I recently connected with my goddaughter about what it’s like to experience school with an ADHD brain. She doesn’t have a diagnosis, but it’s possible she will so I wanted her to know that there is nothing wrong with her brain, in fact many ADHD-ers are also gifted. Schools are often designed with one kind of learner in mind and it’s not kids who are neurodivergent. We work hard to make accommodations and modifications for more and more of our students. The more I hear about how neurodivergence manifests in people’s lived experience and how common it really is I wonder…where are all these neurotypical people anyway? Does this majority of people whom school is often designed for actually exist? Like our fingerprints, each of our brains is unique and we’re affected by epigenetics – the intricate combination of genetics plus experience that makes us who we are. I find it harder each day to experience that any sort of “typical” could be discovered amongst any group of humans.
Our love of the way the original early educators of Reggio Emilia practiced “school” was what originally brought Angela Carolina and I to teach together. We both love that they perceive the school as an organism – sensing ourselves in relationship to others in order to move together, like a school of fish. Research on interoceptive awareness is starting to validate that this way of existing leads to a sense of belonging. The more I sense myself, the more I can sense “other” without losing myself. I can feel that I am part of a group, part of nature, and where I end and others begin. In change-making processes I learn to sense which aspects of the work belong to me, which ones belong to someone else, and which ones belong to the group or the system. This is not to say that it happens smoothly because being in community, especially one that embraces change, includes resistance, friction, and a steady call for responsiveness. It is not sturdy or stable. And Sacred guest (season 1 ep. 5), Christian Martinez mentioned, “No matter where you are in this ocean called life , you’ll be okay if you just swimgood.”
In the US school was originally designed to achieve obedience and reinforce one way of thinking and working. Even in early childhood, where play can rule more often, we are fixated on preparing children to enter a system that’s not designed for them (or us!). Where are the cracks in the system? Where is it crumbling? How can we play in that space to decide what we want to mean by school? Where is there more time to practice and model sensing inward? To practice and model connecting outward? To learn to feel at home in our bodies? And eventually to design something that is both rooted in ancestral knowledge and innovative in the present.
We’ve been steeping ourselves in these questions for a few months now, and from here Season 2 of Sacred: Reclaiming Intuitive Teaching and Caregiving Relationships is emerging! Stay tuned for our trailer release in the coming weeks. We’ll give you a preview of the big ideas we’ll be excavating.We can’t wait to share it with you! If you haven’t listened to season 1 you can have a listen at any of these locations: Youtube, Apple, Spotify, Website.
If you’re interested in going deeper with the concepts I wrote about in this post here are the reading/watching recommendations:
A World Yet to Come, talk by Bayo Akomolafe
Toto Chan: The Little Girl at the Window, by Tetsuko Kuroyanagi
Children, Spaces, Relations: Metaproject for an Environment for Young Children, by Reggio Children
The Hundred Languages of Children: the Reggio Emilia Approach – Advanced Explorations edited by Lella Gandini, George Foreman and Carolyn Edwards (or 3rd edition: Experience in Transformation)
How to Change Your Body: The Science of Interoception and Healing Through Connection to Self and Others, by Saga Briggs
On a side note, you may have noticed that the voice in this post is singular instead of plural. That’s because Angela Carolina and I have decided to take turns writing to the community instead of writing one post together each month.. This way we’ll be able to share more about our individual experiences in the context of our collective work. We hope you’ll enjoy getting to know each of us in this way – let us know what you think!
With love and gratitude,
Lauren