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Finding Equal Learning Opportunities for Neurodiverse and Gifted Kids with Dr. Kate Bachtel · The Spiritual Parent: Mindful Tools for Raising Spiritual and Conscious Kids

• 0:00
  Kate: they're achieving at the 95th percentile, great.
• 0:02
  Kate: And you think, wow, teachers are grading, doing an excellent job.
• 0:06
  Kate: Yeah and right, like I don't care, like I don't care what, like, if you're achieving at the 99.9th percentile.
• 0:14
  Kate: Um, if you are not growing, then we're failing, failing that school is not serving its purpose, right?
• 0:21
  Kate: Every child deserves access to equitable growing and equitable learning and growth opportunities.
• 0:26
  Kate: So you can think of it kind of like as a stretch opportunity quotient.
• 0:30
  Kate: Everyone should have opportunities to grow and learn at school, and if not, we're teaching them implicitly that they don't belong right.
• 0:42
  Kate: That they have.
• 0:42
  Kate: We're invalidating their lived experience and marginalizing, and that happens pretty regularly.
• 0:50
  Kate: There aren't a lot of districts that monitor the growth data for students who are neurodivergent gifted.
• 0:57
  Kate: They look at those achievement levels.
• 1:01
  Carrie: Welcome to Heart to Heart Parents.
• 1:02
  Carrie: Let's connect with our kids and learn together.
• 1:05
  Carrie: I'm Carrie.
• 1:06
  Carrie: I was a former teacher and speech therapist.
• 1:08
  Carrie: I'm also a parent of two spirited, gifted, highly sensitive kids.
• 1:13
  Carrie: I was quickly brought to my knees as a parent when I thought that I would see a rosy lens version of parenting just as they present on Instagram.
• 1:22
  Carrie: But I quickly learned that's not real life of parenting just as they present on Instagram.
• 1:26
  Carrie: But I quickly learned that's not real life.
• 1:28
  Carrie: I will provide real life experiences and transform them into moments for connections and change for you to use in your house.
• 1:35
  Carrie: Hi there, conscious parents, before we start today's episode, it's Carrie here and I wanted to reach out to ask you guys for a quick favor as a follower of our show.
• 1:44
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• 1:49
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• 1:57
  Carrie: So thanks so much for tuning in and I'm so excited for you to hear today's message.
• 2:02
  Carrie: Happy listening for you to hear today's message.
• 2:08
  Carrie: Happy listening.
• 2:08
  Carrie: Hi there, and welcome back to Heart to Heart, Carrie, or Heart to Heart Parents I'm Carrie, I'm your friendly, conscious parent here and today I have a really special guest who is joining me locally from where I am, which is really fun.
• 2:19
  Carrie: I haven't had that lately and she is Dr Kate Bachel you can correct me if I say it wrong or Bactel Bactel, thank you.
• 2:29
  Carrie: She studies and designs exemplary programming for neurodivergent, gifted and 2E youth and facilitates professional learning through the nonprofit SoulSpark Learning, while also teaching in BVSD or Boulder Valley School District.
• 2:44
  Carrie: She has a doctorate in curriculum and instruction with a gifted emphasis and she's a published author on topics related to giftedness and emotional development and I am so excited to have her here today.
• 2:58
  Carrie: I was telling her before we started that I had, as I was raising my kids and I would hit, pieces of not knowing what to do, not knowing exactly how to entertain or maybe engage or why I was seeing certain things come up with my kiddos.
• 3:13
  Carrie: My aunt would always say, look into the gifted and talented pieces and I was like, oh, but this is behavioral and I don't.
• 3:21
  Carrie: I see that as part of it, but I don't know how that relates.
• 3:24
  Carrie: And as I started to dive in and really understand GNT, it really helped me to connect with my kids and understand why they were doing certain things, what their needs were and how they were seeking out that intellectual challenges in their lives.
• 3:44
  Carrie: So I'm so excited to have you, dr Kate, is that okay?
• 3:49
  Kate: Thanks for having me, Carrie.
• 3:51
  Kate: I'm glad we were able to make time together.
• 3:54
  Carrie: Yeah, it's so fun to have you here.
• 3:56
  Carrie: I was so lucky I got to attend one of your sessions for SoulSpark recently I think it was this spring and as you were talking during it, I kept thinking oh my gosh, you're describing both of my children and it was so interesting.
• 4:13
  Carrie: I think you had mentioned and I keep using this everywhere when I'm talking to people about GNT as the child, as the intellectual levels go, go up, there's often a possibility of having another disorder.
• 4:31
  Carrie: Is that correct and how I'm saying it?
• 4:33
  Kate: well, like, as, as iq increases um, so does um or a sort of asynchronies and learning and development, oh right.
• 4:43
  Kate: And so sometimes you think of like in the autism community they talk about splinter skills, right, and like extreme strengths and then other otherwise challenges, and so I'm going to say that I might have like somewhat of a controversial perspective on this within the gifted community.
