The leading teacher and inclusion outreach coach from Lake Colac School in Victoria says she’s had enough of sitting through PD sessions littered with assumptions about autistic learners that are delivered from a neurotypical lens.

This should be a realm occupied by those with autism themselves, she argues.

“I think in the autism space in schools there's enough of us autistic educators out there to be able to be delivering [quality] professional learning for schools now.

“And people that aren’t autistic really can step aside and let us have our space; it’s never going to be honest because you don’t understand how our brains work, because we live it,” she tells EducationHQ.

Peverett is aware her call might seem harsh to some, but she maintains it’s delivered with kindness and the best intent.

“I’m not being intentionally mean … yes, it might be confronting [to hear from autistic presenters] because we don’t have those same ideas or (adhere to) social norms as much as everybody else, as much as ‘allistic’ people (individuals who do not have autism).

“But it’s still important for fellow teachers to understand that this is where we’re coming from, and we’re not mean and we’re not rude and we’re not trying to make your life difficult.”

Peverett’s autism diagnosis came when she was 28, and since then the educator says her understanding of neurodiversity has deepened considerably.

It’s only been more recently that we’ve begun to see more people with autism step into the spotlight and speak as an ’expert’ in special education, she adds.

“…it’s been a massive learning journey, but over that time … I’ve seen more people with autism talk about living with autism.

“The models that I was reading really early on when I was diagnosed back in 2010, were all around how autistic people need to understand neurotypicals to fit in.

“So, it’s heavily around masking and ‘if you want to get ahead you need to do these certain things’, and so the language was very much around what it looked like from a neurotypical perspective of what we were doing.”

You simply cannot fully analyse a neurodiverse brain from a neurotypical standpoint, Peverett says.

“You’re assuming that there’s certain things that I would do based on your understanding and so for many, many years autistic people have to live in a society trying to fit in with neurotypicals.

“Now I know in my own journey, the more I’ve tried to fit in the worse my mental health has become, and I know in my journey the more I’ve tried to go by society’s norms of how I should be acting, or what I should be saying, the anxiety to do that is massive.

“And especially because I can never do it right – because that’s not how my brain works.”

The educator is imploring school leaders to stop employing neurotypical people who might have experience with autism, such as being parent to an autistic child, to deliver staff PD on 'autistic strategies' and the like.

“For professional learning, it’s better to have someone with lived experience to be able to say ‘this is why students do this, because I live it’.

“I mean, we’re not 100 per cent perfect in this space … but I’ve worked with a lot of autistic kids and I can always read them innately better.

“I know why they do things even if they don’t have the language to tell me, because my brain works very similarly to them.”

The educator says teacher professional learning has tended to focus on getting autistic students to better align with social norms.

Peverett’s own diagnosis was prompted when she recognised she understood her autistic students far better than other people.  

“Even if they’re non-speaking students, I still know why they’re doing things…”

Teachers often come to Peverett asking for advice and insights on how best to support their autistic students. They usually appreciate her cut-through insights, she says. 

“Realistically, I can explain things to allistic teachers better than I’ve ever read in a book, because I can say, ‘oh they’re just doing this because of that’,” she shares.

The teacher emphasises that her views are nothing personal against those working in neurodiversity PD at large.

“[Rather, it’s about us] reclaiming this space and saying, ‘this is why we do this, not why you think we do this’.

“And when PD is not delivered by autistic people, then we’re doing a massive disservice for understanding of what it actually is, not what people think it should be for us.”

Once people glean an insight into the unique mind and world of those on the spectrum, a common realisation often hits, Peverett notes.

“When you learn about our perception of the world you realise that when we’re doing things, it’s not because we’re being mean or because we’re being abrupt or because we’re trying to be difficult or we’re trying to make people feel bad – it’s just the black and whiteness (of how we think).”

Using soft, inviting language to communicate – as society’s expectation dictates – can completely scramble the thinking processes of an autistic person, Peverett says.

It’s unfair and counterproductive to train teachers in how to get autistic students to adhere to many linguistic social norms, she contends.

“People get pretty cranky with me because I haven’t used the norms like ‘I’m curious about….’ or ’I’m wondering…’ because if I have to start a sentence with that, I have to re-work my whole language and the I way I was going to say it. I have to reprocess that.

“…I’m just being direct. If you want me to put it into a ‘nice’ way, then I have to do this whole reworking – it’s exhausting every day.

“And especially for autistic kids, that’s exhausting if they’re having to do that all the time day in, day out.

“If you constantly ask us to change our language to suit, we will never say what we need to say...”

Peverett says this is just one example that illustrates how teacher professional learning has tended to focus on getting autistic students to better align with social norms.

“It’s nothing [against these people], it’s just ‘this is the way it is’,” she says.