What really is inclusion and how do we know if we are pulling it off?

Our lovely and talented guest week, Lauren Hough Williams, offers her expertise as an educator and expert in creating inclusive educational experiences for neurodivergent students.  Lauren helps us see inclusion as a mindset that can manifest in a variety of ways.  We discuss how to encourage sharing responsibility with the classroom teacher in this effort, as well as creating an environment in which thoughtful risk taking and creativity are supported.  While there is no question that inclusion benefits our communities, we discuss how to create plans that maximize the educational experiences of all students in realistic ways.  

Find us on Instagram!

Gillian: https://www.instagram.com/clearconnectionpsychology/

Joelle: https://www.instagram.com/joelle.vanlent/

Transcript

0:24

Hello and welcome to Stance of Curiosity. I'm Gillian Boudreau, and I'm Joelle Van Lent. Hi everyone, and today is our first time in season three that we have a guest who's one of my favorite people in the world. We're very lucky today to have Lauren Hough Williams. She happens to be a neurodiversity and inclusion specialist and an experienced special educator. I know that because we've been best friends for 30 years, and she used to let me come into her classroom in the arts and teach yoga to autistic children. Lauren taught in the New York City Department of Education before working for over a decade to define, refine, and expand ASD Nest, the largest inclusion program for autistic students in the country. As a program developer, Lauren partners with neurodivergent experts to shift the paradigm in traditional special education from focusing deficits to centering strengths. She is committed to galvanizing school systems to understand the needs of neurodivergent communities to build equitable, inclusive learning ecosystems for all. And she's also been my best friend since 1999 when I sang her into an a cappella group in upstate New York. Welcome, Lauren. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Nice job, Gillian. That doesn't really show up. In my bio often, so I love the extra color. We should all put one kind of random fact at the end of our bios, right? Like at the end of mine, it should definitely say grew up on a sheep farm. It should definitely say that because it also taught you so much about co-regulation and dynamics; it really did. Right, yes, because we had to adopt all kinds of dysregulated animals on said sheep farm. So yes, yeah, I feel like we have to shift and talk about that today. That's for another day. Would be, as a child, was inattentive enough that she not once but twice wandered into the path of somebody swinging a baseball bat and got hit in the head. Oh, two times. Two separate times. But not a third time. Nope, no, not yet. Not yet. Anything can happen. Not Lauren, we're so excited to have you here today. So one of the first things we wanted to talk to you about. Joelle, can you frame your question for So Lauren is an inclusion expert, and we want to hear more about sort of the how to really do inclusion well when it can sometimes seem a little bit impossible in our settings. Take it away, Joelle. Yeah, so I have actually been having a lot of very lovely and thoughtful sort of debates or discussions with special educators and school teams about how our idea of inclusion is not the reality of inclusion. And so I wanted to, I thought it would be great to start the conversation with like, what is your basic philosophy about inclusion in terms of, like, on a hypothetical level, what do you think it all boils down to? I mean, I wish it was an easier answer, but I think in my mind, inclusion, people think of it as a program, people think of it as a place, people think of it as a training protocol that you go through as an. But I think at the end of the day, inclusion is really all about mindset, right? It's really about, and this can be the mindset of any educator or any adult who's kind of holding space in a school. Do you believe that all children, regardless of neurotype right. Regardless of the acronym that happens to follow their name after a clinical diagnosis, regardless of how they're presenting in the classroom, do you believe that they have a right and a and belong in your classroom?

And I think to me that's what really defines inclusion: 4:31

that mindset of every kid belongs here. And I think that out of that inclusive mindset can come a lot of the methods, right, that help to really put inclusion into place, that help to kind of drive what do you do every day to make sure that you're running an inclusive system if you're talking about a school and classroom if you're talking about. that kind of smaller ecosystem think it's easier said than done, right? There are a lot of people who are educators, who have wonderful hearts, who want to be there for every kid, but who, at the end of the day, when they're struggling finding a way to reach and support a will default to what I know we've all heard, which is he just doesn't belong here, right? And it's because I care about him that I'm telling you he doesn't belong here; he belongs somewhere else. And I think that default, Jillian and I have talked for years about the fear that kind of drives educators to say he doesn't belong here, which I think is the main issue. But if your mindset is our communities are diverse; our learners are they're going to bring a lot of different needs and profiles. But at the end of the day, they belong in my room. Yeah, I, that's such a helpful grounding, like starting place, and I would say I've been working in schools for about 25 years, maybe a little bit more if you include graduate school. And in Vermont, I will say I feel like we've come to the point where I can proudly and confidently say that almost everybody believes that they belong, that they have a right, and almost everybody believes that the community benefits from their being present and and learns from them. gains valuable skills from them being there and so that I feel pretty confident around. The tension seems to come up in terms of I spent a lot of my, I do a lot of evaluations and consultations, so I do a lot of observation in the back of the room. When I ask What do you think so and so is doing during first instruction And this could be kindergarten all the way up through twelfth grade, a lot of times I hear they're zoning out. And and so I can see that for part of their day being in the room and being present and gaining all of those things, the tension for me comes up with like, how much of the day are they going along pretending? that they know what's happening and how much of the day are they engaged in something that they can feel competent and authentically engaged, and are we moving their skills forward? So it comes down to what is the best use of this person's time, and are we maximizing the years that we have with them? It's never really about do they belong somewhere else; it's about what are they learning here. And it's 80% of their day sometimes, and I start to get uncomfortable, and then I feel like I lose my footing as an advocate because I feel like people say, well, we must do inclusion, and it's see something happens when I advocate where I come across. as though I don't believe in inclusion. So I'd love you to help me think about, like, how are we advocating without it seeming like I think that we should go back to putting neurodivergent people in a different room together? I definitely don't want that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think, I mean, I run into this as well. You know, I'll talk to really well-meaning educators who will say, " Yeah, you know, I'm gonna do my 20-minute mini lesson, and then I'm gonna reach those kids that really didn't get it And so my curiosity is around, like, so what is your expectation of this student during that 20-minute mini lesson? That they sit and comply and nod? Or at least are quiet and wait right Well everyone else learns and then then it'll be your turn and I'll provide that differentiated instruction after the fact. And then we get frustrated when students are zoning out, when students end up becoming Dysregulated because they've been asked to wait. I mean I can't sit and wait for 20 minutes. So you know I definitely couldn't do that when I was when I was in school. And so I think one of the things that we need to really think about is inclusion is more than just being in the space. All right, what is the educator doing differently to reach a variety of kids that are that are in there in their room and I know that that is. That becomes increasingly complicated as you have less adults in the room and more students in the room. You know, you can be a very sophisticated educator and you can be differentiating and still not be able to reach everyone, and I think that's the part that gets really tricky. One of the things that I'm always really interested in, in the classroom, is how are we differentiating for the learners in the space? Are we using those universal supports first and have a really robust year one intervention in place where we're proactively supporting the majority of the learners in the space and then? finding the opportunities to provide that more individualized instruction or individualized supports for the students that are really struggling. Or are we jumping to the laminated solution for each individual kid that is struggling, which is not a sustainable solution if you're also trying to meet the needs of the rest of the kids? So it's still not easy, but I think that there are some foundational questions that I always want to ask first to really interrogate what's the base level of support that's currently in place and that we're not withholding some of those, waiting for some of the kids to struggle. and then putting them in place kind of reactively when we see that they're they're having a hard time. I don't know what you think about that. Well, for listeners, could you, that was so brilliant? Could you define tier one and also laminated solution? Yes. Yes. You know, when we talk about tier one supports, we talk about supports that every every student in the classroom has access to. So one of the universal supports that I love to talk about with educators, whether you're talking about primary or secondary, is there some sort of break program that's available to all kids, right? And so in the kindergarten class, is there a break? space But any kid can go to to kind of recoup, recharge, and then rejoin the rest of the class. And it's not something you have to earn, and it's not something that's sometimes closed, and you don't have to have an IEP to utilize it. But this is just in our classroom. We know that sometimes our energy level isn't quite matched to whatever task we're trying to do, and sometimes we just need a break to take care of. Why not proactively have some of this in place and help kids of all ages learn what they need best in order to learn, right? And then when I think about the laminated solution, I mean I think there are so many really powerful visual supports self regulation supports that teachers really creatively create when they see that a kid is having a really hard time. You know, they stay late in the classroom and it's always dark, and they've got the color printer that they're only allowed to print one color copy, right? And they use it. They're frightening the unwitting custodian who comes in at 9 p. m. You're still here? Not expecting, yeah? Yeah, and you know they toil over making this perfect visual for this kid who's struggling in. And you know best case it works. You've laminated it, it looks beautiful and it works for this kid. But can you really maintain it every single day. What about the next kid that needs something like this? How do you continue to use it? How do you refine it? And so I think we get a little bit stuck, and we jump to these very specific and involved individualized solutions rather than stepping back and saying, what could I do differently for everyone to hopefully meet the needs of the many, which gives me a little bit more time to focus on the few? Yeah, I also wonder too, and I mean one thing I've said so often on this podcast is that I am not a classroom teacher, and I wouldn't be good at it. So it's honestly a little bit rich that my whole job is like advising classroom teachers. But you know, so if I'm thinking about that, you know, maybe that kid who Joelle was observing, right? Who Lauren's familiar with, who you until we have a better strategy, who to some degree is being asked to kind of wait it out through the mini lesson that's not really for them, right? I wonder if there are also ways to tailor something like a mini lesson to even make that more universal, to maybe bring that more to even like ever more foundational pieces of just like the very universal themes that we're trying to get to in that lesson. Remembering that just like we could come back after that mini lesson and break it down for somebody who. might need it more broken down. We would just as easily be able to come back after the mini lesson and, like, make it much more abstract and advanced for somebody who needs that. I also think about, you know, not only do you want these multiple entry points at different levels so that different kids can kind of access in different ways, right? That's some of the UDL work. But I think also how can we prime some of the content for some of the students so they're not constantly, right? I love a pre-teach. I mean, you know, many of our students are being asked to constantly set shift and think about something new every single period, and that's. an awful lot for them to kind of tolerate. It's a lot of newness. And so what could we do in advance to give them a little bit of a leg up so that they know what's coming as some sort of something that they know, you know? Joelle, you mentioned kind of feeling competent early on. It's because they can feel really competent in that mini lesson. So they don't feel quite so... Yeah. You know, Joelle and I talked about that, sorry to cut you off, Joelle. In I think season two, when we were talking about PDA, or pervasive drive for autonomy, right? Which doesn't always come along with autism and can also exist separately, but sometimes does. And I also love. you know with my like ad nauseum a safe brain is a smart brain thing. It also is hard to process a mini lesson if you're feeling, you know, basically like startled. A startle response is one of the main things that can throw a PDA nervous system into overdrive, but also can like throw any of us off our balance, being the basic safety, right? So a pre-teach is also just so great for unlocking the thinking part of the brain because it's like we don't even have to deal with startle right now. We actually knew what was gonna be happening. This mini lesson is not a. Now maybe we can, you know, hear it again for the second or third time, get some more. Information out of it, without just shutting down, because this is yet another startling new thing in my day that's already a circus of, yeah, I mean, I think in Vermont there's been, in most or all schools, a lot of professional development time spent on universal design for learning. Yeah. So you're teaching to the edges so that you get everybody in between. And I think, as you're talking, I'm almost feeling like maybe part of what I'm wishing for is that we could give permission to educators to come to a team to say, I think we're accomplishing visually what looks like inclusion because the student is in my room or in a regular ed. classroom almost all day. But what I'm worried about is how often they feel competent. What I'm worried about is that I'm not sure I know or have the time or knowledge to accommodate the instruction for them