From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis
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Research from the National Center for Learning Disabilities tells us that roughly one in five children in the United States has a learning and attention issue — and one in three educators believes that's really just laziness. One in three. As both a teacher and a mom who has fought for accommodations, I know those numbers don't tell the whole story. The real story is nuance, and that's what this episode is about.
Today on Cool Cat Teacher Talk, a developmental psychologist from the University of Edinburgh and a neurodivergent CEO recognized by Forbes 30 Under 30 share what the research actually says — and what it means for the students sitting in your classroom right now. From the double empathy problem to the power of a quiet room that rarely gets used, this episode is packed with ideas that will change how you think about every student who learns differently. Whether you're driving to school, walking during your planning period, or unwinding at the end of a long day, this hour is for you.
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Key Takeaways for Teachers
- Communication breakdowns are a two-way street. Professor Sue Fletcher-Watson explains the double empathy problem (a concept from autistic scholar Damian Milton) which reminds us that when interaction falters, both sides share responsibility for building the bridge. Small steps like leaving instructions visible on the board or creating checklists for multi-part tasks can close that gap without singling anyone out.
- The safety net you provide may be the very thing that means students never need it. Sue shares that when hosting events, they designate a quiet room — and nine times out of ten it goes unused. It doesn't get used because it's there. Just knowing a safe space exists reduces the anxiety that would have sent a student there in the first place. Every classroom can benefit from this principle.
- Flow states are not a problem to manage, but should be an opportunity to harness. Monotropism, the deep spotlight-like focus many neurodivergent learners experience, can become a superpower when teachers design for it. Give students choices about the topic of a project (they still learn the skills), preview transitions with five-minute warnings, and help students capture their ideas before switching tasks.
- One harsh comment from a teacher can silence a student for years. Vanessa Castañeda Gill, diagnosed with autism and ADHD at 14, shares how a single remark in algebra class kept her from raising her hand until her senior year of college. She urges teachers to treat outbursts with care, offer processing time instead of rushing responses, and provide a consistent vocal tone. These are small adjustments that protect the trust neurodivergent students need to participate.
- When we design for the students at the edges, every student benefits. Research on Universal Design for Learning confirms that accommodations such as flexible seating, visible instructions, transition warnings, and processing time improve outcomes for all learners (not just neurodivergent learners). As Sue reminds us, diversity is normal. One in five kids is not a special circumstance; it's every classroom, every day.
Visual Summary
Here is a visual overview of the key ideas from this episode created from the transcript using Google NotebookLM. Then, I downloaded and edited it with Canva. This is meant to be a visual summary of the show but not comprehensive on this very important and broad topic. I suggest starting with some of the books and resources from our guests.
About Our Guests
Vanessa Castañeda Gill
Vanessa Castañeda Gill is the Co-founder and CEO of Social Cipher, which builds social and emotional learning curricula and video games for neurodiverse youth and the professionals who work with them. Inspired by her own journey as an autistic/ADHD individual and her time as a neuroscience researcher, Vanessa decided that social skills were a cipher worth solving and assembled a neurodiverse team of researchers, game developers, educators, and artists to form Social Cipher. Vanessa and her team have earned recognition as Forbes 30 Under 30s, MIT Solvers, and, most recently, LEGO Foundation Partners.
Website: socialcipher.com | X: @SocialCipher | Instagram: @socialcipher | Facebook: SocialCipherGame | LinkedIn: Social Cipher | YouTube: @socialcipher
Sue Fletcher-Watson
Sue Fletcher-Watson holds a Personal Chair in Developmental Psychology at the University of Edinburgh. She is interested in how children grow and learn, with a particular focus on development and neurodiversity. Her work draws on rigorous methods from psychology and applies these to questions with clinical, educational and societal impact. Recent studies have focused on the double empathy problem and what that means for interactions between neurodiverse people, including in the classroom. She is an editor of a new book, It Takes All Kinds Of Minds: Fostering Neurodivergent Thriving At School.
