Welcome to Episode 146 of the Think UDL podcast: Futureproofing with Adam Davison and Clare Squires. Adam Davison is the Lead Specialist Autism Mentor and Clare Squires is the Disability Officer for Autism both at De Montfort University in Leicester, United Kingdom. I met Clare and Adam at the AHEAD conference in Dublin, Ireland, and was intrigued by the programs they have created to help Autistic students transition out of university and into the working world. We have many college and university programs that help students transition into college, but Clare and Adam saw a need for programs to help students think through life after college and confront and prepare for the challenges outside of the university that do not necessarily have to do with academic life. In today’s episode, we discuss the need for these programs and what De Montfort University has to offer, and also the many successes of these programs. You can read more about “Future Proofing” in this episodes resources on thinkUDL.org website and thank you for listening to the Think UDL podcast.
Resources
Link Tree with links to news articles etc De Montfort University Autism | Instagram | Linktree
Instagram: DMUAutism
Clare Squires Disability Officer for Autism
Clare’s Linkedin (24) Clare Squires | LinkedIn
Adam Davison: Lead Specialist Autism Mentor
Info about 5 ways to wellbeing: 5 steps to mental wellbeing – NHS
A Different Kettle of Fish by Michael Barton A Different Kettle of Fish by Michael Barton, Delia Barton | Waterstones
Strong Female Character Fern Brady Strong Female Character: Nero Book Awards Winner : Brady, Fern: Amazon.co.uk: Books
Odd Girl Out by Laura James Odd Girl Out: An Autistic Woman in a Neurotypical World: Amazon.co.uk: James, Laura: 9781509843060: Books
Transcript
53:39
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Universal Design for Learning, autism mentor, disability officer, future proofing, De Montfort University, transition support, student variability, career planning, resilience building, wellness, mindfulness, support network, alumni event, job application, academic life.
SPEAKERS
Adam Davison, Lillian Nave, Clare Squires
Lillian Nave 00:02
Welcome to think UDL, the universal design for learning podcast where we hear from the people who are designing and implementing strategies with learner variability in mind. I’m your host, Lillian Nave, and I’m interested in not just what you’re teaching, learning, guiding and facilitating, but how you design and implement it, and why it even matters. Welcome to Episode 146 of the think UDL podcast, future proofing with Adam Davison and Clare Squires. Adam Davison is the lead specialist autism mentor, and Clare Squires is the disability officer for autism both at De Montfort University in Leicester, United Kingdom, I met Clare and Adam at the ahead conference in Dublin, Ireland, and was intrigued by the programs they have created to help autistic students transition out of the university and into the working world. We have so many college and university programs that help students transition into college, but Clare and Adam saw a need for programs to help students think through life after college and prepare for the challenges outside of the university that do not necessarily have to do with academic life. In today’s episode, we discuss the need for these programs and what De Montfort University has to offer and also the many successes of these programs. You can read more about future proofing in this episode’s resources section on think udl.org That’s our website, and thank you for listening to the think UDL podcast I’d like to welcome my guests. So thank you so much for joining me, Adam and Claire, thanks for being on the think UDL podcast.
Adam Davison 02:10
Thank you. Thanks for having us really happy to be here. Thank you.
Lillian Nave 02:13
Thanks, Claire.
Clare Squires 02:15
hi, Lillian.
Lillian Nave 02:15
So I wanted to start out with my question I ask all of my guests, and I’ll start with you, Claire, if you wouldn’t mind, what makes you a different kind of learner?
Clare Squires 02:26
Well, I think I’m very lucky, because I’ve been working in education for over 30 years, and I’ve worked with lots of different students over that time, and each of them have got their own own ways of working and and learning, and I’ve, I’ve seen what works for for different people, and now I feel like I have, well, I’ve added all of those methods to my repertoire, and now I feel like I’ve got a menu to select from. So when I need to learn something, I can choose the most appropriate thing according to the task or the time of day for me or how I’m feeling. And also, as I’ve grown more experienced, I’ve grown more confident, and so now I feel I don’t feel embarrassed or afraid to ask for, for what I need, that’s great. So now you’re you really know what you need and what’s going to help you and and confidence enough to do that, right? Yeah, that’s right. That is an empowered expert, adaptive learner. That’s totally what we want in UDL, of course, so perfect.
Lillian Nave 03:43
And Adam, how about you?
