What is NEURODIVERSITY?
Please CLICK above to share.
What is Neurodiversity? (below are quick notes that go with the video above)
Love my work and want to give? Click here! To support me, please CLICK at the bottom to share. Click here to visit my official YouTube Channel & subscribe if you want! Thank you — Seth
Reading the transcript? Great! We’re currently uploading hundreds of transcripts so you can read them asap, but they are NOT all edited yet. This is a big process. If you notice anything wrong and want to help us, feel free to click this Google Form to share it. Thanks so much for pitching in! – Seth
- WHY it’s such an important term, shine, quality of life
- Neurodiverse, Neurotypical, neuroatypical, neurologically diverse brains, thinking, learning, experiences, values
- Invisible is a problem, causes shame, misunderstanding, Iceberg theory, layers of the onion, more to it
- It’s not bad, it’s just different
- Standardization, Sameness: Same age, grade levels, same chapter, same homework, “cover” material, follow the curriculum.
- Asynchrony
- Different strengths, interests, gifts, talents, passions
- Different challenges, processing
- People LEARN DIFFERENTLY.
Love my work and want to give? Click here! To support me, please CLICK at the bottom to share. Click here to visit my official YouTube Channel & subscribe if you want! Thank you — Seth
Reading the transcript? Great! We’re currently uploading hundreds of transcripts so you can read them asap, but they are NOT all edited yet. This is a big process. If you notice anything wrong and want to help us, feel free to click this Google Form to share it. Thanks so much for pitching in! – Seth
Video transcript:
Hey, what’s up are teachers and maybe some students out there today. I’m going to tell you about what is neurodiversity and why does it even matter? Why should we even care about this term is very important in my line of work. So I’ll be explaining that to you again again for the first time. My name is Seth Perler. That was so throw it out, I’m really glad that you’re here. I work with a lot of students who think differently they learn differently. They don’t fit in the box and I like people who don’t fit in the Box. I enjoy being around people who don’t who break the mold and who are complicated who are interesting and I’m going to teach you about no diversity, but I don’t want you to feel like you’re going to walk away from this video having a formal definition. That’s not how I roll what I want to give you and this video is I want you to walk away from this video with a Vibe with a feeling with a sense of what nerd versity is a strong sense of what it is. So why is it even important? To understand the term neurodiversity. The reason it’s important is because we’re in the business of quote educating students who want to educate people. Why do we want to educate people because we want them to have a great life one that I have a great life now and we want them to have the tools to be able to build a great future want them to have a high quality of life. We don’t want them to have an average life for a mediocre life. We certainly don’t want them to have a bad life or a stressful around happy life. We want to give people a great life and education is where we give people tools doesn’t always work. Of course not why doesn’t it always work? Well because we can’t always or we don’t always I meet everyone’s needs adequately. So the reason it’s important to understand our diversity is because when we don’t ask is because we want you to shine and have a great life and when we don’t understand their diversity when we miss understand human beings when we interpret things incorrectly then we address problems and correctly. Address needs and correctly when that happens. We can’t give people what they need than that diminishes their quality of life it limit their like it gives them less choices less opportunities. It it lowers our quality of life in the future in that is not what we are in the business of doing so that’s why it’s important. Now before I get further and I want to mention that it’s really important for us parents teachers and students anybody. It’s important for us to be aware of the intentions behind the words we used so we want to make sure that we’re being politically correct in a way, but we also don’t want to overdo it. So we got it. We have to use words to describe things. But there are some words in this whole number 2 verse this world of understanding this concept that can be misconstrued or taken the wrong way. So I’m just be sensitive to how we label people, you know label server purpose, but they’re not everything by any means so people can take labels way too far and think that a labeled They can read too much into it and then again misunderstand the student, which is not what we want to do. So neurodiversity. Basically this refers to neurologically diverse Brains Brains are very different. We are extraordinarily complex beings and we want to put terms within education. We want to put things into simple terms and think that we can quantify things in measure everything and oh my God, it’s so it’s so dangerous the way that we measure kids with grades and scores in in in the way. We perceive things sometimes so neurodiversity refers to neurologically diverse brain different brain that people think differently your experience of thinking feels different than somebody else’s experience of thinking learning differently we have different experiences that we’re coming from. We have different values. So nerd versity refers to that. We have different ways of interpreting processing feeling sense thinking learning. Now one of the problems with no diversity is that it’s invisible. Often we can’t we can’t see what’s going on inside somebody and I talked a lot about iceberg Theory where we see the tip of the iceberg. A lot of times. We might see falling and anger sadness. We see things on the outside, but what’s underneath the iceberg and when my work working with these students that’s what really matters finding out. What what’s the route of the stuff? What’s really going on behind the scenes? So with nerd of our students often times, they aren’t even noticed in the reverse. So and I’ll talk more about that as I go on but one of the problems that happens because it’s invisible is that when the student is winner diverse student is struggling in school that we want to Simply labeling. Yeah, you’re just lazy you just don’t try hard enough. You just need to work harder. You just need to be more disciplined. You just need it for yourself up by your bootstraps. You need to be more motivated need to be more