Welcoming Neurodivergence: Utilizing Picture Books to Support Acceptance & Belonging

Please join us for "Welcoming Neurodivergence: Utilizing Picture Books to Support Acceptance & Belonging" with Connie Persike, M.S., CCC/SLP.

Connie Persike, M.S., CCC/SLP, is a highly experienced Speech Language Pathologist and Educational Consultant. She has 20+ years of experience in educational settings and holds a certificate in instructional coaching, positive education, and applied educational neuroscience.

She served as a member of the multi-state work group to help develop the Common Core Essential Elements for English Language Arts. Connie is a published writer for Autism Parenting Magazine and writes for Exceptional Needs Today. She created an innovative process to assess student behavior, which deviates from the traditional behaviorism approach and aligns with current relational and neuroscience while maintaining a trauma-sensitive and neurodiversity approach.

Connie works from the guiding mission that Connection + Collaboration = Endless Possibilities.

Transcript

Guy Stephens: 0:13

Well, hello and welcome back to AASR Live. My name, of course is Guy Stephens, I'm the founder and executive director of the Alliance Against Seclusion and Restraint, really excited to be here. I feel like we actually had a couple of changes on our schedule. So I feel like I haven't been here for a while, haven't had an opportunity to do any of these live events. And I was really greatly enjoy these. So hopefully, you will as well. For those of you that may not be familiar with the Alliance Against Seclusion and Restraint, we're a nonprofit organization started a little over four years ago, we focus on issues not only restraint, seclusion, but often a lot of the punitive things that are being done to kids very often, namely behavior. So it might be restraint, seclusion, suspension, expulsion, corporal punishment. And even more broadly, it's a lot of the misguided and outdated approaches that are out there around behavior management, that can be harmful. And we work to change policy, to change law, and also to educate and to support families. So if you are here with us live, I am, as always really excited because I have to admit that I enjoy doing these quite a bit. It's always a lot of fun for me, and it's a lot of fun to have a really exciting guest on and today is no exception. Really excited to have with me today, Connie Persike, who is going to be giving a special presentation and we're going to be having discussion as well. Connie is a highly experienced speech pathologist and educational consultant, and so much more. And someone that has a core belief around how important connection and collaboration are and how that can lead endless possibilities. So before I bring Connie on for her introduction, I'll just mention a little bit of housekeeping. One, as always, today's session is being recorded. And we record them for a couple of reasons. One, because we know everybody can watch here live when we do them. We do them typically on Thursdays at 330 Eastern time. But I happen to know from experience of where people that watch all over the world, and it's not always easy to watch it in the middle of the night. So we do record these, so you're able to watch them later. But we also record these, because we want you to share them with you if you're a parent, share them with other parents, if you're an educator, share them with other educators, we really want people to spread a lot of these ideas in the work that we're sharing here. So they are recorded, you can find them after the fact on Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn. And we have it available as an audio podcast, which you can download and listen to on Spotify on Google music on iTunes, whatever your your favorite audio podcast platform is. And with that, I'm going to introduce our special guests. But before I do, if you're watching now and you are live, tell us who you are and where you're from. So in the chat, leave us comment and I already I already see a comment. Look at that. Ginger Healy. You know, my friend and colleague, Ginger already left a message and said Connie is amazing. She is a world changer. And that's coming from another world changer there if you happen to be on live as well tell us who you are and where you're from. And we'd love to hear from you. So with that, let me go ahead and bring Connie up. And we now have Connie, join us. Hey Connie, it's great to Great to see you, and really excited to have you here today. I'm going to read through a little bit of your bio, and then we'll get to the really important stuff. Beyond just kind of the bio. Of course, you are a speech-language pathologist. You know you're a highly experienced educational consultant, you have over 20 years of experience working in educational settings. You hold a certificate in instructional coaching positive education, and applied Educational Neuroscience. And of course, you've served as a member of a multistate workgroup to help develop common core essential elements for English language arts. You're a published writer for Autism Parenting magazine, and you also write for Exceptional Needs Today. You've created a really innovative process to assess student behavior, the why toolkit, maybe you can tell us more about that later, which really moves away from the traditional behaviorism approach to behavior, and really aligns well with kind of relational neuroscience-based approaches while being trauma-sensitive and really, neurodiversity affirming. And of course, you kind of work with this guiding mission or philosophy that connection and collaboration equal endless possibilities. And of course, that's just a little bit of a bio there. I've gotten the privilege to get to know you over the last few years. And in addition, to all those wonderful things, I consider you also a friend and a colleague and somebody out there doing amazing things. And of course, we've had an opportunity to work in a bunch of different areas. So we're really excited to have you here today. Some people are already jumping on board to tell us where they're from. We've got somebody here from Houston, Texas, and Fairfax County, Virginia. That's actually not too terribly far from me. And I'm sure we'll have more people joining us as we kind of get moving here. So with all of that, Welcome, and thanks for being here today.

Connie Persike: 5:34

Thanks, I'm excited to be here.

Guy Stephens: 5:36

So you have a really, I think, meaningful and exciting presentation that you're gonna share with us. And of course, we'll have the ability for people to ask questions. And of course, I'll probably throw some questions at you. And I had an opportunity to see you present something very similar to this a while back, and it really was impactful, so without giving a whole lot more intro here, I'm gonna go ahead and pull up your slide deck so that everybody can see it. And I'm going to let you take over and present this, and I will disappear. But if you need me at any moment, I will pop back up on the screen. And what we'll do is after you get done kind of going through the presentation, we'll open it up for questions, or comments that people might have. And I do encourage people to feel free to put questions in the chat. And anytime we might wait to get to those at the end. But feel free to put them in the chat as you think of them, and even comments. And we'll review those as well. So one last request of the audience, and then Connie, this, the stage is yours to take away. And I would just ask again, if you are watching live, tell us who you are and where you're from. It's always great to know where people are joining us from today. So with that coming, I'm going to disappear and welcome you to get started with your presentation. Sounds good? All right, thanks.

