Leslie:
Today I am really excited to be chatting with Karen Costa about all things ADHD.
Here’s a bit about her. Karen is an author, adjunct faculty and faculty development facilitator working in higher education. Her second book An Educator’s Guide to ADHD: Designing and Teaching for Student Success was released by Johns Hopkins University Press in January.
So huge congrats on that! That’s what we’re going to be talking about today, but I also wanted to mention her first book called 99 Tips for Creating Simple and Sustainable Educational Videos that was published by Routledge in 2020. Also, Karen gives a range of workshops and keynotes on a variety of topics, including teaching asynchronously in an AI age, neurodiversity and neurodivergence, trauma-informed teaching, and climate action amongst other things.
You can find out more about her books and other offerings at 100faculty.com. So, I first heard about Karen’s new book from some of her posts on LinkedIn. And full disclosure, I’ve been looking for a guest to talk about ADHD in academia for years now. And the reason is that a rather high percentage of my own coaching clients are women faculty members who either suspect that they have ADHD or they’ve been diagnosed later in life, like in their 40s or after.
And as a non-ADHDer, I’ve been trying to understand their experiences and find better ways to help them achieve their goals. I read nearly all of Karen’s amazing new book and I’m truly overflowing with questions.
So let’s get into it. Karen, welcome to the podcast!
Karen:
Hi, Leslie. Just hearing all of those things, I’m so excited to talk to you.
I loved what you said about how so many of your clients are either suspecting that they have ADHD or know that they do and that you want to better support them. Which is what we’re here to do. We’re here to take care of ourselves and each other.
So I’m really excited to talk to you today.
Leslie:
Thanks for being here! So like I ask everybody, can you first kind of briefly describe your own path through higher ed and talk about what prompted you to write this book?
Karen:
Oh boy, okay. So as you were reading my bio, I was kind of smiling to myself because I have a variety of interests that’s part of the ADHD profile. I don’t have one job. I have several jobs. I don’t have one research interests. I have lots and that will continue, no doubt, in the future.
So, my journey in higher ed is a bit like that. It’s a long and winding road, but I was drawn into higher education because I wanted to help with college access. I got a job through a friend way back when working at a college access program, and I loved working with my high school students, helping them get access to higher education.
These were under-resourced, first-generation college students. And the second year I did it, some of my students who I had helped to get into higher ed started to report back about their experiences in higher ed. And some of them didn’t make it through that first year. So I got very curious about that and decided to go back to school in order to help with the student success piece. So once we get them in, how do we help them persist through graduation?
So I did a master’s in higher education at UMass Amherst. Got a job right out of graduate school at a community college here in Massachusetts working in advising and enrollment. Got promoted to a full-time position as Director of Student Success. So I was overseeing all the retention activities at the college and then got really burned out. This might sound like in the clients that you work with, very familiar to get really burned out.
Did not know at that point that I had ADHD; that was definitely part of that burnout story and I quit. I left. At the time my goal had been to become a college president, and instead, I quit. And I was teaching as an adjunct. So I kept doing that, and then I started to pick up more adjunct teaching gigs and then started to do more faculty training and faculty development work and more writing. And that’s where my current sort of, variety is a spice of life career evolved from. I built it myself. My therapist tells me that that’s what we ADHDers are meant to do. We’re meant to design careers and systems that work for our unique brain style. And I certainly have done that. I got diagnosed with ADHD at age 40, so that shed a lot of light onto why my career path looks the way it does.
I dropped out of my doctoral program along the way, also likely because of undiagnosed ADHD. And yeah, I’ve just built this sort of weird, unique, hopefully helpful small business of one adjunct faculty. So I’m teaching students, I’m working with faculty, I’m writing, I’m doing something. No two days look the same in my world, which is exactly how it needs to be for me.
Leslie:
Right, right. So, you know, you share a lot about your diagnosis story at age 40, which also happened during the pandemic, right?
And so, how did that help you make sense of things? And then how did that lead into you writing this book?
