Neurodiversity and inclusion in schools with Catrina Lowri

In this episode of the Theropod podcast, Banu Balaji, the host and an occupational Therapist chats with Catrina Lowri, founder of Neuro Teachers UK ,a Special Educational Needs Coordinator (SENCO) and an advisory teacher for Gloucestershire County Council.

The podcast dives into the intricacies of behavior and regulation, emphasizing that what often appears as disruptive behavior is frequently a sign of dysregulation. The conversation delves into sharing insights from their extensive training in sensory systems, highlighting the importance of understanding individual sensory needs to foster better learning environments. Together they advocate for meaningful movement as a key strategy to enhance engagement and reduce behavioral challenges, drawing on personal experiences and successful case studies.Listeners can expect to gain practical advice for parents and educators, including techniques to support children’s sensory needs and strategies to create more inclusive and effective learning experiences. 

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Transcript

 Katrina. Hillary is the founder of neuro teachers.  And you have teachers help educational settings work with their autistic and neuro divergent learners to find simple solutions for neuro inclusive practice. Katrina is neuro divergent herself having the dual diagnosis of dyslexia and bipolar disorder and has traits of ADHD, dyspraxia, and auditory processing disorder. She's a qualified special needs teacher and an experienced Senco and advisory teacher. She uses her unique status as an expert by lived experience and a teacher with 23 years of pupil facing experience to help schools improve behavior, attendance, and attainment among pupils of all neuro types. 



The neuro teachers team do this through training, mentoring, coaching, and culture change in nurseries, schools and colleges. Katrina's particular area of research is around exclusion prevention. She's written two papers for the good autism practice journal. The first in 2018 was a case study about preventing exclusion for an autistic ADHD boy. With extreme demand avoidance and the second published in 2020 looked at reintegrating autistic children into school. 

After a period of persistent absence. Katrina believes passionately in true inclusion for all. She offers schools, simple practical solutions through empowering information. Hi, Katrina. You're very welcome to the theropod podcast.

Can you tell me a little bit about yourself, Katrina to start off.

 , I come from an education background. I was initially,  a modern foreign languages teacher, trained in secondary, and for one reason or another, I meandered into special educational needs. So, throughout my, sort of, time in the classroom, I became a special education.

Co ordinator, you can totally tell I'm dyslexic sometimes when I get the letters wrong. Anyway, in Wales where I live, we call them Additional Learning Needs Co ordinators, ALENCO.  Um,  but yeah, I, I did that and I also was a SEND teacher in special schools and then I became an advisory teacher for Gloucestershire County Council, which I did for quite a number of years.

And now I run my own consultancy firm, working with schools. nurseries, um, businesses to try and improve situations for neurodivergent people.  And the thing that people come to me about is always behavior. That's what they seek me out for, because they want to change someone's behavior, whether it's a child or an adult.

And I'll go, no, no, no, . What you need to know about is regulation.  And they go, Oh, what's that? And I go, well, cause it's to do the sensory system. You see, because the reason that the person is in a way that you see as undesirable. Because this person is dysregulated. And when I, when I understood that myself, about me, that made a huge difference to the way in which I go about my day to day life as a neurodivergent person.

And it made a huge difference, massive, massive difference to my classroom practice.  So I first heard about this, I worked in a, in a special school that was specifically for autistic people. And we had an entire year where all of our inset and all of our twilight sessions, all of our training was devoted to sensory. 

 Because the head teacher had taken the precaution of employing  a, an occupational therapist amongst the staff. And then also  there was an OT technician as well, who was. Also training to be an OT. So we had two members of staff dedicated to this. We did all of our training where we had an aspect of something to do with the sensory system.

And the first thing we had to do was map our own sensory systems. as staff and talk about them and thought, you know, our own experience. And that was really, really enlightening.   And then, you know, we had, we, we worked with our, our, our class and we looked at how, what their sensory systems were, were like, and, you know, whether they were hyper, hypersensitive to different areas of the sensory need.