Connie Persike: 7:03

So this is a topic that I'm really passionate about. I love books, I especially love picture books for children. I love using them to teach and especially teaching around social-emotional skills, I think they're a great tool and technique to use to teach students and kids my own daughter. So, I was thinking about our classrooms and the books that are in our classrooms. And it kind of activated me to present this topic about welcoming neuro divergence by using picturebooks to support acceptance and belonging. For those of you who know me, I have an identical twin sister. She's a literacy person, she's a literacy coach or a reading, she was a reading teacher. She is an instructional person in her district around literacy. And so she loves books. And she taught me all about text sets, and how to group books together based on a topic, and then use those to really teach students which I absolutely fell in love with. Because I'm a speech pathologist, I love categorizing things. And so I started creating all these text sets around neurodiversity at different levels. Picture books for younger kids, early readers for elementary, and then chapter books. And those are all on my website, you can go to my website, there are text sets there for different variety of topics. But specifically, today, we're going to talk about how we can use books to support acceptance and belonging in our classrooms. And so we've come a really long way, in this discussion around equity around diversity in children's books and other marginalized groups by you know, such as by race, and culture, and gender and sexuality, but we're really lagging behind both in the research and in the literature around disabilities. And you know how to increase those in our classroom. There are less books available for teachers, for parents. And so I really wanted to bring this to light and to have a really nice conversation about it or talk about it. So please throw any questions out there. I'd love to answer them at the end. And I'll just jump in. So before we get started, I do want to go over terminology because I want to make sure everybody knows that I'm going to be using identity-first language. As many of you know, especially the followers of the Alliance Against Seclusion and Restraint many individuals see their neurodiversity or their disability as a part of their identity. And self-advocates really celebrate their differences by using identity-first language So today you're going to hear me using identity-first language such as autistic individuals, disabled students, and neurodivergent individuals that's me using identity-first language to honor and respect and celebrate their differences. I think in the neurodiversity conversation world, terminology can get mixed up pretty easily. So I just want to go over a few terms for you. Neurodivergent means a person whose brain diverges from what is considered to be typical. Some examples would be autism, ADHD, obsessive compulsive disorder, dyslexia, stuttering, epilepsy, and apraxia. Those are just a few examples. So neurodiversity, and you'll hear those words are kind of interchangeable, but they do mean different things. So again, neuro-divergent is a person whose brain diverges from what is considered to be typical. Neurodiversity is just that all brains are different. That's okay. Differences are a natural variation of the human world. And we should celebrate that. To be neurodiversity affirming is the belief that diversity and differences and how we think, how we feel, how we behave, and relate to other people, or what makes us unique. And that's all people are equal, one brain type doesn't trump another, all people are equal, we're all worthy. And we're all valuable to society. You might also hear me saying instead of nonverbal, I will be using the word non-speaking, which just means that someone does not use traditional words to communicate, they might use sign language, or they might use assistive technology, but they just don't always use words to communicate. So then I will be using the word non-speaking. Okay. So before we jump in, I really do want to talk about the difference between belonging and acceptance. Because I don't think that we always think about that I don't think that's always clear to us. And my goal for all students, for all people, is that they really feel like they belong. And so belonging is very different than acceptance. When you're accepted exactly for who you are, by the members of a group. So when we're talking about students, by those people in your classroom, and in your school that's belonging, if you feel the need to change things about you, so that you can be accepted, that's fitting in. And if you want more information about that Reanne Brown has done a lot of research, and a lot of talks about that. But my goal is for students and all people to really feel like they belong to their group, and not have to change in order to fit in. So why is this important? Well, there's a lot of research out there that says, loneliness, and social exclusion impacts self control, and it increases aggression. So if our students don't feel like they're accepted, they don't feel like they belong there. They have, oh, gosh, you guys, I just messed up I'm sorry. Belonging and acceptance means when you're accepted for exactly who you are fitting in, is when you have to change who you are to be to feel like you're belonging. And so I screwed that up. But I wanted to correct that really quick. I'm sorry. All right. So why is belonging and acceptance important. So basically, if our students don't feel like they're belonging to their community, their school community, you know, even their outer world, you know, their community, their neighborhood, loneliness and social exclusion impacts, self control, and increases aggression. And a lot of the work I do in schools is around behavior and supporting students to help them help teams support students who might be having some behaviors that are interfering with their learning. And so this is really important to me, if we can help them belong and help them feel accepted, then we can decrease some of that incorrect aggression that perhaps we're seeing social pain, there's been research and I have all this cited for you. But there's been pain or there's been research that shows social pain caused by social exclusion is similar. It impacts us in the same way neurologically as physical pain does. A strong sense of school belonging has so many positives, it increases the student's self worth, it increases their emotional well being. If they have a lack of school belonging, or they don't feel like they have a sense of belonging in their community in their school, then we're going to have more behaviors, we're going to have more violence, and we're going to have increased dropout rates. And again, this is all based on research I have cited for you in the slides, and I'll share the slides with Guy afterwards so that you have a copy of it. And so we can use representation of children's literature to affect one's sense of belonging. So many disabled adults describe their childhood, who talked about their childhood and describe it and talk about coming to terms with their impairment. They talk about how that was a minor issue for them compared to coming to terms with their impairment and their disability was minor compared to the feelings of social isolation, the feelings of segregation, the feelings of pity, the feelings of being rejected. And so it's really impactful when somebody doesn't feel like they belong. And so when children see characters that are different from themselves in a way that allows them to become immersed in their life experiences, their ability to see and understand and value other people is enhanced. So picture books featuring characters with a wide range of diversity can promote equity, it can promote acceptance, positive examples, and that's what we're going to be talking about today. And I have thoroughly looked through all of the picture books that I've recommended, and I bought all of them, I've returned a lot of them that I didn't feel were positive examples, and there are a lot out there, surprisingly so. But if we have picturebooks, with positive examples of neurodivergent individuals, then we can increase the probability of them being accepted, and then also when children see themselves or their experiences mirrored in characters, their ability to value themselves is enhanced. And I think this is really important. Children recognize unfairness and injustices way earlier than we think that they do. When they catch on to that, and they noticed that at very young ages, trust me, my company does a lot of behavior audits for school buildings, and we survey students, and one of the questions we asked students is, do you think people like you are treated fairly in your school, and these kids notice that they have such beautiful responses to the things that they're noticing. So it's definitely noticed at a much younger age than we think they noticed when people are being left out. They noticed when they're disregard, and then if there's no books that mirror you, you feel disregarded, you feel like you're not being noticed or seen. So sharing books that have positive again, positive portrayals of neurodivergent individuals can impact the belief of peers, but also in trickles down. There's a trickle down effect, where it impacts their caregivers, their parents, their teachers that all encounter these books. It also