Karen:
Yeah, so I was diagnosed the first week of March 2020. I actually went into the psychologist’s office. It was like five days before lockdown started. And I can remember that waiting room, looking around, being like, “should I be here? I don’t know.” And I met with him and talked to him. And he sent me home with a bunch of tests that I had to do like fill, I don’t know how all psychologists do this, but these were like paper and bubble tests. And I went home and started doing them, and then lockdown started.
So then he called me to give me my results over the phone, actually, because we couldn’t meet in person. The first few weeks were really tough. That was really overwhelming. And I think one of the reasons it was so overwhelming is because I had all of these stories in my head about what ADHD was. And it was like, “oh my God, I have this terrible thing.” Right? Because we are so often taught that this is this deficit and it is a drain on relationships in classrooms and society.
And to get that news at the start of the global pandemic while incredibly isolated was very, very upsetting and overwhelming. But I pretty quickly got on the path of finding strengths-based resources and educating myself about what ADHD is and is not. And it very quickly turned from a negative and overwhelm to, you know, I call it in the book, the diagnosis for me was a map, and it was a map to community. To find other people with ADHD, which I very quickly started to do. And hey, I’m not the only person that struggles with this, or I’m not the only person with this cool, but weird, part of me. That was deeply healing. And then also a map to resources and treatment options and life design and lifestyle design options, which I’ve been able to implement over the past five years or so. So it was an incredible blessing for me. In that it made so many things that I had struggled with every hour of every day of my life make sense.
Just this week for example, I take French. I’m taking a French class later in life, and I messed up the times. I was so ready for this class. I was over prepared. And it started at 9 and I thought it started at 10 because my brain just doesn’t hold details very well. And I was so embarrassed when I showed up in Zoom. I immediately left and I sat there and I could feel the shame show up. “What’s wrong with you? Like, why couldn’t you figure this out?” But I don’t do that anymore. I know enough to know that I don’t do that anymore.
So I was like, “Oh, no, no. Shame, goodbye! We don’t do that anymore here.” And I was able to, in that moment, immediately reframe it, start flooding myself with, “who cares? Like how are we going to adapt? How are we going to make this work? You have ADHD, there’s a lot going on in the world. Perfectly understandable.” Just completely shifted into self-care, positive talk.
That was not something I would’ve been able to do before. It was just so confusing. I would just have thought, “oh, there’s something wrong with me and I didn’t know what was going on.” So, it’s been a huge blessing. It’s an opportunity for me to talk about it. Hopefully, I really think now about being a good ancestor to the young ones coming up with ADHD and how we can create a world where ADHD is seen for what it is, which is a unique brain style, a neurotype, a way of being in the world, part of the vast variety of life with challenges and with strengths. So I’m grateful to get to share that with the world.
Leslie:
So, so amazing and thank you also for being open enough to share your story.
And I do want to touch on shame in a little bit, but before we kind of dive into the details of things, can I ask you like, what prompted you to seek out a diagnosis?
Karen:
Sure. So this is kind of funny, I’ve heard this from other ADHDers. Hank Green is a YouTuber and he started, I guess talking, he’s like got a gazillion followers. I guess he started talking about, do I have ADHD? And then he realized he had actually been diagnosed with it as a child and had forgotten that he had it.
Leslie:
Is this the author?
Karen:
Yeah. Well, no, so John Green is the novelist, Hank Green is his brother. So I was like, “oh, that was kind of what happened to me.” So, I went to a therapist probably 20 years ago and said, I think I might have ADHD. And she said, okay, let’s talk about that. And we went through it and then I just stopped going to her and forgot about it. And went on to the next thing. I went on to like learning about the Enneagram and trauma. And as I do, I just follow the rabbit holes and completely just forgot about the possibility that I had ADHD.
And then in early 2020, I was in therapy at the time. But there was something missing. There was something clearly missing. I had always been told that it was anxiety, which I think is a very common experience for a lot of women. It’s a catchall. And it’s not that anxiety is not at the table. But anxiety is not the root cause what I was dealing with. But that’s what I was sort of being treated for. And the common therapeutic methods for treating anxiety actually are not helpful in many cases for people with ADHD and autism.