• 5:00
  Kate: But I think that when it comes to asynchrony, it's hard to delineate where asynchrony ends and twice exceptionality begins.
• 5:10
  Kate: Twice exceptionality is the term we use for youth who might be eligible for an advanced learning plan or maybe identification criteria for gifted and also have a diagnosed disability, and so the 2E is oftentimes referenced in terms of like IDA legislation and if you'd be eligible for an individualized education program, an IEP or 504.
• 5:36
  Kate: And so sometimes that where the asynchronies and development lie determine whether or not one would be considered twice exceptional, right.
• 5:48
  Kate: So if I have um, so if my asynchrony is such that, um, I'm a very precocious reader or hyperlexic, reading comes very easy to me, but then maybe I struggle more with the pragmatics of speech and social communication and my ability to connect, then maybe that twice exceptionality might be more likely to be recognized in a school setting where someone might be eligible for an IEP or 504 under the category of autism and identify, maybe, as autistic, and yet if the asynchrony let's say, um, like myself, I'm tone deaf, I would love, I would love to be a musician and be able to sing like I love music in that form of um expression, but yet I am completely tone deaf and so that's part of my personal asynchrony, right, and so that might not be considered a disability within a school context, but yet if I was attending a music program like I would need definitely like specialized services and supports to be able to not hurt other people's ears.
• 6:56
  Kate: Right, so it's, there's a context piece to it.
• 7:01
  Kate: But most youth who are identified as neurodivergent gifted often at times, have asynchronies in their learning and development, whether it's related to their motor skills, their executive function skills, their literacy skills, calculation skills, their motor, like all of the things, right, and so we just have responsibility, just like with any child, to make sure that they have what they need to thrive, that their strengths are spread, fed and nourished, but also that they have the support that's needed.
• 7:33
  Kate: And with our students, those exceptionalities can mask one another, so oftentimes they don't get the support they need for either in traditional school.
• 7:44
  Carrie: Yes, that can be super challenging, I'm sure, yeah, so what are some of the components of an exemplary program for these kiddos?
• 7:55
  Kate: Right, that's a big question and there are a lot of pieces to it and levels to it.
• 8:01
  Kate: Right, we want each child to have access, first and foremost, to highly qualified, culturally responsive teachers.
• 8:10
  Kate: Right, and in teacher preparation programs, um, we don't get training oftentimes in in neurodivergence and gifted in um in in terms of how that development might unfold or look different than same age peers.
• 8:27
  Kate: And so if you don't have that understanding of how children are experiencing the world, including the asynchronies, the needs oftentimes for different depth, pace and complexity of instruction, how can you be responsive that these are unseen differences that children can mask in the classroom setting?
• 8:48
  Kate: So having having educators that understand how children neuro diversion, gifted twice exceptional children are experiencing the world is critical.
• 8:55
  Kate: If they don't have that training, it's already a recipe for disaster, right, and then that cultural responsive piece historically we've had a lot of under identification or historical exclusion, especially of bilingual, latin, now african-american, indigenous, um multi-exceptional youth, for a lot of reasons, including shortcomings and the assessments that are used to identify cultural factors.
• 9:22
  Kate: Right, like if we're a more individualist culture and children come from a culture that's more collective and where um group performance is more valued and um, and there's more humility and not wanting to stand out.
• 9:37
  Kate: Um, those characteristics of giftedness might be presenting differently and we might be missing children who need, again, different programming, um programming form focused on growth, carry right, like is another thing.
• 9:53
  Kate: Like ready, we're thinking about responsive um and neuro-inclusive programming for gifted.
• 9:59
  Kate: So oftentimes we're just looking at achievement, achievement levels, right, like if a child, wow, if they're achieving at the 95th percentile, great.
• 10:08
  Kate: And you think, wow, teachers are grading doing an excellent job, yeah, and right, like I don't care, like I don't care what.
• 10:15
  Kate: Like if you're achieving at the 99.9th percentile?
• 10:19
  Kate: Um, if you are not growing, then we're failing, failing that school is not serving its purpose, right, every child deserves access to equitable growing and equitable learning and growth opportunities.
• 10:32
  Kate: So you can think of it kind of like as a stretch opportunity quotient.
• 10:36
  Kate: Everyone should have opportunities to to grow, grow and learn at school.
• 10:42
  Kate: And and if not, we're teaching them implicitly that they don't, that they don't belong.
• 10:47
  Kate: Right, that they have, we're invalidating their lived experience and marginalizing, and that happens pretty regularly.
• 10:56
  Kate: There aren't a lot of districts that monitor the growth data for students who are neurodivergent, gifted.
• 11:03
  Kate: They look at those achievement levels and be like, and again we'll pat ourselves on the back and say, wow, yeah, um.
