hi! feel free not to answer this if you don’t want to, but i just saw your post about college being a test of executive function. i’m a grad student who is currently TAing and will probably be solo teaching in the near future, and your experiences definitely resonate with what i’ve seen happening with some of my students. i’m invested in making higher ed more accessible and i’m wondering if you have any ideas for (or experiences with) things that would make it easier for you to work outside of class? obviously i know that these would be at best bandaids without structural changes to how school (especially college) works, i’m just thinking about how i can do the least harm in the short term. thank you!
I'm actually just now seeing this, so I hope it hasn't been sitting here too long! The first thing I want to say is thank you so much for caring about your students enough to seek out answers and understanding. I promise you it means so much to your students, and teachers and professors who care really do make all the difference. In terms of tangible things that helped me a lot, in high school, I ended up graduating from an "alternative school" due to some behavioral issues as well as academic issues with traditional schooling. I actually really excelled in the alternative school because the way it was structured made a HUGE difference.
Some things that made the biggest difference for me were:
They didn't run the same hours as a traditional school. Rather, they went from noon until 5pm. A lot of neurodivergent people have sleep differences as well. Many of us find it difficult to fall asleep at a "normal" hour or to wake up early even if we do manage getting to bed early--our internal clocks aren't always socially acceptable, so on top of executive dysfunction, many of us are chronically sleep deprived and exhausted. This schedule allowed me to actually get enough sleep.
There were no attendance requirements. You could choose not to come, you could come late, or you could leave early. You could even sign yourself out for a couple hours and come back to finish out the day. On days that I felt burnt out or my executive functioning was especially low to the point that I couldn't get myself to show up, it didn't count against me. If I couldn't get up and ready early enough to get there at the beginning of the day, it didn't matter. If I burnt out in the middle of the day, I could just leave. It prevented me from falling into what I describe as energy debt, where you keep pushing past burnout until it compounds on itself.
And the one that was the biggest thing for me was that there was absolutely no homework that had to be taken home. None. We put our work up at the end of the day and picked up where we left off the next day. This was the thing that always hurt me the most academically, and it hurt me all over again in college. I had less difficulty getting into "work mode" when I was physically in the classroom, but at home I couldn't make myself pull out my backpack, start up my laptop, log into the college website, then start the assignment itself. For some reason there was always this invisible barrier in my brain that would not allow it to happen. I got A's on my tests easily, but it didn't matter because the incomplete homework was too much to make up for.
Another thing I want to mention is that ADHD, autism, and other neurodivergencies tend to exist on a spectrum--it's a cluster of traits that can be sort of mix and match in terms of intensity and how they impact an individual. While I did have a hard time getting to classes in college on time, I didn't have that much of a problem being there in general. Some neurodivergent people find it immensely difficult to sit in a classroom due to sensory issues, social anxiety, the distraction of other people being around, etc. I on the other hand HAD to take classes in person because I could never make myself log on for online classes--I actually got talked (tricked) into taking one by my counselor one semester and I literally didn't log on a single time. I just couldn't make myself, and it just became a huge source of stress and anxiety that spilled into my performance in other classes. All of that being said, the best thing to do is to ask those students that you see these struggles in what kind of things they think would help them. They might not know and it might take some suggestions or question asking on your part to identify where their particular struggles lie. I hope this helps a little bit!
