Roberto Germán [00:00:01]:
Welcome to Our Classroom. In this space, we talk about education, which is inclusive of, but not limited to, what happens in schools. Education is taking place whenever and wherever we are willing to learn. I am your host, Roberto Germán, and Our Classroom is officially in session. Welcome back to Our Classroom, folks. Today I'm joined by JPB Gerald. Dr. Gerald, an adult educator and theorist, 2022, graduate of C U N Y, Hunter College, doing some great work. Has a book on the horizon that we're going to get into momentarily.
Roberto Germán [00:00:52]:
But you should know that through his writing, teaching, and podcasting and his public scholarship overall, he seeks justice for the racially, linguistically, and neurologically minoritized. Thank you for being here, Dr. Gerald.
Dr. JPB Gerald [00:01:11]:
Thank you for having me.
Roberto Germán [00:01:13]:
What a pleasure. What a pleasure. Well, I was introduced to you through Shawna Coppola, and she. She's a person that I greatly respect and I've collaborated with where we're in partnership. And so she recommended you when I said, I'm gonna have to check this guy's work out if it's coming from you, Shawna. So you come with high esteem. Dr. Gerald, just so you know, just so we're clear, let's get into your book, and it's on the way. Before I get into my questions, why don't you just share with us, share with the audience the title of your book, but also what inspired you to write this book?
Dr. JPB Gerald [00:02:08]:
Well, the title is Embracing the Exceptions: Meeting the Needs of Neurodivergent Students of Color. And, I mean, the inspiration was that I got diagnosed with ADHD, and I write about education. I mean, that's kind of the boring answer. But the impetus for the book itself was that I had written an academic book before, and I'll write more of them, but I wanted to reach a different audience. Academic books are. They're nice in your little cv, but nobody reads academics. And I wanted to reach an audience that was not inside the ivory tower. You know, I wanted to find.
Dr. JPB Gerald [00:02:52]:
Get this to people. You know, it's pitched at teachers, but, you know, you could read this book even if you're not an educator yourself. So if you have a parent, if.
Roberto Germán [00:03:03]:
You have a parent and your child has been diagnosed with ADHD, then you should probably grab a copy of this book or if you're working in the community, because different. What I've noticed is that there's folks who are engaging with youth in different capacities, not necessarily in the schoolhouse, and they might sometimes struggle to best support a child that's been diagnosed with ADHD. They don't necessarily have the strategy. So it sounds like this book might be a great resource for those individuals. Is that right?
Dr. JPB Gerald [00:03:37]:
Yeah. I mean, the fact of the matter is, it's the first book of its kind.
Roberto Germán [00:03:43]:
In what sense?
Dr. JPB Gerald [00:03:45]:
Yeah. Well, yeah. Which surprised me, because they always say when you put a book proposal together, like, why should I publish this book? Right? And I started looking around and, like, unless it's something that's been published and scrubbed from the Internet, because that could have happened. I couldn't find a book about this specific thing. Maybe some academic books, but I mean, a really public facing book that was specifically not just about neurodivergent students of color, but also from the perspective of neurodivergent students of color. I couldn't find one about neurodivergent students of color in general, but, like, specifically, if there's going to be one about us, I wanted it to be by us. So. And as you'll discuss, most of the book is really just our experiences.
Dr. JPB Gerald [00:04:35]:
So that, to me, was really important because I wish that this book had existed 30 years ago when I was in these situations.
Roberto Germán [00:04:47]:
Well, in the prologue, you mentioned the emotional journey of receiving an ADHD diagnosis. How did this diagnosis reshape your understanding of your past experiences both in and out of the classroom?
Dr. JPB Gerald [00:05:03]:
You know, the short version is that I realized I wasn't a problem. I'd sort of been treated not by everybody, but by people in certain positions of authority as kind of a nuisance or someone who couldn't get out of their own way, and they would get very frustrated with me. And then I get frustrated with myself because I didn't know I had this going on both in school and work. More recently at work. In fact, it was work that led me to go get the evaluation. And I also reflected back on all of my experiences where people would get mad at me, and I realized that most of them were picking up on neurodivergent traits. And it made me feel relieved because I was like, okay, well, at least there's nothing, quote unquote wrong with me. It also made me kind of mad that, like, they were just kind of picking on me and getting frustrated for things that I couldn't really control.
