Arts and Youth Mental Health Podcast: Episode 4

Episode 4: Neurodiversity in the Classroom

This episode of the Arts and Youth Mental Health podcast addresses neurodiversity and how neurodiversity may show up in the classrooms of teaching artists. Albeit a huge topic, the discussion dives into ADHD and autism, featuring concrete examples coming from the teaching artist practices of host Louise Campbell and guest social worker and teaching artist Alyssa Kuzmarov.

Transcription:

Louise: Welcome to the ELAN Youth Mental Health podcast. My name is Louise Campbell. I’m a teaching artist, the project manager for ELAN’s ArtEd program, and your host for this series. The Arts and Youth Mental Health Podcast delves into youth mental health and well being as it relates to the practice of teaching artists. Our guest is filmmaker, teaching artist and social worker Alyssa Kumarov. Alyssa, welcome to the podcast! 

Alyssa: Hi. Thank you, so happy to be here. 

Louise: I’m really happy that you’re here with us today. 

Neurodiversity In The Classroom

Louise: The topic of our discussion today is neurodiversity, and how neurodiversity can show up in our classrooms as teaching artists. This is admittedly a huge area.

Alyssa: Yes, yes.

Louise: To get us started, can you give us a sense of what the term neurodiversity means? 

Alyssa: Yes, just before we get into that, I want to say I’m not positioning myself as an expert. I think that’s important to say, because there are people out there that really do specialize in this field. I have a lot of experience in this field, but just to say I’m not positioning myself as an expert. Having said that, this population has been my best teachers, both as social worker and also in the classroom as a teaching artist. I’ve learned so much from this population and I really appreciate working with them. I think there are so many gifts. 

So is it okay before we launch into neurodiversity, that we talk about the term disability in a general way? Because I feel like it does lead into neurodiversity. 

Louise: Sure, go for it. 

The Medical vs. The Social Model Of Disability

Alyssa: Well, thanks. It’s just because I’m a bit uncomfortable with the term disability because it’s very negative. It refers to a deficit or something that’s not “normal”. To me neurodiversity is a powerful and more empowering word, because it really just talks about differences, right? And differences, not as deficits, but differences as something that’s positive and a strength.

I prefer that kind of thinking, because what affects me and bothers me is the idea of thinking of neurodiversity or disabilities as a negative thing. I can go into this medical model versus the social model. The medical model, very, very quickly, has this idea that we have a norm. And anyone that deviates from that norm is not “normal” and we want to fix them, and we want to change them, and we want to adjust them in some way. So that is again, a very negative kind of disempowering way to view disabilities in general. The word disabilities could maybe be changed eventually to special abilities or abilities instead.

That doesn’t take away from the fact that people have impairments or they have actual differences in their brain functioning and their sensory processing, hence leading into ‘what is neurodiversity?’ It really just refers to different ways of processing information in a very general way.

There’s this idea of the medical models, which is very negative with the idea of deficits where we want to fix people or adjust people versus a social model which is really acknowledging that people have differences. They have impairments: someone can’t see, or someone processes things differently. And yet the disability comes from the barrier society places on those impairments or the labels that people get from those impairments. 

So I just wanted to qualify that just because if we’re moving into ‘what is neurodiversity?’, well, as I said before, it’s really about differences and different ways people process different information. Obviously I’m not a medical doctor. I don’t get into the technicalities of that. But yes, it’s the idea of processing things differently.

Louise: I have to say I’ve always found it a little odd to hear neurodiversity in the same sentence as disability. I’m also not an expert, but I have a fair amount of experience with people who are considered neurodiverse. But it’s always seemed to me that it’s a different way of thinking, a different way of seeing and understanding the world, and that can be really interesting and fascinating, and lead to different solutions to things that maybe other people might not think of.

Alyssa: It really can be used very much as a strength, just because everyone is unique and everyone is different. I fully agree with you. I think it’s a strength. And why I like the word neurodiversity versus disabilities is exactly for what you just said, that it’s seen as a strength. It’s seen as differences, but not in a negative way. This is a new kind of thinking. That’s why I just wanted to sort of frame it, because people with autism or people with ADHD, it’s still considered a disorder or a disability. I just wanted to kind of frame it as a difference. It’s a difference. It’s a neurodiversity. 

What Is Neurodiversity?

Louise: Okay, so if we take that umbrella term of neurodiversity, it really does encompass a lot of people. Can you give us an idea of what people mean when they use this word?

Alyssa: Sure. So neurodiversity, I mean, again, in a very simple way, describes the idea that people experience and interact with the world around them in many different ways. There’s no one right way of thinking, learning, and behaving, and differences are not viewed as deficits. So it encompasses a lot of things. See, if we talk about ‘what is autism?’ Well, it’s called autism spectrum disorder. So it’s still seen as a disorder. But neurodiversity includes neurological and developmental conditions, anything from learning disabilities to social anxiety, to ADHD or autism.

The ones people most often talk about are ADHD and autism, but it does encompass a lot of other different experiences. 

Louise: Alyssa, can you tell me a little bit about your experience in the field, so to speak?

Alyssa: Absolutely. I really love working with this population because they really were my first and best teachers in social work. Actually, I worked with this population even before I went in to study social work. So I started working, I always say, at the start of my social work career out west at a camp. It was for people with disabilities. It was an Easter Seals camp.

And it was a Disneyland kind of place, you know, it was youth and teenagers and adults who would come for one week, and we were supposed just say yes to everything, and give them a really great experience. And that taught me so much, just saying ‘yes’ to people who, let’s say, are considered having deficits. In and of itself that’s a mindset, and I love that. 

That was where I learned social work, because to me it was like, everything’s possible. So you know, I’m not going to look at this person in front of me as having a deficit. I’m going to look at, well, how can I make this happen? What needs to happen? If they want to go rock climbing and they have one leg, well, we’re going to figure out how to get them to the top of that mountain. I worked with a lot of kids with autism and with different neurological conditions, many of whom I wouldn’t even know the names of what they had. It was just a really positive and empowering experience, really. I learned so many great lessons which include things like not labeling people, not limiting people, not judging, not trying to control either, and really just taking people for who they are and going with that. 

So if they like music, well, we might spend the entire week doing music, and that’s it. We won’t go to the pool, and we won’t do other things. We will play music for that week. It was a really, really wonderful experience. 

Louise: That idea of taking people as they are sounds like great advice for anybody really.

Universal Design

Alyssa: I’m sure that that theme is going to come up a lot, because to me it’s the concept of universal design. If we think of being inclusive to all kinds of people, then we will benefit all kinds of people. If we just have one mold, and we try to fit everyone into that mold, a lot of people will be excluded. 

Louise: It seems to me that the kind of framework of working as a teaching artist can lend itself to that. Oftentimes we go in with an idea of what we’re doing, and then it changes, depending on who is in the room with us. So I think that this idea of universal design is helpful in terms of working with people of all types. 

Alyssa: Yes, I fully agree with that. Just to be clear, universal design, we’re not going to do that topic in just one session, either. It’s a huge topic. But I really like the idea of just thinking that there’s two ways of doing things. We can create a building, and then try to accommodate anyone who may or may not be able to get into that building, or we can create a building with an inclusive kind of mentality where most people would be able to get into the building. And to me, that’s the same with teaching artists’ curriculums. Let’s just say, for our workshops, we can think about, okay, how can we create the most inclusive kind of workshop possible? Or, again, this is for any educator or any social worker, for that matter, then it would benefit everybody. Right? So if we think about having maybe breaks in the middle for people. Some people might have to take a break. Well, that’s going to benefit absolutely every student in the class. Or if we think about sensory issues and sensitivities well, that probably also will really help everybody in the class.

Louise: Can you give me an example of something that you would consider kind of like a universal design, knowing that you might be going into a mixed class where some students might be more neurotypical and other students who may be more neurodiverse? 

Alyssa: Absolutely, and we’ll talk a little later, I think, when we get to strategies. But just one example off the top of my head is this idea of giving people choices. So as a teaching artist, I’m going to walk in the room, and I’m not going to know who my students are, who the youth are going to be in my class. Honestly, most of the time we won’t know things like diagnoses, and what codes youth have, and all these sorts of things. We won’t know that as teaching artists.

