The Need

Space without Behaviorism, Segregation, or Ableism

The Answer

Reframing and Respectful Connection

The Feeling

Electric Belonging and Soaring Inclusion

The Learning

Passion-Based, Human-Centered Learning Compatible With Neurodiversity and the Social Model of Disability

The Gift

We have created a system that has you submit yourself, or your child, to patient hood to access the right to learn differently. The right to learn differently should be a universal human right that’s not mediated by a diagnosis.

📚 The Learning: Passion-Based, Human-Centered Learning Compatible With Neurodiversity and the Social Model of Disability

Hey, you ever stop to think that maybe we're all different?
Or that you can't just throw every student into the same system
Just examine resources and where they're placin' em

I'm just saying there's different students out there facing some pain
It's completely unfair to expect that they would behave the same
But go ahead, make it harder for one and watch them play the game

-- Imaginary Numbers

⛺️🔥 Come As You Are to Cavendish Space

niche construction may be every bit as important for survival as natural selection 

Reimagining Inclusion with Positive Niche Construction

We create Cavendish bubbles of peer respite and collaborative niche construction where we can find relief from an intense world designed against us.

Since reading NeuroTribes, we think of psychologically & sensory safe spaces suited to zone work as “Cavendish bubbles” and “Cavendish space”, after Henry Cavendish, the wizard of Clapham Common and discoverer of hydrogen. The privileges of nobility afforded room for his differences, allowing him the space and opportunity to become “one of the first true scientists in the modern sense.”

Let’s build psychologically safe homes of opportunity without the requirement of nobility or privilege. Replace the trappings of the compliance classroom with student-created context, BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), and BYOC (Bring/Build Your Own Comfort). Let’s hit thrift stores, buy lumber, apply some hacker ethos, and turn the compliance classroom into something psychologically safe and comfortable to a team of young minds engaged in passion-based learning. Inform spaces with neurodiversity and the social model of disability so that they welcome and include all minds and bodies. Provide quiet spaces for high memory state zone work where students can escape sensory overwhelm, slip into flow states, and enjoy a maker’s schedule. Provide social spaces for collaboration and camaraderie. Create cave, campfire, and watering hole zones. Develop neurological curb cuts. Fill our classrooms with choice and comfort, instructional tolerance, continuous connectivity, and assistive technology. In other words, make space for Cavendish. Make spaces for both collaboration and deep work.

In other words, make space for Cavendish. Make spaces for both collaboration and deep work.

Classroom UX: Designing for Pluralism

We provide caves, campfires, and watering holes so that dandelions, tulips, and orchids alike can find respite. Everyone has individual space as well as community spaces so that they can progressively socialize according to their interaction capacity. Caves, campfires, and watering holes are necessary to designing for neurological pluralism and providing psychological safety. They’re necessary to positive niche construction.

The campfire is a space where people gather to learn from an expert. In the days of yore, wise elders passed down insights through storytelling, and in doing so replicated culture for the next generation.

Australia’s Campfires, Caves, and Watering Holes

The cave is a private space where an individual can think, reflect, and transform learning from external knowledge to internal belief. 

Australia’s Campfires, Caves, and Watering Holes

The cave is a private space, where students can find that much needed alone time useful for reflection on their learning or just to recharge. (a necessary space for those students with Aspergers).

Campfires, Caves and Watering holes | Libraries, Youth and the Digital Age

“Some autistic people’s needs will conflict with each other. For example, some autistic people may need the TV playing to calm down, as it can help to focus on specific sounds. But for others this may cause more stress depending on their mental state. Additionally, some autistic people may need to stim to feel relaxed and comfortable, or it may be involuntary when they are stressed, but noises they make (e.g. verbal stims), could really stress another autistic person out. I think the key here is space.”

“It’s Not Rocket Science” – NDTi

…positive niche construction is a strengths-based approach to educating students with disabilities. Armstrong describes positive niche construction in this way:

In the field of biology, the term niche construction is used to describe an emerging phenomenon in the understanding of human evolution. Since the days of Darwin, scientists have emphasized the importance of natural selection in evolution-the process whereby organisms better adapted to their environment tend to survive and produce more offspring. In natural selection, the environment represents a static entity to which a species must either adapt or fail to adapt. In niche construction, however, the species acts directly upon the environment to change it, thereby creating more favorable conditions for its survival and the passing on of its genes. Scientists now say that niche construction may be every bit as important for survival as natural selection (Lewontin, 2010; Odling-Smee, Laland, & Feldman, 2003).

We see many examples of niche construction in nature: a beaver building a dam, bees creating a hive, a spider spinning a web, a bird building a nest. All of these creatures are changing their immediate environment in order to ensure their survival. Essentially, they’re creating their own version of a “least restrictive environment.” 

Reimagining Inclusion with Positive Niche Construction

Come as you are, however broken
And we will see if we can make you whole again
Come as you are, with your heart wide open
Bridges that you've burned they are still there just floatin'

If I am meant for anything it's to show you you're not alone

--Come As You Are by Zach Bryan

♿️⚖️ We Create Anti-Ableist Space

It is time to celebrate our interdependence!

Collaboration allows us to create genuinely safe spaces.

The Beauty of Collaboration at Human Scale: Timeless patterns of human limitations

It is time to celebrate our interdependence! Collaboration allows us to create genuinely safe spaces for autistic and otherwise neurodivergent people. We should expect society to support us in establishing new forms of creative collaboration, and we should not be forced individually to be “included” in toxic exploitative environments.

The Beauty of Collaboration at Human Scale: Timeless patterns of human limitations

We create anti-ableist space for passion-based, human-centered learning compatible with neurodiversity and the social model of disability. We create space for those most ill-served by “empty pedagogy, behaviorism, and the rejection of equity“.

👏🧷🌳 Stimpunks Foundation Presents: Stimpunks Space

Space

Stimpunks Space is where we actualize our philosophy.

At Stimpunks Space

Online: Bringing Safety to the Serendipity

Online, we bring safety to the serendipity with our distributed community and communication stack. Chance favors the connected mind. Our learners connect using 1:1 laptops and indie ed-tech. We give our learners real laptops with real capabilities, and we fill those laptops with assistive tech and tools of the trades.

Offline: Fresh Air, Daylight, and Large Muscle Movement

Offline, our learners enjoy fresh air, daylight, large muscle movement, and the freedom to stim and play. Ensure there is quiet space and outdoor space that people can access at any time.

Cavendish Space: Caves, Campfires, and Watering Holes for Dandelions, Tulips, and Orchids

We provide psychologically and sensory safe spaces suited to zone work, intermittent collaboration, and collaborative niche construction.

We Believe: Human-Centered, Trauma-Informed, Self-Determined, Equity Literate, Interdisciplinary, Open Technology

Learning is rooted in purpose finding and community relevance.
Social justice is the cornerstone to educational success.
Dehumanizing practices do not belong in schools.
Learners are respectful toward each other’s innate human worth.

Every time I get close to the edge
Breathe real slow

Breathe real slow
Down to your belly, to your toes
Breathe real slow

--Breathe Real Slow by Jim Lauderdale

The Gift: Learning Disabilities Reframed

Now that we’ve explored The Need, The Answer, The Feeling, and The Learning. Let’s celebrate The Gift: our reframed notions of disability, neurodivergence, and difference.