Each student brings individual strengths and challenges to our classroom communities. In this episode, Karen Costa joins us to discuss ways to help students with ADHD thrive.
Karen is a faculty development facilitator specializing in online pedagogy, trauma-aware teaching, and supporting ADHD learners. Karen holds graduate degrees and certificates in education and education leadership; trauma and resilience; trauma-informed organizations; and neuroscience, learning, and online instruction. She is the author of 99 Tips for Creating Simple and Sustainable Educational Videos, and has served as a facilitator for the Online Learning Consortium, the Online Learning Toolkit, and Lumen Learning. Her most recent book, An Educator’s Guide to ADHD, has just been released by Johns Hopkins Press. Through her business, 100 Faculty, Karen offers supportive, fun, and engaging faculty support and development to faculty from all over the world.
Show Notes
- Costa, K. (2023). 99 tips for creating simple and sustainable educational videos: A guide for online teachers and flipped classes. Taylor & Francis.
- Online Learning Consortium
- Lumen Learning
- Costa, K. (2026). An Educator’s Guide to ADHD. Johns Hopkins University Press.
- 100 Faculty
- Clear, J., & Clear, J. (2018). Atomic habits: Tiny changes, remarkable results. Penguin Publishing Group.
- Costa, Karen (2022). Systems Aren’t Scary. Medium. October 31.
- Hallowell, E. M., & Ratey, J. J. (2022). ADHD 2.0: New science and essential strategies for thriving with distraction–from childhood through adulthood. Ballantine Books.
- Dr. Ned Hallowell’s TikTok channel
- Fehmi, L., & Robbins, J. (2008). The open-focus brain: harnessing the power of attention to heal mind and body. Shambhala Publications.
Transcript
John: Each student brings individual strengths and challenges to our classroom communities. In this episode, we explore ways to help students with ADHD thrive.
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John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.
Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…
John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…
Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.
[MUSIC]
Rebecca: Our guest today is Karen Costa. Karen is a faculty development facilitator specializing in online pedagogy, trauma-aware teaching, and supporting ADHD learners. Karen holds graduate degrees and certificates in education and education leadership; trauma and resilience; trauma-informed organizations; and neuroscience, learning, and online instruction. She is the author of 99 Tips for Creating Simple and Sustainable Educational Videos, and has served as a facilitator for the Online Learning Consortium, the Online Learning Toolkit, and Lumen Learning. Her most recent book, An Educator’s Guide to ADHD, has just been released by Johns Hopkins Press. Through her business, 100 Faculty, Karen offers supportive, fun, and engaging faculty support and development to faculty from all over the world. Welcome back, Karen.
Karen: Thank you. I’ve been here before a couple times. It’s been a while, and I just want to say I’m so impressed with your continued work, that you are able to put these incredibly helpful podcasts out into the world. I think the first time we talked was around COVID lockdowns, about trauma, and you’re still doing this, and I find that so impressive. Thank you for all that you do.
John: In fact, your first podcast with us during the pandemic was our most popular podcast ever, and it remains so, it’s still number one on our hit list of the most popular podcasts.
Karen: Well, that wasn’t me. That was because people were trapped at home and desperate for some kind of simulation. So I can’t take credit for that.
John: You provided some help that they desperately needed during that time.
Karen: I’m glad you said that. I do get nervous about these things, but I think you all are my first sort of podcast stop. I’m talking about this book, and it’s a little different, because the book’s not just about helping students and helping teachers, but it’s about me and being somebody with ADHD and late diagnosed and all that comes with that, and I speak pretty openly about it, but there is an element of vulnerability to that. So I gave myself a little extra TLC this morning, reminding myself that it’s normal to feel that vulnerability. I’m really glad to be having this first initial conversation with the book with you two who are so kind and welcoming and making me feel right at home.
John: And speaking of TLC, do you have tea today?
Karen: I don’t think I’ve ever had tea when I’m with y’all.
John: You’re one of many.
Karen: I don’t pretend, and I like to think I’m a truth teller. So I’m drinking a nice, crisp, cool, Polar lemon seltzer, because when I do podcast interviews or talks, I do tend to get warm, and there’s a non-zero chance these days that that could lead to a hot flash. So there’s no tea, and I’m keeping things cool. So to our listeners who also need to keep things cool, you are seen and supported.
Rebecca: You can have iced tea.
Karen: Iced tea, yeah, I have to limit, while this is another ADHD story for another day, but yeah, I got to be careful about the caffeine. There’s probably a decaf. I’ll explore it.
Rebecca: Maybe next time. Today I have a Kenilworth pekoe tea.
John: Very nice. Was this one you picked up in England too.
Rebecca: This is from Scotland.
Karen: You went to the UK recently.
Rebecca: It was last summer, but I stocked up.
Karen: Oh, I’m sure. I lived in London in college for study abroad, so I never made it to Scotland. That’s on my list. I’m jealous.
John: And I just have a mint tea, which I picked up in the local Wegmans.
