Embracing Neurodiversity in the Classroom

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello and welcome to the Wellspring Way. Now, my guest today is an expert in helping schools to improve inclusion for neurodivergent children. She's been supporting autistic and neurodivergent learners for two decades as an SEM teacher, Senko, and advisory teacher. She's written two papers for the Good Autism Practice Journal, and she's a trained specialist leader for Wellspring's Positive Regard Relational Practice Training. I'm so pleased to be joined today by the founder of Specialist Teacher Training and Consultancy Service, Neuroteachers, Katrina Lowry. Katrina, welcome. Nice to meet you, lovely to be here. Thank you. Now, how is it in lovely Cardiff this morning? Because it's absolutely freezing up in South Yorkshire. It's Baltic. Um, so Neuroteachers. Tell me a little bit about it and kind of how it all started and what your aims are, really.

SPEAKER_02 0:54

Okay, well, it all started as an idea of mine when I had just left the advisory teacher service in in Gloucestershire, which is where I used to work. And I really am quite passionate about inclusion for neurodivergent people. Um, the reason for that is because I'm neurodivergent myself, so I'm dyslexic and bipolar. Uh to say I had a unique experience of school would be an understatement. Uh, my schooling journey was uh somewhat different than you would expect. And um, the reason I was attracted to teaching in the first place is because I really wanted to help people who were a little bit like me. Most of my work has been around exclusion prevention.

SPEAKER_01 1:36

What are the kind of challenges around um supporting neurodivergent children in classrooms? And well, I guess what are schools getting right and what are they getting wrong?

SPEAKER_02 1:46

Um, I really feel for schools actually. Um, even like my recent conversations over the last couple of weeks, things are pretty dire out there. It's got a lot worse since the pandemic. It's got a lot worse recently because the budgets are just being completely battered by the cost of living crisis and the the price of fuel, etc. And schools are just completely on their knees with all of this. So it's much more difficult to be curious when you have that level of stress.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:17

Um, and you know, we've we've got kind of the perfect storm. So, you know, inclusion has been a thing really since I've been in in schools, you know, since I've been working in schools, which is, you know, 23 years now. But it's sort of been almost just like put upon the education system insofar as there aren't enough special school placements, there aren't enough alternative provisions, there aren't enough SEMH schools, etc. And so more and more children who are more and more complex are going into mainstream. The teacher training that you get is not really fit for purpose for this. I mean, my personal PGC, I had half a day on on send, and that was generic send. It wasn't half a day. Yeah. Um, and I I think that even now, like my partner did the PGC uh like over lockdown, you know, he just he just graduated. Um and he got maybe a day of send training with practically nothing whatsoever about neurodiversity, specifically nothing about behavior and nothing sort of linking neurodivergent needs with behavior and classroom management. So graduates go into the classroom completely unskilled and can be very rapidly de-skilled by a child who, in some cases, they probably would be better off in different provision, but in some cases, they are very definitely mainstream children who are extremely stressed by the fact that they are neurodivergent in a neurotypical world, and that in itself is an adverse childhood experience. So you have this tremendous amount of stress and these very de-skilled, but really, really caring and compassionate teachers on the one hand, and then you have these children who, you know, they've just experienced lockdown, the pandemic, and possibly, you know, bereavement within their family, on top of all the other things that they have to experience. So it's just like at the moment, business is good, I'm inundated, but I wouldn't want it to be like that. Ideally, I would like to be kind of, you know, I'd like to be in a situation where there's no need for my type of business because it shouldn't all be happening, frankly.

SPEAKER_01 4:30

Because there should be enough support, there should be enough training that this, yeah, that schools shouldn't be having to find money in their budgets to no, they shouldn't.

