The Cult of Pedagogy Podcast, Episode 264
Jennifer Gonzalez, host
GONZALEZ: This is Jennifer Gonzalez welcoming you to Episode 264 of the Cult of Pedagogy Podcast. In this episode, we’ll explore ways we can support neurodivergent teachers.
I want to start this episode with a little disclaimer: I’ve put it together to help other teachers, but I’m also kind of making it about me.
Earlier this year I made a discovery about myself that couldn’t have been more of a shock. I was talking with my best friend Angela, like I have done almost every day for the last 10 years, and for some reason I can’t remember now, she was looking at the signs of ADHD in adult women who are often undiagnosed. Without much hesitation, she said, “Jenn, I think you have ADHD.”
My first thought was No way. I’ve known a ton of people with ADHD and I don’t think I’m anything like that. I don’t think I’m any more disorganized than your average person. I almost always meet deadlines. I don’t think anyone has ever described me as “scattered,” and I’m certainly not what would qualify as “hyperactive.”
But then she started making a case for it. Through our regular conversations, Angela had heard me say on an almost daily basis that I was “behind” on things, on everything, all the time. I got sick of hearing myself say it. She’d watched me start projects that took years to complete, and ultimately abandon many more after years of saying I was going to get to them soon. When we talked about our working styles, I’d always marveled at the way she was able to start a task, work on it for a few hours, take a reasonable break, and then finish it more or less on time. Meanwhile I would have to set Pomodoro timers and give myself treats to finish even a percentage of a task.
As I did more reading on my own, I started to see that I had been busting my butt for years to compensate for my natural ADHD tendencies, coming up with all kinds of tricks and strategies and work-arounds, and when those didn’t work, wearing myself out trying or beating myself up for not being able to do what everyone else could do.
Like the way I get super stressed out when I’m trying to focus on a task and someone interrupts me (especially one of my kids when they were younger); I realize now it was because I had such a fragile hold on my own attention that the slightest thing could disrupt my whole flow and I knew I wouldn’t be able to get it back again. I thought about the way I have to set timers for anything important happening in my day, because if I’m planning to do any concentrating whatsoever, that other thing will drop out of my brain immediately and I’ll forget it, so if I have anything at all planned in the coming six to eight hours, I walk around with extra anxiety because if I don’t, I’ll definitely forget that thing. Lately I’ve even set alarms to go off while I’m driving to remind me to run an errand I’d planned to do for fear that I’d space out and forget it.
And then I started thinking about what I was like as a teacher. I absolutely got things done, like grading papers and planning lessons, but it took me hours and hours and completely wore me out. I thought about how hard it was to stick to rules like making my students raise their hands before they spoke, because anytime a student would pop up with a question, I would just answer it, forgetting that I was trying to stick to a system.
And then there was the noise. The way it would build up and I’d shout back at it when it finally got too much to bear, my students’ faces always registering shock because they had no idea it was even bothering me until it did.
I didn’t think there was a name for any of this; I thought it was just how I was. Once I was able to name it, so many things made so much more sense. I haven’t done anything medical to address my ADHD; I’m still really in the process of accepting the label for myself, and I’ve already put so many systems in place to keep me functioning. But now I can find even more strategies to help. And I beat myself up about it a lot less. And that’s really nice.
Anyway, on episode 255, Tom Rademacher and I happened to get talking just a little bit about our ADHD, and my guest today heard it. You might remember Emily Kircher-Morris from episode 243, when she and Amanda Morin shared some ways we can make classrooms more neurodiversity affirming. When Emily heard my conversation with Tom, she reached out and said hey, could we do an episode about neurodiverse teachers and how they can manage some of the unique ways the job of teaching affects them?
It was an easy yes. Emily has written a fantastic post for Cult of Pedagogy about some of the strengths that neurodivergent teachers bring to their work, the challenges that they face in the job, and how schools can best support them. In today’s episode, we’ll talk about it all.
Before we get started, I’d like to thank foundry10 for sponsoring this episode. Teens want to learn more social media literacy in school. But too often, what they get sounds like an outdated PSA: “Don’t share personal info. Avoid strangers.” So how can educators make the lessons more relevant? foundry10 is an education research organization that blends research and practice to make a real difference for real youth today — while deepening understanding about effective teaching strategies. Through applied research, they are studying everything from social media literacy instruction, to soft skills in career-connected learning, to supporting number knowledge with dramatic play. They generate insights from impactful practices, expand ideas about learning, and create immediate value for youth, educators, schools, and community-based organizations. If you’re looking for fresh, research-backed ideas you can apply in your classroom, visit www.foundry10.org/cultofpedagogy.
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Now here’s my conversation with Emily Kircher-Morris about how we can support neurodivergent teachers, and how they can support themselves.
GONZALEZ: Emily, welcome back to the podcast.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Oh, thank you so much for having me.
GONZALEZ: You came to me with this idea, and I was so excited because I am a very recently self-diagnosed woman with ADHD, and it could not have been more of a shock to me. Angela Watson is my best friend. She’s another education podcaster, and she knows pretty much everything about me, and we sort of stumbled on this and she started doing some reading and she said, “Jenn, I think you have ADHD.” And I was like, “Pfft. What?” And as she started to point things out, I realized, oh my gosh. This is the reason for so many of the issues that I’ve had. So you heard me mention this on a recent podcast with Tom Rademacher. And said, “Hey, let’s talk about this, how it impacts teachers.”
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yeah.
GONZALEZ: So yeah. Before we do that, let’s just remind everybody of sort of what you do and who you are, because you’ve been on the podcast just recently.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: So, so I’m the host of the Neurodiversity Podcast, but primarily I’m a licensed professional counselor, but I came to the mental health field from the education world. So I started my career as a elementary education teacher, and then I taught both in gifted ed classrooms, both at the elementary and middle school level, and then also I was a school counselor before I made this transition. But the other thing that’s a little bit interesting is part of the reason that resonated for me when you were sharing that is that I’m also an ADHDer. However, I am somebody who was diagnosed in the early ‘90s and so, which is pretty rare. There were not even a lot of, there were not a lot of people in general being diagnosed but especially girls —
GONZALEZ: Yes.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: — back then. And so, and even though I knew that as a child, it hasn’t really been until the last, I would say, 10 years or so where I’ve really started to understand a lot more about how that impacted me, even as a young teacher in the classroom and how that really influenced my professional trajectory. And I think it’s something that we don’t even really think about too much as far as how we support teachers and just recognizing that there are probably so many people out there who are not diagnosed.
GONZALEZ: Yeah. And the thing that’s interesting is that once you have a diagnosis, even if it isn’t official, you start to develop a whole language and an explanation for, for me personally, why I struggled so much with certain things as a, definitely as a teacher, as a parent of young children too. And just seeing, and what you’ve done is you’ve written a really, really good post for the site that kind of outlines, and we’re going to talk about what strengths, you know, neurodivergent teachers have and what struggles they have, and then how they can support themselves and how their schools can support them. I’m, if I had had this, teaching could have been a completely different experience for me. So we’ve talked a little bit already about kind of why we’re seeing this. You know, you call it in the article the lost generation of neurodivergent educators, and it’s got to do with this idea that people just weren’t being diagnosed when a lot of us who are now in our 30s, 40s, 50s, and so on didn’t have language for it back then.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, it’s not just ADHD, right? I mean there’s a lot of those different labels that kind of fall into this. But recognizing that, we talk a lot about ADHD. We talk a lot about autism. There are other labels that fall under this neurodivergent umbrella, of course. But when I think about this, when I, there are so many people, like my students, when I first started teaching, I taught third grade. And those kids at this point in time are probably in their 30s.
GONZALEZ: Yep.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: And that was at a time like Asperger’s was added to the DSM in 1994, but it wasn’t even until the early to mid-2000s that I as a pretty new teacher, but even teachers who’d been established had even really heard of that.
GONZALEZ: Mhmm.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: And so part of this process of adults getting diagnosed, many adults are coming to a diagnosis now because their children get diagnosed. So their kids get diagnosed with ADHD or with autism or whatever it might be, and all of a sudden it’s like, oh wait a second. This actually makes some things kind of fall into place for me. And so, but because, because of some of the barriers, so for example, even now, if you take your child to a pediatrician and you’re like, “Hey, I think my kid has ADHD,” whatever, one of the first questions out of the pediatrician’s mouth is going to be, “Well, how are their grades?”