Adam Davison 03:45
Yeah, so, um, I think I’d say, I don’t know how different, but I’m a different learner. I think I’ve try and connect what I’m learning to sort of real world situations, rather than just memorizing facts or things that I’ve been told, sort of question, why does it matter? Why are we doing this? How can I use this in a real world, sort of situation? And hopefully, I hope this helped me to retain the information for longer, and helps me to be able to use it in in situations, problem solving or group situations, I think
Lillian Nave 04:22
nice. So you’re tapping into the authenticity of why the task is at hand. You know, why should you be learning this? Another one of our UDL principles is making authentic especially assessments like, why would I have to do this homework? You know, that’s the big one. The why that very first column of Universal Design for Learning is why? Why should I even learn this in the first place? All right, so what a great start. We have a confidence and also an authenticity about our learning. So I think that really, those are probably those lenses that you brought to. What your future proofing is, helping your students to really know what’s appropriate for themselves and why they should be doing it. I really enjoyed your session that we were at the ahead conference, and I got to learn about what you’re doing. And so I wanted to ask about what is future proofing, what’s a future proofing session, and why is there a need for them, and how did they come about at De Montfort University, where you are. And we’ll start with Adam,
Adam Davison 05:29
yeah. Thank you. So future proofing sessions are sessions that have been designed by us as the autism team at De Montfort University in Leicester. We offer these future proofing sessions to our autistic students that are transitioning out of university, the how and the why. So the future proofing sessions are part of a much broader support package that we offer at DMU. Unfortunately, at the head conference, we only had a certain amount of time to talk about, like six minutes or something. Yeah, six minutes. So we as a team offer sort of a whole range of support to our students, and that’s sent to our students in like a newsletter at the start of each term, but in particular with future proofing as a team, we realize that we do so much to support students who are transitioning into university, but we didn’t do anywhere near as much to help them transition out of university, which is equally As scary as transitioning then, yeah, yeah. So ultimately, we spoke to students on a one to one basis, and it became really, really clear that our students were far too anxious to think about future plans, think about what happens next after university. So we came up with the idea to put on the future proofing sessions to support students with this. So again, as a team, we discussed what we could cover in the sessions, topics that would be really beneficial for
Lillian Nave 07:27
can you tell me just a little bit more about
Adam Davison 07:30
that? What that does there, too? I know this is one part of it, but just a little bit more that we’re gonna Yeah, we’ll hear about one part. But what else does it do absolutely so at the start of each term. So we have three terms. At the start of each term, we send out what we call an autism what’s on and in there, we have a whole range of things that we’re there to support with, outside of the general sort of day to day support that we offer. So the main thing that we do is our autism social so every single Thursday, Claire and I and other members of the team meet students on campus at six o’clock each Thursday, and we have a program of events throughout the term. So we go and do something different, either in the city or somewhere on campus together. So a whole range of things that we’ve done. We could be here all day, but we’ve been to we’ve done cinema, we’ve done bowling, mini golf, arts and crafts nights, Lego nights. That’s so fantastic. It’s, it’s, there’s, we try and do different things each terms, some some stay each term, because they’re just so popular. So one of our mentors at DMU runs a runs a quiz, and we do a quiz, and we that’s always really, really popular. We do open mic nights. We’ve done karaoke. You won’t hear Claire and I sing at the karaoke. So that’s, that’s sort of our, I guess our flagship thing, isn’t it? I think we do, and it’s something that obviously our students love, but we love being able to do that, as with our students as well. It’s really fantastic. So we meet students at six o’clock. We go and do the activity, whether that’s in the city or on campus. We stay throughout it, and then we offer students to come back to campus with us at the start of the academic year. Everybody comes back with us because we’re all a little bit nervous, a bit anxious. Yeah, as the academic year develops, naturally, say, actually we’re going to we’re going to stay for another game, we’re going to go on to get a coffee or go somewhere for a drink. And sometimes Claire and I have no nobody to walk back, which is, which is really nice. And our job, yeah, exactly. So, yeah, that’s one thing. We also do autism life hacks. So we’ve got a YouTube channel, and we talk about different topics that students are going to find might or might find difficult at. University so things like ways to make friends, living with flatmates, avoiding scams, revision techniques, online dating, yeah, love and intense emotions, yeah, energy, accounting, executive skills. So we put on a sort of a session to sort of try and help students with this. Claire, I’ll let you do you do a mindfulness session. I’ll let you talk about your mindfulness session.
