As Liz Hofreuter passed the ESHA presidency to Rose Helm, they took a minute to talk about the topic of neurodiversity in our schools. While our schools cannot be all things to all people, we all need to make sure we are supporting the needs of all of the students on our campuses.

Rose Helm: Do you think we are just becoming more aware that students learn differently? Do you think this is one of those things that’s like a trend and it’s going to change? Or are we really at the precipice of just another movement in education because we’re talking about neurodiversity as if it’s this new thing? I’m curious what you think.

Liz Hofreuter: Like everything else, we’ve put more attention on it, and so there’s more push, and there’s great lobbying around autism and dyslexia. We’re not talking about dyscalculia so much, even though it’s probably the same issue but we don’t have the same spotlight on it.

Rose: Also ADHD, I feel like that has such a spotlight. Right?

Liz: You can add dysgraphia, and there’s your top five.

Rose: We’re just more attuned. We know better, so let’s do better. And the same thing with gender equity, making this point parallel, we now know that there are so many different ways to think about gender in this sort of broad spectrum. And so let’s do better. Let’s be more inclusive to our young people. We know better. We should do better.

Liz: For me, the big shift was actually the work that Todd Rose was doing on the End of Average. I mean, when I was preparing to be a teacher, you were told that you taught to the middle, and then you modified for the higher and lower students. The big shift is there’s no middle. There is no average student.

At any point in time, on any topic, a student is really struggling and not getting it. So if you actually design your curriculum with your children who need the most support because they find it challenging, and the children who are getting it really quickly and need further challenges, then the curriculum is more inclusive for our young people.

Rose: Low floor, high ceiling kind of idea.

Here’s another question, and something I’m thinking a lot about – the teacher shortage. Fewer people are going into graduate education programs, and if they do they are coming out of those even, not wanting to teach and then if they do teach, are they staying with the profession?

I think there are so many burdens on educators, and one of them is the kind of differentiation that is required. Who then can do that? How are we going to support students across this spectrum of learning, if we aren’t supporting teachers to be able to do that?

Liz: Well, I think the problem is insurmountable when you approach it from 30,000 feet. From there it feels like the system is broken. We’re talking about Higher Ed, we’re talking about teacher shortages, learning differences… It gets to be too much. My advice is always pick that one teacher who has the heart for this industry and is that teacher for whom you would carve out a half hour at the drop of a hat. Add to that the one student who is struggling and yet, you know, has crazy potential. Only think of those two, and what can your school do for those two as a pair in learning, both of them being learners, so that it becomes a positive experience of growth. FInd out what works for them and see how we can innovate and scale that. Maybe technology comes into play in that scale. I’m not an advocate that AI replaces teachers or tutors in this area, but AI has a place to generate new math problems for what foundational challenges a student has, or generate new phonemes for the places where the child is struggling based on data analysis of errors.

Rose: It’s kind of like when you think about Reggio Emilia where the third teacher is the environment. If technology is a part of the environment, it’s inherently a part of that. And so to not overemphasize it, but to regard it as a part of the larger influence of the environment.

Liz: I just did some research on math. I interviewed a group of stakeholders… public school, more than private school… superintendents, principals, special ed directors, teachers, kids with dyscalculia, parents with children with dyscalculia. And I asked, what’s the number one problem? And every single one of them had a different answer.

We are going to have to make the decision of which problem rises to the top to decide how to tackle the problem, but may need to address them all to come to a solution.

Rose: I think you’re actually wrong to try to please everyone. If all schools could be a little bit more like Southwest Airlines, where it’s unapologetically bad at something. You’ll get no food, but we are going to have low costs and we’re gonna get you there on time. And so I think schools need to be more discerning and more willing to be bad at stuff.

Liz: Know who you are. Be transparent.

Rose: For example. We don’t offer a world language. We’re a K-6 school.

There are people who come to look at our school and say, well, this isn’t like all these other schools who are doing this. We’ve looked at this data. From an outcomes basis, our kids aren’t behind other kids.  When they go after our secondary school starting in seventh grade, they catch up pretty quickly because we spend a lot of time on English language arts and on study skills and advocacy skills and all of those things. If we offered a world language, it would be purely an exposure model, which there’s value in that. But can we expose them not just to one language and one culture, but in other ways?

I think if you’re willing to be bad at some things where you’re like, how much stake is it for us relative to spending even more professional development, even more resources on directly supporting students rather than just thinking about curriculum or program to keep up with the Joneses?

Hear more from ESHA leadership and members in the coming months via our blog, the monthly Elementary Exchange Zoom Discussions, Heads Cohorts, and more. For more information on becoming part of ESHA or to recommend a colleague for membership, please reach out here.