to access it. I'm worried that they're feeling dysregulated or triggered by a lesson that they can't access. And it makes me think of research that was presented at a conference I went to with Michelle Garcia Winner, who was the presenter years ago, where she talked about the mental health risk is highest for neurodivergent students who are the closest to what we would think of as neurotypical. Right. So, like the closer that you are to that edge the more at risk you are for depression quite aware of the ways in which you might be socializing differently or self-regulating differently or learning differently. And so I guess part of it feels like we're not supposed to, it almost feels taboo to say should we be doing this differently? Should we be accomplishing inclusion a little bit differently? Or I don't know how to accommodate this for this student. I need help, I need coaching, I need support. Because maybe there's a fear that I don't know how would sound like a return to like I don't want to or like get this get out of here. Right? When really I think this is something that we're going to be figuring out in different ways forever. Right? And it's it's going to look all kinds of different ways. Well, I think a missing piece for me for many teams, and you know when when I was in the classroom I had the benefit of this from the beginning. And so I didn't realize, I didn't realize what I had right until I went into into other schools. I had, you're, you started out in NEST schools, right? Pretty early on when I first started I remember now. There was not additional tons of support, but early on I had a tremendous amount of additional pre-service and ongoing professional development. through the program that I was working in, as well as consultants who came in and observed and gave feedback, which I think that was really critical to for for me to kind of figure out how do you do this. Because you can have a very successful year with a collection of students that are in your class, and then you could try all of those exact same things the very next year and all of them could fail. And it's not because you're doing the wrong thing, but it's because you're not yet doing the right thing for that makeup of kids. But I think that one thing that would be of tremendous support to any school to figure out how do I facilitate the interprofessional collaboration that's really necessary to fully understand and support our our let's say neurodivergent kids because Joelle you're you're absolutely right right The you know you feel unsuccessful in the classroom is not only going to be contribute is not only going to contribute to academic struggles but social emotional struggles as well that we don't want to snowball And as an educator I have a certain perspective in terms of thinking about this child as a learner and thinking about this child as a member of a classroom community But I need other professionals to help really interrogate what's going on with this with this student I need to hear from the occupational therapist right What are you seeing both in sessions if the if the student has sessions or what do you see in the classroom when you happen to push in for for another student if we're examining this student from let's say an executive functioning kind of perspective And I really need my SLP to help if you don't if you can't already tell I'm quite a talker right Am I over talking around this student And they really can't process as much language as I am pouring at them all day long I want to hear from the from the psychologist right What are some of the the anxiety triggers right that I need to be aware of. And then how do we, as an interprofessional team, really examine the Rubik's cube of the kid that we have in front of us in this moment and figure out what are we all seeing? What are some of the patterns? Where are some of the questions we all have? And where do we go next as a team supporting supporting this student? And that team needs to include all the professionals in the school, needs to include the family, right, that's working with the student and needs to include the student themselves, right? They're obviously the most critical part of the team. Yeah, yes. It's it makes me it's so fascinating from a regulation perspective, right? Because we want to, we want to do inclusion, but we also want to do it in a, you know, a really thoughtful, tailored way because we don't want the kids to feel unsuccessful and have the negative mental health as results from that. And there's always a parallel process here, right? Because trying to do inclusion well is incredibly vulnerable for educators, in part because it's you can't set it and forget it, right? You can't like put a plan together one year and have that work the next year or even the next month, right? It has to be so fluid and flexible. And it's really easy to feel like you're doing it wrong, which could set the educator up right for the negative mental health consequences of feeling unsuccessful. Some of which, right, are probably the feelings that cause people to, you know, fewer and fewer people are shying away from inclusion now, but when they do, I imagine it's mostly because of that fear, right. Of, I don't know if I'm doing this right. Maybe they, I don't know, maybe they don't belong here. I can't do it. And so, you know, what you're really talking about is something that, Joelle, I learned from you, which is educators sharing the worry as a main way to stay regulated, right. So it's like we also have to find inclusion on our multidisciplinary teams to tolerate the vulnerability and the constant attunement to changing factors, and the vulnerable confusion at times of trying to do inclusion well. It's making me think about how sometimes, if you