SPEAKER_02 4:39

And and the thing is as well, if you if you look, I'm a great believer in early intervention, early years is my absolutely favorite. Actually, my two favorites are reception and year 11, which is oh that's interesting, but they're both about transition and there's a lot of hope at those two stages, insofar as you know, at the beginning they're just starting their school journey and it's really, really exciting. It's lots of learning through play and everything's new. And then at year 11, they're about to embark on adult life. Uh, and that's that's new because it's kind of like you know, getting them prepared for that next step. I'm a big believer in early intervention, I'm a big believer that if you got it right in preschool and reception year one, you probably wouldn't need EHCP's, you know, one-to-one TAs, other expensive, difficult, complicated interventions that are difficult to come by, if you've got that really right right at the beginning. Um, and if the teachers had more information about very simple things that they can do, not necessarily easy, but simple, straightforward, practical advice about things that they can do, then they probably would feel a little calmer in dealing with these children. There'd be less stress for them, there'd be less stress for the other adults in the room, and there'd be less stress for the children involved, most importantly.

SPEAKER_01 6:03

So, what what kind of things are you talking about there? What are some examples of that? Those simple things that teachers could be doing.

SPEAKER_02 6:10

Um, straightforward things like if you have um just a very small basic understanding of, for example, autism, um, better communication, straightforward things like saying the child's name before you give an instruction, breaking an instruction down into small steps, waiting for them to have carried out one instruction before moving on to the next one. That works very well for ADHD and dyslexic children as well, because it's all about processing. If you understand a little bit about processing and executive functioning, then you can think about different ways you give instructions. Doesn't need any photocopying, doesn't need any stuff from Twinkle. I love Twinkle, don't get me wrong, right? I love Twinkle, but you don't need to spend hours and hours doing prep. It's just when you're in the moment in the classroom, the way you give your instructions is different. And that is gonna make a huge amount of difference for you, for those children, but also for everyone else in the room, because it's altogether a karma experience.

SPEAKER_01 7:06

Yeah, well, that was one thing that I was going to ask you actually, because obviously inclusion is a huge thing. Um, you know, high on high on the agenda. We talk about inclusion a lot. Um, but obviously the thing that people always come back with when you talk about that is well, yeah, but how do you get the balance right? Because you don't want to disrupt things too much for everyone else. Yes, of course, we want to include everyone, but how do we how do we get that balance?

SPEAKER_02 7:31

It's so funny that you should say that because I've just put a proposal in for a book. It's actually called the other 29. Right. So what I get asked all the time is, yeah, but Katrina, what about the other 29? And I'm like, cool, all right, yeah, I totally understand that. But actually, what's good for Sally over there is actually gonna do the other 29 a tremendous amount of good. Because if she knows what she's doing and she's settled and happy and can do her work and access learning, then that means you've got plenty of time to teach everyone else.

SPEAKER_01 8:04

So going back to neuroteachers and what you do on a practical level, then um, you work with us on on positive regard. Yes. Um, how have you found that?

SPEAKER_02 8:15

It's really interesting. I'm kind of like out on a limb here because there's no one else in England in the West of England stroke whale, because I'm in Cardiff, as you know. Um, there's no one else in the West of England or Wales, so I'm kind of on my own. So I'm doing like bits and bobs of of um sporotic work. We did a really, really successful um webinar the other day with with Jacob and Luke, which was phenomenal. And this is just the start, this is just the beginning. You know, I really I'm I'm really kind of passionate about amplifying this whole thing for the you know for Wales and the Southwest because I think it's so needed down here. That's excellent.

SPEAKER_01 8:50

Yeah, I mean it's gosh, it's needed everywhere, isn't it? Um yeah, like you say, you know, we've we're we're short on spaces in specialist provision. Um, and we know that all that happens when you exclude a child is you just shift a problem somewhere else. Um, so keeping more kids in education is obviously what what all of us want to do more and more of. So um, yeah, fingers fingers crossed that we can get it flying in the southwest then.