Rebecca: Still important. All right, now that we’re all hydrated, we invited you here today to discuss An Educators Guide to ADHD. Can you tell us a little bit about the origin story of this book?
Karen: I always find that an interesting question, because we could go pretty far back, generationally speaking. There’s some stories there, but we don’t have that much time today, so [LAUGHTER]I’ll come into the nearer future. A few years ago, I read a book called Atomic Habits by the author, James Clear. I love reading nonfiction. I’m usually reading, because I am ADHD. The way I read nonfiction, I usually read four or five at the same time and sort of cycle through them, because that’s how my brain works. I really enjoy self- development type books. I know how to take what I need from them and leave the rest, because they often have things I don’t agree with and things that aren’t helpful, but I can usually take a nugget or two, and the message I took from Atomic Habits was to focus on systems more than habits, which is something I had already been doing, but it kind of named that for me in a new way. I got excited about it, and I talked about it a little on social media, and I got some, not a lot of, pushback, but some of the pushback was of the don’t do that, don’t read books like that. You’d be better off taking a nap and resting, sort of like people who don’t really support or like that, quote, unquote, business bros, type of advice. And I found that sort of pushback really concerning, because systems for people with ADHD are really life saving, sort of like assistive devices. And so I wrote an article about it called “Systems Aren’t Scary,” and I think it came out on Halloween, which is we’re recording this the day before Halloween. That’s why I called it “Systems Aren’t Scary” because I’m so clever. And Jim Lang and Derek Krissoff, who were at the time, at West Virginia University WVU press. I was talking to them about writing another book, and they saw that article, and they said, “Oh, can you write this book instead?” And I said, “Okay, sure.” Long story short, a lot went down at WVU a few years ago, and Jim and Derek moved on, and I moved on, and was really happy to end up through the leadership of Greg Britton at Johns Hopkins University Press. The book is coming out. At the time of this recording, it’s October, so I think you’ll be hearing it, right around comes out January, 20, 2026 it’s been a long and winding road, changing publishers like that. For somebody with ADHD who struggled with finishing things, it was interesting. I’m proud of myself that I stuck with it. Writing a book is an incredibly long process, slow process. I like to do things like immediately and quick. So book writing is sort of out of my comfort zones, but I really want to have this in the hands of people. I want the generations coming behind me to have it better than I did, and I really want people to understand ADHD for what it is, and to make the world a better place for my fellow ADHDers, so I’m glad that I stuck with it and got it out into the world.
John: You begin the book with an analogy between ADHD and living in a house that’s open to the elements, in terms of both the advantages and the disadvantages. Could you share this analogy with our listeners? Because I thought it was a great introduction to your book.
Karen: Oh, thank you. I changed that introduction 17 times. It’s lovely to hear that. It’s such a funny thing. Book writing is such a solitary process. So just starting the stage where I get to hear from learners who’ve read the book is very exciting. So give me a minute here to be like, “Oh, that’s so cool, John read my introduction.” I like analogies. The analogy is, imagine that you’re living in a house with the windows thrown open, no screens. You are just sort of at one with the elements. You have a certain layer of protection, but you can hear birdsong. Maybe birds even fly into your house. Maybe the cute, adorable forest animals come into your house as well. You sort of got like a Snow White vibe. Your neighbor walks by the house. You can call out to her while she’s walking her dog, and say, “Come over and have a chat. Have a coffee.” You can pass her coffee through the window. We can imagine sort of this combination of those really lovely positive aspects, but also you’re going to have the not cute forest animals and the mosquitoes in your house. It’s probably going to be noisy. You’re much more exposed to the elements. So it’s this combination of strengths and challenges. We can imagine the neurotypical house as being more similar to a house with the windows closed, so you have certain protection from those elements. There is sort of a more fixed or closed or rigid nature to it. I’m not using those terms as positive or negative, just trying to describe that experience. And there’s positives to that, right? It keeps out the pests. However, you’re not going to get to hear the bird song either. There’s pros and cons. Another analogy, I don’t think this is in the book, but I’ll share with people that I often have been thinking about lately, is if you want to cook spaghetti, you use a pot, and that’s where you boil the water and you cook the pasta in the pot, and then you want to drain the water out of the pot. So you use a colander or a drainer. And one of the ways we can think about ADHD as like the colander or drainer, and we might think of the neurotypical person more like the pot. You wouldn’t say, like, oh, the colander is better than the pot, or the pot’s better than the calendar. They’re different. They have different benefits and different drawbacks. You’re not going to cook the pasta in the colander. You’re not going to drain the pasta in the pot. So there’s lots of metaphors that we can think of ADHD, but this more sort of open fluidity. And a word I’m using a lot lately is porousness, because I think that word has less, sort of like goodness or badness attached to it. It’s kind of more like it’s just the nature of the item. So thinking about the ADHD brain and neurotype as more porous, which comes with challenges, but it also comes with strengths, so that more fluid or porous brain or neurotype or experience has a lot, a lot of benefits, which I talk about in the book, and it has a lot of challenges. And that’s where we can meet folks with ADHD.
