As educators who work in highly structured learning environments, I find that it is often too easy to concentrate on the challenges that students face. We quickly notice the impairments or how the student is struggling to engage or access the curriculum. In other words, we notice their deficits. As a diversity teacher, this is a huge part of my job. And I do it because I care. I want to see every student thrive and succeed. I want to be an advocate for students who find themselves lost and sometimes even scared in our education system. Through an inclusive framework, I form my approaches around what adjustments we can make to the environment to support the student and reduce the barriers to learning. Sometimes it is around giving students extra support or time to learn skills that they have not yet acquired. When I conduct reviews, I make time to ensure that I hear their voice and their perspective on their learning. As I am well aware that what I think the student needs might be very different to what they believe they need.
And yet, if I'm honest with myself I know there is still a strong sense of 'how can we help these students be more like the 'norm'? I think it comes from a place of good intentions because I don't want to see kids struggling when they don't fit the norm. I don't like to see them hit their heads in frustration or rock in the corner or lose it when they go home because it's all too much. I quickly see what is not working but fail to recognise to the same extent how their diversity is a gift us through their different ways of seeing and thinking about the world.
I have recently been challenged by the discourse around neurodiversity to start shifting my thinking. Neurodiversity means that there are many and diverse ways of thinking, seeing and understanding the world. The idea of neurodiversity is that there are normal and naturally occurring differences in the human brain that result in differences like Autism and ADHD. Brains are diverse rather than divergent. Differences are not caused by disease or injury. In one way, differences in the way the brain functions could be seen the same as the differences in skin colour. It is just the way we are made. They are not flaws, just differences. The lens of neurodiversity helps us to shift our thinking away from pathologising people - thinking that differences are a problem that need to be fixed. Instead, we can see neurological diversity as a vital part of humanity. Now this is quite a stark divergence from the traditional way of viewing disabilities and impairments.
The neurodiverse discourse does not deny the existence of impairments or the fact that these impairments can have challenging functional impacts for people. As a diversity teacher, I see this everyday. It's my job to support the student to find ways and paths towards greater participation and success. However, the framework of neurodiversity means that we need to work harder at realising that participation and success will look different for different people. It challenges assumptions about what intelligence is and how to measure it. It makes us reexamine what behaviours are accepted as 'normal'. It promotes understanding. It calls us to create communities where all people feel like they belong and have a way they can contribute.
Far too frequently, neurodiverse young people feel like they don't belong. They are often acutely aware of their differences, seek to hide and withdraw. We have created a society and communities where neurodiverse people label themselves as 'dumb', 'stupid', 'wrong', 'failures'. Our learning structures and education focus often highlight their impairments and struggles. They spend much of their adolescence wishing they were someone else or that they could do things that other people can, rather than seeking, finding and flourishing in their differences. For where would our world be without neurodiverse people such as Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs, Issac Newton, Bill Gates, William Yeats, Wolfgang Mozart, Michelangelo, Thomas Jefferson, Hans Christian Anderson and Charles Darwin?
I think this is what I found lacking in my recent professional learning. If the teachers of diversity are framing their conversations around deficits and impairments, what hope do we have for change in our wider school communities? We need to be stretched in our thinking. We need to see the beauty, the wonder, the mystery. We need to find pathways to help students discover their gifting and embrace its flourishing. We need to learn acceptance of tangential thinking and behaviours. We need to learn to listen. There will always be challenges. We see it. The students are reminded of these everyday. It's time to remind them that they are remarkable. And our world would not be the same without them.