Dr. JPB Gerald [00:06:13]:
That isn't to say you can't work within the things you have. Like, there are things I've learned to do better since then, but, you know, they really did blame a lot on me, and it's just the journey, since the diagnosis, has been trying not to blame myself for things that are, you know, natural.
Roberto Germán [00:06:32]:
Yes. That's important. It sounds like you're giving yourself the necessary grace in order to be able to move forward in a healthy manner.
Dr. JPB Gerald [00:06:42]:
I mean, I'm trying.
Roberto Germán [00:06:46]:
Well, can you elaborate on the unique challenges faced by neurodivergent students of color that you discuss in your book, particularly at the intersection of ableism and racism?
Dr. JPB Gerald [00:06:58]:
Well, not to, you know, go too much into the history, which the book does to some extent. Right. Because it's in there. So just read it. But the way we think of disability in this country, at least, and it's true in some others, but we're here, has often been shaped by racism. Right. The way that we have constructed what we considered a person who is disabled has been shaped by people we basically didn't think were useful. And obviously, the way we've thought of people of color, particularly black people, but not exclusively, has aligned with that.
Dr. JPB Gerald [00:07:39]:
And I go into that slavery and all of that in the book. But now the problem is that you will find that there are people who truly do care, or at least claim to care about people with disabilities, but they don't really have a racial understanding. Right. Or you'll get people who care or claim to care about people of color, be they people of color themselves or not, but they don't really have a disability understanding. And so what I'm trying to do here is say it's not just a plus b, you must understand both of these things, which is true. It's that it's not really a and b, they're interconnected. And understanding the way that they overlap and are interconnected is a much more effective thing than just saying, here's an entirely new subject to learn. It's like, understand how these are the same subject is really what I'm trying to get at.
Roberto Germán [00:08:33]:
Yeah, that's good. That's good. That's real. It's. It's important, especially in a time in which there's resistance against concepts such as intersectionality. And here you introduced one that a lot of people are not really thinking about. A lot of people are not talking about, at least not in terms of the intersection. Right.
Roberto Germán [00:09:00]:
I think folks definitely talk about it isolation. But what you're bringing up here is a challenge to us, and I appreciate that your book emphasizes the importance of teachers understanding neurodivergent students unique way of learning. Can you share some effective strategies that teachers can implement to support these students better?
Dr. JPB Gerald [00:09:28]:
I mean, the, perhaps the best way I can encapsulate those strategies is to say the focus on, there's only one right way to do a thing is a big problem. I specifically go into that in one chapter. But almost all the strategies can be summed up as that. Right. I sometimes understand that there's only one right answer, like the end product. If you're like a math class, like the answer might be 42 or whatever, right.
Roberto Germán [00:10:01]:
But the way we get there, the way we arrive to that answer, I.
Dr. JPB Gerald [00:10:05]:
Understand also that sometimes you are teaching the process. But what happened to me, and I've talked to people and it happened to them too, was that teachers would either get way too focused on the fact that you did it a different way, even if you got it right, or they wouldn't really explain that what they were focusing on was the process and then the product didn't matter. Right. And you know, if you're listening to this and you're like, well, I don't do that. Great. So then tell your other teacher friends who don't do it because I always be an advocate, at least in my writing background. I always have to sort of like, I'm in Eight Mile. Think of what they're going to say.
Dr. JPB Gerald [00:10:48]:
Right. You know, so I try to think of what the disses are going to be to get ahead of it so that there really isn't a lot people can say. It's not that people can't disagree with me, but I'm trying to anticipate the holes in my argument. And so that's really. Yeah, it's the one right way. Or if there really does have to be a way to do a thing, then being very clear that what's being focused on is the way and not the product. That's probably the gist of it.