SPEAKER_02 9:17

Well, yeah, exactly. I mean, and I think like, you know, there are a lot of people who argue quite strongly in favor of exclusion, believe that exclusion is too difficult and that it should be more, and that it's this universal panacea, but it's just like like you say, you're just shifting the problem to somewhere else. And then the thing is, it doesn't actually help that teacher if that child is removed, right? It's providing short-term relief. Then you know, you you exclude one ADHD kid in your class who's thrown a pair of scissors. Next year, you get another year seven who this time is gonna throw a table. Do you know what I mean? You you can't say, okay, well, that's it. And for the rest of my life, I'm never gonna come across another child who is that dysregulated that they become disruptive or challenging in my class. It's never gonna happen. Exclusion done, job done. Okay, right. Now all the children I'm gonna teach are just gonna be harmonious and wonderful for the rest of my life.

SPEAKER_00 10:09

Oh, yeah, yeah. Perfectly behaved all day long.

SPEAKER_02 10:13

Exactly. Like, and it's such a waste, isn't it? I mean, you know, we look at the statistics for excluded children, they're you know, 90% of the prison population have been excluded from at least one setting. 70% of those have ADHD, 75% of them have dyslexia, and something like 65% have a diagnosed autism, which you'll notice obviously that's a lot more than 100%. So many of those may be co-occurring. Yeah, crakey. Well, then, you know, what does it cost? It caught it costs, I don't know, it's something like 35, um, 350,000 pounds a year or something to put a prisoner in prison.

SPEAKER_01 10:47

Wow, yeah. I mean, I've I've I always find this fascinating is that we don't look at things holistically when we do an accounting on a government level, society level. Like, oh, we'll save money on this little area, but hang on. Yeah, now we've got to deal with the health impact of that, the policing impact of that, the wider social problems we've created with that. And yeah, let's just put some more money into solving it early doors rather than wait for all that to kick off.

SPEAKER_02 11:11

Exactly, because those kids who are excluded from school there are at so much risk, and they are likely to get involved in criminal behavior. They're statistically, they're just statistically likely. That's maths, you can't argue with it. Yeah, you know, forget about what my feeling is about it. The cold, hard statistics of it say that these children are more vulnerable. They're more likely to get involved with drugs, they're more likely to get involved involved with nefarious behavior of criminal kind, either themselves or be the victim of crime, or both. They're more likely to have mental health difficulties later on, that you know, they're more likely to have to use the NHS services because of the mental and physical health differences, etc. etc. It's not cost efficient to continue to exclude children. Why are we doing it so frequently and to so many children when we, you know, we know that the outcome for them and for society is so poor and it costs loads of money.

SPEAKER_01 11:59

Yeah. The the impact of it, it blows my mind really when you start looking at it statistically on what exclusion does. Um and the fact that, like you say, it seems to be um just continuing as as an option that it's seen as a in in some spheres, even quite an early kind of line of defense. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:22

No, it's the first option, not the last, unfortunately, in some sense scenario. And the thing is as well, like it's kind of done out of love. I know that sounds kind of a little bit backwards here, but if you see what I mean, you don't go into working in education if you don't love the kids. You can earn a lot more money in industry with similar skills, you know. Most of us in education have got a high level of you know, high level of qualifications ourselves.

SPEAKER_01 12:48

Yeah, you know, you got TAs with PhDs quite regularly. Yeah, amazing levels of talent and skill in classrooms.

SPEAKER_02 12:57

And you could you could earn a huge amount amount more money. So you're not going into it because you hate children, right? And then, you know, and sometimes sometimes you'll you'll think, and I've been, you know, I've been in head teacher's office where they well, they've been on a um, they've just come off the phone from the LA, and the LA said, right, you've got no choice. If you if you don't exclude them, we can't give them a place at a special school, you know, and you know, the head teachers crying and sobbing their heart out because he or she doesn't want to do, and this is more than one occasion, this has happened to me several times. They don't want to exclude the child, they want the child to get the support that they need, but sometimes they feel like they have no choice but to exclude the child because otherwise they won't be able to get the child what they need. Because at the moment they have a school placement. If they didn't have a school placement, then they go up the list in terms of specialist provision, and that's not right.

