack of) toothbrushing.

I was in my 30s when I stopped getting nauseous and sometimes physically sick at the dentist, because I was able to advocate for myself to not get any flavored pastes (they make me sick) and to skip the floride treatment (the texture and taste - yes I can taste it!) makes me gag.

I was nearly 40 when I finally developed a tolerance for the electric toothbrushes that the dentist recommended. I still hate the Sonicare ones and won’t use them. But I worked my way up with the pulsar ones (the vibrating ones that look like manual toothbrushes) and now can use the Oral-B electric toothbrush (well, the CVS generic version!) They have a smaller brush head that means the vibrational input in my mouth is more localized, and the handle doesn’t vibrate as dramatically, so I get the input (and cleaning power) without my whole face, hand, and arm vibrating, which I never could stand. I’m still waiting for the dentist to tell me that my toothbrushing has gotten good enough that I can stop going every three months. Maybe next time?

Why do I tell that story? Because most of my students do not have the language to explain things as clearly as I just did. And yet, as verbal and generally self-aware as I am, look at how long it took for me to figure it out and find relief. I’m not saying that everyone with sensory challenges experiences dental hygiene the same way I did. I’m saying these are the places to start looking when a student struggles.

Especially when working with an older student, it’s important to recognize that there is likely a trauma component to the resistance to learning this skill. Do your research: what’s been tried in the past? How does the routine go at home? What are dental visits like? For many of our students, it’s a battle of wills with the parent at home, and either restraint or sedation at the dentist office. This is a breeding ground for trauma. You can’t start with sensory desensitization, or do sensory desensitization alone, and expect it to be effective. It might be effective in the classroom if they have a positive relationship with you, but it won’t transfer to the home environment. You have to work with the student and the parent to build trust around the routine and more positive associations.

What does that look like in practice?

We start by getting the student to hold the toothbrush.

Then we work on bringing to their face (any part accepted)

Slowly we work toward bringing to the lips.

Next is getting them to open their mouth.

Once they will hold it in their mouth for a count of 10 we can start putting it in each section of the mouth.

Then work toward top and bottom of each section.

Only after that do I introduce the “brushing” motion.

Some students can and will skip steps.

Some students do better starting with the vibration on.

The vibration scares some students away (like it did me.)

For some students we alternate: do each step without and then with vibration before moving on to the next step.

That’s going to depend on their sensory profile, and also where their sensory regulation is that day. (I know I’m more sensory defensive when I’m anxious or tired.)

Toothbrushing is a challenge, but it shouldn’t be a battle. Take on the challenge, work with your student, but know when to pick your battles and don’t make it a battle you choose to pick. 

The Mask in My Teacher Toolkit

I try very hard to create a classroom that is welcoming of students natural ways of moving, of interacting with the world, and of expressing themselves. In the adult autistic community, we talk a lot about masking, and the effects of it on self-esteem. And then I watch my neurotypical colleagues, completely unaware of what they’re doing, expect those masking behaviors. And I watch myself use them all the time as well. And in makes me wonder, am I doing a disservice to my students by not teaching those skills?

Masking is a skill. The more skills you have, the more opportunities are available to you. But what if our students grew up knowing, not just that masking exists, but that it is a choice? The social skills curriculums currently out there teach “this is what you have to do” but how different would the educational experience of the next generation of autistic children be if we taught it as “this is what the NT population does/expects.” What if our behavior expectations where “here is how to do it/fake it” and “here are reasons/times when you might want to.” 

I know full well that my ability to pass, and thus have control over disclosure, has given me opportunities I might not otherwise have gotten. (There’s a reason this blog is anonymous.) My students may never pass for NT due to other disabilities, but don’t I owe it to them to give them the skills to try if they want to? When I have struggled with social interactions, I’ve gotten instruction (I, personally, found Michelle Garcia Winner’s Social Thinking at Work and Ian Ford’s Field Guide to Earthings particularly useful.) Why shouldn’t they benefit from the same opportunities? As a special educator, isn’t that my job? To make the general education curriculum accessible to my students?

