By: Lake Braendle and Kaycee Johnson

Lake: My name is Lake Braendle and my research partner is Kaycee Johnson, and we’re undergraduate students working for the University Writing Center here on EMU’s campus. When we decided to research ways to support neurodivergent students for our final Peer Tutoring project last semester, we had no idea just how much we would end up doing with that project. 

Kaycee: We chose this topic for our research in order to provide the UWC with education and resources to use for years to come to make the consulting experience more inclusive to neurodivergent students. This is important to both of us because of past personal experiences in our education journeys, and during this whole process, it has exploded into a new world of experiences that affect us in the present and will continue to carry our education into the future. It has gone far beyond the Writing Center since we started, and we hope to spread what we’ve learned as far as possible.

Lake: I was diagnosed with ADHD at a young age. Because of that, I am now very good at coping with my ADHD, as I have had lots of time to experiment with what works for me, and by the time I got to college, I was pretty much an expert. 

But not every neurodivergent person is as lucky as me. Most don’t get a diagnosis until much later in life (especially if they were assigned female at birth), and even if they did manage to get a diagnosis they just get medicated and are not actually taught how to cope. Then, they get thrown into a college environment where suddenly it's up to them to do everything for the first time, and it’s a lot harder than they thought it was going to be. I believe that everyone should have access to the resources and strategies that they need to succeed and that it shouldn’t be entirely on students to find them. Beyond the fact that students are so incredibly busy these days, between classes, homework, and work, the students who need these resources are also going to be the ones who will have the hardest time finding them. 

Consistent with the principles of Universal Design for Learning, these things can help all students, not just neurodivergent ones. Who hasn’t gotten a bit bored in a lecture, spaced out, and missed content? Well, maybe having a fidget toy would have helped, or if spacing out is inevitable no matter what, maybe having access to the professor's slides on canvas could help a student fill in what they missed. And if EMU as a community were to teach its students not to be afraid or confused by neurodiversity but to instead seek out information and embrace people who think and learn differently, then these students will raise a generation of children who learn this from their parents, and who are able to get access to things like a diagnosis or accommodations more easily.

Kaycee: I have had a unique experience with neurodiversity. I haven’t personally been diagnosed with anything (although I suspect I might have ADHD inattentive). However, I have spent my entire life learning about neurodiversity from the perspectives of educators. My parents are both teachers, and their staffs over the years definitely helped raise me. I would learn from my role models about behavior differences between students, and how differences related to neurodiversity affected the classroom environment and individual learning. I had the privilege of being able to ask any question about those differences whenever I wanted, and to get an educated response. 

As Lake and I did our research, I interviewed my old teachers and got the sense that the education system is generally ignorant of the needs of neurodivergent students. All my life I have heard discussion on what needs to be done for different students’ success, and how the limitations of the education system create barriers to that success. My eighth grade English teacher said something that really stuck with me: “Classroom settings are built for neurotypical brains”. Classroom environments can hinder students’ ability to focus, stay engaged, and perform, especially neurodivergent students.

But classroom environments can also help them thrive. The first step for instructors seeking to run a supportive classroom for neurodivergent students is to learn. A little bit of research can go a long way. Learning what the different neurodivergent conditions are and what people with them might struggle with opens up the opportunity to learn about your own students and classmates. Once you are familiar with the information, you can use some of that knowledge to improve classroom functioning. Finding or coming up with solutions (and this is simpler than you might think) and presenting them to the class, trying them out, might help those students finally click with you, and might level the playing field between neurotypical and neurodivergent learning experiences. It might make learning easier and more enjoyable for everyone!

Whatever the reason, every struggling student deserves a chance to succeed, and we believe that putting measures into place to help neurodivergent students will ultimately help far more people than just those with a diagnosed neurodivergence. We encourage you to consult the Faculty Development Center’s Resource Page for Working with Neurodivergent Students, to speak with other experts on and off campus, and to feel free to contact us to hear more about our perspectives on the topic. Thank you for all you can do to support this population of EMU students!