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Welcome to Embrace, a heartfelt podcast series led by Rachel Forbes, Executive Director of LDS - Learn. Develop. Succeed. Drawing on her rich experience in community building, social justice, and nonprofit leadership, Rachel takes you on an intimate journey through the life of Mason—a remarkable individual whose story of navigating dyslexia and ADHD offers powerful insights into the world of neurodivergence.
Through Mason’s story, from his early years in preschool to adulthood, we explore the first signs of learning differences, how they evolve over time, and the impact of a strong, supportive community. Alongside educators, neurodivergence experts, passionate parents, and allies, Embrace shatters stigmas, highlights the unique gifts of neurodivergent learners, and offers empowering strategies for building confidence and self-esteem.
Join us as we celebrate the power of educational and social-emotional supports that embrace each unique learner for who they are—and who they can become.
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Hi, I'm Rachel Forbes. I'm a passionate mother, an advocate, a partner, a friend, and an ally. I bring those identities and my experience in community building, social justice, and nonprofit leadership to my role as Executive Director at LDS, Learn, Develop, Succeed. Over the next few weeks, I will lead you through the story of a beautiful soul named Mason from preschool through to adulthood.
We get to witness Mason's early years, exploring the first signs of potential learning differences like dyslexia and brain-based differences like ADHD. In this series, we will feature educators from LDS, experts on neurodivergence, as well as passionate parents and allies who make up the community that rallied around Mason. Along the way, we'll reveal the gifts that unique learners offer.
shatter some stigmas about neurodivergence, explore ways to build confidence and self-esteem, and offer a path forward. A path paved by educational and social emotional supports that embrace each unique learner for just who they are and for who they can choose to be. This is Embrace.
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Equipped with an assessment of both dyslexia and ADHD, Mason is transitioning out of elementary school into middle or high school. The last years of elementary school and the first years of middle or high school is a time of transition, a very vulnerable time for most kids because it's the start of adolescence.
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They're often starting or going through puberty and are often worrying about fitting in among their peers and adding a diagnosis of a learning difference and another brain-based differ. This is a time of transition for all students and everybody, really. And it's really important to keep that in mind because this also helps with with feeling a sense of belonging is knowing that everybody else around you is experiencing the same thing, although it does look different for different people. This is Patrick.
an autistic educator who focuses a lot of his work with learners between grades seven to 12. He helps support students at LDS with academics and also coaches on social communication and helps them understand how to navigate the school system while having a learning difference. Transitioning to high school, especially here in BC where we don't have any sort of middle school system except in, I think, three school districts, makes it much more of a transition than it is in most of the world.
On one hand, this is a very anxiety provoking transition, but on the other hand, there are some positives to this as well because high schools tend to have much larger populations than elementary schools. And when we think about neurodivergence, the larger your student population, the larger the pool of people who think like you is. And so a larger school is going to mean that there's more kids, more teenagers who think the way that your child does. And this is actually a really amazing thing for
to be able to go and find a group that thinks like them and appreciates them for who they are. And so it does come with significant anxiety, but it is also an opportunity for teenagers to branch out and find their people or their tribe that they can spend their time with. That's a great point because I think sometimes the size of a big school can be intimidating, but remembering that that means that there's a greater chance of you finding people who you identify with.
is a really good reminder so that it's not about how big overall the school is, it's about who's there that can support you and the chances of those people being there both peer-wise and potentially adult or educator mentor-wise are greater when you're in a bigger school. Yeah, I'm always, when I'm coaching students on this, like transition to high school, I always really focus on helping them to realize that they don't need to befriend the entire school.
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Like that's not a realistic goal. It's about finding a few people that accept you for who you are and like you for who you are. And it doesn't matter if 90 % of the school doesn't even know your name. The goal is not to become like the most popular person in your school. The goal is to find a good group of people that are gonna support you for who you are. Unlike neurotypical people, learners like the ones who come to LDS require
a little extra support that carries them through important transitions, especially when moving to different schools and to middle or high school. So maintaining or building a community during this transitional period is fundamental to setting up neurodivergent youth for success academically and for social, emotional, and mental health. It allows them to find psychological safety while entering a new environment where they feel a little less alone and awkward.