But in Purple....

For years now, I have described myself as a “part time AAC user” but beyond my preference for communicating by text and email whenever possible, I’ve never taken any steps to communicate multi-modally outside the home. (At home, I use a combination of gesture, sign, objects, facial expression, and cat sounds in addition to speech. My husband has become an able translator over the years!)

I have the same communication software as my students use downloaded on my phone and tablet. (Ostensibly, I got it for school.) I’ve tried using it, but it’s way too slow to ever be functional for me. Also, I find myself simplifying my language in order to use the vocabulary that is available instead of choosing the exact words and sentence structures I want, which slows me down further and can obfuscate my meaning. And so, I do use it for school, but I don’t use it for me.

This past week, I finally purchased a text-based AAC app. I hadn’t been able to justify the expense to myself. After all, I talk. A lot. And I wasn’t really sure if I would ever use it outside the house. So I found one that had almost all the features I wanted and didn’t cost as much as the ones with all the bell and whistles. The first thing I noticed about it? I liked it a lot better once it was purple. In fact, when I set up my second device, getting the color right was higher priority for me than getting my vocabulary set up. That’s particularly interesting because I’m usually not a visual person at all. I tend to ignore avatars, backgrounds, etc. (My NLD exacerbates this tendency.) Yet, if it made that much difference to me, who usually doesn’t care about such things, how much do our students care? Our students who we bombard with color choices at every corner “to provide language opportunities?” How often do we even pay attention to the cosmetic aspects of their device? We use vocabulary color coding, but what about background colors? Case colors? Fonts? There are a lot of ways to personalize a device beyond content that we often overlook. 

I hear a lot that “we have to motivate the student to use the device/to communicate (or they won’t.)” What difference might it make if the student was able to set up the device to be more visually pleasing (or interesting) to them? I haven’t used mine in the wild yet. I haven’t needed to. (It’s vacation week. I haven’t actually gone out much!) But I’m motivated to. I keep wanting to add vocabulary that might be useful. I haven’t had that before. I never would have thought that being purple would have made so much difference.

(Neuro)Divergent: The Classroom

It’s funny, I used to be called “the mean teacher” because I would insist on students doing everything they could independently, no matter how long it took, and not letting others “save” them. Because I insisted on teaching grade-level content to all my students, no matter their academic skill access level.

Now, I’ve changed schools. To the school that was closest aligned to my values that I could find in the state. And all of the sudden, I’ve developed a reputation as that teacher that is too permissive. You know the one, the one that lets her kids get away with everything and doesn’t actually teach? Yeah, that’s how I’m being perceived.

So what happened?

I could point to any number of things. I do have a really hard class this year. Certainly harder than I’ve had in a while. Groups don’t look very group-ish most of the time. And certainly, I’ve had more lessons fail than I had gotten used to. That’s only a problem when I’m okay with it and don’t learn from it. (And it’s the cause of my discomfort, not the school community perception.)

No, this reputation came about because I have found the hard edge of their tolerance for neurodiverisity. I knew it had to be there: schools are staffed by neurotypicals and even the respectful ones are limited by their perceptions of the world if they’re not listening to the voices of the neurodivergent community. And I noticed that from day one when I started at this school. It was far more respectful and understanding of the neurodivergent community than any place I had been before. But it was still an “us” and a “them” and the voices of the neurodivergent community were conspicuously missing from the conversation. (I left feedback saying as much on my evaluation. I doubt it made a difference.)

That’s what the perceived “permissiveness” is: I’m being too neurodiversity friendly. And, as often happens, it’s being perceived through neurotypical eyes as letting them get away with too much: because it makes them uncomfortable, because if they were me they would not let him do it. And so the “he needs to learn he can’t do that out in a job setting” argument gets invoked.