Books by this author:
- It Takes All Kinds Of Minds: Fostering Neurodivergent Thriving At School (Routledge, 2025)
University profile: University of Edinburgh | Podcast: Psychologicall | Bluesky: @suereviews.bsky.social
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
- Social Cipher — Game-based SEL curriculum for neurodivergent youth (free pilot program available for classrooms with 10+ students)
- It Takes All Kinds of Minds: Fostering Neurodivergent Thriving at School (Routledge, 2025) — Edited volume by Sue Fletcher-Watson and colleagues
- The Double Empathy Problem — Concept by autistic scholar Damian Milton
- Monotropism — Theory of attention in neurodivergent individuals
- National Center for Learning Disabilities — Source for the 1-in-5 and 1-in-3 statistics
Full Episode Transcript
Read the Full Transcript (Click to Expand)
This transcript has been lightly edited for readability. Timestamps correspond to the audio/video version of this episode.
[0:24] Vicki Davis: Roughly 1 in 5 children in the United States has a learning and attention issue, and that's what we're talking about today. Neurodivergent. For some background, neurodivergent includes students with ADHD, autism, dyslexia, dyspraxia, and other neurological differences. And if you're a teacher, you already know this. You see it every single day. Your classroom is beautifully diverse in the way students think, learn, and experience the world. And mine is too. But here's something that should bother all of us. Other research from the National Center for Learning Disabilities shows that about 1 in 3 educators believe that what's sometimes labeled learning or attention issues is really just laziness. We've seen it. We've heard it in our frustration. We might have even felt it. But today, my hope is to help us do better and learn more about neurodivergence, to see that it is more nuanced than this. Today we have two remarkable guests who are going to help all of us — teachers, parents, and administrators.
[1:51] Vicki Davis: First, you'll hear from Sue Fletcher-Watson, a professor of developmental psychology at the University of Edinburgh. Then we'll hear from Vanessa Castañeda Gill, co-founder and CEO of Social Cipher, who was diagnosed with autism and ADHD at age 14 and hid it for six years. Vanessa turned her own journey into a mission to help neurodivergent youth build self-advocacy and competence. So whether you're a teacher trying to reach that one student who seems to be somewhere else, a parent fighting for accommodations, or an administrator wondering how to build a truly welcoming school for everyone, this episode is for you. Let's dig in.
[3:36] Sue Fletcher-Watson: Yeah, absolutely. It was really important to us that it was an edited volume with loads of different people contributing chapters. We worked really hard to reach out to people — experienced practitioners, a very neurodiverse group of authors who bring a lot of lived experience as well as their professional knowledge — and to think about intersectionality, to think about diversity in other ways of gender or ethnicity and so on, that we could really embody our values in the book itself.
[4:05] Vicki Davis: There are these topics — neurodiversity is one of them, and honestly AI is another one — where everybody has their own experience and we're an expert in our own experience. But just like AI can look different over here and different over there, the word neurodiversity means it's diverse, right? Do you ever find that all of these people who write sometimes really have different opinions about this topic?
[4:30] Sue Fletcher-Watson: I do think we get a real diversity of opinions. That's kind of the point — we're not trying with this book to be really didactic, you must do these precise things, and then your classroom will officially be inclusive and all of your students will thrive. You just can't say that about a classroom, right? You've got to think about all sorts of variations in terms of educational system. I'm based in the UK. You're based in the States. But what we do find is that there is increasing rates of diagnosis of these diagnostic groups that are associated with neurodivergence — things like autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia. There's increasing awareness of these things in the classroom. Young people themselves and their families have a stronger focus on their child's rights to inclusive, effective education. And I think that is putting a lot of teachers and other education practitioners in a situation where they're feeling a little bit uncertain. Is my knowledge good enough? Are my skills good enough for this class? And we really wanted to put something out that would help guide and reassure, to some extent, those teachers.
[5:46] Vicki Davis: But let's talk about fixing. I have been blessed with three remarkable children, all different, and I'm thinking about one of them. I had a particular math teacher with him. He has a working memory issue, ADHD, you know, all these different things. We had worked really hard to accommodate and his grades really turned around. He was really learning math. And so we had our parent-teacher conference and the teacher said, I was so excited — we fixed him. We don't have to accommodate anymore. And I'm just sitting there like, I mean, mouth open. This fixing thing has been around a long time. Like we just want them to fit in, to fix, to not notice. But what are we doing with that attitude?
