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.

Sexuality in the Special Education Classroom

CN: “sex ed” 

There is no room for sexuality in the special education classroom. It’s a difficult and controversial topic in general education that gets largely ignored in special education. Students with disabilities are either viewed as non-sexual (eternal children) or hyper-sexual (sexual deviants). Those who fall into the first category don’t get sex ed at all. The second group do get sex ed, but it’s “sex ed for special education.” Sex Ed for Special Education covers: public and private - what you can do where, circles of friendship - appropriate behaviors around people you know more/less well (aka not everyone is your best friend), and hygiene.

If you’re wondering where the actual “sex ed” is in that curriculum, that’s pretty much my point. Hygiene is as close as they come to “why my body is changing” and I’ve seen some pretty fascinating misconceptions about how the adult body works from my adult students as a result. But I only knew about it because I was supporting them in the residence in the evening when they were confused and overwhelmed and unable to express it. Most teachers don’t get that opportunity to interact with their students in that setting and most residential staff don’t have the time or training to provide the feedback to the educational staff. (And that’s assuming either side is willing to listen or do anything about it.)

Somebody did ask, at a recent conference I attended on teaching sexuality to students with significant needs, about teaching about sexuality, safe sex, or dating. The presenter dismissed this as a non-issue for this population, stating “if a student expressed an interest in any of these areas we would address it on a 1:1 basis, but it hasn’t come up.” Of course it hasn’t come up. Most of our students don’t know how to ask. It certainly isn’t default vocabulary in anyone’s communication device. Typical students have extreme difficulty talking about it and finding someone who they trust enough to talk to. We are expecting students for whom basic communication can still be a challenge, and who may only have a few people in their lives with whom fluent communication is even possible, to initiate these conversations?

But that won’t change. Because that’s not the point of Sex Ed for Special Education. The goal, like the goal of most special education curriculum, is to get those uncomfortable box 2 students back into box 1 where they make their typical educators feel more comfortable. Without changing that paradigm, sexuality will never be allowed to exist in the special education classroom.

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. 

My Curriculum Resources

Disclaimer: I received no financial compensation for writing this post. I have no affiliation with any of the authors or publishers. I don’t even have an affiliate link with amazon.com, so I won’t get any money if you buy anything through the links I didn’t put in this post. I’m just a teacher who wants to share what I’ve found works for me.

I’ve made somewhat of a name for myself for teaching content to students that other teachers had written off as “unreachable.” I frequently get asked is for advice on the best curriculum to use. (SPOILER ALERT: There isn’t one.) I’ve written before on the problems with pre-made curriculum (You Can’t Teach Self-Determination Out of a Box!) but since I know the daunting idea of having to create everything from scratch and individually for each student is what keeps many teachers away from providing curriculum access to students with complex needs, I wanted to expand on that notion and maybe make it feel a little less daunting and a little more accessible for teachers just starting down this path.

I don’t use any one curriculum per se, but do think that there is a lot to be said for using off the shelf curriculum as a starting point or building block. Timothy Walker makes that point very compellingly in Teach Like Finland (a very worthwhile read, but that’s a different post) and there are certain resources that I find I keep coming back to year after year as my curriculum building blocks despite the individual variability in my classroom student population.

To me, this one seems obvious, but I’m putting it here anyway. My first place to start is the state curriculum frameworks. (http://www.doe.mass.edu/mcas/alt/resources.html) I need them for assessment in ELA, Math, and Science, but I actually start with social studies, because that is the content that will drive my literature and give me an anchor for my science topics. My students are no where near meeting the standards as written, but MA provides what are called “access and entry points” for students who are not able to complete grade level work. I’ve written before about why I believe this grade level content access is so essential. (Assessing Our Place)

Math:

Math is always hard, especially as students get older. Traditional high school math feels light years away from students who are still struggling to master numbers and counting. Functional math like money and time can seem out of reach too. Yet music and movement are generally parts of all special education curriculum. If you look at them with an academic lens, what are they? Math.

My favorite resource is:

Math on the Move by Malke Rosenfeld (I’ve blogged about this book before!)

And one I’m just adding to my repertoire:

70 Play Activities for Better Thinking, Self-Regulation, Learning, and Behavior by Lynne Kenney, Psy.D.

I heard her speak a couple years ago about integrating music and play into learning and really liked what I heard. I was somewhat disappointed that most of the activities in this book are much more linguistic than exploratory, but I love her early Musical Thinking ideas, and how she builds in teaching students about how their brains work (that all important self-awareness part of self-advocacy we so often overlook!)

Reading:

I actually really like the often over-looked phonics and high frequency word curriculum materials from Reading A-Z for teaching reading to AAC users. I’m not as much of a fan of their leveled readers for teaching reading, but I find they make great content textbooks. Level B, C, and D books are just about the right text level and text-to-picture ratio, and it saves me a lot of time creating my own content textbooks! (Special Ed Teacher Hack!) Plus, they often come with reading and vocabulary worksheets that I can adapt for unit vocabulary instruction. 