regrets. You need to try. Hard do your past you have so much potential and we say all these messages and we are our intentions are good when we are sharing these messages or these these these sentiments but but often times the student starts to internalize this and they start to feel it safe to take it inside in and they start to feel shame and shame is a very corrosive thing really affects these kids very deeply in it as you probably know you adults like we can carry the stuff for years. I I doubt that there is an ad about watching this right now that doesn’t have some part of their life where they worry too much about what other people think of them. We are raised to fit in the Box to conform to do what you’re told and then were shamed if we don’t so Anyhow, I wanted to mention that nerd versity has you know, I’m sure if you’re watching my stuff and you follow my blog and stuff, you know, that no diversity doesn’t mean anybody bad. It’s just different bad is a shaming think just different if anybody’s dropping the ball at us adults not meeting the needs of nerd verse kids. So I want to talk about another similar term neurotypical and neuro a typical. So neurotypical is a term that came out of the ASD Community from somebody. I don’t know who was I should look this up in but I’m somebody apparently somebody with autism came up with the term neurotypical so we have no adverse. We have narrative. Goalie the neural atypical neurotypical would be sort of normal people now, there’s no such thing as a normal person but a neurotypical person that word. That’s why I talked about wear24 would refer to Buddy, who’s more typical neurologically now what we do in education is we tend to take this weekend to take this thing called education and we tend to want to standardize it. We want to say that they were the standards. We want to look at the sameness. We want to look at people being neurotypical. We we teach to the middle of the bell curve. Not the outlier the kids. I work with are the outliers. No diverse kids are outliers. We group people in our schools by that. We want them to be the same age the same grade level. We want to teach them the same chapter give them all the same homework. We want to cover the same material. We want to follow the creek elem. We approach education with this idea of standardization and sameness and that everybody should be at certain grade levels and blah blah and that is not wouldn’t our diversity is about so I wanted to mention standardization and how that influences so much of what we do subconsciously in our in our in our education world. Now the idea here is that if students that student should work hard and do the cricket lemon do what they’re told and cover the material and if that would happen then everything will be okay. They just apply themselves that they need you and they’ll be happy. But everybody is different everybody learns differently. Okay. So there’s another related Concepts. I want to mention in the stock today. And that is the concept of a synchrony and they think he is the same thing with basically states that kids do not develop synchronously. You can’t take a thousand third graders and they all be at the third grade level you have kids who are that age who are some are way ahead of other kids in certain skill areas and summer way below in other skill areas and you might have a third grader. Let’s stick with that one. Who is it is capable of 6 or 7th grade math who is reading at a high school level whose handwriting. Is that a kindergarten level who’s maturity and some situations like with peers that are not their age may be with older peers or without. Their maturity is off-the-charts taking a really deep intelligent conversations, but their maturity when it comes to not getting what they want with certain things. Really infantile asynchrony says that it’s not this line and you have all these domains and all these areas that you can measure and everybody is this supposed to be at the same place and if they’re not at the same place the worst thing to do is say it’s the fault of the student again in my opinion. It’s the fault of how we approach serving them about give kids who are all over the place if you have one kid and they may be in all of it right now. Do you have neurotypical kids who are relative generally speaking at grade level in certain areas sure. It’s that’s the definition of typical. But again, this video is about the number to verse narrow a typical a synchronous gets I want to mention a synchrony. I also wanted to mention that what we’re really doing here when we’re working with an human being or trying to educate them so that they can have a great future as we want to help them build the things that are going to help him. Have a great future we want to Open develop their strengths and their interest in their gifts and their talents in their passions and people have different strengths interest gifts talents and passions. But that’s what our kids are going to be able to build a career on is the things that they’re interested in that they care about that or purpose both of them better meaningful to them that incorporate their strengths for their talents were their gifts and stuff like that. And that too is diverse Isner diverse. I wanted to mention processing one of the things that happens with with people were processing information and there you have to take into account how somebody processes when you’re looking at their diversity because a lot of the students that I work with your extraordinary intelligent have processing issues and when somebody has a processing issue they can look if they could be shamed with the same thing. You’re being lazy. You’re not motivated. You’re not trying hard enough. They can look like they’re not trying and by Ben sometimes when they get older Frustrated attack with dying because they’ve tried so hard and all they’ve done is been shamed for it, but they can look like they’re not trying but they can be trying really hard because they’re struggling to process information. They can really be shamed them. I wanted to mention that and let’s see. Oh, yeah. I wanted to talk about Tui so to eat and hurt and it’s who we students are by definition. No reverse or neuro a typical or asynchronous to a to e student is gifted and talented in Samaria. So if you were to standardize people they would be gifted or the average in those domains and certain domains, but they also have learning challenges are learning disabilities. They might have sensory issues. They might have ADHD autism Asperger’s dyslexia dyscalculia. The rats traumatic brain injury trauma and may have any number of things that are