Autistic Insights Into School Discipline | Michael Sullivan | TEDxPrincetonCitySchools

I would like to propose a different approach to school discipline that has the school taking ownership for the mental cost of forcing children to suppress their impulses all day, and which proactively coaches students in healthy ways to avoid becoming dysregulated in the first place rather than punish them for being unsupported in their learning needs. I believe the jargon developed for the autistic community can have relevance in facilitating dialogue as we talk about and plan ways to shift school discipline from a reactive to a proactive baseline.

Proactive approaches to school discipline are the backbone of the current Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports (PBIS) structure that schools are increasingly using but I do not believe PBIS takes the model far enough. PBIS focuses on improving the relationships between staff and students and on leveraging those relationships to improve student behavior. I believe that PBIS is misoriented. It strives to motivate students to mask more consistently without addressing the cognitive dysregulation resulting from masking without supports. PBIS is able to achieve its improvements because the improved relationships expand a student's capacity for self-regulation even without identifying or addressing the underlying cause for dysregulation.

I would like to suggest an approach in which we reframe behavior issues as symptoms of cognitive dysregulation and prioritize student self-regulation as an essential component of PBIS structures." After receiving a diagnosis of autism last year I have been conducting a great deal of reading into the subject to better understand how my autism has shaped my life and how I can better accommodate my needs in pursuit of my goals as a parent, a spouse, a professional, and as a member of society in general. This has led me to more closely examine the autistic practice of ""masking,"" or concealing autistic behaviors while mimicking allistic behaviors. Due to my background in cognitive anthropology I found myself analyzing the myriad ways in which all people mask their behaviors as part of everyday life - from concealing nervousness during a job interview to projecting confidence on a first date to laughing at a weak joke just to be polite. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx