Fostering Neurodiversity: Insights from the Greenwood School Workshop

Recently, I had a really cool opportunity to help teach a class at the Greenwood School, a private boarding and day school for young men with diagnosed learning differences. I was particularly interested in participating because of the Greenwood School’s and Landmark College’s similar missions. The workshop focused on how the brain works and neurodiversity discussed by Dr. Ewall. In the workshops, I also touched on the acceptance of disabilities, including how we can foster inclusivity and create safe spaces where people can freely talk about their challenges and how to support peers when being neurodivergent yourself, and strategies to support others while taking into account both party’s needs. Before the workshops, I worked with LCIRT to develop open discussion questions and set aside time for answering students’ questions. One question I got was what it is like to be a neurodiverse college student; my answer to that touched on time management, information about classes and some strategies to help students with their transition.

It was genuinely a great experience. I was a little nervous at first (diagnosed anxiety will do that to you) ha-ha. First of all I would like to thank everyone involved including Devan Monette (Operations and Communication’s Manager-STRIVE) and Dr. Gabrielle Ewall for helping me through the anxiety, as this helps with my goals of helping bringing more awareness of disabilities and neurodiversity acceptance. Something else I’m realizing now as I write this is that through my volunteer work with LCIRT, I’ve realized something I wasn’t so sure of before: I now know that I can complete a PhD program if I choose to after I complete my undergraduate studies which seems like a really good and fun opportunity.

This opportunity was the result of a collaboration with the Landmark College Institute for Research and Training and funded by NSF-STRIVE: the Science and Technology Research Initiative for the Vermont Economy.