Roberto Germán [00:11:17]:
Absolutely. I'm going to have to start calling you Dr. B Rabbit with that Eight Mile reference you just snuck in there. Oh, man. So how thinking about cultural and racial context, how do cultural and racial context influence the way neurodivergence is perceived and addressed in educational settings? And what changes do you believe are necessary to create more inclusive environments? And I know the term inclusive is a trigger term for many people right now, and yet. Right. People on the front lines. We can't ignore the fact that we have all these different type of human beings coming into Our Classroom, whether we're talking about difference in culture, difference in race, difference in how they learn. And so maybe you could just share a little bit as it relates to the cultural and racial context.
Dr. JPB Gerald [00:12:23]:
It's kind of related to something I said a few questions ago about these things. People caring about one thing, not having the information about the other thing. Right. And I think as far as a change. And so it is understandable, especially as an educator, if you're trained in one discipline, that that's going to be the first thing you think of. Right.
Roberto Germán [00:12:49]:
Right.
Dr. JPB Gerald [00:12:50]:
That's not, that's any job career. So if you're trained as a special education teacher, you're probably going to see things through that prism, and that's not inherently bad. Same thing if you're trained on like, culturally responsive, culturally sustaining. Right. You're going to see things through that lens. The problem, similar to the a plus b thing I said, is that these things really are taught very separately. Training, I mean, very separately. A lot of the work that I do in the writing, especially my first book, but even this one, I feel a little like I'm throwing dirt in a hole that's already been dug.
Dr. JPB Gerald [00:13:32]:
Right. In the sense that this is like backfill. Like, you need to get to people as they're being trained. And what I mean is the special education programs or the culturally responsive, et cetera, programs, these other subjects need to be a central part of it and not just like a little elective that people take. Like, I just taught a class this past spring because I do adjuncting on the side for my main job, and it was for special education teachers, or at least for future special education teachers, but it was about language teaching because I was a language teacher and I brought all this stuff in there. Obviously, I brought everything into the same place because I can't do anything otherwise. But that was one class. Right.
Dr. JPB Gerald [00:14:19]:
They're special educated teachers, and they told me, no, I learned a lot in your class. Thanks for opening my eyes up to stuff. But, like, are they going to retain it? Because everything, everything else is just going to be. It's just one of many things they took. Right. So my point is, you know, I think there needs to be a. And you could look at this from either angle, a racial lens to every special education training and. Or a special education lens.
Dr. JPB Gerald [00:14:46]:
And I'm not, I don't even love the term special education, but it's just what they use to, you know, racial or anti racist training because, like, there's so much work that's happened in the last few years, like anti racism. Despite the backlash, there's still a lot of work going on. Right. But not as much of it is really focused on including disabilities or working with it. And also the definition of what is a disability is also limited. People don't really think about neurodivergence as a disability, unless it is so severe that it is so visible that you can't but ignore it, and then you just get stigmatized differently.
Roberto Germán [00:15:27]:
Interesting. In talking about you get stigmatized differently. That makes me think about students. It makes me think about personal stories. And I know that you included counter narratives in your book, which I think is particularly important. It's something we definitely do with our writing here in multicultural classroom. I'm wondering about these counter narratives of neurodivergent individuals of color. Is there a particular story that stands out?
Dr. JPB Gerald [00:16:04]:
Yeah, from the people I spoke to. One story that stands out is there's a person named Terry, and, well, that's not their name, but that's their pseudonym in the book. And they were explaining how when they were in. Most of the book is focused on adolescents, but they were explaining how being treated this way can affect you later. So she was in grads. Sorry, they were in grad school. These they them pronouns were in grad school. And they had some health issues that were exacerbated by their neurodivergence.