And as far as kind of like finding other supports who are not necessarily peers, but finding like supportive staff members or adults who are in a position to play a positive role inside a school environment. Unfortunately, by the time that a neurodivergent youth is entering high school, they will have already had some experience in determining who safe, caring adults are versus adults who are not positive people in their lives.
And so I will usually talk through with them, like how do we tell if an adult is going to be supportive and safe versus how can we tell if this adult is going to be bullying us? This is a common fear for kids, neurodivergent or neurotypical, that they're going to get endlessly bullied for being different. Unfortunately, in our society, neurodivergent children and youth typically don't have access to representation or many adult role models.
who think the way they do, or at least don't openly identify as neurodivergent. And this extends to the support that schools provide to try to help students make friends. Because a lot of the time, these programs are run by well-meaning people who don't have the lived experience from these communities to really understand and give that support. They are often very well-intentioned and well-meaning, but a lot of the time, when people are trying to be empathetic,
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they ask themselves, what would I want in this situation? How would I want to be treated in that situation? And that's not the most neuro-affirming way that you can approach something like this because it's really important to acknowledge as part of being neuro-affirming that other people's brains work different than mine and my way of thinking is not necessarily better than theirs. So that kind of leads into the much harder question of how can we make spaces available in schools?
and outside of schools as well, because I always say to families that if school is not a supportive environment, your child really needs some place where they can fit in. And unfortunately for us, for many students, school is not really set up in a way that that's going to be realistic. That's where people like Virginia Van Zee, Senior Manager of Instruction and Innovation at LDS Committee.
She focuses on how to apply research-based, specialized, explicit, sometimes called remedial instruction techniques, while also using neuro-affirming approaches that are strengths-based and allow learners to be unique in themselves. I find that lots of instructors and families and educators often are trying to find the right language to describe the ways in which they're unique or they're different than mainstream schooling.
And tutoring is a catch-all word that lots of people use to mean lots of different things. And for folks who work in maybe more specialized, individualized education, focusing on learners who are behind their peers, remedial education is a way that we can talk about something that's really individualized, hopefully based in kind of best practices for instruction for this specific population. And so are we, are we remediating something? Like where does that?
come from? Are we trying to fix something when we're doing this kind of explicit, systematic, research-based, typically one-to-one kind of stuff? Yeah, that's a great question. And I think it's important to identify that I tend to use a language of remedial instruction when I'm talking about kind of like the technical expertise that I have in instruction. But you're right, I wouldn't necessarily use it to explain to the general population.
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what LDS does because it does have a negative connotation. Yeah, super individualized instruction that is strength-based, that's neuro-affirming, that is based in research and also really strong interpersonal connection and understanding all of the things that instruction should be for anyone and especially needs to be for any kind of learner who has any kind of learning challenge. So it's really about the expertise of the instructor.
and the approach that they take to learning and to creating a positive relationship with learning, having teachers who are dynamic, responsive, and can ground themselves in trusted techniques while also prioritizing a good relationship with the learner and supporting growth and self-esteem and confidence is key. What's right for one student at one point in their life isn't gonna be right for them three years later. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. So...
This is something that I think my ideas about are constantly changing. And as someone who has somewhat of an academic background and has learned a lot about having a worldview that looks at scientific research, backing up evidence-based practices, I think personally that it's really important that any individual instructor or organization is thoughtful both about what does the research say and also what is the research continuing to say so that education isn't
know, best practices in education isn't an end point. It's a constantly changing thing and we're always learning more. So there's a lot of programming that serves students with learning disabilities or different kinds of learning differences that maybe is based on some parts of research, maybe not all of it. Maybe it is really great for certain profiles of students or certain students in certain environments. And there's never going to be something that's right for everybody. A good place to start.
is something that has some evidence that it is effective in general, rather than reinventing the wheel for every single student.