say things in August to a team before anybody's done anything, then people don't take it personally. So it's almost, it's almost like we should in August pull the team together and say that, you know, pulling off inclusion, this student looks different every year and it will automatically require a feedback loop between all of us that's somewhat constant. know how to do that. And what we did last year will be helpful information to guide us, but potentially not what that means this year. And if we call inclusion a mindset, not like a percentage of time in a specific room, not a location. Right? Exactly. And so if we, if it's a mindset, and so there will be feedback all the time, and it's sort of like this student comes with a lot of learning and a lot of feedback. It's opportunity for all of us to grow professionally. So then we say that right out of the gate. And then if in like mid-September, we're like, okay, I think we need to rethink this part of things. Here's our first opportunity for feedback. and learning I just you know some people will love that. And some people will feel immediately overwhelmed by that. But what you're talking about is like a group of people thinking about it together. So it's not on any one person. And I think some of the breakdown is where the regular educator feels like, Lauren, I don't have just one tricky student, I have seven tricky students out of 20, and two of them are neurodivergent, and three of them are living in such circumstances outside of here that are highly adverse. And the other three I have no idea yet. And then you know, so I'm it's a lot. And so I think what when we're saying good news is that some of these students come with a whole team that is going to sit and help you think about that. And we're going to keep restructuring that toward this mindset of inclusion that doesn't have to look any one particular way. And what happened last year may not work this year, not because that teacher was better than you, but because all the circumstances in very subtle, but impactful ways changed. I think that setting that expectation could be really helpful. Well, I think there are two there are two other things I think about that I think piggyback on those. And one is from the leadership of the school. And the other is on the part of the individual educator that we're talking about. We need school leaders to obviously lead with an inclusive mindset and to lead with a neuroaffirming mindset. But also to say early and often, I welcome the welcome educators who take some risks, right, who try something new. I give you permission. I mean, I've printed out permission slips for principals to hand out, like I give you permission to try something new. I give you permission to do something that you haven't done before. And it might totally flop. And I'm not going to think that you're a bad teacher; I'm not going to think that you don't care about. your kids, I'm going to celebrate you for being flexible and pushing yourself outside your comfort zone and trying something new for the sake of your kid. And tell me what happens. I want to hear the good, the bad, and the right. Because I think in order to be a really successful educator for kids who think outside the box, right, we need to meet them outside the box. And the mistake we make is when we try to shove everybody into the way I've always done things or my preference as a teacher, the way I like to teach, what's always worked in the past for me. And so I think the risk-taking behavior, which has not always been celebrated or encouraged. In educators right, you know we've had our hands slapped many times for doing that. And so I think to have a supervisor say, 'Try it out. I really want you to explore I think could be really powerful. Also, to the teacher who's like, 'I have these seven kids and there are three more and I'm not quite sure where to begin And especially, you know, we're thinking about fall, right? We're still very much in early the school year. The most powerful thing that any educator can do right now is get to know and get to like your kids. I'll sit in on hour-long consultation sessions and everyone wants, again, that fabulous laminated strategy and solution. But at the end of the day, that connection, that relatedness, is the most important thing that you can do. Because if the child feels calm, if the child feels safe, if there is early trust, if they see that you can see their strengths and you see the things that light them up inside, you can build on that. But if you don't have that, it's hard. And if they see that you light up in their presence, right? If they see that you experience delight around them, that helps me too because sometimes I can start to get overwhelmed about, like, I don't know enough strategies or how am I going to tell people, how are we going to do this? And it is so grounding to remember that yeah at the end of the day, the name of the game is regulate to educate, right? And the most universal thing we have is connection. And I actually do have a strategy for that that I will talk about a lot, which is called the two by ten strategy,

which is: 30:04