And then we brought in sensory equipment and we, , did an assess plan, do review cycle where we had Done a kind of sensory checklist with the child. We knew if they were hypo or hypersensitive in certain areas like.  We knew if they were hypersensitive to noise and everyone goes, Oh, just give him some headphones.

It'll all be fine. No, it's very, very individual because some children can't cope with the proprioception feeling of having headphones on their head. Some people would be better with hearing loops, for example. So we tweak this over the course of a year. And what we found was across the school,  it reduced challenging and disruptive behavior by 65%. 

Amazing.  Amazing. But this is the important thing, like, so you can't just go, uh, uh, headphones,  weighted blanket, um,  pop up tents. And then the next day, oh, that didn't work at all. Well, yeah, it didn't work. She didn't do any assessment to find out whether this was right for this particular child's sensory needs, because not every, your sensory makeup is as unique as your thumbprint. 

So without having done any kind of, I mean, you don't have to do a full on assessment, you can just do a checklist.  But without having done any kind of observation or anything on the child, you just went, Oh, pop up tent. Yay. Oh, no, it's not working. All right. Scrap that. That was a bit waste of 30 quid.  Yes.

And I also tell, , the teacher, I sometimes ask the teacher now, is that your  problem or is it the child's problem? He's always moving. I was like, well, is that your problem? Because you're distracted. By that,  or is that the child's problem? And then when you start to really think about it and in terms of, okay, my sensory system also needs a bit of regulation in relation to the child, it does shift that,  that narrative that that child's behaving badly or they're not paying attention or they're not engaging.

It does change that, doesn't it?  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, like I,  people come to me about behavior, but what they really mean is dysregulation. So if a child is continuously needing to move during the class, what is that telling you? That is telling you that they need to regulate in some kind of way. And the way in which they help themselves regulate is by moving. 

So, Understanding how the brain works and understanding the importance of movement for switching on all kinds of parts of the brain that we need for learning, right? So I saw a brain scan yesterday that's from the University of Oregon, and it had two pictures of a brain scan with, you know, explanations by it.

Basically, it was like one before walk, not really engaged brain. Two after 20 minute walk, very engaged brain. Which child is going to be able to engage with the work better? The one who's got their brain in gear. And it's just so like,  particularly like my sphere is neurodivergent children, particularly, or adults for that matter. 

One of the big important neurochemicals is  dopamine, which is known as being like the motivating neurochemical. And  movement is one of the things that gives you a little bit of dopamine. If you don't have the dopamine, it's not just about the rewards. If you don't have the dopamine, the bits of the brain don't talk to each other. 

So you've got fragmented, you know, thought processes because the different sections of the brain, that's what dopamine does is it ties the brain together and it gives you the opportunity to be able to think clearly through a process. So if you want children to do anything that even resembles. academic learning, you've got to build  meaningful movement into their day.

So if you,  if you had to give, um, some advice to either parents or teachers in preparation for going back to school,  Now I know holidays are on. So what would they be? What can people, what can they start doing now?  I think one of the things that like, so from, from this wonderful experience, I had a working in a special school where I had an entire year of training on sensory.

 The one thing that I really took away is that five minutes, just five minutes of movement can reduce self stimulating low level disruptive behavior by 60%. That's massive. So. Exactly. It's huge. It's huge. So it is actually self stimulating behavior, what we're seeing. So children rocking on their chair, spinning around on like a wheelie chair, walking around, pacing, turning around to their friends, tapping, et cetera.

We see that as low level disruption. It's not actually low level disruption. It's dysregulation. If you just allow meaningful movement, particularly with, you know, deep firm pressure, proprioceptive,  you know, feedback,  then it reduces that by up to 60%. And imagine, right, if you could get an improvement in the child, in your child's behavior by 60%, that would be miraculous.

So my one piece of advice would be, before you have to do anything that's focused, that is not of the child's choosing,  give them that five minutes of meaningful movement that works with their sensory system.  to properly, physiologically calm down. And you will get so much better results out of them. Like, you know, whether it's academic or whether it's you need them to do something in the house.

Yeah, well, you need them to go to grandma's and they've got to put their shoes on first before they get in the car. You'll get much more out of that if you give them some meaningful sensory input  and just five minutes. It's going to save you time later. It's going to take time now, but it's going to save you so much time and effort later.

