619- Potential Over Problems: Reimagining School for Students with ADHD and Learning Differences

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0:34Welcome to the Attention Deficit Disorder Expert Podcast Series by Attitude Magazine.

0:43Everyone, I'm Annie Rogers, and on behalf of the Attitude team, I am delighted to welcome you to today's ADHD experts presentation titled Potential Over Problems, Reimagining School for Students with ADHD and Learning Differences. Leading today's presentation is Dr. Kara Schoenfeld. Dr. Schoenfeld is the partner of research at Education Reimagined, leading national studies on learner-centered education. As a late diagnosed woman and parent of a neurodivergent child, she brings both research rigor and personal understanding to this work. She has spent more than 25 years in education teaching both conventional and learner-centered K-12 schools and as a teacher educator before moving into research.

1:37Her latest study examines how a learner - centered approach can transform outcomes for youth with learning differences. Today, Dr. Schoenfeld will introduce us to compelling case studies in learner-centered education and help us see how we, as parents and educators, can apply their principles and tools with our own students and schools. We'll discuss new approaches to building strong educator-student relationships, to connecting lessons, to student interests, to customizing accommodations, and to teaching young people how to practice self-advocacy. All of these practices are shown to improve student engagement, confidence, and academic growth.

2:24And today, you'll see some great examples of them in action and learn how to take the next steps in your child's growth as a confident learner. If you value the work we're doing here at Attitude to support the ADHD community, please consider subscribing to Attitude Magazine. Your subscription helps us to continue providing trusted resources and information. Visit attitudemag.com slash subscribe or click the subscribe now tab on your screen and receive 15 % off and a free ebook. Okay, without any further ado, I am delighted to introduce Dr. Kara Schoenfeld. Thank you so much for joining us and leading this really important and compelling discussion.

3:12Khara Schonfeld: Thank you so much, Annie. I am absolutely delighted to be here. Prior to being here right now presenting in front of you, I was actually an avid attitude reader, watched webinars for years because there was just so much I was getting from this community. And so it's a real honor to be able to share a little bit back. So thank you for having me and thank you to the audience for joining us today. So there's a lot to get into in this webinar. Here is a high level overview of what we'll talk about. So first, I'll explain the group I work with at Education Reimagined and a little bit about when we say learner-centered education, what that means.

3:59Khara Schonfeld: Next, we will share about this particular research study we did. We did a multi-site collaborative case study, and I'll translate that into different ways that you can apply it in your setting. So we'll look at four main ways that the findings can translate into action. And then, as Annie said, at the end, we'll have an audience Q &A, and you can feel free to add questions as you go. So first, as it said in my bio, I'm a partner of research with Education Reimagined. It's a nonprofit whose mission is to make learner-centered education available to every child in the United States, inclusive of race, background, and circumstance.

4:48You can see our

4:49Khara Schonfeld: website at the bottom. And how we do that is through a variety of ways. First, we connect learner-centered educators and leaders to each other. We elevate their stories, and we conduct research and study policy to help transform public education systems.

5:13Khara Schonfeld: You might have heard terms child-centered was one I heard before or student-centered and they all sort of have a similar flavor. But we really focus on the idea of learner-centered, especially because the word learner is such an active way of naming a young person or whoever is in an education experience. The main thing to think about when you think about learner-centered, it's really centering on that learner as opposed to centering on a system and sort of plugging learners into a system. We've identified five key elements that we see throughout learner-centered environments. The first one and the most important is really promoting agency.

6:01Khara Schonfeld: So making sure that learners have a say in what they learn and how they learn it. We also see a lot of socially embedded learning, meaning that learners are known, they're cared for, they're seen, they're connected to each other. The learning itself is personalized, relevant, and contextualized. It's also open-walled, and what that means is that learners are often not staying on the campus. They're out in the community, and members of the community are coming into the campus. And finally, it's competency-based, which means learners are progressing based on when they're showing that they truly understand something, as opposed to, say, seat time or like it's time on the calendar or curriculum says you have to proceed.

6:55I also should note at this time that learner-centered education, it is an educational approach,

7:01Khara Schonfeld: but it's also a mindset. So it's a way, it's a sort of a pedagogical way of being that we can bring to every situation in some way to varying degrees. Okay, so this is the research question that drove our study. It's how do learner-centered environments work with youth with learning differences? I should note that learner-centered education is for all learners, but we were provided an opportunity to really dive deep into this particular group of learners. I was beyond grateful for this because as a parent, when I learned my child was diagnosed with ADHD, my burning question was, well, how do learner-centered schools, which I had taught in, And how are they serving learners like my child?

7:55So it just so happened that we had a study in the works and it was this one.