Rebecca: A growing share of students are diagnosed with ADHD. Can you talk a little bit more about whether or not this is because more people are being tested?
Karen: When I wrote the book, I didn’t expect ADHD and autism to be in the news, as they have been recently this past year, in quite that way. There’s a lot of conversation happening on this, a lot of interest, and that boggles the mind. We don’t have any evidence, despite what you may have read or seen on the news, we don’t have any evidence that ADHD is growing. It’s kind of presented as like this monster that’s out of control and we have to contain it. That’s not what’s actually happening. We are seeing things like a decrease in stigma. A lot of that is due to social media, and a lot of that is due to specifically conversations that happened during the pandemic where a lot more folks sort of came online and came onto social media and were speaking more openly about some of those challenges. We also know that, particularly later in life diagnosed folks, crises or massive changes will often precede a diagnosis. So a lot of the people who [LAUGHTER] were in a structured work environment and then got sent home with all their stuff one day, [LAUGHTER] and had to live in a very unstructured environment that is often cited as one of the reasons a lot of people realized something’s going on here, because that external structure of the workplace went away. So, that didn’t create the ADHD, It revealed it. We have no data, and there’s no evidence that this is something that is growing because of… I don’t even know. I try not to listen to these people. I don’t want to give them too much attention. But there’s no evidence that it’s growing. It is likely due to an increase in awareness, a reduction in stigma. Social media is motivating people to realize things about themselves, and many folks have been saying, “I want to get tested,” or folks are self diagnosing. So we’re seeing sort of a rise in awareness about ADHD, which I think is a really good thing, because I talk about diagnosis as a map in the book, and whether we can talk more about this formal clinical diagnosis or self diagnosis, diagnosis can be a map, and it typically can be a map to support ,whether that’s through medical treatment, through lifestyle design, or to community. And for me, that was one of the biggest pieces of the puzzle, was finding people like me who I can talk to about this experience and know that I’m not alone in that. So we see that, when done right and supported, diagnosis can lead to a massive reduction in shame, which is one of the biggest challenges for people with ADHD. Diagnosis is increasing more because of awareness and access, and generally speaking, it can be a really good thing because it connects ADHD or their communities.
Rebecca: Folks feel less stigmatized who have ADHD is becoming evident in university environments because people are speaking out more openly about such a diagnosis and also asking for supports and having really healthy conversations. I know that I’ve had some of those conversations with students in ways that I wasn’t having previously, because the students brought that conversation to the table, which I think is really great.
Karen: I think that’s great, and two things can be true. So I think we are seeing a decrease in stigma, and I think like [LAUGHTER] we were starting from a really, really bad place. So like, any improvement is good, but I will tell you, I get messages from people all the time, private messages, like through social media or email, and it’s from people who are working in higher ed who either are ADHD or suspect they’re ADHD, and they’re coming to me privately to ask for advice because they don’t feel they can speak about it publicly. I talk about it because I try to use the privileges that I have to, again, make things better for people who don’t have the privileges and protections. I like to be honest, the biggest reason I’m able to talk about this is because my husband has a stable job that provides me access to quality healthcare. As an adjunct. If I didn’t have that access, would I be speaking about this publicly? I don’t know, because I can’t live without… I don’t really think anybody can, but I have chronic health issues, and I need a lot of support with my various diagnoses, so if I didn’t have that, I wouldn’t be able to do this. Yes, I think two things are true, and we’ll never be bored, because we have so much work to do and so many areas of opportunity. So we won’t be bored, is the good news.
Rebecca: I really appreciate you also just addressing and drawing attention to the differences of experiences often that students might have from faculty and staff too. This is true around accommodations and all kinds of things related to disability.
Karen: I want to speak on the accommodations piece. That was one of the most intense parts of the book. There’s a page in the book where I write about the process to get a diagnosis. Because right now in higher education, our accommodations model, in order to access learning through formal accommodations, students have to come in with a formal clinical diagnosis. And I forget exactly how many steps I wrote out in that process, but it was like 18 steps. That made me feel pretty sick about that, that that’s the model that we’re using, and obviously a lot of folks are designing around that, through Universal Design for Learning and focusing more on accessibility. That’s how I teach. I know so many folks listening to this teach that way. But the idea that the system that we, who claim to be some of the brightest people in the world, have developed has 18 steps in between students and access to learning is preposterous and infuriating. So again, though, the good news is no boredom, because we have plenty of work to do.
John: And your book is a nice, important part of that. And the issue you just mentioned results in a lot of inequity, because those steps take time, as well as some diagnosis that’s not free, typically. The people who are more likely to get diagnosed are people who do have the privilege of good health insurance and more free time and other things. So the impact is quite inequitable on students.