So I was sort of in this constant, I didn’t know it at the time, but I was getting sort of a style of therapy that was actually in some ways harmful to me, cognitive behavioral therapy, CBT, which works for a lot of people and works for a lot of situations. It was not helpful in this situation. So I asked my, this was another therapist. I’ve had a gazillion because I get bored and move on. I asked her and she said, “you know what? I think you’re a little complex. So she said, “I think what I would like you to do is go for a neuropsych evaluation. I want you to see a psychologist who was trained in diagnosis.”
So my insurance at the time did not cover a full neuropsych evaluation, but it covered a psychological evaluation, which was sort of like a neuropsych eval lite. So they tested me just for ADHD and I was off the charts. I had like, I think I talked about this in the book. I was like 99th percentile for everything. And I said, what does that mean? I thought that was like, you aced it! And he said, you scored higher than 99% of the people that take this test, which could be, they always hedge their bets, could be indicative of severe ADHD.
So yeah, it was a sense of constant wrongness, constant everything is harder for me than it is for everyone else. Constantly feeling just sort of a state of persistent confusion about how to adult. There’s a saying in the ADHD community that ADHD is when the hard stuff is easy and the easy stuff is hard.
Leslie:
Oh, interesting.
Karen:
Yeah, like things like brushing your teeth, or cooking a simple meal for yourself or making your dentist appointment and following up with that. Those things were incredibly challenging for me and are for a lot of ADHDers. But then I could, you know, run like workshops for hundreds of people. So that was very confusing. “Why, why can’t I remember to brush my teeth, but I can do that?” And that wrongness was what I was sort of calling out for help with. And was able to advocate for myself. I had seen at that point probably 13 different therapists and none of them had mentioned ADHD.
Leslie:
Wow.
Karen:
Yeah, it’s, I mean, that’s a whole, whole big can of worms. the underdiagnosis of, girls and women with ADHD, we tend to present quite differently. And some of our, you know, socialized caretaking behaviors block—or mask, I should say—a lot of more obvious ADHD symptoms that we see in boys and men. You know, this is not just an inconvenience to people or a hardship, an individual hardship.
These are life threatening decisions that we are making for people. I talk in the book about the life expectancy for people with untreated, ADHD. There’s some data that it is as much as 25 years off of your life span. If you have ADHD, more than the top four other impacts combined. So things like accidents and injuries and not staying up with regular healthy medical habits all play into that. So not getting a diagnosis is really a big deal. It’s life threatening. and it’s incredibly important that we get people connected to their communities, to resources, to treatment if they want to go that route. And I’m one of many women who didn’t get that till later in life.
Leslie:
Right, right. Absolutely. And so you mentioned you had a lot of different kinds of negative narratives in your head about what ADHD is, and now you have a wealth of information about what it is and what it isn’t.
So what would you say are like the biggest misconceptions that are out there about what it is?
Karen:
Sure. I mean the name that is used in the DSM, the Diagnostic Manual that clinicians use, “Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder” is the first place we can start. So it’s not a deficit of attention. In some ways we are starting to realize that it is an abundance of attention. In particular, ADHDers, when they are interested in something. So we have an interesting nervous system. Our level of attention can far exceed that of our neurotypical peers. So it’s a more nuanced attention. It’s a more open attention, more porous, more flexible, more connected, more creative. It is a different way of practicing or expressing attention than for neurotypical folks. It is not a deficit of attention. It is not a deficit of attention.
The authors and doctors who I cite quite a lot in the book, doctors Hallowell and Ratey, they have a book called ADHD 2.0, which, when people come to me and say, “I think I have this,” or “I think my kid has it,” or, “we do have it, what, what should I read?” That’s the first book I recommend. Because they’re both medical doctors and they also both have ADHD and that lived experience is really important for me. And they renamed ADHD as Vast V-A-S-T, variable attention stimulus trait and variable attention. Means that our attention is very context dependent. Not that we have a deficit of attention. In some cases, our attention will actually exceed our neurotypical peers. So that’s a big misconception about ADHD.