Dr. JPB Gerald [00:16:41]:
And they explained how hard they had to work to keep up with a lecture. They couldn't follow the professor, so they would, like, go back and write everything down afterwards and so forth. And then when health issues got in the way and made it so this delicate balancing act was impossible to balance, the program thought that they didn't care. Like they weren't trying hard enough. Right. And, you know, so there's that. And then on the same sort of same token, because they're sort of not trying hard enough is a big sub theme of the book, is that when I was in, I gotta say, 8th grade, you know, I had a former friend, he was my friend at the time, who, I don't know if they had any kind of neurodivergence or anything. I just know that he was disorganized.
Dr. JPB Gerald [00:17:24]:
Right. Which is a lot of kids are. But I remember the french teacher sitting him down and, like, going into his backpack and saying, yesterday we put the homework here. And then he'd be like, oh, that's where it is. And then they would do that all the time. Whereas if I lost my homer, I just get in trouble. And it was just like. But as a twelve year old, you just think that you're not thinking that's wrong.
Dr. JPB Gerald [00:17:52]:
You're like, that's what I guess. I guess I lost it. I should have lost it. And it's really hard to get out of that mindset. And now I look back and I realize that they had this assumption of me because I was always good at tests that I should be able to figure anything out. And then they didn't need to give me any help. That's at least how I experienced it and how it appears to me.
Roberto Germán [00:18:15]:
Reflecting on it now, so important that we suspend our assumptions. Our assumptions could lead to harmful actions. I'm wondering about the text on the COVID of your book, because I noticed that you have certain words there, and you. You crossed them out, right? So you have your title embracing the expect the exceptions, but then under meeting the needs of. You have the word lazy crossed out. You have the word messy crossed out. You have the word dramatic crossed out. You have the word annoying crossed out before it gets to neurodivergent students of color.
Roberto Germán [00:19:03]:
And that caught my attention. I would love you to speak about that.
Dr. JPB Gerald [00:19:10]:
Yeah, they let me design the COVID Well, not technically, like, I'm not the graphic designer, but I was able to write the words down with the strike through. And because those words come up in the book, some more than others, some are from my life and some are from the others, and they're all sort of epithets that people in the book gotten tagged with. Right. The lazy thing is similar to what I just said about people thinking I should be able to do everything messy. I'm still not particularly organized in a lot of ways. And people talk about dramatic because we tend to have pretty strong emotions or at least strong reactions, and then annoying, at least. That was just something that stuck around with me my whole life. But all of these are sort of judgments that are made on us because people don't pause and ask why we might be doing something.
Dr. JPB Gerald [00:19:56]:
All they are reacting to is what they're seeing in front of them. And I understand why another child might react that way. But as a trained professional. Right, which is what teachers should be having an internal reaction. That this kid is annoying you is whatever it happens. And even if you say something untoward, if you go and apologize and explain, then everybody's human. A lot of the teachers that I reflect on were younger then than I am now. But it's to feel like not only is it fine for me to say these things about these kids, but to allow this perception of them or us, I guess, to color the way they are viewed throughout their time in front of you.
Dr. JPB Gerald [00:20:47]:
You know, once you get tagged as annoying, it's hard to not be seen as that. Right. And once they think you're lazy, well, then if you do something positive, it doesn't erase their judgment of you, in fact, they just think it's an exceptional thing when you do something that they don't think is lazy. I remember I had an internship after high school, and, like, it wasn't going well for, in retrospect, neurodivergent reasons. And then at one point, they had me write an essay because you do that in internships. And then my boss, who did not like me at all for a lot of these reasons, told me I shared it with everybody, and we were just really impressed by the work you put into it. And that thing took me, like, a minute. So I'm just like, what was he expecting? He was like, what was the low expectation he had of me? That this essay that wasn't very hard was, you know, so it's just, you don't want to get frozen in amber, right.