So we come in planning our workshops where we have many different scenarios in our heads. Let’s say somebody might have issues with noise, or somebody might have issues with standing up in a circle. I can anticipate that and give people different options and sort of build that into my workshop planning. Then probably everyone could be included in the workshop. 

Louise: Yeah, it reminds me of a visual artist that I know who is very particular about having a variety of materials that students can touch so that if a student doesn’t like the squishy feeling of some material, maybe there’s another material that is fuzzier, you know. And then that student has a choice of what they touch, if touch is a particular thing for them. 

Alyssa: That’s a wonderful example, absolutely. So I think choice is going to come back again as a theme, especially as teaching artists, because we won’t necessarily know what issues the students might be experiencing. 

The pros and cons of knowing diagnoses

Louise: Right, because as a teaching artist, you said it before, we don’t know the diagnosis. 

Alyssa: No, we don’t. And to me that there’s a lot of positive in that, although it’s always sort of the same debate. Is it helpful to know? Because we can, you know, adapt specifically to the needs of this particular student. However, in knowing diagnoses or knowing codes, as they call them in schools, we might limit also what we think this student can do. So it’s always a bit of a controversial thing, I personally think.

If I go back to the camp, the lessons that I learned at the camp really were taking people as they are. Hearing everybody’s individual stories because no two people are alike. These are themes that to me, I think, are more helpful than actually knowing conditions or diagnoses in advance. It’s just to really take people where they’re at and to assume that every single kid in that class is going to have something valuable to share, and it’s more about: how can I help? How can I reach them? How can I make it a positive experience for them? 

Louise: Yeah, I would agree with that as well, too. Sometimes a teacher will share a diagnosis with me and I’ve kind of learned to set that aside, put it in the back of my brain so that I remember. I’ll usually ask a teacher in advance ‘is there something particular to do with sound?’ Because I work with music and sound. If I know in advance that a student will be set off by noise levels that are too high, I’ll know to keep it a little bit lower, or to have cues set in place in order to make sure that I can get quiet very quickly. That is useful information for me to know in advance. 

I’ve also been in a situation where a teacher told me in advance that one of the students was on the spectrum. I went into the classroom, and I totally got the kid wrong. It was a really interesting experience, because I found out months later that the student that I thought was on the spectrum was actually diagnosed, but I’d gone in with an idea that I was fairly certain was going to be possible for everybody, and there were different ways that people could choose their roles, and so it worked. But it was interesting because the student who at the time that I was in the classroom had the diagnosis, I didn’t even clock it. It just didn’t occur to me. So it was as interesting as a lesson for me of saying, yep, there are ways that knowing a diagnosis can be helpful. And at the same time, it’s not necessary, especially given that I’m not medically trained. I don’t know all of the different implications of all of these different diagnoses, and sometimes, if I know, I may have some preconceived ideas of what the child might be capable of when, in fact, they’re capable of many, many things. 

Alyssa: Yes, you said so many great things. It’s helpful to sort of put it at the back of your mind, because I think that, yes, some things can be helpful, especially things like noise levels for you as a musician. But it’s true. I’ve had many experiences where the teacher might prepare me in advance for a student, and my experience of that student is completely different. 

I just went in last week to a class where there were quite a lot of students with special needs, and the teacher actually made the reflection, she said, “It’s so great to watch you with them, because I have a certain interaction with them. I have certain ideas of what they can and can’t do. And then I see you come in with just like a blank slate, and they can do it, everything and anything.” So yeah, it’s always a bit of a balance. It’s definitely helpful for specific things. But then it’s yeah. It’s really taking every youth as they are. 

I know people might be listening to this wanting specific strategies and certain things, but the truth is, every youth is different. So we’re going to talk about autism and ADHD and all these things. But every youth will be different for sure, and there may be youth who have a condition who don’t know. They may not be diagnosed yet. They may not want to be diagnosed. Or a youth might have a diagnosis and want to be referred to in a very particular way. 

Louise: Yes. The the words can be a little tricky, I have to say.

Evolving language and neurodiversity

Alyssa: Yes, yes. So a word about words. I agree. Words can be tricky. I might say the wrong words, even today, as we’re talking. There is this debate of, do you say ‘people with autism’ or ‘an autistic person’? When I started out I was taught we put the person first, so I would say, a person with a disability or a person with autism. But there are some movements right now where they feel that it’s more empowering to be called an autistic person. So again, this is a debate and a confusing issue at the moment. I think the most important thing is to be respectful, and to ask the person if you can, or ask somebody, and not just assume, you know, and be humble, if ever you do say the wrong words.

Louise: I have to be honest. I don’t ever bring it up. It’s really more a matter of if the student brings it up themselves, and then I’ll try and mirror whatever words they’re using to refer to themselves. 

Alyssa: Yes, sorry, I should qualify that that piece of advice was actually given to me by an educator who was more referring to parents. Yes, I would never ask a student in a classroom ‘how would you want to be referred?’ No.

Okay, yeah. So the words are tricky. And even when you’re trying to find out, should I be aware of any sensory issues, you know, I think, that the real important thing is to show concern and to show that you’re willing to adapt and change things in order to best serve the students.

Louise: Absolutely, yeah.

Alyssa: So if we focus a little bit more on neurodiversity, neurodiversity can be a result of certain things. And in other ways, I think we just don’t know a lot about it. 

Louise: Can you tell us a bit about that? 

Alyssa: It can be with the results of genetics, physical trauma, infectious disease, immune disorders, nutritional factors, neurological problems such as epilepsy. But the truth is, mostly it’s unknown. There’s so many things that fall under this umbrella that we can’t possibly talk about everything in one specific podcast.

ADHD: the basics

But I would like to touch on a few things that come up quite often in our classrooms. Could we talk a little bit about ADHD? First of all, what does ADHD stand for? ADHD and ADD, and people do get confused about what they both mean.

Attention deficit disorder is ADD: Attention, deficit and hyperactivity disorder is ADHD. So just to clarify, ADD, and ADHD.

There are two main categories of symptoms. One is related to inattentiveness, like having trouble focusing or difficulty organizing, versus hyperactivity. So some young people or people in general have both of those main categories of symptoms, and some don’t. Some might just have one or the other.

So how would we see this in a classroom? That’s a very interesting question. And again, it’s very hard to answer that, but, you know, a kid might be fidgeting a lot. So is that ADD, or is that they just need to move more. 

If the experience of the young person is more to do with inattentiveness than they might have difficulty with organization. THere might be an issue difficulty paying attention or getting distracted very easily by different noises or environmental things that are going around. You can sometimes see a kid not being able to sit still or not even being able to have a full conversation with you, because they’re sort of buzzing about. And they’re having trouble focusing, but it could also be things like losing their belongings. It could be not being able to follow instructions. Things like that. Those are some of the things we might see in students, in a classroom. 

Louise: Considering how busy classrooms are, how busy schools are, that strikes me as a very challenging place for someone to be who has ADHD.

Alyssa: I don’t know how they do it. Honestly, when I walk into schools I am often very overwhelmed by all the sensory input that comes, it’s almost like it flies at you. Yes, I can only imagine how challenging it must be for students. 

Just to finish with the two types of symptoms, there’s a hyperactivity part, which is more like fidgeting, feeling restless. There might be tapping of the legs. There might be impulsivity, things like blurting out answers, or just not being able to control, waiting their turn. Things like that. But I agree with you back to what you just said. Classrooms are very overwhelming environments as our schools in general. So yes, it must be very challenging for kids. 

Louise: You’re making me think of a number of students that I’ve met. It really, very commonly happens that you’ll have a student who clearly just needs to move, and who knows if they have a diagnosis or not? But I’m thinking of a student that I had once, when I was doing a lot of sound walks. The task was to go for a walk around their school and in their school courtyard and write down their observations of what they saw, what they heard, and what they felt, both in emotions and in touch. 

Usually when I do this, the teacher is in the front and I’m in the back. So the teacher leads the little parade, and I’m in the back, being the sweep. I often get the kids in the back who might be labeled as ‘the bad kids’. There’s might be just a little bit of friction with the teacher, and they want to be a little bit further away. So I was doing this in one school, and I had this one boy who was super interesting. One of those kids who just had this buzzy kind of energy that he needed to move. And he was busy. He was just busy doing what we said. You know he was writing everything down, and he was like ‘Miss Miss. Can I have just another minute?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, no problem. I know where we’re going’. And so I would wait with him and we would catch up. It’s like, ‘Okay, you know, we need to stay in sight of the other kids so let’s just move on to the next place, you’ll have more time’. And he filled up his paper front and back, writing on top of writing, with everything that he could observe. 

