Rebecca Engle: neurodiversity in the classroom and stories of advocacy

Welcome to Why Not Me Embracing Autism and Mental Health Worldwide?
Hosted by Tony Mantor, broadcasting from the heart of Music City, USA, Nashville, Tennessee.
Join us as our guests share their raw, powerful stories.
Some will spark laughter, others will move you to tears.
These real life journeys inspire, connect and remind you that
you're never alone. We're igniting a global movement to empower
everyone to make a lasting difference by fostering deep awareness,
unwavering acceptance, and profound understanding of autism and mental health.
Tune in, be inspired, and join us in transforming the
world one story at a time. Hi, I'm Tony Mantour.
Welcome to Why Not May Embracing Autism and Mental Health Worldwide.
Joining us today is Rebecca Engel, an autistic educator, author,
and powerful advocate for neurodiversity in education. Rebecca brings both
lived experience and professional insight to her work as a teacher,
helping students feel seen, understood, and supported in systems that
weren't always built with them in mind. Through her writing
and her classroom work, she challenges outdated narratives around autism
and replaces them with honesty, compassion, and practical understanding. Her
story is not just about teaching. It's about learning and
learning and creating spaces where neurodivergent voices are valued rather
than accommodated as an afterthought. This is a conversation about identity,
resilience and what happens when autistic educators step in and
help reciate the future of education from the inside out.
We'll talk about how she became an author and uses
that to help people as well. So before we dive
into our episode, we'll be back with an uninterrupted show
right after a word from our sponsors. Thanks for joining
us today.
Yeah, thank you for having me.
Oh, it's my pleasure. I understand in your early years
you were nonverbal.
Yeah.
Can you share some of the early moments in your
life and what challenges helped you create what you have
become today.
Yeah, so I think having to navigate those struggles, you know,
I always had to fight for something. I always had
to fight for what I wanted to achieve in life.
And my mom will tell you that she always jokes
around that I'm one of her most successful children because
I've always had to fight to get everywhere. Communication got
mistaken for intelligence adults. A student, my silence meant lack
of understanding, and I was clocking everything. I was clocking
the toe, and I was clocking the room, I was
clocking the roles. So I learned how to clock that
as an adult. And a lot of my needs when
I'm met. So I feel like I overdo my needs now,
you know, the hunger, pain, the fear, the overwhelm, the
sensory overload. A lot of it, you know, just was ignored.
So I feel like I overdo self care now. And
I'm very aware of when I need.
Things because I overlooked it as a child.
Okay, so when you say you overdo, can you give
us a few examples of what you mean on overdoing
some things.
In your life, like things that I overdo now?
Yeah that works.
Yeah.
So there's days where I just knock out all day long,
like I don't want to do anything. I sometimes overdo
with skincare, right, so, like I'll buy way too many
products to take care of myself. I'll overdo getting supplements
all overdue routines. I'm very very picky with my calendar
and my timing and my schedule. I am very careful
about you know, regulating my whole body. I go to
the chiropractor every week, which is, you know, something that
most people do rarely, if at all. I work out
twice a week, and I'm very particular about when that happens.
So I think that's kind of what I mean by
the overdoing.
Okay, you said that you felt unsupported and you felt
kind of secluded in school. What did that do to you?
Ultimately you thrive academically because you did get your bachelor's degree,
then you got your master's in educational policy and leadership
at Texas Tech. I believe can you tell us the
steps you took to achieve all this?
I'm trying to think of how to best take this question.
I think, you know, planning my day, scheduling, being always
on top of it was what got me there. But
I think again, I think challenges that I was constantly
facing and conflicted with kind of pushed me to keep going.
Like you know, during my bachelor's I was told I
was too autistic to teach and I had to graduate,
but I wanted insurance, so you know, I, like you waited early,
but then I forced myself to immediately start my masters
because I wanted to get out.
Sure, sure, that makes sense. Now, why in the world
would someone tell you that you're too autistic to teach.