can you take two minutes a day for 10 consecutive school days and just find a way to sit near a kid and interact with them in a child-directed way, right? Just about anything at all. And it's amazing how often that will change the game, right? In inclusion-wise, and help a kid maybe get to where they don't feel they don't appear to be zoning out as much because oh, well, now, right, whether or not like the lesson has been able to be pre-taught enough that it carries a lot of meaning for them, you know. Now this is like a teacher who they feel a connection with, who they're interested in, right? Who's doing something up front, and that's like more engaging, right, than watching someone who you don't have much of a connection with do something up, and then peers in an authentic, legitimate way in the school. And if not, that's an emergency and becomes more important than anything else. And then the second thing is how often does the student feel competent? Not just I can keep up. It's like this is actually the time and the thing. where I shine that I'm good at. And none of us could sustain in an environment like a day, whether it was our job or our school, where almost all day you were feeling like you were barely keeping up or not sure or not going on. So I'll actually look at the schedule and I get quite practical about it. Like, show me on their day and their week, circle the times where they feel competent, they don't need any help, and they're shining and totally in the zone. If that's not at least twice a day, then we have an emergency and we need to move things around. And so basically for me then, inclusion becomes like before they are going to be challenged with. literacy or math or social development. Before that, we're going to position a time where they can do something for however much time, wherever it might be, where they can feel highly competent. And lots of times, that's like they're a reading buddy for a younger student, or they're helping in the library, or the art room, or the classroom, or somewhere they're doing a job. There's something where we're patterning the day so that it's like I felt like I was comfortably in the middle of the group, I felt like I was shining, and then I felt like I was totally at the edge of my proximal development, really being challenged. And we pattern. It that way. And if the patterning isn't thought of in that step back and look at it, then you can see why somebody is shutting down or escalating or dysregulating. And it's sometimes permission to let go of what we thought we had to do to make sure that somebody has competence, which I think is like a basic human need. Well, and you're also talking about the building blocks of internal motivation, right? And self-determination, right? And so if we're not feeling connected to the people around us, if we're not feeling competent, and if we're not doing things independently, we're not going to see students become really internally. motivated. And then the challenge is when we see that students are not motivated, we make the mistake of then jumping into some sort of compliance protocol. And we jump in and we overly control. And then we're shocked at, like, oh, she's not very motivated, is she? Well, no, because we've compromised their feelings of relatedness, competence, and autonomy. Right? And sometimes we've tried to steer them away from the things they're most interested in because we don't want them to get fixated on those, right? Losing a total opportunity to bring in. Yeah, like we withhold the things that they're most interested in as privileges. that you have to earn. Oh, I have to tell a terrible story. I'm really sorry in advance. It's terrible. I was visiting a school, and the principal was walking me around, and I was visiting all the classrooms. We were going to the kindergarten classroom. I was very excited to see the little ones. And on the door was a sign that said proudly, " This is a no train classroom And I said I don't know what that means. Can you explain to me what does it mean that it's a no train classroom And the principal said, " Well, there's one student who is just so distracted by trains, and so we just do not let them anywhere in. We don't talk about them We don't read about them. We don't do anything so that this kid can be more focused. And I was like, oh, we have an opportunity, right? We have an opportunity. I have an idea. We have an opportunity. Let's, let's, let's, let's try to anchor in that, right? Because what was what was being so missed by this team was that this student's driving passion was going to be a way for them to connect with peers, for them to self-regulate, for them to access academics, for them to shine and lead in the classroom. I mean, what a door to literally close to a student and to then say in the following breath, you know, he's really just not motivated. I'm not quite sure. what to do about it? Right? Yeah, I mean I had such a aha when you said when you went right to because that idea of connection and confidence comes from motivation neuroscience, right? It's like how you build that. And I am glad that there's I hear more and more often that the goal can never be compliance. Like compliance can never be our goal. It's deeper than that. And I think we have to give our students credit. Like one of my favorite things to do is I travel around with a big bag of fidget tools. And when I'm working with a for psychological assessments, I often will dump this bag out and say can you make three piles? And I've done this with four year olds all the way to 18 year olds of all different types. Can you make three piles? One pile is it's so fun, it would be a great tool for me during a but it would be too fun for me to use while learning. Second pile is I'm just not interested in it at all. And third pile is it increases my ability to on something that I'm also doing. And every student has been able to make three piles. And then I say if I offered you one to keep because of how hard you worked with me today, which pile do you think you might choose from? And they almost always say I should probably choose the one that helps me focus. And then if I say do you want to choose two? for you or one for you and one for your classroom. They almost always say one for me and one for my. And it's just honestly a little social psychology experiment that I've been doing for years and years and