plays a really important role, seeing yourself mirrored in a book plays a really important role in developing a child's identity, their self efficacy, their self-worth. And then under representation creates a sense of not belonging. And this is really important, and I don't think we talk about this enough. But if certain groups are over represented, it creates a sense of greater importance in the space. And so when we think about our classrooms, and we think about the students that are portrayed in our books, they're typically kids who are neurotypical. And then it creates this sense of greater importance to those students in the space, which I think is equally damaging, as underrepresented represents representation and creating a sense of not belonging. Okay, so by incorporating picture books with strength based representation of neuro divergent characters, we can promote our respect and dignity of all children. It also really sends a message that you're important to society that you matter representation does, and that everyone is different, and that's okay. So, why is this important? Out of the University of Wisconsin Madison, which is right near me, I'm from Wisconsin, a small town in near Madison. But they have a center called the Cooperative Children's Book Center at the University of Wisconsin. And they actually track how many books have neurodivergent characters, main characters, primary characters, or significant secondary characters. We don't think the data is available yet for 2022 or 2023. But the 2022 data showed that 1.8% of books that came out that year had a neurodivergent primary or secondary characteristic. The number of students in our schools aged 3 to 21, who receives special education under IDEA, that is 7.2 million or 15%, the average population of students with disabilities or disabled students in all of our public schools is at 15%. And so definitely underrepresented in our books 15% of the population 1.8% of neuro-divergent characters. Now that might be a little bit higher if you start calculating just disabled characters. Also, I specifically just pulled the data for Neuro-divergent individuals or characters, and our schools don't track by neuro-divergence, they track by disability, school, and educational labels. So without accurate representation, children feel excluded, they feel as if they're not allowed in the spaces that the books represent. And then again, when a segment of society is excluded from literature, the implication is that group is without value. I don't know why I struggled with that word. Sorry, I lost my tabs. Okay. So there's many different ways that we can use picture books to show diversity and to represent our students they can be used. And this is Bishop back at, you know, this has been around for a long time. But a lot of people outside the literacy world haven't heard these analogies. But we can think about this analogy. Books can be used as mirrors, they can be used as windows, and they can be used as sliding glass doors. So when you think about mirrors, we want to make sure we have books that represent each and every one of these for our students. So books can be mirrors, they can mirror a child's lived experiences, so that they can see themselves represented in that book. And that validates their experiences. Books can be seen as windows, they can provide windows so that we can see into other people's lives, and to other people's different lived experiences. This is really important when it comes to building empathy and helping our young people start understanding and having that perspective of different lived experiences. And they can be considered sliding glass doors, so they can take children in and out of different situations, helping them imagine themselves with a different future than they previously had imagined. So it can help students see themselves in different situations than perhaps they might never have envisioned for themselves. So now, how do we do this, I'm gonna go through it, there's no absolute correct way. But I pulled from several different research articles and researchers to give you some important techniques that perhaps you could use. And I'm also going to help you get to some resources, so if you don't want to do the work of reading all the books and determining if these are positive representations of your students or of your child, there's a lot of resources out there that you can go to and find those places. This is an example of one of my early elementary neurodiversity text sets, those are all free on my website. I tried really hard to give priority to disabled authors or neurodivergent, authors, and or illustrators, because oftentimes, then the representation is much more authentic and genuine. But some of them if I thought they were really, really good, and they were written by a neurotypical individual, I still have those in there, but I definitely did give preference to our neurodivergent authors or illustrators. Okay. So some tips and cautions. The first thing I want you to think about is that picture books can have a focus on neuro divergence to either help increase or educate other people and help them understand a disability or a neuro divergence. However, it's really equally important for us to show books and expose students to books with neuro divergent characters who are not solely defined by their disability or by their difference. They don't evoke sympathy, they don't promote the belief that neuro divergence is something that needs to be overcome. Those are books that we don't want to include. These are a little bit harder to find in picture books just because the plots aren't always you know, picture books are for younger kids. They don't always have a really complex plot, but I do have a few examples that I'm going to show you. across history representation of neurodivergent individuals or disabled individuals, even The role that those books have taken is that we have to have pity for them or sympathy for them. Or we need to, you know, or those books used to highlight the kindness of other people for you know, including that neurodivergent individual or that neuro individual child. So we want to try to, we will, we definitely want to avoid those, no representation is better than bad representation. So try to focus on picture books written by neurodivergent individuals or disabled authors, because that can ensure adequate representation. I'm going to talk a little bit later on about how pound owned voices can help you with that. However, there are a lot of people moving away from that, and I'll talk about that coming up here. But many books written by neurodivergent authors are neurodiversity affirming. And so that's the kind of books that we want to put into our classrooms and bring into our environments if you are a parent. So when it comes to making sure that we have characters that aren't solely defined by their disability or their neuro divergence, we want to make sure that they're involved in everyday events and adventures, that they are, you know, in settings that neurotypical kids would be in settings for. So we want to make sure we have a little bit of both. So I'm not saying the books that are here to educate us about neuro divergence is bad, but we want to make sure that we have both opportunities of literature and I'm gonna get into specifically the differences between those two types of literature. Okay, so a little bit more about neuro divergent authors. According to Liam lols, 2019 Diversity survey, 11% of authors are disabled. Now that might be that might be low, because some people may not feel safe to share their neurodivergence. They definitely don't have to, that's not something that they have to do. And so that might be an under representation, if they don't want to share that, that should be respected. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. 26% of the adults in the United States have some type of disability. Again, that's about disabilities and not about neuro divergence. So we're not really comparing apples to apples, but I think they're probably close enough that we can see that neurodivergent authors are also underrepresented, they're less of them than neurotypical authors. And so again, that's one of the reasons I really like supporting that work. Not only are they more likely to be neurodiversity affirming, I also want to support our neuro divergent authors. Okay, so some resources for you to be able to find some authentic representation. A novel mind is a website that you can go to, it explores literature that has representation of neuro diverse diversity in general, it's, you know, they also bring in books about just, you know, all brains are different. So not just neuro divergence, but also mental health. So I think this is a really nice website, for those of you who are interested in making sure you have representation beyond just neuro divergence. They are developed and maintained by neuro divergent individuals. They're really about just gathering them all. Right now, they're not about qualitative reviews yet. It's just a comprehensive list of about what's out there. Some of their people that are maintaining it also have mental health diagnoses. So again, it's really nice that this website is maintained and run by neurodivergent individuals, but they aren't yet sorting them by quality yet, or they're just looking at quantity. At this point. They just want to get a comprehensive list. I think that is their goal for the future. Also, although supportable solutions