Karen: Absolutely, it’s not just the fact that you are asking somebody who has executive function challenges to go through an 18-step process, which is again preposterous. It’s that even if the person with ADHD can get through that, we know that there are massive inequities around race, class, and gender in terms of access to a formal clinical diagnosis. Girls and women are massively under diagnosed. I was one of those girls who slipped through the cracks until I was diagnosed at the age of 40. We know that black and brown kids are less likely to be diagnosed. They are more likely to be misdiagnosed, often with personality disorders, or they are funneled into sort of like the punitive discipline process, instead of getting access to their actual diagnosis that can lead them to community and to support. You’ve got this incredibly inequitable system that’s just people are getting misdiagnosed or not diagnosed at all. You get into higher education, and you say, in order to access what you need to learn, there’s all these barriers in place, and a formal diagnosis can cost upwards of $3,000 if your insurance doesn’t cover it. In addition, the most recent diagnostic appointment I had was eight hours long. I had to find somebody who could do the work. I had to drive into Boston, which is, as the crow flies from where I live, it’s like 30 minutes, but Boston traffic, it’s like two hours. So eight hours out of work and life, and go in and making the appointment. I can go on and on here. So just the casualness of how people talk about like, “Oh, you just need a diagnosis,” is just so wrong. It’s so, so wrong, and we’ve got to do better.
Rebecca: You talked a little bit already today in our conversation about how diagnosis can provide a little bit of a roadmap. Can you expand upon that a little bit, maybe from your own experience and how that provided you with a roadmap?
Karen: I have had the experience my whole life of feeling like an alien. This is actually a pretty common thing among folks who identify as neurodivergent. There’s some writing on this, which I learned about after I was diagnosed. And I was like, “Oh, that’s cool.” This feeling of wrongness, of this deep shame, of like, why can I do these things but not these other things? One of the things I talk about in the book that’s really challenging for people with ADHD is personal care and dental hygiene. This is the vulnerability I was talking about earlier. One of the things I struggle is remembering to brush my teeth, and not just remembering to brush my teeth, but remembering if I brushed my teeth. So if I leave the house, which I don’t too often, because I work from home, but anytime I leave the house, I don’t know if I brushed my teeth. I can’t remember. Speaking back to James Clear, I have a system that I’ve learned to create, and if my husband’s home because he works from home, I’ll text him and I’ll ask him, can you check my toothbrush to see if it’s wet? And he knows how to help me, so he’ll check. And most of the time, he says “yes,” but sometimes he says “no,” and I drive with a toothbrush and toothpaste in my car and a bottle of water. If I didn’t know that I had ADHD, that’s a really, sort of, like, scary and demoralizing and shameful thing of like, what’s wrong with me? Why can’t I figure this out? Right? Like, I just wrote a book, I have a master’s degree. I speak publicly, and most of the time I think I know what I’m talking about, but I can’t remember to brush my teeth. And that’s one of like, a million examples. When you get the diagnosis and you learn to understand your brain, and I understand now why I don’t remember to brush my teeth. And I understand how to design a system, and I understand that the most important part of that system is if I remembered or if I didn’t. I say to myself, “Karen, I’m so proud of you. I’m so proud that you checked with your husband and now you have your toothbrush in the car. I’m so proud of you,” or if I did remember I say “I’m so proud of you that you were…” like either way to learn how to speak kindly to myself. It was just so confusing before when I didn’t know what was going on. And those skills have been learned through therapy and working with coach and doing tons of study on ADHD and things like that. There’s work involved in that, but yeah, I think that shame reduction piece is so powerful, and you find people like yourself, like one of the books I talk about most in my book is the book ADHD 2.0 by Ned Hallowell and John Ratey, and they’re both medical doctors, but they both also have ADHD. And Dr. Ned, when I was first diagnosed, seeing him say… he would do these little TikToks about what people with ADHD, and then he would say, people like me. And when he said people like me, this doctor who has written multiple books, little pieces of me would start to heal. It was the “people like me,” not even the content that he was talking about. It was when he said, “people like me.” And that is, for me, the beauty of what diagnosis, whether clinical or self, can do, is it can help you find people like you.
John: So you received some really nice support from those videos. What can faculty do to better support students who do have ADHD, and you mentioned in the book that faculty need to unlearn what they think they know about ADHD. Could you talk a little bit about some of the misconceptions that people have?