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: And what we know is that that is not a great, a great measure of whether or not somebody is struggling with executive functioning.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: That just is not realistic to look at it in just that very narrow viewpoint. And so, especially for girls, and that’s kind of this, the piece that we get into because with most labels, whether it’s autism, ADHD, even dyslexia, and learning disabilities, the rate of boys who get diagnosed earlier is much higher than girls because what do girls tend to do? Girls tend to internalize a lot of behaviors. Boys tend to externalize. So who do we see? Well, we see the boys who are bouncing off the walls. We see the boys who are really impulsive and doing all these things. I think part of the reason I got diagnosed when I was a kid is that I am, I do externalize a lot. I think I have a lot of those quote/unquote behaviors that made it really obvious —
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: — that something’s going on. But you know, it’s, it’s just hard as an adult to kind of like re-contextualize everything that you thought you knew about yourself —
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: — with this new label. And what does that really mean?
GONZALEZ: And that’s been the thing that I’ve been wrapping my head around in the last couple of months as I’ve embraced this and said maybe this is possible — my first, my first reaction was no. Because I thought of these very, very jumpy, fidgety boys, and I was just like, “That’s not me. I don’t have a problem with that.” And the other thing that I’m starting to realize is that now I’m talking to more adults that I know who have called themselves ADHD, and I’m like, “You’re totally crushing it in all of life.” And they’re like, “Yeah, because I manage it.” And now I’m realizing, I have been able to compensate for it in a lot of ways. Some of it has been just sort of naturally kind of figuring out the same kinds of strategies that are given to kids when they get, you know, I write notes to myself everywhere. I use timers and everything. But I also, what I’ve also done meanwhile is constantly beat myself up for needing all of that stuff.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Like, “I should be — ”
GONZALEZ: Yeah. With “I’m forgetful” or “I’m scatterbrained.” And so now it’s allowing me to give myself so much more grace and just say, “No, your brain just works differently from other people.” And it’s just, it’s nicer because it was just always like, “God, what is wrong with me,” you know?
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Well, you know, it’s interesting. I think. I started my teaching career, like I said, I taught elementary education, and I have to tell you that it was so hard. I left the general, as a matter of fact, I left, I spent a, I taught for a little bit, and then I actually left the classroom, and I was like, “I’m not teaching anymore.” And I spent a year, and I was kind of doing a couple of other jobs, and I was like long-term subbing and this sort of stuff. And then I was like, “Okay, this is silly. I have this degree, and these student loans. I need to do something with it.” So I started going back, and I got a master’s in gifted ed, which is kind of how I started out on that path, which was a much better fit for me. And, but what I realized though looking back is the thing that was hardest for me about teaching the elementary school classroom was the amount of executive functioning that it required.
GONZALEZ: Yes.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: And so even though I had an ADHD diagnosis as a kid and I went through, by the time I was in high school, I stopped taking my meds. My mom was like, “Whatever. Figure it out.” And so then I spent over 15 years treating myself for anxiety and depression.
GONZALEZ: Wow.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Until my own son was diagnosed with ADHD. He’s a senior this year. He was in second grade then. And I saw what a difference the medication made for him, and so I went back to my doctor and said, “Hey, what do you think?” And it was like, all of a sudden that was when I really came to terms with what that diagnosis meant for me and the fact that no, I’m actually not all that anxious.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: But I am anxious when I can’t manage all the executive functioning stuff.
GONZALEZ: Yes.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: That’s what triggers the anxiety. And if I can slow my brain down, if I can manage the executive functioning, then I feel okay about those things.
GONZALEZ: Yes.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: But again, because my grades were okay.
GONZALEZ: Right.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: And so, and even as a, as a teacher, as a professional, I don’t know, I think a lot of teachers are this way where you just have, you’re an achiever. You have a vision and high standards for yourself and I don’t think you get into teaching without having some of that in some ways.
GONZALEZ: Yes.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: And so then you don’t realize this. Like, why is this so hard for me? Why do I feel like a failure at the end of the day?
GONZALEZ: Yes.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: And I don’t know, I’d love to hear a little bit more about what it was like though for you.
GONZALEZ: Ugh. You know, when we, when we start, some of the things that you wrote in this post, I saw them and I was just like, oh. First of all, I am also an Enneagram 3, and I don’t know if you know Enneagram, but the Enneagram 3 is the achiever. And so every day you start with a blank slate, having to sort of earn your place in the world. So that combined with this and then being a teacher where your work is never done, and you sort of fail every single day because it’s such an imperfect science that you’re trying to conduct. So it was, I just, I mean I have lifelong insomnia now, which I haven’t even been in the classroom in 20 years, but I still have that brain of just, like, there’s more to do. I’m behind, I’m behind, I’m behind, I’m behind.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Always.
GONZALEZ: The thing that I also really struggled with, and this is where you got into a little bit of the autism stuff was the sensory stuff. I have big struggles with “just block out the noise.” And I was just like, nope. And I can remember when my kids would start to get noisy, I would, like, just yell back at them just to push the noise back, and it would always shock them because they didn’t realize I was having a buildup inside. They thought we were having a good old time, and then all of a sudden, I was like, “Ah,” and it was just, and it was me just trying to get the noise out of the way and let me think for a second.”
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yeah, yeah. Well, that, that auditory processing is huge. I think we talk a lot about sensory hypo or hyper sensitivity to sensory stimuli with autism because it is actually part of the diagnostic criteria. You don’t have to have that to qualify for an autism diagnosis, but it was one of four criteria where you have to have two. But there is a sensory component to ADHD for sure, because when you think about it, when you think about what is distracting or what is causing the difficulty with regulating focus and attention, it is that my brain is being pulled in all these different directions. So before we started recording, I was like, “Do you hear those voices out in the hallway?” I can’t tune those things out in my head.
GONZALEZ: Yes, yes.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: And, and it’s really, like, I know that about myself. And it’s like, I get very frustrated when I, when I can’t direct my focus to what I want to focus on.
GONZALEZ: Right.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: And it’s, you do. You end up getting, it causes emotional dysregulation. It causes overwhelm. And then it, and this is the thing about so many traits of neurodivergence, so many of the difficulties that come along with it are viewed as character flaws, as moral failings.
GONZALEZ: That’s what I did to myself.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: And that’s what we internalize.
GONZALEZ: Yes.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yeah.
GONZALEZ: I’ve spent my whole life trying to make myself more chill. Because no matter whether it was a parenting situation or a teaching situation, I would look at everybody else around me and think, why isn’t this thing bothering them? Why isn’t that little noise, why isn’t that blinking light bothering them? And I was just, like, it’s because I’m too Type A, I’m too anal retentive, I’m too —
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yeah, right.
GONZALEZ: — focused on stupid little details. Why can’t I just be chill?
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yeah.
GONZALEZ: And now I realize it’s, and the thing is, the thing that was such an epiphany for me is when I started reading the strengths piece, which we’re going to get into. It’s not just that you have challenges, you also bring some strengths. That also explained some stuff to me.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yeah.
GONZALEZ: And it made me feel better because it was just, like, the fact that I see problems and notice things and can come up with solutions, and I’m always the only one in the room saying, “What about this?” And everyone’s like, “Oh, I didn’t even think about that.”
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Right.
GONZALEZ: And so it’s a blessing and a curse.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yeah, that goes along with it.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Well, and you know, so many of these things are also a double-edge sword. So like you mentioned that in the Enneagram, you’re kind of that achiever mentality. Sometimes that is a compensatory strategy that neurodivergent people develop.
GONZALEZ: Yes.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Like, oh I have messed up on all of these things, so now I, it’s almost like a hyper vigilance, like I have to pay attention to all of the details.
GONZALEZ: Yes.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: In order to compensate for that because I get, again, anxious about making those mistakes.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: And so, you know, it’s, but yeah, it’s interesting to kind of think about, these are things that really, in many ways, are assets, but also have, have struggles that come along with it. And I just also want to be on record saying, I do, I am not somebody who believes that, this is my personal opinion, obviously many things are my personal opinion that we’re talking about. But also, I don’t think that it is helpful for us to view neurodivergence as a super power, because I think that minimizes the struggles that come along with it.
