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Guest blog: Coping with school when you're autistic

Published April 2024

In this guest blog, 19 year old Hana Kinney shares her experience of being in a mainstream secondary school as an autistic young person, and offers advice and strategies to help other children and young people get the most out of school...

"If you are autistic in mainstream education, you probably use up most of your energy just getting through the school day. For me, navigating a neuro-typical school environment felt like walking blindfolded through a minefield of potential meltdowns. What got me through was some great teachers but mainly by ‘autopsying’ (analysing in detail) and learning from every incident.

When I got to year 13, I felt that there were enough strategies and guidance that could be implemented, and that if only teachers put some of these in place, it would go a long way to help a large number of neuro atypical students. So, I pulled together what I’d learnt and lots of research to write a guide for teachers, but this blog is for the students. 

Self-advocacy

I found that self-advocacy is one of the most important tools to help you help yourself.   Due to lack of time and resources, many teachers may not be aware how and why their ‘ordinary’ way of doing things in class may cause you anxiety and stress.  Being able to identify and effectively communicate your difficulties and needs should help the teacher to empathise and give you the right accommodations which in turn may help others.

Reflecting on the triggers

Talking with my mum about my meltdowns and reflecting on the triggers is how I caught most of my own difficulties. Reviewing particularly bad days or events leading up to meltdowns, maybe with someone trusted for another point of view, is a way to help identify what your sources of anxiety and difficulties are. 

Triggers could be caused by something specific like being asked to answer a question or getting a detention but it could also be a culmination of smaller triggers of anxiety that build up to the point you’re barely conscious of what was going on let alone learn.  This process takes time, so I have provided a resource in my guide that makes it easier to assess incidents.

Once you can identify your needs, you can start finding ways to support yourself, both in and outside classroom. To help with my problems with executive function and remembering tasks and deadlines, I started using alarms and reminders and hand wrote on a calendar template - it helped to be able to visualise what needed doing over the next few months.

To get you started, here’s a workbook to help you reflect on your situation and needs.  It may take trial and error, but looking at how other autistic individuals with similar difficulties manage is a great way to get ideas. 

Download Hana's 'Speak up for yourself' guide (pdf 577kb)

Getting people involved

If you have a diagnosis, you should have a keyworker at the school that you can get in touch with for support. If you would like to let teaching staff know about any supports you would need, let them know by writing an email to them or the school’s SEND team who should inform your teachers.

You can email teachers for small things like the lesson’s PowerPoints or textbook pages before the lesson if you struggle to take in information verbally.

Writing an email may act as block for some, so I will add a link in my guide to some email templates you can use to get started."

Take a look at Hana's website where you'll find both a guide for teachers and one for students, as well as recommended reading, and tools to help you with some of the strategies.

We'd like to say a big thank you to Hana for all her time and work on putting this amazing blog together. 

If you have any comments, or know of a young person who'd like to share their experiences in a blog, please do get in touch at localoffer@hertfordshire.gov.uk.