Shannon's Blog: Blog Post #10

"What is Neurodiversity" by Caroline Miller

Connection

While reading through this article by one quote, and example stuck with me, in the article overview it mentions activies a lot of children do in school or with friends. "from kids’ birthday parties to school classrooms to adult workplaces, which can be made more comfortable for them. And they are often excluded from things by neurotypical people who misunderstand them.". This stuck out to me because it reminds me so much of when I was younger. Particularly in school enviorments, ive always been known as more anti-social and shy, and this relates to the fact i struggle to operate in new enviorments, or enviorments that can be loud and congested. As a result, a lot of school events, or birthday parties were not my kind of enviorment and a lot of times I'd skip them. Caroline Miller observes points from both sides, some in support of often having neudivergent children make changes to their lives, or medication to help them in school settings. The other viewpoint is making changes to the infrastructure as it, for example modifying a class enviorment to help benefit all students instead of just the neurotypical. In the article, Miller brings up some common practices that are done to help students for example covering the floruscent lights in a classroom so they are less bright. Alongside trying to create less strict schedules, especially in elementary schools as strict schechules can be harsh on all young children. For example in the school i observe, outside classes like gym, or library are not a set time period. They do it usually when they have time, and there isnt a set time period but the teacher lets them know when they will be going in the morning.

When attempting to ask Chatgpt to create an image representing neurodiversity in elementary schools, it did not understand so I thought id instead show my failed attempts of getting an image.