Teaching Autistic Learners: Listen, Believe, Then Act

Vicki Davis (00:00): Today, for Wonderful Classroom Wednesday, we’re going to look through the eyes of a person who is autistic. She’s now a teacher, but she tells us this story from when she was a child.

Announcer (00:14): This is the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast with your host, Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis (00:18): Today, we’re talking with Claire O’Neill. She’s a teacher, researcher, and neurodiversity consultant from Cork, Ireland. She’s the author of The Strengths-Based Guide to Supporting Autistic Children, a PhD researcher at University College Cork. She is a co-editor of It Takes All Kinds of Minds: Fostering Neurodivergent Thriving at School. I’ve also had one of her co-editors, Sue Fletcher-Watson, on this show as well.

Claire, there’s so many things that we can talk about. But you’ve spent 20 years teaching autistic students and you’re autistic yourself. How does that dual perspective as both teacher and someone who experiences the world differently shape how you think about helping neurodivergent students thrive in school?

Claire O’Neill (01:13): What a question to start with. I think my autistic way of being in the world just informs every part of my teaching. Before I was ever an autistic teacher, I was an autistic learner myself. And my school experiences, by and large, weren’t very positive.

I went into teaching with a fire in my belly. I knew things had to be very different for autistic people to thrive and flourish in school environments, and had a fair idea of what was needed in terms of change and what was needed in terms of support. And I hope in my years of teaching that I have helped autistic learners learn, thrive and flourish in school.

Specifically, looking back at my own school experiences, adapting the environment and making sure that the environment is as supportive and as sensory friendly as possible is really important. And a very, very close second, even if it is a second, is the relational environment.

How do we create a sense of belonging, a sense of everybody here matters? We believe when you tell us that the lights are too bright, that the overhead projector is too loud, and that we believe your experiences of school. And not only do we believe them, but we actively work hard at changing the environment, adapting the environment to make it a place where neurodivergent learners can learn and learn optimally.

Vicki Davis (02:37): So Claire, take us back in time and describe that environment you said wasn’t as supportive. Describe a day and what it felt like for you in an unsupportive environment, just so that we can get that empathy and feel what it felt like for you.

Claire O’Neill (02:55): I live very near to my primary school. And if I look out my window here, I can actually see the rooftop of it.

I can still remember the walk up to school and just that nagging, gnawing feeling in my stomach that I was going in somewhere it just wasn’t going to be pleasant. And that feeling started the minute I put on my itchy, scratchy school uniform. And in my school where I went, we spoke a lot of Irish, so it was a bilingual school. And that was fine. But I didn’t really like talking a lot. I just tried to stay under the radar. I didn’t find having that bilingualism in school difficult. It was only when I was called on to answer questions.

Definitely had subjects that I preferred to others, and in subjects that I really, really liked I can remember having no sense of time. But in subjects that I did find not as interesting, I can just remember looking out the window an awful lot and getting into a lot of trouble for that. A lot of trouble for all that doodling, fiddling, looking out the window.

It was probably helping me concentrate. It wasn’t impeding my learning. I don’t think it was impeding anyone else’s learning, but I would have got into a significant amount of trouble for that.

I can remember school always being way too hot or way too cold, and always too loud, too smelly, and getting into trouble for things, not really knowing why I was in trouble. And that was nearly more anxiety inducing when somebody said, why are you in trouble? And you’re like, I don’t know. So just that kind of double empathy problem, just being very present.

I can remember walking the perimeter of the schoolyard at break time, just wishing I could just kind of sink into the walls and not really getting a lot of the games, the rules, and the hidden curriculum of the schoolyard.

That was primary school. Secondary school then, definitely a lot of masking, trying to fit in socially, found it difficult changing from teacher to teacher with different approaches. Certainly in my post-primary school, a certain type of learner was valued. I’m probably going to be a bit facetious here, but to my teenage self, it was somebody who could sit down very quietly, learn off notes that were given by the teacher, and be able to regurgitate notes. And if you’re that type of learner and you excelled, and if you weren’t, there wasn’t really a place for you in my post-primary school.