I literally got told that I’m really good at keeping kids calm and preventing them from getting upset so they can learn. And that that is a bad thing. Because they need to learn to handle being more uncomfortable. (Them being comfortable is making the staff around them uncomfortable.) We need to sacrifice their learning so they can accept more “appropriate boundaries.”

And to some degree, of course, they’re right. Because outside my neurodivergent-friendly classroom, the cold neurotypical world won’t accept them for who they are. And they will be forced to accept arbitrary social rules in the name of “appropriate boundaries” in order to be successful. And we all want them to be successful.

So, where do we go from here?

• We use a more typical token or points system on are goal-directed-learning project. (Honestly, that was probably the next step in understanding how to reach our goal anyway. We needed to make it more concrete.)*

• We set up clearer physical boundaries in the classroom. (I’ve already bought painters tape. Wish I could remember the name of the teacher I met on Twitter who gave me the idea a couple years ago! Thank you, Awesome Autism Teacher Who’s Name I Forget!)

• I have some social skills curriculum to write. And some social stories. They need to come from me because they need to come from a neurodivergent perspective. (Unless someone else out there has already written one? I don’t need to reinvent the wheel!)

I’ve got my work cut out for me changing the perception of myself at my students at my new school. But I think it’s worth it. Because this school really does have the right idea and the right values. It’s why I chose to work there. 

Even when we have neurodiversity acceptance in our society I don’t think we’ll ever have neurodivergent-friendly classrooms the way we have neurotypical-friendly classrooms now. And that is what I was trying to create. And honestly, if I believe in inclusion, which I say I do, that shouldn’t be what I want. Our goal should be a neurodiveristy-friendly room. One that works for all of us, neurotypical and neurodivergent. They are right, I went too far to one side. It’s time to re-build the classroom that works for all of us, because that’s the classroom that is really going to prepare students for “the working world” after graduation.

*I know the research on reinforcers. I’ve read Punished by Rewards. I’ve read Mindset. But I work in a PBIS school that wants to increase its use of PBIS. That means using rewards. I have some ideas about how to make this work following the TTOG principles. I’d been trying it before everything fell apart in the last month or two and having some really awesome successes, even in the DTT context, that I hope to get to write up at some point.

The Gift of Flexibility

The rules that make up our social structure can seem arbitrary when participation is not intuitive: Go here now but not later. Touch this but not that. Put this here but not there. When you look for an underlying logic in order to understand them, as many autistic children and adults do, it appears they change on a whim. “Go with the flow” requires recognizing and understanding, or at least being able to follow, the “flow” of society, which is based on social norms - the very skill that eludes so many people on the spectrum. It’s really no wonder so many cling to routine, structure, and sameness and get upset when it is violated. From that perspective, it’s actually surprising more folks on the spectrum don’t spend more time in “fight or flight” mode. It is a constant battle to figure out how to live in a world that often doesn't make very much sense.

Engaging with the norms and expectations of the school and classroom environment is particularly challenging for several of my students. In particular, they do not recognize the logic behind sitting and completing an academic task, moving to another area, and repeating the demand. Both sitting and moving are non-intuitive demands. Both have, historically, had intensive intervention aimed at compliance with these demands. 

They often demonstrate their lack of understanding by removing themselves from the demand to engage in preferred activities which are both highly interesting to the student and engage the teacher in an interaction, thereby drawing both of them away from the interaction they do not understand the logic behind. What concerned me was students who were getting bigger and older (I teach middle school) and more aggressive. And we were the cause. (Of the aggression, teenage boys are going to grow like weeds whether we want them to or not.)

I met with the team and we got programs put in place to get everyone’s hands off the students unless there was a real immediate safety risk (e.g. about to be hit by a car!)

We got lots of alternative seating in place. More than enough for every student in the room. Ball chairs. Bouncy chairs. Rocking chairs. We stopped telling students to sit and started asking them where they wanted to sit.

