Supporting Neurodivergent Learners

name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name name Hi, this is Dr. Osses El-Diva with another episode, The Weight of College Podcast. One of the great things about the podcast is the opportunity to connect with folks, connect with folks all over the world, folks doing amazing things. I initially started the podcast hoping just to connect with folks in my network. Full disclosure, it was an opportunity for me to reconnect with people, people that I hadn't seen, spoken to in a long time. That network has since grown exponentially and it is exalted. Today is another addition to that network. As always, what I'd like to do is I'm going to allow my guest to introduce herself to everyone out there. Dr. Tara Williams, will you mind introducing yourself to everyone? No, hi. I'm Dr. Tara Williams and I am a chemistry professor and a business owner of Innovative Collegiate Consultants, which I'm sure we'll talk about eventually. I work with neurodivergent students in middle school, high school and college. Wow. This is exciting. I was familiar with the business and so I knew we were going to be talking about that, but I'm eager to talk about to get into sort of what led you there and particularly to the population that you work with. So Dr. Williams, as with all of my guests, I asked if they have to identify a starting point for their own educational journey. Where would that starting point be for you, do you think? The starting point that maybe want to be on this track, Amy? I would say one of those moments where maybe things crystallized for you, where education became particularly significant to any kind of moment like that. So I would say 11th grade, 10th grade, 10th grade geometry was sort of when I had like an aha moment where I had always struggled with math and I couldn't understand why we were just writing on the board and it was the 90s. I think about the fact that we just were writing on the board and I really struggled visually with understanding things and why I struggled so much in math and why I had always struggled in math and my geometry teacher handed me a cube and I held it in my hand and I moved it around and I looked at it and I was like, wow, this makes sense to me. I can hold this in my hand. I can understand it. And now maybe if I can visualize things or my teachers can help me visualize things, I can understand math. And so I would say that was sort of my first aha moment in I'm not bad at math. I'm just not understanding the way that my teachers are trying to have me understand. Wow. Yeah, that absolutely sounds like a significant moment. Absolutely. Yeah, for I think, so I had a conversation with this student last week and he's a young man, maybe eighth grade. And I was asking him about his experience in junior high and he said, right now school just feels like the place where I go. And so it was a conversation about the importance of college. And I said, I remember feeling like that. And I said, it wasn't really for me until I got to college where it was like, wow, like education just changed for me. And but it sounds like for you this particular moment, right? This happens a little earlier for you. At that point, Tara, tell us if you can, what, which direction were you headed? Was college part of the plan? Was what, what were you thinking at that moment? Is it a 10th grade, Tara? What were you thinking about at that moment? For sure. I always thought college was the plan. And if not, my parents, I'm first gen. So my parents were like college as part of the plan when I was in like the fourth or fifth grade. I was always a good student, but I really did struggle in some processing. I great at English and reading. I could, my mom said I could read when I was like four years old. I loved English and reading and those kind of things made sense to me. But science and math were so hard. Like once again, like because of for the, I feel like for the English and their reading, I could make it up in my mind, right? Like, I think that's the most amazing thing about reading that I try to get, tell students to read now because it's so important. And like, that's your getaway. That's you make it up in your mind until they make a movie about it, right? So I feel like, but for math and science, they're just telling you like the, you know, quadratic theorem exists or whatever, right? And you're just like, okay. Or like, and it's so funny that I became a chemist, but or that these are these things called Adams that we didn't see until like the 1970s, the scanning electron microscope, but people knew about them or came up with them in the 1800s, right? So to me, it was just like things that I couldn't see I really struggled with. So for me, like I always struggled as a visual learner. So I thought when I went to college, you know, I'm good at English, I'm good at reading, I'm good at dissecting things. So I'll be an attorney. Like, so that made sense to me. Like college made sense to me because I was a good student and I was like a scrapper. Like I could make myself get through stuff. That was no problem. But but being from a small town and first gen, it was scary. Like the thought of going away and social experiment that is college is for sure scary, but I still love to learn. I love to read. So to me, it wasn't the choice of was I going to go? It was just maybe what my major was going to be, how confident I was in my own intelligence because I grew up like a big fish in a little pond. But that's not the way that the real world exists. So you I love how you sort of characterize yourself as you are a scrapper and you would you would get through things. And I given your, you know, given the work that you do now, it I can tell and feel free to correct me or refute me. But we don't just want kids to kind of be scrappers and to get through, right? That education have that kind of educational experience. What is it that you knew you were going to go to college? You have this experience. All of a sudden, you can visualize something. You can visualize these concepts. What is it that led you to chemistry? I always tell people I got lost on the way to law school because that was always that was the