Clare Squires 10:28
Yes, yes. So, so Lillian, we do so many things because of our students have challenges with making friendships. So the non academic, absolutely, yeah. So we try and create a sense of belonging and a sense of community. And so we have these, the things that Adam has been telling about, that’s just some of them. This this year, we did for the first time, a book group, which was massively popular, and it we did, or can’t think of the names of the books that we we chose odd girl out, girl out, and talking to somebody about it, literally last week, but their memoirs, of people, of from autistic women and so, and We thought that we would mostly get women come to the book group. But actually it was, it was half and half, and it was, it was so lovely because it was just those books has resonated so much with our students, and they were, they, well, it was sparked a conversation that people were sharing their feelings. It was so validating. It was, it was just an incredible experience. So, but yeah, we do loads of stuff because we want to provide, like a safety net, a support network and and we want to scaffold students relationships so that, because a lot of our students, they they have had, they come to us at 18, generally, and they’ve had not great experiences socially up until this point. And so that that makes them feel less confident about it, or or or reticent, or they’ve assumed that they’re no good, that relationships can’t do them, and so they do need that, that level of support. And we can, we can do that, and we can dive in if anybody needs to be rescued from something, but mostly we don’t need to. And we’re really lucky at De Montfort because we’ve got 570 students with autism.
Lillian Nave 12:47
Wow.
Clare Squires 12:49
I know not all of them have a diagnosis. They don’t need a diagnosis if they think they’ve got autism. They’re in as far as we’re concerned. But you know, we say to students, you’re never going to be in a situation like this again, where you’re going to be amongst so many people with autism make the most of it. And you know, you don’t have to only be friends with people with autism, but you’re going to find that they’re well, they’re just ordinary people. You’re going to have a lot of similar experiences and similar ways of looking at things and and, you know that that really does make them feel well, it’s validating. It just makes them feel like, Oh yeah, and I belong, and they and they do, and they do, they belong, yeah. We also have a dog. We have a therapy dog,
Adam Davison 13:35
therapy dog, so we do lunch socials. So we do a music lunch social and a therapy dog lunch social as well.
Lillian Nave 13:45
Yeah, it’s fantastic. Strong female character was the other book we read. Awesome. You know what? I you’ve already given me a bunch of things that I want to put on our resources, so we could put a link to that YouTube channel and the books and so people can maybe replicate or do something similar. It sounds wonderful. And are all of these students? These are all degree seeking students, right? In your normal population, this is not an extra or certificate program, right? Yes, they’re all either undergraduates or post graduates. So some of some are doing PhDs. Some are masters and yeah, but the vast majority are just ordinary undergrads. Wow. Okay, what a beautiful community you’re already creating. Wow. So, you know, I only heard because, again, we only had six minutes when we presented at this conference. So I only heard this one part, but I was so attracted to it that I wanted to ask so I didn’t realize the whole breadth of those other parts that you offer. Back to our future proofing session, which is a really fantastic part of this beautiful community and this program. I’ll start with you again, Adam on this one. But what goes on in one of those future proofing sessions? How many.
Adam Davison 15:00
Students who attends, how long are these sessions? And can you give an example or two? Absolutely. I mean, lots can happen in a future proofing session. But initially, how the sessions would work, we’d start by asking the students what thoughts they have, what ideas they have on what to do after university. So this could be full time work, part time work, further study, internships, placements, volunteering, traveling, all of the above and a host more. Hopefully the student has has an idea. If they don’t, I’ll talk about that in a in a moment. It doesn’t matter if they don’t have an idea of what they want to do, but we’ll start to look at these sort of in in more detail. So if a student is looking for for a graduate job, we would start there. If they want to do a master’s degree or a postgraduate degree, we’d look there, and maybe our university doesn’t offer exactly what they want, and that can be quite scary for them, because they obviously know the location, they know the environment, they know us as the team. So trying to look where else that they could go that would be a difficult transition, right? It really is, and I think sometimes we’ve seen it in the past, where students have wanted to do a postgraduate degree. Them off at university doesn’t offer it, and it’s almost like, well, I can’t do one then. So I guess it’s trying to sort of try to help shift the thinking that we appreciate how daunting it would be to go somewhere else. But you’ve just spent three years with us, and I’m sure you had these exact same thoughts when you were coming to us from your previous educational institution. So trying to work, trying to work through that in terms of numbers of students, this has some challenges, because we run this during the day. So we have challenges with timetable clashes, other commitments, assignments that are due, etc. We’d say most future proofing sessions, group future proofing sessions, we have sort of a handful of students attend, which is quite a nice amount, because it allows us as members of staff, to be able to give attention to each student. I think if the if we had masses of students arriving, it would be more difficult to give more individualized time to that student. Now, to overcome overcome this with we have started to offer one to one future proofing sessions as well, because we also appreciate that if we run them on a Thursday at three o’clock, if we run them at that time during the whole academic