GONZALEZ: Yeah, yep.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: And I just want to be very clear that it is definitely both/and.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: There are strengths, and there are also struggles.
GONZALEZ: Right.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: It’s not better than or less than, it’s just different and trying to find those ways that we can support people who have this different type of wiring so that they can be successful —
GONZALEZ: Yes.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: — when they are the people who are teaching our kids.
GONZALEZ: Yes, yes. It’s learning just how to manage it. And I, I also, having learned more about it for myself, I can remember certain students and things that they would do, and now I’m realizing, oh, that, she didn’t have a label but she was —
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Totally.
GONZALEZ: I mean, the one example I’m thinking of right now, and I do this all the time still. I do this when I go to CrossFit and the coach is giving us our instructions, and I’m thinking in my head, I have a question, I have a question, I have a question. And I put my hand up, and she’s like, I was going to get to that. And I’m like, I know, but I was afraid I was going to forget it.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yeah.
GONZALEZ: And I do, and I remember kids being like, they would be blurters and we would treat it as a discipline problem, and now I’m realizing, they knew that they, it was going to run out of their head, and if we had had a strategy of just like, here, just write it down, and then u’ll have it. The number of times that I lash out at people because I’m just like, don’t say anything right now because this thought is about to leave my head.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yeah.
GONZALEZ: You’re going to make it —
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yeah. And that’s a huge, that’s so important though, because I think what you’re really getting at there is the fact that, so when we were on the podcast in the past, my co-author Amanda and I were on the podcast, and we talked about our book “Neurodiversity-Affirming Schools,” which really is about one of the main thesis of that book is that we have to move away from treating things that are traits of neurodivergence as discipline issues.
GONZALEZ: Yes.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: And part of my experience growing up, part of the reason I went into education was because as an ADHDer, I had a diagnosis, I had a label, but that was about as far as the supports went back in the ‘90s. And it was like, basically, so I just had consequences. I had discipline, I had behavior charts, but nobody was teaching me the strategies or the skills. It was like here’s your consequence, now figure it out.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: And I’m like, but when you’re talking about that, it’s like, okay, so the kid who blurts the thing out, okay, here’s a Post-it note.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Jot it down. This is a strategy. This is a skill.
GONZALEZ: Right.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: I’m going to scaffold this for you. I’m going to help support you with this until you can do it independently, but then that is a skill that you will take forward with you —
GONZALEZ: Yes.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: — into adulthood. But again, this is the thing about the neurodivergent adults who never got these diagnoses is that either you figured it out on your own or you didn’t.
GONZALEZ: Right. Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: And that had a huge consequence with where you ended up in life.
GONZALEZ: As a person who was teaching mostly in the ‘90s and had a lot of those 504 plans come, it would just be like, ADHD, and I was just like, okay. But it was literally just like, that’s all it was. It was an explanation for why this kid moved around a lot.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Right.
GONZALEZ: I mean you really didn’t have, we had, we didn’t have any strategies as teachers to apply to them.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Right.
GONZALEZ: So we were all kind of lost.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yeah, trying to just figure it out. Yeah, absolutely.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Absolutely.
GONZALEZ: All right. Let’s start, you started by talking about the strengths that neurodivergent educators bring, and this part was a new piece for me to read. So can we go through some of those? If somebody is hearing us and saying, “This kind of sounds like it might be me,” or “I already know it’s me,” let’s hear what some of the pluses are, to start with.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Sure. Well, the one that you mentioned earlier was like the pattern recognition, right, and the problem solving. So one of the reasons that sometimes ADHDers specifically are really good at this is because there’s a lot of evidence that shows that ADHD brains have a lot of that divergent thinking, lateral thinking because of the — almost because of the distractibility, you make these leaps and are kind of intuitive with things. But then you notice when something doesn’t match up with that, right? You’re like, okay, well, wait a second. If this, then this, but then this part doesn’t fit with that. There are also just being able to look at things kind of from that other angle because again, if you’ve been somebody who’s been compensating for years with a brain that kind of shows up differently, you do solve problems differently, you do approach things differently. And so having that ability to look at things and notice those inconsistencies is something that we all need on teams and whether we’re looking at how we support students and try to figure out a plan for helping them, you know, whatever growth area that they have, you know, or just developing systems in place to have in the schools.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Like, we need those people who can notice those discrepancies and offer different options.
GONZALEZ: Mhmm, mhmm. Yep. And this, I mean, I kind of always felt like I was nit-picky, and that’s, you know. A lot of times I would notice something, and I would not bring it up because I thought, I’m always the one who’s just like, this little nuanced thing is kind of a problem. Like, what if we try — and everybody else was just kind of like, you’re so extra. Why do you have to, you know? And so I would have to sort of choose my battles —
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yeah.
GONZALEZ: — as opposed to constantly mentioning little details that I noticed because everybody else was more chill.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yeah. I wonder also how much of that for you was, was the fact that if things historically for you in your lifetime, if you felt like there were a lot of gaps, a lot of things that weren’t always adding up. So then you have this drive to make sure that you’re not missing things. So like hey, wait a second. I see this thing that doesn’t fit. I need to make sure that it fits because otherwise I might be missing —
GONZALEZ: Yeah, yes.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: — the whole point of whatever. And again, that almost becomes just that compensatory strategy, right?
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: To do that.
GONZALEZ: Yeah, yeah. There’s a very unsettled feeling when something is off, and I will just keep at it until I can figure out what it is. And then once I notice what it is, I can’t sort of shut up about it.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It needs to all, all add in.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Well, and it’s also interesting to think about some of the other kind of pieces. So another strength that I notice a lot, just with neurodivergent people in general but how it applies in schools, is a lot of ADHDers often really love novelty. They thrive on, they thrive on novelty. Part of the reason why when I got into gifted ed that was such a better fit for me is the way I always described it, again, before I really understand what was happening is it was a lot more front-end planning than it was back-end planning. And so it was about creating these units of study and coming up — like, there was a lot more freedom with some of that as opposed to following a curriculum that was super rigid.
GONZALEZ: Yeah, yep.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: As well as the fact that I didn’t have to go back, there wasn’t as much grading. It wasn’t as much remediation. That task persistence for me was an executive functioning skill that was struggle, that was a struggle.
GONZALEZ: Yep.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: But then when I was able to be in the gifted ed classroom, and again, this was just based on how our district’s model was, you know, kind of structured.
GONZALEZ: Yeah, yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: But it really fed into that novelty. Like, I loved that. But in general though, novelty is a great strength, and we, we need to keep things novel. That’s part of how we keep kids engaged. It’s part of how we build morale in all of these different areas. When you, when you lean into that, can be really effective in how we support neurodivergent people in the schools.
GONZALEZ: Yeah, yeah. So we’ve got pattern recognition and problem solving, this love of novelty, which can end up making a very creative teacher who has, brings a lot of fun, novel experiences in.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yeah.
GONZALEZ: What else? What are some other strengths?
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yeah. I think a, I think a big one that we often talk about is hyper focus and monotropism. Those are kind of two things. So in general, we talk about hyper focus a lot more when we’re talking about ADHD, but that’s not the only place we’ll see it. But hyper focus is basically like when I get so involved in something that I can’t even, like I don’t even notice other things that are sometimes going on around me or I have a really hard time shifting from whatever that purpose is. Monotropism, we usually talk about more related to autism. And so monotropism though is similar to hyper focus but it’s a longer term thing. So like, I’m super into this particular topic.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: And sometimes that can even be lifelong, right? Or it, and so, but when we have that, again, that ability to focus on those things, that ability to really dive in deep. People talk about going down the rabbit hole, right? That’s not a bad thing. We need people who, who can do that in order to think about how to lesson plan, to think about how to approach a problem in a different way.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: And so, you know, that really can be, can be an asset as well. And I think the other one that always comes to mind when we talk about strengths is just if you’re neurodivergent, you have empathy for your neurodivergent students.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: And I know that’s the case for me. It’s part of the reason why I ended up shifting even from being in the classroom to doing the mental health counseling and being a school counselor was because I recognize so much of that in my own experience and what my kids were facing and wanting to really connect with them and help them have better experiences that I feel like a lot of people did.