plan in my mind. And every career test, whatever, everything that we do in middle school, high school, I always got a lawyer. I've taken one since my PhD in chemistry and got a lawyer. So I don't know. Maybe that's in my next career. But I mean, I liked the law and the thought of it. And my big brother's a lawyer. But I when I was sitting in working at some law firms when I was 19 in college, I hated it. Like I was inside and I was like, this cannot be my life forever. So I was this was in like early 2000s and forensics was huge. Like everyone was in a crime scene investigation and it looked like the best thing ever. So at the time, I was a criminology and English lit major because for law school, I could do anything. So I loved criminology and they were like, well, if you want to do forensic science, you have to be a chemist. So I switched to chemistry right after my sophomore year of college. So that's kind of what led me there. I appreciate you talking about that and sharing that experience with us. Because so I still work with first year students. I teach like a college success course and help students figure out, you know, potential majors and career pathways. And I have a lot of students that want to do forensic science. And so but think that they have to do sort of the criminal justice. And I said, no, I think you've got to do chemistry. You've got to. So thank you for. Yeah, six six. Always happy to talk to your students, too, if you ever. Yeah, absolutely. That's actually has someone who changed their mind a lot. Like I always nobody's seen Sun and Law like none of my students. But I don't know if you've seen Sun and Law with Pauli Shore, but he has like 7000 majors. And that's how I feel like I was like I changed my major like four times. But no regrets there because I think I would have been miserable if I had if I hadn't decided to make the change. Was there ever any pressure from your parents as a first gen to to choose a particular major? I mean, here you had law school sort of in your sights early on. When when you deviated from that, was there any you know, any criticism? Did parents get upset? Anything like that? No, I mean, in fact, when I left my college advisor's office, I had like a 3.9 at college at this point. And my advisor was like, you didn't do well in the math, S.A.T. like I don't think that you should change majors. Advisor who I never knew. And I immediately call my mom crying like maybe I shouldn't do this. And my mom was like, you're not going to let someone who doesn't know you tell you what you can't do. Like, what's the harm? We take college algebra. That's where I was going to have to start. But I'd taken like two sciences that weren't, you know, just G.E.s. And I take like stats and things that were math G.E.s. So I had to start from scratch and my mom was very, very, very like, no, like we're at least going to try it. At first, I think they thought I had little nuts. Like, are you really going to go from, you know, from law to STEM? Like, do you know how hard STEM is? And I was like, yeah, I guess like, well, see, right? The negativity of the moment. But, but no, they were very supportive. They just wanted me to do well. I mean, I think at that point, my mom was like, please just pick a major career and stick with it and let's decide, especially because I was on Florida, Florida Merit Scholarship. So blessed to have that. So, so yeah, they were very understanding and they just wanted me to be happy. I love that. I love that. And that's great that your parents wanted that for you. They just wanted you to be happy. You, you pointed out something I think really important. You talked about the your advisor and this academic advisor, maybe discouraging you or at least asking you to think about right your decision. But I think a lot of students have this experience with an advisor, as somebody who doesn't know them and who, you know, their only interaction is maybe when I've got to pick courses or I maybe having second thoughts about my major. What advice would you give a young person who is trying to make sense of this interaction or, you know, trying to understand what is my relationship to this person and they're giving me this information, but I don't know that I necessarily agree with it. I mean, I would say first off, I do think most people in academia have people's best interest at heart, right? So even with her, I don't, I'm on the advisor experience I had, I don't think it was trying to be negative, but I also think sometimes adults don't understand that when you're talking to a young person, how much that matters, right? Because we see that person as the expert, the person, right? So if they're telling you that, like I said, I immediately cried and called my mom because I was like, well, maybe she's right. And so I think that people have their, the advisors have their best interest at hand, but also you know yourself better than anybody else, right? And if it's a big change or maybe you're just thinking about it, like I said, I had to take college algebra and I think I took college algebra before I could take anything else. So for me, I would say if you're interested, maybe take one or two classes and don't make it this entire life change just to see if you like it. And then if you like it, then I think it's a different story. And so where even sometimes I think even with advisors, sometimes they give students a really heavy load per semester and that's something even in STEM that I'm kind of like, do we have to take calculus, chemistry and bio of all in the same semester? Or maybe we can put off calculus because it's not, you know, we don't have to take that second semester, the next course in that. So, so yeah, I mean, I think a lot of times sometimes advisors are advisors that are separate. Sometimes they're professors. So maybe they don't have the full picture of everything, right? So I would say everyone's doing their best, but I think watching words sometimes is super important because I know I was so discouraged when I walked out of there and it ended up great. So, and I didn't see that advisor again. That would be my other. If it's not, if it's something that you're really struggling with and