When people find out that I am an autistic ADHD special education teacher, one of the first assumptions I hear is that I must automatically understand all my autistic ADHD students. I understand why people think that. I have lived the experience of being autistic and ADHD. I know what it is like to be misunderstood, to have adults make assumptions about me, to struggle to communicate what I need, and to experience the world differently from the people around me. Those experiences absolutely influence the way I teach. But one of the most important things my students have taught me is that being autistic does not make me an expert on every autistic person. My experience is my experience, and theirs is theirs.
Being an autistic teacher has not taught me to assume I know what my students need. It has taught me to stay curious.
My students have taught me that communication does not always look like words. Sometimes communication is a student pushing something away, moving closer to an adult they trust, refusing to enter a room, becoming unusually quiet, repeating a phrase, changing their tone of voice, covering their ears, pacing, laughing at what appears to be an unexpected moment, or simply walking away. I have learned that the question is not always, “How do I get this student to communicate appropriately?” Sometimes the better question is, “What are they already communicating, and have I learned how to listen?” That shift seems small, but it changes everything. When we only recognize communication that looks like the communication we expect, we can miss an enormous amount of information from our students.
My students have also taught me that regulation is not the same thing as compliance. A quiet student is not automatically a regulated student. A student sitting still is not necessarily comfortable. A student following directions does not necessarily mean the environment is meeting their needs. I have learned to pay attention to the whole student rather than simply whether they are doing what I asked. Sometimes regulation looks like movement. Sometimes it looks like taking a break. Sometimes it means needing less language, more processing time, a different environment, or an opportunity to step away from a demand. The more I have paid attention to those differences, the more I have realized how easy it is for schools to mistake outward compliance for internal regulation.
They have taught me about autonomy, too. As educators, we have a lot of power. We decide what students do, when they do it, where they sit, how they demonstrate learning, when they transition, and often how much control they have over their environment. We can forget how overwhelming that can feel for a child who already experiences very little control over their day. My students have reminded me that offering appropriate choices and opportunities for autonomy does not mean giving up structure or expectations. It means recognizing that students are human beings who deserve some ownership over their own lives. Sometimes giving a student a choice between two acceptable options is enough to completely change their willingness to participate because they no longer feel like everything is simply happening to them.
My students have also taught me that sensory needs vary widely from person to person. Because I am autistic, I know what sensory overwhelm can feel like for me, but that does not mean I can look at another autistic student and automatically know what is overwhelming them. One student may need movement while another needs quiet. One may seek deep pressure while another cannot tolerate being touched. One may become distressed by fluorescent lights while another barely notices them. One may need music to focus while another cannot think with any background noise. Autism is not a single sensory profile, and disability does not come with a universal instruction manual. My job is not to assume that my sensory preferences are theirs. My job is to learn theirs.
Perhaps one of the biggest lessons my students have taught me is that trust is not something we can demand.
We can demand that a student sit down. We can demand that they complete a worksheet. We can demand that they follow a direction. But we cannot demand that they trust us. Trust has to be built through consistency, honesty, respect, and repeated experiences of being treated safely. I have watched students who initially resisted almost everything begin to participate once they realized that I would listen to them, respect their communication, and follow through on what I said. That relationship did not develop because I found the perfect behavior intervention. It developed because the student learned that I was someone they could trust.
That has changed how I think about challenging behavior. I am much less interested in immediately asking, “How do I stop this?” and much more interested in asking, “What is happening here?” That does not mean I ignore unsafe behavior or pretend that boundaries do not exist. Safety matters, and students need boundaries. But understanding the behavior and maintaining a boundary are not mutually exclusive. I can tell a student that hitting is not safe while still being curious about what happened before the hitting occurred. I can maintain an expectation while recognizing that the student may be communicating distress. I can address an unsafe action without turning the child into an unsafe person.
My students have also taught me that relationships are not an extra part of special education. They are part of the work. We talk a lot about interventions, accommodations, data, goals, behavior plans, curricula, and progress monitoring, and all of those things matter. But none of them exist in isolation from the relationship between the student and the adults supporting them. A student who trusts their teacher may respond very differently to correction than a student who expects every adult interaction to become a power struggle. A student who knows their teacher will listen may be more willing to communicate when something is wrong. A student who feels respected may be more willing to take an academic risk.
Being an autistic teacher has also forced me to confront something uncomfortable: sometimes I recognize myself in my students, and that can actually make it harder to see them clearly. When I see a student doing something I remember doing as a child, there is a temptation to assume I understand exactly what they are experiencing. But I don’t. I can relate to them without projecting my experience onto them. I can say, “I remember feeling something similar,” while still asking, “What does this experience mean for you?” That distinction has become incredibly important to me.
My students have reminded me that disability is not a single experience.
Two students can have the same diagnosis, the same eligibility category, or even similar IEP goals and still have completely different needs, personalities, strengths, communication styles, sensory profiles, and experiences. Labels can help us access services and understand broad areas of need, but they cannot tell us everything about the person sitting in front of us. The label should give us somewhere to start, not somewhere to stop.
They have also taught me that I do not have to have an immediate answer to everything. Sometimes the most professional thing I can say is, “I don’t know yet, but I’m going to figure it out.” I do not need to pretend that my lived experience gives me all the answers. I need to be willing to observe, listen, ask questions, collect information, talk to the student and their family, collaborate with other professionals, and change my approach when the evidence tells me that what I am doing is not working.
That may be one of the most important lessons I have learned as an educator: curiosity is more useful than assumption.
Assuming I understand a student because they are autistic can be just as limiting as assuming I understand them because they are not. Their disability is part of their experience, but it is not their entire identity. Their behavior tells me something, but I may not immediately know what. Their communication may look different from mine. Their needs may change from day to day. Their strengths may show up in places I did not initially expect.
My students have made me a better teacher because they have continually challenged me to look again. To listen longer. To ask another question. To reconsider an assumption. To notice what I missed the first time. To understand that what works today may not work tomorrow. To remember that there is a person underneath every data point, every behavior, every goal, and every disability category.
I entered special education with my own experiences of disability. I have the perspective of someone who was once the student, someone who has experienced being misunderstood, and someone who now sits on the other side of the table as an educator. But my students have taught me that those experiences are not a shortcut to understanding them. They are an invitation to understand them better.
I do not want to be the teacher who assumes she knows what a disabled student needs because she is disabled herself. I want to be the teacher who is willing to learn from the individual child in front of her. I want my students to know that they do not have to fit my experience in order for me to respect theirs.
Because ultimately, my students have taught me that disability is not something I can learn once and master. It is something I have to keep listening to, learning about, and understanding through the people who live it every day.
And perhaps the greatest lesson they have given me is this: being an autistic ADHD teacher doesn’t mean I understand every autistic ADHD student. It means I know better than to assume that I do.
