Dear REEL community,
This fall has been an especially busy season for REEL. We have presented at numerous conferences, including Stanford’s Neurodiversity Summit, Santa Clara County’s Inclusion Collaborative Conference, and the Twice-Exceptional Teacher Education Conference at Cleveland State University. We also helped many local public and private schools kick off the school year with educator workshops focused on increased awareness and robust support for neurodivergent learners. We’ve hosted notable experts in our Expert Speaker Series and have many more exciting events planned! To learn more about the impact we’ve had in the past year, please check out our 2023-2024 Impact Report.
Our REEL board meetings always start off with sharing meaningful mission moments. I’ve had several of those over these past few months, a few of which I’d like to share with you.
The first came at a recent professional development workshop where a parent asked me, “How do you convince a family member or friend that our children’s differences are real, and that they should be taken seriously? How do you respond when they say, ‘In my day, we just had to follow rules. All these options are just excuses. Teachers aren’t strict enough anymore, that’s the problem’?” As the holidays and increased time with family approach, I imagine this question is on many people’s minds, and so I’d like to share my answer with all of you:
I will address this question in two parts. First, let’s talk about the necessity of options and flexibility for all learners. If I could highlight one key point, it’s that accommodations are not cheating. Accommodations are merely options for all that enable us to be most successful at any given moment. Everyone can benefit from choices and options, and flexibility does not lower standards. Instead, by being mindful of our goals and providing options which enable students to be most successful in pursuit of those goals, we create pathways for students to achieve their best. When we only offer accommodations to some students, we are implicitly inviting a culture of inequality. However, if we acknowledge that all of us need different things at different times, and we offer those options to everyone, we are acknowledging that our differences are all valid and valued. Take these two examples:
Offer fidgets to everyone in the class. Explain why some people find them useful for concentration. Explain how they can sometimes be misused. Discuss the boundaries for productive and unproductive fidget use, and then make them available to everyone. Should a student become unproductive with a fidget, they can no longer use it at that time. But any student that would benefit and should be able to have access to that benefit.
Offer audiobook options to all students in the class. Unless the goal of the lesson is to teach the skill of reading words on a page, listening to a book to receive its information is no better or worse than reading a book; it is simply a different input modality. Some students may prefer - as adults often do - to occasionally listen to books while completing chores at home, or while commuting. They may prefer to listen at an accelerated or or decelerated speed. Other times they may choose to read the words on paper while snuggled in bed or at their desk with a highlighter. Providing these options to all gives students agency to pick what works best for them at different times and in different situations, without stigma.
The second part of my response is much broader. ‘Back in the day,’ some students succeeded in class. Others ‘got by’ and did okay. And quite a few were left behind. We can do better. The world has hard problems and we need everyone’s help to make progress. A diversity of perspectives and approaches is invaluable. The job of educators - and the responsibility of all of humanity - is to help everyone achieve their potential. We can achieve this by acknowledging and honoring the value each individual brings to the community. The DEAR REEL model that we released earlier this year provides practical strategies for working with neurodivergent and 2e kids at school. If you missed our October 28th presentation that walked through the model, I encourage you to watch and share it with educators in your community.
Often the primary pushback we get when working with educators is the struggle they have with finding the time to make changes to their curricula. While they acknowledge that they want to help all learners, they feel constrained by multiple competing demands on their time. It is true that making modifications and adding flexible options to an existing curriculum takes time. Connecting with students takes time. Looking for the underlying, unseen causes behind behaviors is more challenging than simply addressing what’s in front of you. However, all of this extra time spent will pay dividends.
At the Twice-Exceptional Teacher Education Conference, Dr. Claire Hughes recounted a story which serves as a powerful example of how spending some time up front can save time and headaches later. One year as she began to teach a class of middle school students, she sat down and called the parents of every one, and simply told them each something positive about their child. She called one particular mom and told her, “I just want to let you know, I really enjoy having Jake in my class! He is so funny - his sense of humor adds a lot to our class discussions!” The mom waited a moment, and said, “But…?” Dr. Hughes replied, “There’s no ‘but,’ that’s it - I just wanted to let you know I’m enjoying having him in my class.” The mom was stunned. She had never had a phone call from a teacher which was anything but negative, and she had gotten those calls a lot. From that point forward, that mom knew this teacher was on her team. Teacher, parent, and student now had a productive relationship. Time spent calling each parent was reaped through smoother, more positive interactions throughout the school year.
Educators - know that you don’t have to do it all at once. Start small. Add a flexible option to an assignment. Present and offer a single new accommodation to the class. Experiment with one new way of connecting with your students or their parents. Iterate. Next semester, try adding one more new thing. One of my favorite examples of doing this comes from Dr. Carol Tomlinson, in a lesson she teaches on differentiation. In the example poetry lesson (starting at minute 10:40), she walks through 3 revisions to this unit which a teacher made over 3 years. It’s an incredible evolution of a unit which improves incrementally - and in a manageable way for the teacher - to provide more differentiation, preference, and choice.
Parents - acknowledge the wins. Thank your teachers. Celebrate your student’s progress, their effort, their success. And know that you are making a difference through your involvement, your passion, and your commitment for both your own children and for those who follow on the path you’ve blazed.
Your child sees you. Your student sees you. Together, we enable everyone to achieve their potential.
Abby Kirigin, Ed.D.
Executive Director, REEL
PS - It’s donation campaign season! Please consider a donation to REEL and help our community achieve potential together.