And the way I look at it is you're going to have to do the work now or you're going to have to do the work later. It. Yeah. Perfect. This way it is actually just more connecting, it's pleasant, and it's, it's rewarding. But later, when there's an overwhelm, and you're still having to calm and co regulate the child, that is actually harder.

 Yeah, exactly, because at that point then you've got a child who's not, you know, they're no longer in the green going into yellow. They're probably near to the red zone, and they're like getting really, really dysregulated at this point. And so are we. It's all in front of the adult, yeah. Actually, exactly, because our  sensory system mirrors theirs, our arousal curve mirrors theirs, our window of tolerance gets smaller as their window of tolerance gets smaller. 

And so, you know, putting the work in at the beginning, which may be an okay, right, so we have to plan going to grandma's house for 30 minutes before we go to grandma's house because we need five minutes of this and then we need 10 minutes of Sophie putting her shoes on and getting her bag together and putting her coat on and then we need to get in the car and get zipped in so we need to start off at this point. 

You put that forward planning in and you've put, you've given Sophie the five minutes on the trampoline before she gets in the car for half an hour and she's not going to be kicking her little brother in the head and you're going to have a much calmer journey. You won't have to pull over and scream at the two of them on the motorway or whatever.

It's really going to make your whole life. Honestly, I have found it life changing for my own particular sensory system, but also for the children and adults who I work with. And if you can't do that, have a snack. Have a crunchy apple, or a carrot, or something that's crunchy, chewy, blowy, sucky, that they can use their mouth.

Yeah. And that's also regulating their quick quick strategies to you. Exactly. That's the thing you see it's like, and the proprioception I know I keep banging on about it because I don't know whether the people listening necessarily know what that means but it means it's your external sense of body, body awareness. 

And like, , in between your jaw, there's like, just by your ear, there's like, this is really great area which you can kind of just massage, and that will give you a nice little bit of proprioception  there. Or you can chew gum,  if you think that's socially acceptable. I'm not a fan, personally, but I know a lot of people like to chew gum, or Haribo.

Or you can have crunchy carrot sticks, or you can have crunchy sticks, etc. But yeah, crunchy car snacks, gonna make life much better for Sophie, and everyone around her for that matter. Yes, yes. Just going back to that learning, uh, movement and learning and the, you know, just being even aware that , no one does sustained attention for six, seven hours a day. 

That is really unrealistic to expect. And I think we sometimes expect it of our older children, the young people, like once they get into secondary school, we expect that they will come into school, keep their attention for the whole day and then go back home and do more homework.  That's actually a very unreasonable ask.

It's unreasonable, adults don't do it. If you go to any kind of place of work, if you go to, you know, a factory floor, an office, or a hospital, or a school, or whatever adults work, they're constantly on the move.  They're constantly switching from one thing to the other. So it's unrealistic to sit, to expect children to sit there for six hours a day and learn, you know, whatever.

And it's like, okay, this is, this is, you know, I get the privilege sometimes of observing children in school, right? So I do something, I do something, , called a behavior audit with some schools. And I was asked to track a particular pupil who they're having a lot of problems with because he kept getting detention over and over again.

It was autistic ADHD.  And he was doing it. , he had, A timetable that I don't know who designed this, right. But it was basically like  double geography, lunchtime, another lesson of geography, and then a science lesson.  Not very good. Now the geography they were doing about globalization through the medium of learning about India.

And he was really, really interested in India. And at the very beginning of the first geography lesson, the teacher said something that he found really cool and interesting about India at the beginning.  And he got really, really into that and was basically sitting talking to the TA and everyone around him asking all kinds of questions about, you know,  Indian culture.

I can't remember what it was that she even said. I think it was something to do with the exchange rate between India and Britain. But anyway, four hours he was on that topic.  So he missed three geography lessons. And he was still talking about it at the very end of the science lesson at 3. 30. So he'd had that information about half past 11 at 3.