8:01Khara Schonfeld: So I got to take it over. And it's been very powerful for me, not just as a researcher or as an educator, but also it's really at this time of my life influencing me as a parent. So throughout this, I will refer to, I have it sort of written towards parents, but if you're an educator or a clinician or school leader, you can just think of your student opposed to your child. So we studied three sites. We studied them over the course of a school year. They're all public in different contexts. You have a Lafayette Big Picture Learning School. Big Picture Learning is a network of schools. I was a part of a team of a big picture learning school in Philadelphia, so I know that one well.

8:53This one in Lafayette, New York was a school within a school. So you had the comprehensive high school, and this school was in a part of that building. The other one is Avalon School. This was in an urban setting in Minnesota. This was a public like high school and middle school.

9:11Khara Schonfeld: And then you have Norris School District, which their claim to fame is that they are the smallest school district in Wisconsin. They serve a very highly transient population. So sometimes they only have the learners for four months or so, but what they do at the time is pretty impressive. Our requirement was that of the schools that we would study that 40 % or more of the enrolled learners had IEPs or 504 plans. I should note that none of these schools are specifically designed for students with ADHD or learning differences, but because of the way the learner-centered approach lands naturally, it supports all learner variability, including those that are neurodivergent.

10:01So with this study, what I loved

10:04Khara Schonfeld: is it wasn't just me as a researcher going into the schools. I had a team of researchers with me, and a lot of those were practitioners in the field. So you had educators, you had school leaders, you had other researchers, and together we did two days at each one of these schools, deep dive, and we spoke to learners, we spoke to educators, site leaders, parents, and community partners. And what I really loved is that each of the leaders of these three schools visited the other schools as well. This episode is brought to you by NoCD. In today's episode, we're discussing the benefits of a learner-centered school environment for youth with ADHD and co-occurring conditions.

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12:31Khara Schonfeld: It's the way it looks and the way it feels. So we thought we would immerse you in one of these schools through a video. So we're going to zoom in on Norris School District, and we're going to show just a really quick five-minute video so you can kind of get a sense of what me and my research team saw when we visited these schools. So I'm going to turn it over to the next slide, and we're going to get started.

13:00Every behavior is a message. It's communication from someone who doesn't know how to communicate using words. There are times when they don't know how to say how they are feeling or even what they want. So you just got to keep giving them options, taking their time, never rushing them. We'd have a day of blowing up and then the next day we'd spend recentering. And now we're able to have those turnarounds happen in a much briefer amount of time. The learners here just don't have the skills it takes to say, I'm angry. And so that comes out in a way that can be really counterproductive, but ultimately can turn into something really great.

13:42Learners come first.

13:50Every staff member just wraps around whatever a learner needs at that given time. If a learner is walking down the hallway and they are having an emotional eruption, somebody is there to support them. Sometimes it's not the right person or that person does everything that they know that's in their tool chest and it just doesn't work, so we tap each other out. You weren't able to express that because people just kept getting you to that point where you were in your emotional brain. We learn and grow just as our learners learn and grow every day. Norse is a caring, loving, and sometimes chaotic school.

14:28But you can learn a lot of stuff from it. And it has tons of fun stuff because you can do shop. So you were going 24. You can go outside. So Malachi wants to dig stumps. We've got some pieces of tree that I had cut up a couple weeks back. and I think they're gonna bury this dumps in the ground to kind of make some steps with it. I think some of the best moments happen in that unscripted outside your comfort zone time. Like, we didn't rehearse this, you know? This was just just another Thursday.

15:11He loves coming to school here. We're excited to have him show up every day. You know, he really is an incredible young man. We maintained a really strong relationship with the family to help them understand what was going on each day. When Malachi's problems were at their peak, Norris school never flinched. They just continued to welcome him as a student, as a learner. We allowed him to be himself. They would do research if they weren't familiar with the topic. they would invest the time to become somewhat of an expert and assemble resources to deliver to Malachi.

15:52I'm climbing on the, I'm doing like the rope thing where you gotta put one foot in front of the other and then grab the rope and walk across and being scared.

16:07It's just instrumental in helping building trusting relationships as we see our learners climbing up and trying to do the leap of faith. When I was scared he just put his hand down and said just got my hand and I did that. When you look up and you can see these young learners who five minutes ago were melting down in a hallway yelling and using very colorful language and now their peers are all encouraging them. My stomach hurts!

16:40You got this Malachi, you're doing awesome. Yup.

16:47Nice job buddy. How'd you jump off right away? Yup, you can. Yeah, you got it.

