We were not really mainstream sort of people. Maybe we’d get called odd, weird or quirky by others, but in the open mic nights above pubs, at the tents in festivals or drama studios in arts centres, we found somewhere we could connect with others and feel a sense of power and choice. A space we could truly express the word-passion and other interests we had. We would be accepted, heard and understood in ways that resonated deeply with our loneliest core and which healed the parts of ourselves that had always felt alone- isolated – like we didn’t fit in.

Ford, T., John, A., & Gunnell, D. (2021). Mental health of children and young people during pandemic. British Medical Journal, 372. As for the ‘Alice’ of the Alice books, she could be seen (as some have) as an autistic child with a logical approach to life and a tenacious insistence on what is right and appropriate, who must navigate an unpredictable and capricious neurotypical world. When neurodiversity is used to include everyone, and to drive a radical agenda of acceptance, the benefits can be substantial. One problem in our current model of classroom support, which all too often relies on a diagnosis before support is offered, is that children may sit on clinical waiting lists for months before receiving a diagnosis. If their needs are not being met in this time, serious outcomes can ensue, including exclusion and mental ill-health. Neurodiversity reminds us of the variability that exists in every school, in every classroom. A neurodiversity-affirmative school provides a platform for teachers to analyse and act upon the apparent needs of the children in their class without waiting for external (often clinical) validation to do so. Such practice is truly child-centred, and permits a rapid response to the changing needs of pupils, while waiting for the insights that can come from a clinical evaluation. As well as for individual teachers, there is a challenge here for schools. A school is a complex community, and by its very nature it is systemic. The neurodiversity paradigm requires systemic change – we can't continually ask individuals to change themselves to fit in. Instead, we need to meet individuals nearer to where they are. This raises the crucial question of funding. While staff are underpaid and resources in short-supply, it will always be impossible to fully realise the vision of the neurodiversity-affirmative education for everyone. A key way to deliver on the promise of neurodiversity is to campaign for change and investment. Print copies of ‘Making a Difference: A Selection of Neurodiverse Poets’ have been circulated to libraries and public services across the region, and a digital version is available online.Johnson, M. and Rutherford, L. (2019). An Autism Evidence Based Practice Toolkit for use with the SCERTS™ Assessment and Planning Framework . Since my diagnosis in 2017, I’ve reflected that my performance and movement practice had perhaps always been a way of stimming, although I wouldn’t have known to call it stimming at the time. Stims are often described as techniques for sensory regulation, particularly to ameliorate sensory overload for autistic people. For example, in my experience, swaying from side-to-side helps me to process what’s incoming, if it’s too much. One of the biggest risks, at a time when neurodiversity is becoming increasingly a part of the discourse around education (and employment too) is that it is perceived to be just the latest acceptable terminology: another burden for over-stretched teaching staff to wrestle with. Can we switch the narrative so that schools see the positive and practical benefits of embracing neurodiversity, not just for the pupils but for the whole school community? What does it really mean to foster, accept and support neurodiversity in a school? What is neurodiversity? The Face It comedy drama monologues reveal how two women feel about their faces in the modern swipe-right world, and the unexpected impact of wearing Covid-19 face masks. Meet straight-talking Leonie who has an acquired facial difference and ambitious Abbey, who’s no longer prepared to be overlooked.

Schools that have provided tablets and laptops to the whole school benefit those children who struggle to spell and write, without singling them out.Read the rest and other stories here: https://debjcooper.wordpress.com/2018/01/26/mr-samuels-gift/. But I also knew that most people weren’t trying to work out how different people processed the world. They were categorising people by whether they were introverts or extroverts, happy or sad, anxious or easy-going simply by whether they liked or felt comfortable with them or not. Most people, I think it’s fair to say, expect that other folk experience the day to day world in pretty much the same way as they do.

Perhaps one of the most important aspects of writing poetry for me is the way it allows me to look forward. In my more joyful poetry, this has allowed me the chance to rewrite much of what happens to young neurodivergent people, and give myself and the characters in my poems things that in reality might only be dreamed of. One of the first nonspeaking poets I worked with, Meghana Junnuru, has grown from one word to one poem to one chapbook to co-founding her own advocacy and co-housing non-profit, the Autism Sibs Universe (ASU). Along the way she enlisted her brother Chetan Junnuru, who is also nonspeaking, as her collaborator and co-editor in all things. In writing together, they wield an astounding balance of simplicity and surprise, always expanding my understanding of autistic experience. Meghana and Chetan smell water the way I smell coffee. They revel in the idea of “zero point,” a state where “humans can merge with their infinite presence and live a creatively authentic life.” They harness the alapa–the underlying rhythmic structure of an Indian raga–to reinvent the autistic body as the “alapa body,” a porous mode of “enriched musical patterns suffused with nurturing connections.” In May, Meghana and I will be in San Francisco to be interviewed for The Neurodiversity Project. Kate Fox in her collection The Oscillations says that many of her poems in the collection ‘touch on neurodiversity – the idea that, as in biodiversity, there is a strength in the differences of people with conditions such as autism and ADHD who think and experience the world differently’. (2020, p69). In this post, I write with a similar emphasis on some of the perceived strengths and differences of neurodivergent writers. ‘Diagnosing’ autistic writers?

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I think you would like the chestnut tree I met in my walk. It hit my notice suddenly, and I thought the skies were in blossom. Then there’s a noiseless noise in the orchard that I let persons hear’ (2011, p172).