that's the only interaction you get and it's not good and you can find another one. Oh, I appreciate that. Yeah. Yeah. Because I try it, try it. What do you get to leave? It's one class. Yeah. If you decide, oh, maybe that this isn't for me because it's so hard. That's why I struggled because there's so many amazing things to study and learn about and classes to go to that. I know I did change my major a bunch because I was like, oh, I'm going to do this and I'm going to do that. And so maybe I should have just taken a one course and then decided if that's what I wanted. Well, fortunately for you, it sounds like everything paid off. It did, it did. But it was changing from to chemistry was a lot. Like I my life drastically changed in terms of time and the difficulty. And that scrappiness definitely had to come back like a thousand percent because I was finishing a degree in three years that everyone else finishing four. Yeah. Wow. Wow. The. Now, you currently teach chemistry, correct? I do. When did you decide? I think I want to do this. I think I want to teach chemistry. So a PhD in chemistry is fully funded, typically. So but part of that funding is teaching until you have like a research dollars that are for you. So I went into my PhD at twenty three and they immediately stuck me in a classroom with, you know, some students older than me, some students, 18. There wasn't that much of a difference. And I had had some not great experiences in college with my science professors in terms of classes were really large. My TAs were just trying to be a grad student themselves and get everything done that they had to do. So I sort of thought when I became a T.A. I really want to do a good job with this. I don't want to be like some of my TAs that made me feel like I was an annoyance just by asking questions. So when I became a T.A. I tried to take it really seriously and I really liked it. And then throughout my PhD, I was teaching and when I was done, I kind of had the same thought I did about law school like, oh, my God, am I going to work in a lab with no windows for the rest of my life? Is this is this going to be like my life? So for me, I was like, well, I really like teaching and and this is something I could see myself doing. And so I started applying and I did some adjuncting and then I got a full time position nine years ago. Wow, congratulations. Thank you. I teach at a community college, which I love. Yeah. I knew I didn't want to do research, but we get to help so many students and do so many different things that I really love the community college system. I imagine as one as a faculty member, but as a particularly as a faculty member to community college, you do spend a lot of time helping students navigate just the school system, the educational system. Is that correct? Yeah. I mean, I think we are, you know, there's only so many counselors and counseling hours. And once again, it's like everybody, as you know, in education, we're all over, overworked. So, so a lot of times, yeah, they'll, the students will come and be like, Hey, like, what do you think I should do next semester? Or, or maybe we're the first, the first chemistry course. I love the intro course. It's one of my favorites to teach. And sometimes we do have students who are like, Hey, like my mom wants me to be a nurse, but I hate chemistry or I don't like biology or I don't like working with people. So also having that discussion, I will, maybe that's not for you then, right? Or, you know, or I really don't want to, I want to be a doctor or something, but I don't want to go to school for the next, you know, 11 years or whatever it is. And so then we have the conversation. Well, what about being a nurse or what about thinking about PT or, you know, there's a lot of different things or things that they can consider where, you know, there are other options or you get students from day one that are like, I'm going to be a doctor. And then I end up writing their medical school recommendations four years later. So I think it just depends on the student and where they're at. But I kind of feel like chemistry is also one of those classes that makes you decide if this is what, is this really what you want to do? Yeah. Wow. Well, thank you. Thank you for the work that you're doing there on that end. But you talked earlier about the, your company and about this other work that you're doing. Where did that idea, where did the idea for that company and that work come from? I think working with so many different populations of students was when I first got out of my PhD, I moved back to Florida and was working at a college there and was teaching students. And I was really seeing, even from my experience five years before my undergrad, like what a struggle it is for different people to learn in different ways. And that was also probably the first time that I had students as being a professor, not just a TA, but a professor where students would come to me with their letters and say, Hey, I get accommodations. And so then I was kind of like, Oh, what are accommodations? And, and so learning to look into it and be like, Oh, I get extra time on my test or I get to, you know, get up for a few minutes or whatever the accommodations were, and I would have a conversation with the students. And then I was like, wow, like this isn't, you know, this is really amazing that this exists. And I kind of went like a scientist down the rabbit hole. And then also like learned a lot about executive functioning. And I was only teaching part time. So I started working with students in Florida on this of like, I've just always been like a great organization, time management planner, focuser. And so I was like, this is just teaching other people to do the same thing. Right. Like students who struggle and then looking at it in a different way. So to me, I think I had just gotten out of school. I tell people all the time, like when you're in school, so long, like once you leave that, it's kind of a hard, like transition to make because you have friends and you have people and you have a community for 10 years. And then it's like, Oh, go be an adult with other people. So, so to me, I was like, Oh, I can just be around other college students and teach them to be better at this. And so through that and those experiences, I worked with students with autism. I worked with students with ADHD. I worked with students with anxiety and depression and substance abuse. And I really enjoyed it. And then I was like, I really want to live in California. So I moved out to California in 2015. I've been out here 11 years and I started teaching a bunch of different community colleges and started working with students and colleges here. And it's just kind of really grown and expanded from there. Wow. The did you find that there was really a need for this kind of work? Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Once again, I think schools do it really well and accessibility centers and things like that. But a lot of times if you have a student, especially at like maybe 10 years ago, I would almost always get students who are already in trouble. There are again, academic probation. And when we have the conversation, they're already like, Oh, well, I was like, Oh, well, what a combination is there you're using? And oh, I don't use those anymore. I'm like, okay, so that three months between high school and college, so you've always had them, you decided you didn't need them anymore. And they're like, yeah. And so, and oh, I'm not taking my medication anymore for, you know, ADHD or whatever. And I just decided that I didn't need help. And so then we're like, okay, well, maybe you do. So trying to figure out how important those accommodations are for the students. And, you know, there's just a lot of shame that comes with not doing well. And there's a lot of shame that comes with admitting that I don't think the same as everybody else. I think that's gotten way better. And I think that students are much more likely or to tell their parents or parents are much more likely to to seek out people like myself to be like, Hey, they're going to probably need a little extra help, especially on that tough transition to college. So there's definitely a need for it. And there's, as we know, there's more and more neurodivergent students that are going to college all the time. The thank you. Thank you for that. Yeah, I'd certainly, I think I've seen it more. And I've always, I don't know, it's, you know, on my end, right, I'll get notified if a student needs accommodations. But oftentimes, sometimes those accommodations or that notification doesn't come till mid-semester sometimes, sometimes it never comes. And I've had students come to me and say, well, you know, and so sometimes, I don't know, I think every university kind of handles it differently, but I think I think I'd like to think, yes, we are getting better. I think. But I appreciate because not only did you talk about sort of the gap that you've noticed, but sort of over time, how I mean, there maybe not as much shame around it. So students are more apt to seek out the help, to acknowledge it, to say, you know, I need these supports. So thank you for that. Now, typically, if, who is it that reaches out to you for your support? Is it a parent? Is it a student themselves? Most of the time, it's a parent. We get a lot of parents, like I said, whose students are either sort of in academic trouble or they're worried about the fact that they've always had supports and when they get to college, especially if they're coming from out of state or, or I also just get a lot of parents who are like, I've been helping them for 12 years. Like I want our relationship to be different. I want it to be based on whatever, because this is also like I said, a big social experiment, right? Of college of you've never lived with anyone, but maybe your brother or sister. Now we're going to put you in a room with two other people, right? We're going to give you a lot of time. We're going to give you maybe no sleep. We're going to add all these social things in there. Eating habits, everything's different. And then I think parents want to be there for those issues rather than academically, Hey, did you check your email today? Did you check your learning management system today? Or so to us, it's kind of like, no, we got it. Like let's, let's see what we can do and we'll let you know. We will keep you updated, but, but let us try to handle that so that you can work on the other things that they need you for. It sounds like, well, one, thank you because it's clearly there's a lot that goes into this. And, and, and when you frame it like that, I, a lot of my students are commuters, but there are countless students that are living on campus, right? And so they're, they are experiencing this, this seismic change, right? This big shift in their lives and in how they've done education and the routines around it. So, so if there's sort of thank you for, for framing that for us, it sounds like a heavy lift. I mean, it sounds like one, it was a heavy lift for mom and dad or anybody else helping the student. But for you, it sounds like a heavy lift. Do you have a team that supports this work or how many are there? We have about 10. Most of them are part-time. A lot of our staff are either former K-12 or maybe still K-12 teachers. And then we have a few of our coaches, tutors, whatever you want to call them, that are in an LMFT program. So they're learning how to be family therapist or they're in a therapy program. So they're patient kind, want to work with this population, understand the population. And then we have subject tutors for things like business, math, foreign language, things that students really struggle with. And we do give them some training and let them know how to do that. And we do give them some training and let them know who our population is. So that they also know the best sort of ways to work with that. But yeah, we have about 10 to full-time people on staff and everyone else is just depending on schedule and how that works with the students. Wow. Wow. I am so glad. I'm so glad that you're doing this work. I'm so glad that you're available to these students. Because yeah, you again, like I think I don't know why I maybe took for ground aid or didn't really think about sort of the just the ship for a lot of these kids. It's not just