Literacy:

One of the first curriculum materials I was introduced to when I began my special education career over a decade ago was the Story Grammar Marker. I love the visual and tactile way it allows students to interact with the parts of a story. Literature and story has been one of the backbones of my instructional approach for as long as I’ve been teaching. For the research base for that instructional strategy, I point you at Story Proof: The Science Behind the Startling Power of Story by Kendall Haven.

New to my instructional repertoire this year is Hacking School Culture by Angela Stockman and Ellen Feig Gray (Published just this year, I blogged about it not long after it came out) It’s full of awesome teacher hacks, many of which I want to try and adapt for the classroom, but the one that really got my attention is the idea of empathy maps. The structure is very similar to that of Story Grammar Marker, and this year I’m looking forward to combining the two into a single classroom wide strategy for understanding what is going on around us. Which brings me to the next topic.

Social Emotional Learning:

Probably the best thing I took with me from a previous school that was a very poor fit for my teaching style was their social skills curriculum:

Skillstreaming the Elementary School Child: A Guide for Teaching Prosocial Skills (Third Edition) by Ellen McGinnis

I like the way it breaks down skills into discrete steps (although I often have to edit the steps, either to be less linguistic or to be more neuro-inclusive.) I also like the way it divides skills into different areas of focus. Last year my students focused on Listening from the “Classroom Survival Skills” section, Introducing Yourself and Playing a Game from the “Friendship-Making Skills” section, and Knowing and Expressing Your Feelings from the “Skills for Dealing with Feelings” section. This year, with a slightly different group we’ll focus on “Asking for Help (Classroom Survival Skills); Using Self-Control (Skill Alternatives to Aggression); Dealing with Boredom and Relaxing (Skills for Dealing with Stress).

Science/Social Studies:

I make extensive use of google and my local library for instructional materials and related literature to match the frameworks-aligned curriculum. I don’t keep as good track of the resources I use as I probably should. (Though I’ve gotten better at citing the literature, so I can keep using the same books for the same units.) There is one specific website, however, that bears mentioning here. That is the Perkins School For the Blind. Their website is a great repository of adapted lessons for students with visual impairments. I especially like using their science materials, as they do a great job making difficult concepts concrete and hands-on. Just because their lessons are modified doesn’t mean I don’t need to modify them, I do. (Most often, I need to supplement with before and after lessons to break down the concept further. Also, obviously, I need to create any related visual supports.) But they’re a great resource for teaching difficult concepts, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t include them here.

Obviously, the curriculum materials listed here, even with modification and suplementation, isn’t enough to create a well-rounded instructional day. It doesn’t even touch on the ADL and vocational instruction that are key parts of our academic day. These are tools I have found useful to support me in creating individualized instruction. Another way to think of them is as useful maps for the terrain. They’re not a GPS. You still need to plot your own course from September to June.

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?

Hacking Classroom Culture: A Blueprint for My Implimentation

There’s a picture I took last spring of my students during their social skills group. They’re playing a matching game. The rules of the game are: chose a picture and ask your peer if he has it. Peer tells the first person he has the match and gives it to them. First person makes the match and puts it in the box. The students in the picture look absolutely pained, like this was the worst thing I could have possibly asked them to do.

It’s not the academic task. Matching was specifically chosen because it’s a mastered skill and the one they default to when they’re not sure what is being asked of them. No, what is paining my students, who are accustomed to doing their academic work 1:1 with a teacher, is that just answering the teacher they’re working with (who will provide prompting and reinforcement) isn’t enough to complete this activity. Interacting with a peer is a lot more work!

Enter Hacking Classroom Culture: Designing Compassionate Classrooms by Angela Stockman and Ellen Feig Gray. I was struck by how their ideas would fit so sensibly into the outlines I already had in place. I loved how easily and sensibly they dovetailed with best practices in severe disabilities and prevocational training. Finally, someone had given me some tools to build a classroom community, instead of a class of students who happen to share the same room and teacher.

So what are we going to do?

Morning Meeting:

First off, I moved the basic calendar and schedule work out of morning group. The students all need 1:1 support to complete this task and can do it at different speeds and independence levels, so it makes more sense to make it part of their arrival/unpacking routine.

(You can view my trello board to see a full implementation of our morning meeting here: https://trello.com/b/383gGHvw)

One of the best practices in severe disabilities for eliciting attention and language is a mystery box. The idea is that you put an object in a box and the students have to use their senses/language to figure out what it is. Here, I’ve put a social language spin on the idea:

Place object of high interest to a specific student (or highly correlated with a specific person in the classroom/school) in a box.

Students can take turns making guesses about what it will be like based on sound/touch or opening the box and describing/identifying it (scaffold for skill level)

Once object is identified, students complete the activity it is used for (e.g. fill out attendance for secretary) and then identify/bring it to correct person (vocational delivery skill and social interaction skill integration)

An old tired idea you see in most special education classrooms is practicing greetings and personal information during morning meeting. Or the age-old variant of identifying who is at home/work/school. I’ve brought in some math instructional targets to keep it fresh (and keep us moving!) and brought back some good old-fashioned “show-and-tell” (with a new more social spin!):

Organize students/have students organize themselves using personal information (e.g. height, birthday month, age, etc) - visual models of data.

