Download transcript PDF

00:00:04
and I'm going to kick kickers off by giving you a little bit of an introduction into neurodiversity in general what it is um the different kind of types of neurodiversity that exist and also look a little bit at inclusion what is inclusion uh in the context of Education why is it important and then after that I'm going to look at autism uh in particular uh focus on that and look at what autistic people are like basically uh hopefully bust some myths which you may have heard about autistic people uh and look at how

00:00:47
we can include autistic students in the classroom in any lesson really any whether it's language learning or or any subject that they're learning it doesn't matter okay so let's start as you can see the title of my talk is increasing accessibility for neurodiverse students in the classroom so that's going to be the focus how can we increase or improve neurodiverse students access to learning essentially and before we start properly I should just mention that when I'm talking about

00:01:28
neurodiversity I do have I am talking about it from the perspective of someone who has lived experience of it um because I have autism and ADHD um so I'm an Al DHD you can call it some people call it um I also have a son who's eight years old who also has autism and ADHD so when I'm talking about that I'm talking about it from a perspective of of my own experience um and from the experience of being a parent uh to a child who's neurodiverse and of course my experience as a teacher comes in all

00:02:08
on top of that too so just so you know I think it's important to point that out at the start okay so let's get going uh what is neurodiversity so it's probably a word that you've heard often but you may not be sure exactly what it is in some ways it's kind of become fashionable lately you may have heard people talking about it on social media or in the news or just from colleagues um so of course the neuro comes from neurological connected to the brain and diversity of course

00:02:44
means a range of differences so it recognizes the range of differences in brain function okay so the idea is not to say you know you are bad because your brain is functioning different it's just to say there are lots of different ways in which the brain works and trying to give these different ways a degree of parity with each other so the ways in which the brains of neurodiverse people function differently is in terms of sensory processing so how they experience uh sensory input um sights sounds smells Etc

00:03:30
uh how it affects their motor abilities so their ability to use their hands their bodies uh how it affects their cognition so thinking learning remembering and their focus so their concentration and their social comfort so by social Comfort I mean how comfortable people feel in different situations so as you can see neurodiversity a lot of different aspects of your life so these are going to be things that you're going to be dealing with every day every day you're going to have sensory input every day you're going to

00:04:12
be thinking every day you're probably going to be in social situations every day you're going to be using your hands right so this is why neurodiversity really affects people's lives in a in a significant way now a little bit of science it'll only be short I promise um So within this range of differences that is neurodiversity doctors psychiatrists have psychologists have identified certain Tendencies so kind of groups of characteristics um so there are certain tendencies in behavior and

00:04:58
cognition and then these these the identification of these Tendencies has led to medical diagnosis for different types of neurodiversity autism spectrum disorder attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder and dyslexia um so you're going to have an expert on each of these three types of neurodiversity talking to you today um so it's really it's worth pointing out that autism spectrum disorder is the medical diagnosis um when we're talking about it generally we prefer to use the term

00:05:44
autism just autism um and of course words like disorder obviously have a negative meaning very negative um so many people prefer to replace disorder with condition which is more neutral okay so you have to be a little bit careful with the terminology you use here right so as not to offend anyone uh terminology is important um but everyone will have different perspectives on what techn what terminology they want to use for themselves so it's is okay to say an autistic person I am autistic um but some people say um I don't like

00:06:41
that because if you saying I'm an autistic person I'm autistic um you are saying that that person is solely or overwhelmingly characterized by their autism and some people say no I don't see myself in that way I'm not that characterized by my autism um I would prefer to be described as a person with autism so the autism is like my handbag which I carry with me so it's with me but it's not part of me it's just I'm a person with autism Some people prefer that definition uh Some people prefer again a

00:07:27
even more distance between the person person and the condition and those people prefer to say a person who lives with autism and of course the lives with is now a kind of preferred terminology for talking about any kind of difference it shows that compassion and also that idea of um the condition is not you it's something that you have to deal with okay that you that you do deal with you know it has a it has a it also has a positive meaning of you know you do deal with it um personally I prefer the

00:08:09
terminology an autistic person um I don't mind being characterized in that way I don't think that autism uh characterizes who I am to a dominant degree even if I use that terminology so that would be my preference okay um so having talked a little bit about what neurodiversity is I was wondering how many of you have taught neurodiverse students um up to now um so if you could bring up my poll please evina that would be great thank you uh so as you can see here the poll question is how many of