30. He was still talking about that piece of information. So he missed the entire, everything else in terms of the input. But if you'd have looked at him, he was sitting still and he was looking, looking at the front and he was talking to other people, but only at a time when it was group work or pair work.

So he was allowed to do think, pair, share, et cetera.  If you were looking at him and you weren't doing what I was doing, he looked like he was behaving.  But actually he was not anywhere near engaged.  And for certain sections as well, he was very much in the blue zone. He was just completely hypostimulated by what was going on because he was overwhelmed. 

Yeah, yeah. And it is those minute observations that , make or break that classroom experience for that child because if he'd sat there then for the whole year, then he's missed out on quite a lot and then he's feeling,  you know, down in himself and then it causes big, domino effect. Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Like, you know, and, and the thing is, as well, like, what will happen is the teacher will ask him to hand in that piece of work, right, for the science was on endothermic and extra, ectothermic  reactions, which is not an easy concept, because purely from a vocabulary point of view, that's quite hard to understand. 

And he would have had no clue about it, because he didn't get any of the input at all, because he was still going on about how cool India was.  And also the social impact of it, because the other kids are like, they're not going to want to engage because he is on his, , you know, his area of interest and that's kind of what's happening and they're not going to want to engage in that. 

Yeah, so he's just monologuing  about that. And you know, brain dump is, is unceremoniously called a brain dump, you know, from the point of view of a, of an autistic or ADHD or autistic ADHD person, this is something that, you know,  because they're getting so much dopamine and, and  so much comfort from the topic that is their favorite topic  that it does, it can become, you know, quite disengaging for others.

Yeah. So what is the, what, what can you do?  And that in that situation, I think  when I, when I have met people who have super enthusiasm for something,  I can usually anticipate that somebody is going to have that, that that's going to be their special interest,  or that this is going to spark conversations.

So I would do a short, a short input. saying, you know, did you know the exchange rate between India and the UK is so and so and such and such. So if you went this in this country, that would be equivalent to that in that country. So, et cetera. I think that was the topic. And then I go, okay, so Clive, what do you think about that?

What's, what comes into your head when I say that? And I'd allow him to sort of like download the information a little bit and then go, okay, right. We're going to write down those ideas. And everyone else is going to write down their immediate thoughts about it. So everybody's doing a little bit of a download of the information, right?

And then we're going to go on to the next piece of input.  So he's at a time to have his ideas and park them somewhere before he goes on, because that's the way in which his memory works. Now, even better with that than that would be as if you've got some input involved. So, so people are allowed to walk around and.

do a survey about what they thought was the most interesting thing. Go and ask someone else in the class, , what was good, bad, and interesting about the information that you just learned,  and then come back and talk to me.  But, you know, I was the sort of teacher who did a lot of standing up, standing around, you know, like rather than carpet time, we used to stand in circles and things like that.

But I think movement really breaks that kind of,, Inability to move from one thing to the other movement or any proprioceptive activity can break that, can it not? That kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

I mean, this is the thing. We don't concentrate in a straight line. And like, you know, even if,  like one of the good pieces of advice that was given to me is you want to really want child to concentrate. They're not really doing concentration. They're doing joint attention.  So that's like, you know, what you want is two or more people attending to the same object.

conversation point or activity at the same time. You don't actually mean I want you to pay attention because I could pay really, really good attention to my fingernails.  That isn't what we're talking about.  So yeah, so if you want to get someone's actual, actual attention, first of all, they need to be regulated and then you need to be giving them an invitation to share their ideas. 

And I like one other thing that you said about what you would do, that you would ask, um, you know, everyone else their input and their ideas. I think that is kind of your, kind of your restructuring. That activity in a way that for the other person to say, okay, this is what we can talk about next because when they're in that zone, they don't know where to go next. 

Yeah, and he was having a lovely time, and he wasn't like, he wasn't on the face of it disruptive or challenging.  He just wasn't getting any of the input because the first thing, the first thing that he heard was so cool, he was super into that. So, I mean, you know, it's actually a real massive compliment to the teacher. 

Nothing inherently wrong with that, but it's just, it is, you know, There's a lot of stuff talked, particularly in early years, about active learning, but somehow, as soon as children get into about year three, they're expected to sit in lines behind desks. And that isn't the natural state of being for any humans.