Dr. JPB Gerald [00:21:49]:
And these things are really hard to shake once somebody believes that about you. And even as an adult, you know, I try not to, but I still get defensive when I think that people might see me that way. Some of the stuff, like, messy, doesn't come up as often in my outside of home, my wife finds me messy, but, you know, like, I had a job where people actively told me they thought I was annoying, and this is before the diagnosis. And I just, like, it's hard not to withdraw at that point, right? Once they told me that, they were actually telling me that they used to think I was annoying, but, like, once I know that, right. You know, I'm going to pull back. And all of them talked about how they've been seen certain ways, especially by a lot of their teachers, that made it hard for them to connect. And then if they need help, why would you go to somebody who thinks that you're dramatic or thinks that you're annoying or thinks that you're whatever.
Roberto Germán [00:22:46]:
Let me build off of that. Why don't you then describe for us the teacher that you would go to, the teacher who demonstrates qualities and actions that help the student that's been diagnosed with ADHD feel like, hey, this person really wants to support me.
Dr. JPB Gerald [00:23:09]:
Well, to be clear, like I said, I wasn't diagnosed till I was 35, so any of the teachers who did write by me didn't even know. Right. And there's one in particular who gets, I believe, the last thank you in the book. And I had her. I went to small school, so there's just not that many teachers. And I had her five separate times.
Roberto Germán [00:23:32]:
Wow.
Dr. JPB Gerald [00:23:32]:
I wasn't necessarily only the last time did I choose her because they were just randomly assigning it. Right. I had her in 4th, 5th, 6th, 9th, and 12th grade. By 12th grade, we were really on the same page. She wrote one of my college recommendations. So I want to be clear with people, because I think sometimes, and this is one of the things people say about equity and inclusion and all that, is that she had very high expectations for me and she would be disappointed in my work that is not inherently harmful. Right. Um.
Roberto Germán [00:24:03]:
Right.
Dr. JPB Gerald [00:24:04]:
She expected us to do our homework. And when I was eight and nine, I just didn't. So I would come to class unprepared and she didn't like it. And so I thought, like a lot of people thought that she was me. She really just wanted us to do our work. But she was doing things a little bit differently and she was encouraging us to express ourselves and connect with the material in different ways. It wasn't just read the stuff. Yeah, we had to do our homework and I wasn't doing it, but every so often we would have some sort of, like, she'd take the eraser put on the desk and it was like the buzzer and like half the class would.
Dr. JPB Gerald [00:24:43]:
It was like a trivia game in the. About the books we were reading, right. And over time I realized that, like, okay, no, I would like to participate in this game. If I don't do the homework, then I can't help my team. And regardless of how I felt about it, when I finally clicked, and it took me to like 8th grade to click on getting all of my work done really quickly, then I realized that she'd been the right teacher for me the whole time. So honestly, a lot of it was being creative, being open to different approaches. Like I said, not just the one right way, because she wasn't doing things one way. And the way she would grade assignments, sometimes you could be right and wrong.
Dr. JPB Gerald [00:25:29]:
But if she's writing, if you're writing a paper, she would very rarely say, this is bad. She would say, this is awkward, which is just like, this sounds a little bit. I don't know about how that sounds. Just the writing. And I'm like, huh? And now I have, and I say in my acknowledgments that, like, I'm doing that in my head now. When I read my work and I'm editing it, I'm like, it's a little awkward. And so that really stuck with me. And, you know, I also appreciated how as we got older, she would be disappointed when I wasn't doing my homework when I was eight, but I was also eight.
Dr. JPB Gerald [00:26:04]:
Right. But when I got to be in high school, and I really started doing my homework. And some of the other kids were not, because I went to a school with a lot of really wealthy kids, and I'm not pretending I didn't have any money, but not as much as them. We all didn't do our homework when we were, like, eight, but by the time we got to be 1314, a lot of them continued to not do it because it didn't matter to them. And I started to, and I I could see that she could see the difference between me where I was struggling and kids who were sort of more entitled in a lot of ways. And she would call them out the way that other teachers wouldn't. Right? Like, she would call them out. Not mean, but like the people who had every advantage and so forth.