00:08:55
the students you've taught were neurodiverse and I have given some some options because we have to have options the majority of them around half of them 10 to 20% of them hardly any of them so less than 10% or none of them so I wonder what is your experience of students with neurodiversity mean um so I'll give you about 20 seconds to input your answer to the question there and then we'll see what results we have I'm here CLA if you want me to share any um results with you yes please

00:09:47
do so we've got about 5% say the majority of them around 8% say around half 40% of the result of the people that answered says 10 10 to 20% 40% hardly any of them and 7% say none of them okay so most people are going for around 20 to 5% yeah okay great that's really interesting um I probably that your percentage may depend on um how long you've been teaching but okay great we'll go back to this at the end of the talk and see if there are any any changes to your perspective okay thank you or could let's um

00:10:33
disappear that great just like magic okay great so we know what neurodiversity is and we've talked about autism but why I mean you know Vicki and buo and I today are going to be talking a lot about how what can we do to include um neurodiverse students strategies and tips and so on but the question is why is inclusion important okay and unfortunately say whisper it but not all teachers seem to believe that inclusion is important I'm sure that doesn't apply to any of you here um because you've come to this

00:11:15
session but I think it's really important to just reiterate that um it is important because you're teaching the whole class not just some of the students or at least you should be that's what you're there to do as I see probably agree right um and the class needs to function as a community for the whole class to be successful in their learning right the class is a community and in communities we should also help those who are struggling in one way or another or facing challenges in one way or another

00:11:52
to overcome those challenges that's what communities do that's what they should do and when everyone is included everybody body wins okay okay so having said all of that some people would say Okay Claire but what do I do if there's a child in my class who's autistic and who's disruptive um because he's constantly humming while he's working and the other children find it hard to concentrate because he's always like humming okay at that stage it's important to understand that the child may not be

00:12:35
able to stop the humming the child may not be able to um immediately switch off the humming okay so we have to we have to you know of course the whole class the whole Community we have to as teachers consider the whole class and do what's best for the whole class but we also have to have that compassion for neurodiverse students who you know may be yeah like in this example inadvertently disrupting the class there has to be some compassion there not just tolerance or not just oh well if I have to do that but there has

00:13:14
to be some compassion there and some understanding um that the child is unintentionally disrupting in nearly all cases okay so this is why we need to be aware of these character istics of autism and other types of neurodiversity so that we can show that compassion that's that's what it all comes down to really I think right being awareness leading to compassion leading to success and winning for the whole class okay so I want to start by looking at some stereotypes of autistic people how many

00:13:56
of these stereotypes have you heard um the first one is they take medication um maybe a stereotype a bit more associated with people with ADHD than people with Autism um but I remember when I first mentioned to my son's teachers this year that he has autism the first thing they asked me was what what medication does he take and I said well no he doesn't take any medication so I don't want to critici obviously I don't want to criticize The Taking of medication um but I think it's important

00:14:36
to realize that this is a this is a bit of a stereotype a Mis a little bit misguided understanding of what it's like to be autistic um some autistic people may take medication for depression because there's a high incidence of depression amongst autistic people including autistic children uh but generally being autistic is not something that you need to take medication for okay uh autistic people are brilliant at maths um I can personally attest to the fact that this is not true as an autistic person who was rubbish at maths

00:15:14
um and who I struggled to help my son with his third grade maths homework at times so yeah The Stereotype of the brilliant Sant mathematician with autism is definitely not true for everyone I wish it was to some extent I wish i' had been at maths at school um there's also the stereotype that autistic people have no social skills so maybe the The Stereotype of Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory on TV he's seen as you know having no social skills uh he does have friends otherwise the series wouldn't

00:15:47
work but it's definitely obviously it's not true that um autistic people have no friends they certainly do and they also have social skills it's just that their social skills are different to neurotypical people's social skills their social skills are let me tell you in great detail about this book I've been reading or let me tell you in great detail about this thing I build I'm building from Lego or whatever it may be they like to go in deep in social situations and for other people that is a sign of