16:56Alright Malachi. Ready? Yes, buddy! Let's go, Malachi! Watch the ball! For kids to have that experience, first at Norris, in our extended community, really helps them get out into the real community, right? I can do things that I never thought was possible, and people that I trust are here to help and support me through that. They're experiencing, they're navigating life, and everyone's experiences are different, so we guide them on building out their own journey. It's a chance that they didn't have to get through something that I think they probably weren't going to or it was going to be much more challenging.

17:49Khara Schonfeld: I hope you enjoyed that video. If you had any questions about what they do at Norris School District or learner-centered education in general, please feel free to add it to the comments. And I'll just note, I feel like it was captured in the film, but when I went to Norris, I was just taken by the educator's ability to co-regulate with the learners and just the unconditional, unwavering respect and care that was extended it to these learners. I mean, it was just really a marvel to see. So you got a little taste of what learner-centered education can look like. Now let's talk about what that means in more depth.

18:36So from the research, we identified four shifts that I feel could be applicable or applied in

18:45Khara Schonfeld: two different contexts. So what I'll do for each of these four shifts is I will share more about the research findings, so what the schools do, what we observed, and then translate that into some ideas you can try. On those parts, there will be an advocacy script that you could consider bringing into conversations, like IEP meetings, 504 meetings, and also just some ideas that you can do at home, whether you're an educator or a parent, to take some of these ideas and integrate it into your way of being with children or young people.

19:26So this one was probably one of the most strong findings across all three schools, is that all of them started with a strengths-based mindset. You can see in the first bullet, it says we're all human and we all learn differently. In the schools, this was the foundation upon the school models that were built on, upon which teachers and educators were interacting with each other and with their learners. It's this idea that human variability is natural, it's desirable, it's to be celebrated.

20:05Khara Schonfeld: And when you start with that as the base, you can really build something special. Second bullet, you can see a site leader said that. He says, we're really looking to see how you are smart, not how smart are you. And that's a nod if you're familiar with Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences. That's a nod associated with that line of work. But it's this idea that, oh, no, we know you're smart, like you are smart. We just need to know how you are smart and what ways do you shine. And that might not always look like the way that we measure intelligence or aptitude in conventional school models.

20:52And in addition to looking at the strengths of the learners, there was also this celebrating the strengths of each other. So you heard in the video that the educators were, they would really come together to support the learners. It wasn't like, oh, this is my learner and that's yours. It was like all the learners are mine. And there was space for if a learner gravitated to a certain educator, that there was space to do that.

21:23Khara Schonfeld: And also the part that really got me was just how much the parents were integrated into the education experience. and they were really valued as experts in their own way of their children. One of the parents that really struck me is they said, I just walk out of here every day going, how can it be this easy? Because it's not like that in their prior experiences or in a lot of other contexts. This episode is sponsored by Element. Did you know that a lot of people with ADHD struggle with something called interoception? It's the ability to recognize and understand internal signals like hunger and thirst.

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23:49Khara Schonfeld: I put these slides together. I put a little prompt to take a screenshot if you'd like to, just so that you have that in your records. But on the one side, we have the advocacy script, things you can say in a meeting, especially now as we're getting ready to start the new school year, to bring in this lens of a strengths-based mindset. So you could say something like, my child and I were discussing how they're great at, name their strengths. And then give the educators an opportunity if they know them, like, is there anything else that you would add? What else do you see as their strengths? And then asking this question of how can the plan we're building integrate and build on those strengths.

24:32Khara Schonfeld: So for an example, you might have a child who's a great negotiator. The way the plan could be worded is instead of the child or the student will accept adult direction without argument, it could be that the student gets an opportunity to propose an alternative that meets the same goal. Lots of different ways you can do it. That's just one. Now there's other things that we can do, whether an educator or parent, outside of the IEP or 504 plan. One of them is to notice your own thinking. For me, this has been a huge takeaway from the study, is I didn't realize how ingrained the deficit thinking model was in me, till I really got to see educators in these schools really speaking about the strengths of their learners.

25:30Khara Schonfeld: So something that you can do is watch your own thinking and you can practice naming strengths out loud because for like me, it might be a new muscle you need to exercise. You want to make sure that you use those strength-based language with your child when you're speaking about them to them and also others. So if you go to meet with educators or other people, you're modeling how to talk and how to think in this way. And like me, other people might need exposure to that. And then the last piece is really encourage your child to name their own strengths, to see them, identify them, and to be able to celebrate them.

26:12I'll give you an example from my own life about this one.

26:16Khara Schonfeld: So I was recently, I have an eight-year-old, and he was really, he wanted to get into wood whittling. So I got him a kit. And he started ripping open the kit and didn't read the directions. I was trying to slow him down. He wouldn't slow down. And I watched my thoughts. And my thoughts were like, oh, man, he's so stubborn. He's impulsive. And then I caught it. I was like, oh, there I go with my deficit thinking again. And so I stopped and I actively reframed it where I was like, what's also what else is happening here? Those might be true. And what else? And the what else is I have a very enthusiastic child who's eager to jump into new situations and really motivated to learn things that he loves.

27:00So that's not a sugarcoating.

27:03Khara Schonfeld: It's true. Like it's this and that. It's not one or the other. So it's just where you want to put your attention.

27:14Let's talk about the second shift, something we saw across the sites. And that is that the learning experiences were led by the young people's interests. So one of the things that we saw across all the sites is they had a lot of real-world learning opportunities. and oftentimes that include internships where the learners were going out to places of business or different sites in the community multiple times a week and that people from the community were coming into the schools. I love this next quote that we have here,

27:50Khara Schonfeld: which is, we don't do a project for it to sit on a shelf. That was one of our site leaders. And what it means is the projects have authentic audience. So they're building a project for, say, someone they care about. This one young lady was building a dresser for her child. Or they are developing something for the community. Another child with ADHD, he developed a walking guide around the historic sites around his city. But the idea is the sites are engaging in project-based learning. And those projects have an authentic audience, which really increases motivation. for the learners. So as you see on the third bullet, authentic products and assessments.

28:37So what else we saw was in addition to tests, there was just so many opportunities for learners to show what they know, what they could do, whether that be exhibitions of learning or something they've made or something they're demonstrating. So that was just really inspirational to see.

29:00Khara Schonfeld: Another slide, if you want to take a screenshot. So what you could ask. So you can share what your child's interested in. My child is interested in these things. Just like my child, it's ever-changing. And then you can ask the educators, do you see those at school? Are there other interests that surface at school that I'm not aware of? And then again, how do we bring these interests into this plan? So what you could do, if you imagine a standard sort of accommodation is students get extended time on a written assessment. Maybe instead of that, it could be that the learners demonstrate their understanding through a product of their choosing.

29:44Maybe there's a list of three. Maybe it's larger. But just getting them to have that choice that connects to their interest makes a world of difference. So other things that you could try if you're a parent, you provide the educators with information about the child's specific interests. It's always better, I find, instead of general to get really specific. So my

30:11Khara Schonfeld: child was into mycology for a while. I kind of missed those days, but he wasn't interested in eating mushrooms. He was interested in foraging them and learning what they do. So the more specific you can get, the better. Also, educators may or may not be able to connect your child's interests to what they're teaching, but you can. Something that I think works really well is you can look up online, you can see all the state standards or school standards, or you can ask an educator for it, and then take a list of your child's interests and plug them into AI and put in a prompt that says, build these connections for me.

30:50What books can I give my child that connects

30:53Khara Schonfeld: what they're learning in school to what they love? Where could we go? Who could they talk to? So just if you want to extend that, you can also build that interest connection between school learning outside of school.

31:10Okay, this is the fourth one that we have here, and that is thinking expansively about accommodations. Although the schools were all public, we had charters, we had schools in school, we had a school district. So they were able to do a lot of supports for their learners that you read about in research as being very effective.

31:34Khara Schonfeld: But maybe as an educator, you might be in a system where they're more limited, but there are ways to build them in. So this first quote was from a site leader. he said that students would come to him with their 504 plans or their IEPs and he would look at them and they would just say this is what we do for every learner. They had this mindset that all learners need to figure out how they learn best and support themselves to learn best. so we saw all sorts of universal availability which takes away the stigma of using different supports um so that one of the things i'll give you just a few but one of the things i really liked is they had those sensory rooms which i know we have more and more so but you know they had the sort of dim light the aromatherapy but they also had like a heavy gym heavy duty gym where the learners who needed the proprioceptive input, the heavy work to regulate, they had access to that too.

32:39Daily practices, like maybe there's an educator they really connect to that they could have a daily check-in with. We also saw the schools leaning on community supports. So you had like therapy dogs coming in and you had the learners working for the therapy dog programs. things like this make a big difference when it's available to everyone. And the last thing I'll say about this is at the sites, the real focus was on learning needs. So not compliance or behavior management. The understanding was if there's a behavior surfacing, it's because there's a need that's unmet. And it's our job as a school to figure out what that need is and work with the learner to figure out how to meet that need.

33:30And I love that framing so much because then it's about getting the student ready to learn as opposed to just listen to directions or comply to what is the norm.

33:48So when it comes to accommodations, you can ask something like this. You can say, my child learns best at home when, and give the conditions that work best, and then open the conversation, what seems to work best in your classroom, and then how can we build these strategies into our goals? So one example, and they actually do this for my child, is instead of taking breaks when dysregulated, you can maybe have regulation activity built into a schedule. So it's in there proactively so that it's not a reactive situation so much as we already know this about this learner.

34:27Khara Schonfeld: What can we do to get ahead of it? Things that you can try. So I'm thinking of the last IEP meeting I had. We use compliance a lot. It's a word that is used in education quite a bit. But I said, you know, I said, you know, I really don't, the word compliance doesn't land well with me. Can we focus more on what he needs, what his learning needs are? And just even changing that word is a way of shifting the conversation. Something else you could do is brainstorm ideas with your child. Well, how do you learn best? What do you think we could do at school? What could we ask for? And I would encourage you to try thinking outside of the box about possibilities.

35:11I have the vantage point where I was a teacher, so I know what can or cannot be done, but it never hurts to ask. For example, this year, at the end of the IEP meeting, I pulled a special ed teacher aside and I said, hey, you know, my child already has these regular plan blocks of breaks in his plan, can you make one of those breaks overlap with lunch? Because my son has a lot of trouble watching and hearing people chew. It's almost painful for him sensory wise. And the special ed teacher and I have a really good relationship and she's, oh yeah, we can try it. And it went amazingly at the start of the school year.

35:55And I have to say Like he's actually eating at school for the first time in years. Usually his stimulants would suppress his appetite.

36:04Khara Schonfeld: So just that one ask made a huge difference. Now, some of you might be wondering, well, what do you do if they say no? So a couple of, you could stay open to like, well, what are ways we can work around this? But a couple of real focus tips is you could do what I did, which is you can anchor the request to a goal that's already in the plan. So like I did, like he already had breaks built in. I just asked to tack this on. You can also ask them to do it for a set amount of time. Like, can we try it for two weeks, four weeks and collect data on it and see if it works? And then the last thing I would say is there's a team of teachers.

36:43So maybe ask the one that is most likely to say yes. And if there is one working example, that could really motivate others.

36:56Khara Schonfeld: All right, this is the final point that I wanted to pull out from our research to share with you today. And that is really empowering the students to ask, to give them voice. This is a quote from a learner. It said, it feels like a second family. What he's referring to in this case is something called, a practice called an advisory. It's similar to a homeroom, but much more. So the learners, a group of learners gather together with an advisor, an educator, and they stay together. They meet regularly and they stay together usually for the course of the year. So all through middle school or all through high school.

37:37I had an advisory when I was teaching and, you know, we asked deep questions.

37:42Khara Schonfeld: We journaled together. We talked about our lives. But it really gives everyone a chance to feel known and to practice feeling safe enough to ask for what you need and to share what you're struggling with. In addition to that, learners were explicitly taught. Like part of the curriculum was learning to name what you need and to learn how to ask for it. So there was lots of supports in there. And I had one example. There was a graduate of one of the schools who came back to be an educator at the school. and he was saying that there was this one 11-year-old that every morning he would check in with him and be like, are you feeling overwhelmed?

38:23Khara Schonfeld: Do you want a break with me? And the learner kept saying, no, no, no, no, no, like refusing. But over the course of months, eventually this learner pulled that in and made it his own and went over to him one day and was like, hey, I'm feeling overwhelmed. Can we take a break? So it's just little actions like that that repeat over time that make a powerful impact. And the last point I'll bring here as we start the new school year is this idea of bringing student voice into IEP meetings. I know that it's a common practice to do when they're transitioning from high school and making like post-graduation plans, but there's ways to do that even when they're younger.

39:03And I'll share more in the next slide. And what we found in schools was that we saw a lot of students that were leading parts of the IEP meetings. You know, they were very active part in making the plans that affected them.

39:21Again, what can you ask? So you could say something like, I've been encouraging my child to name what they need. At home, we've been working on. How can we give them more chances to practice this at school? So I love this because, bring it back to that IEP meeting when they do the present levels at the beginning of the meeting, it could be great to have that learner lead that part to say, this is what helps me. This is hard. This is what I want to get better at. And it just changes it because it puts them in the center opposed to a whole bunch of adults making decisions for them. Things that you could try at home, attitude team put together relevant resources that'll be provided at the end of this webinar.

40:08One of them is a link to a student profile worksheet. Have your child, your learner, say who they are. Get used to naming that. At all the schools, there was so much time taken with discovery of who I am, what am I interested in, what works for me, what do I like? So you could do something similar at the start of a school year with your own child or your own student. Like I said, bring them or their voice into the meeting. My child's still a little young. So what I do is I talk to him at home. And I think I asked him and we talked about the idea of the cafeteria before I even brought it in. So there's ways you can bring their voice in without them being present.