At one point the teacher came back, and she was ready to give him heck, because he was one of the kids who was a bit of a distraction in the classroom, and I remember saying, ‘Hang on! Hold on! He’s doing exactly what I asked him to do’. And she looked at that piece of paper that was absolutely black with writing, and her jaw dropped. I don’t know that child’s diagnosis was, but I do know that he was hyper aware of his world and the sensory information that he had was just extraordinary. 

Alyssa: I love that example for so many reasons. One of them is where, first of all, you talked about kids being labeled ‘The Bad Kids’, or, you know, have friction with the teacher. That is very common. So when you see those kids, often they have some of the symptoms that I’m describing, diagnosis or not. But also what you mentioned, sometimes kids with ADD or ADHD, they will be very able to focus when it’s things that they like to do, and then when it’s not, it becomes a jumble in their brain. I don’t know what this student’s situation was, but it’s a great example of if they’re given a task or something that they really love to do, then they’ll fly with it. They’ll fly with it. 

Louise: Yeah. Yeah. And the interesting thing, too, for me was that I could see it in that teacher that she suddenly understood that child in a very different way. And I don’t know what happened, but I would like to think that perhaps that teacher might be able to provide a better learning context for that student after having realized that this kid is just bombarded with sensation all day long.

Alyssa: Yes. You’re making me think, I have lots of examples buzzing in my head. I was at a school last week (when I talked about one symptom of being just not able to sort of control themselves so they’ll blurt out answers), well, one boy apparently blurts out all kinds of sounds, including farting noises and all kinds of things. But the teacher is so wonderful that she kind of knows this about him, and just kind of tries to incorporate it. So when we were making films with him, he was brilliant in doing these like voiceovers with all kinds of noises, and it was just brilliant. 

So I think with both your example and mine, we can channel the energy of these youth. It goes back to everything we said earlier. It’s actually not a problem. It’s not a disorder or a deficit. It’s a special ability, right? It’s just that our school system is so formatted into sort of this box, and everyone has to fit in the box. But when we can step out of that box, there are gifts and talents that are just wonderful. 

Louise: As teaching artists, we often have the privilege to see that or to encourage it. And as teaching artists, if we can really grab that special interest that that child has, and use it within the context of the project then they get to excel in a way that they can feel proud of. Their friends can see them excelling, and their teacher can see that they have capacities that they might not normally be showing in a regular classroom.

Alyssa: Absolutely. I have another example from last week. There was a group of boys that actually couldn’t focus. So all the groups were making their films. And this group was not.

It’s another good lesson for teaching artists also to be patient. Had I bombarded those three boys with directives ‘Let’s do this, and let’s do that’, they weren’t ready to do it. I was lucky I had three workshops with them. So the first day they were not able to work. You know what I just let them be. And then I made a mental note. Okay, the next time I go back, though, I would really love them to do something, because I want them to be proud of their work. And it happened so because I think because I let them be that first workshop. They didn’t do anything. I kind of joked with them even, and I said, ‘Next time I’m coming back and I’m going to check in with you’, which I did. I brought some stuff that I thought they would like, but they also had a need to talk. It was very interesting. They had a need to talk first. It was almost like they had to feel comfortable with me first, and then they could get to work. It was just very interesting the whole process.

And again it just comes back to not judging the outcome. Sometimes the process is going to look different also, and maybe the most important thing is that we connect with this youth one-on-one, and just hear them in that moment. Because that’s also not something they’re used to in the big craziness of the classroom. In the end just to finish, though one of the 3 boys became a crazy editor. He had never edited before, was quite oppositional, did not want to do it. I just sort of sat with him and showed him, and I think because it was just gentle, and it wasn’t pushing, it just came. So it was really amazing. 

Louise: You reminded me of a student that I know had ADHD, because he told me himself. I learned some incredible lessons with him. He said that ADHD, people think that it’s just not being able to focus. It’s being hyperactive and running around all the time. I remember really clearly in a lesson once, I asked him a question. He’s super smart kid, loved music, he’s actually a professional musician now. I asked him a question, and he just looked blank. And he said, ‘That’s what ADHD is. I can’t remember what you said. That’s really embarrassing. Can you ask me again? 

Alyssa: Nice that he could verbalize that, though with you.

Louise: Yeah, he could. And it was really interesting, because we’d had a very in depth conversation for quite a while. And then suddenly, for some reason, it was just gone. And I don’t know what happened, you know, if there was this sound outside the classroom or something, but something happened that his brain just sort of zapped. The question that I asked him just instantly before was gone.

The interesting thing with this student was that his way of focusing did not look like I would have thought was focusing. He was learning how to read and write music, because he was actually a very good guitar player. If you want to go to university or CEGEP as a musician, you need to be able to read and write music which he didn’t. So the gist of our lessons were him learning how to write music down. So that’s what we were doing. He picked it up super fast, and we did a lot of dictation where I would play or sing him a melody, and his task was to write it down. And I play the melody just once and he would sit there for like 10 min. just kind of fiddling with his pencil. He’d kind of stare around into space and kind of tap his feet, nod his head a little bit. And I remember his classroom teacher walking in at one point, asking ‘Everything okay here?’ and I said ‘Yep, he’s figuring it out, that’s all’. And 10 min. later he wrote it all out perfectly. One shot. No mistakes, no going back to erase anything, the same way that you and I would write down our names. That was how quickly he wrote it out. But to somebody looking in from the outside, he would have looked like he was just daydreaming, and yet he was working it all out in his brain. 

Alyssa: That example to me explains neurodiversity in the sense that we have a fixed idea of what we think focusing looks like or paying attention looks like. And yet, you know, one student I had in my time at Dawson explained to me that she has to do other things while listening to me. Sometimes she would be on her phone. But she wasn’t texting or doing other things, that was how she focused, by doing something else.

And that is a common thing that I’ve heard from people with ADD or ADHD. They sometimes have to do two things at once to focus, which seems like, you know, maybe something we might not understand. But that’s so. Everybody has different ways of focusing and different ways of paying attention, and I like how you said it, different ways of processing what’s going on around them and making sense of it. 

Louise: As a teaching artist, I like to try and help people have the conditions they need in order to do their best. Are there any ways that we can help youth with ADHD?

Alyssa: Again, that’s a really tough question, because everybody is so different, but I think for sure there’s lots of things. There’s being patient, just like with your example. It’s letting him figure it out right as opposed to pouncing on him, because it doesn’t look like how we want it to look like. Or it could be taking breaks. It could be having different ways of explaining things, so that someone with different sensory processing issues or different ways of paying attention or receiving information can understand.

Back to the idea of just giving choices right? So, the idea of maybe writing it on the board, maybe verbalizing at one time, maybe going up one-on-one to check in if people understand.

Doing all three of those things is just one example of checking in that everybody’s processing what I’m saying. It could be having a visual. For example, this is from one of the ArtistsInspire workshops, but an artist takes videos of all the steps of the process of her artwork so that way somebody who might process things differently can watch it again. That could be super helpful. So there’s no one size fits all at all, and I think that’s the biggest takeaway. So it’s to just check in and see if a student is not following what I’m doing. I will check in with that person, you know, and just try to sort of see what’s happening.

Louise: And sometimes the student will know what they need.

Alyssa: Often they do. I would say most of the time they do. And from my experience is, yeah, if the authorities in the classroom don’t listen to them, then they get frustrated and spiral out. But if you’re actually trying to listen to them, they do know what they need. Yeah, most people do. They’ve been living with this, after all, like this is their way of being in the world. That’s it. 

ADHD and trauma

Louise: Now I’ve heard that there’s a certain amount of overlap between ADHD and trauma.