We got some pretty ridiculous answers at first. On the table? On the heater? On the floor?

We said okay. We did our academic work there.

Sometimes students didn’t want to sit. They stood or leaned.

We said okay. We did our academic work there too.

It wasn’t perfect. Kids were still on the move a lot. Transitions were not flawless. But what changed almost immediately? The day we made this change, the aggression that was starting to become a problem disappeared overnight. We’re getting just as much work done as we did when we were following the compliance-based program with one difference: everyone, kids and staff, are happier. We’ve been at this for a couple of weeks now and an unexpected thing has happened: the kids are starting to sit. They are sitting in chairs and without being asked. The logic is simple really:

Stop fighting the kids and they’ll stop fighting you. It’s the gift of flexibility.

The Limits That Make Us Soar

A former student of mine just transitioned into a new classroom. Her new teacher has set limits for her that make me uncomfortable from a philosophical and pedagogical perspective. Some of these are limits that I literally spent years working with staff to get them to understand why they were completely unacceptable in my classroom. It’s taking all of my willpower not to say something to her. But the thing of it is, that student is happy. She is happier than she was toward the end of her time in my classroom. She is happy and she is engaged in learning in a way that she and I had struggled with over that last year or so.

With a little perspective, it’s clear to see what has happened. In my quest to create a student-centered classroom, I lost too much of the structure and boundaries that make the classroom effective. If I’m honest with myself, I knew that. My data on student progress and student behavior over the second half of last year showed it pretty clearly.

It shouldn’t surprise me. I’ve known, as I’ve gone through this process, that I’ve consistently struggled to implement one of the most key pieces of a student-centered classroom: feedback. My students need to know what is expected of them, and how they are doing in meeting their goals and expectations. I need a way to show them. For progress on student goals, I’m thinking about creating visual goal monitoring pages in their program data books. Using picture supports, students can track by independence level or accuracy level increases (we take data on both) and can choose what they want to make public: progress, achievements, or nothing. I’ll try and post one to twitter when I get them made, hopefully next week, and will try to edit this post. (Blogger doesn’t seem to like image posting anymore.)

In order to provide more effective behavior feedback, I need to first re-examine for myself where the behavior limits should be in my room. The feedback I got from my students last year was that I didn’t give them enough limits, and that they found learning difficult in that environment.

What matters?

Student choice:

Students should be able to choose: where they work (learning station - may sometimes have to be restricted choice, depending on activity), who they are working with, which activity they are doing (from list of activities for that academic block)

Student safety (individual target behaviors)

Student task completion/participation

I can see how this could easily be represented to students using an interval data visual:

Activity Chosen

Location

Staff Member

5 minute interval safety tokens +++++

5 minute interval participation tokens +++++

(Again, I’ll try to post an image-based one to twitter when I have it, Blogger doesn’t play nice.)

The similarity between the behavior feedback visual I’m proposing and a traditional token chart is not escaping me. In fact, during the difficult time we had last spring due to the weakening structure associated with the school closing, one of the things I did for one of my students was pull out a token board he hadn’t used in over a year. He needed the visual to know how much work he was expected to do in order to help him stay regulated. Many of the tools in the ABA toolkit are very useful tools. Tools, by themselves, are not positive or negative, it is how they are used. Behavior tools must always be used to support student choice, self-advocacy, and body autonomy not to create compliance or restrict a student’s natural expression/movement in the name of “normalizing” behavior. The line of teaching “socially appropriate” behavior is a very thin one and must be walked with extreme caution and much input from the Autistic Adult community. We do not always fully comprehend the power of the tools we use. We need to listen to those who have had those tools used on them, just as we look at the results and reviews of any other new curriculum and program that we wish to adopt into practice (or material we chose to use with our home and family.) But to quote Levar Burton “You don’t have to take my word for it…” (ask another Actually Autistic person!)