GONZALEZ: And that’s, this is why I think this is going to be such an important episode. Because the first time I think I recognized that the definitions or the diagnostics for ADHD and autism came to me, as so many things have in the last few years, through TikTok. Because so many of the people that I was following presented as just regular old people just talking the way everybody I sort of — and then they’d be like, and I’m autistic. And I’m like, wait, you don’t sound the way that I have been shown people with autism sound, so I was just like, what? And then, and there was more and more people talking about how they had ADHD. And my first thought was like, oh, this is so trendy now. Apparently everybody has ADHD.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yeah.
GONZALEZ: And I still didn’t see myself in it. I still didn’t see it.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yeah. Well, and to be fair, I do think, it’s important to recognize, they’ve done some studies and there’s a lot of misinformation on TikTok about diagnostic criteria presents and different things. So I think that that is, proceed with caution —
GONZALEZ: Yes.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: — as always with any of that, but it does give a face to things. I mean, even now, one of the biggest barriers I feel like for so many autistic individuals is that there’s so much stigma surrounding those labels and diagnoses. Unless you are really involved in that neurodiversity community —
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: — I think that beyond that is, like, I talk to families all the time, and we do assessments at our office. I work with families and kids. And parents are very afraid of an autism diagnosis.
GONZALEZ: Oh, I bet.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: More than an ADHD diagnosis —
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: — specifically. But again, that’s because the idea, the stigma of this is that, you know, you either have, you either have somebody who looks like Sheldon from “Big Bang Theory” —
GONZALEZ: Right.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: — or you have somebody who is really significantly disabled and primarily non-speaking.
GONZALEZ: Yes.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: And I think that that is the image that most people have in their mind.
GONZALEZ: Right.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: But it can look so, it’s so much more broad than that. But people just don’t, just don’t know what that really looks like all the time.
GONZALEZ: And this is why, at least my understanding, is why the terminology has now changed to just ASD. Is that still the preferred term?
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yeah. Yeah, so Asperger’s, so, well, here’s, I love getting into some of this historical kind of goofy stuff, but I’ll only put it in this perspective. So in 2013, the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual,” the fifth edition, was released. That was when the Asperger’s diagnosis that had been present previously was rolled into the autism spectrum diagnosis. Now I will tell you that I, I prefer to use the term “autism” or “autism spectrum.” I try to drop that word “disorder.”
GONZALEZ: Okay.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Just from a neurodiversity perspective.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Like, affirming perspective. Part of it also is in the UK and in Europe they don’t call it autism spectrum disorder, they call it autism spectrum condition, which I think is really an interesting little difference there in how, in semantics.
GONZALEZ: Yeah. Oh yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: But when, when this happened, so then, yes, so everything’s kind of rolled into this autism label. But then the other thing that’s interesting about this is in 2013, that was the first time somebody could have both an ADHD and an autism diagnosis. Prior to that, they were mutually exclusive.
GONZALEZ: Okay.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: So I will often say, I was diagnosed with ADHD before Asperger’s was even in the DSM. It was added to the DSM in 1994. So I’ve never been assessed for autism or Asperger’s. I always notice a lot of those traits about myself. I don’t think I mean diagnostic criteria now, but I think if I were a kid today, if I were 8 years old today having the same concerns I had then, we would have at least evaluated for it.
GONZALEZ: Right, right.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: But when we talk, going back, that lost generation piece, that’s part of why it has shifted so much as far as how we see and understand this because that’s not that long ago. I mean, I’m not, I’m not that old.
GONZALEZ: Right. Right, yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Where, you know, and so, but prior to 1994, nobody was getting an Asperger’s diagnosis, right, let alone people who are not typically presenting, you know, with some of those differences.
GONZALEZ: Right. You know, and what I’m picking up from, and what I’ve kind of assumed as I’m learning more about this is that this is not, this is not a black and white thing anyway. The word “spectrum” really is important and the word “traits” is important.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yeah.
GONZALEZ: That, you know, there are certain pieces of the ADHD descriptors that I’m just like, yeah, I don’t have an issue with being on time. It also might be that I’ve compensated so hard —
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yeah. Mhmm.
GONZALEZ: — that’s why.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yeah.
GONZALEZ: But, you know, I think anyone listening might be like, “Well, that sort of sounds like me but not.” You can have traits —
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yes.
GONZALEZ: — but not necessarily be all the way on the, yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: And you can have traits and benefit from some of the strategies and accommodations.
GONZALEZ: Exactly.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: And that kind of gets into some of the systemic things about what schools can do to support, like, what’s good for, what’s good for neurodivergent students is good for all students.
GONZALEZ: Is good for everybody, yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: What’s good for neurodivergent teachers is good for all teachers. And so thinking about it from that perspective is a way to kind of approach that.
GONZALEZ: Yeah. So before we start getting into the strategies that can, teachers can use, let’s just talk about why schools, because we’ve been more generalized about ADHD and autism. Why are, why is the teaching job particularly challenging for somebody who has a neurodivergent brain?
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yeah. Well, I mentioned specifically the executive function overload. So all, I would say, pretty much, most diagnoses that you can come up with that are in the DSM, whether it’s a neurodevelopmental diagnosis like autism or ADHD or a learning disability or even more of a psychological, like an anxiety or depression, there is an executive functioning impact in all of those areas. Like, one of the things when we do assessments, it’s super hard to tell sometimes if something is anxiety or if it’s ADHD.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Because it manifests in much the same way, where it’s like some of that avoidance. Okay, well is that avoidance anxiety based or is it difficulty with task initiation, right? And so, but executive function overload, there is, when you are working in the schools, you have to be doing so many things at so many different times.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: And holding all of that information in your working memory —
GONZALEZ: Yes.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: — there are so many transitions throughout the day that you have to be ready for. And, in some ways that can actually be good. So for some, the transitions specifically, for me as an ADHDer, I don’t mind the transitions. It helps me feel like I’m moving, like that hyperactive piece of myself —
GONZALEZ: It’s the novelty.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yes.
GONZALEZ: Now something different.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yes, it’s different. Now we’re moving on.
GONZALEZ: New dopamine hit, yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Totally. However, at the same time though, if you’re not prepared, if you’re not set up to have everything ready to go.
GONZALEZ: Yes.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Or, again, lots of people just struggle with those transitions overall. That just gets, trying to juggle all of those things at once can be really overwhelming. And, you know, we talk a little bit about, we talk a lot about masking and camouflage in the neurodivergent community. And so one of the things that people will try to camouflage is executive functioning difficulties. But the amount of energy that that takes, the amount of bandwidth as far as what you’re putting into something, it is exhausting.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: I mean teaching in general is exhausting.
GONZALEZ: Right.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Let alone — because you have to be “on” for that whole day with students and then everything else that goes along with it. But yeah, the executive function overload is a huge piece that is a struggle for a lot of neurodivergent teachers.
GONZALEZ: And, you know, for me when I hear you talk about masking, the piece that resonates the most with me or what I picture myself doing is pretending not to be as frazzled as I actually felt. Because I knew, that was just embarrassing. Just get it together and don’t be so, “Ah! I can’t, I can’t manage all this stuff,” and just, like, go to your quiet place whenever you get a chance and start organizing it on paper or something.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yeah. Well, and, you know, I always, everybody camouflages to some extent in different environments, right?
GONZALEZ: Right.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Like, we all have different personas that we kind of put on. I don’t ever want to make it sound like that’s, that’s bad. However, if you are camouflaging and masking how much the sensory environment is impacting you, you don’t have a lot of control over that in this school environment. If you are constantly camouflaging with the social communication piece, there is a lot of communicating that goes on, especially from peer to peer, with teacher colleagues and —
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: I would say that, I don’t want, I’m going to make a generalization. I feel like sometimes probably people who teach feel a little more comfortable with their students just because it’s a bit of a different type of dynamic with that. Like, I know for me, one of the reasons I also went into teaching was I always felt more comfortable with kids who are younger than myself than with people my own age.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: That was just an easier relationship as far as that goes.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: But, you know, when I have to go and work in my PLC, when I have to go and talk to the teacher across the hallway and ask if they’ll do my recess duty or whatever it might be.