SPEAKER_01 13:44

Not at all. So then that's then that child is labelled as being excluded, and what that does to a child psychologically, um, which is totally unnecessary when there's another option.

SPEAKER_02 13:57

Especially when you're talking about, I mean, the vast majority, like so, if you've got a special educational need, then you're six times more likely to get excluded than your neurotypical peers. So we're already talking about children who are invulnerable, who you know have additional needs.

unknown 14:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:11

What's your take on and we see more of this in children now? Is it more or is it or is it just that we're more aware of it now and we're spotting it more?

SPEAKER_02 14:22

Oh, it's a chicken and egg problem, that is. Oh, I love questions like this, they're brilliant. Um, so neurodivergence has always existed in society because it's uh it's of a of an evolutionary advantage.

unknown 14:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:39

So I don't know whether you you are you familiar with Temple Granding?

SPEAKER_01 14:42

No.

SPEAKER_02 14:43

Okay, so she's uh an autistic advocate and she has a PhD in agricultural engineering, and her actual job is to design slaughterhouses so that cattles don't stampede. Wow. Someone has to do it, right? Yeah, yeah. And she's from Texas, and uh, she does all kinds of TED talks, and you can hear her speak in in you know all kinds of like autism thing, um, kind of uh forums, etc. And she's a really kind of fantastic advocate. And one of the things that she said, and this is kind of paraphrasing, is if we left it all to neurotypicals, then we'd still be sitting around in our cave socializing. Interesting. Yeah, I mean, so that's a really important point. And things that I've heard from other people is, you know, for example, there's this really great TikToker who's he's a carpenter who's got ADHD. And he said, you know, who do you think it was who discovered fire? You know, it's not going to be a neurotypical kid banging two sticks together, is it? And I and I love that. And I just think, you know, like there's we have skills that are advantageous to the human genome. For example, if you're dyslexic like me, you have the helicopter view. You can see, you know, you can see problems in the round. You can you're very good at multitasking and you can see you have that helicopter view of things. So, strategically speaking, in business, I mean it's why so many of us are entrepreneurs. If you take, for example, Richard Branson. Dyslexic people make good entrepreneurs because we can, you know, we can spin plates and we've got the helicopter view, we can see things, you know, different things and how they work together. And there's advantages to that, you know, there's 20 20% of the population neurodivergent.

SPEAKER_01 16:17

Is it that high? I had no idea.

SPEAKER_02 16:18

So that's one in five of us. One in five of us have a neurodivergent condition. Wow. So, you know, it's quite a large number of people, yeah. It might be higher than that because there's a lot of people who are undiagnosed, there's a lot of late diagnosis going on these days.

SPEAKER_01 16:32

Yeah, and just going back to the thing about being um basically gifts, different ways of looking at things, different talents. I'm imagining that a lot of creative people are in that, are in that 20%. Yeah. If we don't look after these people and give them the right support, what a waste of talent, if nothing else. That's a huge amount of people, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 16:55

Yeah, exactly. And the thing, the way the education system is at the moment is there's there's still this belief in things like slant, you know, like there is a way to concentrate in class, which involves you sitting, looking at the teacher, tracking them around the room, sitting up straight, nodding in agreement. You know, there's these these beliefs that that's how you concentrate. Now, if you were neurodivergent, even if you're me, and I'm dyslexic and bipolar, so you know, I my sensory differences are not as pronounced as someone with ADHD or autism. Um, I would find that incredibly difficult. There's these perceived wisdoms that there are ways of concentrating and there are ways of behaving which mean that you will learn better. And no minutes should be wasted within, you know, and everything has to be quite regimented and quick, and that you, you know, the more time you spend actually learning, yeah, the better your learning will be, and that learning goes on this kind of like trajectory like that. But that's not how people learn. Neurotypical people don't learn like that, and neurodivergent people certainly don't learn like that. So your ADHD is much better standing up or walking round. Um, you know, your your autistic person might be better staring out the window the entire lesson. Might be. They're definitely not going to be better giving you eye contact because that could be painful. The clo classrooms at the moment aren't necessarily some of the brilliant, there's some brilliant practice going on. And thinking of the AT I saw last week, phenomenal, right? But there are a lot of people who haven't got the information in order to help these children to really learn and meet their expectations yet, yet, but you're working on it.