Structured Feedback: #ObserveMe

As an educator, I value feedback, especially from other professionals who share my core teaching beliefs. I joined the faculty of my current school because of the mission based around student-centered teaching focusing on self-advocacy and meaningful independence for every student regardless of perceived intellectual ability. Because of negative experiences I’ve had with observers in my room at other schools, having visitors in my room makes me anxious. I feel judged. I automatically see the behaviors, the missing symbol supports, the student(s) not fully engaged in an academic activity at that exact moment: all the things I would have been criticized for at other placements. And I want to say, “I know all that! We’re working on it! Here’s what I *actually* want feedback on…” And that’s when I heard about #ObserveMe.

#ObserveMe was started by Robert Kaplinsky last year. (I think this is the original post here.) I first saw it on twitter. (Of course, it’s where I find everything new and cool in education!) The idea is simple: post a note on your classroom door inviting your colleagues in to observe and telling them what areas you would like feedback on. It feels to me like exactly the answer I’ve been looking for. The visuals I put on my door already tell someone entering a lot about what I value as a teacher: that’s intentional. My hope is that adding this sign will help to structure those interactions so I can finally get the feedback I am looking for to grow my practice.

The text of my #ObserveMe sign is below:

We are all learners in Room 1. Please come in and observe me. I would like constructive feedback on the following goals:

Student voice:

Are students making authentic choices?

Are we honoring all student communication (not just symbolic language)?

Instructional Process:

Are teacher demands clearly rooted in meaningful instructional context?

How could we change the instructional demand to increase learner independence?

Feedback:

Are we giving clear feedback to students that gives them a clear picture of the progress they are making toward their goal?

How can we make student goals and the path to achieve them more concrete and visual for our learners to understand?

Please #ObserveMe and help our learning community grow!

Finding Inclusion in a Separate Day School

This has been a hard post to write. But, as an inclusion-minded special educator, I wanted to tell the story of why I have decided to take a teaching position at a separate day school for students with disabilities. It’s not what I expected when I started looking, but I believe I have made the right decision for myself and for my students.

During my job search, I visited some schools that, though amazing educational institutions, would not be accessible to me given my own disabilities. These were places where I know I would not have been successful teaching because my access needs would have gotten in the way: classrooms that were too large, socially set up, or in an environment that I found far too distracting to focus. I also visited places that met my access needs but where I could not envision providing instruction that adequately met the needs of the enrolled students due to the space, the ratios, the technology access, or a combination of factors. I found both of these challenges to be present across settings: public, collaborative, and private. 

Going beyond physical access, I knew I needed an environment that backs up its statements about building independence and self-advocacy with real action. I needed stay away from environments that prioritize the ideal of “safe and happy” over meaningful instruction. I found each of these types of environments across settings as well, but I found the ones that most shared my teaching values in the separate day school setting.

Separate day schools don’t provide the access to rigorous grade-level instructional environment that can be found in a public school setting (if you have a teacher with the knowledge and mindset to provide access to that instruction.) However, just being in a public school doesn’t imply access, and all of the classrooms I visited operated on an “integration” not an “inclusion” model. 

Over the past two years, I have developed an instructional model that incorporates global learning opportunities to give students access to connection and collaboration with students beyond their local school community. Using this model, I am able to provide access to the grade-level classroom without sacrificing the intensive instructional supports of the self-contained environment. You can’t get that combination in a traditional public school’s grade-level classroom.

I worried about the social nature of these small close-nit institutions. Places with a strong focus on social norms can be inaccessible or even dangerous for me. But I learned this past year to value the sense of community that can be found in these environments when they are staffed by professionals who share the same commitment I do to high quality instructional access and building independence and self advocacy.