I mean, just look at us two here, we're both moving in our chairs. We're adults. So, you know, It isn't a natural, like, you know, I work from home, I probably get up about every 20 minutes and do something else. Like I'll go downstairs and put some washing on if I need to think about a particular issue. Drink a cup of tea or something.

  It's really good to hear from a neurodivergent person as well to say, actually, this is all the wonderful things I can do now. Like you're running your own, you're running your own business and you're successful and you're communicating with people  and you can do all of that.

It's funny, actually, I was on a podcast yesterday as well, because I get asked to go on podcasts. And I said, I'm professionally neurodivergent. I'm like neurodivergent for a living now, you know, like I stand up in front of rooms of people and say, hello, my name is Katrina Lowry and I'm neurodivergent.

, but you know, like I have like, cause I live in Wales in the UK and, , we have this thing called access to work, which is a grant that you can get. which you apply for through the government and that you can get, you can get money in order to help you make reasonable adjustments. So that could be something OT related, like a standing desk, for example, it could be, it could be, you know, hearing loops for being in noisy meetings.

It could be all sorts of different things. It can be a taxi to work. It can be a PA.  There's all sorts of different things that you can apply for. And you get an assessment takes six months, but you get an assessment and then you get somebody who helps you through it and they, they help you with assistive technology and so on and so forth.

And, and like, you know, that's available to people who are in the world of work. Even if you run your own business, that's available, but yet in schools, they'll say, Oh no, no, she's been given a laptop. That should be enough.

But have you taught her how to use this assistive technology on a laptop top? Or are you just expecting her to imagine it? And then, and then you have the, the child there that's like, Doug doesn't want to lug a laptop because that makes them look different because no one else has a laptop.  Yeah, exactly.

And it's, there is that whole piece about othering and that's the same sort of thing as well. Oh, he's, he's got headphones, but he won't use them. Well, because they're bright pink and he has to wear them in assembly full of like 500 children. It would be a different matter if everybody had the options. If you had a table with some headphones outside and any child who wanted them could pick them up, because sometimes neurotypical children have a bit of a headache that day and would like it to be a bit quieter in assembly,  then it's self selecting.

Then you're not othering and going, you neurodivergent child, bright pink headphones.  We want you to stand out as much as possible and make it feel like it's your fault.  And to be honest,  a lot of kids could use that, that, that break from all the, all the noise.  Tell me, Katrina,  looking back on your own educational journey, whether a school or after school, what would have helped you? 

Oh, understanding, early identification, I think, and understanding of what my needs are. Right. When I was in school, I'm like quite old now. I'm 49. So I was identified as being dyslexic back in the 1980s. And the only reason I have the privilege of coming from a fairly affluent family, both my parents are psychiatrists. 

So they had an idea about these sorts of things and they knew who to go to. So they, they found an educational psychologist who would see me privately and they had the means to be able to pay for it. , my school's reaction was to shove me into  a portacabin down the bottom of the school field.

 I did loads and loads of handwriting, funnily enough. Lots of handwriting, cutting and sticking, and colouring in the lines. And they taught me how to colour the right way. And apparently there's a right way of doing it, so you have to go up and down. And you use it, and you use it all the time today.

It's, it's revolutionised my life, honestly. It's the basis of my entire career. Oh, she should see her colour. I'll definitely give her the job. , but yeah, so it was a lot of that really. And, and I, and I was, I felt very othered and they used to call us the rems because we were in the remedial class. It was the eighties, you know, we don't use language like that anymore, but it was very, very hurtful.

And I wasn't, and then I was seen to overcome my needs by the time I got to kind of the middle of secondary school. I did, I got decent GCSEs, straight Bs pretty much. I was a straight B student. , you know, I'm not setting the world alight, but for me, that was really good because I had, I had tutors to help me because again, I'm from a privileged background and my parents were able to pay for me to have extra tuition. 