GONZALEZ: Right.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Like, those types of social interactions can be really stressful and overwhelming.
GONZALEZ: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, you mentioned the sensory overload. That’s another big piece of — and I feel like for me, that was the thing I struggled with the absolute most was just never being able to get enough quiet —
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yeah.
GONZALEZ: — to really focus. And, yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Well, I really appreciated how you mentioned the part about it then caused the emotional overwhelm.
GONZALEZ: Yes.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Because I think that’s what people don’t pick up on that. Is that when you are in a sensory environment that is really stressful to you, you can try to manage it, try to manage it, try to manage it. But what ends up coming to the surface is anxiety and irritability, because you don’t have control over those things. And as teachers, one of our primary jobs that we do not talk about enough in teacher prep programs is that you have to be able to regulate your emotions —
GONZALEZ: Yes.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: — to be an effective teacher.
GONZALEZ: Yes.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: And that is a huge component of it. But I know the same, I can relate to that so strongly, that same feeling of — you know, it’s like, it’s interesting. It’s like, I’m sitting here talking to you right now. You can see me and people are listening, but I’m swinging back and forth in my chair. I don’t know if you know this but I have this little fidget in my hand that I’m playing with. But I know that I need that, but depending on how somebody understands their own neurodivergence, they may not feel comfortable doing those things. They may feel like —
GONZALEZ: Right.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: — I have to present a certain way. I have to stand a certain way. I can’t have fidgets in my hands. I also don’t want my students to have fidgets in their hands, so then, you know. Those are the types of things where it’s like, what are the strategies that work for you?
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: What are the things that, you know. But yeah, schools in general are often not a very sensory friendly environment for anybody who has some of those sensitivities. It’s just, that’s just not, I mean, they’re kids.
GONZALEZ: Right.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: I’m not saying, like I’m not saying kids need to always be quiet or that we shouldn’t have those things.
GONZALEZ: No.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: But it is, if you’re aware of it though, then you can kind of go, oh, you know what I need to do during my lunch break? I need to go, and I’m going to eat lunch in my classroom as opposed to down in the, in the staff break room.
GONZALEZ: Yes.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Because I just know that I need that to reset, even though there might be that social pressure to feel like “I have to be there.” Right?
GONZALEZ: Yes.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: But also, you worry. It’s like, am I missing something? Am I giving something up?
GONZALEZ: I know. Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: It’s so hard to balance that.
GONZALEZ: The neurological regulation of my system that would happen when my kids would go to their elective, and the whole hall would get quiet, and I would shut my door and all of a sudden I could feel my entire nervous system just going, “Okay.”
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Well, and isn’t it interesting too because the things we don’t think about, you think about the classroom getting noisy and group work and all these things. You don’t think about the background noise, of the noise out in the hallway. Like, I think that those are the things that are subtle, but they definitely build up as far as what your overall tolerance is.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: And then depending on how well you slept the night before or —
GONZALEZ: Yes.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: — you have an observation coming up with the principal, like, who knows. It just magnifies.
GONZALEZ: Yeah. Well, and I also have a real people pleasing tendency. And so what would happen is that if I could sense, and there’s the perceptiveness, if I could sense that one of my kids needed something, was confused, had a question, whatever, I could not shut it out. And so it was just like —
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yeah.
GONZALEZ: — constantly trying to, like, feed baby birds all the time. And that energy was exhausting.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yeah, yes.
GONZALEZ: And I was not great at setting up systems where it was just like, we’re not going to, we’re not going to talk right now. And actually enforcing it.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yeah.
GONZALEZ: I would like, maybe that was my need for novelty. I would seek something and be like, oh, yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Well that was going, yeah. Yeah, my impulsive brain, it was like, yeah. I’m always — it’s so, it’s such a catch-22.
GONZALEZ: Yes. And we definitely never talk about this in, in teacher prep programs.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: No.
GONZALEZ: Like, the teacher’s mind and the teacher’s ego. None of that comes into play, and that’s huge in terms of how the classroom goes.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yeah. I don’t, I don’t want to go off on this tangent too much, but I will mention it. I don’t think we talked about this in the last episode, but the idea of countertransference in education. Have you ever heard of this?
GONZALEZ: Sounds a little bit familiar.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: So in mental health, one of the big things that we talk about going into a therapeutic field is the idea of countertransference. It comes, it’s a long story. I won’t go into all of it, but basically, it is the idea that as a therapist, I show up as myself in a session, and I’m going to have emotions about what a client presents to me. So if my client presents to me in a way that reminds me of my sister, and I have a bad relationship with my sister, am I aware of that enough so that I am not bringing that into the therapeutic relationship? I have to be able to be aware of those biases and put them aside. We do not talk about that in education. We do not talk about the emotional component of that and being able to identify what my needs are in order to be able to effectively let go of those things —
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: — in order to meet the needs of my students.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: And that’s true for all educators.
GONZALEZ: Yep.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Not just neurodivergent educators. But I think there’s an extra layer on there for neurodivergent educators who. It’s like, I remember times when there were things, and I am not proud of this, and I’ll share this and just be really vulnerable about it, but there were, there were things that happened to me as a student that I then replayed with my own students because I didn’t have another way, I didn’t know what to do instead.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: But I knew it didn’t work or feel good for me when it happened to me.
GONZALEZ: Right.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: And I look back on those things, and I’m like, why did I do that? And I can only go to the point where it’s like, I just didn’t know what else to do.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: And so, you know, how do we make sure that people have really those, those skills that are so important as far as how you show up for your students —
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: — and being able to recognize, like, what are the things that are influencing me as I am present here in this moment?
GONZALEZ: Is there like a specific example that’s coming up in your mind when you say that? That you did things that —
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yeah, I have a couple of them. Oh gosh. It’s really kind of embarrassing to talk about.
GONZALEZ: That’s why I want you to share it, because I know people are going to hear you, and they’ll be like, yep.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Okay. So I, so please forgive me, and for this student, I hope, you know, this is my very first year teaching. But I was really struggling with work completion and getting things done, and just doing really poorly. And my teacher pulled me out in the hallway when I was in fifth grade and said, and was, was on repeat, getting on my case.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: And she said to me, do you want to fail fifth grade? You’re going to fail fifth grade if you don’t get your act together. You need to try harder, you need to do this. And I didn’t do the exact same thing, but I did have a conversation with a student where those words, like, do you want to fail this — and I was like. I look back, I’m like, it was such, I just, I said it, and I think I even knew in the moment that I didn’t —
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: — want to do that, but again. But I was, again, that’s that countertransference, right?
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: I’m having emotions about this student who’s reminding me of my past self. This is how it was handled in that moment. I don’t have a better way to deal with it. And it really is, I don’t think I’ve ever shared that with anybody. Now here it is on this podcast. But that’s the one that stands out to me. And I look back, and I’m like, oh my gosh.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: I just, I was 21 years old in a classroom of 26 third-graders, and I did not have, honestly, a clue what I was doing.
GONZALEZ: Yeah. I mean I think that’s such a good example of how unprepared most teachers really are. And I pushed you to tell a story, because I could tell it was going to be something a little bit embarrassing.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yeah.
GONZALEZ: But it’s going to resonate with people. They’re going to hear that and say, I think everyone has a story like that.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yeah.
GONZALEZ: Maybe more than one, yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Well, and I, you know, and I offer, I always, I do kind of joke. Some of my friends, some of my friends on social media are some of my students from that first year teaching. I do think everyone survived, but I look back and I’m like, oh. There are so many things I could have done better.
GONZALEZ: Yes. Same. And the second year, and the third year.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yes, well, for sure. For sure. But especially that first year, it was rough. Rough for everyone I think. But yeah, I mean, yeah.
GONZALEZ: Hey, it’s Jenn. I’m going to interrupt this episode for just a minute to tell you about something I think will be a big help to you as an educator, whether you’re a teacher, a school leader, an instructional coach, or even someone studying to become a teacher. It’s something I’ve been publishing for the last ten years called the Teacher’s Guide to Tech, and it’s basically an encyclopedia of tech tools curated especially for teachers. My team and I keep an eye on all the tech tools that are out there — the ones that are fresh and new and the ones that have stood the test of time, and we think about how they can best be used in classrooms. Then we sort them into categories, give you a really simple description of what each one does, provide a link to the tool’s website so you can check it out, and we also pick out a video that shows the tool in action so you can understand quickly how it works and if it will work for you. And because tech changes all the time, we have to maintain these listings to make sure they stay fresh and accurate. On top of that, we have a really nice collection of articles we’ve written that will help you explore more ways to use tech and fine-tune and troubleshoot things as you go along. Plus there’s a huge glossary of tech terms to help you stay current with the language.