40:52And then at home, really encourage self-advocacy. If there's a chance for the child to do them itself, let them, but coach them. Make it a scaffolded approach. You might want to throw them in there, but just start working that so they get lots of opportunities to practice self-empowerment and advocacy.

41:16So we're here at our final recap slide. So just to remember that learner-centered means centering around the learner, not the system. And the way you do that is you start with the learner's strengths. Focus on their interests. look expansively at their needs and give them chance to give voice to what they need to learn

41:39Khara Schonfeld: best. And my call to action to you is I ask you to please put your child in the center and then in doing so invite others to do the same.

41:54Khara Schonfeld: This is one quote I wanted to make sure we got in. It was from a parent. It left me very touched on my heart. So she said after going to the school that her child went from crying every day to wanting to come to school every single day, happy and joyful. At the school, she feels supported and seen, and she's making plans for her life that I didn't think she'd be making as a ninth grader. If you'd like to learn more, there's two QR codes on the screen. One of them is directly to our research on learning differences. We have six publications, so depending on what your interest is you can explore those there's also a QR code if you want to watch more of our film series and then if you just want to be stayed tuned and tapped into the work of education reimagine we have a newsletter that you're able to subscribe to on our website and Annie I believe I'm turning it back to you now amazing thank you so much Dr.

42:54Schoenfeld for, you know, it was both an inspiring and actionable presentation. And before we get into the questions, which are excellent, I wanted to circle back ever so briefly to the very beginning. We asked our readers, our listeners, sorry, what accommodations have made a difference for them or for their child or for their student. And we had a few that I wanted to share because I think that they really drive home the point you made about your finding that thinking expansively about accommodations can make a big difference. So someone said having an easily accessible calm down corner in the classroom was their one thing.

43:44Another attending homework club weekly and reviewing homework and organizing at home at home weekly were very helpful. Another, I love this one, I found that read aloud and read along opportunities for all learners makes a big difference. It allows others who may not qualify for accommodations to access text and also normalizes this accommodation for students who require it. And the last one, which I think brings home a point about, you know, the social emotional aspect of learning, they said that the big shift was a teacher who stepped in and put an end to bullying. And they wrote that learner-centered education doesn't mean much if our neurodivergent kids don't feel safe at school.

44:37And so I thought that was very insightful as well. Okay. So now to our questions, I have one to kick off from an educator who, I'm sorry, not an educator, a parent who said, I love the model of the school featured in the video, but it seems like it's a small student population. Is the model scalable for a larger context? Her son's high school has more than 2 ,000 students. Yeah, thank you. Can you offer advice for a parent to support that in a large school setting? Yes, thank you for asking about that. Like I said, the study focused on three schools. The largest one was Avalon. I think they have between two and 300 students, but they are smaller.

45:31They're not these 2000 student schools. But with Education Reimagine, we work with all sorts of environments, not just schools. So you think about out of school offerings. You think about programs that go into schools. So here in North Carolina, we have one called Spark and See, and they go into the big high schools and they offer, they have like a space in there. They train one of the educators there and the learners get credit for pursuing things that are of their interests and getting, you know, that experience, even if it's just for one block of time. And that's something that parents advocate for and then their county gets

46:10Khara Schonfeld: it. So mine does not have it yet, but I'm in North Carolina. I'll be one of those vocal parents It's asking for it. But there's different ways to do it within that model. If you are interested in looking at learner-centered schools, our website has some of the schools we partner with featured. You can also Transcend, which is a partner organization. They also have something called the Canopy Project, where you can go on there and it has the map of the U.S. and some schools you can find. and another thing that you could do which I did myself is you can take our website and put it into an AI and put in where you live and just say are there any schools that sort of match this this philosophy and then go visiting them so it's been for me an exploration process to find them but I think there's things you can do where you are and then there's things that if you want to seek out a setting like this, those are some ways you could do it.

47:12Okay. That's very helpful. Thank you. And our next question really ties into, I think, a point you made about the first finding about the strength-based mindset and how it requires a shift in many cases on the parents' part as well as the educators. And we had a question along these lines from an educator who said that they work with a lot of kids who have masked and created sort of effective but maladaptive executive function workarounds. And they've produced well with their parents. This is a quote put with a push and shame parenting model. And then the kids hit a wall. You know, we know this executive function while middle school, high school, and the demands just outpace their workarounds.

48:09Getting the parents to see that truth and to have them move past that push and shame is a real challenge for this educator. And I wonder, since you have perspective on both sides, if you can offer some guidance for those educators who want to encourage parents to take this strength-based approach and to move away from this, you know, as she said, shame and push.