[6:26] Sue Fletcher-Watson: It's such an unhealthy way to think about things. And the title of our book, right? It Takes All Kinds of Minds is really a reminder that we want those different ways of thinking about the world, right? They enrich our lives. They're fantastic in our businesses, people solving problems in different ways, viewing the world in different ways. It's not just ethically and emotionally wrong to say to a young person, there's something wrong with you, we need to fix it. It's just strategically wrong for society as well. We really want to think about meeting in the middle, right? We expect young people to make an effort in the classroom, but we need to meet them halfway as well. It's really the idea of building the bridge from both sides, rather than expecting the kid to do all the work to fit in, to catch up, to become more “normal.”
[8:15] Sue Fletcher-Watson: So the three basic principles of the neurodiversity paradigm. One is that neurodiversity occurs naturally — diversity is normal. We should stop behaving like it's very surprising when all of these kids turn up in school with different profiles, different learning needs, different sensory experiences. That's what normal is. Another part is the idea that no one way of being is better than another. And then the third part is this idea that when we're understanding the experiences of neurodivergent people of any age, we can think about those experiences in similar ways that we think about other kinds of minorities. We can think about stereotyping, clichés, prejudice, and discrimination. Those are the three elements, and we use them as guiding principles to inform the research that I do and the way that we try to translate that research into the classroom.
[9:55] Vicki Davis: So let's talk about the double empathy problem. What is it and how does it relate to exactly what you're talking about?
[10:02] Sue Fletcher-Watson: The double empathy problem is such a magical concept. It was generated by an autistic scholar, Damian Milton, based here in the UK. Essentially what he's pointing out is that communication is a two-way street, right? It takes two to tango. And if we are struggling to connect, I can't put it all on the other person. It's a mutual problem. I'm not fully understanding the way they communicate and what they need, and nor are they fully understanding what I need. It goes back to that idea of building that bridge from both sides. What we have done, especially with autistic kids, is label them as having communication deficits. And we haven't fully recognized that as non-autistic people, we also have a responsibility and a role to play in that communication. The implications go much wider — you can take that same logic and apply it to so many different scenarios, whether the way that you're teaching is reaching the learner's needs.
[11:54] Vicki Davis: One example of this is in my experience, and some of this comes from mom, and some of it comes from teacher. Extensive multi-part instructions can really be a challenge. Let's say you have half of your students who can follow extensive multi-part instructions, but a lot of your neurodiverse students, that's just not going to be possible, particularly the first time. So creating checklists, helping take it one step at a time — I teach technology, so I have a lot of multi-part instructions. The double empathy of understanding is what I might do, and what I perhaps did in my early days of teaching was, well, that half needs to learn how to keep up. But we're still growing. So I think the double empathy problem is not an excuse for the student, but it is a reason for us teachers to learn how to be better communicators.
[13:16] Sue Fletcher-Watson: That example of multiple instructions is such a powerful one, because it's such an everyday challenge in the classroom. Little things like if you've done a slide deck or you've written something up on a whiteboard — just leave it up there for the rest of the class so everyone can look up and refer to it when they need to. Really small things can make a big difference. If we're not providing that scaffolding, they are going to experience being a failure in the classroom. They're going to feel like they're dumb. They're going to disengage from learning. And we know, at least in the UK, that there is a pipeline from being neurodivergent to being excluded from school to interfacing with criminal justice and potentially ending up in prison. I firmly believe it starts with feeling like a failure in the classroom.
[15:17] Vicki Davis: We as educators are body language experts, right? We're taught to interpret lack of eye contact, interruptions, off-topic comments as behavior problems. Do we need to reinterpret those same behaviors through a double empathy lens?
[15:40] Sue Fletcher-Watson: Absolutely. I think approaching that young person with empathy and with a recognition that what's happening here is not necessarily negatively motivated is key. So this is a kid who's got a lot to say. This is a kid who's brimming with ideas. Can we say, hey, Sarah, I can see you've got so many ideas that you want to share with the class, and I love that about you. But I also want to think about how we can make space for other people. Can we work together on what we can do when you've got a great idea? Articulating it not as a problem within the individual, but thinking about what are we doing here as a class.
