Challenge Series: Neurodiversity in Education

November 22nd 2024

Today’s forum was led by Sarah Arthur, the JS Learning Support Team Leader and Jordan Ford, our Speech and Language therapist. Sarah began by unpacking how we understand neurodiversity and some of the strengths that neurodivergence brings to our community as well as some of the areas that children may struggle with. Sarah illustrated how our brains process differently through a memorisation activity, where we saw a variety of strategies used across the parent group. This was a great opportunity to demonstrate how difficult it can be to learn information in school and how we support learning through interventions (focused learning for a short period of time) and accommodations (tools and strategies to help children learn throughout their school day.) Sarah also provided a list of strategies parents can use at home to support learning.

The second part of the forum focused on the Affirmation of Identity and Jordan, shared a personal journey of identity affirmation and his own understanding of his neurodiversity and how that affected his education and his life as an adult. Jordan used this to illustrate the importance of supporting children in understanding themselves and affirming their identities through positive strength based approaches. If you would like to learn more about identify affirmation please do reach out to Jordan to learn more ([email protected]).

Challenge, Growth & Neurodiversity Slides

If you would like to learn more about neurodiversity as a family we shared the following resources to students so please feel free to use them at home or for your own understanding.

Understanding Neurodiversity

Additional Resources