Alyssa: Yes, actually I take that to heart because a lot of my experiences with youth in the protection system, I see a lot of youth getting misdiagnosed with ADHD, and add again, I’m no expert, but I do think a lot of youth, for example, in the protection system and youth in general have experienced trauma. Because a lot of the symptoms are similar, it can be labeled as ADHD or ADD, and they’re given medication. But they’re never actually given the psychological or emotional support for the traumas that they’ve lived. So is trauma or is it, ADHD? I think that’s a big gray zone. But I’ve worked with a lot of youth in the protection system who have a lot of those symptoms like they can’t sit still, they can’t be in their bodies because they feel unsafe in their own body. Then they’re labeled ADHD, they get put on medication. So my hypothesis is most of the time in those specific cases, if they have psychological or emotional support, there might be a whole different diagnosis or outcome. I think it’s much easier to diagnose ADHD and ADD, than to provide psychological support unfortunately. That’s a very gray zone. 

Louise: And of course, as teaching artists, we’re not going to go and delve into somebody’s trauma. That’s way outside of our scope of practice. 

Alyssa: That’s it. We’re not. That’s it. That’s why we go back to, most of the time we’re not going to know. We’re not going to know people’s diagnoses. We’re not going to know what they’ve lived in the past. So is it trauma? Is it something else? Yeah, we will not know that. And that’s okay. Again, if we come back to our principles of just taking people as they are, we’re listening to them then we don’t need to know that either, but we might detect it also, because artists are really sensitive, I find, and good at picking up things like that. So it’s possible that that’s underneath some of the symptoms or behaviors.

In one of the previous episodes we’ve talked about trauma-informed practice, which is, in a sense, a way of just being aware that people have a lot of different experiences in their lives, and we’re not wanting to step our foot in it right at the beginning. Right? 

Well. I love your question: what can we do to help people with ADHD or any issues in neurodiversity, when we talk about autism, surely the same thing. The trauma-informed principles, like once again, are a kind of like that. This idea of universal design. They’re good for everybody, because basically trauma informed principles are things like giving people choices. It’s creating safety for people. So, for example, I am someone that might like put my hand on someone’s shoulder. Well, no, I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t do that. I want to be sensitive and say something like, ‘Is it okay, if I put my hand on your shoulder to show you the camera angle?’, but to ask them first, right? 

Safety and collaboration is another principle of trauma informed practice, which is asking them what they need, or ‘how can I be of help to you?’ ‘How can I make this a good experience for you?’ So those are all trauma informed principles and practice. 

Louise: It’s being responsive to the person who is in front of you and making sure that they have a voice and are active in what you’re doing and how you’re doing it. 

Alyssa: Exactly, exactly, and that includes if that day they’re having a bad day. Then, okay. I’m gonna back away for today, and I’m gonna come check in on you next time, or I’ll come check on you later see how you’re doing, okay? 

So ADHD and autism are very, very different from each other. 

Autism: the basics

Louise: Yes. Can you talk a bit about what autism is? 

Alyssa: Sure. I just want to say we’re not going to do justice to these topics, but it’s still wonderful to have these conversations. I think the more we talk about it, the more we’ll be familiar and comfortable in working with people with all different types of conditions. 

So autism, spectrum disorder is the name. We’ve talked about the word, but it is a developmental disability that can cause significant social communication and behavioral challenges. So there’s usually three categories of different experiences. People with autism might have issues regarding social communication, social interaction, social imagination or play. Once again, everybody with autism is very different. It’s often diagnosed in and around the age of two, because that’s when social interactions begin. We have huge waiting lists for people with autism, but the earlier that people do get diagnosed and get help the better, because, they’re just learning different skills. 

I do want to also talk about the spectrum for a second, because I think there’s a bit of an idea that the spectrum is this line and that if you’re at one place on the line, you’re like higher functioning and if you’re another place on the line, you’re lower functioning. Those are kind of old terms that are moving out now because they’re quite negative. It’s really judging someone as high level or low level. So we’re trying to move away from that kind of thinking. And truthfully, it’s not a linear thing. It’s really more like a pie, if you want to have it visual, where there’s all these different behaviors like communication or social interaction. And it’s ‘what

experiences does each person have relative to all these different pieces of the pie?’ Does that make sense? 

Louise: Yeah, totally. I mean, I have to say, when I am in a room full of people who may be on the spectrum, each person maybe completely different from every other single person in that room. 

Alyssa: Totally. And again, like at that camp, my first experience of learning about how to work with people with autism, you have everything. You’ll have youth that do not speak at all, or are nonverbal, completely. You’ll have, I say youth, but people of any ages or people that are very verbal. And you know, again, because they’re very verbal, you don’t want to say they’re high functioning. These are things that we’re shifting away from. We’re moving away from that to just different symptoms and different experiences. Even the word symptoms is quite medicalized. 

Louise: My experience with people on the spectrum is that music seems to be a very specific thing that works well with how some people’s brains work. And it’s really quite fascinating, somebody on the spectrum, music might be their thing, and that’s what they want to do all day long. And so it’s make it super fun, really easy for me. I’ve certainly played with people professionally who are definitely on the spectrum, and I’ve had many people in my classes as well. I have to say that one of the things that is extraordinary with some of the people is that their musical memory is amazing, they just learn so quickly. At the same time some of the social issues might be a little bit more of a challenge for some people. So I’m just wondering if you could talk a little bit about some of the misconceptions that people might have about autism. 

Alyssa: Okay, sure, absolutely. There are a lot of misconceptions about people with autism. So, for example, number one, individuals with autism can experience a wide range of emotions, but may express them differently. It does not mean that they don’t have empathy. That is a misconception. People often say, ‘Oh, people with autism don’t feel things or aren’t empathic’. Not true at all. It’s just a range once again. It also might be the way they express themselves. So we might think that that’s the case, but it’s definitely not the case.

In fact, I have a person I worked with very recently, who was very empathic, to the point of, doesn’t know how to deal with that. So no, that’s a big misconception.

Just because they’re nonverbal does not mean they don’t understand you. That’s a whole other topic in some ways about how to work with people who are nonverbal. But definitely, there’s just a different way of processing things.

And this is another myth. People with autism don’t want to interact with others. Again, this is completely false. So often, you know, there are issues in terms of like they might miss certain social cues. Or, again, the way they communicate might be different. It doesn’t mean that they don’t want to interact and it doesn’t mean that they don’t have emotions. 

Louise: Or it may just be shown in a different way. 

Alyssa: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. 

Louise: So this is making me think of a student that I just met about 2 weeks ago, who his thing is music. I was thinking about that when I was talking about some some people’s brains just seem to be wired for music. He plays keyboard, and I brought my loop system, so I was able to add a few effects like delay, which was something that he didn’t usually have. I also had my clarinet with me, and he was also visually impaired. I got really close to him, and showed him the buttons that he could press in order to change the notes on my clarinet. And if my mouth hadn’t given out he would have just kept on going, because all he wanted to do was jam using his personal keyboard and the buttons on my clarinet at the same time. He might not have been smiling. But his actions showed that he wanted to do that, and that he was absolutely thrilled and engaged with doing what he was doing. 

Alyssa: Yes. Actually, you made me think, see, we feed off each other, but I met a boy recently again in a school who found video editing. He had never edited before, and I only did 2 workshops in this class. I showed him how to do it once. He literally edited every single person’s video in the class, like he just got so into it. And it was methodological, and he had fun with it. And so there you go. 

Louise: It’s just so interesting, you know, with that particular boy. His hearing was based on pitch, and so we had an entire conversation, where we imitated pitches back and forth, so I would find the pitches he was playing and he would imitate the pitches I was playing. It was an improvisation. I would love to go back again and build a very personalized music station for him, kind of like a drum kit because a drum kit is something where you choose your sounds. But this boy needs one specifically for him that’s all about pitch. And so it was interesting, you know. In a sense we didn’t need words for that. We were talking through music. 

Alyssa: Amazing, amazing. And again I commend you because you tuned into his interest, his need. You could have missed that also, you know what I mean? So the fact is, you tuned into how he functioned, how he thought, what interested him. So that’s beautiful. And that comes back to our role as teaching artists. If we can do that, which sometimes we’re limited in time and won’t be able to, but if we can, it’s beautiful. 

Louise: Yeah, absolutely. So when we’re thinking about these types of issues, you’ve mentioned things like social interaction, like different ways of expressing empathy. Can you just talk to us a little bit more about that? Because I do think that’s something that will come up, more especially when you’re in a classroom setting where there’s maybe 15 to 20 people. 