00:16:24
social incompetence um I've also heard the stereo type or the assumption that everyone who is autistic lives in some kind of care facility and it's important to say that yeah this is the case for some autistic people some autistic people are able to cope with day-to-day life on their own because they're unable to cope with paying bills talking to people they don't know and they do need that um care but this is definitely not the case for everyone okay most autistic people live happy and

00:17:02
independent lives and this feeds on to the last one they can't speak okay or they have problems with speaking what is more of a common issue especially amongst autistic children is what is called selective mutism which you may have heard about meaning they can physically they are physically able to speak uh but they choose not Toc usually because they feel extremely uncomfortable in the situation that they're in so unfortunately we have a lot of children going to school with who have autism who are just not speaking

00:17:40
for for weeks or months at an at a time because they feel um overwhelmed by the situation that they're in socially their level of social Comfort is so poor or so low however you want to put it okay so yeah let's move on to more to stereotypes more in terms of how autistic people learn so they can be seen as disruptive um causing problems making noise H maybe maybe true they may disrupt but they're not necessarily disruptive they may go to The Other Extreme and be very shy and quiet and

00:18:23
really not interact with anyone or not even speak as we just mentioned um they can't sit still I can testify to the fact that this is not true I spend a lot of time uh sitting still as an online teacher and writer so I can definitely manage that most autistic people can also manage it they can't write legibly um and there is a higher than average occurrence of a condition called disg graphia amongst autistic people and disg graphia is a condition which makes it difficult for you to write

00:19:02
legibly so some autistic people if they also have dis graphia will of course struggle to write legibly but it's not necessarily it's not an autistic trait in itself they have a photographic memory that makes me think I wish uh now in my 40s I sometimes struggle to remember where I put my keys um I wish I had a photographic memory uh that fits into this like the autistic salvant uh stereotype um they don't want to work in groups um it's not really that they don't want to work in groups it's just

00:19:42
in some sit social situations in groups they feel uncomfortable like if they're with people they don't feel comfortable with they don't trust or if they don't have a clear task to be getting on with or maybe they're in a group with people whose ability level is lower than theirs for example they could feel frustrated because they're like oh why don't these people understand it's so easy that could lead to frustration but it's not necessarily the case that they don't

00:20:09
want to work in groups um in fact neurodiverse people have some excellent qualities it's really important to Spotlight that and it's not just me saying that the people at gchq as you can see here also think that um I don't know if you've heard of gchq you um you may well have done if you're from the UK but if you're not from the UK um gchq is the central spy agency in the UK um so if James Bond was a real person he would work at gchq and the current director of gchq anaris Butler has said neurodiversity

00:20:53
and dyslexic thinking are highly valued at gchq in fact they are mission critical we need the right mix of Minds to keep the country safe and our neurod Divergent staff can think creatively spot patterns and solve problems that other employees might miss okay so that's that's really great that she's making such a positive statement about neurodiversity isn't it um so you notice she's also used the term neurodivergence that's a term that some people use as an alternative to

00:21:27
neurodiverse um or neurodivergence the noun um and she separated neurodiversity and dyslexic thinking which is interesting because usually we think of Dyslexia as being part of neurodiversity but okay she's seeing them as different things um yeah and you may well have heard of Alan Turing the great Alan Turing um the famous codebreaker he's widely believed to be um autistic um the English codebreaker Alan Turing is ly believed to have been autistic and he you know famously was the lead figure in

00:22:04
cracking the Enigma code uh for the allies during World War II okay so in the next part I want to look at how inclusive strategies help everyone so inclusive strategies do not only help neurodiverse people when that's what they're targeted at but they can help everyone and here is are some examples that show that to be true um an example of a NE of an inclusive strategy which will help neurodiverse people is giving clear instructions and breaking instructions down step by step okay this helps neurodiverse people

00:22:48
to understand the instructions better um but it's also something that most of us if you have done a Sela course or any kind of teacher training course I'm sure you will have been told to give make your instructions clear as a basic principle of teaching a foreign language um so yeah this helps neurodiverse people and also everyone neurodiverse people also prefer written instructions to verbal instructions um but yeah there's no reason why you can't yeah written instructions too uh

00:23:22
explaining changes that are going to happen um for example next from next week our lessons will be taking place in room X we won't be in room Y and that's because of building work in room Y and we'll be in room X for 6 weeks and then we'll be back to room y this is of course helpful for everyone you know when change is happening it's helpful for everyone to know why and what's happening but it's especially important for autistic people um who find change very unsettling and need that

