2025-09-12 –, Ballroom 3
I work for a local council as an educator and mentor at The Lab - a social group for autistic teenagers with an interest in technology. Operating out of a makerspace at a public library, we allow participants free use of tools so that they can tinker, experiment, and build their skills, both social and technical. I see these students gain confidence, discover and ignite new passions, and grow their independence.
It isn't all easy, however. Providing a safe space for neurodivergent teens has its challenges. We have had to support participants through emotional instability, interpersonal clashes driven by contradicting neurodivergent sensitivities like noise and light levels, communication barriers, and more. However, with a little patience, when given the right support, we have seen participants bloom, stepping out of their comfort zone and sometimes even developing their own projects.
I'll share some reflections on what participants at The Lab do, how we structure the sessions, and the considerations we take to foster a neurodivergent-friendly learning environment - hopefully this provides you with some insights that can help you to improve your pedagogy too.
I believe that by creating an inclusive environment for neurodivergent people, we make it easier to learn for everyone. After all, accessibility for one is accessibility for all.
I'll go through some of the techniques we have used to build trust, support our participants, maintain social inclusivity, and inspire the use of technology. These methods have been honed by the mentors of The Lab specifically to support autistic teenagers, so many of them may help if you have neurodivergent students or peers of your own.
I will be highlighting some features of The Lab that differentiate it from school environments, and giving you an insight into some of the stories of growth we have seen in participants of our program. These heartwarming stories include socially anxious kids making friends, teaching via stealth to empower oppositional students with independence, how we flatten the hierarchy to build trust, and leaning into having fun to foster collaboration.
By giving our students independence, trust and support, we’ve seen them not only become more confident, but - if we’re lucky - sometimes they’ll even work on their own projects too.
After changing gears from corporate technology to tech education 1 year ago, I have been inspired and delighted watching my students grow. I work for the Canada Bay Council libraries, predominantly running The Lab, but also assisting in the makerspace and other tech education activities.
My 7 years as a front-end engineer at Nine and then Atlassian provided me with a solid foundation of technical expertise, that I still use today in my work as a developer for Kumo Study, a startup that creates study tools for people with ADHD. This goes hand-in-hand with my work with neurodivergent teenagers.
I love teaching technology, and am excited to further improve my skills and the programs I teach so that every student feels empowered to learn and use it.
Python was the first programming language I learnt, and so I always use it as the first step when teaching programming to my students.