You're learning all the things that you need to learn,
you're doing your studies, you're figuring it all out. This
just does not make sense.
Yeah, it didn't make sense.
The director of education at my university pretty much said
that I didn't communicate correctly with kids due to my autism,
despite having all five star rankings across all of my evaluations,
and was just always saying that my communication was off
or not there, which actually set me to set a
communication goal as my goal when I got to my
first year teaching, because I was so self conscious about
meeting these requirements that I was scared that I was
scared that my communication was going to get me fired
and make me lose my job, or make me not
applicable enough and funny enough. My last two years teaching communication,
but it has been my highest area on my records.
So I still to this day have no clue what
this woman met.
Yes, that's very strange and unprofessional in my opinion. How
did it start off for you? You said you was nervous,
which is totally understandable. You're going in and working with
those kids. So did you start off kind of tentative
or did you go in there with confidence and say, Hey,
this is what it's going to be, this is what
we're going to do, and let's see where the chips fall.
I was very much, you know, believed in myself and
was very much relatable with the children I teach special education,
So I think that helped calm my nerves. I feel
like if I were around neurotypical children all the time,
I feel like I would have to mask or hide
my stimming or my communication style and things like that.
But I'm very open with my students, like I'm overwhelmed
right now, please stop right or you know, we're allowed
to have those conversations. And it goes both ways. And
I tell them that at the beginning of the year, like, hey, like,
you know, you have sensory needs, but so do I
and this is my background, and a lot of the time,
you'd be surprised how shockingly open they are to those things.
That's really good to hear. Now, some kids tend to
question others that say they're autistic. Did you have that
issue or did you find that connection you was hoping for?
Right from the start.
I automatically connect.
I feel like I teach the younger grades, so I
don't think they think of they don't like question it.
And you know, I don't go up to my kids
and straight up say I'm autistic in ADHD, right, because
some of them don't even know what those terms are yet.
And some of them aren't autistic or ADHD themselves. They
have other neuroniverse traits like dyslexi or dysgraphiaskakia, right, And
so I'm very just like upfront about my sensory needs
and things that trigger me or set me off rather
than the disability itself. And I feel like they connect
with that, like, oh you know that nowise sets me
off too, or that texture feels weird to me too, right,
or things that are palatable really to any human, but
more offsetting for evergent individuals.
That makes total sense. How long did you teach before
you decided to move on to other things.
I'm still teaching, Oh you are.
That's great. Are you teaching the same age groups as
you were before? Better yet? What are some of the
challenges you've seen now that you've been in teaching for
a few years.
Yeah, so I've been teaching for two years now if
you count my student teaching and stuff, a little over three,
and I would say that funny enough, I've actually been
in a self contained unit. I've been in a resource classroom,
which is like a pullout setting, and I've been a
dyslexia therapist, so I've kind of seen all three sites.
Resource you're pulling out your kids who are autistic ADHD,
but not enough for that self contained setting. And of
course I've done fifth and sixth grade self contained. I've
done three through five resource and co teach, which is
like inclusion minutes, so I'm going into the classroom and
helping kids one on one in their generic setting. And
then I've done dyslexia pullout for kinder all the way
to six grade. So I've seen all the grades pretty
much from your early primary to six.
So, yeah, what were some of the challenges that you
felt were or could be bigger than what you thought
they might be or how am I going to handle this?
So what are some of the challenges that you overcame
either personally or you helped a student overcome some of
those challenges.
Yeah, some of my challenges as an educator really are
handling noise overwhelm.
Especially in those co teach setting.
I had to find the correct environment, right because I
knew that the twenty five to thirty kids at a time,
even if I was only working with one, was too
much for me. And then of course in the self
contained setting, I had a lot of kids with autism
and they had severe.
Needs that need to be met. But not only were.