48:39Khara Schonfeld: Okay, I love this angle. Thank you so much, whoever asked this. What comes to mind for me was when I was teaching at a big picture, like a learner-centered school. So at the beginning of the school year, like we were in the advisory, so it's happened when we first started mostly, We always had home visits. So we could meet the parents either at their home or somewhere else in the community where they felt comfortable. And I would come with questions. And they were questions that were asked of the parent. And then I'd ask it of the learner. Or I'd do vice versa. Ask the learner first and then the parent.

49:18And those questions, a lot of them said like, whoa, I never thought about that. Oh, I didn't think you saw yourself that way. But they were empowering questions. They were questions about identifying strengths, identifying interests. You know, what creates that spark for the learner?

49:36Khara Schonfeld: Ask the parent that. Ask the children that. What's your, you know, an IAP calls, what's your vision for your child? What's your vision for your life? But I think it starts with just creating a space and allowing the child and the parent to name the strengths. So rather than pointing out like, oh, you're doing this to your child and it's having these challenges, just create room and space for them to start identifying the strengths themselves. and what that could cultivate is a greater chance for the learner themselves to speak to the parents or perhaps you could even coach the learner of, you know, I see this happening, tell me about it, but build that connection with that learner and then you could empower them to speak up for themselves to share.

50:32Okay, wonderful. Thank you. Um, okay. Another, uh, question kind of along this strength based mindset, um, the nuance of a child who is, um, twice exceptional, um, gifted and specifically, you know, living with, with neurodivergence, um, and has shown, um, some hesitancy for self-advocacy and accepting accommodations where needed. Have you found that taking this strength-based mindset can open up the child to accepting accommodations where before they may have seen it as a sign of weakness?

51:15Khara Schonfeld: So interesting. So I'll say my child is one of those. This is twice exceptional child. And I can see how it can be difficult, right? Because you have these great skills and you have great challenges. And it's like, where is there space for both and acceptance of both? I'll have to say that prior to doing my research with Education Reimagine, I researched a form of home education called unschooling, which is a very learner-centered form of home education. So I did research on that. I published a book on that, but I learned from these amazing parents that a lot of their children kind of fit that profile.

52:04But I think that the huge key is just normalizing it, normalizing at home, modeling it yourself, naming out lives, sort of do that metanarrative piece of like, oh, this is something I really love. I'm really good at. I feel this way about it. Or, oh, this is something, you know, I have resistance to. So asking the young person, like, do you have any suggestions? What do you do when you have that? How do you name it? How do you work through it? So I think we can model it. And I think just this idea of it's like, it's normalizing. You can be incredibly smart and successful in this way. And you can have these struggles.

52:46We all do. So just the way that we model that as adults and unschooling parents were phenomenal at modeling and exposing their children to ways of being that they hoped they would adopt. Gotcha. And it kind of ties in with your next finding, which was leading with the child's interests too, and sort of tapping into every child's brilliance and what sparks their fire. Um, you gave some great examples. I love the idea of projects that have an authentic audience. I wonder if you have ideas or inspiration for younger students who maybe, you know, wouldn't be doing an internship or a project outside of the school setting.

53:38Some of the parents were very receptive to this idea, but struggling to see how it might apply for an elementary school student. Absolutely. So one of the models I really like approach to education is called place based education. If you're familiar with that, it's basically learning is rooted to the place where you're located. and there is a large sense of fostering civic responsibility.

54:08Khara Schonfeld: So I love this one example. My sister-in-law is actually, she studies place-based and she was a place-based educator, but they brought the learners out into the community, these young learners, and they just noticed that people weren't picking up after their dogs. And they looked into, as a class, They looked into a project of like, well, what does this mean? How does this affect stream water? How does it affect our quality of living? And then together as a class, they came up, they proposed an idea to put up signs, to inform people, to try to change the community around this activity. And they went to the, you know, representatives in the community and got it approved and they were able to do it.

54:53So there's things like that where it's perhaps not an individual, but a collective. and how can it be inspired by what's around you, the things that they care about? It's just one way you could approach it. Yeah. Oh, man, I love that. It's sort of, it's very entrepreneurial in a way. It's recognizing a need and coming up with a creative solution, which is a skill that certainly, you know, society can use. Um, and just the tapping into, I think a lot of, um, we hear a lot in our audience of, um, justice sensitivity, um, and how you could recognize that as a real strength for your child. Um, and this would be a way to tap into that.

55:39So, um, man, that's great. I'm like, can we get that project going on in my town? I think, I think we all, yeah. And it's one of the superpowers, right, of those of us with ADHD is that when our intrinsic motivation is like kicks in, man, like we will move mountains, like because we're passionate

56:03Khara Schonfeld: about it. And we have the, you know, ability to hyper focus. And really, you know, that that is, you know, sometimes hard for us, but also sometimes like it's a real gift that we can let shine. Yeah. Yeah, I love that. Okay, I'm going to move on to the third insight. And that, again, was thinking expansively about accommodations. And you had mentioned in that section about behavioral signs in the classroom and that prompting the educator to dig more deeply into what the needs of the child may be. For the learner who is not able to communicate their needs, are there ways, questions, approaches that both parents and educators can take to kind of untangling the mystery of some of the behaviors, especially behaviors that are disruptive to the classroom?