Dr. JPB Gerald [00:26:44]:
And I'm not sure, again, I'm not trying to pretend I didn't have anything. My mom's a lawyer, but still, it's different than some of the kids I went to school with. So ultimately, that's the person that, you know, really stuck with me. And then much later, a similar version, the person who first taught, the professor who taught me about disability studies. And I was emailing her before the semester started because I had read the syllabus and I had some questions. And I was always emailing professors before the semester because I was so excited, right? And we get these, you know, I'm working, right? So we'd get these five week breaks over Christmas, and I'm like, what am I? I don't know what to do with myself, right. I'm not like a, you know, I wasn't a college student, right. And so I would just read all the books and I asked her questions and I apologized for being annoying, right.
Dr. JPB Gerald [00:27:37]:
Because it's a complex I had and still have to some extent. And she told me, in no way are you annoying me. And that reassured me. And she's still the academic person that I look up to the most these days. Sometimes it's just, it's not. There's avoiding calling people the negative things and then there's counteracting the negative things. If you say. If I say to you, I'm sorry for being annoying and you tell me you're not annoying me, that could go, I'll remember that forever.
Dr. JPB Gerald [00:28:07]:
And I'll remember it if you call me annoying forever, too.
Roberto Germán [00:28:09]:
So that's important. That's important. The words that we direct to others, whether intentional or unintentional, they have an impact. And even as you described, the teacher using the term awkward when she was correcting your paper. Like, I'm receiving that just from my parenting. I'm like, okay, I see how when I'm giving my son basketball instruction, I'm just like, oh, this is a word I could use to address the fact that, like, you don't quite got that right, instead of using something else that feels harsher and not as constructive. So thanks for sharing that. That's good.
Roberto Germán [00:28:55]:
So in your conclusion, you discussed the need for further research and solidarity for neurodivergent students of color. What specific areas of research do you think are most urgent, and how can the broader educational community continue?
Dr. JPB Gerald [00:29:14]:
I mean, so I'm not a quantitative researcher. I originally thought that I might be. When I first started my Dr.al program, I sort of wavered. Do I want to do qualitative? Do I want to do quantitative? Because I realized that there are people who just don't care. If you don't have numbers, they don't care.
Roberto Germán [00:29:32]:
True.
Dr. JPB Gerald [00:29:33]:
Right. But on the other hand, as we've seen in the last four plus years, you can use numbers to mean anything, and people are just going to react to the headline and people won't read the study. Even if you are an academic, you are usually too busy to read the whole study. You just go look at the numbers, and I say, well, I don't really want to be reduced to the results of my studies. So that's why I do qualitative work. That's why I tell stories or share stories. Right. But there are the administrators out there and the policymakers.
Dr. JPB Gerald [00:30:12]:
They need numbers. And so we need numbers because I'm estimating in the book, I know there's not a lot of numbers in the book, but, like, there are estimates of what percentage of people are neurodivergent. There are estimates of what percentage of students are neurodivergent, which is more or less the same percentage. But people of color are so under diagnosed that we have no idea, especially as kids, how many of us, again, unless it's particularly severe. And of course, if it's particularly severe, we're usually just punished for it. Right? But the people in the situation, because, like in the book, these stories are the people who quote unquote wonde, we went through some stuff emotionally, and I'm not saying all of us are in the best position right now, but all of us, between the seven of eight of us is more than 20 degrees. Right. We are the best case scenario in a lot of ways, and we still went through these things, but none of us were diagnosed as kids.
Dr. JPB Gerald [00:31:17]:
So we need numbers on this. We need to know how many of us there are. Right. We need to do that so that we can speak to the people who make policies and speak to the people. Take the stories in this book and other stories that I hope to collect and put the numbers with it. You know, I also want to know what our outcomes are. I can't say with any confidence this percentage of black neurodivergent people go on to degrees because, like, we don't have any of these numbers. Right.