They autistic, a lot of them were deaf or blind
as well, So I was dealing with the nonverbal communication
and that and I had never gone through being deaf
or blind, right, so despite being autistic, I had to
almost connect like, okay, beca well now, you know, take
the fact that you were nonverbal, and imagine if your eyes,
you know, didn't work the right way too, or imagine
if your ears had.
A hearing loss.
And I was like, oh my gosh, Like I kind
of had to step into their shoes even more so.
And I guess one of the things I thought about
was like, I don't know how a neurotypical teacher who
doesn't have the background of being neurodivergent, also doesn't have
the background of being you know, dead or blind, steps
into these shoes and has to, you know, imagine this
classroom or the structure for this child not understanding one
hundred percent of them, you know, And so I had
to reshape, just pulling for my personal experience and really
dig into like how do you teach kids like this?
And so I had to take something that I didn't
have to in the past. And then for the dyslexia, again,
I'm not dyslexic, So I think that that opened a
whole nother door, right. I had to be more open
minded than I was with that resource setting because I
was the resource kid, and so it was a lot
easier for me to navigate that than it was the
other two settings because I hadn't lived those settings. I
was self contained in pre K, but after that I
was jen ed.
So, okay, being autistic yourself. Autistic people are known to
have their meltdowns. Have you had situations where you were
in the middle of a class you felt a meltdown
coming on? How did you handle that?
Oh, that's a good question.
I have a color coded card next to me at
my kidney table, so if I have a moment like that,
I can show it to my students and they tend
to know. Sometimes I'll do this, and my kids immediately know,
like I'll put my hands up for those maybe listening
auditory only, and I'll close my eyes and they'll be like,
uh oh, they know, like oh oh, miss Ingle's over stimulated,
and so they'll they'll kind of reset, or one of
my other kids will be like, hey, like look, she's overwhelmed,
like like pointing at me, or I say take a
minute and read this real fast.
I'm going to a second, and they know.
I mean, that's one of the best parts about teaching
your at a virging kids is because I can do
the same thing with them or you know, if I
stim like this or you know, rub my hands together
or whatever, they're well aware of why I would be
doing that, and sometimes they join in like oh, we
can unmask right now, which is awesome.
Okay, we've covered your meltdowns. Now what about the kids.
Because they're not adults, they are going to handle their
meltdowns completely differently than you might. So how do you
help them through their meltdowns so that everything's okay and
you can move forward with your class?
Yeah.
I have a regulational system which is available on my
Teachers pay teachers, but it's pretty much a three zone system,
So it starts with regulating their nervous system.
The one area is full of weighted tools and activities.
The other one is full of like sensory supports with calmings,
so like maybe running in a circle or repeated motion
of the body, while the other one is noise seeking.
And then the third area is like journaling, releasing my emotions, drawling,
And the whole goal is that they're more comfortable than
your desk seat. So a lot of my students know
to follow that system, and I slowly teach them that system,
and I actually model it when I'm overwhelmed, and so
they're like, oh, okay in singles doing it, Let's join
her if they need it.
And some of my kids, I'm just like, are you
not ready right now to learn?
When they're going through a hard time, kids stop processing
when they're not ready to learn. I can get them
to sit still and comply, but they're not going to
actually pick up anything i'm teaching them at a certain point,
and so I'll just say like, go relax, go calm
your body, go make sure that you're okay. They know
they're they're areas that they're allowed to be in I
don't really have strict rules on that, you know, don't
be at distraction, and we're good. And then you know,
I call them in the next day and I remind
them of you know, like, hey, this is what we
did yesterday, are you ready to learn it today? And
most of the time, if you just say okay, I'm
not even going to force you, within five or ten minutes,
they're like, oh, I'm now. And I didn't even have
to fight them to try. But they watched their peers
and they're like, well they're having fun. Oh wow, they're
enjoying themselves, and they end up joining into the lessons.
So sometimes it doesn't even take the full class.
Okay, now, what about some of the neurotypical teachers. Have
you had any of them that questioned what you were
doing or they just do not understand what you're doing.