• 11:08
  Kate: But then later on, oftentimes these students, if they haven't had access to those um growth stretch opportunities, they get to middle and high school and then teachers are like, oh, these skills are those, these kids are motivated.
• 11:23
  Kate: They shouldn't be in the advanced math class, they shouldn't be in calculus or geometry or whatever it might be, or be taking multiple languages in or you know whatever that they're interested or curious in.
• 11:38
  Kate: Because, look, because they aren't, aren't motivated.
• 11:41
  Kate: And sometimes that happens when children aren't given the opportunity to develop the growth mindset or resilience.
• 11:48
  Kate: Right, we talk about that um being so critical.
• 11:51
  Kate: But if you're not, if you don't have opportunities to move outside your comfort zone, you don't get to develop grit in the same way that your peers do because you don't have as much practice um learning, um that failure is sometimes requisite to growth, or like how to navigate that um and so um programming focused on growth is another piece um access to true peers, okay, like, if you think of that being another thing.
• 12:24
  Kate: It's hard to see yourself or deeply know yourself without a mirror, right, and you talk about for our neurodivergent gifted youth, especially those in rural settings, like here where we are in Colorado, 80% of our school districts are rural yeah, only 20% of our student student population, but approximately 80 percent of our schools are rural, and so it's less likely if you're neurodivergent gifted that you're going to have a peer um, and then that can be very socially isolating and marginalizing, right.
• 12:56
  Kate: If you want to invent a complex game at recess and all the other, like kids of your same age, like just um, don't have that same interest in that level of complexity, then you're playing by yourself, right, and so that is invaluable.
• 13:14
  Kate: Maybe gone to homeschool or unschool, world school model because they didn't have programming.
• 13:27
  Kate: What they are hungry for is finding opportunities for their kids to connect, whether online or through other programming, because just that in and of itself, putting the kids together it's like they can finally breathe.
• 13:37
  Kate: Right and have mirrors and understand, like, be, essentially be validated, and learning is different, right, right, when you put a group of neurodivergent gifted youth together, the learning increases exponentially because they we can all like, play off each other and it's just a different experience that can be hard to conceptualize if you haven't seen it before.
• 13:59
  Carrie: I love like the rabbit holes, right.
• 14:01
  Carrie: It's like, well, why does this work?
• 14:03
  Carrie: And then they can just go with a teacher down a rabbit hole, why does this work, why does this?
• 14:08
  Carrie: And they all beat off of each other when they're in that similar mindset.
• 14:13
  Kate: It can be more distance among the outliers, there can be more diversity at a program for gifted youth than in a neighborhood school, sometimes, right.
• 14:27
  Kate: So even when we're talking about like bouncing and having that similarity, it's the diversity that also oftentimes fuels them, because in that program one student might have interests, they might have competing and contrasting strengths and interests that allow them to collaborate and innovate in a unique way too, where one might be more of a visual facial thinker and communicator, one might be more musically or artistically inclined, and then, um, there's just unique and I'm going to say um, I want to say a certain kind of, certain brand of magic that happens when they have that sanctuary to come together and have specialized programming.
• 15:10
  Kate: I love that.
• 15:13
  Kate: So I'm like thinking about, like, I'm just gonna go through it, I'd like if kind of a few more things that are my brain, because it's a big question, right, but when you're talking about your inclusive, neuroclusive, adequate funding, yes, right, and so like you look at um, our like a good way to look at a neuro, like a measure neuroinclusivity is, are you funding um, gifted and special education at commensurate levels?
• 15:39
  Kate: Right, because they're all.
• 15:41
  Kate: Oftentimes youth are eligible for an IEP if they're 12 percent or less unique, right, like, and and then within neurodivergent gifted eligibility for an ALP is usually five percent or less cognitively unique.
• 15:56
  Kate: And so like, let's say, here's an example like a local school district here that we're you know, that we're familiar with here in the in the West, funds elementary special education teachers at a rate of one full time teacher for about, you know, 22 to 23 students.
• 16:14
  Kate: Yeah, and then they'll fund like a like someone in a tutor role that's getting paid not as a licensed teacher but kind of at an hourly rate that you could probably make at McDonald's to have a case load of like 65 to 75 students and work 10 hours a week.
• 16:31
  Kate: Right, yeah, that, and you, so you have student populations with similar levels of needs in terms of specialized programming.
• 16:39
  Kate: Oftentimes and granted, there are exceptions, right, like if you have a blind student, you might need Braille books there are medical, like, expenses tied to medical needs that you know it's not going to be perfect and sometimes it's more, but generally speaking, there should be more similar rates of funding if we and as a measure of making sure that children have access to those equitable growth opportunities they need to to flourish and basically access to a free and appropriate public education.