I have text sets, I mentioned that my website has text sets and some reflection questions for all ages. I've sorted them by age group. And I definitely had an emphasis on neuro divergent authors when I put those together. Now, I told you, we were going to talk about that Pound Owned Voices. That was a term coined by author Corinne. I'm not going to try to say her last name, because I don't want to say it wrong, but referring to books, just any books about characters from underrepresented marginalized groups. So it's not just neurodivergent groups, but if the author is writing about a marginalized group, they also identify within that group. So they're writing about their own experiences. Now, a lot of I'm going to talk about another website coming up here that used to use that a lot and they've moved away from it. Just because some authors started feeling like they were being exploited for their difference and not everybody felt safe sharing that with the world. And nor should they feel like they have to. And so it's kind of fading out, however, you might still see it out there. And then Megan Not an autism mom, she has 100 book list on autism and neurodiversity. She has vetted those all by autistic adults and their allies. And so that's definitely a free website, a free resource you can go, she makes sure to promote books that only promote inclusion, and they're moving away from ableistic views. And they really are focused on neuro diversity affirming characters, and books, and representation. So those are some resources that you can go to, We Need Diverse Books is the website that I was talking to you about that's kind of moved away from Pound owned voices. But it's a nonprofit organization that advocates for change in the industry to produce and promote literature that reflects and honors the lives of all young people. So when I say there's resources on owned voice authors that's been recently removed, so that's no longer accurate, but it's a great website, and it has all sorts of different marginalised groups represented not just neurodivergent individuals or neuro divergence. Okay, so how else can we do this, as I said before, the picture books can feature neuro divergent main characters, neuro divergent secondary characters, and neurodivergent background characters. Now, it's gonna be a little bit harder to have background, characters who are neurodivergent. And for us to notice that because they don't always look different. And so in at the picturebook level, this will be much harder to find, you're more likely to see that for people, you know, disabled individuals who are in wheelchairs, although you might be able to see someone with a cochlear implant. Those are the kinds of things in the background, they're not a main character. Okay? So the story can be about their neuro divergence, about their strengths and about their differences. That's called inclusive literature. Remember, when I was going back, the point of that is when a few slides before I was talking about how that's the purpose is to promote acceptance, promote understanding, and that's called inclusive literature. And we also have books that the neuro divergence can just be incidental. The character just incidentally has neuro divergence. And so that's called our immersive literature, the focus was on a totally different topic. It's not about the person's difference. It's not about their neuro divergence. They're just a character who happens to be neuro divergent. So we want to make sure we have both in our settings. Again, that can be a little bit harder to have immersive literature at the picture book level. So inclusive literature, the purpose is to teach, it's to raise awareness and acceptance and to be able to promote acceptance of differences and help people tolerate differences more. Its characters are disabled, and they're defined by their disability. The assumed audience is non disabled people or neurotypical people, and ableist norms, it's really trying to counter ableist norms. The portrayal is disabilities to be tolerated and accepted by non disabled individuals. This is a really nice example of a picture book that is just beautiful. It has a main character who has Down syndrome, and that character is just about him and his dog, and how much his dog misses him when he goes to school. And so it's a great book. It's not about his Down syndrome. I don't think it even says that that character has Down syndrome. So it's a really great book. I love it. It's one of my favorites. I actually have two of them, because I thought it was so beautiful. And then we can also have immersive literature again, this is to engage children and show characters that are fully engaged in life. That's the purpose. The characters have a disability, but the disability is not defined their character. The audience is all children, disabled and non disabled and neurodivergent and neurotypical. The research is really around disability. So that's why I'm saying disability in this because I'm pulling from research. And disability is not the focal point of the story, it's incidental. There's no moral or educational message about the disability there. The lived experience or disability is depicted accurately and authentically. And being different is normal because all human beings are individual and different. So that's kind of immersive literature. This is a great sample, because dyslexia is definitely underrepresented in our literature. And I want to show you a beautiful example of that. Oh, gosh guys, I'm just messing up today I have these reversed example of inclusive literature. And the other one is the example of immersive literature. My goodness, I'm sorry, my brain is not working today. It's summer. So please give me grace. But the beautiful book, it's co-written by a little girl with dyslexia and her mother, and it's the story about her and her dyslexia, and it's strength based, it's really beautiful. And we're going to talk a little bit later about how certain disabilities are underrepresented. And usually they're the more common disabilities like dyslexia or learning disabilities in our schools. And so I want to make sure I showed you an example of that. Those of you who know me know I hate making mistakes, so this is gonna drive me nuts all day. Anyway, so immersive literature is much preferred by non disabled and disabled communities, but just more engaging to read about. And so again, it is harder to find in picture books, I want to give you a few examples of early readers. For you. Meena is a whole series about a little girl with epilepsy, epilepsy is not the foundation of the story or the plot, her difference is not it's just incidentally mentioned throughout. And same with Finkel, the the many mysteries of the Finkel family, those girls have autism, and they are artistic and they are trying to solve mysteries, really cute series. And then Emma Everyday has a cochlear implant. And the book does not focus on that it's definitely a beautiful example of immersive literature. There's a whole series of Emma Everyday books my daughter loved, my daughter loved all of these actually, and reading about these when she was younger. And so I wanted to share some early literature books for you. Okay, so if you're going to use inclusive literature, again, that's where it's focused on the disability. And it's all about helping with understanding and acceptance and tolerance. We can kind of use some of these guiding questions to critically engage our students and our children and discussions about that. And so we could say, how are you like the main character? And how are you different? Those could be some questions we ask people, which illustration would you redraw to reflect the lived experience of the character's life? How would you be tell the story from the character's perspective? If it isn't written from the character's perspective? How would you or even if it is you could have like, hey, from your experiences, how would you retell that story? What are some barriers faced by people with the characters district differences? Great questions that you can use to mediate inclusive literature. Some questions to ask yourself when you're choosing books, I think this is really important because again, we want to make sure that we're using books that portray people in a positive light neuro divergent individuals in a positive light. So does the book author offer authentic and meaningful representation of our neuro divergent individuals? Can children with or without neuro divergence, see meaningful similarities between themselves and others in the books? Do they offer a respectful representation of neurodiversity? Does the storyline acknowledge in some way the main character's identity with both the story and theme of being about trauma or the injustice of their difference or an obstacle facing that individual, of course, everybody has obstacles. So if we just don't want it to be solely voted on, like, oh, this difference if there's a huge obstacle that they have to overcome, because remember, in history, that's what we've seen in the past, and I think there's many more neurodiversity affirming books coming out, than there ever has been. And so we don't have to use those books. We don't want to use those books anymore, where it's just focused on the trauma of their disability and the injustice of it all and this obstacle that they have to overcome. There's no flawless criteria to help you pick good literature for your setting. But hopefully, these questions can