Alyssa: Yes, for sure. Of course, I’m going to generalize, because there’s a ton of things that we could talk about whether it be symptoms or types of impairment, Again, social interaction could look very differently. We talked about atypical expressions of empathy. So it could be that the face is sort of flat, I guess if I could say, like no expression in the face, which could be really misinterpreted. There could be verbal expression, but no movement in the face, kind of thing. I’m just saying that could be one thing. Often eye contact could be an issue, or just looking down, or the way that their bodies are positioned. It’s so hard to say, because everybody’s so different. I don’t want to fall into stereotypes or cliches either, but these are some things we might encounter. 

It also might be social cues, or in a group of small people, and everyone’s laughing about some idea. They might be in the corner, not connecting with that same idea as everyone else in the group. Whether it be through the non verbals, or you can just see that they’re not quite connecting with the rest of the groups. That might be something that you see.

Louise: Yeah, I’m kind of wondering about this, too, because not everybody engages with the material in the same way. That’s totally fine. We’re all human, we have different interests. I guess my question has a little bit to do with a youth who may be overwhelmed by the situation.

Sometimes I feel like my instinct, which is to go and try and include the person may actually make it worse. 

Alyssa: Yes, actually, I did that the other day. It made it worse because I think there were a few youth with probably autism or some other neurodiverse condition – again, I’m always fumbling a bit for words. The teacher had put them together, and one of the girls was very specific that she didn’t want to be with one of the other boys that was in the group, and I was trying to work it out and mediate between them. And then I realized, ‘Oh, maybe I shouldn’t do that, and maybe I should just go tell the teacher because she knows about them’, because the girl was actually being quite mean to the boy. But the boy didn’t seem to be picking up on it either, so it was a bit of a situation. I don’t know. That’s where you don’t know. I don’t know codes, I don’t know diagnoses. That’s where I brought the teacher in because as a teaching artist, those are things you don’t know. So she actually reconfigured the groups in a different way. If you’re asking about different behaviors, one behavior could be rigidity. This girl, particularly, the teacher explained me later, is someone that she has an idea, it has to be her way, and that’s it. There’s no negotiating with her. And actually, as I got to know her, I saw that.

So I did go back to her after. And I said, ‘Listen, I’m really sorry that I was trying to maneuver the groups. I really see that you had one idea, and you wanted to do it a certain way, and I do respect that. I was just trying to not have anybody else feel hurt by it’. She really appreciated that. She actually sort of nodded her head. And she thanked me actually, which I thought was cool, because I think people force her to do things she doesn’t want to do, and in this case, I didn’t. She’s very artistic, and she had this idea about an animation that she wanted to do, and she sensed the boy would not go along with it. She stuck to her idea, so rigidity might be something that we encounter with youth, with autism that is.

That is something I’ve encountered numerous times, and I think again, go with it, you know, if they want to do it that way and this way. Well, let’s do it this way, you know. I’ll adjust. 

Louise: There may be other ways to to find a way to make it work as well, too, I remember a girl got very, very upset in one of the classes that I was leading, and I actually didn’t see it coming. I was told later that that kind of happened with this girl like she was just having a lot of trouble identifying when she was going to become upset, and it just all comes out all at once. So that made me feel better because I thought that I’d missed something whereas it’s partially just like what this girl is learning how to identify for herself.

But I was there over lunchtime. I needed to eat my lunch, and I asked the teacher, ‘You know if she wants to come back and finish her thing, is it okay with you? If she comes in at lunch, you know, with you and me here, we’ll just let her have the space and she can do what she wants. And the teacher said, ‘Yeah, no problem, that’s really kind and generous of you to offer. It’s easy, right? I need to eat lunch, so do you’. So we offered that to the girl, and she was thrilled and came back with a friend, and was perfectly happy because she got to do what she wanted to do.

Alyssa: Which leads back to your question of what if a student becomes overwhelmed. We could talk a lot about what to do with that case, in some cases, as teaching artists. We’ll think that we do something “wrong” when we just didn’t know and that could happen. We’ll feel badly, and all these sorts of things, but we just didn’t know. So we try our best, in other words, what you did. I like your example so much, because if we give them other options, it goes back to that in some ways. They might feel overwhelmed in the moment, but if they have a chance to do something at another time, or the next workshop, or in a quieter space where it is less overwhelming. That’s another way to work with someone who’s overwhelmed. It might be that we have to back off in the moment and come back after. Sometimes it might be that we ask the teacher. And you know, because again I wear my two hats of social work, when I’m in a classroom as a teaching artist, I really do defer to the teacher completely, because they know that student. And if there’s like some kind of panic attack going on or just overload, then, you know, I would want to ask them, ‘What do you normally do in this kind of situation?’ And they’ll help me with that, or tell me what to do. 

The teamwork of the teacher and teaching artist

So yeah, I rely on the teacher a lot. Yes. And for the entire topic that we’re talking about today because the teachers know their students the best. Yes. And as we talked about before, sometimes that can not necessarily be a great thing, because we can kind of tend to, you know, have an idea of what somebody is capable of. But also they really do know their students well. 

Louise: And I think most teachers out there, they’re there to help their students. So if there’s something that I’m doing, that is not working for a student, I want that teacher to tell me so that I can find a different way of working. 

Alyssa: Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree with you. I always defer to the teacher. Now, sure there are some not great teachers out there, let’s be honest. But for the most part I do find, as you said, the teachers really do know their students. They’ll be as helpful as they can be. And we as teaching artists, I think we can discern, too. I have been in classrooms where the teachers are amazing. But there’s these behavior techs that are also in the room hired specifically to help the students, let’s say, who are neurodiverse students. And yet sometimes those people do create barriers. 

So you know it is a game. But, on the other hand, yes, I defer to the teacher to help me with certain behavior. 

Louise: It’s teamwork. And when all of the adults in the room can work together, then some really amazing things can come out 

Alyssa: I totally agree. So in that same classroom where I told you about the girl who didn’t want to be with the boy, the behavior tech put the boy alone. Actually, she put them with other boys, then she ultimately put him alone, is what happened, and myself and I was with my partner, who’s also a teaching artist, we were both in the room at that point, and we both didn’t really like that. We were sort of like, why is he alone, everyone’s working in teams. So we gave him a lot of extra effort, like, in terms of just developing his idea, because otherwise he would have been very lost in the group. He would have just been sort of tossed around from group to group, helping people. But he had a very clear idea, and nobody was really listening to him. So we did spend a lot of time sitting with him. We wrote a storyboard with him. And we didn’t have time that day, but I said to him very specifically, I’m going to come back and we’re going to film your film next time.

It was a very particular situation, but in the room not everyone really wanted to work with this boy, so it was quite a dynamic, we didn’t really know what we were walking into. In any event, another of the behavior techs was amazing and got him to have friends from another class to come in and help him film his film. And we did film his film. So all I meant by that was, we have to trust our own instincts also, when we feel like I feel like there’s a limit going on with this young person, whoever whatever’s going on to trust that, too, and to kind of see. See how we can bring a bit of our teaching artists magic, or just our other lens and other perspective.

Louise: One thing that I’ve done actually, that I’ve found works really well, is I ask everyone in the room to be part of the artistic process. Oftentimes, the the kids who are neurodiverse, they have a code, and so they have an aid or a behavior tech. So that means that there can be a lot of adults in the room, and a lot of adults in the room sitting around doing nothing. You know, the poor kids, they get put on the spot! So I actually insist, I will tell the behavior, the behavior tech, ‘No, no, no! When I said everybody, I meant everybody!’ 

There was one time when we were using a drum, and I asked for a lineup. It’s one of the ways that I control the noise levels, I don’t give a drum to every single kid in the classroom, that’s crazy-making for everybody. I’ll say, ‘Okay, we’re gonna have a lineup. I’m going to hold the drum. Every single person is going to come up and find a way to make a different sound on this drum that doesn’t involve hitting it.’ Everybody thinks you play a drum by hitting it. Everybody comes up, and one person will scrape, another person will brush, another person will play with the little things on the side. And then somebody will inevitably hit the drum, and I say, ‘Oh, we said, not hitting, but you can do something else’. Then they’ll do something that a prior student had done. ‘Oh, it’s got to be something different’. And eventually the teacher, the behavior tech, or the adult will come and they’ll just sit and stare at the drum. And it’s quite funny. It takes a little bit. Then, all of a sudden, I remember this one Behavior Tech, who was extremely strict, sat there and looked at this drum for about three min. And then he came up with the coolest sound out of it, and all of the kids looked at him and were just like, ‘Whoa, okay. Did you hear that sound he made?’