SPEAKER_01 18:39

I am working on it. Um, so what's in the pipeline for neuroteachers? What's going on?

SPEAKER_02 18:47

Well, in terms of neuroteachers, um, I've got a lot of really interesting pieces of work coming up, as I say. I'm hoping to get this book, fingers crossed. I only just put in the pro proposal for that. So I'm being a bit previous by telling you. But if I don't go with this publisher, I'll find another one.

SPEAKER_01 19:04

The title's great. I like the title, so surely, you know, somebody's gonna somebody's gonna buy that.

SPEAKER_02 19:09

There's a need, isn't there? The other 29. There's a need to talk about what's going on with the other 29 in terms of differentiation because we've heard differentiation up to here, haven't we? Yeah, so you know, I've got lots of um events going on. Um, I'm still working really regularly with schools. The most exciting thing that I'm kind of doing at the moment that I'm like really, really excited about is I've just actually opened a new business, uh, which is to support neurodivergent teachers and educators. So I'm just working on that with a few colleagues who are also neurodivergent teachers and entrepreneurs. And um we feel that uh neurodivergent people have an awful lot to offer in terms of education, and that we should really be supported in becoming teachers, TAs, support staff within schools. When I first started teaching, I really had no idea there were other neurodivergent teachers. Had no idea. It's only really when I've become when I've sort of become more into social media because of my work with neuroteachers that I've realized just how many of us there are.

SPEAKER_01 20:16

I guess it's that one of those things that you don't you don't really talk about it unless there's a reason to talk about it.

SPEAKER_02 20:22

You you don't bring it up. No, well, I think there's a lot, there's well, anyway, we did this survey in the Facebook group that we opened back in March. And I believe the statistic was that 72% of neurodivergent teachers mask the entire time whilst they're at work. I can imagine, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:42

I mean, I did. I did when I was working in classrooms. Now I tell everyone. But I think I think that kind of reflects wider society as well, doesn't it? That we're as as a society we're becoming much more aware um of neurodivergency and what that looks like and how people need different things to to get on in the world when their brains work differently.

SPEAKER_02 21:06

Yeah, but you know, exactly. Inclusion has to be like just embedded into all organ, not just schools, all organizations, like properly in proper inclusion. And then also we need cathedral thinking, we need that long-term goal, right? So if I spend, you know, I've sat in meeting, I've sat when I was an advisory teacher, I sat in meeting, and there was this really, really dysregulated five-year-old who was about to get excluded from his preschool. Uh, and it was a horrible backstory. Like, you know, Ace is just up to here with the poor little boy, and he had all kinds of neurodivergent needs as well. And I've sat there and I've listened to the social worker and the EP arguing about who should pay for a £500 intervention for this poor child that we knew would make a difference, that was evidence based. We had all the people set up, right? But everybody's making a fuss about £500. quid and I was just like seriously I sat in the meeting went do you know what I'd pay that out of my own pocket for that kid if I could yeah you know because like 500 pounds now right or you can wait till he goes to prison because I'm and I'm not you know statistics right I'm not doing this as an emotive I'm not saying this in the motive fashion right because it's my opinion I'm telling you the statistical likelihood the outcomes for that child are slim to none if you put 500 pounds into his future now you might have a chance that we might he might not end up in that situation um and you know actually this is a really optimistic story because I have a lot of hope yeah if we get things right for those five year olds yeah if we really do yeah yeah they just need one person who cares who one person who goes you know what actually it's worth the budget to do this yeah yeah you need one person who lobbies for that child and I've been I've been at that I've done tried to do that as much as I possibly could in my life and I know I've met some absolutely phenomenal colleagues who will literally go that extra mile because like I said to you earlier in this conversation you don't go in education to get rich you do it because you love the kids and you care passionately and anything that goes wrong it's not for lack of it's not for lack of love it's not for lack of care it's because they feel completely stressed out and completely de skilled right and yet massive resource problems as well and all that kind of stuff but the stuff that's within our control we can't necessarily just get the energy to do that because everyone is just running on less than empty and has been for years.