[17:08] Vicki Davis: Some recent work also extends to a triple empathy problem. Take us the next step and explain that to us simply.
[17:24] Sue Fletcher-Watson: The triple part is the two people — pupil and teacher — and then the third part is the system in which they're working. The curriculum, the exams, the coursework, the way that is marked — those are going to be more or less accessible to different kinds of kids. It's this idea of being a team with your pupils and thinking about how do we together navigate a path through this system. Where are the firm lines that can't be crossed, and where is there room to flex? Maybe for an assignment, you could choose between a written essay or a poster or a presentation. If you can create that space, then you're creating that way for all those different kinds of young people to engage.
[19:13] Vicki Davis: I first saw this about 18 years ago. I had co-founded a project called the Flat Classroom Project, based on Thomas Friedman's book The World Is Flat. We were merging classrooms together in China, Bangladesh, the Middle East, and Austria, and they present at the end online. We had a young man — he was autistic, he wanted to present. The teacher asked if we could all agree to just be patient and wait. Well, we got to the end and I messaged the teacher in Austria. She said, Vicki, we were over here crying. They had let him be in a different room, put on his headphones with the microphone, talking to the camera. He didn't stutter. He was so eloquent. We were in the other room cheering and crying. It was such a great example — we have this diverse classroom, but do we have diverse ways of presenting?
[21:15] Sue Fletcher-Watson: I love that story. The thing I think that's also going on there is that student knew they had the support of their teachers. They're going into it knowing if I do stutter, no one's going to interrupt me. And I think that's incredibly powerful. Sometimes teachers can worry about being too soft. But when you are offered all the support you need, sometimes you then don't need it. When we're hosting events, we will have a designated quiet room. And I would say nine times out of ten, that quiet room doesn't get used. And I think it doesn't get used because it's there. Everyone knows it's there. They can go to it if they need it. And because of that, that anxiety never crosses that upper line. So I think that is a huge piece when it comes to helping our neurodivergent kids be the best they can be.
[23:24] Sue Fletcher-Watson: I just think you need to have the right attitude. You've got to be responsive to the particular class that you're teaching at this time in this place. If you have the right attitude as a teacher, the right belief system deeply held — understanding that people are different and that's okay, that people need different things in the classroom, and it is not a failing for a young person to need something that isn't part of the standard package — I think you will find yourself problem solving and developing your practice in the right way. The book is full of strategies and suggestions, but it's not a rigid, step-by-step didactic piece. It's much more about, okay, we're all on the same page, we all share this belief — what does that look like?
[25:39] Sue Fletcher-Watson: Monotropism is the idea that for quite a lot of neurodivergent young people, attention is like a single spotlight. Whereas for other people, there may be lots of beams of light that can filter out in different directions. But if you're more monotropic, your whole spotlight of attention is going to be on one thing. Which means if you're talking to me and I start thinking about my jumper, I'm sorry — the whole attentional beam has gone on the jumper, you're out of the picture. So you can see how that's difficult in a classroom. But also, once the beam is fixed on the right thing, it's amazing. That's where you get flow — a flow state. What I would say is that wherever possible, can you engage people's interests and passions in the learning? Give them choices. You're still getting the learning done, but you're also harnessing that flow state. And think about counting down to the end, giving people warnings, helping them manage that structure and taper off that flow.
[28:34] Vicki Davis: Part of it, from my experience, is respecting the need to know that a transition is coming. Instead of just saying, that's the end of the lesson — it's saying, hey, the bell is going to ring in five minutes. What can we do to write down where you are so that you don't lose all these good ideas? That's a mistake I made early in working with children — thinking that just because I could flip the switch and move on doesn't mean that there aren't kids who take time and space to have that transition.
