Neurodivergence in the classroom is not a new thing. In elementary, middle and high school neurodivergent children are often misjudged. Some say they talk too much, are delinquents, troublemakers, or simply aren’t paying attention.
I was a “doodler with zero attention span” in grade school. No matter what class or how accurate my notes were, my ink pens swallowed up the margins of my papers. They contained whole worlds of black and blue ink patterns and half-finished animal drawings. Because of this, my teachers were surprised when I would routinely do well in class assignments and understood the homework well enough to tutor my own classmates.
Yet my neurodivergent circle of friends, including myself, were far from delinquents in class. Sure, some of us took our notes in fantasy fiction languages or flooded our desks with origami cranes and paper balloons, but that didn’t mean we were trying to disrupt our learning. We were doing our best to focus. Studies have found that hands-on activities produce higher rates of productivity and focus in children. Especially for neurodivergent children, the difference between sitting still in class and having something to put physical energy into can make or break a neurodivergent child’s learning experience. Similarly, the development of neurodivergent adult cognition benefits from manual activities as well.
Recently, in a large lecture hall, my professor interrupted his lecture to give a public service announcement. This class is no stranger to sudden interruptions like this, but he always circles back to his original material eventually. Dr. Landau is also a professor known for his understanding of neurodivergence. Having ADHD himself, Landau designs his class considering each of his pupils and their potential mental health needs.
A handful of students emailed him about students who were working on other projects or watching videos and playing games on their laptops during class time. He asked the class to abstain from engaging in other media during future lectures to eliminate these distractions. At first, I felt this was a strange request for him to ask, though still fully within his power.
Didn’t everyone use their computers to do other work in class?
I knew the girl who sat next to me always worked on her next class’s homework during this time, too. A girl in my literature class constantly looks up art on Pinterest or looks up words from our reading. I’ve seen classmates playing Wordle or placing their H-E-B curbside orders in the front row. My friend, who attends lectures four times a week, always complains when his laptop is on low battery at the start of a class because he can’t work on other assignments.
In college, there is less stigma surrounding students multitasking in class settings, but the attention placed on what is appropriate for multitasking has shifted. Doing something creative or hands-on in a college class setting is uncommon, but almost everyone tries to work on homework for other classes. The overabundance of technology in the classroom has created a strange expectation that we should be “multitasking” all the time.
The presence of portable technology is a large factor in this. It’s expected that most students will have some device that they can use in class. Now, professors rarely print their assignments out on paper. Instead, they tell us we can find assignments and class materials posted on Canvas. Group projects are assigned online, and you have to reach out to your group members through email. Assignments almost exclusively get turned in online as well. A professor once told me to drop her class if I could not pull up online materials during our class meetings. She assured me I would fail if I stayed enrolled, all because I did not own a laptop.
Yet, this essential commodity had become a distraction for students in my class, and they wanted to speak up about it. I had not thought about how “multitasking” at such a level could disrespect your professor and classmates. Not to mention what a detriment to your learning habits this could be.
I thought I was old school — and maybe kind of cool — for preferring paper notes to house my everlasting need to doodle, but practically everyone else has a computer on campus. Those of us who may not have a laptop tend to have a disadvantage in certain classes, but in Dr. Landau’s class, he asked us to face an hour and 15 minutes with minimal distractions. We were still allowed to use our devices for notes, but he wanted us to pay attention. He followed up his PSA with an interesting alternative.
Dr. Landau explained how he understood that many students might need to work on multiple things to focus better or absorb class information. “If you really need to multitask, get a fidget spinner,” he said, pausing to think of a less distracting substitute. “Get some yarn, and take up knitting.”
We all chuckled, though his encouragement to continue multitasking stuck with me. I was curious about what my classmates might choose as their new multitasking activity. What would we do if we were not dividing our attention between the professor and technology but instead employed our hands to create and listen?
Hustle culture makes us believe that we need to produce content at the highest rate possible constantly. This usually means staring at a screen all day and typing for hours. Many follow that up during our breaks with a long doom scroll on our phones. This creates a barrier between cognitive reality and the physical realm.
The real beauty in processing information comes from the simultaneous use of both sides of the brain. Neurodivergent brains tend to practice both sides more easily due to faster-paced and rhythmic, pattern-based execution. The left side of the brain processes speech, language, and analysis, which is helpful in a student-teacher setting. We rely on the left side to gather information and communicate our cognitive reality. The right side of the brain deals with spatial processing and nonverbal memory. This side of our brain is what allows us to connect through art and creative means, looking at our experiences in context as a whole. Both sides of the brain also retain memory, but in different ways and with different applications. Where the right side processes more fluid and abstract concepts, the left brain allows us to be more analytical, organized and precise. Though all brains– regardless of neurotypicality– are just as likely to benefit from multitasking, neurotypical brains may find multitasking distracting or even frustrating to keep up with. Multitasking has the opposite effect on neurodivergent brains.
But that doesn’t mean multitasking is only for neurodivergent students. For those who benefit from listening to music or repetitive crafting, such activities can help create “inherent pacing” within the brain to keep away external distractions. Multitasking not only heightens an individual’s ability to focus but successfully doing it utilizes the memory retention from both sides of the brain, thus allowing us to enhance our overall understanding of all kinds of information. One way to determine if a certain type of multitasking will be helpful for you is to see how monotonous or rhythmic that task is. A good multitask creates a looped effect that peripherally engages your focus. Then, your left brain actively processes information while your right brain associates the memory of the information with the task’s pattern.
Though higher education classes such as economics, music theory, statistics, or philosophy may not have solid leeway for hands-on learning in lectures, multitasking with our hands, like knitting, to better comprehend these concepts should be left wide open for students of all brain types.