SPEAKER_01 23:38

Yeah but I am optimistic I'm a very optimistic person um now something that we always like to do is a quick fire round to get a little bit of a taste of what your own school dates were like we've heard a little bit about them but we'll find out a little bit more.

SPEAKER_02 23:54

So favorites out of these primary school or secondary school probably year 12 and 13 secondary school ah yeah a levels was my do you know what now you've said that I think I'd probably go with A levels. I had a great time showing my A levels the wear uniform yeah you could sign yourself in I have sixth form college as well so it was all felt very very grown up I I would have done I should have done that really in retrospect but I was a young you know like my birthday's in June so I felt a bit young to go to college so um school performance or sports day oh performance every day I hate sports day I mean you know like I represent you know like I work the kids that I worked with went to sports day and had an amazing time I made sure of it even though I really really dislike it myself because it's just sensory overlay.

SPEAKER_01 24:45

School performance definitely right um maths or English oh maths yeah obviously yeah um numbers can you tell um woodwork well as it was back in the 90s now resistant materials or food technology would work um school milk yes or no I'm vegan so I'm totally biased but I never liked it at the time because it was always a bit warm.

SPEAKER_02 25:13

Um geography or history? History I've got a degree in it ah have you well degree my degree's in German and history my my bachelor's degree is in German and history right okay yeah so yeah definitely history so kind of more modern history type stuff that you were yeah I did um European well actually just do you know what I started off doing European studies isn't that hilarious now given what uh what's going on so I did eight I did um European political social and economic history from 1870 to the present day wow yes for all the rights of Hitler and that was quite good yeah but fascinating stuff um and then finally our last question um if I could give you a magic wand and you could do whatever you wanted to do no don't worry about money or anything like that but anything you want to change the education system in this country for the better what's the one thing you'd do the one oh do you know what I'm like really torn between two things you can tell us both I'll let you okay so the first thing I would do is I would make free properly funded universal provision from two year olds for nursery and preschool I think that would be very very popular. It would be as well also as well do you know what it helped the economy out massively because parents could go to work. Yeah um think about all of those parents who work part time they don't need to think about all of those parents who are totally crippled by by the costs of nurseries then they would have thousands of pounds literally thousands of pounds to spend in the economy so it would boost the entire economy it would cost money but it actually would be a loss leader.

SPEAKER_01 26:56

So that's my first thing and the second thing I would do is I would make um I would make it free for all children all the way up to 18 from four years actually do you know what including preschool I would have that they would be able to get three meals a day in school for free hot meals like you know hot hot lunch proper tea you know nice breakfast they would be available for all children in all schools yeah when you say it it's simple really and it's not expensive either it wouldn't even cost you know yeah just feed the kids just feed them how can they learn when they're hungry well it's masless yeah exactly it's Masless hierarchy of need bottom part of it you know meet their physiological needs their learning's gonna get better yeah right as well and also it's quite cheap but yeah I've got it all worked out you see I've costed it and everything brilliant thank you so much for joining me this morning it's been brilliant I really enjoyed it thank you so much for inviting me lovely chat um and that's all for today uh please join us next time when I'll be talking to Rob Smith from RJS Coaching about what it takes to become a successful leader in education. Hope you can join us then