On Being an Autistic and ADHD Music Teacher
When I started my career as a music teacher, I didn't know I was neurodivergent. Sure, I had known for my entire life that my mind worked differently from others, but I had been teaching for almost a decade before receiving my autism and ADHD diagnoses. But now that I have this knowledge, I'd like to reflect on how my neurodivergence has impacted my experience as a music educator.
Strengths
Autism
The biggest strengths that I attribute to my autism are my passion for music, ability to quickly gain depth of knowledge, natural inclination to building routines, and ability to notice and analyze patterns.
Music is one of my intense/focused interests. This means that I have a strong intrinsic motivation to do all things music, so I never get bored of the subject matter! I am also passionate about sharing my interests with others, so teaching and engaging with learners about music is my favorite way to interact with others.
I'm an auto-didact, which allows me to quickly gain a deep amount of knowledge about topics related to my interests. Before I teach about a concept, culture, instrument, musician, song, etc., I do extensive research to ensure that the information I provide my students is accurate and that I have enough of a grounding in the topic to answer students' questions (or at least know where to look for the answer).
Many learners, especially young children, gain a sense of comfort, safety, and stability when music class (or any class) has a predictable routine. This is especially the case for kids who have experienced trauma and/or are neurodivergent. Because I also feel best and do my best teaching within the structure of a routine, building routines into my instruction comes naturally.
My pattern-recognition ability applies to learners' behavior and responses. This helps me to not only conduct constant informal assessment, but to also quickly determine the potential misconceptions or missing knowledge that is causing a learner to make a particular error. With time and experience, I have found that I can usually "get inside" a learner's thought process and figure out the next instructional move that will help them reach their "aha" moment.
ADHD
I credit my ADHD for my creativity and ability to manage multiple simultaneous tasks.
As much as I thrive on routine, I would get bored teaching the same repertoire the same way year after year. I tend to switch things up from year to year, experimenting with different class structures, teaching methods, and songs. This constant cycle of change gives me the opportunity to keep my content relevant to students’ interests and learning needs.
I tend to focus more easily and be more productive when I have multiple projects to switch between. So having concerts and after school programs to plan for actually help me get my lesson planning done!
Both: Empathy!
One of the biggest benefits of being a neurodivergent teacher is the empathy it gives me for my neurodivergent students! If a student is having a rough day, I understand that it’s usually out of their control. I can empathize with the root cause of their behavioral or learning struggle, which is usually an unmet need that I try to meet whenever possible. And if they’re expressing their engagement or enjoyment in an atypical way, I embrace it and celebrate with them!
Challenges
My autism and ADHD also contribute to my main challenges as a music teacher. The greatest of these are sensory and social overwhelm, and distorted time perception.
Even the best managed music classrooms are busy, bright, loud places! My ADHD makes me seek out these types of environments, but my autism places an upper limit on how much sensory input and social interaction I can take before needing some peace and quiet. Teaching 7 or 8 classes per day leaves little time for breaks. I often need more time to recover than the evenings and weekends allow, leading to fatigue in the short term and burnout in the long term.
One of my particular executive functioning differences is that I have trouble tracking how much time has passed and predicting how much time a task will take to complete. In a school environment with a tight schedule, I found myself frequently running late! Thankfully after getting to know me, my colleagues understood that I meant them no disrespect when I needed an extra minute or two to welcome their class in or have them ready to line up at the end.
Conclusion
Being a music teacher is a challenging job for people of all neurotypes, especially in today’s K-12 school climate. My autism and ADHD amplify some of these challenges for me, and mitigate others. The main accommodation that would be the greatest help to me would be to have smaller class sizes to reduce sensory and social overwhelm and more break time during which to recover. These are things that would likely benefit all teachers and students! Overall, my autism and ADHD are a large part of what makes me the music teacher that I am.
How do the unique ways your brain works impact you as a music teacher or learner? Comment below if you’d like to share!