The school and classroom where I accepted a position are both small. Smaller than I found almost anywhere else. (One of many reasons why I will never name the school I work at on my blog or social media.) The reason that they had an opening at all was because they found that the students in this class were not being successful in a larger class, so they broke it up to give the students who needed it a more intensive instructional environment. We spoke about the idea of teaching vs. helping (a frequent problem in severe/multiple disabilities.) Instead of the “and how do you address that” question, I was told the story of how the school had made that mindset shift and hired staff who believe in teaching. The school values of building independence and self-advocacy really came through in both word and action.

I went into this job search looking for a placement in a public middle school. But I also went into it with a very clear understanding of what my teaching values are and where I was and was not willing to compromise. I know how to recognize an environment where it will be accessible for me to be the best teacher I can be for my students. I found those values and that environment in a separate day school. I didn’t find it at any of the other schools I visited. So, despite (or maybe because of) my belief in an inclusive environment for all learners, I have taken a position in a separate day school. Inclusion, after all, is a mindset not a placement.

Do You Have a Minute?

(Image courtesy of ASAN www.autisticadvocacy.org)

I've wished, pretty much since I learned about them, that the rest of the world would implement Color Communication Badges, especially for events like conferences where so much emphasis of the benefit is placed on the face-to-face connections: in other words, the socializing - that thing I can't do. My dear friend, Nightengale, made a wonderful argument in her most recent post about why we need to introduce the badges into schools. Because what we expect people to want isn't necessarily the same as what they do want, and the first step in advocacy is ask-vocacy: ask the person.


Then I spotted this on the Internet: https://twitter.com/weareteachers/status/771072597962272768

That got me thinking about the benefit of implementing Color Communication Badges in my classroom, not just for my students but for myself as well. There's pretty much nothing a student can do in my classroom that will bother me, or prevent learning from happening, but there are 4 little words that can throw off an entire lesson or even an entire day:

"Do you have a minute?"

The unwritten answer to this question, of course, is "yes." I work very hard to be flexible and accessible for collaboration. It's worked. It's worked a little too well, to the point where people think it's okay to interrupt me in the middle of lessons. But the fact remains that, a lot of the time, I don't have a minute. I'm with a student or group; I'm mentally (sometimes physically) organizing the next lesson; or I'm taking a much needed breather so I can be "on" again in a minute.

The problem is, once I've explained that, no, now is not a good time (because it would be rude to just ignore you) I've already lost that focus so I might as well recoup my losses and go down the rabbit hole on whatever you wanted "a minute" about. Maybe it will be useful. So I have acquired a reputation of being always accessible that is actually counterproductive to the way my brain works.

Therefore, when school starts again tomorrow, I'm going to be rolling out Color Communication Badges for everyone, students and teachers, in my classroom. The original descriptions (edited slightly for brevity) are:

Green: actively seeking communication. May have trouble initiating conversation, but want to be approached by people who are interested in talking

Yellow: only want to talk to people they recognize, not strangers/friends from the Internet.

Red: probably doesn't want to talk to anyone (or only a few people) unless it is an emergency.

(Source: http://autisticadvocacy.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/ColorCommunicationBadges.pdf)

I'm going to have to tweak the definitions for the classroom environment a little bit. (They stand fine as they are for leisure time.) My preliminary classroom definitions:

Green: available to talk on a new topic/with a new person. Ready to try something new.

Yellow: can talk, if it's on the topic at hand/current instructional topic, or getting information I'm waiting for. Probably don't want to try something new/work with a new person.

Red: not available, unless it is an emergency. 

I suspect my card will spend a fair amount of time on "yellow" during the school day. I'll check back in after a couple weeks, and let you know how it goes.

Autistic and Disability Culture - The Forgotten Cultural Competencies

This is the first post in a series of posts for Autism Acceptance Month unpacking the impact of being autistic in education and why we need more autistics in education at all levels.

