Resource Spotlight: Neurospicy Resources

Today is the International Day of Persons with Disability! We should celebrate, right?

Kind of--today is a day about awareness. So we do want to celebrate wins for equal rights and equal access, but we also need to talk about the needs that are still present. As an online education company, one of the needs that we deal with daily (both for ourselves and for our students!) is neurodivergence, so today we are focusing on that with three things that have helped us--and we hope will help you!

Tip 1: Change your vocabulary

Many years ago, I heard someone point out that the term "neurodivergent" can be a mean term, especially when people say things like "Oh, she's not neurotypical--she's neurodivergent". It's like the word wants to be a bit of a bully, and we don't like bullying! Many folk in the neurodivergent community have started using the term "neurospicy". Amethyst Schaber is credited with coining the term, and it has been adopted by many people with conditions like autism, ADHD, Tourettes, OCD, and even dyslexia. It is a kind, open-ended term that is helpful for positive self-talk and for explaining conditions to kids. Neurospicy brains are just like neurotypical brains, but with different flavors that sometimes spice things up.

Tip 2: Use resources built for the school experience

Neurospicy brains understand things differently, but they still go through learning stages, and as a parent and educator, it can be difficult to know what to do! Navigating those stages can be hard, especially when the majority of resources focus on behavior and may not have enough concrete steps. One of our favorite resources is Understood.org, which focuses on the learning journey. It has resources for parents and teachers, including sample activities and step-by-step instruction. This resource is great for parents of students with ADHD, dyslexia, dyscalculia, written expression disorder, and other language disorders, but it also has a lot of resources for helping kids of all brain types manage Big Emotions and adjust workspaces to help them do their best.

Tip 3: Learn together

A classic learning strategy is "I do, we do, you do". Sometimes, the real world doesn't leave space for the "I do" to happen first. If you are learning about navigating the neurospicy landscape, spending more time on the "we do" portion might help everyone: not only does it show students what to do when they don't know something, but it helps them understand that adults keep learning things, too. A great way to do that is through YouTube, where you can view and discuss videos together. We love Jessica McCabe's channel HowtoADHD for its family-friendly presentation and use of illustrations, so her channel is a great place to start! While Jessica's main focus is ADHD, she also adresses many issues that impact others in the neurospicy community, too. We recommend starting with videos in this playlist that focuses on motivation. Most of the videos in this list are less than 10 minutes and are great discussion starters for middle and high school students!

You can learn more about HowtoADHD and access other playlists with specific focuses (like school!) on Jessica's website.

Bonus Tip: Reach Out

Navigating disability can be difficult, no matter if it is mental or physical, but it is harder to do it alone. Whether you just need a break or are looking for community, let us help you. As individuals, our team has (and continues) navigating life with ADHD, autism, anxiety, depression, auditory processing disorders, and other learning disabilities, as well as our share of physical hurtles. We don't have any magic cures, but we do

know it is better to face these challenges with a community that understands. Our goal is to help strengthen our community, so we want to get you in touch with those who can provide that support to you. You can always contact us at info@1knacl.com.

Lincoln's Forgotten First Thanksgiving

Most adults are quite aware that the "Pilgrims and Indians" setup is at best a caricature and the founding of a nation is messy, anyway. Sure, it is a day of giving thanks (or, as George Washington called it, "Publick Thanksgivin"), but other than the torturous "let's all say something we're thankful for while the food gets cold", most folks today don't really honor that part of the holiday.

Why don't we reframe our perspective?

The first Thanksgiving wasn't about food--it was about survival. It was the first bountiful harvest in a new world. It was a celebratory feast and a small Thank You to (some) of the folks who had taught them how to survive. It also was a brief moment of success, because unexpected ships arrived from England shortly after, filled with hungry people and no supplies. As one poet put it, "we have pumpkin and morning, and pumpkin at noon, if it were not for pumpkin, we would be undoon"*. Other sources say that food was rationed down to five kernels of corn in order to try and survive that winter. Regardless, that feast was a bright spot in the middle of a Really Tough Time.

Days of Thanksgiving were celebrated intermittently up until 1863, when the first annual Thanksgiving was announced. You might recognize 1863 as an important year--that was the year of the Emancipation Proclamation, the Gettysburg Address, and several major Civil War battles. In the midst of this, President Lincoln asked people to set aside a day to give thanks that the impact of war was fairly limited to the areas of battle and pray that peace would come quickly.

Lincoln was right--historically, war often results in widespread famine, and the famines of the American Civil War were comparatively localized. But Lincoln's Thanksgiving wasn't just about being thankful for what we had: it was a call to be thankful for a good future that was free from violence and oppression. It takes a lot of bravery to be thankful for something you don't have yet.

Right now, we need some of Lincoln's Thanksgiving spirit. While every day seems to bring more bad news, the future is not set: it may be a long road to Better, and there may be more Really Tough Times before we get there, but being thankful helps us visualize where we are going and help us get there safely.

Some ideas to help your students understand this:

For Hands-On Learners: Arts and crafts time! Build a vision board of something you are thankful will happen.

For Auditory Learners: Have a conversation about Lincoln's proclamation and why he might have wanted people to celebrate Thanksgiving when they were in the middle of war. If you have students with mixed learning types and differnet ages, this is a good activity to do while preparing food as a family.

For Visual Learners: Create a Thankfulness Board. Print the iconic Gettysburg Address picture and put it in the middle of a piece of carboard (an old Amazon box works great!) and have students add post-its with items they are thankful for. For older students, have them create a flow-chart of the major events of 1863 and talk about how they might have influenced Lincoln's decision to ask the American people to celebrate Thanksgiving.

For Reading/Writing Learners: Let your students translate Lincoln's Thanksgiving Proclamation into modern English. Bonus points for turning it into a creative writing exercise! You can find a printable version of President Lincoln's Thanksgiving Proclamation here.

If you share your projects to social media, be sure to tag us!

*The internet now credits this line to a song called "New England's Annoyances", but I first read it in a very old book called Virginia, Ho! and seem to recall the poem's author was a young woman. My suspicion is that the young lady likely penned it, and then someone else incorporated the iconic final line (with some spelling and grammatical changes) into the song. The internet is unhelpful in tracking down the book, as there is an author named Virginia Ho, and I don't remember which book box this particular book is stored in.

Welcome Fall 2025!

Hello everyone!

To both new and returning students we offer a hearty welcome to Thousand Grains of Salt Tutoring! The coming year is sure to be filled with fun and learning once again, and we can't wait to get started on this adventure. Whether you are joining a group or are taking part in one on one tutoring, there is plenty to learn. 

As always, we try to run a few enrichment options every semester, but we are having trouble picking a topic! Could you help us? Please fill out our workshop subject feedback survey and tell us what your favorites are. We try to rotate through our workshop topics regularly, but we know some workshops are more popular than others--or sometimes one topic is just more interesting than another! (If you want a workshop on a topic we don't yet offer, feel free to put it in the comments section in the survey!)

See you soon!

Stay salty,

The Thousand Grains of Salt team