year, chances are the same students are going to miss out due to a timetabled session. So we’ve started to offer one to ones, and they can be more flexible on the on the time that they can do the group sessions last for about an hour that we put them on for an hour. Students can come and go as they please. They don’t have to spend the whole hour there. And for the one to ones we put on, we put those on for 30 minutes. It allows more time to sort of really get into, get into content. It’s got a sort of a sort of a business lunch feel, is what we will go in for nice so students, sort of, they bring their they bring their laptops, doesn’t bring cups of tea, coffee, depending on where we are, we’ll try and put some refreshments on as well. But it’s not always possible depending on where we are on campus. But yeah, trying to get sort of, sort of a work and lunch. It’s also nice that we’re in the group sessions, in particular, that students can help each other out as well. So if Claire or I talking to a student about their career path or that their next steps, sort of getting an idea of, oh, what are you looking at? Because other people might have contacts or know people in different industries that could potentially help as well, which is always nice to see Yeah, or they couldn’t even or they might not even know that’s even an option. What? Absolutely, yeah, I didn’t know you could do that. This happens all the time. Absolutely, so it is really fantastic to sort of get the students to sort of give their ideas as well. So in terms of an example of a job picture, a particular student out that I was working with last year, a final year graphic designer looking for a graduate position, were finished. They’d gone through their educational journey. Was like, right? I’d like to go and make some money now to be honest, yeah, that’d be great, yeah. So they told me that they were looking at positions in graphic design. So the student had moved to Leicester for university, and that they come from quite a rural i. A town quite a way, quite away from Leicester, and they had no preference at all on where in the UK they would want to work. So they were more than happy to relocate anywhere, really, which makes things easier in some ways, but also quite difficult to sort of narrow down a place. So basically, where we started was simple, a simple Google search of graphic designer graduate jobs in Leicester. So started off in Leicester. They’ve got friends that that were staying in Leicester after university, so that would have been their ideal to stay local. And started looking through job websites for this particular student, something that they’ve never done before in their lives, they didn’t really know where to start, and it can be an absolute overwhelming minefield of looking for positions. So we started to look through various jobs, initially looking at the job descriptions and the day to day activities of that role, and sort of asking the student, is this something that you would want to do? Is this something you can see yourself doing? If that was a yes, we’d sort of look at it in terms of, okay, let’s look at the location. Is it can you? Can you get there is accessible to you, in terms of this particular student didn’t drive, so they would be using public transport walking to get to the role. So, yep, the location is perfect, brilliant. So from there, we’ve either ruled things out straight away, and those that have been rules out, ruled out. Fantastic. And then we look at sort of a batch of of roles that had potential to sort of take on further. So if they did like the look of the role, we’d then take, like a deeper look into that, and start to look at the person specification of the role for this particular student, again, had never, had never seen a person specification before. Didn’t know the differences between the essential criteria and the desirable criteria. So just going through that and just making sure that, first of all, we’re hitting that essential criteria enable to apply for the role. And then what other desirable criteria does that employer have that you could also really talk about if we get to a stage where you’d like to apply for the role, and again, once, once that’s all been looked at and gone through, we would then start the application of that role and start that application form, which, again, I find incredibly daunting when I’ve ever done a job application. So to have somebody to sort of sit there and try and support you with it and ask the questions that you’re unsure on was was really, beneficial.
Lillian Nave 23:02
And, you know, even that difference between the essential qualifications and the, you know, what we’d like to have, I know a lot of students will read that and say, Oh, I can’t do this job. You know, that’s really overwhelming. Or if they don’t even have all of the essential ones like that, they don’t realize that there’s, there’s oftentimes, room to grow, you know, like, if you hit most of them there a lot of our students, you know, that I work with, or just think why I just can’t do that. I can’t, you know?
Clare Squires 23:32
Yeah,
Adam Davison 23:33
absolutely. I think looking like closely at the job advert as well, because a lot will say are willing to work X, Y and Z that are on the essential criteria. So the the employer is, you don’t necessarily need to have that at the here and now, but you could, if you’re willing to work towards that, then great, it’s absolutely fine. Yeah, our students tend to take those person specifications very literally, yes, so if they haven’t got absolutely everything on that list, they say, Oh, well, I can’t. I can’t apply for it. And we come across that so often, and we always say, but it’s not up to you to make that decision. You put the application in if they, if the employer, decides you can’t, well, that’s fair enough. But you don’t, don’t you make that decision, that’s great. I’m so impressed that you’ve got this very personalized kind of career focus, that you’re helping your students, and that you’re helping through that whole process, right? Yeah. Well, you see those roles? We do have a careers team at the University, but for our students, they don’t know the careers team. They’re strangers, and they’re not some. They’re not a team that they they have anything to do with. So they because we’ve been part of.
Clare Squires 25:00
Of their their support network for the two previous years. They know us, they trust us, so we can get alongside them and and and support them with that journey in a way that the careers team aren’t able to do. That’s great. And so there were you do a lot of these future proofing sessions, right? So, Claire, did you have another example? Yeah, so the the future proofing sessions cover the whole student. So we’re not just focused on getting a job or further study. So I do a session, well, do several sessions actually about creating a support network, because our university is very safe, very supportive. They’ve everything the student needs is here. There’s 100 plus societies and clubs that they can join. You know, there’s something for every single possible interest or hobby that they could could ever have the support here if they’re unhappy or things aren’t going well, if they’re living in accommodation, they’ve got people to speak to all the time. So and, you know, their brains being stimulated. They’re working on on their course, and they’ve got a purpose, you know, get that qualification, but when they leave university, that’s all gone. And so it’s really important that they plan for this. So that’s what we focus on as well. So we start to work out who could be part of their support network when they leave university, and when we get them to think about the interests that they have and how they could pursue those interests when they’re living back home or wherever they’re, you know, in their new location. So we get them to start to research clubs and societies or activities in that area, and it’s important for them to keep fit and active. And when you’re at university, that’s really easy, because there’s a gym on the site, swimming pool, sports, pitches, leisure center, it’s all there. So we get students to research how they’re going to continue to keep themselves fit and active. You know, we get into research gyms and, you know, running clubs, tennis clubs, all the sorts of things that they could possibly pursue in a in a new environment. And those sorts of things are things that our students can often overlook, and it’s not something they plan for. And at University, students will have made friends if we’ve done our job properly, won’t they Adam, and they’ll and those friends will be a big part of their support network. And once they leave university, they’ve, they’ve, they’ve got to think about how they’re going to make some new friends, but how are they going to maintain those friendships, perhaps long distance, and these are things that they they wouldn’t, wouldn’t even think about, they wouldn’t even consider, unless we we mentioned it. And so we get them to to discuss that and start to make plans. So as we’ve said before, the the autism team are a really big part of their support network. We’ve created this sense of belonging, this sense of community, and it’s really important to our students. So when we’re no longer there, we want them to think about how they’re going to create a sense of community, a sense of belonging for themselves. Now, for some of our students, that’s going to be a place of worship. Other students, you know, volunteering will be how they get that, but we want them to consider it, because it is so important to their well being, and it and it’s something that just just gets overlooked, wow, oh. And also Hong, and I didn’t say, but I meant to that online communities are really important for our students as well. Yes, yes, so a lot of discord, and yeah, the chats, and yes, that’s making friends all over the world. Honestly, yeah, I didn’t know what discord was, but before I started at the mafia, but never heard of it. Yeah, I have recently, you know, in the last couple years, I was like, Oh, wow, this is a whole universe that is on Discord. Yeah, so many friends, so many opportunities to to connect there. And so, you know, our youth, like I’m, you know, older. I have children who are college age, right? So when I was in college, we had none of that, and had none of those ways of connecting. I mean, we got so excited when we got a written letter in a mailbox in college, you know. And.
Lillian Nave 30:00
And Ha, and it brings those kind of pluses and minuses, because now students who are going away to college, they can still keep a lot of those friendships that they had in high school or before they got to college, and because everybody’s connected, so a lot relationships, you know, either boyfriend, girlfriend or whatever. But in some ways, it also keeps them from making so many new friends at this new place, because they still have that. I mean, so it’s that balance of, how are you making the new friends? Then how are you going to keep those new friends when you are then you disperse again. But that college time is such an amazing, formative time, you know, for for young people as you know you we all work in the college world, and that you make those lifelong friends like you find that you find your people. So many times you get the option to find your people there, it’s so important.