Thankfully, university was where I did start to thrive and flourish. My love for learning kind of really reignited it. And my husband jokes and calls me the Pokémon of universities because I have to catch them all. I think I developed a lifelong love of learning.

But it was things like when I got to university, I had agency as a learner. I started with an arts degree, so there wasn’t a lot of contact hours. So I was able to regulate a lot during the day. I was able to self-direct my own learning. There was more choice and assessments. All of these things that can be easily applied to primary and post-primary education, just with a bit of reframing. So that’s kind of a bit of a trip down memory lane.

Vicki Davis (06:00): So if little Claire walked into your room today, how would you teach her to be the kind of teacher she needed?

Claire O’Neill (06:10): It will be a teacher that shows an interest. I teach her it’s really important to show an interest in somebody as a person, not the learner you want them to be or you think they should be. Certainly wouldn’t be using tactics like shaming or comparison. Comparison is the thief of joy, and I believe there was a high element of shame in my primary school teaching, which just shouldn’t have been there.

If I was teaching young Claire to be future Claire the teacher, I would be really, really encouraging her to be interested in people, be curious about people, and see what it is that’s there to connect with people. I think that’s a good advice for life anyway. But when it comes to that really special relationship between teacher and learner, I think seeing the person first is really, really important.

And finding ways to connect, finding ways to get in to their interests, what they like to learn, what topics they like to learn about, and use that as foundation for that really important relationship.

Vicki Davis (07:13): So my mom was a great teacher, and she always said, when you have a student who learns differently and you accommodate, it improves the classroom for everybody. She was a teacher in the 90s, 80s, 70s, before all this was out. The concept is the same. When you differentiate instruction, it improves it for every learner. It’s not that you’re just, quote, delivering this to one student.

Where are some places that they can start? Because it can be overwhelming and teachers are so busy.

Claire O’Neill (07:41): In our book, Universal Design for Learning — there’s one specific chapter dedicated to Universal Design for Learning, written by Mags Flood from Maynooth University.

For UDL, I think the first place to start would be the CAST website. So that’s like CAST away, C-A-S-T. And I really feel like that’s a website that talks the UDL talk, but also walks the UDL walk. Want a quick podcast, a quick video or a quick text overview of what UDL is, you will get it at the CAST website.

Vicki Davis (08:15): Claire, do you have any last encouragement for those that need a little bit of a pep talk about reaching their neurodivergent students?

Claire O’Neill (08:24): The more you make the effort as a teacher to connect with your students, the better it’s going to be for everyone. And really, it is as simple as listening to your learners, believing them. And then when they tell you something about how they learn or what they’re interested in learning, that you act upon that.

I know it’s not an easy task in busy classrooms, but that’d be such a big step to making classrooms more accommodating for neurodivergent learners. Care and kindness, that pedagogy of care is just so important for all learners. But if that care was really extended to neurodivergent learners by listening to them, our classrooms would absolutely transform for neurodivergent learners.

Vicki Davis (09:10): That’s wonderful. And it takes time. You have to build those relationships so that they know that you hear them. I mean, it took a while to get my student to where she would tell me, where she would ask for the seating she needed. It took time to build trust, because when they open up to you, if you don’t act, it’s probably the last time they’re going to tell you anything.

So you really have to, I think with all students, hear what they’re saying and read their body language and understand where they’re coming from. And that’s just the beauty of teaching.

So Claire, this has just been delightful. We’ve been talking to Claire O’Neill, teacher, researcher, and neurodiversity consultant from Cork, Ireland, who has spent over 20 years teaching autistic students. And the book that she is co-editor of is It Takes All Kinds of Minds: Fostering Neurodivergent Thriving at School. Claire, thanks for coming on the show.

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