Teachers, are you looking ahead to the next academic year and thinking about how to develop your practice by making your classroom more trauma-informed, supportive of neurodivergence and the nervous system friendly? 

Read this blog for book and resource suggestions.As the summer break approaches and educators prepare for their well-earned rest, often a space for consideration and planning opens up.  We have a window of time in which we ask ourselves, as reflective practitioners, what worked well during the past year? What didn’t? What gaps in understanding need to be bridged?  How can I best meet my own needs, alongside the needs of the students, in my classroom?

At Neurodiverse Connection we are in entering the final stages of preparation and readiness for the launch our Neurodivergent Friendly Wellbeing Approach in the Autumn, which is based on an experience to share model, to provide practical skills to parents and professionals for supporting their own and young people’s wellbeing. 

In this training we centre nervous system, embodiment, regulation and neurodivergent perspectives. 

Do these topics pique your interest?  Are you curious to learn more about these topics yourself?  If so, we are offering you a curated list of recommended reads to help you gain new insights, deepen your knowledge and enhance wellbeing in your classroom and school – in advance of the new school year.

So, let’s explore three thought-provoking books by neurodivergent authors:

“Safeguarding Autistic Girls: Strategies for Professionals” by Carly Jones,  MBE, a respected and highly regarded autistic advocate and author, focuses on the specific needs and challenges faced by autistic girls.  This book offers practical guidance on recognising and addressing the unique vulnerabilities autistic girls may encounter. With a focus on safeguarding, educators can gain valuable insights into creating a safe and supportive environment that meets the needs of autistic girls, promoting their well-being and educational success.

“Untypical:  Learning to Live with Autism" by Pete Wharmby, in which the writer, shares his personal experiences as an autistic individual, offering unique insights into his personal and professional experience. This book provides an honest and compelling account of the challenges and strengths of autism, allowing teachers to gain a deeper understanding of both neurodivergence and neurodiversity and how to support autistic students in the classroom. Wharmby's perspective can help educators foster a more inclusive and accommodating environment, especially as he is an ex-teacher himself.

“Learning from autistic teachers: how to be a neurodiversity-inclusive school” edited by Dr Rebecca Wood. A collection of engaging and insightful chapters from autistic teachers and school professionals. It clearly outlines suggestions for support that have benefitted those writing the chapters, as well as considering implications for inclusion within the classroom.

And a couple of additional resources from non-neurodivergent authors:

“Nurturing resilience: helping clients move forward from early developmental trauma” by Kathy Kain and Stephen Terrell. A fantastic and accessible introduction to the nervous system. This book provides a great introduction to understanding regulation, connection, safety, attachment, and trauma and provides valuable insights into trauma-informed practices that can be applied within the classroom. Teachers will gain a deeper understanding of how trauma affects individuals and discover practical strategies to foster a safe and supportive learning environment.
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Irene Lyon’s website has lots of free online resources, practical suggestions, vlogs and articles.  Although not neurodivergent, Irene Lyon is a somatic practitioner and nervous system expert who specialises in helping individuals heal trauma, regulate their nervous systems, develop capacity and regulation, alongside cultivating well-being. Her work integrates various modalities and approaches, including somatic experiencing, polyvagal theory, and neuroplasticity.

By exploring these resources, teachers can expand their knowledge and gain perspectives from the lived personal and professional experience of the authors, practitioners, and specialists.  This will enable educators to develop a deeper understanding of autism, neurodiversity, and specific considerations when working with autistic individuals, contributing to more inclusive and wellbeing focused classrooms.


This is a repost of a blog originally posted here: https://ndconnection.co.uk/blog/recommended-summer-reading-for-teachers?rq=aldred

Original post date 18th July 2024. 

In the current ‘industrial’ [1] educational paradigm, schools aren’t accessible for autistic people. They both contribute to and cause trauma for autistic individuals. With reasonable adjustment and an embodiment focus, steps can be made to begin to change this.  However, a wholesale reform of the educational system, is what is actually needed.

Trauma is anything which is too much, too soon, too quickly. For autistic young people the pace of school alone, moving from lesson to lesson, hour after hour, without decompression and processing time, stim or sensory breaks, is ‘too quickly.’