Karen: The first problem we have in front of us is the name. ADHD stands for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and I’ve had very lovely sort of people who are ingrained in the clinical or medical model say to me, “that’s not deficit based,” and this has happened to me, so it has the word deficit in the name disorder. Yeah, so that’s not what it is. I still use the term ADHD. I don’t use the term attention deficit hyperactivity disorder because it is obviously deficit based, but it’s just we’re learning now that it’s incorrect. ADHD is not a deficit of attention. It is now increasingly being understood as an abundance of attention. And Hallowell and Ratey are on the leading edge of this. But we’re also seeing this influx of researchers who have ADHD coming into the field, and the framing of research studies and how you approach them, obviously impacts the outcomes. I know I’ve got a lot of research folks that are listening, and when you bring folks in who’ve actually lived with this neurotype, you open up this whole world. We are learning so much more about what ADHD is and isn’t, and one of the biggest misconceptions is that it is either deficit or superpower. So I use this model of strengths-based, challenge-aware, which I think is a much more middle path. It is not fully a deficit; i t does include challenges. I don’t like when people say it’s a superpower, because my family and I are fans of superhero movies, and all the superheroes are intensely miserable, and it has ruined their lives. I talk about Tobey Maguire Spider Man meme in the book, where he’s just the most miserable human on the planet. Superheroes are not generally healthy and happy, well-balanced people. So I like to really bring people into this middle path. This is a neurotype. Another way we can think of it as a brain style. It is part of the natural, vast variety of life and ways of being in the world, and it comes with challenges, and it comes with strengths. And I go into this in the book. We are taught that there’s one right way to be, the neurotypical way of being, and that anybody who diverges from that is both weak and threatening. The reason we do that is so that we can then deny those people resources, its not rocket science. So it’s really quite a radical thing for folks to say, “Wait a minute, I’m not weak or threatening. I’m part of the vast variety and natural neurodiversity that is part of the entire world.” And if you, as an educator, can shift your mind into that, you will not only be better supporting your students, but you’re really also sort of working toward a brighter, better future where we can move beyond some of those limitations. The biggest thing is to also bring in those strengths. And I want educators to know this is like a win-win. Your ADHD students are the creative geniuses of the world, and they are little engagement fireworks that you can be igniting in your classrooms. That’s the number one thing educators tell me that they want to do in their classroom is to engage their students, and your ADHDers are just like human vacuum cleaners who love to consume information, love to learn, have so many ideas, they’re gifts and assets to our world and to our classrooms. The most important thing that you can do as an educator is to get your mindset in check about what ADHD is. Get rid of the deficit. Get rid of the idea that there’s something wrong with us. We are part of the natural variation of the many neurotypes and ways of being in the world. We have challenges. We need help, we need support, but we also come to your classrooms with so many strengths. So if you can come into your classroom with that mindset, you’re going to reduce shame, and you’re going to design inclusive learning experiences for your ADHDers.
Rebecca: Can you talk a little bit about some practices in the classroom that can help lean on some of those strengths and help address some of the challenges.
Karen: The first rule of supporting folks with ADHD is externalize everything possible. Our working memory, as ADHDers, I mentioned this word before, is very porous. An example of that is if I leave this room of my house that I’m in now, and I go into another room with the intention of putting on a different pair of socks. When I get into that other room, I will have no recollection of why I’m in there. If I need to do that, what I will do is I externalize it. As soon as I say “I need to change my socks,” I will walk into the other room and I will repeat to myself, “change shocks, change socks, change socks.” I’m making it external, because I’m not able to hold change socks in my working memory, so that when I get to the other room, I can take that action. This saying “in one ear and out the other.” is how my working memory works, [LAUGHTER] or doesn’t, for that matter. It’s porous. The thing is that, I want to say this quickly, that porosity is the reason behind our creativity. Let’s go back to the open windows. So that’s why we’re getting birdsong. That’s why we are getting to play with the squirrels and have all that fun. That flowing creative energy is Hallowell and Ratey, call it “the paradoxical pairs.” The flip side of that is we can’t hold things in our working memory. So this is what you got to do. Everything is external. Everything gets written down. What you don’t want to do is like, if you’re on site and your students are walking out of class, time is up, you yell out the door, like, “Don’t forget, I want you to read pages 72 to 77 next week,” or whatever, in one ear and out the other. The second it’s out of your mouth. It no longer exists to me. Things need to be put into emails, put into task lists. We need to be putting things in multiple modalities so that it’s something that we can see and touch. I use multiple alarms. So I use like things that I can hear, things that I can see, things that I can touch. And there’s always multiple layers. Task lists are really a lot of bang for your buck. What do you want people to do this week? And it’s got to be something I can see and touch. Couple other things I’ll mention, metacognitive, or what I talk about in the book, is meta learning. So metacognition is learning about learning. Meta learning is sort of just like a more expansive way of not being quite so brain bound. Giving students a chance. I’ll name the elephant in the room, the AI elephant in the room. I’m seeing a lot of folks who are linking metacognition to some of the pedagogical strategies we can use in the AI era, having a greater focus on process rather than product, and metacognition and meta learning is great for this. So asking students, how do you plan to do this? And then after they do it, what did you learn from what you did? It’s great for everybody, but it’s particularly great for ADHDers, because we get to explore our process and what works best for our brains, and then the reflection afterwards, we get to see if it worked, and then we can redesign as we go. That’s a much better process than you imposing what you think your ADHD students should be doing. You’re putting them in the driver’s seat of your learning. This metacognition should really be much more intensely built into all our courses, but it’s a particularly powerful strategy for ADHDers. Fun fact, somebody who got their hands… I didn’t end up having to work with this person …[LAUGHTER] on an early copy of my book, who was from the clinical field, said pretty much word for word, “ADHDers can’t do metacognition,” and there’s reams of data of how good metacognition is for ADHDers. We absolutely can do it, and it benefits us, but there are still so many people out there who have this idea of like ADHDers can’t do that. That very ableist mindset is alive and well. But read the book. There’s tons of research in there to support this. The beauty of this is you’re not trying to make them be a neurotypical student. You’re empowering them to figure out what works for them. I could keep going, but I know we don’t have all day, so I’ll stop there. Read the book for more ideas.