And it was so interesting because it flipped that power dynamic on its head. And I knew from the kids that they all of a sudden saw their behavior tech as being sort of more of an ordinary human, rather than this very strict authority, figure. And the behavior tech told me later, ‘You know, I always thought about being an artist, but I didn’t think that I could paint. But I could have been an artist if we did it the way you did it today’. And he ended up making the most interesting, quirky invented instrument that you wore like a hat on your head, and you played all of these different things on the side of the drum kind of how he was making the sounds with the drum. And it was so interesting because it really changed, at least for the time of that project, the dynamic between him and the students for that little bit. 

Alyssa: Very interesting! Yeah. So the adults in the room, they’re our allies. I think we have to go in with that idea. And then sure, yeah, sometimes they need a bit of tweaking as well in terms of letting go as artists. 

Louise: He actually told me that at the end of the project that it’s really hard for him to not be in control, and to let go, and he learned that that was a really important thing to do.

Alyssa: I love that. Actually it happened to be me also recently. But the behavior tech was kind of doing the editing for the group. And this was a group of special needs youth. And I said, ‘Uh-uh. No, no, no’, I said, ‘I know you’re good at it, but they are, too, and I want them to do it’.

And she looked at me, and it’s like I caught her, you know. It was a good moment, because, look, I don’t envy their jobs: being in schools all day long, the role that they have to play is very specific. So some ways we can help remind them to let go of the control and to be freer themselves as well, and still to be there to support the students. Yes, again, again, I always turn to them. So yes: that was an interesting thing, because it really showed that the behavior tech had some different understanding of himself and about what art could be.

Louise: And who knows how long that effect lasted, that the students and him saw each other differently for that period of time, but they had a good time together, and that was a really nice thing to see. 

There was also something else that happened in that class. One of the students was doing a kind of repetitive behavior that might have been some stimming with his hand, just sort of like, very, very regularly, tapping his knee. I put the drum right in front of his hand, so it became a drumbeat. Musically, it was like. We all of a sudden had a super, very strong beat, like you could not move it at all. It was so rhythmic. I kind of wondered afterwards if that was a good thing to do or not, since stimming is something that I don’t know a lot about. It could be something that somebody just does. It could be for pleasure, it could be, for, I don’t know, a sign of distress. But I was kind of interrupting what that student was doing. I’ve always kind of wondered what to do in that sort of scenario, and if that was a good choice or not. 

Alyssa: I can’t say if it was a good choice or not, but I think in the moment you trusted yourself, and it sounds like it was a good thing, because he probably would have moved away if it wasn’t.

Having said that, stimming can make you a bit nervous, because it could be quite impulsive movements. It could be quite grand gestures, and yes, people don’t know quite what to make of it. The truth is, there’s no one answer to what it actually is. It could be emotional regulation. It could be that the person’s calming themselves down. It could be self soothing. It could be some sensory issues that might be faced by people with autism. They might be hypersensitive, or they might be hypositive. Hypersensitive is loud noises might be painful. Bright lights are overwhelming. Certain fabrics like touch might be painful. Hyposensitive is the opposite of that, when a person doesn’t feel the sensory input or seeks more of it. It could be not noticing loud noises, or just not being sensitive to touches, like not feeling so much.

Back to stimming. What is it? Exactly? Again, I’m not an expert in that, but it could be related to one or the other. It could be that they’re trying to stimulate themselves, it could be a way to calm down from overstimulation. It could be many things, and I think the bottom line is as teaching artists we might never know, unfortunately. If we had time and spent time with each person who does that behavior, then we probably would understand more. 

My understanding, too, is stimming is kind of connected to repetitive behaviors. So for some people it might look like stimming for others. It might be that things have to be lined up on their desk exactly how they want it to be. For others, it might be related to the routine, like very, very clear, and following the same things all the time. So it could be within that category of repetitive behaviors. 

Louise: I mean, in this case, I asked the teacher and the behavior tech. They said, ‘Yeah, yeah, this is good’. 

Alyssa: So they knew that this, which is back to what we were talking about before: trust the teachers and the behavior techs, the adults who know these students and have relationships with them. 

Louise: That was why I kept on going with it, because they said very clearly, ‘No, this child is really into this, keep going’. 

Alyssa: Yeah, I was just about to say that again. It’s individualized to every single youth, right? And we can’t necessarily know if they’re not going to verbalize it themselves, but they will show it. Often youth know themselves for the most part, not always, what they need, and they also don’t know what they don’t need or don’t like. For example, if that boy you’re talking about didn’t like that movement, he would have moved away. He might have escalated into a panic moment, he might have had a freak out. So the fact that he went along with it, and the adults in the room who knew him really supported that, I would go with that. I feel like in the moment you trusted yourself to try something.

Sometimes we can’t know. It could have been disastrous, it could have been incredible. And it sounds like it was incredible, or just really a great moment for that young man and everybody else in the class. 

Louise: It worked really well. You’re also making me think of another student who I worked with, who told me very specifically that he hated music. Not just didn’t like it, he hated music. And this was a student… I mean when I first played the clarinet it was like I stabbed a knife in his ear. It was very, very painful for him. I believe what happened the first day was that he went into the library. It was very clear it was just not good for him that day, for whatever reason, it was very, very intense. I took some time with him later in order to ask him a few questions like ‘Is there a place where you find it’s easier for you to listen to music?’ He said, ’Well, when I have my headphones I listen to it like this at home’. I asked, ‘Can I see the level that you have it on, like the volume?’ And he had it on almost as soft as you can get. Okay, all right. Volume is a thing. Then I asked him if I could show him how to manipulate EQ. 

Alyssa: Sorry, what is EQ?

Louise: EQ or equalizer is a way to manage sound. It happens on this podcast, it happens in every single music recording that you’re ever going to listen to. It’s a way to manage the balance of the frequencies. So I had a very, very simple EQ meter that you could adjust. We listened to a piece of music, and I said, ‘Here, let’s see what happens when we take down the really high frequencies’, which sounds really muffled like this. Then we put up the high frequency, and the poor kid flinched like you believe. And I said, ‘Okay, I’m going to stop. You know how to do this. Can you make it so it sounds good to you?’ 

He very clearly had super sensitive hearing, could not tolerate a very specific band of frequencies. But as soon as he figured out how to manage that EQ so it sounded good to him, we started to listen to a whole bunch of different music. As it happened, he totally loved music that was written from about 1720 to 1730, at the beginning of tonality, when tonality was very pure with not very much dissonance.

And so it was this high frequency thing, where, as soon as you got into those high frequencies, as soon as the dissonances started to create more dissonance in the high frequencies, he really disliked it. But as soon as he could control the EQ, he liked it. And he’s now developed this incredibly deep knowledge of the music from 1720 to 1730. 

Alyssa: Amazing. How did you tune into the fact that from 1720 to 1730… that’s amazing. 

Louise: We went on Youtube, and we tried all kinds of different music. ‘Okay, tell me, if you like this’. ‘No!’ ‘How about that?’ ‘No!’ ‘This?’ ‘No!’ I started to get a bit of a sense that he didn’t like anything like the distortion, which was terribly painful for him. Heavy metal wasn’t going to cut it. So I just kept on going back and back and back in time. I just kind of started to figure out that he didn’t like high high amounts of dissonance or noise in music, and so I just kept on pushing it back in time, until I said, okay let’s try some Stamitz (a composer the Early classical period). 

Alyssa: Wow! Such great examples, because you’re really tuning in. 

Now, what’s making me think of when I hear your examples, though, is, in some ways it’s so sad because the school system does not have time to do what you just described. Nor do we often, as teaching artists, have that luxury of time. So just imagine some teaching artists listening to that example, which I find amazing, like, wow! you just tuned in. And how did you even do that? But it’s true that we can, as teaching artists, sometimes be frustrated that we don’t have that time. We might not be able to connect to a certain youth in a class, but we try and we also have twenty other youth in the class. It could be really challenging to know. How do we get to like that place that you just described? And we may or may not be able to. 

