Stimpunks Foundation

Mutual Aid and Human-Centered Learning for Neurodivergent and Disabled People

Positive Greetings at the Door

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Many neurodivergent people have difficulties with the eye contact, touching, speaking, and other acts of performative neuronormativitythat are expected when entering a classroom that implements Positive Greetings at the Door (PGD).

Exposure anxiety, threshold anxiety, and situational mutism are widespread in our community. Their intensity is overwhelming. PGD policies turn teachers into anxiety-inducing “threshold guardians” that we have to get past by performing. This is an exhausting and dysregulating start to the day.

Classroom door greetings are steeped in PBS/PBIS, a form of behaviorism overwhelmingly opposed by the neurodiversity movement.

Two studies often cited in favor of PGD are full of behaviorist framing and language.

Behaviorist education is ableist education.

You don’t need to do door greetings. There are better ways to invite people into shared space that don’t induce anxiety at thresholds, those liminal lines between inclusion and exclusion.

We advise against posting any sort of threshold guardian or threshold ritual. If you must implement PGD, PGD policies can be improved and better avoid ableism by supporting multiple modalities and embracing flexibility as good UDL. Allow greetings of all sorts:

  • Spoken
  • Fist bump
  • Handshake
  • Thumbs up
  • Hug
  • Virtual hug
  • Head nod
  • Sign of the horns

Nonverbal interpersonal interactions, such as a friendly handshake or a thumbs-up, can help make greetings feel authentic and build trust—as long as students feel comfortable with physical contact.

Welcoming Students With a Smile | Edutopia

Also allow no response at all. Compliance is not the goal, a good start to the day is the goal. Forcing students to perform against their mood is a bad start to the day. Forcing students to be false to themselves and their reality is counterproductive.

Trust and authenticity are important to many autistic people. We’re wired for it. Forcing us to perform neuronormativity and toxic positivitydestroys trust and authenticity. Such coercion is gaslighting, as it is an attempt to “overwrite another person’s reality“. Such coercion contributes to school-induced anxiety.

What to Ask For in the Room

  • Ask that no greeting be required. Any greeting, including none, and nothing recorded either way. That single sentence is the whole ask, and everything below is what to do if the answer is no.
  • Ask for the accepted modalities in writing — spoken, nod, thumbs up, fist bump, sign of the horns, or walking straight past. A list that lives in one teacher’s memory ends when that teacher is away.
  • Ask that the greeting never be scored. The moment it feeds a behaviour system it stops being a welcome and becomes a checkpoint, and a child who cannot pass it starts the day already behind.
  • Ask what happens on a day a child cannot speak. Situational mutism is not refusal, and a policy that cannot tell them apart will punish the first as the second.
  • Ask whether there is another way in. Arriving early, using a different door, or coming in without crossing a threshold ritual at all.
  • Ask what problem the policy is solving, and whether that problem exists in this classroom. PGD arrived as a behaviourist fix for a behaviourist question. It may be answering one nobody here has.

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Version: 1.1
License: “Positive Greetings at the Door Why Sheet” is marked with CC0 1.0
Repository: https://github.com/Stimpunks/Why-Sheets/blob/main/Positive%20Greetings%20at%20the%20Door.md