kind of guide you and help you find some sort of self talk and some questions you can ask yourself to help you out. Okay, these are just some suggestions for ensuring adequate and authentic representation. Because again, in the past, this has been really difficult to find. And we definitely want to be including diversity in our books year round. We do not have to, like my daughter's school had neurodiversity week, when it came to literature, and they started pulling out all their books with neurodiversity. We want those to be in the classrooms all year long. We don't want to have like a month of it or a week of it, we want it to be just embedded into our community. So select books that have people really interesting that there are more books with animals as a main character than there are neurodivergent characters. So so we want to make sure I think the most recent research was 26% of books had, remember 1.8% had neurodivergent characteristics. And I think either that same year, or shortly after that 26% of books had animals as their main character. So we want to pick books with neurodivergent characters, we want to pick books that show our neurodivergent characters engaged in authentic everyday activities. We want, if possible, to have picture books that have plots that aren't, that have plots that are good and represent good literature. Also, we want to also make sure that the literature in our classroom shows multiple depictions of the same group, because that's how we can counter some stereotypes. So we want to make sure we don't want to just have one book about a character, you know, a Down Syndrome character, we want to have bunches of different representation so that we don't have stereotypes Jean, you know, embraced, we want to try to break stereotypes. As often as possible, try to use authors who are representing the same character. And then intersectionality is something that's really important. It refers to the idea that individuals have multiple identities, so students of color with disabilities, gender neutral individuals with a neuro divergence, non-speaking students of color. Are students of color are over represented in special ed. Yet, to be able to find a neuro divergent character, who is also a person of color is very hard to find. And then I wanted to hit when I'm talking about this, I want to also hit that oftentimes, we have an over representation of disabilities or neuro divergence of characters that are on our like low incidence disabilities in our school. So for instance, cochlear implants, so you can find more books with kids with cochlear implants than you can with somebody with dyslexia. But dyslexia is probably the number one disability in our schools. And there's very, very few books that have representation of a dyslexic characters. So we want to try to match our population. Also, we don't want to have in there do it, you know, autism used to be considered a low incidence disability in schools. I don't know what that it still is, I would guess it isn't. But there's a lot more books about autistic characteristics, then there are let's say obsessive compulsive disorder, or Tourette syndrome. And so if you have a classroom that has kids made up of different neuro divergence, you want to try to have good representation in your book match the population of your groups also. And so think about that, as well. I do want to and I know most of you have probably already heard about this book. But when it gets to intersectionality, this is why this book is so celebrated, and everybody was really excited about it coming out. It's an autistic boy who's non-speaking and he is also a black boy. And so this is a really nice picture book of somebody with multiple different identities. Again, those are so hard to find, and it's one of the reasons I'm so excited about that book. So a day with no words, is the book title. Okay, so we definitely also want to use and they said, This may sound like a broken record strength based views when we use strength books that represent our characters in a strength based way, we can counter ableism, which is one of my goals. So to do this, we have to help teachers get high quality literature that really either explicitly or inexplicitly kind of disrupts abelistic views. I oftentimes buy, almost every year, that my daughter has been in school, I buy her teacher, one of these books for her classroom because I'm trying to usually buy more than one, but I'm trying to make sure that My daughter's classroom has some representation of different types of people. So we want to make sure that the books recognize the whole individual, that disability is just one aspect of someone's life in that book. Typically in the past, it's been, books have been based on the medical model, or like, we need to feel, or charitable model, like, we need to feel sorry for them, we need to highlight the character who's friends with that person who's neurodivergent, because we should celebrate that person, they're, they're becoming friends with the neurodivergent character, we want to avoid those. Researchers are really concerned with the scarcity of children's books that represent positive portrayals of characters with disabilities, because that lack of representation prompts a lack of acceptance and reinforces ableist inequalities. So if we can make sure we change the narrative of children, by showing books that are really strength based. I'm gonna talk about this a little bit more, but that within the social model of disability, then we can counter ableist views. So I do want to talk about the boy who lost his stim. I'm just going to jump ahead of that, because that is a nice book. That is a nice book that owners abelist views. So this boy was bullied and he was told he can't stim. And then he overcomes that and he realizes it's okay. He connects with the Autistic community, and he realizes his stims can help him and he starts being more open about stimming. And so that's a really nice book that explicitly tackles some ableist views. Alright, so we also want to know, how can we do this, some ways that you can make sure that you're using strength based books, or have a strength based books that have a strength based lens is to use books that have confident characters, they accept their disability, they're not trying to overcome their disability or cure their disability. They're well developed characters. They don't need to be pitied. They're not in need of charity or intervention. The character changes and grows throughout the book. Another reason I really love this book, he changes and he grows just like all of us do throughout the book the character does. Individuals with you want to try to get books where neurodivergent characters are with neurotypical characters, they're not in isolated settings, they're in the same kind of settings as our neurotypical children. That's another reason I really like Best Buddies, he is riding the bus with all the neurotypical students, he is in the same kind of settings as people who are neurotypical. So he has a similar life experience to them in many ways, okay, and I talked about implicitly or explicitly tackling those ablest views already. Okay, so you can use picture books to also introduce children to the social model of disability, versus the medical model of disability. And so just to quickly review, for those of you who haven't heard this, you know, the medical model of disability views, the individual is the problem, the focus is on impairment, their impairment, and their need for intervention, and/or cure, the focus is on a need to be fixed or changed. And there's a lack of acceptance for who that person really is, and a lack of celebration of their uniqueness and their differences. Whereas the social model, and if we want to avoid those books, those books that portray the medical model of disability, and we want to instead focus on the social model of disability, and so focusing on acceptance, and have a neurodivergent character being their authentic self and feeling safe to be their authentic self. We want to view that character as being impaired by barriers in society and not their differences. We want the book to be focused on support and self advocacy versus intervention. And we want to teach that removing those barriers equal equity. For older kids, I would probably use examples of picture books that one example that portrays a medical model and another example that portrays a social model. And I would talk about that with older students. I use picture books to teach adults even because I love them so much, and so many of them have such great messages. The rabbit who listened is like a wonderful book to teach about empathy. I mean, I think so many adults even have a hard time knowing what empathy is and how to, to use empathy. And so like that's another example of when I've used it for teachers even like, hey, let's look at this book. And we talk about how you know the rabbit is empathizing with a little boy. So I would actually show different types of these literature's to older groups of kids. And we would talk about which one is just depicting the character through the medical model of disability, which one's the social and I would talk about what those means, so that kids can learn about the history of disabilities and learn about the difference and how we want to be focusing more on the social model of disability. Okay, I think that's it. And then I have a whole slew of references for you. Because a lot of this was research based.

