By Ellen Raphael, teacher in Primary at Caxton College in Valencia

With Neurodiversity Celebration Week in mind, we invited Shona O’Callaghan to Conversations in Education, the Caxton College podcast, to talk about neurodiversity, true inclusion, common misconceptions, stereotypes and more.

Shona is a TEDx speaker, and CEO and founder of Empowering Creative Minds, an educational consultancy based in Valencia, with the aim to bring true inclusion to all schools. Shona has a master’s in education focused on multilingual learning and is a neurodiverse specialist teacher.

You can listen to the full podcast here.

Some of the key takeaways from the discussion were:

• We will know when we have reached true inclusion when neurodivergent people are treated the same way as glasses wearers are treated - we don’t discriminate against them or ask them about it. We just accept it as what it is.
• Screening for neurodivergence should ideally be done in a child’s dominant language.
• Don’t believe everything you see about neurodivergence on the internet! There is lots of misinformation on social media that isn’t helpful and is just clever marketing.
• You can’t cure neurodiversity. If you are neurodivergent, you will always be neurodivergent.
• IQ and neurodivergence are not linked. Albert Einstein was thought to have been dyslexic!
• Having neurodivergent role models for students is very important.