 And then, and then I had, , , some support and funding when I was at university. So I had a dyslexia tutor.  specifically when I was at uni. But there was a lot of my neurodivergent needs that weren't ever identified. So like, I didn't know, cause I'm all, I'm also bipolar. I have traits of inattentive ADHD.

I have traits of dyspraxia  and I have auditory processing disorder as well.  And those, those other things, like I wasn't diagnosed with bipolar until I was 32, and then I wasn't diagnosed as having the other things ever really. I have written down on pieces of paper that I am, I have traits of these things, but I don't have a formal diagnosis of any of those things.

So, I was always considered to be complex.  in school. And I didn't really enjoy that very much because that makes me seem like it's my fault when what they mean was we don't really know exactly what's going on for Katrina, there's dyslexia and something, but we're not sure what the something is. So I think, I think having, if somebody had done a screener on all of my strengths and needs, from the beginning. 

And, and I say this to teachers,  and for that matter, businesses, right? Your student, colleague, friend, et cetera, you can sit down and write a list of strengths and needs. You do not need a diagnosis. You don't need any medical professional to do this. Just need to say what are they good at? What do they need help with? 

And if somebody sat down with me and done that, and then gone, okay, well, these are the things you need help with. So we can give you this, this, this, and this, or we could try this, this, this, and this, or have you considered this, this, this, and this? And then they'd actually play to my strengths and gone, do you know what?

You're really good at talking, Katrina. Maybe we should give you a job where you talk about stuff.  Which is what I do now.  You found it. I had to find that myself, you know.  So, and not being othered as well. So, giving opportunities to everyone. Like, it's an invitation. So, like I was saying previously about the pink headphones.

Yeah, by all means have a table where there's some pink headphones. Sanitize them after use.  But they are, you know, there's a box of them. And if any child or adult for that matter, it's feeling their sensory seats, um, system is a bit jangly and they're not enjoying the noise in the very echoey school hall, then they can put some headphones on. 

You know, it's the same sort of thing with accessibility tools on, on laptops. Don't go. Oh, Deidre, we know you're dyslexic, so we've put this on your laptop. Just go to everybody. Oh, we've got some new, we've got a Grammarly and, you know, whatever package. We're going to put them on all the laptops. If you're interested, we're going to have a little session at lunchtime or after school or after work today, like 3.

30, 5 o'clock, where we just have a little play and there'll be a techie available to answer any questions if you need them. Come along if you think it would be of use to you. That's it, yeah. We'll repeat it, we'll repeat it in a month's time.  You know, rather than going, you know, singling out, you know, Deidre or Susan or Clive

 or taking them out of class,  you know, here, come on, come here now. We're going to have a session with you. And they've taken them out of the main class. Yes. In front of everybody. Exactly. It's humiliating. And it happened to me. You know, I used us to go to the remedial class.  Well, funnily enough, , my, both my children are dyslexic and they're, they were.

Only just,, diagnosed and it's only now my, my son's finished school this year. And he was saying, Oh, he, he was to go to resource resource class. Now he didn't mind it so much. He thought it was a laugh because he was missing Irish.  It's still happening that you're taking kids out and putting them into a special room and saying, this is a resource room.

, and everyone else knows. Yeah. Oh yeah. It's humiliating. And the thing is right. Like there are ways in which you can do it that make it look like it's a beneficial option to everyone,  right? So, okay, so this week you're taking out the dyslexic kids, but the next week you're taking out children who have a particular interest in,  I don't know, an aspect of Irish grammar, and they're doing a special piece of work, or they want to, they want to learn a bit about poetry or something like that, and, you know, something like that.

So you're taking different kids out at different times, so it's usual that kids go in and out of class. If you're going to take  kids out of class, you need to take all the kids at some point out of the class. Yes. And also as well, like,  as a linguist, I object to children, there's a blanket idea that they'll be taken out of a language.

And like, because we obviously we have Welsh in this country and people go, okay, well, they, oh, they shouldn't do Welsh, they're dyslexic or whatever. But no, actually, they might be better at Welsh than they are at English. So  if it's always. If it's always only, they only get taken out of the German lesson, French lesson, Spanish lesson, whatever, then you're, they're missing a whole chunk of the curriculum.