if there's so many different experiences that they're having. And so I'm glad that this service is available to them. So congratulations to you. Thank you. It's also just changed, education has changed so much in terms of technology for the good and the bad, right? I tell, you know, when I think about even my friends who are like, man, my kids are struggling and I didn't struggle in this way. And I'm like, yeah, but we had like a syllabus and we had maybe a learning management system. Like I remember getting like Blackboard or something. My, but like everything was there, right? Our teachers communicated with you in class, which we now know students who are neurodivergent, if you say something, it doesn't necessarily mean that they got it. Right? We should probably write it down. We should do things. But now like with technology, there's just constant ding after ding after ding. They're getting a million notifications. It's easy for us. I'm sure even you, I mean me, like I get notifications and I'm like, oh, look at that later. Right. And I feel like sometimes this stuff is posted in their syllabus. Sometimes learning management systems, sometimes in announcements, sometimes professors also have a Google drive. Like there's just so many places, email and things to look that I think with technology, it's there's a lot of amazing things about it. But I think it does make things more difficult for the generation since I was in college. You talking about all of that now I'm overwhelmed. I think I'm feeling, I'm getting a little bit of anxiety here now. Because you're right. Like and even from, you know, as like you said, as you pointed out, right, even for me and for us as faculty, there is a lot to manage. There is a right, all kinds of notifications and things. And so now I'm thinking about my students and I know for me, I go through this process. I feel like every semester where it is, how do I streamline? How do I streamline? How do I, how do I, where I, the communication is streamlined and I'm not using all sorts of different things. But or even like you said, it's more than just saying it in class. Where else can I reinforce? So, so thank you for again, just the context and the framing. You know, Tara, before, before we go, I would love to get your thoughts on the advice that you might share with students who are feeling overstimulated, who are trying to manage all of sort of this information and that's coming at that. I mean, I would always say ask for help, right? Learn to become an advocate, which I know, I do think this generation does that a lot better than maybe I did where we were taught like, no, your professors and your teachers are like up here and you're here, right? So, but I think asking for help before it comes too late. And as you know, ask your professors, ask your teachers, ask people for help because we don't know, I tell students all the time, no, I don't know. No one knows what I want better than me. So, if you want to know what I want, don't ask each other, ask me or, you know, if you go to the tutoring center and ask for help or, you know, there are plenty of people that one of you professors included and I know that that's not the case, not things that were the case 100% of the time, but I feel like telling people what's going on, I tell my students all the time, if you know you're going to miss an exam or if there's something going on where we can reschedule, we can work around it. If I am much more likely to work with you, if you don't let me know two minutes before the exam starts, right? Let me know what's happening and a lot of students do feel comfortable, but I think it's us having to say that, right? To say come to us, talk to us. Like we're scary people sometimes even though I can't imagine either of us being that way, but I know my students that it's just scary to talk to you and I'm like, well, I'm just like everybody else. But yeah, a learn to self advocate is the best advice I can give to students and help having parents help them learn to self advocate in high school. I know that even with my own parents, like really wanting to do it for me, but telling me, no, you have to do it because they knew like that they're not going to be at college with me, I'm going to be far away. And so yeah, I think asking for help and learning how to advocate for yourself and learning all the resources on campus and not being scared to say, I don't know is like that's that's what people on campus are for. That's what academia is for. We really are trying to give that warm handoff if we just know what's going on. Yeah, I appreciate that. And I couldn't be more. Tara, thank you. Thank you for your story today. Thank you for the work that you're doing before you go for our listeners and viewers out there. If they want to connect with you, how would they do that? So we always do a free consultation and just meet and sort of see where the student is at. So you can find that on our website at innovativecollegiateconsultants.com and that has our sort of social media with tips and tricks. And I also have a book coming out in the summer about my work with neurodivergent students. So that'll be up there. And that's with some case studies talking about my own educational experience and then some case studies with students where they started and then where they are now, which they are all happily living like whatever their journey was. That's awesome. That's awesome. Well, so what we'll do is make I'll be sure to share your links are shown out. If folks want to connect with you, they can. And I think pick up your book because I just like I try to do with this podcast. I think sharing the stories where people can maybe might find a connection or can relate to maybe one of my guests. I'm sure many of my guests will be able to relate to you is encouraging and is always helpful. So thank you. Awesome. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. Yeah, absolutely. This concludes another episode, The Way to College podcast. Thank you to my guests. Thank you to our listeners and viewers out there. Please remember to share the podcast, rate, subscribe, all of that good stuff. And we'll see you again soon. Thank you and bye bye. Bye.