Autism Month: Accommodating the Needs of Autistic, Neurodivergent, and Neuroconvergent People

1. A Couple of Illustrative Examples
   1. The Disruptive Stimming Student
   2. The Disruptive Hyper, Attention-Seeking, Angry Student
      1. The Mismatch Between Needs and Environment
      2. Choices Make for a Better Learning Environment
2. Meeting the Needs of Autistic, Neurodivergent, and Neuroconvergent People
3. Image Attribution

As I’ve mentioned many times here on Ye Olde Blogge, autism runs deep in my family. My daughter and I are both autistic, as was my mother. My sister and her four daughters are also autistic. As a teacher, I work with autistic students every day, and this has made me keenly aware of the challenges in creating an inclusive learning environment for all—autistic, neurodivergent, and neuroconvergent alike.

As a professional teacher, I’ve been much concerned about making an inclusive learning environment for all of my students, autistic, neurodivergent, and neuroconvergent. My conclusion is that it is nearly impossible to do in the way we organize our schools and classrooms.

In a typical class of twenty students, you can expect four to five to be autistic and two to three more to be neurodivergent, including those with ADHD, the dys- disorders (dyslexia (reading), dysgraphia (writing), dyspraxia (motor control), and dyscalculia (math)), and anxiety-related disorders. This doesn’t even account for students with executive dysfunction challenges, like working memory issues, impulse control problems, and shortened attention spans.

That’s a lot to plan for! It’s not just about providing the right learning materials and activities; it’s the nitty-gritty details of teaching: seating arrangements, sensory considerations like sound and lighting, transitions between activities, and even the time of day. The last two classes of the day often require a vastly different approach than the first two, even with the same students.

A Couple of Illustrative Examples

The Disruptive Stimming Student

We keep a variety of fidget toys in the classroom, including inflatable dynamic seating cushions. One of my students enjoys sitting on these cushions, but he thrusts himself back and forth on the cushion so violently and graphically that it’s alarming, frightening, and disgusting. While I don’t think he means it to be a sexual imitation like twerking is, it is impossible not to relate the movement to sexual activity.

I’m so disturbed by it, that I want to ask him to stop. I can see in the faces of the other students sitting at this table that they are disturbed by it, too. While I know he’s simply stimming — a common movement-based strategy used by many autistic individuals to manage anxiety and energy — his movements are so outlandish that I feel I must respond to him.

He has a right to stim, but the other students have rights, too. We all have to be in the same space together. Obviously, the solution is to suggest some other form of stimming, but not all forms are created equally. Some students paces others flap their hands, and this one flings himself about in his seat. I manage it by carefully assigning table mates that are more tolerant and less distractible.

The Disruptive Hyper, Attention-Seeking, Angry Student

The Mismatch Between Needs and Environment

I have another student who is so distracted by being in a room full of people that he, literally, cannot focus on the material in front of him. He cannot get anything done in a class of twenty students. He lives his life in constant motion, and being in school is an anathema to him. It is the exact opposite of what he needs to learn and be comfortable, so after six years of teachers trying to force him into compliance — which isn’t true, he’s been accommodated generously over the years — he’s angry.

Then there’s another student who finds it nearly impossible to focus in a room full of people. He thrives on constant motion, and the school environment is the antithesis of what he needs to learn. After six years of well-meaning teachers trying to force compliance — which isn’t true, he’s been accommodated generously over the years — he’s understandably angry and often disruptive.

Adding attention seeking behavior to the mix creates a classroom that is nearly impossible to manage.

Choices Make for a Better Learning Environment

Fortunately, this year, we expanded our learning support staff, allowing him to spend much of his school day in the learning loft with a learning support teacher, a TA, and several other students in similar circumstances. This has given me the chance to experiment a bit with my teaching methods.

One of my teaching techniques is frequently asses understanding, knowledge, and thinking as we go through our lessons. Of course, I’m also accommodating learning needs and styles in the more formal testing I do — We are, after all, still required to produce a grade — but I don’t differentiate my progress-monitoring quizzes or assessments.

At the beginning of the year, this student was scoring between two and ten percent on assessments—an impressive feat considering random chance should yield twenty-five to fifty percent. It became clear that he knew many answers but was intentionally getting them wrong.

He learns best by watching video, so I started finding online on-topic videos, writing comprehension and thinking questions to go with them. He’s grades improved, but remained low. However, when the learning support teacher read the questions aloud, he became the center of her attention, and he could hear and read the questions, his grades improved even more.

Accommodating both boys’ needs takes a lot of time and effort from me. Luckily, I teach them both two of their four core subjects. Talking to their other teachers reveals a wide disparity in the level of accommodation provided. Not every teacher is as understanding or as willing to make the effort that these students require.

Meeting the Needs of Autistic, Neurodivergent, and Neuroconvergent People

The takeaway? Meeting the diverse needs of autistic, neurodivergent, and neuroconvergent students is an ongoing challenge, and often, we default to “average” accommodations. This seems fair to many of us who are neuroconvergent, as our own needs are typically met.

Convincing schools to allocate the necessary resources for effective accommodations is a daunting task. Bureaucrats and administrators can often prioritize budgets over learning needs, and biases about what can and should be done to support every student are prevalent. We’ve all seen the horrifying reports of neurodivergent students being bound, shackled, and locked in closets because teachers and administrators couldn’t manage their behaviors and needs. All it takes is a little training, sensitivity, and few more choices so that schools can meet the educative needs of all of our students, autistic, neurodivergent, and neuroconvergent.

Reorganizing our society to be inclusive of everyone feels like an impossible task. This challenge mirrors struggles for civil rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and women’s rights. And, like those struggles, the solutions must come from the majority, yet that majority often remains unwilling to act—at least in the U.S.

Image Attribution

This image was found on Barrier Free using a DuckDuckGo Creative Commons image search.