How have you handled that?
Yeah? So funny enough.
The reason I've been in three classroom settings in two
educational years is because my second job, they actually forced
me to resign. I was following that three space model
and they told me you need to have one calm
down corner.
I was like, but I don't believe in one calm
down corner.
I have three calm down corners, because not everybody calms
down the same way. And so I was in an
autism unit and I got all six autistic children that
were self contained to actually attend gen at.
Classes all day long with support.
But the fact that I was able to do that
by October was considered oppressive.
They would come back and regulate and then go back
to class.
I mean, they had their moments, and they knew that
they were allowed to come back whenever they needed to,
but naturally they were internally motivated to stay in class.
And the neurotypical teachers said, you need one calm down corner,
and the neurotypical district leaders said, you need one calm
down corner, and you need to use tokens. You need
tokens to control the kids. So every time they come back,
but you tell them to know that they have to
stay in class, you take a token away.
And pretty much they wanted me to.
Train them like a dog, like, here's a treat every
time you do what I say every day of the week,
and I refused. I said, no, this is my system.
All of my kids get a treat at the end
of the day regardless of how today win. Thank you
for being here in the morning, and thank you for
being here at the end of the day. And it
has nothing to do with their behavior. And my district
was very much against it. So I ended up having
to leave the school I was at. They called me
into a meeting with HR and they said, you can
either grow on a growth plan to learn how we
do things, or we can have you resigned. And I
was like, Okay, I'll peacefully leave, so I did leave.
So I've had neurotypicals misunderstand I've also had neurotypical teachers
tell me that they will not provide accommodations to a
student with autism or ADHD unless they are medicated.
Wow, now what about their parents? Because you're autistic, they
should see that you understand them better than the other
teachers and that should have made a difference. Did you
get the support from them right away?
Yeah.
So I've mostly taught with children that are homeless or
in poverty, so I've had a mix of parental involvement. However,
when my parents are involved or talking to me, I've
never had a parent who's upset with me, and that's rare.
As a special ed teacher. I feel like I've never
had an advocates in a meeting. I've always had supportive
parents and parents who, you know, thank me. I've had
parents thank me for being young, like who are just
happy that their teacher is under a certain age. I've
had parents just meet with me and ask me about
my autism, and I'm very open with them. I love it,
like I love that I have that connection with my students,
and you know, I feel like a celebrity when I
walked through with parents and teachers or students, because it's
parents and students are always like screaming my name, and
so it's like feeling like a celebrity when I walked
down the hallway, especially like during student awards and things
like that.
Yeah, I think that's really cool. That's awesome. At what
point did you start to write about your experiences? When
did you start doing that?
Yeah, So my college years really inspired that. I was
actually a volunteer with a refugee group in San Antonio.
It was required for my history degree under my bachelor's
degree because I had bachelor's degree in history and when
in education, and one of the requirements for this degree
was that I had to do like.
Three hundred hours with refugees.
In order to do those three hundred hours, I went
to a tutoring room at an elementary.
School and worked with these refugee students.
One of my college professors was like, we need you
to write a book on books good to teach kids
with autism or kids about autism. And every book I
found was written by someone who was not autistic. Every
children's book I found was written by the mom or
the dad, or the sibling of, or the cousin of.
And I was just like why, Like how does this
genuinely teach kids about autism? Like it teaches the parents' perspective,
but it doesn't teach how the kid feels. And so
I was like, pro I can't do this, Like this
doesn't exist. And so I was like, I'm making my
own book. And so one of my college professors, doctor
David Compost, he handed me a book that he was
inspired by that was written by someone who was deaf,
and it was like a children's graphic novel, and he
was like, you need to read this and inspire your book.
So I inspired my own writing from that and wrote
it and published it, and then people were like you know,
you speak out against these token economies and these behavior charts,
but why and so I was like, well, that's book
number two. Then I just never stopped. I had people
come to me who were like, I want to share
my disability story, but I don't know how. So then
I made an anthology and then people started asking me
about stemming and I was like, ooh, like I should
make a book out of that.