The other thing I would say is this idea that we are, you know, and I talk about ableism in the book, that ADHDers are simultaneously weak and threatening, which is how we like to frame difference in our society. We won’t go too far down this rabbit hole, but that’s how we determine who gets resources in our world and who doesn’t get resources. So framing us in that way is the way that we can justify denying people resources. That’s a place for people to start is to say, “wait a minute, why have I been taught these things about ADHD that are so negative?”
It’s part of the plan. It’s part of the playbook. The other thing I would say about ADHD is that, ADHD learners are a drain or a burden in learning environments, and this is just absolutely not true. Your ADHD students are probably the best asset for engagement that you have in your classroom.
If you can design systems in your classroom where people are supported, where you are designing against shame, where you are aware of diversity and neurodiversity and supportive, and embracing that and you are helping ADHDers design learning systems that work for them. So if you’re giving us a chance to be creative, if you are giving us a chance to express and follow our interests, your ADHD students are going to be little sparks or little fireworks of engagement in your class. That will create sort of an environment of contagious curiosity, which I think is when I talk to teachers and faculty, the number one thing they say to me is, “I want my students to be more engaged.”
And you’ve got these intensely curious by nature, by design folks and learners in your classroom. With your ADHDers, design for us and support us and acknowledge us. And understand us better. And it will just be such an asset to not only those students, not only you as an educator, but to the entire classroom community.
Leslie:
Yes, exactly. And, since we’re on the topic of teaching. Can we go more into detail on this?
What does an inclusive classroom environment look like when you’re really trying to meet the needs of all of your students, including ADHD learners?
Karen:
Yep. I think one of the first places to start is with your mindset. If you go into your classroom and you still are holding onto any of those deficit-based incorrect assumptions about learners with ADHD, that is going to play out in all of your strategies and your decisions. Teachers and faculty mindset about their learners is one of the biggest determinants of student success. So when you believe in your students, when you have high expectations for them and when you balance, challenge, and support, students rise to the occasion and live up to those expectations.
So the first place to start is to sort of commit yourself to unlearning what you’ve been taught about ADHD. Even when I started writing this book, I knew it had to be from a strengths-based perspective, but I was still holding onto a lot of that medical model, DSM- based understanding of ADHD. And as I wrote the book, those tendrils of ableism and deficit-based models, those were in me too. And I really had to just kind of like slowly and sometimes painfully, pull them out of me as I was writing. So we’ve all got them. You’re not bad if you have that bias and those beliefs, but just commit yourself to educating yourself about these kinds of differences and the diversity and neurodiversity in our world and in our classrooms, and come into your classroom with a mindset of belief in your students and belief in their ability to learn. That’s a, really critical place to start.
So practical strategy-wise, the first couple things I’ll mention, I mention a lot in the book, obviously. The first thing I’ll say that can be really like, low risk, high reward is externalize everything that you can. So, for example, putting things in writing. Rather than just offering instructions, for example, verbally, but putting them in writing. So what can you make tangible and visible for your students?
An example would be time. If you’re in an in-person classroom and you say to students, “I’m going to give you 10 minutes to work on this assignment.” Writing the start time and the end time on the board, is one, just a simple, simple example of externalizing time, because as soon as we start, you know, our relationship to time is very fluid and porous. So we aren’t able to hold that in our brains. So externalizing time, whenever you can. Another example of that would be sending reminders to students. So for example, some folks are teaching live on Zoom, sending out a reminder of your class time. An hour before class starts will. Work wonders for your ADHD students, as it would’ve for me an hour before my French class. But there were no reminders sent.
So, reminders, alarms, anything to externalize information. If you’re doing any kind of lecture, giving students some structured notes so that they’re not just sort of grasping at. “What should I write down? What was said?” If you’re giving them structured notes, you’re putting some guide rails on the note taking process. Everything gets put in: writing assignment deadlines get put in writing, reminders get put in writing. Externalize everything.
And the second tip I would say is to look at the creativity in your class and ask yourself, higher education tends to be much more focused on critical thinking than it is on creative thinking. So we’re much more focused on sort of like analyzing what is and like pulling apart what already exists, whereas creative thinking is about. Creating something that does not exist, something novel, and higher ed’s not as good at that.