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A different approach to learning that comes up a lot is online instruction. And we saw a huge educational and social disruption starting in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic with lockdowns in place and families being isolated to their homes. The school system did the best that they could in those circumstances and made that quick transition to online learning classrooms, even if they've never taught online before. What we've heard time and time again at LDS that this online learning structure
brought through COVID was not a great introduction for lot of learners with learning differences, especially those who benefit from a more customized and one-to-one approach. But big classes online during lockdown out of necessity is not the same as purpose design, skilled instructor, one-to-one delivery of specialized one-to-one online support. Virginia says. And I actually think that we can harness
a lot of things that are neuro-affirming and supportive and inclusive by having online instruction because students can be in their own space. So they can be where they're used to self-regulating or they're most comfortable. You know, it could remove some of the transition time of driving somewhere, getting in the car, getting ready, getting to the space, getting settled in the instruction room that I think is really powerful for a lot of students. And a lot of students are increasingly more and more tech savvy. So...
Of course, there's some students who maybe don't have a lot of exposure to using a computer and online instruction is going to be a really hard learning curve for them. So for that student, maybe in-person is better, or maybe they need to receive some explicit instruction in how to use the technology to access that. But a lot of students are really love being on the computer. The things they like to do are based in technology. And when we can harness that and include that in instruction, for a lot of students, that's going to make instruction more engaging. It's going to be more focused on their interests. They're going to learn more.
in that environment. I think that the fear that sometimes we have about online instruction being super different, it is different, but it have to be different bad. I have seen time and again that skilled instructors are instructors who are ready to adapt and be flexible and constantly iterate and try new things to meet the needs of each student in front of them every moment. And
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You can apply that in person or you can apply that online. Yeah, there's a learning curve of how do I want to share the screen in this platform I'm using or use which game, but skilled instructors I've seen over the past four years now doing that really, really well.
Since lockdown, we've had the space and time to do things more carefully and thoughtfully, and have also learned that it's less about the medium and more about the method of instruction. LDS measures outcomes, but Virginia explains that whether it's online or in person, there are some other critically important factors to consider in what's effective or good instruction for neurodivergent learners.
You can measure test scores and improvement on metrics like standardized assessments, but you also can look at, does this student enjoy doing the work? Do they enjoy coming to sessions? Do they feel like they're learning something? Does their family see them talking about this being a positive learning environment? Do their teachers at school see them having a more positive outlook on learning? All of those things are.
as important, if not, I would argue much more important than test scores or any other metric that's looking at the effectiveness that isn't looking at this individual student and how they're feeling about it. So good instruction is instruction that makes difference in the life of the learner and yeah, helps them kind of in a holistic way, not just in an academic output way.
Yeah, and of course I've met lots of families who have students who maybe have gotten older and again, they get to a different point in their schooling or the demands of their schooling environment, their home environment, and that can be a point where it's time to look at evidence-based approaches for the specific need of that learner. But I think that often that's pretty clear because
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Students and families, like they know each other really well and they know when something starts to feel like it's not meeting whatever their specific needs are right now. And looking at what is evidence aligned in this area can help families find the next thing or move on to the next step. Speaking of transition times and moving on to next steps and things, there are a few pinch points or things that, you know,
Family See coming up on the horizon and we've in this podcast already talked about transitions into kindergarten being a big one for early learners. Another one that comes up a lot for families and for their children or the students is a transition to high school or in some cases junior high and how that can be daunting or challenging and just because it's such a different learning environment.
With that, when you know that your child is struggling academically and the transition to high school is on the horizon, how can families support their learner? How can they prepare themselves to support their child, really, but also support themselves kind of in that transition? One of the biggest things, I think, for any student and especially a neurodivergent student is that there are so many
things that aren't explicitly taught. And really the way our school system is set up is there might be individual teachers or people who go out of their way to make things explicit, but it's not a requirement of the curriculum, for example, to teach a student how to note take, or that this is the assigned reading and...