years. And I will say that it is remarkable to me how I have to say like 90 some percent of the time students can make three piles and they choose the tools that are gonna help them and they wanna bring back a helpful tool to their classroom. So it's just so interesting to me how like given if we step back and look at like a lot of times we talk about sitting next to the student and aligning with them against the. And if we do that if we take that stance if we're sitting together looking at this curiously together. They have really great wisdom to offer into that. And so, how could trains be so exciting to you? And you have so much information about trains. How could we include trains in our classroom and in our day in a way that we could also learn and find joy in trains, but not have it be so distracting to what else we're trying to do? I bet that student would have maybe had some ideas. I bet you're right. I mean, it makes me think about how a lot of this is about holding trust that kids are interested in advancing their own education. They're interested in figuring. out something they really care about and getting good at it. And they also, to some degree, do know what they need. Their nervous systems are smart and are trying to keep them regulated and in a good spot. That maybe as a segue to a second thing I really wanted to talk to Lauren about today, which is what happens for autistic kids when they become autistic adults, which Lauren, I think in your work, you have a keen eye for because you work in sort of the employment space with autistic folks as well. Because I feel like that permission slip idea is so massive, right? Because oftentimes educators have not been given the space to take the type of out of the box risks that we might to really do inclusion well. Also, one thing I hear really often from well-meaning educators is, like, maybe we could do a lot of creative accommodation and inclusive stuff here, but is that doing these kids a disservice? Because, eventually, these are my words, not the words of educators, but it sort of boils down to, eventually, they are gonna have to sit still under fluorescent lights in order to be agents of the machine to get a. So are we, or are we not getting them ready to do that? And I actually I have some evidence in my practice, right? Because I work with a lot of autistic adults for why and how. If we help foster self-trust and self-determination, those may just very well not be the jobs that they need to do. They might find way cooler jobs that are better for their nervous system. But, Lauren, I'd love to hear sort of your thoughts and your experience with all that too. Yeah, well, first of all, I wanna also just name that I come to this work as an educator who is a member of the neuro majority, right? So I work with many autistic folks, but I myself do not identify as autistic. So when I talk about kind of the expertise, and there's such an expertise in lived experience. And so, when we're talking about how we're more inclusive, schools. for neurodivergent folks when we're talking about how do we grow this up into the employment ecosystem and how does that inform the landscape. I think we need to be looking to and to the neurodivergent folks who have been doing this work for a very long time but who haven't always really been listened to as the experts. And so, I've had the pleasure of working with many autistic folks, kind of, and thinking about so how do we begin to scale up and continue this mindset of inclusion as we talk about moving outside of K to 12. I think that a lot of the work, thought about it, I think a lot of the work is on the shoulders of the neuromajority. right And not on the shoulders of the neurodivergent folks to do something different again. Earn your place again right. We're right back in the classroom. Earn your place into the general education environment. How do we really redefine what do employment landscapes kind of look like? What do the spaces look like? We don't need fluorescent lighting just like we don't need lighting in the classroom. So how do we think about the physical spaces and really redesign for more neurotypes? How do we really examine some of the neurotypical bias and kind of ableism that we see in workplaces? How do we think about the interview process? for example, and how do we make sure that that's more accessible to folks of different neurotypes? There are some folks who can go into an interview with a brand new person and have brand new questions thrown at them in an environment that is sensorially very overwhelming and be very successful. But is that necessarily going to be the person who is most qualified for that position? Perhaps not. Are you actually cutting off an entire arm of talent that could actually be very successful and really push your business if you were more accessible? Right. It's like unless the role is taking interviews, right? It's actually not a very good metric. Yeah, right. And unless you're going to work a public school, you don't really need to be able to deal with what Gillian often calls control. A lot of times I'll say to a team we have to think about whether this is a transferable skill. And if it's not, I have no interest in working on it. You can have a very full adult life and never eat in a room with 100 other people that smells really strong, and everybody's talking at once, and it's echoing. Yeah, yeah. That is not at all necessary. So from kindergarten to 12th grade, I would never feel a need to require a kid to eat there if it doesn't work for them. Yeah. And if we've done our job right. In K to 12, if we've done our job right, we are growing up young adults who have a certain level of expectations of the people around them in terms of, I understand my needs, I understand who I am, I know what my strengths are. I know the employers to have a neuro-affirming practice, right? To have some of these accommodations proactively in place. And I hope that a lot of the students who were quote unquote general education in K to 12 also have an expectation of a really neuro-diverse employment ecosystem, right? Because they've grown up in that. And so, you know, my I hope that there's a little bit of coming up as we really think about the realities that have always been in our employment ecosystem. Yeah, I think that's a great stance. One of the things I like to do in high school is, you know, there's IEPs; sometimes, they come with IEP at a glance, which is like a cheat sheet for people. I like to do in high school a me at a glance that the student participates in. So,