So take a look at your class and ask yourself, “where do I give students opportunities to create something new? Where do I give students an opportunity to create something new?” That is a tremendous skill of ADHD learners. In lab tests and real-world settings, we outperform neurotypical peers by far in creative tests. So we have a ton of creative strengths that are not often built into the higher ed classroom. So give your students a chance to express themselves creatively. Creativity is not just painting and drawing, right? It’s creating something new. So give your students a chance to be playful and to be creative, and look at your course and see where you have opportunities for them to do that.
And if you don’t have any, try to add one, just one. Don’t try to redesign your entire course. Look for one space where you could give students a chance to create something from nothing or to create something new. And that would be a lovely place to start. So starting to externalize information and building in some creativity are a couple strategies that would, in addition to shifting mindset, that would go a long way to more inclusive classrooms.
Leslie:
Yeah, I love those. Absolutely, and I can see like when it comes to sending reminders and things like that, I could see some percentage of faculty members being like, “that’s not my job. Do you know what I mean? Like, this is spoonfeeding students, they are college students, they’re adults. This is why I don’t take roll.”
I can see that pushback. So how would you respond to that?
Karen:
Yeah. Bring the pushback. That’s one of the reasons that I disclose my ADHD and speak about it publicly. So in the example that I’ve already shared here of I am someone who teaches and works in higher education and hopefully is a trusted voice in higher education. I have a master’s degree, I have a post master’s degree. And I had a class that was very important to me this week at 9 o’clock. And I am doing all the things, Leslie. I have the Google calendar, I have all the reminders set up. I have multiple paper calendars. I’m doing all the things. I am one of the most organized people I know. I am hyper organized.
Sometimes those details of the number 9 versus 10 just don’t process in my brain like they do for other people, like for neurotypical folks. So this is not a personal failure. It’s the reality of this disability. So reminding ourselves that ADHD is a disability, and that sending reminders is an accessible practice to supporting students with that disability is what I would encourage students to do.
My hope is that in sharing that and in hearing that, like it’s not because your students are lazy. It’s not because they don’t like you or don’t care about your course. ADHDers, we just process things differently and sometimes the detail of 9 versus 10 just is not held in our brain in the same way that it is for you. And I also am always like, yes, I get how much you are asked to do my fellow faculty. So could you automate that? Could this be something that you invite your administration to take a role in? And could this be something that somebody else is doing, maybe as a school-wide initiative to support your students?
I know some schools have academic coaching, systems and offices in place. Maybe that would be something that would come through an academic coaching office. So, you know, I get it. I get that faculty are being asked to do a lot. But if you could set up an automated reminder and take 15 minutes at the start of your semester to set it up for the entire term and just click done and it, the automated system does it for you, wouldn’t that be worth it to make sure that some of your most creative engaged learners are there in that classroom to learn with you? I hope that it would be.
Leslie:
Right, right. So just a little bit of pre-planning.
Karen:
Yeah, a little bit. Like be strategic about it, right? You mentioned my first book at the opening. I talk about: don’t say details in your videos, don’t talk about the weather or holidays or specific due dates, because the second you do that, you can no longer reuse that video. In the next term, keep your videos general and evergreen so that you can repeatedly use them.
Because that will save you time and energy. So be strategic about some of these things that you’re doing with your learners. So for example, the structured notes make it like a very simple template so that you don’t have to update the details on it every term. Maybe it just says “Lecture 2” and it doesn’t say the specific date on it, but maybe there’s a date space where students can write the date in.
You don’t have to update the date on that structured template. You put that on the students to do, but you are providing them the basic outline and building that into your pedagogical practice. So think about, “how can I make this as easy as possible for me and good for my students?” And find that balance, whenever possible.
Leslie:
Yeah, I think that’s great, great advice. And so now I want to return to the topic of shame.
It’s something you write about a lot in the book and particularly when it comes to a ADHDers receiving feedback or critique or any sort of, feedback can be taken harshly, right? So can you talk about that?