John: Those techniques you’ve talked about are good for everybody, and they’re parts of inclusive teaching practices, which suggests that a lot of inclusive teaching practices will work for a wide variety of students with a wide variety of backgrounds [LAUGHTER] and needs, desires, interest and motivation. This is really good advice for all students. One of the things that you’ve talked a little bit about is that deficit mindset, and one of the things you suggest is that, as you have already mentioned, the term ADHD is a misnomer. And you suggest an alternative ON, or the open neurotype. Do you think using a more neutral term like that might help shift people from the deficit model to a more accurate representation of our students?
Karen: I thought I would have some fun with it and say, If I could rename ADHD, what would I name it? And I landed on open neurotype, because ADHDers, we are often “on,” I don’t know if we have an offsetting that’s one of the best parts about us. We have what the French would call a joie de vivre, a joy in life. One of our challenges is never turning off. It can be quite exhausting. “On” worked for that reason, but it also worked in that idea of a neurotype is one of the words I use to describe these, I don’t like the word conditions, but some folks are still using the word conditions. It’s a better word than conditions. It’s not a disorder, and it’s not a condition, it’s a neurotype. It’s a brain style, and then open is talking to that fluidity, that porosity, that flow, that is the best part of our ADHD learners, and it’s also the root of many of our challenges. I don’t know how we get from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder to something like ON. I do know that if the word deficits in the name, then it’s deficit based. So again, the way I’m doing it is I’m very transparent about my language choices, and I talk in the book and I say, like, I’m going to use ADHD, I’m going to tell you what it stands for, and then I’m not going to use that term again, and that’s what I do in my work. And I hope that, again, as we have this influx of ADHD researchers coming into the field and a lot more advocacy going on, I hope that we start to lean into more inclusive terms, just as one other example in the ADHD 2.0 book, they use the term VAST, variable attention stimulus trait, that is their alternative term for ADHD. And you’ll notice variable attention is speaking to the fact that ADHD is, once again, I’ll say it, not a deficit of attention. And stimulus trait is a much more flexible way of looking at this, not as a disorder, but as a collection of traits.
John: And the use of the VAST term, too, points out that there’s a whole spectrum in which people may have their attention. It could be very narrowly focused, or it could be much more open. And we have a wide variety of people, and we should be trying to address the needs of everyone.
Karen: I talk in the book about there’s this relationship between neurodiversity and biodiversity, which I find very fascinating, because we’re seeing that biodiversity is under attack, and a big part of some of the worst climate outcomes we’re seeing are related to the loss of biodiversity. And some of the original creators of this term neurodiversity were modeling it off of biodiversity. And the idea is that if you look around the world, you see millions of ways that life expresses itself. There’s not one way to be alive, and neurodiversity is lined up with that, there’s not one way of being a human being and expressing yourself and experiencing the world. There’s a seemingly infinite number of ways. So that vast variety is why life persists. Life didn’t put all its eggs in one basket, [LAUGHTER] sort of like why life is here. It’s a good thing. There is strength in diversity. I want to say the word diversity like 100 times a day, because we’re being told we’re not allowed to say it. It’s why we are here. Diversity is strength. So whether it’s neurodiversity, racial diversity, gender diversity, diversity is strength. And I just want to say it a million times, because people don’t seem to get it. And neurodiversity, biodiversity, we need to celebrate it all.
Rebecca: I wanted to circle back to the idea of attention. One of the phrases you used earlier and you use in your book, is that, like abundance of attention, I find really delightful. But we also hear a lot from faculty of concerns about paying attention or distraction or focus, all those kinds of words. Can you talk a little bit more about this range of attention and why maybe this narrow focus on how the term is used is problematic.
