Podcast Show Notes
Episode 1:
Welcome! Today we get a brief introduction to the show hosts Bridget Young and Jack Gibbs.
Bridget is the Head Teacher of the Holmewood School (THSL). Whilst she is neurotypical, she has dedicated much of her career to advancing her learning and creating best practices and frameworks to get the best out of our autistic students. Jack is a teacher at THSL and has a diagnosis of autism, ADHD, OCD and dyspraxia (DCD) alongside motor and verbal tics.
As 1/100 people are diagnosed as autistic globally, we are now at a point where the world is ready to move on from just knowing autism exists, to understanding and accepting it. As a specialist school for autistic individuals, THSL needs to do better than awareness and acceptance, we need to deliver programmes specifically for the autistic learner. As there is no guidebook on how to do this for our niche, we have created our own way of working, which is what will be covered, amongst other things, on our podcast.
So, what exactly is pedagogy? No it isn’t to do with feet…it is the method and practice of teaching, especially as an academic subject or theoretical concept.
Neurodiversity refers to the concept that certain developmental differences are actually normal variations of the brain and people who have these features also have certain strengths. Neurodiversity commonly refers to those who are autistic, have ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia (DCD) etc.
Dr. John Biddulph lectures in autism and is autistic himself, describes autism as multi-dimensional rather than a spectrum. Thus showing that the language around neurodiversity should, and is, changing. At THSL, we have moved away from language such as Autism Spectrum Disorder and high-functioning autism, as it points to deficits rather than strengths.
We tend to refer to our students as having ‘subtle but significant differences’ - a term taken from ‘Social Thinking’ created by Michelle Garcia-Winner and Dr. Pamela Crooke (https://www.socialthinking.com/).
Today we are going to show the ND Support Framework by using it alongside the example of travelling and travel training. How did you manage to learn to travel? Most neurotypical individuals learn through osmosis from their parents/carers, as well as making mistakes and learning from them. But this isn’t always possible for neurodiverse individuals. Here’s where the ND Support Framework comes into play:
Step 1 - Explaining the relevance of the topic:
As many neurodiverse individuals have barriers to osmosis learning, like anxiety, attention and focus challenges, literal understanding and social communication. The key to teaching autistic individuals is ‘buy in’ through special interests, or a means to get to a special interest in the case of travel.
Step 2 - Explicit teaching:
Spell it out. Don’t assume prior knowledge, social understanding or understanding of unspoken rules. Minimise or if needed, fully explain, analogies. Think about all the possible sensory/noise issues that could be encountered e.g. noise, crowds, smells on the underground to help with preparedness.
Step 3 - Practise the skills in a safe environment:
Putting the theory into practice and being able to experience things that can and will go wrong in life. Whilst starting off with as much help and support as possible, the aim is to reduce to allow independence. Failure is a key part of this, for example, travelling in the wrong direction, getting the wrong bus or train or allowing the student to miss their stop if they hadn’t noticed. Then allowing them to start to course-correct, all with the safety of a familiar person with them.
Step 4 - Generalising the skills:
How would this skill work in other environments? This is where you step away and allow the student to completely prepare for a trip from start to finish on a new route. But still being present and gradually increasing that independence to solo travel if possible.
Step 5 - Respond positively to success and failure:
Create an understanding that failures will happen, but it isn’t always your fault - train strikes, diversions, missed stops etc. all add to this. When celebrating success, ensure the praise is measured, as the successes of travelling are part of life too and we don’t want to create a false expectation for the future.
We hope you enjoyed our first episode and hope you look forward to the next!
If you have any questions or comments, please do reach out at podcast@thsl.org.uk.