00:23:57
explanation autistic people also have a need for being made aware of the real world relevance of the tasks they asked to do this increases their motivation but of course this is also helpful for every every student to know you know how could you use this language why are we learning this um neurodiverse people may neurodiverse Learners may take a lot of time to complete tasks because they have this kind of perfectionist trait which makes them want to just keep going until everything is perfect but they also

00:24:35
often finish tasks very quickly so they need extra tasks but you know giving fast finishes extra tasks is also a principle of language teaching right um R of us students especially autistic students I should say and focusing on autistic students um they like to have the chance to ask as many questions as they would um even if it's say a grammar topic you know present simple versus present continuous they want to be able to ask questions why this um how does that work etc but you know these are all things

00:25:13
that teachers you're probably doing anyway um so when I talk about autism with teachers I've noticed a lot of them say to me oh CLA this is all very well that you're telling me what to do um to help or autistic students but how do I know if my students are autistic I'm not a psychiatrist uh I'm not a psychologist so how how should I know um completely fair enough um you it's difficult to help students through their autism experience if you don't know that they're autistic

00:25:51
how can you um so yeah you may not know that your students are autistic because they may not know it themselves uh especially if they're children a lot of autistic people are diagnosed with autism in their um pre-teenage or teen teenager age or as adults um some people are not diagnosed until they're 40 so the student themselves may not know that they're autistic if they do know they or their parents may not feel comfortable with discl closing it or they may still be in the process of getting a diagnosis as

00:26:35
for autism which can take several years um sometimes parents don't want to disclose it because they feel like it's going to be a sort of black mark against their child which is obviously due to a negative perception of autism and perhaps the the child has got a diagnosis of autism perhaps the parent has informed the school of this but somehow this information has been lost and hasn't got to you for whatever reason okay so you may these are all the reasons why you may not know that a

00:27:06
child is autistic and of course it's not your job to diagnose your students with autism and you shouldn't try but there are certain characteristics or tendencies that you can kind of look out for and these include a student completing a task poorly even though they have the ability to do it well and you know they have the ability to do it well from from talking to them but then when they had a Written Task um they have they've performed poorly and you're like hm that seems strange and if that happens consistently

00:27:46
they were not just having a bad day but something is going wrong between them knowing stuff and applying stuff um often autistic students can concentrate better when they work alone so that may also be a sign um autistic students often think that their teacher hates them for no reason without any reason um I know my son is always super nervous around kind of parents evening times he's like oh no she's gonna say that I'm not good and it's always like oh yeah Henry he's he's

00:28:21
great he's doing great but there's this nervousness of like um you know does the teacher like me and um the student shouts out answers in class um this is also an issue that my my son has been dealing with for about two years we've only just about got to the point where he doesn't do this anymore uh it's been a journey or um the student is wearing less or lighter clothing than other students um so by that I mean it's winter and January it's cold and the child is wearing a short sleeve t-shirt

00:29:02
and the reaction of most neurotypical people to that is oh why are you wearing a t-shirt aren't you cold are you all right and you know it's just because of sensory issues of feeling uncomfortable when you're hot and kind of fear of being too hot so yeah obviously not something you should shame students for um so if you notice several of these tendencies it's a good idea to maybe maybe have a chat with the parents first if you can um and and just mention what you've noticed and and and leave it with them

00:29:38
because they're ultimately going to be the ones who are going to have to go and find a diagnosis for the child the child child can't do it themselves and I think it's important that you do this um because being an undiagnosed autistic person can be very difficult um not knowing why you are doing the things that you're doing and that brings me to a page from this book uh unmasked by Ellie Middleton who you can find on LinkedIn she's um a neurodiverse influencer you could say and talks a lot about neurodiversity

00:30:18
she's a young woman who a lot of young people can relate to and she has written here to grow up as an undiagnosed autistic person or ADHD is to spend a lifetime being gaslit ostracized and misunderstood it is only natural that our mental health would suffer as a result of that so people's mental health is going to suffer if they're not diagnosed so doing what you can to help them to become diagnosed if you notice these Tendencies is only going to do them good right okay so then we need to move on to