Karen: This one could probably be a book in and of itself, one of the first things that people can do if they want to explore this, a fascinating exploration is look at the different words and terms we use across various languages to describe attention. So I’m studying French later in life, which is a very ADHD thing of me, and the French translation is not to pay attention, but to make or do attention, which is a very different way of looking at it. Isn’t it interesting that in America, attention is something that we pay, so there’s a little like, “Hmm, let’s be curious about what’s actually going on here.” There’s a book I talk about in my book called The Open Focus Brain, by this guy, Les Fehmi, and his argument is that this idea that attention, it should be this very like you’re zoning in on one thing, is very much tied to capitalism, and that’s how you are efficient. That’s how you’re a good worker bee. That’s how you produce the most, is by zooming in on one thing. Zooming in on one thing is also what we want to do if we are like under threat. And he argues that by really cultivating a single pointed type of attention, we are training our brains to believe that we are under threat whenever we are sort of in that super- focused type of attention. He presents this alternative called “open focus.” And anybody who’s listening to this, who’s gone through meditation, I’m like a lifelong… this is another podcast… yoga student teacher and meditation student teacher. When you go through the meditation process, you often learn to start with single pointed meditation, focusing on an anchor or your breath, and then you learn to expand out, and you learn to sit in meditation and be open to all of the experiences and all of the noises and all of the sensations. One of those isn’t better than the other, so open focus is the idea that we are able to be taking in everything that’s happening around us: the other students in the classroom, the sound of the air conditioner, the smells in the room, ADHDers tend to have that sort of more open focus that can make it more challenging for us to be in that sort of productive, efficient mode, but it offers many gifts as well. That’s why we’re so creative, and why we are able to connect seemingly disparate ideas in really interesting ways. So it’s, again, that blessing and a curse. The other thing that we will do, ADHDers, when we’re in a setting where you’re saying, I’ve got to zone in and my focus is open, is that we will do something called stimming, which is things like doodling or fidgeting or turning around in our chair, things like repetitive motions, rocking. Both ADHD and autistic folks do this. We’re not doing that because we’re distracted. Doing that helps us to focus. So that’s one of the big messages I guess I’ll leave folks with is whatever you want to call it, you don’t know when people are paying attention. Attention is very complex. It’s very personal. It’s very diverse. Stop trying to police other people’s attention. The way that I pay attention. I mean, my desk is like covered with little toys and gadgets that I use behind the scenes [LAUGHTER] in Zoom meetings to keep myself focused. If you think attention looks like sitting still and not moving, you’re going to say she’s not paying attention. I actually am. I’m deeply paying attention because I’m doing all of those other things that give me those external structures that I need to focus in on what you’re saying. So stop trying to police people’s attention. Know that open awareness and open focus is another way of being in the world, and incredibly valid and important, and we probably need a lot more of it, and trust your students to do what they need to do to be present in your classrooms.
John: A friend of mine is an autism researcher, and we’ve talked about it quite a bit in terms of the type of focus that people with autism have. As I was reading your description of ADHD, I was seeing so many connections in terms of the different types of attention, and you mentioned that there’s an emerging recognition of an overlap between ADHD and autism. Can you talk a little bit about the ways in which they’re connected, or the similarities that occur in autism and ADHD,
Karen: I can. So here’s a fun little story for the listeners. In the middle of writing this book, I got a second diagnosis. After getting late in life ADHD diagnosis, I then got a late in life autism diagnosis, so am doubly blessed. And remember the winding journey of writing the book I mentioned earlier? Didn’t see that one coming either. So yes, I can speak to this from both lived experience and the research. AuDHD is sort of like this new wild frontier that we are seeing rise up. I’m really excited for this understanding of the overlap between autism and ADHD. I think we’re going to be hearing that term, AuDHD more and more and more in the coming years, there’s a lot of unknowns. So I have seen data that up to 80% of autistic folks would also qualify for an ADHD diagnosis. At that level, [LAUGHTER] you start to wonder what’s going on. And there are some folks who are saying, “Are these like the same thing, and they’re manifesting in different folks differently.” There was a time, up until several years ago, where you couldn’t get both an autism and an ADHD diagnosis through the DSM. They said these two things cannot overlap, and now they’re saying 80% of folks with autism have ADHD. So we are learning a lot. There are days when I feel like these are the same thing, and AuDHD is like a thing in and of itself, and there are days when I can feel them as separate entities [LAUGHTER] inside of my head. And it’s hard for me to explain that, unless you’ve lived with these neurotypes, it’s a very sort of fluid situation. I don’t know if it’s a question we’ll even be able to answer through research. I think it’s more something we’re going to move through and have to experience and really listen to people’s lived experiences. But you’re going to see a lot more AuDHDers in your classes, in your meetings. The joke is in our community that if you got a late in life ADHD diagnosis that you can just chill out for a couple years and then you just go and pick up your autism diagnosis as well, because there are some folks who believe the reason that they mask each other, and that’s why folks are getting late diagnosed. One of the ways [LAUGHTER] that I’ve heard it talked about is ADHD is the gas pedal and autism is the brake. So you’re driving a car pressing down the brake and the gas pedal at the same time. It makes for an interesting ride, but there’s some evidence that they’re masking each other, no less challenging for people. They are no less in need of support, but there’s some interesting overlaps going on there. If you’re listening to this and this is something that interests you, we just need a ton more research on this, a ton more support. We need people who are diagnosed and have lived experiences leading the charge on this. But yeah, AuDHD is going to be pretty big and very interesting for us to continue to learn about.