Here's the expected outcome is that you're gonna be able to talk about it in class and you're gonna be able to remember the information and apply it on a test or in some kind of written assignment. Students are just told you have this assigned reading, it's due on this day. And most students kind of have to figure out from trial and error what all of the unspoken systems and tasks are that are embedded in that. These unspoken systems and tasks
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are barriers for a lot of neurodivergent students. And the most important piece of this puzzle is that it's hard to build safe, neuro-affirming spaces for children and youth without the input of the community. One thing comes up when I'm thinking about the logistics of trying to figure out if a school is going to be this or to offer these things or to, you know, even have the capacity to try to...
facilitates setting up safe neuro-affirming places. Is there anything, if somebody's a parent or guardian or close family member of a student who's looking for these options and trying to figure out, you know, if there is a choice of should I go this route or that route for a secondary school or should I go into potentially more specialized school? Are there any kind of indicators or things that we can ask a school or do research on a school about to...
kind of figure out if they really are what they say they are or if there are any flags that come up. Do you have any tips on that? This is a big concern that a lot of families have. Is the school just telling me what I want to hear to make me go away or is this actually a safe environment? And there's no test like 100 % to tell for sure.
but there are some strategies that people can use, both with schools and strategies for like teenagers to use to gauge if their friends are going to be accepting or not. So for parents looking to identify if a school is going to be actually neuro-affirming versus using that word as like a buzzword, one of the most important things that they can ask is who on your staff has actually developed this program or who on your staff is actually being consulted about that because...
When a program is being run without consultation with the communities that are taking part in it, I can't actually think of a time when I've been in one myself and thought, this is actually helpful. Like, this is actually a good thing. So that's one way to really check in, like, who's actually, who's doing this? And the entire group doesn't necessarily need to be run by neurodivergent people, but there definitely needs to be involvement.
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With so many compounding things, stress and demands, navigating learning differences in the traditional school system is extremely challenging without the right support and reassurance. When I'm trying to speak to students and young people about this, it's always a matter of letting them know that there is a framework in place. In order to have like a safe, neuro-affirming place, there have to be ground rules about it and how people are going to...
treat each other and speak to each other and what information gets shared outside of that group in a school environment. And also to let students know that if this is too overwhelming, that's okay. And so one of the things that I've had a lot of success with in addressing executive functioning and organizational skills with students is not treating it like a moral issue. Because our society is really set up in a way that's...
that treats things like this as if it's like an issue of blame or a problem or a concern. And I mean, the stereotype is that a teacher or an educator or a parent looks at this behavior and says, I would get fired from my job if I didn't have my organizational skills. And then this kind of gets passed on to young people at a far younger age than like a neurotypical peer would get pushed in this way.
So by taking out the emotional side of this and just treating it as, okay, we're gonna make a plan and I'm gonna get your input on this plan and we're going to come up with it together.
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In the next episode, we see Mason as a full-fledged high schooler who has fully embraced his learning differences. think it's critical for parents and teachers and adults in a child's life to normalize that mistakes are how we learn. It's the best way to learn. And then when mistakes happen, rather than getting angry, upset, arguing with your team, especially, listen and problem solve.
and allowing those things to be nurtured. And at the same time, accepting and realizing that things are going to be challenging. And we talk about how kids like Mason can build independence and grow their confidence. That's all for today. Embrace is an everything podcast production, an award winning team focused on engaging storytelling that connects with its audience in a meaningful.
and memorable way. Our showrunner is Rithu Jagannath and our audio engineer and sound mixer is Scott Whitaker. And if you like the show, please rate and follow it. It helps us reach more listeners like you. Until next time, embrace your kids.
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Another Everything Podcasts production.
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