[30:33] Sue Fletcher-Watson: When it comes to what is a prerequisite for learning — number one, you've got to be in class. In the UK we have really high rates of neurodivergent kids just not attending school because their anxiety has got to such an extent that they're refusing. They have to be physically comfortable. They need to feel safe at school. They need to have a sense of belonging. So far from being soft on these kids, these things are a necessary first step to learning. You will not learn if you don't first have those things. This isn't about dumbing things down. This is about giving them the safe, secure foundation from which to show us how brilliant they are.
[34:52] Sue Fletcher-Watson: Something that my husband and I do every now and again — we just call it five things. We will sit down and try and think of the five things that matter most right now, and what are the things we're going to let go? It's a kind of pick your battles strategy. Sometimes if you just consciously agree: I'm going to let this go. I'm going to push this one forward. This is where I'm going to put my energy. The other thing I would say to those parents who are really struggling: if the effort you are putting in to support your kids is known to your children, that will support them more than any difference that you can make. Just your willingness to fight — your willingness to stand up on their behalf. That love and care will last a lifetime, and they will always know that you were there for them. The happy ending comes from the love you show them more than it comes from whether they get extra time in their English exam.
[37:42] Vicki Davis: One of mine, who's well into his 30s now, just recently said, thanks for fighting for me, even when sometimes you had to fight me. And thanks for not giving up on me. My heart goes out to you, Sue — that's one of the hardest seasons of my whole life, helping my children be what I knew they could be. There's all the research and then there's living it every day. The beauty of research is when it can impact how we better live.
[40:28] Vicki Davis: What a powerful conversation that was with Sue Fletcher-Watson. Our next guest, Vanessa, was diagnosed with autism and ADHD at 14 and spent years believing she needed to be fixed. Research tells us that autistic youth are four times more likely to develop depression. And Vanessa lived that statistic. But now she's leading a company with a majority neurodivergent team, recognized by Forbes 30 Under 30, MIT, and the Lego Foundation. Her story is a testament to what happens when we stop trying to make students fit the mold and instead help students discover the power in how their minds work.
[41:51] Vanessa Castañeda Gill: Diagnoses are a powerful tool. They can give a lot of clarity, but if you're not prepared or equipped enough with the right knowledge, they can also make you feel stereotyped. I had a really difficult time with my autism and ADHD diagnosis. It was the 2010s. There was not as much knowledge around neurodiversity, especially for neurodivergent girls and for neurodivergent people of color. So much of it was really about these Sherlock-like savants who were typically boys. And I felt like, all right, I'm autistic and ADHD — I have to fit this mold. And of course, I'm not that person. I'm a woman. I'm Latina. I spent so much time trying to squeeze myself into a box. I was also told when I was diagnosed that I probably wouldn't be able to connect with people “normally.” So I fell into depression. Anxiety. Hid my diagnosis for about six years. It was really tough.
[43:48] Vanessa Castañeda Gill: I became a neuroscience researcher in an effort, sadly, to fix my own brain. What I didn't expect was that through neuroscience, I realized I could use my special interest and my passion to help people. I was making friends through the things I was passionate about. And with my friends, we were engaging in music and movies and games where I never saw an autistic character that fully represented me, but I was able to piece together my identity through these different characters and stories. That was the starting turning point of creating Social Cipher.
[44:55] Vicki Davis: Research shows that neurodivergent youth spend about 41% of their free time playing video games, compared to 18% for their neurotypical peers. A lot of educators hear that and go, too much screen time. But you hear that and think something completely different. What do you see in that number?
[45:18] Vanessa Castañeda Gill: A lot of the timelines and objectives of video games really line up with neurodivergent traits. There are objectives, there are levels. They have a linearity, unlike the chaos of real life. It's a place where you can ground yourself. But the even bigger reason is that it's a place where you can be who you want to be. You can take action and try different things without this fear of judgment or rejection. That's really where the power in video games lies for neurodivergent young people.
[46:18] Vicki Davis: I had a student — there was something going on in class and she spoke up and said, I want y'all to know that I'm autistic. So that means sometimes I'm sitting back from the table. Mrs. Davis has given me a choice. Sitting up among you sometimes is just too much for me. Also, I can't be rushed. When you rush me, it makes me feel like my opinion is not respected. And listen, the difference that happened in my classroom for everybody — not just for her, but for everybody listening to her advocate for herself.