Adam Davison 30:58
So what happens when a student really doesn’t know what to do in one of these future proofing sessions. Adam, yeah, so it’s probably for having spoken to students. It’s probably the biggest barrier of even attending a future proofing session, because they think, well, what’s the point of me attending a future proofing session, if I don’t know what I want to do, what would we possibly talk about? But if students, if they don’t know what they want to do next, is absolutely fine. I don’t I can’t remember the exact moment I remembered what I wanted to do, but it certainly was after I finished uni. I think so it’s and that sort of, sort of giving our own perspectives on things around our own, sort of our own stories, if you like that. It’s absolutely fine, and that’s, that’s why we we put them on. So what we do is we still go through the options that I mentioned earlier, work the volunteer and places. Placements, traveling, and if that didn’t spark an interest, that’s not a problem, we would start to look at what strengths they have. What are their what are their autistic strengths? What are they going to bring? What would they in an ideal world? What would they want to do? Try not to think of practical elements of next steps. But if you could pick anything, what, what would you do and try and try and work from there, like you’ve already mentioned Lillian, like, sometimes it’s like, oh, I didn’t realize that was possible. I didn’t realize that that was even a thing that we could do. So just giving them sort of free reign, if you like, of forget the the fundamentals of going into work. For example, what if I asked you what you want to do? And it could be absolutely, I think, where would we go? And then, depending on that response, we’d sort of work our way down into sort of places where we can start to actually, physically look at things and start to hopefully put things in place. Another key part of that is eliminating what they absolutely would not want to do. So we, a lot of students that we’ve, we’ve worked with have had maybe part time jobs, maybe in bars or pubs, and it’s just been a complete sensory overload, and they really, really disliked it. So all others that have worked in customer service roles where all day you’re talking to people you’ve got your the the norm, expectation, if you like, is to hold eye contact all day, which can be completely draining of all energy for students that we’re Working with. So trying to absolutely discount what isn’t a possibility for them at this moment. And that doesn’t mean to say that in the future, they won’t be able to do those sorts of roles and do but for now, what’s what you almost dread, what would you absolutely not want to do? So as we start to rule things out and hopefully pick things of of interest for students. We’d sort of try and go from there and trying to build on that and other things that we’ve come across. I’ve talked about employment quite a lot already. Thank you. Claire has talked about different stuff, but because we’re I think there’s sort of the the expectation is you finish university and you either know what you’re doing next or you go into a paid role. Well, there are other options. And just giving students the other options we’ve had, we’ve had so many students that have wanted to go on to do a postgraduate course. Force, but have held back for lots of different reasons. More more student finance, more more debt in to pay back later on, pressures of, well, if you’re maybe precious from home, if you’re if you’re coming home when you need to be earning money and all that sort of stuff. So just given as many options in a in a safe environment where we can talk through them all and go through what’s going to work for them. So I’ve had students that have come in and said, I don’t know what I want to do for a job, but does it have to be a job? Do you have to have to go into work straight away and just trying to sort of shift the thinking a little bit. It can be a process. I’m not going to sit here and say they come to us in an hour session not knowing what to do, and they go away with their lifetime plan. It is something that we continue on, we we aim to build on, sort of each session. But yeah, it’s, it can be tricky, but I think ultimately it’s, it’s okay not knowing what’s next. It’s scary. We completely appreciate that. It’s scary, but you don’t have to have things completely figured out by the time, by the time you graduate. And I think it’s just trying to
Lillian Nave 36:22
let students hear that at times. Yeah, wow. This is so many things that make me think. I wish I had this, and I know we’ll talk about, how does future proofing work out, even outside of your autism team, but so many good questions and so many amazing things to be, like, doing that work in your head, like I when you were talking about, like, what are the things that you’re interested in, and could that even be a job? And can we think about it that way? Kind of think outside the box, because there have been so many times when I hear this in my head, or I think about, like, so many instances where it’s parents or even myself, like, well, you can’t play video games the rest of your life. And you know what? Turns out you can. There are actually, you really, like, there are some really incredibly bright people who build these video games, you know, and do all this stuff that I was like, Oh, really, oh, I guess I didn’t really think about what all those options were. That’s it. And not only can you do it, you can do it for a very good living and become, yes, maybe more modern than the academics. Become incredibly popular and have millions of followers. Yeah, it’s incredible. Yeah, so all these questions that I was probably too afraid to ask and ask myself, these are really good questions, what would happen after college, Claire, and what challenges does that bring, and how do you approach that with students? Well, what we found was that that students were leaving it too late to think about it, particularly our students, they prefer to focus on one thing at a time, and so they they put off thinking about what they were going to do until the after their last exam. And after their last exam, the course is finished. They’re moving out of accommodation, and they’ve left university. And so it was, it was too late,