affecting there are at their learning in their processing. So now. Tui it is kind of misleading because that assume that there are two exceptionalities, but there can be multiple of sex exceptionalities. In fact, you usually there are yea and sometimes things are undiagnosed are on notice or so, we have to take that into consideration to and then there’s a term called comorbidities which also kind of bored by comorbidities would mean that they’re more diagnoses going on at the same time. So anyhow, the point of all of this so far with this mirror diversity is people learn differently and people need to be taught differently. We cannot throw a standardized cookie cutter a curriculum at everybody and trailer. Teachers and play follow this cookie-cutter curriculum do it the way we tell you to do it and everybody will do just fine and look great on the test and all will be well that is not reality people learn differently. They think differently they feel differently. They processed differently. They need different things in our job. Is that all this to do our best to give them what they need to come do it perfectly know, but we can do a much better job than we’re doing right now. So what do we do about it? Well, what we’re going to do about it as we are going to teach people as if they learn differently so we can use any number of teaching method to do what’s called differentiation differentiation is in order to education term that implies that we teach or approach a teaching people differently. We make accommodations for people make modifications for people we care about the kids. We are teaching we listen to them. We ask them what they need. We usually don’t do that, but we can do that we can do Call creatively differentiated curriculum or creatively differentiated learning experiences and I like that term because it implies that we are creatively differentiating learning experiences for students so that they have some choice they are they have a lot of choice. They have input they have ownership they have buying in their learning and we don’t shame them. You know, what we can do that is not shame them look at what’s underneath the tip of the iceberg and I think part of the problem and part of the reason that we don’t train teachers to do this then and there are definitely teachers who do that sin a lot of the teachers that really differentiate well do it because either they’re gifted teachers or they’ve worked really hard and developing and honing that skill of differentiation and they’ve been empowered by their Administration which doesn’t often happen to creatively designed things that are going Me a highly engaging and meaningful. The thing is is that teaching like that is not cheap. It is not easy. You can’t cram 35 kids in a room and expect the teacher to have the resources in the time to be able to meet all the needs of a group of kid that is extraordinary leaner diverse and we have a model of Education that is designed to increase Revenue. We don’t see this cuz it’s behind the scenes but like Pearson, which is one of the standardized testing companies that is a 9 billion dollar your company and their revenue model. They’re at their model for profit is very simple. They’re selling test very low overhead very high profit. They do not want the story changed money influences politics and policy and and there’s textbook companies. They textbook. Is make a lot of money there these things called consumables. What is a consumable basically is a book that has to be thrown away at the end of the year. So you have to buy new ones are very expensive for school districts buying electronics for school districts, you know who sells very well you can put everything online and and that’ll just be great while that obviously caused a lot of problems because the place where the kids are supposed to focus has absolutely filled with distractions and they don’t have the executive function to to ignore the distractions. So they’re there the point is is that changing the way that we teach the stuff is really hard because they’re people profit from education even though we don’t see it. We don’t think I owe the text accompanying the curriculum manufacturer the tech companies even the food companies like Sysco like these are people who are let’s take the food company to it like that that are selling extremely low. Quality food extremely cheap food for as much profit as they possibly can. You know, it’s they want to keep profit. This is not about what do kids need can we really meet their needs no were still cutting funding it everywhere. We can and blah blah blah. That’s why there’s so many so many protests this year, you know teachers are trying to to live a good life to serve kids to have the resources. They need to have the time they need to have what they need to be able to serve these kids and heading out. so finally trappa neurodiversity forgetting everything I said, let’s go back to the beginning. What are we doing here? You’re trying to educate human beings to build on their strength. We’re trying to help them have strong enough executive function so that they can execute on the goals that are meaningful and purposeful to them. We are trying to create healthy and secure attachment with parents and teachers and the more the more dysfunctional of school is obviously the more dysfunction in Dysfunctional tell a friend you’re going to have with with the adults in these kids lives, but the better a school does at having mentally healthy teachers and the better we is families take care of our own mental health in the more we can have healthy and secure attached relationships relationships are everything is alternately with want to teach our kids how to have fantastic relationships. We want to Value their diversity of the CDs unique human being. So what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to give them the executive function building on this strength developing their skills honoring that there are Unique individual and we want them to shine. We want them to have a great life now and have gay set them up to be able to have a great future. So again what I was trying to do here with give you a Vibe a sense. I wouldn’t know our diversity is I hope that I did that in this video. Again, my name is Seth with stuff perler.com. Really appreciate you if you have not subscribed to my blog you can subscribe there. I send out stuff every week never free course for parents and feel like myself. Please share with somebody today and leave a comment. If you’re on YouTube, you can leave a comment below and I hope that you go Shine Your Light today and have a fantastic day. I’ll see you soon.