In the past, this guide was published as a PDF that we updated once a year. Although this worked fine, that PDF would stay the same all year until the new edition came out. In January of 2025, we moved the entire guide to a fully online, subscription-based model — this allows us to update it all year round, keeping it fresh and new all the time! A year’s subscription costs exactly the same as the PDF used to cost, so we haven’t raised the price one bit, and it’s even more affordable if you get it as a group. To learn more about how this guide can help you become the most tech-savvy teacher in your school, visit teachersguidetotech.com.
GONZALEZ: Let’s take a look though, and any other things about this system. So we’ve got, there’s executive function overload. Sensory stressors. And then you’ve got some other stuff, some social expectations and masking, which we’ve kind of gotten into a little bit already.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yeah, we talked, yeah, I think we talked about the —
GONZALEZ: Okay.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: — yeah, the masking and the camouflaging, whether it’s staff dynamics or parent interactions, all of those different things.
GONZALEZ: Right. Okay.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: The two that I will also just mention are kind of two that kind of go together in a lot of ways. One, I’ll start with systems that don’t fit. You know, so I don’t know. Some schools I know have teachers where you have to submit your lesson plans, right?
GONZALEZ: Yes, yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: When you talk about executive functioning overload, what, is there a system that is in place that could help support that? I’m not saying that the expectation doesn’t exist. But what might make that work for some students? What is the mismatch of having that variability in attention and focus? The thing that sometimes comes out of that is if the systems don’t really fit, sometimes it leads to something that I feel like has come up a couple of times where as educators we become perfectionistic. We try to overcompensate for these things that we have internalized as things that are bad about us.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: But then the next domino to fall is just this burnout.
GONZALEZ: Yes.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: And we know that there are so, there are so many teachers who leave education, and I think a big reason for that is they’re neurodivergent, they don’t have the support, they don’t have the tools. And it’s just too much.
GONZALEZ: Yes.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: It’s just too much to keep managing all of those expectations. And again, that was me. Like I said, I was, I was not going back to do, to teach, you know. And I’m, I mean, ultimately I’m glad that I did because I do love it, but it was really hard to have all of that. And so trying to find those pieces and recognize, what can we do to create systems for our teachers, just like we create systems for our students, that allow the space for the sensory needs, right?
GONZALEZ: Right.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Or when we were doing the master schedule, is there a way that we can take into account, on some level, what that means for students, teachers. I know that that’s not always realistic, but maybe. But maybe it’s a conversation.
GONZALEZ: Yeah. Yep, absolutely. I mean, just because we’ve always done things a certain way doesn’t mean that that’s set in stone.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Right.
GONZALEZ: So, you know, we’ve talked a lot about sort of this whole idea of systemic change, and we’re going to get to that in a minute, but just, if a teacher’s just working in a regular old school, and they want to start attacking this problem right now, what are some things that they can do to sort of manage this better?
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yeah. So I always go to the executive functioning, because I feel like that’s one of the areas that is the most practical and can make the biggest impact. So first of all, some of the very, we have to just kind of figure out as far as organization, what works for you? And externalize those executive functioning components makes a big difference. So my sister, who also, I don’t, she’s not been diagnosed ADHD, but I mean, you know, we could, we could — but she teaches kindergarten. And she has alarms on her phone and alerts on her calendar to remind her to take attendance every day.
GONZALEZ: Oh my gosh, yes.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Because it’s like she, you know. But she’s externalizing that executive functioning. It’s like my brain is not going to remember that, so I need alerts, right? And so that might be, so reminder apps, voice memos. Trying to, anything you can do to take the internal processes that you’re doing mentally and make them, make them outside of your brain.
GONZALEZ: Yeah, yep.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Because it does a couple of different things. First of all, it gives you a place and then a resource to go look for, but the other thing, when we’re talking about anxiety and worry, one of the, one of the things that our brain does, which is really interesting, is when we are stressed or worried about something, we think about it, and it cycles, and we think about it, and we think about it, and we think about it.
GONZALEZ: Yes.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: And our brain interprets that cycle of thinking about it as doing something, but we’re not actually doing anything with it. And that’s where that worry comes from. But if you can then simply do something with it, write it down, it actually stops that cycle, which then also improves the bandwidth that you have for everything else. It’s like, okay, I did write that down. I know I’m going to come back to it. I don’t need to keep —
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: — keep it in my head trying to remember it.
GONZALEZ: Right. Yeah. That’s the exhaustion —
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Right.
GONZALEZ: — is trying to keep all of that stuff swirled in your head. Okay. So any, and this, this is a whole lot of categories. It’s like, I’ve got all the different, you know, I’ve got Google Keep that I keep on my phone. I have systems for writing things down now and making sure I check, and then there’s a checklist.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yeah.
GONZALEZ: And the, and the alarms, yes. All of those things, okay. So externalizing executive functioning.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yep. Another one that kind of goes along with this, and so you’re mentioning that you’ve got a lot of different systems. So sometimes for neurodivergent brains, too many systems, or sometimes many systems are too complicated.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: And I say this a lot of times with students. Like, if you have an ADHD kid and you come up with a new organizational system, and it’s color coded, and it’s great, that novelty is going to kick in. They’re going to be super excited about it.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: And it’s going to last two weeks.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Because they can’t keep up with it because it requires that executive functioning again.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: So then what is the simpler way to organize those things?
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: So for me, I have one planner. It has some file pockets in the back, but everything goes in the planner.
GONZALEZ: Yes.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: That’s the only place. I can’t use an app on my phone and this and that. It’s like I need everything in one place because I will not remember to go and look at all of those different places.
GONZALEZ: Right.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: But you can also lean into that novelty if that’s something that helps. So the way that I do that for myself is I get very excited every year when I get to order a new planner, and I use one, I order one of those customizable planners that I get to design it how I want, and so then that gives me that little dopamine kick that comes along with that novelty piece. But really the overall system is kind of saying the same.
GONZALEZ: Yes.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: And so you can lean into that novelty where it works, but don’t just kind of upend the entire system.
GONZALEZ: Right.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Because it gets, then you’re just starting over and reinventing the wheel.
GONZALEZ: Yes. It’s got, yeah, if it’s not working, you have to change something or simplify something. Okay.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yep.
GONZALEZ: What else?
KIRCHER-MORRIS: So another one would be batching tasks. So I use this with students all the time. So if you have a student who is way behind on work, I always tell them, first of all, do the current stuff first. Keep up on the current stuff.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: And then go back and do the old stuff in an order that makes, bundle them together. So I’m going to do all of my ELA stuff. I’m going to do all my social studies stuff. I’m going to do all of my math stuff. And start and work through it, because it eliminates those transitions in between where oh, now I have to do this. Now I have to do that. So, which just extends the process. So for teachers, like, okay, you’re behind on grading, or you have to do, you have to get your lesson plans turned in, or I don’t know. Whatever, whatever it might be, responding to emails. Like, trying to batch and do all of those things and knock out as much as you can in a certain amount of time —
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: — is going to be more efficient than losing that momentum of switching back and forth between tasks.
GONZALEZ: Mhmm.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: That cognitive load of task switching is really underestimated, both, for everybody, really.
GONZALEZ: Yes.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: And it’s like, you don’t even think about when you’re quote/unquote multitasking. It’s like the least efficient way to get things done.
GONZALEZ: Okay. Good. All right. Batching and bundling tasks.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yep, yep.
GONZALEZ: Great.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Another one that I love is just body doubling. And so, and this is kind of a goofy term, but all it basically means is an accountability partner, right? Who can you be accountable with? And so, okay, we’re going to work on grading these things. It’s our planned time, but my teacher from across the hall is going to come in. We’re both going to sit in the same classroom. We are not going to talk.
