A Book Study

I am currently taking a class dealing with ADHD in the classroom and Neurodiversity in the classroom. It looks at strength-based strategies to help students with special needs succeed in school and life. We are using the book Neurodiversity in the Classroom by Thomas Armstrong and I thought I would share some of the highlights with you as I go along. I have a lot of students in my classroom who need help and strategies to help them succeed. 

Here are some highlights from chapter 1.

* Neurodiversity: is a shift in how we think about our students in special education or with special needs. It suggests that we focus on the strengths of students and not on their deficits, disease or dysfunction.

* While the term neurodiversity has been around since the 90’s it is growing in the autistic community as well as including groups such as those with learning disabilities, intellectual disabilities, ADHD and mood disorders.

* The book reminds us to think of Calvin and his ADHD behavior in the coming strip Calvin & Hobbs or the behaviors of Monk that show his obsessive compulsive disorder.

*Neurodiversity offers educators the opportunity to step outside the box and embrace a new thinking about human diversity. It calls for us to stop putting students into separate disability categories and using old tools and language. Instead of seeking to “fix, cure, or help” a student’s disability we need to seek to discover the student’s unique requirements for growth and then use differentiated instruction and strategies to help them grow.

*The book reminds us that there is no “NORMAL” brain sitting somewhere in a museum or hospital waiting to be seen and to which all other brains are compared to. There are a variety of brains out there and each one is different.

Positive Role Models

Children can be influenced by the adults they see in their lives and we can use behavior modeling to help provide children with guidance and an example of what to be doing. Students with disabilities may also benefit from learning about people who have succeeded in their careers who have had learning disabilities.

Some famous people with ADHD or had ADHD:

Michael Phelps (Olympic athlete)

Jim Carey (actor)

Stephen Spielberg (film director)

Thomas Edison (inventor)