Sasha Long, founder of The Autism Helper, shares six strategies for neurodivergent-affirming classrooms. Present information in multiple ways, offer choices about materials and seating, allow breaks without questioning, learn from neurodivergent adults like Temple Grandin, and assign tasks that highlight each student's strengths.
When your classroom is set up in a way that supports neurodivergent learning, you are going to have students that are more engaged, making more progress, and are happier. I'm Sasha Long, I'm the founder and president of The Autism Helper, and today I'm going to share 6 ways that you can create a neurodivergent-affirming classroom. The first strategy is simple and easy: give multiple ways to consume information. If you are giving directions, guess what? You should also write it on the board, and you should also model out what you want your students to do. You You say, "Okay class, it's time to pack up and wait in line to go to gym." Write that on the board: pack up, wait in line to go to gym. Written text is a visual cue, and model that. Pack up your own stuff, go wait and stand in line. These 3 ways are gonna help learners that receive information in different ways. Students with lower receptive language are gonna really benefit from the modeling and the written words. Students that struggle with task initiation and sustained attention, 2 really important executive functioning skills, are also gonna help by getting that information in different modalities. If you're asking your kids to wait and you say, "Hey, we've got 5 or 10 more minutes till something," not all learners are great with understanding the concepts of time. Maybe you also wanna use a visual timer where you can show how much more time is left and there's a visual cue. Maybe you also wanna use a visual wait card that visually breaks down a time period into sections and shows how much time is left. This is going to help neurodiverse students be successful when some— for something like waiting. Strategy number 2: Offer choices. This could just be the strategy for everything, but choices are so powerful. This puts your students in control. We want to give our kids choices and the opportunity to self-advocate. Your students likely have a better understanding of their learning profile, so give choices about what materials they use, where they sit, the order of activities, who they work with, what the setting looks like. We all make those decisions for ourselves when we work, right? When you have time and you have to get, get something done, you make the decisions of what the setting looks like, if there's music on, what the— if the door is closed. I personally hate working when the door's open. I don't know why. If someone were to leave the door open, I would go and close it. We want to give our kids the same autonomy. This is going to help them get their unique needs met. Such an easy-to-use strategy that we can use in literally any setting that can support all of our students. Strategy number 3: allow breaks. And you know what? Just don't ask too many questions. When I talk to teachers about this, sometimes people get uncomfortable and nervous. They're like, "I should just give a break whenever he needs a break?" I'm not saying it has to be that, like, all-encompassing, but I don't think we need to question so often when students ask for a break. I think we can teach our students how to recognize triggers that may be leading to them feeling overwhelmed or upset, and they do identify those triggers, that when they ask us for a break, we're gonna say yes. That's really key. Not like, "Why do you need a break? Maybe later." If they need a break in that moment, validate and reinforce that request by giving them that break. Your student may need a break to engage in coping skills, self-soothing skills, to kind of regain their composure and then come back to the group. If it becomes a problem and they're asking for it too much and you maybe think they're abusing that privilege of asking for a break, go back and look at that, but don't start there. Give them the benefit of the doubt. Allow students to ask for short breaks as needed. Again, this is something we do for ourselves all the time. When you need a break, you take a break, right? So do this for your students as well. Allow them to ask for breaks. Number 5 is learn with and from neurodiverse adults. I love sharing books and stories from neurodivergent adults because I want my students to see themselves in the people that we are learning from. I also want them to see what success stories there are and what challenges they overcame. Here are a few of my favorite books. There are so many great ones. Temple Grandin, of course, is one that I love always bringing to different students. And there are also a lot of kids' books that have been written by autistic adults, and I love sharing the stories behind the authors with my students so they know that they can see themselves in the people that we are learning from. And last, assign students activities that highlight their strengths. If your student loves helping, have them be the morning helper, have them be the line leader, let them pass out materials. If your student is really good at art, have them help you illustrate a class book or design a bulletin board. Hone in on those strengths and then really help those students cultivate that area and show off that strength for the rest of their class and their peers. Really look at the individual strengths for each of your students when assigning general tasks for the classroom, things like that class helper or parts of assignments. Alright, these strategies seem small and simple, but they can make a huge impact on making sure that your neurodivergent learners feel comfortable, safe, and successful in your classroom. I'd love to hear how you are implementing these strategies in your room, and if you want to hear more from us, subscribe to our channel.