GONZALEZ: Yeah. That’s the hardest part, yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: That is the hardest part.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: But we’re going to do this. And so, like I know for me, like Amanda and I, when we were writing our book, it’s like we would, we would be sometimes on a Zoom together but sometimes not even on a Zoom but just like we would have our chat function up like in, you know —
GONZALEZ: Yes.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: — and so then we would kind of —
GONZALEZ: And you’re both in the, kind of in the space.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: In the space.
GONZALEZ: Yes.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: And if I had a question, I could kind of ask it or whatever. But that was good to, like, again, having that accountability, but body doubling is, is, like having a co-working session or someone who is kind of working alongside you can be super helpful.
GONZALEZ: Yeah. It’s like parallel play for, like, working adults.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yeah.
GONZALEZ: Yeah, okay.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Exactly. That’s exactly what it is.
GONZALEZ: Okay.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: I would also just say, like, thinking about where can you manage sensory stuff. We’ve talked about it quite a bit I feel like already, but are there areas, are there things that help you restore your sensory capacity?
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: So I’m going to sit with the lights off in my classroom for a little bit and kind of have that quiet time. Do you need movement breaks? Do you need to get outside and walk around the building during your — like, what, what can you do to try to reset if you have that sensory overwhelm?
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: That’s another piece that can be helpful if you experience that.
GONZALEZ: Okay. Okay.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: I think that, and then the last two that I’ll kind of mention here specifically. I am a huge proponent of what’s called energy mapping.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: So what this basically means is I know for me, I tend to be a morning person. And so I am most alert in the morning. I am most focused in the morning. And so actually what works for me really well right now is the fact that because I primarily see clients in the afternoons and evenings, and because I tend to be, I’m an ambivert but kind of leaning extrovert on that side.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: So having that one-on-one interaction with my clients in the afternoon and evening helps me stay engaged and focused.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: And so then I use this morning time for the things that I really need to focus on that I really need that real attention and processing to be able to do.
GONZALEZ: Yes.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: So that works for me. So what works for you? Like, are you somebody, is it easier for you to grade papers at the end of the day? Is it easier for you to, again, if there’s some flexibility with some of the scheduling. When is it best for you to meet with a parent —
GONZALEZ: Right.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: — or have those phone calls? Do you want to do it before school or after school? And trying to kind of navigate that a little bit so that you are kind of being protective —
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: — as far as, as where that energy is going. And then the last one is just about self compassion, which you kind of mentioned. Like, one of my friends, Brendan Mahan, he does a lot of stuff in the ADHD space, and one of his phrases is, “Sometimes the ADHD wins.”
GONZALEZ: Yeah, oh.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: You know?
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: It’s like, that’s okay. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: It doesn’t, it doesn’t mean that you’re a bad teacher. It doesn’t mean that you’re not professional.
GONZALEZ: Right.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: But trying to, trying to not let that shame get a grip when things don’t go the way you want them to —
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: — is really important.
GONZALEZ: Yeah, and it can help you just move on to the next day and not get bogged down and just be mad at yourself, yeah. One other thing here, really quickly, is about leveraging novelty.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yeah.
GONZALEZ: What is, what is that?
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yeah, so, thinking about this, so I kind of, I think when we were talking about the planner piece, right?
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Like I like to kind of lean into that novelty, but, so whenever I have a system in place with, with one of my clients, specifically, sometimes you’ll have a system in place. It’ll work for a little bit, and then something won’t work. So whether that’s talking about just self regulation, managing anxiety. Like any particular thing. What I have often found is that if you find a system that works pretty well, sometimes you can just tweak it a little bit to give it a kick of that novelty to reinvigorate that piece of it. So thinking about how can you, like, oh, I really like doing this particular type of lesson. And I want to try to do that again, but I’m kind of feeling bored of it, but how can I just pull in a little bit of a piece to do it a little bit differently this time?
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: It could be thinking about, I don’t know, whether it is — I mean maybe you really love digging into a new app or a new program to kind of organize your things. Maybe you love building a new spreadsheet, you know.
GONZALEZ: But head’s up, yeah, but it’s usually the first couple of hours of that, and then when it comes to actually completing it, then — I mean the number of unfinished projects I have out there. And so I think it’s important when you’re optimizing your ADHD to realize that if you think you need a whole new thing, stop for a second and see, is there a way I can just tweak the thing I’m already doing —
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Right.
GONZALEZ: — because I might just burn out all of my synapses on this new project and realize I could have just tweaked.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yes. And part of it is also gamification.
GONZALEZ: Oh yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: So thinking about how to, so like, there are actually a ton of apps out there that are like productivity apps that build in gamification.
GONZALEZ: Yes.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: So that is the novelty piece. Some of them are little role play games. There’s one called Habitica, which is one of my favorites. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it. But it has this little character and you go, you set certain quests for yourself, and you earn points. But it’s, so it is an organizational system, but it has that novelty built in.
GONZALEZ: Yes.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: And so, you know, that’s one way to kind of do that. Again, like you’re saying, don’t just throw everything out the window and start over.
GONZALEZ: Right.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Try to figure out what has worked in the past and how do I pull that back in to make it —
GONZALEZ: Yes.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: — make it effective again. Like in a little bit of a different way.
GONZALEZ: Okay. All right. And so, those were all individual things that teachers can just do for themselves.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yep.
GONZALEZ: What are things that can be done more systemically? If I’m a school leader, and I know I’ve got some teachers that are struggling, what can I do systemically?
KIRCHER-MORRIS: So I think one of the biggest things is just talking about and normalizing neurodiversity. We need to have open conversations about it. We need to really work on dismantling those stereotypes and the stigma. Some people will feel comfortable talking about this. Some people will have those labels and not feel comfortable talking about it. But I think what really needs to happen is having this opportunity for, for reflection and then setting the stage for teachers to be able to ask for accommodations when they need it. So I talk about this, when we talk about students, we talk about self advocacy. And, but, that’s kind of what we’re getting at here, but I think it’s really important to recognize that self advocacy is really hard.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: It is especially hard when you’re in a situation where there’s a power differential, and when you are asking for accommodations, that is scary.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: And so how do we make sure that there is an opportunity to feel safe, to invite those conversations, to make sure that those are offered without a fear of judgment. And I think that that is really, the pressure is on the administration, the higher ups to set that stage because you can’t just do it performatively. Did I say that, you know?
GONZALEZ: Yep.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: It can’t just be performative. It has to be really, it has to be intentional.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: And it has to be thoughtful and in order to signal that psychological safety for people to approach that. Because if you don’t, then they’re just going to kind of suffer in silence. And not have the supports that they need, and then possibly, you know, there might be a really great teacher who walks out the door because they needed a little bit more.
GONZALEZ: Yeah. So school leaders, in addition to just opening up more conversations and sort of normalizing the idea that not only are, do we have neurodivergent kids, but on staff here we’ve got plenty of people who are, who have these differences in their brain. But then maybe also having more open conversations about, I mean what kinds of accommodations?
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Right.
GONZALEZ: I think a lot of teachers wouldn’t even know that there are things that they could ask for, so making that transparent too.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yeah. And sometimes it’s not even knowing what, you don’t have to know what to ask for necessarily. It’s just the opportunity to have the conversation.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: “I’m struggling with this. I think it’s related to this.”
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: “I’m not sure what might be an option.”
GONZALEZ: Right.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: “But maybe we could think about something that might work.” And, you know, sometimes, and then, and then just having the check-in, right? So maybe you try something for a little bit, and see if it, see if it might help or whatever. And sometimes it just requires some creativity.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: But, you know, I really believe that that is something that can be really powerful, and sometimes, if you’re an administrator, and you have somebody who’s on your faculty who comes to you and says something like, maybe there really is nothing that you can do. Like, maybe, again, if it’s like, you might not have a whole lot of options. Then you kind of fall into this, this role of, “I’m still here to support you.”
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: “I hear you. I understand. Let’s — ” You can try to find other ways perhaps to make sure that that teacher feels supported. But I also kind of, even as I’m talking about this, I’m going, I feel like there’s always something, even if it’s small, that maybe could be attempted to try to —
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: — mitigate whatever that area of difficulty is.
GONZALEZ: I’m also thinking, what a really interesting opportunity for the special educators in the building —
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yes.