Guy Stephens: 50:34

That was fantastic. So I'm back. And, as I was listening to you, I was remembering why after I saw you give this presentation, I thought it was so important. You know what you're talking about here, representation matters. And I have a comment here that was put in the chat a second ago that I think, really sums that up. This is from Jamie, who says, as a 30 year old who's had Tourette's my whole life, I would have loved a character with Tourette's being represented in the classroom. I love that this is being talked about, kids need representation. Yeah, absolutely. And it's so important. And I'm thinking a couple of ideas here that I want to run by you. But I really appreciate, the focus on this. And, of course, the one thing we were able to do in person that we can't do is is pass books around the room. We need to figure out how to get more of these books into more places. So those of you that are watching live, if you have any comments or questions, feel free to put those in the chat. And I'll share a couple of the things that came up while you were presenting. We have somebody, Sydney, actually a volunteer with the Alliance who is in Canada that was joining us. And Jamie, of course, who commented a moment ago from Nashville.

Connie Persike: 52:00

Jamie, it's still hard to find characters and books with main characters with Tourette Syndrome. I've looked because people have requested it every time I do a live presentation. And like Guy said, I do like this little speed dating activity where everybody can see all the books that I have. Because I have a lot of them. And because I want people to get a glimpse of them. And we want them to see, you know, sometimes it's scary to buy the books, we don't know what they are like. But I almost always have an audience member asking me about books with characters who have Tourette's, and they are really hard to find. I think there are a few on my texts. But there are still not enough out there.

Guy Stephens: 52:41

Well, maybe that means there's opportunity, Jamie, have you ever thought about writing something and as I recall, Jamie is a member of our community here. And I think as an educator, as I recall, so maybe there's an opportunity there. Chantelle had joined in from Canada, also. Chantal is our lead Canadian volunteer. So we had a number of people that kind of joined us. We also had a comment here from Chantelle that said an amazing presentation, you're igniting that fire in me to write a children's book again, that would be fantastic. And I think as I was listening to the presentation, I mentioned a couple of thoughts running through my head. One of those after kind of hearing what you were saying, Connie was this idea that sometimes we have to be the change in the world that we want to see, even when we can't find it. Which, really was why I started the Alliance, that there was nobody doing that. And so I kind of have this hopeful thought that maybe somebody like Chantal, or Jamie or somebody else might be inspired by this discussion, I think it's really important. The other thing I was thinking about is what we can do to get books, and I shared the links that you provided throughout the conversation. And of course, you have some amazing, in fact, would you mind because you've got your screen up, pulling up your website and showing them what's on your website. If you can do that, that would be fantastic. But I guess the question was kind of running through my mind while you're looking at that was how do we get these books in more schools and more libraries? And of course, some of these answers are easy. Okay, great. I see you're navigating there. You know, putting requests into your local library. You've got some fantastic graphics that work as one pagers. Do you want to walk us through that and you can tell us what they are? but these are great things to print and take to a library, wouldn't they? I mean, could you do this?