Louise: One thing to say is that that experience was an actual residency. So I was in that community for one entire month, twice. So I did have the chance to get to know this student in that classroom very, very well. It was a very small classroom as well, too. So I was lucky, in a sense, but I guess the reason why I wanted to tell that story is because I asked him. I wasn’t coming with the answers, and I told him in advance: ‘I have a way that I think you might be able to manage the sound so that it’s not painful for you. Do you want to try?’

Alyssa: Yeah.

Louise: And he said yes. 

Alyssa: I love that because you asked him. You sort of dug into what was actually happening. You asked the level on his headphones, or I’m not sure the right terminology, but,

I love that. And that is what we can do as teaching artists in a more limited way. We can still have that approach, right? What do you need now? Or how can I make this activity work for you?

I think that’s the way to go. So your example is a great one. And again, if we have the luxury of time, that’s really amazing and wonderful. And if we don’t, we could still come at it with that approach: how can I make this work for you? Or can you just tell me? Like in your experience, what about the music is painful. I love that you just sort of dug and really tried to understand. 

Louise: Well, I was lucky, and you know, when it’s a more of a short term experience where it’s maybe 3 times that I get to be in a classroom, then it’s more simple things, like asking the teacher, ‘Does anybody have sensory issues in this classroom specific to sound? Or it might be, ‘Do you have the coquilles, the little headphones that are meant to dampen the sound?’ And saying, ‘This is gonna be a slightly noisy class in the second half. Are there any headphones, for some of the students who might start to find it a little tough to handle? Can they put them on at that time?’I can kind of preempt issues before they happen. 

Alyssa: Yes. And again in limited ways, we can pick up on kids’ body language, as I was saying earlier, if they’re not integrating into the group. You can just go up to them and connect one-on-one, and try to do what you did, within the confines of what we can do in the limited time and the being pulled in all directions. 

My example would be, I was in a grade 4 class and I’d given the assignment of making the films, and everybody got up bustling about in their groups, and one boy literally slumped in his chair. So I went up to him, and I just sat with him. And I said, ‘Okay, so I see that you’re sitting here alone. Do you like videos?’ I just started asking him questions like, ‘Have you ever made a video?’ He’s like, ‘No, no.’ I said, ‘What about photography?’

You said the words, ‘I got lucky’. I don’t think you got lucky, but I could say the same thing about me. I got lucky because I asked the right question, but I think when we have a good intention, we’re going to get lucky because we’re trying. 

I asked about photography, and he did like it. He mumbled, and he looked down, so some of the symptoms I was talking about earlier, like no eye contact and his body was quite slumped over and away from me. But he shared that his father was a photographer, and I said, ‘Oh, wow! What kind of photography?’ So we just started chatting. It was a very little conversation, but I just quickly thought on the spot, and I said, ‘I need someone to take the making-of shots to document what’s happening here today. Do you think you could do that? Would you take photos for me?’ And it was like a different kid. He just sort of bolted. He’s like, ‘Yeah, I’ll do that’. And then he went off, and he did it. And in all my time in doing these workshops, which has been a lot of years now, nobody’s ever actually done the making-of video, I end up taking their photos. But he literally edited his own video, and we showed it in front of 80 kids, and he was the only one that had from start to finish edited everything on his own. He was very proud. 

So we’re limited, and we try our best. We just try to probe and understand and ask questions, and might get nowhere. I want to say that just because some teaching artists will leave classrooms frustrated that ‘I didn’t reach that kid’. That has happened to me many times, too, and it is part of the process. But then we have magic moments where we probe and we get somewhere very magical. 

Louise: And I think sometimes you just don’t know. It’s very possible that a student might not show really demonstrably that they learned something or that they enjoyed it, but that doesn’t mean that they didn’t enjoy it. It just might mean that that child is thinking about it or processing it, or it comes up later, somehow, when we’re not around. So I think some of it is just trusting that people will take the experiences in the way that they need to. 

Alyssa: Absolutely.

Louise: And you know, people have bad days. They’re tired, they may be sick. They may just have other stuff on their mind. It just happens. We can’t always know 

Alyssa: Yeah, as you said, we can’t always know.

Some strategies for working with neurodiversity in the classroom

Louise: So we have named a number of strategies for when We’re working in the classroom that’s a mixed group of students. We talked about nonverbals and tuning into them. We’ve talked about collaborating with the teachers a fair bit. I’m wondering now about structures. I have to admit that this is one that’s hard for me to follow, because I tend to have a good overall plan, but I’m quite improvisatory, and I will change things very quickly, which can be challenging for some students. 

Alyssa: Yes, I have the same issues. So I can relate to that a lot. Maybe many artists do.

So structure, what do you mean by structure? So basically, we’re going to talk about some strategies now. And once again, just to be clear, every youth is different, so we’re going to try our best. But some of these strategies can be helpful for all students, and then specifically, some with neurodiversity issues: organizing the environment, organizing time, organizing tasks.

Jumping back and forth, but with ADHD or ADD organization can be an issue, with autism. This idea of needing structure and needing to know what’s coming first and what’s coming next. Those are very real things that can help a student not become overwhelmed. 

So if I just use the example of routines. Right? Let’s say again, this might be how someone with autism functions, is that their routine is very, very important to them. So if you deviate from the routine that could really throw them into quite a panic. Right? So just one thing that we implement in our workshops is when we’re going to switch activities. It doesn’t mean that we can’t improvise. But if we’re gonna switch activities well, we’ll give them five min. before. We say, ‘Okay, this is what’s coming’. So they have time to do that. 

That’s just one example. But it might be allowing times between part one and part two of our workshop. It might mean that we organize the actual environment of the classroom in a certain way to allow for a quiet space if anyone’s having a difficult time, for example. Some of these things are not going to be possible. We walk into a classroom, and it’s beyond our control. But these are just some things to think about, that’s all. How can we structure our workshops so that they might be a bit less overwhelming for someone, for example, who might have sensory overload or things like that? 

Louise: Yeah, I have to say that one. I was in a class last year with a teacher who was just brilliant. She was so so good at working with all of the students, and particularly this one student who was on the spectrum. Brilliant kid. He was in grade one, and he was doing grade 6 math. And he was eloquent about color theory, smart smart smart kid. And it was really interesting: before I came in, she gave me an outline that I was to fill in so that she could share it with all of the students in advance, knowing that it would help this student. It was quite basic, you know: come into the classroom, say hello, present guest artist, activity in the classroom. Then we were doing something outside, so walk to the outside. Activity outside. Completing discussion. Go home. 

It gave me a lot of room to play, which was interesting, but just because that student had an idea of what was happening next. When he started to get a little bit like, ‘I don’t know what’s going on’, she pointed the list and said, ‘We’re right here in the structure’.

Alyssa: Nice. Perfect example, perfect example. And again, it’s a simple thing, brilliant teacher, because that is universal design because she gave it to every student so she didn’t single out that one student. On the other hand, it was helpful to everyone, but particularly to that young man, and then it was a tool during the workshop to keep him calm. And that’s great. 

Louise: And it was interesting, too, because, like I did deviate, as I always do, for better or for worse. And it was really interesting, because she actually said, ‘Well, you see, this part here, we’re going to do it first, and then we’re going to do the next part after it’. She was teaching that as a life skill, because life never happens in exactly the way that it’s planned. You know, I apologized to her after. And she said, ‘No, it’s okay. He needs to know that sometimes plans change’. 

Alyssa: I love that example, that’s obviously such a great teacher. The example I was going to share is, I was in this special needs class and we went off schedule exactly like what you’re saying, and the young man with autism, he really freaked out because he didn’t know where his classmates were. It was a repetitive kind of thing, like he just kept repeating, ‘Well, I don’t know where they were. I don’t know where they are. I don’t know where they are’, and it was really a sort of panicky moment. And I just kept repeating, ‘I’m really sorry wwe went off track, but we’re here now, and we’ll wait for them to come back’. I just kind of kept reassuring him. But it wasn’t reassuring him, because he was in a loop of fear.