• 17:08
  Kate: Sensory mindful environments I know that as someone passionate about taking care of children with sensory sensitivities of all kinds sensory sensitivities, moral sensitivities, emotional sensitivities, creating environments where we're mindful of how light, sounds, textures, emotional safety, but also make sure that their sensory systems are in a place that are useful and calm and that they can engage and bring their best selves forward, right, like a student who's in kindergarten or first grade likely won't be able to articulate oh my gosh, those fluorescent lights are making my nervous system really wonky.
• 18:01
  Kate: They're just going to have, they're going to be irritated in their little bodies, right, and the adults might not understand why there are challenging behaviors.
• 18:10
  Kate: Um and so sensory mindful environments are really, really critical.
• 18:18
  Carrie: Yes, and we'll be right back after this message.
• 18:22
  Carrie: Hi there, changemaker moms and dads.
• 18:24
  Carrie: It's Carrie here.
• 18:25
  Carrie: I hope you're enjoying today's episode.
• 18:27
  Carrie: If there's any pieces of this episode that resonate with you, we would love for you to share it with a friend.
• 18:33
  Carrie: A little helping hand goes a long way.
• 18:36
  Carrie: We appreciate you tuning in.
• 18:37
  Carrie: And here's more.
• 18:40
  Carrie: They sometimes even like my kiddos in my past, they will hold it together throughout school, not wanting to look different, and then just explode as soon as they come home and you're like what just happened?
• 18:54
  Carrie: Yeah, so, and often would you have anything that you would say to parents?
• 19:01
  Carrie: For instance, I had in a previous situation.
• 19:05
  Carrie: I would go to teachers and say yes, I know my kid is listed as G&T.
• 19:10
  Carrie: Yes, I know my kid is filling out all the paperwork and getting all the worksheets done, and then you hand him a second math sheet.
• 19:17
  Carrie: I know he's doing extra work and above reading level, et cetera, but when he comes home he explodes.
• 19:23
  Carrie: He's exhausted.
• 19:24
  Carrie: Is there any room for a sensory break?
• 19:26
  Carrie: Is there any way we can change the light setup in here?
• 19:29
  Carrie: Is there any way we can reduce his worksheet like half, because writing can be painful for him if he's doing 30 math problems and I would get a lot of people smiling back at me and saying I never see anything in class.
• 19:45
  Carrie: I don't know what you're talking about.
• 19:47
  Carrie: He's always right on it.
• 19:49
  Carrie: He's always doing great.
• 19:50
  Carrie: So is there anything that you would be able to share with anybody that's going through a situation that they're not able to change themselves, or what they can ask for?
• 19:58
  Carrie: Any ideas?
• 20:01
  Kate: Well, I think it's tricky right.
• 20:03
  Kate: Any ideas?
• 20:03
  Kate: Well, I think it's tricky right, and that's why you just illustrated why it's so critical to have really strong parent-school partnerships, because what you see at school might be very different than we see at home, you know, and vice versa for so many reasons.
• 20:21
  Kate: And so if a child is holding it together and maybe to a certain degree masking throughout the day because we also know the higher the IQ, the more skilled children can be at masking that parents are going to see a very fatigued, oftentimes different child who melts and might have more behavioral challenges at home than at school.
• 20:41
  Kate: And so when you look at advocacy, it makes it hard because it's in part contingent on, like, the openness and experience and expertise of the teacher.
• 20:55
  Kate: Right, you might have a teacher who just generally is very empathic and is a good listener and a strong partner that can implement accommodations, regardless of whether or not they support eligibility for a 504 or again IEP if needed, for disability.
• 21:15
  Kate: But if you have an educator who's not in a school system or district that supports those kinds of partnerships, it becomes really tricky.
• 21:26
  Kate: And so then that's where sometimes it becomes helpful to have partners with medical professionals, clinicians, consultants or advocates that can speak to the medical need and really focus on on that kind of clinical or medical health side.
• 21:47
  Kate: Um and um, and oftentimes again, students who are um neurodivergent gifted it, um, it's not atypical for them to have a pro like a, like a again, knowing that we're in the Western medical model, right, like, ideally, as educators we just provide and when need is illustrated.
• 22:08
  Kate: But the reality is we do live in a, in a, in a community that relies more on Western medicine.
• 22:18
  Kate: But having like oftentimes our youth are eligible for a diagnosis like sensory processing disorder, adhd, autism, dyslexia, et cetera, um and so sometimes having um that medical diagnosis, if there's eligibility, supports accessing the accommodations that support um, support all of the neurodivergence right, um, because it and so like a 504, is what would provide accommodations for some of those pieces.
• 22:47
  Kate: And then going that route when you don't have, when the teacher, the system might not have the flexibility, might help your student get access to what they need to be able to access instruction.
• 23:00
  Carrie: Okay, that's really helpful and I was going to ask you as well, just thinking.
• 23:05
  Carrie: I know I was an educator so I had ideas when I would go in and converse with teachers, but sometimes I know families.