Karen:
Sure. So there’s a term, called RSD. Rejection sensitive dysphoria. This is not a formal diagnostic term that is in the DSM, but that’s okay because I’m not a clinician and we’re setting aside the medical mainstream deficit-based model. However, it is a term used in a lot of therapeutic settings. And there are a lot of folks who have studied this who say that this is something along the lines of like, 99% of ADHDers meet the criteria for RSD. Basically, RSD is an extreme sensitivity to feedback and any perceived criticism.
The way I sometimes think of it is that we ADHDers have this very open nervous system. This very open mind that is taking in massive amounts of information without some of the sort of cognitive guardrails that neurotypical folks have. This is the root of those strengths and that creativity that I spoke about before.It also leads to a heightened sensitivity, which again has strengths and challenges, right? That can lead us to be incredibly compassionate and justice-oriented people. That’s a good thing. It can also lead to a lot of overwhelm and emotional dysregulation. So, RSD is probably in part due to that sort of openness where we are just more sort of exposed to the world and to feedback.
The other working belief about RSD is that because ADHDers are trying to learn in classroom environments that are not designed with our needs in mind, we’re trying to learn in classroom environments that prioritize a very single pointed type of focus and a very neurotypical mindset and approach. Because that doesn’t work for us. The working belief about RSD is that we have been overcriticized and we have sort of received constant negative feedback from educators throughout our lives. You know, “sit still, be quiet, pay attention.”
I was like many girls, my ADHD did not express typically in sort of the hyperactivity, not being able to sit still. I was the one looking out the window and daydreaming to the point where they’d be calling my name and I would not respond because I was so inside of my own head. When you are experiencing that, it makes a lot of sense that you know, now you’re an adult and your boss says, “Hey, can I talk to you about that report that you did.” It makes a lot of sense that that would bring up an immediate emotional reaction. I think there’s a combination of this history of being critiqued and criticized because people don’t understand us and our nervous system being more open and more sensitive to overwhelm.
For folks who are working with people with ADHD and have loved ones with ADHD, I think one of the important things to remember is it’s not just criticism, it’s perceived criticism. So any type of feedback can bring up a lot of stuff for us. So just being mindful of that, I think is the first place to start. And being aware that I’m talking to somebody who might have a greater sensitivity to feedback. So I’m going to be sort of, I’m very intentional and present as I’m offering this feedback to that person. So being careful to perhaps, emphasize, you know, “my goal here is to support you,” or “my goal here is because I care about you.”
And also giving people a chance to perhaps decide how they want to receive the feedback. You know, email, phone call, Zoom, in person and then having a chance for follow up. To process. Those are just a couple ways we can be more intentional about how we offer feedback to people. It’s not that we don’t want to offer feedback to people with ADHD, it’s just being a little bit more intentional that we sort of have that heightened sensitivity.
The flip side of that is which Doctors Hollowell and Rady talk about is what they call RSE, Rejection Sensitive Euphoria, which is that because we have this history with often getting negative feedback, when you give us positive feedback, we’re like, “thank you so much!” So we don’t need you to blow smoke. You don’t need to sugarcoat things, but if you see an ADHDer doing something well, thank them. Notice it. I do that with everybody. You know. We have this negativity bias and we’re constantly critiquing each other. It’s part of my practice to thank people when I see them doing something well, whether it’s a LinkedIn message, whether it’s an email, whether it’s at the end of a meeting. Pointing out the positives is great, I think, for all of us. But it is particularly powerful for people with ADHD. So, spend a little more time cheering each other on.
Leslie:
That is, it’s such a beautiful message and so necessary. I think for academia in particular, and I’m just thinking about the folks I work with who are grad students, postdocs, and faculty members. It’s just that feedback, even when it’s positive is often so direct.
Like, “this argument is not working.” And then some people go way far onto the other end and they’ll be like, “this sucks,” right? Like, I know many people whose advisors would be like, “this is really terrible.”
And so what are some ways to actually, maybe specific things, ways to approach feedback? So it can be more easily digested and taken in by folks with more open nervous systems?