The sensory environment is ‘too much.’  Young people experience similar sensory issues in schools as they do in other large scale societal institutional settings [2].  The sounds (bells, class sizes, scraping chairs and desks - the collective sound generated), the visuals (bright lights, the paint colours and busy wall displays), the sensations (scratchy, synthetic fibre uniforms, hard plastic chairs, sitting still for long periods of time), the smells (toilets, dinner hall, disinfectant) – all of these contribute to dysregulation and overload and that is before we even consider the demands of social processing. 
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In schools there are people everywhere – lots of people - too close, bumping into us, talking to us.  There is nowhere ‘safe’ to go outside of lessons, during the challenging unstructured times during the school day, for quiet time. Libraries, which used to be an optional safe haven are often shut, at short notice, causing more distress and unpredicted change, due to staffing shortages, or alternatively become social hubs. 

There is no option for down time, to follow our own rhythm, and honour our own pace – especially around extra time needed for processing information. Content delivery in class, due to curriculum and exam board syllabus demands, becomes a ‘too quickly’ experience.  There are pages of text and oral information to take in, understand and process every lesson. We move though the day in overwhelm. Our special interests are irrelevant to the compulsory and prescribed curriculum. Plus, the focus is on exams and content recall rather than exploration, curiosity and creativity.

We are put into groups to work with people who don’t understand us (and don’t care to understand, as they are understandably focused on their own experience, particularly when adolescent), or our communication preferences [3].  There is indirect or implied communication from peers and teachers alike – it’s all ‘too much’.  We experience the Double Empathy problem [4], interpersonal violence, bullying and so mask 195 days a year – all of which impacts all aspects on our health negatively [5].

Schools getting it wrong for autistic young people increases the need for mental health intervention and has repercussions for health services.   Everybody is stressed. Teachers are under immense pressure – Ofsted, exam grades, workload. They often don’t have the headspace, knowledge or time to consider or even know how to consider reasonable adjustment.  The focus remains on student behaviour – which is ‘managed’ (controlled) and young people are ‘moulded’ (modified) into the standardised product of an ‘exam answering machine’.  And, by the way, this doesn’t work anyway for autistic people, as our brains do not habituate – behaviourist and modification approaches are indeed harmful [6] to us.

A wholesale cultural shift and reform is needed in education to a body first and co-regulation focus – to embodiment and relationship approaches – which would benefit and see better holistic outcomes, for all neurotypes.In the meantime, what are five actions which can be taken to mobilise reasonable adjustment and which schools can begin implement to make schools right, or at the very least, less traumatic, for autistic people - students and teachers alike? 

1. Facilitate the voice of autistic students and teachers – LISTEN to and ACTION what adjustments and amendments are needed.
2. Do a sensory environment audit [7].
3. Create a designated sensory friendly safe space – a staffed area where autistic students can go to decompress at any time.
4. Implement a Neurodivergent Friendly Wellbeing Approach [8].
5. Integrate embodiment approaches into leadership, policy and procedure – centring neurodiversity and relationships, nervous system, autism-informed and trauma-informed awareness, and co-regulation, as key strategies [9].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY&t=14s “So schools kill creativity?”, Sir Ken Robinson TED Talk, YouTube
[2] https://www.ndti.org.uk/resources/publication/its-not-rocket-science “It’s Not Rocket Science” Considering and meeting the sensory needs of autistic children and young people in CAMHS inpatient services,  NDTi
[3] More-than-words-supporting-effective-communication-with-autistic-people-in-health-care-settings.pdf (boingboing.org.uk) More than words:  Supporting effective communication with autistic people in health care settings, Economic and Social Research Council
[4] https://kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2021.554875 Double Empathy: Why Autistic People Are Often Misunderstood · Frontiers for Young Minds (frontiersin.org)
[5] https://osf.io/5y8jw/ “Professionals are the hardest to trust” Supporting autistic adults who have experienced interpersonal victimisation, Amy Pearson, Kieran Rose and Jon Rees
[6] s41252-021-00201-1.pdf (springer.com) Long-term ABA Long-term ABA Therapy is Abusive:  A Response to Gorycki, Ruppel, and Zane, Gary Shkedy, Dalia Shkedy and Aileen H. Sandoval-Norton
[7] Sensory environment — Neurodiverse Connection (ndconnection.co.uk)
[8] FAQs 1 — Neurodiverse Connection (ndconnection.co.uk)
[9] Embodied Education:  Creating Safe Space for Learning, Facilitating and Sharing - Kay Louise Aldred and Dan Aldred is scheduled for publication Sept 1st, 2023. 


This is a repost of a blog originally posted here: https://ndconnection.co.uk/blog/can-school-ever-be-right-for-autistic-people?rq=aldred

Original post date 20th April 2024.