• 23:13
  Carrie: I've really held hands with other families and said, like well, think about asking for this or try, have you ever thought about asking for this?
• 23:22
  Carrie: What would you have any ideas of what families might be able to say if they're having a situation where their kids are gifted and they're not seeing as much academics, changes or challenges or what, and they're not able to move to a different school?
• 23:41
  Carrie: I don't know if there's anything that we can say to any of these people, Right?
• 23:47
  Carrie: No?
• 23:47
  Kate: I mean, it becomes really hard and it's part of something that people don't want to recognize is that, like in terms of the fields of education and psychology, there are a lot of organizations that have the term gifted in them and that's the term that has been used historically to describe the phenomena.
• 24:06
  Kate: But the term itself is problematic because, like for those of us who have um, who work with and have neurodivergent family members, we know it's not better than it's just different.
• 24:19
  Kate: Right, it's all a form of exceptionality that should be like value, neutral.
• 24:24
  Kate: Right, it should be neutral, like a trait.
• 24:26
  Kate: Like we have dyslexic processing, adhd processing.
• 24:29
  Kate: It's not better or worse, it's just different.
• 24:31
  Kate: And yet the term gifted for so many implies superiority.
• 24:36
  Kate: We know it's not, but because it implies that for some people the word gifted is a trigger, a lot of people the word gifted is a trigger, right and for many teachers.
• 24:47
  Kate: I mean, I think it behooves us to recognize that it is for many teachers, because the reality is we still we do have a lot of entitled, let's say entitled and privilege hoarding.
• 24:59
  Kate: Entitled and privilege hoarding.
• 25:02
  Kate: I'm sorry, I'm getting a call um and I apparently it's, it's coming through to apparently let me turn off my um bluetooth on my phone so that it's not coming through my headphones.
• 25:13
  Kate: Um, but um, coming back to like again the term gifted, um being a trigger and remind me where I was, carrie, I lost my train of thought a little bit, but that you know that the term can be for some, yeah, for some teachers, like in every like so many schools and districts, but especially, I'm going to say, more financially affluent districts that are very achievement oriented and there's that individualist culture like get ahead.
• 25:45
  Kate: I want my kid to win right that that teachers, including myself, prior to being in the field, like you, kind of associated that entitled, privilege hoarding behavior, the securing of more resources for my kids.
• 25:59
  Kate: So my kid can again be on the top you associate with giftedness, kid can again be on the top you associate with giftedness, right.
• 26:09
  Kate: So then, yeah, um, I think we have to also honor the fact that there are teachers that I'm going to say have also had vicarious trauma by how they've been treated by certain parent and caregiver populations and unfortunately, it's um, sometimes tied to gifted, even though, like, families who truly do have neurodivergent gifted really mostly just want their sensory, emotional basic needs met.
• 26:31
  Kate: Yeah, um, they just want their children to have a chance to learn at school too, um, but it's something that we have to address um the word and not language, and so I want to just make sure that I'm fully answering your question.
• 26:45
  Kate: But, like, I think what I heard is that you want to like how do you address that, the gifted side, and like in terms of when there's intellectual like, when the intellectual, like in growth needs are not being met specifically in academic growth needs are not being met specifically in academic growth needs?
• 27:02
  Kate: Yeah, and so you can really like, I think, focusing on the social, emotional and how, like the impact of mental health, and this is kind of where we can segue to a little bit, to like kind of maybe sources of educational trauma or neglect, right, yeah, I think oftentimes people don't realize that educational practices might result in certain gifted children, neurodivergent gifted children feeling unsafe at school.
• 27:31
  Kate: So it's not necessarily malintentioned, but not realizing the impact of practices.
• 27:37
  Kate: So one of the things that we can do is just generally partner with organizations that are speaking generally to practices that might cause harm.
• 27:48
  Kate: So it's not specific like oh, you're doing this, but like, oh, these are things generally that can cause harm, right, when we're advocating so we know, like denying a student access to subject to grade acceleration if they're not scoring perfectly, that that can be a source of neglect, right, because a child like I'm just becoming a teacher what I think that I had to score like 80% title on the practice test to become a professional educator right.
• 28:17
  Kate: Yes, and you probably can speak to that.
• 28:19
  Kate: Yes, many, many of them.
• 28:20
  Kate: But like oh, there are times that you know a student well, like, oh they, you know a student well.
• 28:26
  Kate: Like, oh, they, you know they score, they only score 95th percentile and they still got one or two wrong.
• 28:30
  Kate: Well, we wouldn't, we wouldn't keep an adult from becoming a professional if they scored that level.
• 28:38
  Kate: So why are we denying the child access to you know, learn if they didn't score perfectly Right, withholding so with any time we're withholding access to equitable growth and learning opportunities?
• 28:50
  Kate: It's a form of educational oppression or neglect, right, that can cause harm.