Karen:
Yeah, I mean one of the things I talk about in the book, there’s an article that was in Harvard Business Review, called “The Feedback Fallacy.” So one of the questions I think we can start with is like, is giving feedback actually helpful? So really, I think sometimes we have this feedback bias or assumption. So that would be a place to start. Like, are they going to benefit from my feedback? The thing about feedback is a lot of us, for ADHDers and all of us, our self-protective sort of psychological mechanisms kick in and we just ignore it.
So if our goal is to help people improve, asking ourselves is feedback actually going to do that? The other thing that I use is I am trained in a model called Appreciative Inquiry, which I used to refer to as AI, but I can’t do that anymore because there’s a new AI in town. So this is the good AI, Appreciative Inquiry. And Appreciative inquiry is a strengths-based methodology. And instead of saying, here’s all the stuff that’s wrong with you that you need to fix, it says what’s right with you. One of the questions we ask in the good AI is, who are you at your best as a blank?
So, who are you at your best as a writer? Who are you at your best as a teacher? Who are you as your best as a podcaster? And starting from that place of assets and strengths, helping students in a paper, for example, to identify what they did well. Not first identifying it for them. Having them identify what they did well can be a very empowering place to start. That’s metacognition. Thinking about thinking, or meta learning as I call it in the book. So giving a student a chance to reflect on what is my strength as a writer? What did I do well in this essay? Did I live up to that strength in this essay? What was my goal in this essay? Did I meet it?
So first of all, sort of stepping back and asking them what their experience was in writing that essay, what their goals were and did they meet their goals? Can make sure that we’re keeping students in that space of agency, when we come in and immediately tell them everything we think about that essay, we’re stripping students of that agency or whoever’s writing we’re critiquing. So, starting with a place of who are you at your best as a writer and starting with them.
And the other thing I do a lot is ask questions. So questions are inherently, I think more empowering than directive statements. And I use this equally with the students and faculty who I work with. So rather than, you know, “you should have done this in your classroom” or “you should have done this in your paper,” right? That is stripping that person of agency. “What would’ve happened do you think, if you had tried this instead of this?” Or, “what were you hoping to accomplish with this?” Or, “I’m curious.” I start a lot of sentences in my work with, “I’m curious, what do you think about this? What are you seeing when you read the sentence back? How does this feel for you? How does this land for you?”
So, I think, you know, I’ve been rereading Paulo Friere’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. So I have that in my mind and heart right now. And the word that’s coming up to me that’s so important in our work and our teaching is agency. And whatever we are doing, whether it’s providing feedback or any aspect of our work, making sure that we are not trying to take away that other person’s agency as a learner, as an educator, as a writer. And I think one of the ways we can do that is focusing on who are they at their best starting with them reflecting on their work and their goals and, asking questions are some good strategies that will work.
Leslie:
Super helpful. Thank you so much for articulating those. Because I know, like for myself, I’m sure people listening, people want specific ways to do this stuff. So that’s really helpful. And I do want to ask you about your experience of writing this book, but actually this is your second book, so like I’ll just tell the audience, this is a hefty book. There’s a lot in it. It is very impressive. It is also incredibly accessibly written in a way that is rare, I think, for books that are geared towards a more higher ed audience.
But maybe you could just talk about like, how did you write it? What strategies did you use that really helped you get this big project across the finish line?
Karen:
Sure. So for folks who might not know, nonfiction books, sort of, if you’re going through traditional publishing, come out into the world via, first a proposal. So, that’s really important for me as a writer, because it would be very tough for me to write a big project like this without a deadline and a contract.
So the proposal I wrote, I’m able to do that because a proposal has a very specific structure which, if folks are interested in writing, Google “non-fiction book proposal,” there’s tons of resources out there. So I got the proposal and it ultimately ended up at Johns Hopkins University Press. They accepted it, we signed the contract, and then I had a deadline. And that for me is that external structure is really, really important. You know, to be transparent, I do not do well in my writing practice unless I have that. So otherwise, my writing practice tends to be very chaotic, haphazard. It’s really tough for me to be consistent, and to get anything bigger than a LinkedIn post out into the world. I have learned that I really thrive with that external structure.