Clare Squires 38:28
and they, they didn’t have the support that they needed to make this massive change. So at De Montfort University, we transition students in really, really well, we do a residential an overnight stay with applicants, before the term starts to get them used to the campus, get to use to us. And then after that, we have like Minecraft, Minecraft server that we that students use. And so gradually, gradually, gradually, they get a sense of belonging, a sense of community, and but transitioning students out, it was very, oh, that’s it. It’s over. And so we’d noticed that this was a bit of an issue, just anecdotally talking amongst ourselves, and we ran some focus groups for students that existing students, but also students that had recently left. And we gathered feedback, and it was clear that students felt that once they’d left, their world had shrunk and and and they were overwhelmed with the enormity of the task. And then, and then, well being, their mental health was suffering. And so we use the focus groups to talk about what would be useful. And it became clear that students wanted something like. Of the transitioning into DMU, but to transition them out. And so to transition them out, we came up, we, you know, in conversation with students when we eventually hit upon this idea of future proofing. So in one of the things that you talk about, and I picked up on, on these future proofing sessions, of why they came about, too, is something you talked about building resilience and wellness. And I thought, but how do you build resilience and wellness in these students? And I wanted to know, oh, right, well, we we do a whole session about building resilience, and we keep coming back to it, because it is so important. It’s a really big part of the job search. And so rejection
Clare Squires 40:57
is, is, is part of that process. And we found that a lot of our students were terrified of being rejected, and then once they had been rejected from a you know, hadn’t even got an interview say, it really hurt, and they undermined their confidence, and they didn’t feel like applying for another job, they took it really, really personally. And so we’ve we talk really openly about it, so that students know to expect it. And Adam and I are really open about it. We share our experiences of rejection, of which there are many. Aren’t there? Adam, yeah, and our horrific job, the job interview experiences, so that students know that it happens to everyone. It’s it’s not, you know, just you, it’s everybody. And so by being open, by talking about it, preparing them for it, knowing it’s going to happen, it’s just part of the process. It’s not about it’s not about you, your personality. It’s not a rejection of you. And over time, over the course of the year, students are more open with each other, as trust builds and they start to share their experiences, and we can laugh about it and not take it as the body blow that we once did. So yeah, I think, I think that that sharing and that building of community is is what helps build the resilience and and, and as for like wellness, we make sure that students are aware of the five ways to well being and and plan into their future. You know, their future planning for how they’re going to address those five ways to well being. But another, another prong of this approach is mindfulness. So I’m a mindfulness teacher, and we use mindfulness to for students to I mean, it takes more than a year to do it, but I’ve got them for three years. That’s plenty of time. And so we, we develop that strength inside ourselves, so that they they know inside them, there is this strength. And another part of the mindfulness that we use is that being in the present and not
Lillian Nave 43:25
obsessing and going over the rejections in the past, the things that have gone before, can’t do anything about those and they’re in the past and not be worrying about the future. Oh my goodness, am I going to get a job or what will happen? We’re just in now, and to keep focused in now, and we find that that mindfulness is a really good tool. Wow, yes, it is. And your ideas about how to build that are so important about wellness, and I love that you have the five ways to well being, and maybe we can put that in the resources too, if people want to learn more about that and that resilience part, I think, is so important and so difficult as students are leaving college, and I have actually haven’t thought about this in 30 years, but I have a really visual memory of being a senior in college and lived in a house with about 12 other people, and as people got rejected from their interviews, and this is before email, right? That’s how old I am, but we would send out letters and see and have interviews or whatever, and it would all be correspondence. So you would get a physical letter, it would come in your mailbox, and you come home and you’d open this up, and then we made a board of all of our rejection letters, and there were dozens, dozens, and just put up here we are being rejected, rejected again, like thumbtack, thumbtack, and all is just imagine a full wall, several walls of the house, being covered in rejection letters. And so we felt like, oh, it’s not just me. You know, it’s like, you just have to, like, throw out all these seeds and see if something takes root. But when it’s just you and you are just continuously rejected, you don’t have that community. And I didn’t realize how affirming that was. I mean, we were just sort of laughing about it, but when the first person just started to put it up on the wall. I just felt so much better about, you know, all of those rejection letters, yeah, yeah. And it’s so important now, Lillian, because with social media, people don’t, don’t post about how, how terrible their life is going.
Clare Squires 45:38
All our students see of people having great lives and being really successful and getting jobs and things like that and that can really undermine their confidence. So, so, but yeah, a wall of rejection letters. It’s just what we need.
