Wowsers, what a BUSY week. I don’t mind admitting that I am completely worn out! 🤣
On Monday we were lucky to host an Awesome Archie assembly at the prestigious Twynham Senior school in Dorset. Thankyou for giving us such a warm reception 🙏
In this particular assembly we spoke about how respect is vital for us all. How respecting ourselves, others and respecting “difference” is key to being a decent human. Further more, we shared that many of the worlds most influential people are themselves neurodivergent and that it was THAT difference that aided their success.
All the year sevens listened beautifully and it was lovely to see and hear you all interacting with us…thanks. 💪
The National Autistic Societies Annual Professionals’ conference 2024
I attended my first ” Prof Conf” this time last year and the impact and teachings have genuinely spurred me on and supported us in the work we have done for this entire year! I couldn’t not WAIT for this years conference and yet again, it didn’t disappoint.
The conference itself was an all day event ( literally 9-5) with different sessions, vastly qualified speakers and passionate educators.
We heard from Shabnam Anam, Education Consultant (DewDrop Education) Carol Povey, Director of Autism Projects, National Autistic Society, Dr Alice Nicholls, Clinical Psychologist, Dr Kayleigh Brown, Principal Clinical Psychologist, Remie Colledge, Expert by Experience and autistic peer support worker, Coventry and Warwickshire Partnership Trust… the list goes on!!
My hand was genuinely sore from all the note taking I took and my brand new notepad is now overflowing AWESOME hints and tips and contacts ready to help you all! 🌈
Over the next few months I will be distilling and distributing as much of this INCREDIBLE information as I possibly can however , I would like to personally thanks some of the amazing speakers.
Shabnam Anam. Your ” Rewiring and rethinking the classroom for ” Neuroclusivity” was so inspiring. We will be adding much of your expert knowledge to our own teacher training events moving forward. I know that this will be so valuable to the mainstream schools that we are blessed to support! THANKYOU!
Dr Luke Beardon…..WOW!! I swear that I could listen to you teach ALL DAY LONG!
I genuinely didn’t want your segment to end! The truly shocking realisation for me, about the all to real links with Autism and anxiety helped me so much on a personal ” Mum ” level. I can now see some of the things that I have said to try and ease my own children’s anxiety have often potentially undermined their own thoughts and I am eternally grateful for this wake up call! I will be creating some snappy graphics to share based on this topic so others can be mindful of well-meaning but unhelpful responses. THANKYOU!!
Paul Micallif. Your Autism and executive functioning segment was simply wonderful. I managed to fill 5 A4 pages with all the brilliant advice you were giving. Again , this for me will be so useful for the wonderful neurodivergent children (in mainstream) that we proudly support through Awesome Archie non profit. THANKYOU!
Rebecca Duffus. Thanks so much for not only everything you said at the conference, but for creating such AWESOME workbooks and support books to help people like me 🙂 Needless to say, I have them on order and I CANNOT WAIT to put this brilliant new toolkit into action.
And last but by no means least… Clinical Psychologist Dr Naomi Fisher. I was stunned by so much of what you were saying. So informative, so helpful and so honest! I will leave this Blog with a quote from you…if you don’t mind?!
“Children do well IF THEY CAN! “
What a truly brilliant day with another CPD certificate on its way to boot 🙂
WELL DONE ALL!