Each student has an opportunity to share a skill they are working on in class or something that happened at home with the rest of the class.

-Encourage community, not just what I did but who I did it with/who helped me do it and where I did it (what tools helped me be successful)

(Teachers can model too, but careful not to turn it into sharing on behalf of students!)

*Both teachers and students (probably mostly teachers at first) have the opportunity to point out things they saw others do - that they thought was cool or they might want to try themselves.* 

Social Skills Group:

The first idea I fell in love with when I read Angela and Ellen’s book was the idea of Empathy Mapping. I tweeted at the time, and I still think, that teaching Empathy Mapping in conjunction with Story Grammar Marker would be a powerful way to give students a structure and language to understand the social world around them. So I want to do exactly that. My students have been working on body parts and what they do. Our next step is to develop visual empathy maps. I want to use folders, with one side being the self, what I am seeing, hearing, saying, feeling, etc. The other side will have a pocket that can be a generic person (background) or you can place a picture or a specific person, and have the same options (what are they seeing, hearing, saying, feeling, etc.) The folder format will allow me to keep the visual supports for both sides in the center.

Ideas I’m Still Pondering:

* I’ve usually used the standard Story Grammar Marker imagery/materials when I teach that unit/skill. I’m wondering if it would make more sense to use the same imagery as the Empathy Maps for students to more clearly see the connection. Haven’t made a decision yet.

* I’d love to invite some of our non-classroom school people to join us for morning meeting (I originally was calling it morning cafe for this reason) but I’m not sure if that will help or hinder the social connection of the objects that are related to them (if they are not in their expected context.) Maybe try and see what happens? Most won’t be able to come except once in a while anyway!

Next Steps:

My copy of Teach Like Finland is supposed to arrive later today. Can’t wait to see what other ideas I find!

Emotions in the Autism Classroom

I teach a social skills curriculum with a focus on recognizing and labeling emotions in self and others. We do a lot of work in that class around matching emotions to their associated behaviors, both the classic NT expressions, and students personal expressions of those emotions. 

A number of years ago, I was teaching in a very bad situation involving bulling and emotional abuse. I was too naive and oblivious at the time to be aware of much of what was happening until the situation got really bad, which is a familiar refrain for anyone who is or loves someone with significant social communication challenges. I thought I was handling it. I thought I had someone in my classroom I could trust. I was very wrong on both counts.

The instructional data from the class I was teaching at the time was very clear: the students could match feelings to behaviors given pictures, but when using video, or during role-play, they were unable to even identify how someone was feeling. Even when the actions were labeled for them (the same actions as the pictures they had memorized) they were unable to connect it to the feelings.

Yet, toward the end of my experience there, when things got really bad, my students made it very clear that they were very aware (more aware than I, myself, was) of the emotional situation in the room. One student, every time both staff were in the room, came up to me asking “Sad? Cry?” Long before I knew what was going on, another student, who had no history of aggression, began attacking the staff member who was the primary source of the abuse.

The instructional data is clear, these students did not understand emotions and their connections to behavior. But the evidence of what they did proves the data to be wrong, or at least incomplete. They couldn’t show their understanding in an academic or assessment context, but they did one better. They demonstrated them in real-world context with the people that mattered to them and had influence over their lives. Isn’t that the whole point of teaching the academic skills in the first place?

Gender in the Autism Classroom

I teach middle school, so it’s probably unsurprising that I have had many students over the years who “like young pretty girls” and show it through their behavior. While I’m no longer a young teacher, and I’ve never dressed particularly effeminate, I’ve always looked younger than I am. And none of those students have ever had those issues with me. In general, I’ve always been able to work with the students who have sexual issues around females. Partly, this is because the behavior just doesn’t bother me, but partly its because they don’t generally exhibit those behaviors toward me. For whatever reason, I don’t trigger “pretty girl” to them.

You see, I present as female. A short, rather busty, female at that. I use she/her pronouns because they match my physical presentation and are really the only ones that make sense to me. But I’m agender. The whole concept of gender and gender distinctions really makes no sense to me. And, it seems, my students can tell.

One of my students this year is constantly labeling people (especially girls.) And for the first part of the year he kept asking me “girl?” (He wasn’t doing this to any of his other teachers.) And I kept saying “yes” because well, it seemed the simplest answer. But he kept asking. Finally, I changed my answer to “sometimes, on alternate Tuesdays when there is a blue moon.” And he hasn’t asked me since. He knew. I think all my kids have known. It’s why I’ve always been their exception to the gender rules around their sexual behavior. Because, somehow, they can tell my gender doesn’t follow those rules.

It’s just another of those things parents/teachers/professionals tend to assume our students “aren’t aware of.” My experience says they’re usually more aware than anyone else around.

(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.