Neurodiversity, Ableism, and Disability Culture: Rethinking the Models We Use and the Occupations That Matter

In this session, occupational therapist Bryden Carlson-Giving joins host Mick Olds to talk about how ableism turns up in ordinary school practice, and what it takes to work differently from inside the system. Bryden is a multiply neurodivergent and disabled OT working in a school district, the developer of the EMPOWER model, and the editor of Neurodiversity-Affirming Occupational Therapy.

He starts with neuronormativity, the everyday form ableism takes in schools, and traces it through four places it hides: which communication counts, what listening is supposed to look like, which ways of regulating are allowed, and why handwriting gets years of goals before anyone offers assistive technology. He and Mick then walk through the medical, social, and cultural models of disability, and why the cultural model, as Sharon Snyder and David Mitchell defined it, leaves room for a student to decide what their own neurodivergence means to them. The back half is practical. Bryden explains how he runs strengths-based student interviews, why he has not reached for a norm-referenced test in years, how he uses photograph-based card sorts so that non-speaking students can answer for themselves, and what he says at the IEP table to get one student-chosen goal onto the plan.

Therapists, educators, and parents will come away with a set of interview questions that work with real students, a clear reason to run evaluations differently, and a way to tell the difference between a skill a child needs and a norm an adult is enforcing. Grounded in Bryden's doctoral work and his day job across two elementary schools and a high school, this session is specific, warm, and honest about how much of the work belongs to the adults.