• 28:55
  Kate: And when I say harm, I mean like psychological injuries that are tied to oppression, right, which is still a form of violence at its heart.
• 29:04
  Kate: I know it's something we don't want to think that violence happens at schools, but it does Educational neglect.
• 29:13
  Kate: So expecting a child to ask their teacher for new learning opportunities, right, like for a child, that's not like.
• 29:21
  Kate: I think sometimes, right, the resistance might be like oh well, and Joe didn't come, like if Joe, if Joe already knows this, joe should be able to come up and ask for, ask for something different.
• 29:36
  Kate: Well, how many adults do that?
• 29:38
  Kate: We can't expect that, especially like elementary age students, for whom, especially when we haven't like provided the coaching and instruction and how to advocate yet, and for whom it's oftentimes really socially intimidating when there's that kind of power imbalance between a teacher and a student.
• 29:54
  Kate: And then I think, like another thing that you know we can support with education to help inspire changes in practices.
• 30:07
  Kate: When it comes to the gifted population, their executive function skill development is oftentimes on a different timeline too.
• 30:14
  Kate: Yeah, right, that most students, like when you're talking about middle school, the executive function skills usually um kick in between like ages nine and nine to twelve when that cognitive pruning occurs.
• 30:27
  Kate: But for students um with iqs over 120, the research shows that actually it might be like age 13 to 19, like it's an extended developmental time period which in the long term they said there's cognitive benefits to.
• 30:41
  Kate: But if your executive function skills, if you happen to be on like more like the 19 side of things, which like, like I have, like you know, I had one student that like was closer to 13, 14 and one that was later and that makes middle and high school really challenging, because the way grades are now, they're oftentimes more reflection of children's executive function skill development.
• 31:02
  Kate: Can you follow the directions clearly?
• 31:04
  Kate: Are you well organized?
• 31:05
  Kate: Are you able to submit every the different pieces on time?
• 31:07
  Kate: Yeah, right, those like meeting those executive function expectations influence your grade as much as your content.
• 31:15
  Kate: Yeah, content, expertise and skill development.
• 31:19
  Kate: And so making sure like that's a place, if we're grading based on executive function skills and we're not providing accommodations for that, it's a place that again, like our gifted students, might be neglected.
• 31:31
  Kate: And so I think when that's happening, then if you can advocate at a greater level for to illustrate sources of gifted harm, including like explicitly naming some of the microaggressions that gifted children report experiencing in the school setting.
• 31:51
  Kate: If we can name those so people can start to recognize them and what ableist practices might look like.
• 31:59
  Kate: And it's sometimes change happens slower than we'd like, um, but in the meantime, like as parents, then we're in a place where we have to make decisions about the environment and whether the environment is causing harm.
• 32:16
  Kate: Or can we do a modified schedule?
• 32:18
  Kate: Can a child come and participate in specials and can they maybe do some creative like math?
• 32:25
  Kate: If you can't if you don't have access to acceleration for math, or or they can do an online math program, for example.
• 32:32
  Kate: That's at their, at their level, um, can we support that in a different way?
• 32:39
  Kate: Right in presenting some solutions rather than the challenge and some different options?
• 32:44
  Kate: Yeah, um, and offer to be partners our partners and finding solutions is probably the best way to help help your child get access to what they need.
• 32:57
  Kate: Is that too long of an answer?
• 32:59
  Kate: You're?
• 33:00
  Carrie: not I.
• 33:02
  Carrie: I think it's great.
• 33:04
  Carrie: I love the way you segwayed into the next piece of what I was gonna ask as well, because that's a huge piece is the neglect and the oppression for this group of kiddos.
• 33:15
  Carrie: And yes, so I appreciate that.
• 33:18
  Carrie: Yes, you did.
• 33:20
  Carrie: Did I skip your question?
• 33:21
  Carrie: I'm sorry.
• 33:22
  Carrie: I think it was in there.
• 33:24
  Carrie: I think it was good and I'm not sure.
• 33:29
  Carrie: One other question we had talked about was practices that affirm identities, identities and nurture belonging.
• 33:37
  Carrie: Did you want to touch on that?
• 33:40
  Carrie: Oh, that, that was in there.
• 33:42
  Kate: Yeah, and so I kind of did.
• 33:45
  Kate: Oh, I totally I'm sorry.
• 33:47
  Kate: I told you it was that, but I think you know every single child, seeing them through the lens of their strengths and potential, with attention to their needs, right, and providing meaningful like truly meaningful instruction that feeds their interests.
• 34:02
  Kate: Right Like right now, we're already having a crisis of meaning.
• 34:06
  Kate: Right now, we're already having a crisis of meaning, right, and I'm going to say a student and teacher existential crisis to a certain extent in schools, right Since no Child Left Behind.
• 34:16
  Kate: We are so focused on teaching academic skills, sometimes outside of context and meaning and purpose, that we're not like when that happens, when it's not tied to the, why we don't, um, children don't see the connection to themselves in the community and also oftentimes too, then, when we have such rigid prescriptive curriculum and and thinking in mind too, a lot of that legislation happened before the internet, when kids could get online and answer any question.
• 34:52
  Kate: Right Like, to a certain degree like, content becomes irrelevant.
• 34:55
  Kate: Right Like we want to make sure that children know how to ask high quality questions, that they can discern the validity and reliability of sources and connect with you know, high quality sources to help them answer their questions.
• 35:08
  Kate: We're living in a different world than the legislation, that's true and you know, was birthed from, and so the consequence of that is that, like, we have less space for, as teachers, oftentimes to answer student questions right, because that's where the gold is when student, by the time, like the research shows now, by fifth grade, that teachers are answering all the questions.
• 35:37
  Kate: So I'm going to say, in terms of near inclusive and nurturing feelings of belonging, is creating space and time for students to find answers to questions that are personally meaning for them, personally meaningful, right, yes, and so that we can reveal their strengths and find, and so they have that purpose at school that also feeds, ultimately, purpose in life, validating their lived experiences.
• 36:05
  Kate: I know as a parent, like as a parent of neurodivergent, gifted youth, that you probably see that oftentimes they get like the deficit messaging right, that they're too sensitive, too intense, they ask too many questions, like they're just too much right, sometimes, yes, right, and so neuro-inclusive schools that nurture belonging are validating those lived experiences, right, there's not, there isn't that deficit messaging right.
• 36:37
  Kate: It sometimes comes in subtle ways.
• 36:38
  Kate: I don't know if you've seen this, carrie, but one of the subtle ways that I see really frequently in schools, especially when it comes to processing speed for our quick processors, like they're the speed that they feel most comfortable moving at, like where they're most relaxed, like if you would have a heart rate monitor on and where they're like then this is my Zen, isn't irritant sometimes for teachers, cause they're our kids are moving too fast Right, and so then the teachers project onto the students that they must be anxious, because the students making them anxious and then they try and control it by slowing down the speed more.
• 37:15
  Kate: It's like a power move that teachers sometimes do.
• 37:18
  Kate: Have you noticed this, when they purposely like teachers or coaches right, where they purposely slow down because they're trying to slow down the child to make it comfortable for themselves and and then in so doing they create more, more of an irritant for our kids unknowingly.
• 37:39
  Kate: Yeah right, um, they're ready to move on yeah, that's um, one um and yeah.
• 37:49
  Kate: And so then those things like tied to I think you know what we're talking about in the beginning too, um and I, so I didn't want to be duplicative right, like the sensory mindful environment, all of those things that we spoke about in the beginning, um, are going to also support feelings of belonging and right.
• 38:08
  Kate: One way that you can, I mean you can measure as a teacher, independent of whether your school or district is um, taking climate data, we can do, um, like I call it rounding.
• 38:21
  Kate: We can do rounding what I have fireworks going on and I don't know why.
• 38:26
  Carrie: I don't know how I can add is it it's telling us 10 minutes maybe?
• 38:34
  Kate: oh, I don't know.
• 38:35
  Carrie: I don't know it's a new zoom, it's a new world?
• 38:38
  Carrie: I don't know.
• 38:40
  Kate: I think I've had that happen before.
• 38:42
  Kate: Certain words are like celebration or if you do certain things.
• 38:45
  Kate: I think it does that now, so I don't know what.
• 38:47
  Kate: Maybe you can go back on the recording and figure out what I said that caused the fireworks.
• 38:50
  Kate: Um, and now I forgot.
• 38:54
  Carrie: I'm sorry.
• 38:55
  Kate: No, no, no, that's okay, I don't know what it did, I'm okay, that's it.
• 39:00
  Kate: No, I I don't know where um we went either, but in terms of, yeah, don't know, I'll come back to it or it might not, and if so, it wasn't meant to.
• 39:13
  Kate: Oh, I know.
• 39:14
  Kate: Rounding we're talking about rounding and so, as a teacher, you can develop a rounding practice and even if you're just asking um like three questions, right, and you're setting a time, even if it's once a month or every couple of weeks, to ask children and I like to use speech-to-text technology because so that students can see that I'm recording exactly what they said.
• 39:34
  Kate: It's not my interpretation of what they said right, where was your greatest learning, right?
• 39:40
  Kate: So if we're asking that we're learning like what is really inspiring students and we're also getting good data, if they're saying like, oh well, I'm not really, I didn't really learn much like in the last few weeks, right, where was your greatest learning?
• 39:54
  Kate: So you know that you're in, that you have data to hold ourselves as adults accountable to make sure that, again, everyone's growing.
• 40:02
  Kate: Where is your greatest learning?
• 40:03
  Kate: What would you change if you could right Like cause?