So once I had that contract and that deadline, this was true for the first book and the second book, then able to sit down and map out what days of the week am I going to write? What’s my word count for the day? And then I am pretty consistent about sitting down. The writing part for me when I have the external structure. I’m lucky, knock on wood, that it flows pretty well. So I was writing probably, you know, I have a lot of different jobs. Adjunct, freelance. I was writing probably two mornings a week. When I did the bulk of the writing on the book, I’m better in the mornings. I know that usually for about three hours, I can’t go much past that or brain turns to mush.
And I would make sure to always set a writing count goal that was quite low. So, I think I aimed for about 500 words a day during those two days, which is about two pages of writing. But I knew that I could consistently beat that. But that was like, that’s one of those little mind games I designed for rather than saying, “I’m going to write 2000 words today,” and then falling short and then feeling like, “Ooh, I didn’t do what I wanted do.” A low sort of achievable goal is really important. So yeah, that’s what my writing process looks like. External accountability is really important for ADHD or so. I know you work as a coach Leslie, so I’m sure like people meeting with you gives them some external accountability or using planners or some folks use writing groups.
Writing groups are not for me, but folks use them for accountability. So thinking about if you are somebody who’s very sensitive to that and needs that structure, how can you get that for yourself, whether it’s through a contract and a deadline or whether it’s through things that you create for yourself, I think is an important part of a writing practice.
Leslie:
Yeah, that’s really useful. And I mean, I really feel like everybody benefits from external accountability. Like I can’t think of anyone who would do worse with it.
Karen:
Yeah. It’s one of those things that I think everybody benefits from it. For ADHDers, it’s an even more intense need. It’s really, really a non-negotiable for many of us. And you know, I, I want ADHDers to get their work out into the world to share their ideas with the world, to express their creative pursuits and by nature we are sort of, a bit more free spirited and open and flowing and porous, and those are wonderful, wonderful traits. And sometimes we need to really work with things like structure and discipline which don’t come as easily for us. So having some other human involved in the process, whether it’s a coach a contract from a publisher. Whether it’s using body doubling, where you sort of work with another person can really help add in that structure for us.
Leslie:
Yeah. Yeah. All great ideas. And I’m wondering, like, thinking about your book, if you had to distill like a core message you want readers to take away from it, what would it be?
Karen:
I’ll just say what I tell people who write to me and say, you know. “My kid has ADHD and thank you for writing this.” I say, “tell your kid that they’re awesome, and that I love them and their beautiful brain.” So, that’s really the message I’m trying to share with the world and my fellow ADHDers.
“You’re awesome. And I love you and I love your beautiful brain.” That’s a very, if I’m kind of pulling back the curtain on that message, it’s a very simple way of saying like, enough with the ableism. Let’s continue to educate ourselves. Let’s continue to speak up against ignorance, and deficit-based approaches. And let’s get rid of the shame that we have put on this different way of being and start to work with ADHDers to build a better world, which we are desperately in need of.
Leslie:
I love this so much. So Karen, what are the best ways for listeners to connect with you? How can they find you?
Karen:
Sure. I am primarily publicly on LinkedIn. I will say I don’t do things in moderation, so, I know some people are good at moderating their social media use. I’m not. So what I do is I do take some sort of like a month-long hiatus here and there. But I do continue to check emails.
So my website, 100faculty.com has a contact form where you can always reach me and I’m pretty responsive to email there. I am currently on LinkedIn, I would love to engage with folks there. I have a BlueSky account. I’ve been less active there. I deleted my Instagram to protect my nervous system and, plan to hold that line, in the new year.
So, LinkedIn and my website are the best two places to reach me.
Leslie:
Awesome. Well, Karen, again, thank you so much for sharing your experiences and all these great strategies and just, you know, expanding our awareness of what ADHD is, and for writing this book. So listeners, please purchase her new book, An Educator’s Guide to ADHD: Designing and Teaching for Student Success.
I can attest to the fact that it is both incredibly useful, but also a really great, really engaging read. So thanks so much again.
Karen:
Thanks, Leslie.
Leslie:
I’ll talk to everybody again soon.
**If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to also check out:
Ep. 90 – Teaching with Courage in Polarized Times (with Dr. Brielle Harbin)