Yeah. They only get taken out of D, you know, they only get take out technology because there's another one or RE, they're going to get taken out of like certain subjects all the time. They're missing a whole chunk of the curriculum. Yeah. Gotta do even more of the stuff they hate.  rather than being a subject that they might be good at. 

And I just, I like, yes. Okay. Interventions, I don't even like the word, have their place and are important, but it needs to be done in a way that is beneficial and doesn't feel like being othered or singled out. Yeah. And that's, that's, I think for secondary, it's, it's, it's a bit far off. It's a long way.

, there's a, there's still a long way to go compared to primary, I think. Yeah, definitely. I mean, that is a real, that, that's, that, yeah, that's a real point actually. Yeah. I mean,  think, , like I don't, I don't know what it's like so much with the Irish curriculum, but the way, the way it is in Britain, it's, it's actually, it's better in Wales probably than England, I would say, because the Welsh curriculum is quite new and it's a lot more person centred and it's a lot less.

is a lot less kind of rigidly subject based and can be a lot more child led than the English curriculum. But you know, we've, we've created the, the systems for an industrialized age that doesn't exist anymore. Yeah. Yeah. I do find that young people are more switched off in school and they're kind of in, in lessons that,  that they can't connect with, that they don't know where it's going.

And so they're just,, it seems to be like, yeah, we have to go to school. So we're going to school. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, it's because everyone, this is what we've always done. Everyone's been educated in this kind of like, you know, okay, so you do maths, you, the bell rings, and then you have to stop doing that and go and do geography.

And then you have to stop doing that and go and do science. So it's not really how learning works for  anyone. And if you think about the world of work, you'd be working on it.  a project or you'd be working with  a group of person or an individual person in order to try and make progress in a particular direction, but it's very, very specific. 

Whereas, you know,  also there's not really any such thing as a school subject, is there? I mean, how can you like, how can you do geography without doing any history or culture or language or, you know, to a certain extent, maths, like that geography lesson, there was a huge, it was about population.  You know, how can you do population without learning some statistics?

So why is that geography when a minute ago I was learning that in maths? Yeah. Why do we need to compartmentalize  everything so much?  Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. I mean, that's a whole deep philosophical, that's kind of our topic. It is. That's my view. It's my, it's, it's something that I've been thinking about quite a bit, um, recently because both my, you know, I've one finished school and the other is also in secondary school.

I've been thinking like, what is it doing for my kids? This education? Yeah. What are they actually learning? Yeah. That's the thing. They're learning to conform, unfortunately. And there's nothing wrong with that because you can't just drive on the wrong side of the road. Or.  You know, go and punch someone at a bus stop just because you don't like the you.

But even the conforming, it is a bit skewed. Like, now, my daughter would say, like, all they're talking about is their hair, their nails, and their tan, and I don't really like that. And, you know, there's conforming and there's conforming, you know. Yeah.  Yeah. Absolutely. And that's the thing, isn't it? Really?  .

Yeah. I mean, yeah, you get, you get better results out of people if you do things with them rather than to them. Yeah. Yeah. And that's that. I think that's the crux of today. That's to say it's to, to, to be toy led  and to do with, yeah, absolutely. And from a strengths and from a strengths based model rather than focusing on what they can't do. 

Yeah, exactly. And I think that that's one of the things that I've always found. Particularly gratifying about working with OT is it's very much like start from the place where they can do and then backwards chain it to the place where they, where they need to be.  And like the whole concept of backwards chaining I learned from working with OTs. 

And you can, you can apply that idea to so many things, like 100%.  There's another thing as well, like working with business, one of the things that one of my colleagues says is meet them at the bus stop. So wherever somebody is, like they might not be anywhere near your, where you think they need to be, but you meet them where they are.

And then you walk them to the place where they need to be step by step and their journey is going to be different and they're going to need different things along the way  to where they need to be. You know, you can't just sort of like fast track them and expect them to suddenly be exactly where they are because they're not there.

There are somewhere that's quite far away from that point. Absolutely. I think that's just how humanity learns. None of us learn in a straight line. No. And I find like as an OT and as someone who's worked in multi D teams, diagnosis don't really make sense to me in terms of a plan or intervention.