it's four quadrants: 45:42

it's strengths and interests, and it's challenges. And then it's things that I know work, and things that I know don't work. And we update it and revise it so that a new person could have that sheet. And the student helps create that. The goal being that by the time you're done with high school, however. Long you're in high school, you could hand that to a new employer and it would transfer and be quite effective. Or you could reference that for self-advocacy. I had a client once who at the beginning of every semester in high school emailed any new teacher with a picture of herself and said, " This is me. I have social anxiety. I will participate in your class. Please let me initiate participation. Please don't call on me And then, if they forget and call on her, she sends an email This is my last email. Just a reminder." Amazing. And I was like, this is where she was like, " Yeah, my teachers are like really, like very responsive And now I sit there. not spending 80% of my energy worried that I might get called on. Oh my gosh, brilliant! I know, it's so great! And I that made me think like we should have students be introducing themselves in very efficient ways to their teacher. Cause you know, this is me and this is what I need, you know, and I think any teacher is gonna remember that so clearly if it comes from the student, even via an email or you know, some kind of a visual document. Yeah, you know, I think that it's something that we need to be starting early and continuing much later, right? What if there is this document that follows, you know, it's initially led by the parent early on as The parent is introducing their child to a new school. What if it grows up through and passes through all of the different educators that this child is working with? And it's an ongoing conversation. And obviously, at different ages, different students can kind of participate at a different level, but even some of the little ones can participate and really articulate, here's what I love, right? And make sure that my teachers know that. And also have this echo across all of school that who you are is important. People wanna get to know you, that there are things that are just so fabulous about you, and we have to let folks know. And then gradually release that responsibility to the student and empower them to be able to articulate some of this on their own. And then that only sets them up to be in a really good position as they're transitioning. So a big part of inclusion is also adults having enough attunement and insight and delight in a child that that can transfer into them and that they can then self-advocate and self-actualize from that same stance of self-knowledge and delight in. Yeah. And I really love that idea of risk-taking. And I love the idea of like a school leader and a staff person saying I wanna take this risk. And the leader is like I've got your back We're gonna bring information to the next meeting about like, hey, we figured out something that doesn't work. Or hey, we figured out something that does work. And so we took a risk; it was calculated and thoughtful, and this is what we learned from it. I think that would, I think the creative freedom of that would really counter a lot of the ... 'Cause I think a lot of the burnout comes from you have to teach in this exact way, and it's so scripted, and we lose our creative license. So that risk-taking, for me, it opens up like just try it. And if you need to, you can let me know ahead of time, and I'll have your back, but I trust you. And then we'll bring what we learned together I think that's so cool, Lauren it's been so wonderful to have you on Anything. Oh my gosh, thank you both. Anything we didn't ask you about in the realm of Gosh? No, I think we've covered quite a but I think this has to be maybe part one of 78. I would love for it to be part one of 78, yes. Okay, we can't wait to have you back. Thank you both so much. Oh, thank you so much for your time. I'm so glad to get to introduce you all. And thank you to the listeners. We are so glad to have you here with us and we look forward to seeing you next week. Bye everybody. Bye everybody. Bye bye. Thank you for listening to another episode of Stance of Curiosity. Stance of Curiosity is an unscripted conversation between Gillian Boudreau and Joelle van Lent. While both are licensed psychologists, this podcast is provided for informational and educational purposes only. The content presented should not be considered a substitute for professional psychological, medical, or mental health advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Listeners should always consult with a qualified mental health professional whenever needed for specific concerns or questions related to their personal situation. Stance of Curiosity is produced by Gillian Boudreau and Joelle Van Lent. Our cover art is by Aaron Lanou, and our music is upbeat indie folk by Twin Music. See you next time.