Dr. JPB Gerald [00:31:52]:
And, you know, I want to be able to validate some of the speculation in the book, which is that I'm pretty sure that it's either what I mentioned, for the ones who have severe things going on, it just gets real bad real fast. The estimates of people in prison who have adhd or similar things is really high, but we don't really know. They're not all diagnosed. But then there's us. Where things ultimately went well professionally. So I want to know if my speculation is accurate, that there's kind of a two pronged road, and then how do we make it so that the people on the other path aren't just punished and sent all the way down a bad way? You know, we know about the prison, that school to prison pipeline, but, like, there's a part of this pipeline that is this. Right. And this could be a massive link in the chain or broken link in the chain that could be fixed, but we don't know what the numbers are, so we can't make the numbers better.
Roberto Germán [00:33:01]:
Sounds like there's a lot of work ahead of us, and it sounds like you'll be doing a lot more writing and research.
Dr. JPB Gerald [00:33:08]:
I hope they want more books out of me, so hopefully this one sells, and then they give me more.
Roberto Germán [00:33:13]:
Well, we support you. As we wrap up. If you had the opportunity to have lunch with anybody, dead or alive, who would it be and why?
Dr. JPB Gerald [00:33:23]:
So I have this poster not here. I'm in my office, but when I'm at home, and it's a picture my wife got me when I graduated with my doctorate. And it's a picture of the town in South Carolina called Gallivance Ferry. I've never been there, but I did a little bit of ancestry research, as much as I could do for free because I don't want to give my money, but, you know, the public record stuff, which anybody can get. And I'm going back. Gerald, Gerald, Gerald, Gerald. And where the trail stops. And I figured out enough to understand that this is before people.
Dr. JPB Gerald [00:34:00]:
Basically, the people were owned before the trail stops. Right. It seems like this family member was the first generation to be free, right? Even if it was before slavery end. But, you know, there were a few free people, whatever, right? And they were owned in Galavan's ferry. So I want to talk to them. Right? I don't want to talk to that generation. They'd probably be pretty confused. But I want to talk to them and see that whatever they went through to either get free or maybe they were born free.
Dr. JPB Gerald [00:34:36]:
I don't know. I don't know that it wasn't, you know, that it was worth it.
Roberto Germán [00:34:46]:
Deep, deep, deep. What is your message of encouragement to our audience?
Dr. JPB Gerald [00:34:56]:
Just what I said at the beginning. Like, you're not the problem. You know, I spent years, not just for the neurodivergence, but just in general. The just sort of burning question is, like, what's wrong with me? It should not be this way. Something is wrong with me. And to realize, and it isn't to say that there aren't many things I could have done differently. Like any person, right. It's not like I've never done anything wrong or never committed any harm or anything like that.
Dr. JPB Gerald [00:35:31]:
But fundamentally, I say this to anyone listening, you're not the problem. You could do better. So could I. But you're not inherently a problem.
Roberto Germán [00:35:43]:
Absolutely. And again, Dr. JPB Gerald, author of Embracing the Exceptions, Meeting the Needs of Neurodivergent Students of Color. This is a topic that we need to continue unpack. We need to think about the intersection of what we presented here. Right. Of neurodivergence, of racism, of other topics, and to do so in a strategic way, in a focused way, in a way where we're digging in and assessing and collecting data, both quantitative and qualitative. But we have at least one resource now in place. As was stated earlier, there seems to be nothing on this.
Roberto Germán [00:36:37]:
And now we have an opportunity to take this resource, dig into it, utilize it so that we can better support neurodivergent students of color and all students in general. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Gerald. Very insightful. Looking forward to learning more about your work and also just applying it again, applying it for myself as a parent and also as an educator, I think you've given me some things to consider in terms of the language that I use, in terms of being able to look at certain behaviors and remind myself to suspend my assumptions and figure out how I can be of better support. So thank you for offering us this resource. I'm looking forward to digging in and growing more as an educator.
Dr. JPB Gerald [00:37:37]:
Well, I hope it helps people, that's all.
Roberto Germán [00:37:40]:
As always, your engagement in Our Classroom is greatly appreciated. Be sure to subscribe, rate the show, and write a review. Finally, for resources to help you understand the intersection of race, bias, education, and society, go to multiculturalclassroom.com. peace and love from your host, Roberto Germán. It.