GONZALEZ: — to collaborate with their peers.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: What a great point, yeah.
GONZALEZ: They’ve got all this knowledge about strategies and accommodations that have all been used on the kids, and it’s just like, hold on. You know, maybe you can help us come up with some ideas too.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yeah, totally.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yeah, absolutely. And again, it is, actually, schools probably are one of the best equipped places —
GONZALEZ: Right?
KIRCHER-MORRIS: — to support the staff who is neurodivergent.
GONZALEZ: Exactly.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Because we have people there who literally do that all the time for kids.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: And so it’s not all that different.
GONZALEZ: Right, right. Okay. So what are, what are some other systemic things that can happen?
KIRCHER-MORRIS: So just really being intentional about communication in general. So ambiguity is, is not good for anybody when you are trying to communicate.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Be really clear. We talk about with students. Give explicit instruction. Same for teachers. Don’t use indirect communication that can be confused. So especially for autistic individuals. Trying to read between the lines gets really tricky.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: So, and you can misinterpret things or not understand, and then if you’re afraid to ask questions, then that causes things. But be really, like if there’s a deadline, be really clear about that. If there are certain priorities, priorities that you need people to focus on, make sure that they know what those priorities are. Offer that really stable consistent communication, and make sure, I think this is one of the areas, again, that sometimes gets missed. But however you’re communicating, do it consistently in the same way, but sometimes you need to offer it in different ways. So for some people, like for example, do you know Loom? Do you know the website Loom? Have you ever seen this one? It’s, it’s, you don’t have to use Loom to do this, but this is what I’m going to use as a point of reference. But basically, it’s just a screen recording program where it also then records a video of yourself talking through something, if you want. But then it’ll actually create an AI description and outline of it. But what you could do is provide, talk through something that you’re sharing out with the staff, but then also put the written description.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: So people could either watch the video, or they could read the steps, or they could look at both. But giving it in multiple —
GONZALEZ: Right, right.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: — modalities can be really helpful. Some people prefer it one way. Some people prefer it another. But the nice thing about it is there are tools right now that, that don’t require extra time to feel like you’re doing both.
GONZALEZ: Right, right. Okay, fantastic. So normalize neurodiversity. Provide clear communication. Maybe even differentiate your delivery system so that people can access them in different ways. What are a couple of other things administrators can do?
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yeah. Just reflect on what those bureaucratic types of tasks are. Like, what are the things, are there areas that are overloaded? Are there things that can be streamlined? Are there things that can be put in systemically across the board so that it’s the same whether you’re dealing with the counseling department or the, I don’t know, whatever it might be, like all of the different places.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: But how can things be — just even sharing documents, right? Is it always going to be on the Google Drive?
GONZALEZ: Right.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Is it always going to be on the, on the shared folder on the, wherever it is. But, and that could also be even possibly in a smaller ecosystem, so, like, within a department, right?
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: If you’re a department leader. But just making sure that it is consistent, because there’s nothing harder than going, okay, where was that document supposed to be again? Maybe it’s here, maybe it’s there. Or how do I submit this, trying to make sure that it is, it is consistent and also if possible, that there is a step-by-step outline that people can refer back to if they’re not sure, so they don’t have to necessarily go and ask for help. But there’s a resource that’s available for that.
GONZALEZ: Yeah, to help people find their way back to it. Okay.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yep. I think another one is just being flexible in general, and it kind of goes back that, having that communication and being a little able to brainstorm through it, but just recognize that, like, just because it’s the way that things have always been done, doesn’t mean that it always has to be done that way forever and ever. And so, you know, what does it look like for professional development? Are there asynchronous options? I mean that’s, that’s a tough one, but maybe in some situations that might be something that would be beneficial.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: As somebody who does a lot of PD with, with districts, I’ll be really honest, I would always prefer to have everybody in the same space, but then if they, everybody is in the same space, okay, so what are the sensory components there? Like, if you need to get up and stand at the back of the room, giving that explicit permission for those types of things can be, can be helpful.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Plan time. What makes that effective for certain people, and is there any flexibility with that? But just being, again, being open to having those conversations and trying to find flexible solutions can be, can be really helpful. Kind of along with that, the other thing I would say about the flexibility is when we are talking about accommodations, really trying to make sure that there is a pathway for having those conversations that teachers know how, like again, I talk about kind of opening that door for self advocacy. But like, how can we know that if they need something, they can communicate that confidentially, so that they can try to figure out what might work without necessarily feeling like that’s going to be disclosed more widely.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Especially when we start talking about disclosing diagnoses, that gets really tricky. I always tell people, it’s like, talk to HR. They’re going to know the ins and outs of what works with your district for that because it just is so, there’s a fine line with some of those things. But at the same time, we want to create an environment where people feel comfortable talking about that.
GONZALEZ: Right, right.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yeah. One, another thing that I always think about too is just about community and having the opportunity to talk to other people. One thing that I don’t see a lot of districts doing, but I know a lot of businesses that I work with do, is they have ERGs. Is that a, are you familiar with ERGs, what that acronym stands for?
GONZALEZ: I don’t think so.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: It’s employee resources groups.
GONZALEZ: Okay.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: So in business, lots of organizations have ERGs, so you might have a parenting ERG, or you might have a mental health ERG, or a neurodiversity ERG. Or it could, it could be like a —
GONZALEZ: These sound like affinity groups, kind of.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
GONZALEZ: Yeah, okay.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: I would say that’s, yeah.
GONZALEZ: Okay.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: And so, but basically, how great would it be to have that opportunity in the schools for educators like, oh, well, we’re going to have this, this opportunity. It’s not necessarily anything more formal. Sometimes it’s like, you know, just getting together over, over a lunch or via Zoom or whatever. But just having the opportunity to connect, to talk to people, to know that you’re not alone, who are the people that you can go to.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: But other ways, any other ways that you can try to connect people who maybe feel separate, who feel different. How do we connect them with the people who help them feel like they’re not alone? And giving that, that relationship, that community —
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: — to help them feel like they have, have people.
GONZALEZ: That’s great. That’s a great idea.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: And yeah, and so I think, and the last thing I would just mention as far as strategies would just be, just modeling compassion, you know. I think that you really have to understand when you are approaching something, ableism is really baked into our society.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: It is something that is internalized for many of us. And so how do we make sure that we are approaching these things with an open mind with our staff. How do we make sure that we are using compassion and, and trying to value transparency and being flexible. All of those things really go a huge way just as far as the overall culture in a school building. Again, that makes teachers want to stay.
GONZALEZ: Yeah.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: And we don’t want to lose good teachers.
GONZALEZ: Before I ask you the last question, let people know where, where are the best places to find your work online?
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yeah, yeah. So if anyone’s interested in, in our book, Amanda Morin and I co-wrote “Neurodiversity-Affirming Schools: Transforming Practices So All Students Feel Accepted & Supported.” That’s available on Amazon or through our publisher, Free Spirit Publishing. You can find our podcast, the Neurodiversity Podcast, anywhere you listen to podcasts. And then, all the social media places. Just look up the Neurodiversity Podcast or my name Emily Kircher-Morris, and, you know, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. Those are the primary places where I kind of spend time.
GONZALEZ: Okay, so before we wrap up, just do you have any sort of final words that you want to share on this topic with teachers?
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Yeah. I think, the whole premise of the neurodiversity movement is about depathologizing and destigmatizing all of these different labels, and recognizing that people who show up in different ways have things to offer to our communities. And we want that variability. We want those differences and those variations. And so remembering that even though somebody might be struggling with something, it’s not about fixing that person or fixing that problem. It’s about fixing the system, and trying to create a system that allows all types of brains to thrive. And so whether that’s for our students, or for our teachers, or in our families, or wherever that might be, really working on figuring out where can we make the tweaks in our system that allow everybody to thrive is just going to make a huge difference.
GONZALEZ: Thank you, Emily. Thanks.
KIRCHER-MORRIS: Thank you for having me.
GONZALEZ: To read Emily’s post and a full transcript of our conversation, visit cultofpedagogy.com, click Podcast, and choose episode 264. To get a regular email from me about my newest blog posts, podcast episodes, courses, products, and speaking services, sign up for my mailing list at cultofpedagogy.com/subscribe. Thanks so much for listening, and have a great day.