57:07We had a teacher here saying, you know, that's her biggest challenge. She can't get past those behavioral disruptions to really get to know the learners.

57:18Khara Schonfeld: I think that what you're saying about learners is true for a lot of us. We're behaving in certain ways and we don't know why or what it means. I would say first and foremost is connection. build a connection and let that learner um know that you're there for them create a space where they can articulate where you can start asking questions you can find out what do they know what are they noticing and pull them in as like you know with my son with sensory breaks right it's Like, it's like he's got a science type of leaning. So it's like, let's collect data. Let's do this. Let's collect data on it.

58:03Let's see what works. Let's see what doesn't. The one example, there's an article that I'll be putting out through Attitude. I gave this one, highlighted this one. There was a learner who wasn't showing up to science class. She kept avoiding it. And so the educator found out a way to bond with her.

58:21Khara Schonfeld: And it was over something random. them. It was over crocheting, like they bonded over crocheting. And through that, they started talking and the, and the educator learned that she doesn't like all science, but she's fascinated in brain science. And he found a way to map the standards to integrate it in there. So the learner ended up pursuing a project that was all about studying the mind. And she studied in particular about autism, which was one of her diagnoses. And she was able to present that to her classmates and to the educators, but there is the authentic audience again. But it all started with that bond that that person, that child, that learner feels like you're really there for them.

59:10Khara Schonfeld: And it could be over something totally different. It doesn't have to be diving right into the, why are you acting this way. Yeah, I think that's such an important point. And it leads beautifully into, of course, your fourth finding. And that's about giving the student a voice, empowering them and asking them. And for those, both, again, parents and educators who get the response, I don't know, over and over and over again. Is it a change in approach? Is it maybe asking someone else to initiate some conversation? I know our kids don't always act the same way with us as they do with people who are not their parents.

59:55Khara Schonfeld: So Annie, would the example be like, I'm going to an IEP meeting. What are things that you need? I don't know. Is that kind of a... Yeah. Or even someone wrote in to say just to progress a conversation about, I think it was about their learning needs. The child's response is, I don't know. I don't know. I think a lot of that could start with, like I said, like the student profile, where they're just getting in the habit and sort of low stakes ways to name, oh, this is what I like, this is hard. Maybe it's not, you know, a one-on-one sort of interrogation, but it's just like little chances throughout time, over time, that allow them to develop that skill.

1:00:51What I found with my learners in Philadelphia was that we spent a whole semester just on who am I, who am I projects, which is a big thing you do in big picture learning and the other sites too. But it's just about like, who am I generally? What are the different parts of me, the intersectionalities of me that I bring? Which one of those do I want to dive into more? Which one do I want to celebrate and elevate more to others? Um, so I think that there's no question you can ask. I think it's a practice you have to cultivate over time.

1:01:24Khara Schonfeld: Um, and it starts with maybe not those hard questions of like, why do you do this behavior, which might be totally unknown to them. They're being honest. Um, but it's just starting that sort of practice of self-awareness and mindfulness that can lead to those insights being revealed over time. mm-hmm yeah truth be told many of us don't know what we need right it takes a level of introspection and um uh and the time and space as you said to explore who you are that um doesn't doesn't happen often enough so um goodness well unfortunately that's all the time that we have for for questions today but dr schoenfeld thank you so much for for sharing your findings from the study and your expertise with our ADHD community.

1:02:13We very much appreciate it.

1:02:15Khara Schonfeld: Like I said, it was quite an honor. I'm so happy to be a part of this community. And thank you, Annie. Appreciate you. Absolutely. Yes, we're happy to have you. And we're happy to have so many people join the conversation today and submit so many wonderful questions. If you would like to access today's event resources, you can visit attitudemag.com and just search for podcast 619. The slides and recording are posted a few hours after our live event. And if you're listening in replay mode, you can simply click on the episode description. And I hope everyone knows that our full library of attitude webinars is available as a podcast.

1:02:52It's called the ADHD Experts Podcast, and it's available on those streaming platforms. We hope you will join us And we hope you'll sign up for alerts so you don't miss any great webinars by visiting attitudemag.com slash newsletters. For more Attitude podcast and information on living well with attention deficit, visit attitudemag.com. That's A-D-D-I-T-U-D-E-M-A-G.com.

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