Adam Davison 45:54
I tell a story that about five or six years ago, I went for a job interview and I felt like I had an out of body experience where I floated above myself, and I was looking at my down on myself, looking at the answer I was given, telling myself to stop talking, because I wasn’t talking about the answers of the question. I didn’t take my time. I rushed. And I wish I could. I wish i at time. I could just stop myself and say, Actually, could I just have a couple of minutes just to think about my answer before I start babbling onto you? Please? I just went off, and I just could not stop talking, but it had nothing to do with the questions that I was being asked. And, yeah, it happens, doesn’t it? It happens, and it’s okay, and we have to share these stories, right? Or, because nobody has to do it alone, and they don’t have to be the first one, and we’re all in it together. All of these things are so helpful for our wellness, yeah, and our sense of resilience as well, that we’re all in it together. And of course, there’s just going to be hundreds of rejections, you know, as these students are going off into the real world. But all they need is one. All you need is one is, yeah, so I guess the last thing is, how are these sessions going, and how are they growing? And are they only for autistic students, or are you opening it up to others? What’s on the horizon for you? Adam, so we’re always looking to grow the support that we have on offer. So firstly, we’re offering more sessions now. So whereas originally they were offered once a month for one hour, and that was all. We now offer one to one sessions. So like I’ve already talked about, this gives the students more contact time with us and longer to actually go through content and try and progress forward as much as we can. Having them twice a month now obviously gives hopefully allows us to reach further afield with students. I’ve talked about, sort of the constraints we have sometimes with timetables and things like that. So running them twice a month hopefully gives them more opportunities. We also last term at the end of last term, so just before the Easter break, we ran an alumni event where some of our old students came back to give their experiences of their time since leaving DMU and what they’ve been up to, and also to give feedback to our current students about the support that they received whilst at De Montfort University as well. And also, what was quite nice to hear was the alumni students talking about how they’re, if they’re in work at the moment, how their employers are actually support supporting them as well. Because that’s another barrier that we see with students, is, do I disclose my diagnosis to my potential employer. So how alumni have sort of worked with that, and the response that they’ve had from that was really nice. It was a fantastic event, and really nice to see so many success stories and hear about so much success, but yeah, always, always looking to grow. They’re not only 46 students. So as Claire’s mentioned, we have 570 students on our contact list of students for this academic year. Not all have a diagnosis, but all receive this the information of future proofing through the what’s on, so they don’t need a diagnosis to attend the session. And what’s on the horizon? Well, first of all, we’ve now opened up future proofing to all year groups at university. Originally, future proofing was excluded. For our final year students, but we’ve had a little rethink of that, and have decided that it’s never too early to think about life after university. And we’ve got first and second year students using it to help them during the summer months, which can be very unpredictable. There’s no routine for them that could they’re they’re back home, so trying to put things in place during summer breaks as well as longer term, looking at alternative times to reach further students based on the feedback that we’ve had, we’re always looking to gain more feedback from not only from students that have attended and what they’ve found useful, or not so useful, but just as importantly, students that maybe haven’t attended the sessions, and the reasons why they haven’t, what are the barriers to this? So we can try and overcome this and get more people, get more students to attend the sessions, and we’re definitely based on the success of the alumni, then will certainly be running more alumni events in the near future as well. I don’t know if you’ve got anything to add Claire to that.
Clare Squires 51:07
No, just about the alumni event. It was lovely. I mean, it was heartwarming. It was it was a beautiful thing. But our student, the existing students, really benefited from this, these people that were really in the real world, doing real things. And it wasn’t just us telling them, but the alumni benefited from it, because they felt so well. They felt like they were giving something back. They were, you know, they felt that, that they were doing something really useful. And it was like, they’ve gone a full circle. It was, it was lovely. So, yeah, we’ll definitely be doing more with alumni. They’ve got loads to give.
Lillian Nave 51:47
that’s so fantastic. Wow. What an incredible program, and so much more than just future proofing that you all do so but I was so excited to hear about it. It’s something that we need. We need for all of our students as they’re going out into the world, not all of them are as prepared or have the networks that some do. So thank you for sharing that this is something that could, I think, be easily reproduced, because you’ve done all of the really good groundwork. So just wanna say thank you so much for being on the podcast with me, and thanks for your time today.
Clare Squires 52:23
Thank you, Lillian,
Lillian Nave 52:27
thank you for listening to this episode of The think UDL podcast. New episodes are posted on social media, on LinkedIn, Facebook, X and blue sky. You can find transcripts and resources pertaining to each episode on our website. Think u, d, l.org, the music in each episode is created by the Oddyssey quartet. Oddyssey is spelled with two D’s, by the way, comprised of Rex Shepard, David Pate, Bill Folwell and Jose Cochez. I’m your host, Lillian Nave, and I want to thank Appalachian State University for helping to support this podcast. And if you call it Appalachian, I’ll throw an apple at you. Thank you for joining. I’m your host. Lillian Nave, thanks for listening to the think UDL podcast.