[47:14] Vanessa Castañeda Gill: That is everything that we do. Getting neurodivergent students to number one, embrace their identity. Know that it's not a burden. It's just a neurological difference that has its own strengths and challenges. The second piece is being able to advocate for yourself — understand what your own needs are, and then take that big step of advocating for those needs. And the last piece is that we hope young people are able to tell their own stories and advocate for others, pave the way for them.
[48:32] Vanessa Castañeda Gill: What really changed was when I met Ava, who was our first play tester. At the time she was six and a half. Now she's 14. Ava just reminded me of me when I was that age. I think it was at that point where I realized I've got to throw this whole narrative of fixing myself out of the window. I want her to never have the thoughts about herself that I had about myself. I want her to fully embrace who she is.
[50:37] Vanessa Castañeda Gill: Allowing for processing time. I think many of us who were maybe diagnosed later in life all know the feeling of a classroom discussion going on, and you have this idea forming in your head. You just need a little bit more time to process, and then by the time you have something to say, they've already moved on. There was this one time in algebra class — the classroom was really loud, I was facing some sensory overload and I had an outburst. I was a very quiet student. And I remember my teacher turned to me and said, “Who do you think you are?” That sparked rejection sensitive dysphoria — an intense emotional reaction to perceived rejection. I took that to heart. I didn't raise my hand in class until my senior year of college. So treating those outbursts with care is really important.
[52:50] Vanessa Castañeda Gill: What I would tell these students: there is absolutely nothing wrong with you. You are doing your very best with the tools you have. You are a unique person navigating a world that historically hasn't been built for you. You are not alone. There are so many of us out here and we are so ready to welcome you with open arms. You are going to find your place in the world. You are going to find your people. And it will get better.
[53:48] Vicki Davis: If you could go back and give 14-year-old Vanessa one message, what would it be?
[53:53] Vanessa Castañeda Gill: You are dealing with so much and you are doing it with so much grace. That is beyond your years. You should be very proud of yourself — and you're going to go really far.
[54:15] Vanessa Castañeda Gill: If you want to learn more about us, check out our free Inclusion library at Social Cipher — that's cipher with an I. We have free lesson plans, webinars, educational videos, plus our games, curriculum, and progress dashboard. And we're doing a free pilot program for any classrooms with more than ten students.
[55:39] Vicki Davis: Remarkable educators. I hope this episode has been one of those driveway moments for you. These two conversations changed something in me, and I hope they change something in you too. From Sue, the reminder that neurodiversity is the norm, not the exception. 1 in 5 kids. That's not a special circumstance. That's every classroom, every day. And the double empathy problem tells us that when communication breaks down, it's not all on the student — and it's not all on the teacher. It's a gap we need to bridge together from both sides. From Vanessa, the reminder that behind every diagnosis is a whole, beautiful person with gifts, struggles, and dreams. And when she tells us about not raising her hand in class until her senior year of college because of one teacher's harsh words, that should stop every one of us in our tracks. So here's my challenge for you this week. Pick one idea you heard today. Just one. Maybe it's leaving your instructions up on the board for the whole class, or giving a five-minute transition warning. Maybe it's creating a quiet corner that students know is there if they need it. Or maybe it's just pausing long enough for that one student to finish their thought. Small changes, big impact. You are making a difference. Get out there and be remarkable.
Other Shows and Content You May Enjoy
- Misconceptions About Kids With Learning Differences in the Classroom with Dr. Rebekah Dyer
- Amazing Grace Adkins – my 89 year old learning lab director and the most amazing woman I know (her views on learning differences are life changing!)
- Using Videos to Give a Voice to Kids with Autism with Teacher John Lozano (Note: This is a powerful show from my previous podcast)
- How to Help a Student Who is Always in the Principal's Office with Andy Jacks
- 22 Top Tips for Better Classroom Management with Vicki Davis
Disclosure of Material Connection: This episode includes some affiliate links. This means that if you choose to buy I will be paid a commission on the affiliate program. However, this is at no additional cost to you. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good for my readers and are from companies I can recommend. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” This company has no impact on the editorial content of the show.
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