00:30:59
what is it like to be an autistic learner specifically when it comes to learning so what you can see here I don't know if anyone recognizes this what is going on here or what language this is um but it is Chinese Chinese characters um uh words for yeah I know the first one is Sky um that's from my son he is learning Chinese uh because he he's he grew he's growing up trilingual and he's really loves languages so we thought it'd be great for him to learn another one so he's learning Chinese um and he loves

00:31:38
doing um drawing the characters on this grid uh and this is really fun and really engaging for him he can do this all day this like repetition of drawing the characters um and this is kind of typical of a lot of autistic Learners um repetition often feels comforting and good and not boring um repetition is good it's kind of the opposite of what you think for a lot of students repetition is good um but they they they they like repetition in terms of I'm going to write the same letter or character a 100 times but they don't

00:32:20
really like repetition in terms of let's review all the tenses again because they're like oh I know all the tenses like don't need to review that um so there can be a fine line between what they like and don't like when it comes to repetition um they switch between phases of high focus and distraction um this is just because all of the sensory processing which is going on and all of the dealing with social situations it's like their computer in a computer is getting a bit hot and then

00:32:52
stops working um they can feel disconnected from your teach from their teacher like I mentioned this kind of perception that their teacher hates them even though there's no evidence for that um they can easily feel overwhelmed or frustrated because they're underchallenged so it's not that autistic students find learning difficult they often find learning easy but they get very unhappy and they may even perform poorly when they feel like they're underchallenged they need they need enough

00:33:23
challenge uh the classroom can be a scary place for autistic Learners and especially the playground um there are sensory issues especially if they have to wear a uniform that can be really unpleasant especially with like a shirt and tie um and just the having to negotiate all of the social interactions can just be so difficult you know how do I make people like me H I don't know should I say something funny or what is funny um just the classroom and school generally can be a scary place for autistic

00:33:58
students that's why unfortunately we find a lot of autistic young people staying at school uh sorry staying at home um because they don't want to go to school um it's it's difficult so finally we're going to look at some changes that you can make some practical changes that you can make in your classroom to help autistic students specifically so I've divided this into changes you can make before for the lesson when you're planning your lesson and changes you can make during the

00:34:33
lesson because I think especially with autistic students how you plan the lesson is really important um think about how you can give those clear and step-by-step instructions that I mentioned um prepare extension activities because autistic students are likely to be amongst the fast fast finishes and they'll get frustrated if they don't have additional work uh but on the other hand planning time for autistic students needing longer to complete a task uh have some understanding for the fact that it's

00:35:07
really important for them to at least try to complete something perfectly and really put a lot of work into it uh think about where you're going to seat the autistic students or how you're going to group or pair them based on what you know about their who they feel most comfortable with and planning time for question and answer session so that they can ask all of those questions that they want to ask okay so then moving on to changes you can make during the lesson uh and the topic of stimming

00:35:45
which we haven't really discussed yet um have you have we have you we heard of what simming is be before um it if you haven't it's a kind of thing with which autistic and ADHD people do to kind of H how can we describe it to sort of deal with anxiety deal with discomfort in social situations and it's often a a repetitive movement uh so or it could be a sort of clicking maybe with your mouth or just some kind of repetitive movement again as I said earlier autistic people feel comfort in repetition with learning and

00:36:26
that's also what we see with stemming the repetition of a specific action um and a lot the natural tendency amongst teachers if they see a student say tapping on the desk is to say stop it what are you doing stop it um but you know we should really you know show that compassion I mentioned and understand that the child is doing that because it's helping them to cope and they would otherwise struggle to cope and unless that tendency is really disruptive or really harmful to them as people we should let them do it don't

00:37:01
automatically tell them to stop it try and talk to them about it why are you doing that that's irritating other people a bit maybe maybe try not to do that if you can but understand the fact that they may not necessarily have control and it's not that they're wanting to disrupt everyone um don't criticize or openly Express surprise at reactions to sensory overload so don't be like oh why you wearing that t-shirt um monitor students so you can think about where to seat them and how to

00:37:33
group them have regular one toone check-ins so they know that you don't hate them and consider adapting homework tasks so that they fit better with this profile of enough challenge comfort in repetition and maybe even getting them to bring in their special interests um we know autistic people love their special interests okay so that's all that I have to say uh except to say thank you for listening