Because when somebody says, Oh, they have autism, that doesn't mean anything to me as an OT because I want to know what can you do or not do what you want to do. And that can look different  for people. So different. I mean, like, my husband and I are both dyslexic, right?  I absolutely can't stand word puzzles or anything like that.

It actually makes me feel a little bit sick if it was the idea. If you were going to say now, Vanna, you're going to go, Right, Katrina, you and I, we're going to play a game of Scrabble now. I would run away screaming because, like, that just, like, honestly, it gets me. Like, I can't do that. Whereas he absolutely loves word puzzles. 

He loves anything to do with puzzles, you know, patterns, sequences, et cetera, whereas they just make me feel stupid and make me want to run away.  and we're both dyslexic. So that's just one of many, many examples about how my neurodivergence is different to his, even though there are at least two of our neurodivergent conditions that open up. 

Yeah. And it's that medical model nearly like, you know, you, how do you know someone has a fever because they're at this temperature and above, but it doesn't work like that for, you know, neurodivergence at all? No, not at all. And I think it's, it's something that like, what I'm kind of quite heartened by at the moment is developments in some areas of, of the UK and so far as like, so in Wales, but also strangely geographic, this is very specific Cornwall and Portsmouth.

Okay. In terms of England, , they're moving much more towards doing something called a profiler of neurodivergent need. You would look at eight areas of strength and need, and you would look at how that person, whether that, that is, , whether that person is experiencing this to a high level or a low level and how much that is impacting their day to day life.

So they might be experiencing something at a particularly high level like sensory experience, but it's not actually necessarily impacting their day to day life. So you don't actually need to do anything to support that person. If they were hugely sensory sensitive in a particular area, then you would maybe need to ask an OT to go and see them.

But it's about making a very person centered picture of their neurodivergent need. A lot of us are not actually going to need a diagnosis.  What we, what we need is support so that, you know, in these particular areas moving towards using a general profiler that covers all areas of neurodivergent needs.

And then from that writing A needs based assessment which has some suggestions for provision which are across education, health and in some cases social care.  Just seems to be like a really refreshing take. Yeah. So that's what we're moving towards in Wales and it's basically based upon a project that's been running in Portsmouth. 

For approximately three or four years and they've just started doing the same sort of thing in Cornwall with some really amazing results. So I'm sort of hoping that that is the way in which neurodivergence moves. Some people are going to need a diagnosis. So for example, if you're ADHD and you need a diagnosis in order to get medication, then yes, you need a formal diagnosis.

But for some people, a screener which tells you where the strengths and needs are in enough depth for you to be able to get the support. That's really helpful.  Will, will be e enough. Yes. Yeah. And, and that's what matters. That that amount of support that they can get in their environment and in their, in and in with their family and friends, really, isn't it,  Katrina?

If you had to recommend a book or an app or anything that kind of, you use quite a lot, what would that be?  That'd be useful. That's a really good question. 

Those are really good resources on my website, which is www. neuroteachers.  org.  Well, that in terms of books, , One of the ones that has really, really resonated with me. I mean, I'm not autistic, but I am very new, very many neurodivergent needs. There's a great book called untypical, which is by an author called Pete Warmby.

He is, a, an autistic ADHD former teacher, and it's about the lived experience, his, his lived experience as being an autistic person. And he talks about other. People and research and so on and so forth, but it's very much first person, very much his experience of it and particularly when he talks about his sensory experience.

I found it incredibly enlightening and I would definitely recommend the audio book because it's actually in Pete's actual voice.  Like he recorded it. So you have that kind of more intimate connection with the words that he's saying. One of the things he says in there that I really, really liked was, Neurodivergent specifically autistic children are continuously scraping the ceiling of the window of tolerance throughout their school day. 

And that was my experience that really resonated with  me. So yeah, that would be my top tip. That is powerful.  Powerful.  Really is. Thank you. Thank you. That was amazing. 

 And you can find Katrina through her website, neuro teachers, uk.com. Uh, which has links to all her social media  handles