Rebecca: So earlier, you mentioned about Universal Design for Learning and also accessible design. Can you talk a little bit about how those methodologies, frameworks, might really help all students, but ADHDers in particular?
Karen: Yes, absolutely. So. I am a student and a facilitator of UDL, a practitioner of UDL, a wonderful approach that helps us address those accommodations, limitations, fantastic. Two things can be true. My concern about UDL is that sometimes I feel like it’s used to ignore disability or ignore difference, and I’ve heard sometimes UDL practitioners say things like, “We don’t even need to talk about your disability or your ADHD in the classroom, because we have designed this accessible learning experience.” Well, those are parts of me, so UDL is not intended to wipe that away. When done well, it should be inviting that into the experience. So what I think might be helpful, I’ll give an example. For me as an educator, I feel like I’m on the right track when I hear from a student who says I have accommodations, and I look at their letter and I am able to respond to them and say, “I’m so glad you sent me this. All of this is designed into the course already for all students,” that feels like I’m on the right track. And I will often disclose, depending on the situation, and let them know that this is something I live with, and I’m proud and happy to be a role model for them, and I am there to do anything I can to support them. I am not a mind reader, so please keep me updated on anything I can do. So that’s my approach to it, like I want to notice and I want to celebrate their identities and reinforce that throughout the course. I teach, primarily online, asynchronous, so it’s woven into my discussions, into the conversations we’re having, into my grading, into the types of resources I share with students. And it’s not disability I want to eliminate, it’s the need for that letter eventually, right? Like everything is built into my course already, I feel like I’ve done the right thing when I’m able to notice and celebrate and thank that student for sharing that with me and let them know it’s baked into the course for all students. The last thing I want to say about this is one thing I don’t like about UDL is when we say, here, “We can do this for ADHD students,” and people say, “Oh, and Isn’t it lovely that it’s good for everybody.” Two things can be true. Let’s let it be just good for ADHD students, that’s good. That’s good on its own. It’s great on its own. And I recognize that we want to motivate people to see the many benefits of this. And it’s good for everybody is a lovely thing. But I also want us to say that, like, “If it was just good for ADHD students, that would be wonderful, too.” So those two things are happening at the same time for me, and I think that’s important to mention when we talk about UDL.
Rebecca: I appreciate you pointing out these complexities, that multiple things can be true at the same time. Now that comes up a lot in the accessibility work that I do as well. So we always wrap up by asking, what’s next?
Karen: This is coming out in January, so I’m really excited to get the book out into the world, and hearing how people are going to react to it and use it will be exciting for me. The other thing I’m working on now is I’m shifting a bit from climate change mitigation to adaptation in my focus, which is to say, I’m always very mindful when I talk about the climate stuff. We need folks who are working to prevent climate change, and I want people who are doing that to keep doing that. I am feeling called to focus more on adapting to some of the worst impacts that we’re seeing already happening. And I’m really feeling curious about things like the fact that we have hundreds of colleges in coastal areas that we don’t know if they will be able to stay there. So I’m starting to take some classes on things like forced migration related to climate change, because my sense is nobody in higher ed is talking about this, or very few people, which is very understandable. I feel called to do that. I want to support campuses that might need to relocate, students who might need to relocate due to climate change, and I very much want to, in particular, help support disabled folks who are part of those changes, and to recognize that our ADHDers are, I think, the creative folks that we need to be leading a lot of the changes that we will need to be making in the next few decades, in this very volatile era. So one of our greatest strengths is that creativity piece. We don’t just think in terms of what has already been proven. We design and create new worlds and new ideas. I think that’s why I’m able to do that work well, and it’s a little disconcerting for some people, but I feel like it needs to get done, and it’s something I’m feeling curious about. So leaning into that more as well.
John: Certainly an important issue to be focusing on in a country where we need far more of a focus on climate change right now. Well, thank you. I very much enjoyed reading your book. I think it would be a great book for reading groups, for any faculty member to learn more about a non-trivial share of the students they’re working with.
Karen: The number that I use in the book is 5 to 10% but I’ve had classes where up to 40% of my students disclose ADHD, so I think that 5 to 10% is the tip of the iceberg, and I also think the vast majority of our students stop outs and dropouts are probably undiagnosed ADHD. If I’ve got anybody out there who’s connected to enrollment management, I think you’ve got a huge opportunity here to help students persist and complete by considering that lens of undiagnosed ADHD and higher ed’s failure to adapt to that as a big, big opportunity.
Rebecca: Well, thanks so much for joining us. We always enjoy talking to you, Karen, and sharing your work.
Karen: I am so grateful for both of you, again, the fact that you are able to persist and keep doing this is such a testament to who you are, and so needed in our world and our very rapidly changing higher ed so thank you for doing the work that you do. Action is the antidote to despair. So everybody’s got to find their small actions or medium or big actions that they can take to help make a difference. You don’t have to save the world, you just got to do your part.
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John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.
Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.
John: Editing Assistance provided by Madison Lee.
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