• 40:07
  Kate: I think a lot of times as adults, we think we know, if we're we have a reflective practice as a teacher, we think we know what kids would change.
• 40:15
  Kate: But sometimes we're surprised if we have that practice of actually asking them.
• 40:19
  Kate: And practice of asking them makes children feel connected and belong, you know, makes nurtures those feelings of belonging and makes them feel like their opinions matter right.
• 40:30
  Kate: And especially if then we're adapting and changing and in response to the you know what they're giving us and then asking them what are they curious to learn more about?
• 40:39
  Kate: Right, as a practice, because what they were interested in the beginning of the school year when you did that interest inventory might be different than what they say in October or January.
• 40:49
  Kate: And then, to the extent that we can integrate those interests into our instruction, is it just makes teaching really fun and and really makes each student, each student feel that they have a critical role in the community.
• 41:11
  Carrie: Yeah, it's really empowering for our kids.
• 41:13
  Carrie: I saw that with my son this year when he got to choose his animal to do the animal study and yeah, and got to think outside of the box, he really felt so empowered and it really nurtured his heart Like he just he was so happy and he didn't have to just complete a worksheet on it, he really got to dive in and learn all these things and it's it was, it was magical to watch that happen in a classroom.
• 41:41
  Carrie: Yeah, so, and yeah, he was.
• 41:43
  Carrie: He felt so, so happy there and I I love all of these pieces and I think it's so applicable.
• 41:50
  Carrie: There's so many kids out there.
• 41:52
  Carrie: It feels I don't know if I'm in a very small community where it feels like it's so common nowadays, but I feel like there's just so many kids born with this zest for life and this zest for learning and so it's wonderful.
• 42:07
  Carrie: It's wonderful to have these insights and these pieces that we can share with others.
• 42:12
  Carrie: So I appreciate that Well and I think it's both right.
• 42:15
  Kate: Like I think there's evolution, right, so children should be coming through more sensitive, with, like, more capacity, hopefully, than the adults before them.
• 42:26
  Kate: And I think, also, where we happen to live, there's a high percentage of employers of neurodivergent adults, right, because we live close to NCAR, nist, noaa, ball Aerospace, google, cu and so many like innovative tech startups that are, you know, leading edge, and so I think it's both Carrie, I think they're coming in wired, yeah, there's more neurodivergence, and I think we're also in a unique pocket.
• 42:57
  Kate: That's true.
• 42:59
  Carrie: Okay, I love that, I love.
• 43:00
  Carrie: Okay, there's an evolutionary piece of it too.
• 43:02
  Carrie: I was curious because I felt like I was hearing it so much.
• 43:05
  Carrie: Every time I describe my kids or they let someone listens to the podcast, they're like, oh my gosh, you're describing my child.
• 43:12
  Carrie: I'm like, okay, cause I felt so alone for so long.
• 43:15
  Carrie: It's.
• 43:15
  Carrie: It's nice to hear that there's other people out there going through the same thing and I wanted is there anywhere that people tuning in?
• 43:24
  Carrie: If anything really resonates or they'd like to check out your program?
• 43:28
  Carrie: How can they find you, dr Kate?
• 43:31
  Kate: Oh sure, right.
• 43:32
  Kate: So again, I have two roles.
• 43:34
  Kate: I am at soul spark learning.
• 43:36
  Kate: You can find me at Kate at soul spark learningorg, and so we have actually we're doing an educator wellbeing event August 1st at the neurodiversity Community Center in Lafayette for those who are local, that's one of the things we do is bring educators together, because there's strength in those numbers to support advocacy and, again, making sure that our neurodivergent gifted students have what they need at school too.
• 44:10
  Kate: And then, and then also, if you, I also am a both a gifted and special education teacher in Boulder Valley School District as well, and so you can find me through Boulder Valley School District also.
• 44:22
  Carrie: Perfect.
• 44:23
  Carrie: Thank you so much for being a guest today.
• 44:27
  Kate: Oh, thank you so much for having me.
• 44:29
  Kate: It was fun.
• 44:30
  Kate: I enjoyed our time together.
• 44:34
  Carrie: Well, that's a wrap.
• 44:35
  Carrie: Thanks so much for tuning in.
• 44:36
  Carrie: Changemakers.
• 44:37
  Carrie: This is Carrie, and I just wanted to send one more reminder.
• 44:40
  Carrie: If you haven't done a review, for us, five stars and a little few words about what you've enjoyed in our podcast episodes, we would really appreciate it.
• 44:49
  Carrie: One other thing if you guys would like to ever message me, I would love any questions you have or any feedback at info at hearttoheartlifecom.
• 44:59
  Carrie: We also have a brand new website which we're super excited to share.
• 45:03
  Carrie: It's hearttoheartlifecom.
• 45:06
  Carrie: Thanks so much for tuning in and happy life, happy times.
• 45:09
  Carrie: Changemaker families.