“Sea glass is weathered by what it has endured at sea … a process that can be related to education.

I am fundamentally marked by the system.

Confidence eroded.

Anxiety wavering.

Shepherd, J., Sutton, B., Smith, S., & Szlenkier, M. (2024f). ‘Sea-glass survivors’: Autistic testimonies about education experiences. British Journal of Special Education. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8578.12506

This is one of the most beautifully powerful pieces of research we have ever read about the autistic experience of unmet needs in the education system.

Sea glass is weathered by what it has endured at sea, a process that can be related to education. I am fundamentally marked by the system. Confidence eroded. Anxiety wavering. Now, overcompensation is a form of self-preservation, taking breaks is still unnatural and achievements come with a little sense of pride. Just as sea glass is ground down by every knock, its eventual form is a sum of its aquatic endurance.

Positive memories of education have been flooded by the negative. Instead, I course through the ocean propelled to defy the lack of expectations imposed on me, but also by defiance, to disprove those who wrote me off.

However, a life tussling with the tide-against the odds— has also left its mark more positively. The researcher, practitioner, colleague and peer I am today refuses to entertain ideas or set up environments that make some people (neurominority) feel less intelligent, inadequate or inferior, than others (neuromajority), just as my secondary school English teacher and other curious individuals did. In many ways, these moments anchor my practice.

.‘Sea‐glass survivors’: Autistic testimonies about education experiences – Shepherd – British Journal of Special Education – Wiley Online Library