That was a good experience for me to see that in that particular class it would have been much better to be much clearer, and have a much more structured plan, so that I could share with the students, so that if we went off, like that teacher, I could have explained it. In this case, it was a bit too much. In the end it worked out fine because the students did come back. And then I said, ‘Okay, see? Now, we’re going to get back on track’, and it was fine, but all that to say that structure can be very helpful to not put anyone in a panic mode or just be uncomfortable.

You mentioned wanting to talk a bit about instructions. We talked earlier about the idea of giving instructions in three different ways. For example, one could be visual, one could be orally like I speak it out, and the other is, I go one-on-one, for example, and just check in with everybody. There’s so many ways to give instructions.

And I think one thing we have to be very mindful of is words. For example, something I found myself saying a lot that I really don’t say anymore, I used to say something like, ‘Oh, this should only take five min,’, or ‘Oh, this is an easy step, and then we’ll move on’. Little things like that seem maybe minor, and they are in some ways, but I think having a more inclusive mindset includes the idea that for some people it might take five min, but for others it might take twenty min. And that’s okay. So that’s one thing. Another thing is using visuals. Visuals can be really helpful, because sometimes if I have my buzzing, spinning energy, and I’m talking too fast, and somebody can’t incorporate what I’m saying, having a visual could be very helpful.

So there’s a lot of different tricks and things that we can try.It just goes back to that idea of universal design of trying to think of all the different scenarios that I might encounter in a classroom, and that includes my words. 

Louise: Yeah, for sure. And I have found as well, too, working with students who are on the spectrum, not to use metaphor.

Alyssa: Yes, yes, or sarcasm. Those are two things that are often not understood. 

Louise: Yeah, because, at least in my experience, with some students, their understanding of things is very literal. There was a classroom that I was in, we were doing Foley, sound design for a video that we were making. We were trying to find a sound that sounded like popcorn. We found something that was, you know, close enough for me. I said, ‘That sounds pretty close to to popcorn’, and there’s one kid who put his hand up. ‘No, it doesn’t. It sounds like a car crash!’

And I said, ‘Oh! You are correct. It really does sound like a car crash’. He obviously had at some point in his life been very close to a car crash because he described it in detail what it sounded like. So I said, ‘Okay. That sounded like a car crash. What can we do to make the sound of popcorn?’

And he was fantastic. Our Foley was so precise in that class because he wouldn’t accept anything that was ‘close to’. It had to be exact. 

ALyssa: Your workshop sound very fun, by the way, that’s an aside, but very fun. 

Louise: Thanks! I have a good time, and I hope my students do as well, too. 

Alyssa: Sounds like your students have a really great time. 

I just wanted to get back to the idea of options, because, we talked about that quite a lot, but I think it’s so important to emphasize that because that’s really in some ways the way to success, if we’re able to be flexible and adaptable to whoever’s in front of us. It might be on the spot, it might be that we think of it in advance. Some things we won’t anticipate also. So just keep in mind this idea of giving options. 

Now, I’ve seen some great things in different schools where they have little activity corners. The kids can actually leave the class and go do their little activities, and then come back into the class. That’s amazing. I’ve seen some in certain classrooms where there’s a calm down corner. As long as it’s not related to punishment, of course, if it’s more like, go into this corner when you need to calm down in a positive way that could be so great. 

Louise: There was one school I was in where a kid literally sat on an exercise bike, and he rode his bike that was his desk. He had a desk on his exercise bike. And he just biked all day long. 

Alyssa: Yeah. And I’ve also seen the big round balls where they can bounce up and down. So those are great things. I think the schools are coming around in some ways. Some of it’s related to resources. Some schools that are more disadvantaged, or in poorer neighborhoods, and they might not have as many resources like that. That’s unfortunate. 

As teaching artists are we going to have all of those tools up our sleeves? No, not really. But we can definitely be conscious of needing to move.

I think also youth today in general have attention spans that are shorter. I think teaching artists are probably a lot tuned into that. I know that now I talk less, and I get them into action much quicker. 

It just so happened in one class, this was a special needs class particularly, but I came after lunch, and the youth were bouncing off the walls, all of them. I had to just throw my lesson plan out the window. I connected one-on-one with students, and it was much better that way. 

I find one-on-one connection seems basic as a strategy, but I feel like that’s very, very helpful, because there are so many different needs. It could be the time of day, it could be what they had before lunch, it could be that an incident happened during their lunch hour. There’s so many factors going on in addition to some of these more sensory issues that we’re talking about.

Louise: Absolutely. So we’ve covered really a lot of ground with neurodiversity, ADHD, autism and accessible design, lots of things that would be very much applicable to every classroom out there, and whoever might be in that classroom. There’s a lot more that we could say, and definitely a lot more to experience with the people that we have in our classrooms. Is there anything else you’d like to add? 

Alyssa: Just a few last points. We’ve talked about a lot of things. Again, we can’t cover everything, either. 

Relaxation is one, just giving quiet times. There might be a quiet corner. I’ve seen some teachers who are really tuned into the students who might say, ‘Go for a walk for ten min. and come back’. So again, I think it’s just to sort of have our eyes open to that. That might be something. Probably the teacher will take a lead on that. Some students really do just need a break from all the sensory invasion of the class and everything that’s going on. I know with my workshops, with film, it’s extra hectic, so that could be very overwhelming for some students.

Again, be aware of not making assumptions. For example, just because someone’s on their phone, I would right away think, ‘Oh, they’re on their phone. They’re not listening to me’. But it might be just their way of actually listening to me by doing something else. Be open to the fact that everybody’s so different. Ask questions in that case, because I do want to see if that kid is on his phone for real, or if that kid is on the phone because that helps them. 

The idea of accessible materials is a very huge other topic. If we’re using a Powerpoint or videos, how would that fall for the students? That could be a question we ask teachers. There’s a lot out there now on different colors you can use in your Powerpoints and all sorts of things to make it less sensory overload-ish, if that’s a word.

So anyway, we won’t get into that now, but if that’s something you use material wise, that could be a question to ask or to just explore. You know, we all do want strategies, and the ‘what do I do?’ and very concrete things. I hope through this discussion, the theme that has really come out is, yes, we can have all sorts of strategies, but the bottom line is that everybody’s so different. To me, the beauty of what neurodiversity is all about actually, right?, that we accept that everybody’s different, and that we’re going to try our best to process things. As we talked about earlier, we have to trust that we’re doing our best, and that they’re gonna get the most out of our workshop, in what we can do in the time that we’re there.

Louise: And hopefully have fun while we’re at it.

Alyssa: And hopefully have fun. That’s always the goal. 

Louise: I have to say that I really love working with students of all kinds, and specifically with people who do show neurodiversity of some kind, because it’s just so fun. It’s so interesting to be able to get a little taste of how somebody other than myself might experience the world, might see it, might hear it, might… It’s just so interesting to be working with all of these different students and the gifts that they bring. 

Alyssa: I love that you talked about their gifts because I agree. If I come full circle with my best social work lessons, my best lessons really come down to the magic of every single person, right? Everybody’s different. And I feel like people who are neurodiverse kind of push us to remember that, push us to get out of our own comfort zones, to think differently, to see differently, to not have limits and not control all of those things I talked about earlier. The idea ofr eally just opening ourselves to what’s possible. 

And that’s a big gift that I take away from any interaction I have with someone. Those lessons to me are really precious. And and just really just reminds me to think bigger, to think differently and think out of the box. To take people’s differences as strengths. So many lessons, so many beautiful lessons. 

Louise: I totally agree. Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts with us today, Alyssa. 

Alyssa: Thanks again for having me. I always love sharing.

Acknowledgements

Hosted by Louise Campbell, this podcast was recorded at ELAN’s Community Digital Arts Hub, with mixing and editing by Tyler Rauman. Music featured on this podcast was produced by Kuzmo, a youth involved in the creation of the soundtrack for the film RESILIENCE.

The Youth Mental Health podcast is funded by the Community Health & Social Services Network (CHSSN), the Secretariat à la jeunesse and the Fondation Lucie et André Chagnon. The views expressed herein are based on the experience and professional training of the guests, and supported by information on mental health and wellbeing that were current at the time of recording in March 2025. These views do not necessarily represent the views of ELAN or the funders.