I often get into conversations about cultural competency on Twitter and elsewhere and find that the voice of disability culture is un-heard and unrecognized in the conversation. Teachers who are otherwise very aware and active in trying to be culturally competent are completely unaware of the inherent biases of the educational system against Autistic and disability culture. So, piggy-backing on the excellent post by my friend Nightengale of Samarkand about practicing cultural competency in medicine, and in honor of April and Autism Acceptance, I want to see if I can unpack the concept for my fellow educators.

 First let's look at how educators encourage students to demonstrate and share their culture:
1. Sharing their food.
Many autistics have specific food preferences due to sensory sensitivities. These may have to do with texture, color, taste, or smell. Teachers at the elementary level could capitalize on this to re-frame the autistic students as experts to teach about the five senses. But that's not what happens. Seen as a medical deficit instead of cultural difference, students are given behavior plans to learn to eat what their typical peers eat in the way that their typical peers eat it. We would chastise a teacher for doing the same thing to a student from China who insisted on eating traditional noodles with chopsticks. We would encourage that student to share their tradition. But it is seen as perfectly acceptable to do to an Autistic student. Students with a variety of disabilities require specialized diets and food preparation for a variety of reasons in order to eat safely at school. Their peers are naturally curious about these differences, as much as they are curious about any other difference in food. While it may not be safe for these students to share food with peers, making it taboo to talk about leads to fear. Yet, many teachers are afraid, because they have limited understanding beyond the inservice they received about how the student could die if they let them near the wrong food (assuming they have any training at all.) This leads to unnecessary segregation: from separate tables to students who are required to be fed by nurses or even eat in the nurses office. This creates a clear and unnecessary "us" vs "them" distinction in the name of "safety."

2. Sharing their language.
Many people with disabilities are able to very articulately describe their experiences, but for many autistics and other people with disabilities, spoken language is not their primary means of communication. And most special educators will tell you "all behavior is communication." For many non-speaking autistics, physical and visual interaction with objects and people are meaningful forms of communication, so are scripting and echolalia. Yet, most speaking people are unwilling to listen to that communication unless it is translated for them into spoken language. Special education has only one translation manual, it's called the FBA, and it says that non-speaking students are only saying one of 4 things in every communication interaction: "I want this," "I want your attention," "stop this," or "this feels good." This problematic belief is what justifies providing limited vocabulary and not introducing robust AAC. When we ask a student from France to share something of their language, we are not surprised to hear greetings, stories, and poetry. When a student who uses AAC does the same, it makes the local and sometimes national news. The disability community refers to this as "Inspiration Porn."

But there is an even more insidious worm than the problems I have laid out above, although it is integral to all of the examples listed. The problem is not just that Autistic and disability culture and excluded from the conversation about cultural competence. The problem is not just that Autistic and disability cultural differences are treated as medical or educational deficits to be remedied or swept out of sight in the name of "safety." The real problem is that Autistic and disability culture is not on most educators' radar at all, even that of special educators (perhaps especially not that of special educators.)

Culturally inclusive educators do not teach about autistic and disability culture. Autism awareness in schools has everything to do with wearing blue on April 2 and nothing to do with learning about Autistic Culture. Even in special education classes specially designed for Autistic students, they do not learn any disability rights history. They might learn about the civil rights movement (if they get that much access to the general education curriculum, many don't.) But they won't learn about how their own history is intertwined with that history. They won't learn about the community that exists (mostly online) out there if they chose to get involved in advocacy.

Some of this is unintentional. Many teachers simply do not know about the history of the disability rights movement. Many, despite their best intentions, still think of their students as children. I have had conversations with many very well meaning teachers where I have to remind them repeatedly that I am talking about the student getting access to their community, not just the parent. But some of it is intentional. I have been blocked from providing inservice about disability history because it is "too political." Disability history is not pretty. What has been done to people with disabilities by well meaning professionals is not something to be proud of. But, as professionals, we have to own that history if we are going to change it. It is no different that any of the other hard parts of our history. Or am I the only one who reads Satayana any more?