So that's my most recent release.
Okay, so let's talk about that a little bit more.
Your recent release, Can you give us a little insight
on what it is, what it's about, and a little
bit on what people can expect about what's in it.
Yeah, my most recent release is The Way I Move,
and it's literally about stemming, on the body movements of stemming,
and talks about like why we stem, how we stem.
But I have some neurological definitions in the front so
that you can understand the neurology behind the stimming and
the movement. Also, it's very child friendly for kids to read.
But ultimately it's this little girl who's based on me
name Riley, and Riley goes through the day and she's
stemming at different things. She's feeling different textures in the
grocery stores. She's going to different you know, different things
at our house, and then ultimately they cause her to
stim And so it's very just talks about the ways
we stem, how we stem, what causes us to stim
and are very clear about everybody stemming differently.
Sure, I think that's awesome. Now, how many pages do
your books have?
Yeah?
So both my children's books are around thirty to thirty
five pages, and my adult books are anywhere from one
fifty to one eighty.
Oh, that's perfect. How many books do you have total?
I have four books I've written in fifteen that I've
co authored.
Okay, now let's dig a little bit into your books
that you have co authored. Are they the same topics?
Can you give us a little background on them?
Yeah?
So a lot of my books that are co authored
are poetry. I was a part of a group called
the Unsealed and I literally entered these competitions to win
money for college, and they came and they were like, hey,
we're going to actually publish you. And then Carrie Margo,
a popular voice, I entered his scholarship and he was like, hey,
I'm publishing your voice too, So he put my story
in a book of his, and then The Unsealed put
my story in their book books.
And then I was invited.
By doctor Shila Day out of San Diego, California to
publish a book called Woman of Purpose, and it was
her first ever one, and this book is very successful.
When I was invited by her to publish, I still
had only published one book of my own. And then
I had co author nine poetry books at that point
through the Unsealed, and it was just contest. I entered
them publishing them, and Shila invited me to collaborate on
her second book because one of her authors dropped out,
and so she was like, oh, you can be on
my second one. So that's mostly how that came about.
And then I've been quoted in other works and stuff
just accidentally.
I think that's awesome. Now you have one that's calls
stepping in my Shoes, right, Yes, can you give us
a little background on that. I'm sure it sounds like
something that means walking my shoes for a while and
maybe you'll understand.
Yes.
Yeah, So that's my first ever children's book. We've sold
fifteen thousand copies.
Of that book.
Wow.
Nice, And that came.
Out in October twenty and that book is very centered
on literally like walking into the shoes of what it's
like to go to school as an autistic Okay, and
so that's the one that college inspired me to write.
Nice. Now, are you self publishing or do you have
a publisher?
I have a hybrid publisher. Now. When I first started publishing,
it was me just me.
Yeah, that's great. So you have someone that's helping you now, Yeah.
Do you have illustration in your books or is it
mostly just words?
Both of my children's books are fully illustrated, and then
the other two books are no illustrations because they're adult
books except for the cover.
Now, which does better your books for the children or
the ones for the adults?
My children's books do better than my adult books.
What do you think the reasoning is that the adults
don't dig a little deeper and read your books so
they can understand more. Is it because you think they
might not understand or what do you think the reasoning
is behind this?
I think there's a fear of change. I think that
a lot of people fear changing the system. Right, we
know something is the way it is and it's going
to stay that way, and a lot of my books
threaten the system. You know, the school to prison pipelines
are threatened. The behavior system is threatened. PBIS, which started
in nineteen ninety is threatened. ABA is threatened. And I
feel like we fear those changes. And my children's books
don't have anything controversial. Right, this is what it's like
to be autistic in school and how I talk, and
then the other one is how I move. So, you know,
stimming is something everyone knows about, and so is being autistic, right,
like communicating with a device or communicating with you know,
your hands, Like we are well aware those two things exist.