Connie Persike: 54:46

Absolutely. And I've had librarians in my talks when they do this live and they are overjoyed. And so I find most librarians want to make sure they have representation of all types of people in their library. So they've been really excited about this. So I have a few adult text sets, actually, here's one for perspectives of non-speaking individuals, all written by individuals, like non-speaking individuals, some who are autistic, some were not. But I was motivated to do this, because so many times you guys, when I'm in a classroom observing, I'm seeing the adults talking about who is non-speaking as if they can't hear. And it really bothered me at such a high level like that there's this lack of understanding that, hey, just because you can't speak doesn't mean you can't hear what you're saying about me right now. I was motivated to go home and put this together. So that I could add it to consultations reports. And I add it all the time, because I haven't all the time, like me, and I really believe that it's done not intentionally or at fault. But just because people don't think about the perspective who is different from them. So these books, and I have something that can help them get that perspective and grow that empathy and treat somebody differently. And then I have several early elementary neurodiversity tech sets.

Guy Stephens: 56:23

And, one of the things that I was thinking in that vein was of course, print these up and take them to your your library, right. But things have been interesting in schools around the country. And in certain areas, we have people that want to ban books, I'm sure your local school librarian would love to hear from people coming in with a positive message that want to add books to their library. So I mean, these would be great to bring your school, your district, your school librarian, as well. Wouldn't it be fantastic to have more of these books, not only on our public libraries, but in our school libraries. And of course the other thing is a parent or an individual, as you mentioned, Connie, there's a lot of occasions where people might give a small gift to a teacher, well, how about a book? How about getting more of these books in the classroom? So lots of potential here.

Connie Persike: 57:18

Yes. So they sort of have upper elementary and middle school, I don't have high school yet. And then I also have disability videos, short sets, because I love video shorts. And these are all short videos that you can use to teach or to build acceptance, build empathy, and then an adult's lived experience of disability text set. So many good books out there. So and then I also have a few for those of you who love the autonomic nervous system, as much as I do, I have books that teach about the feelings that are associated with each of the pathways. So I have those also. Introception text sets I have. So and they're all downloadable, you can just download a PDF and print it off. So I have a text set on interception. So how your body notices it's signals and can attribute those to how you're feeling or your bodily states. I have a text set for adults, because there's so many adults that don't know about that. And then also a text set up for students to help teach them about it.

Guy Stephens: 58:27

Fantastic. And again, I'll put your link in the chat here, so people can go to your go to your website, but you've got a lot of great resources there. Yeah, just thinking kind of went back to school, wouldn't it be great? Maybe we can get a little bit of extra funding and do a little mini grant for some books for classrooms. Wouldn't that be a great thing to be able to do? Yeah, and you know, this can really have such a positive impact. I also love the discussion about and now I'm going to get the terminology backwards. But you know, kind of the idea that, yes, there's

Connie Persike: 59:03

Well, I did. books that raise awareness, but there's books were there. And I'll let you say the term so I don't get it wrong. But there's books where it's really just about the character. And that the neurodiversity is not the focus. And, I think that's really important. I mean, what we want to do is create a world that really is more accepting of all humans, regardless of our individual differences, which are, in fact, strengths. So I love that distinction. Yeah, me too. And that was very heavy in the research how important it is to bring both of those together. You don't want just all inclusive literature where it's all about the disability or all about the difference. You want to make sure that it's just incidental for some characters.

Guy Stephens: 59:59

I had a comment here. From Chantelle who said, Oh, we could think about doing a children's books study series, we've been doing a number of books, studies at the Alliance on various books. And that's a great idea.

Connie Persike: 1:00:12

I even have reflection questions on each of the texts.

Guy Stephens: 1:00:16

Wow, you've done a tremendous amount of work. Yeah, that's great. So again, anybody that might have any questions, feel free to put those in the chat. I just, again want to encourage people to share this presentation, to think about how we can get more books with representation in our school libraries, in our public libraries, and really these kinds of things can really make a positive difference. And, how meaningful is it to be able to see yourself and to have positive reflections throughout literature. So this is really been a fantastic conversation. And I knew when you presented this before, that it was just such a great topic to get people thinking about how we can make these kinds of changes.

Connie Persike: 1:01:05

Yeah, and I think it's so important to link for people, because I have to just believe that a lot of this isn't happening, because people don't know the impact. And that's why I think it's so important to start out with the impact of what happens when you don't feel like you belong, and how impactful it is not to see yourself represented in books. It's so it's so impact, it impacts people in so many different ways that we need to share that. We just talking about it.

Guy Stephens: 1:01:36

Right, right. Yeah. And certainly those conversations have emerged over the years. And, you know, I think there have been some positive responses to that. But at the same time sometimes they'll emerge in one facet, without really kind of thinking this is universal. This is about all people feeling connected and part of something. It's not just okay, well, we want to focus on this one individual difference. So I think it's good to see progress, but there's a whole hell of a lot of progress that needs to be made here.

