Whose norms are we asking neurodivergent students to survive?
Why the question matters
Every accommodation I have ever written assumed the environment was fixed and the student was adjustable. If the norm is the variable, the whole intervention logic inverts.
What I currently think
Eye contact, timeliness, rapid verbal response, and stillness are treated as professionalism rather than as one nervous system's preferences made compulsory. The Week 6 audit of pre-internet social barriers reads like a list of things a school day still requires.
What I am reading & learning
- —Akhund (2025) on decolonizing neurodiversity
- —Sinclair (1993), "Don't Mourn for Us"
- —Chapman (2020), Neurodiversity Studies
Related journal entries
- Not broken — differently attuned
Two constructs at odds: a Global North paradigm that medicalized difference as defect, and Global South paradigms that had already integrated it.
- Norms around us: the exercise I could not answer cleanly about my own building
I asked the room to name two or three norms at their workplace that might exclude someone with a different neurocognitive style. Then I had to answer it myself.