They're not controversial, while my adult books are very much controversial.
What is it that you dig into that's so controversial?
You say you're challenging the system. How are you addressing
the system that is so controversial?
Yeah, so my whole entire, like line of work is
challenging positive behavior intervention supports. Then, actually my shirt speaks
to it. I'm not a behavior chart, I'm not a
point system, I'm not a principal award. I'm not a
classroom token. And schools rely on these systems heavily. You'll
see that, you know, like you have perfect attendance, awards
and a b ho aor role, and I speak and
say that all of those are abusive and our long
term development, and a lot of people are like, well,
but you know there's this and this and this and this,
and people attack me. I mean, both of my children's
books are righted five stars and my other two books
are three point five and four point two.
And there's a reason for that.
Well, I think that you're not wrong. I think the
system does need to be challenged at times. I've been
doing this podcast for about two and a half years now.
When I first started, I knew nothing about autism at all.
Now I've heard and seeing so many people take so
many different paths to get where they wanted to get
for their children and themselves. There really is no right
or wrong path. It really comes down to what we're
for you. Sometimes people want to do it a certain way,
and it's almost like trying to put a round peg
in a square hole. It just doesn't work. What do
you see in the future for what you were doing.
You're trying to change the system to make it better
for the kids and getting a little bit of a pushback.
So how do you see this going, and what do
you see happening for your future?
Yeah, you know, I expect at certain points to be
canceled or attacked.
I already have been multiple times.
I definitely, you know, expect to see the change.
Though.
I think that the louder my voice is out there,
that the more people will open their eyes.
I've had hundreds of people, even people who.
Practice PBIS, say hey, like, you gave me a soluble
solution to get rid of this system, and so now
I'm going to use the system that is created by you.
Right then.
I think that that was the biggest problem in this
fight is that, you know, so many people are like,
I hate PBIS, don't use it, But what are we
using instead? And I feel like that's what I bring
to this fight. And so my hope is that the
instead that I've brought in what I've designed, is used
instead of this PBIS system. And I think that over
time I'll see that adaptation.
Yeah that's great. Now, how do you see this expanding?
Do you see this expanding past your local area and
then hopefully to a national stage, or do you see
it maybe even going worldwide?
Yeah, so I've spoken internationally, I've spoken in all the
way virtually through Zoom. I've spoken in New Zealand. There's
people in Canada who have my voice that have been
published with me. I have following and different parts of Asia.
I have a platform pretty widespread. This year, I'll be
in California, I'll be in Minnesota virtually, Kinnesseee virtually. I
just heard back from a conference in Rhode Island, So yeah.
That's awesome. I love it. How can people contact you
and most importantly, how can they follow you to see
what you're doing?
Yeah? So my Facebook is stitches and stanzas. My Instagram
is ditches stanzas, and I'll have a website which is
coming soon. It's ditches stanzas dot com.
Perfect. Now, how do they find your books and where
can they get them?
So if you just look up Rebecca Ingle on Google,
my Amazon link is the first link you'll see, and
you can find all four of my writings.
Awesome. Now, in closing, what is important that you think
our listeners need to hear not only about your writings,
but what you were trying to do moving forward?
Yeah?
I think that ultimately, what I want people to understand
is you can't solve every child through compliance. You can't
solve every nervous system through compliance. You have to allow
for student choice, you have to allow for narritivergent choice,
but you also have to move away from compliance based
systems in order to do that.
Yeah. Well, this has been great, great conversation, great information.
I really appreciate you taking the time to join us today.
Yeah, thank you for having me.
Oh, it's been my pleasure. Once again, thanks for taking
time out of your busy schedule to listen to our
show today. We hope you enjoyed it as much as
we enjoyed bringing it to you. If you know someone
who has a story to share, tell them to contact
us at why NOTOMT World. One last thing, Spread the
word about why Not me, our conversations, our inspiring guests
that show you are not alone in this world.