Connie Persike: 1:02:14

Yeah, exactly. And I just kind of had this aha moment, when you were talking about when we go back to that acceptance, that definition of acceptance and belonging, and how that to really feel like you are accepted, and you have a real strong sense of belonging means that you don't have to change to fit in, you can be your authentic self within that group of people. That's the kind of books that we want. If we have representation of neuro-divergent characters who are trying to change themselves, or who will have to be fixed, that representation is all about the medical model of disability. That doesn't support that definition of true belonging and acceptance. And so it kind of is all linked, really.

Guy Stephens: 1:03:00

Yeah. And so often, it is, as you kind of talked about early on, it's about forcing people to fit in. For instance, in this case, a neurodivergent individual to have to fit into a neurotypical. And, I think the more understanding, awareness, normalization, exposure, and all of these things that all kids have. The better, more compassionate, more understanding, we're gonna be. No one has done a service when people are not represented. And that Representative ways. I mean, you know, you touched on this, but not represented in ways where it's kind of tied it to the medical model. Like let's not focus on somebody being broken, because they're different. You mentioned, and this has been the case over time with probably not only books, but a lot of films and, and other things where the child that was the individual that was different than maybe neurodivergent, or had a disability, was there only to build a story for how wonderful somebody wasn't or was. And that's really I think, harmful.

Connie Persike: 1:04:30

Absolutely. And I think what we know, social emotional learning is taught by modeling. And if we're saying, I mean, I say this all the time, you might be saying you accept other people, but do your actions really align with that? Because kids pick up on that and kids pick up on that at a very young age. And my daughter picked up on that. I mean, she has health concerns, and I think she picked up on that in kindergarten. You can say that you are here to meet the needs of all learners. But you're actually still saying that, and kids notice that. And so if we're saying those words in our classrooms and they don't have representation of children that are in there, your actions aren't aligned with what you're saying, that's for sure. And they notice that

Guy Stephens: 1:05:11

Right, yeah, I did share a couple of things on the screen while you were talking. And one of them was that the kids notice when when other kids are being left out, or when you're treating other kids differently. One of the other points that jumped out at me, for a couple of reasons, but was that idea that this social pain caused by exclusion is similar to physical pain. And of course, we deal a lot here with not only seclusion, but different forms of exclusion that happen quite frequently. And, I think people often underestimate the impact that it has.

Connie Persike: 1:05:47

I agree, people think that they're helping by removing them from a setting because their behaviors are so out of control. But then I'm like, you're kind of causing yourself to have more of what you don't want to have. Because the more excluded they are the less, they feel like they belong, and the more behaviors you're gonna see.

Guy Stephens: 1:06:07

Oh, yeah, absolutely. So, this has been fantastic. I appreciate you taking some time to join us today. And, want to thank you for bringing this topic, which I hope somehow can result in more libraries, somewhere, having more books. And, to practice what I preach, I think I'll print a copy off and take it down to our local librarian, see what I can do it. Maybe submit a copy to our school, who I'm sure after a lot of negative feedback would be probably happy to get something like this. So I'm going to take a step. And I would ask others that are watching to think about what you might be able to do, because these things really can make a difference. And with that, I just want to thank you for coming on today and sharing this presentation with us. Just want to ask if you have any any final thoughts or anything you want to leave us with as we wrap things up?

Connie Persike: 1:07:02

No, it's been really fun. Thank you for having me on. I will make the change to that mistake again. And I will send the slides over to you for anyone who wants them.

Guy Stephens: 1:07:14

Okay, fantastic. So if you are interested in the slides, you're welcome, and I'll put my email address in the chat here. But you are welcome to send me an email and Connie will share those, I'd be happy to share those with you as well. And of course, going to the website and getting those downloadable list would really be a great step for people as well. So think about what you can do. And with that kind of I'm going to thank you I'm just going to mention here real quickly, and you can hang around for a second. Our next live event is coming up actually on the 27th. We're on a little different schedule right now. Because we had a couple of changes to our schedule, but we're going to be getting back to the every other week. Although there are some more surprises in store with some presentations on weeks that we don't usually do this. But I believe that more is better. Next time we're gonna be talking to Jennifer Abbanat, who is an amazing member of our community here at the Alliance. I've known Jennifer for several years, even well before she was officially part of the Alliance. She has been participating in helping with our book studies, but is an amazing individual that's going to be talking about trauma and its impact on individuals with neurodevelopmental differences. So be sure to join us then. And I just saw one last comment here from Ginger. Ginger so good to have you here. Ginger said I would love the slides. This is so inspiring about what needs to be done and what can be done, mom of two exceptional needs kids here. And of course not only mom but I mean Ginger, look what I have sitting on my desk here. I have a great little book here written by Ginger Healy. From one changemaker to another. It's great to have you here. So Connie,

Connie Persike: 1:09:03

I want to say one thing. Since you're talking about Toronto next week, there is a new set with a character who has experienced trauma. I want to say that early reader they're not totally out yet, so I haven't been able to read them but they're written by Dr. Buyer saying her name wrong. But I can email, TV. It's mi n e c o n ta y I r. I love everything she does. She's a huge expert on trauma, I think in the UK. Okay, she's writing a chapter series with characters with trauma.

Guy Stephens: 1:09:40

wow, that sounds fantastic.

Connie Persike: 1:09:43

They're gonna be really great. I'm really excited.

Guy Stephens: 1:09:46

That's great. Yeah, if you can share that and maybe we can get a share up on social media to share out with folks that would be fantastic. Well, listen, thank you so much for being here. Connie. I want to thank everybody that joined us today for being part of this. And again, encourage you to share. Think about what you can do. I'm going to try to hold myself accountable. So Connie, since you and I are in touch on a fairly regular basis, asked me if I've sent this off to my school library.

Connie Persike: 1:10:19

I see you tomorrow at 9am.

Guy Stephens: 1:10:22

That's right. So I may not have it done by then. But I promise it's on my list. I think it's a great idea. All right. Well, thank you so much, and we will see everybody again real soon. And thank you, Connie.