Featured Student Voice: Sonia Puri

Sonia Puri is a California high school student. One of her biggest passions is increasing accessibility for marginalized communities. She believes that student initiatives are the best way to begin. By gathering your friends and sitting down to do some hard research, you can bring real change to the world. This effort, however, must come from your dedication to make your community a better place, and Sonia believes that all student leaders have that characteristic in common. In her free time, she likes to listen to podcasts, bake for her friends, and listen to music.

When working with neurodivergent students, multiple experts have discussed the importance of ensuring that you don’t treat these students differently. Students and teachers have a tendency to be on either extreme—either being too nice or completely neglecting neurodivergent students. However, the right treatment relies in the middle—providing proper educational support to these individuals while holding natural conversations that sound neither forced nor fake. While the natural part may come easy, the educational support is where it tends to get difficult, as providing proper support that still ensures educational autonomy for these students requires multiple components to be taken into consideration. For example, if we take a neurodivergent student, the first step to receiving any educational support is to acknowledge their neurodivergence, which can be a difficult hurdle for many. Cultural barriers exist, in which neurodivergence presents itself as a stigmatic topic that many families prefer to avoid. Sometimes, parents believe that the issue will “sort itself”, preventing it from reaching to the point where the student can receive any kind of accommodations.

Supposing that a student receives support from their family, the next step is to receive a formal diagnosis via a clinic. According to Josi Health, the average wait time from referral to diagnosis is around 7 months, around 66% of an individual school year, and in turn forming a long period of time without proper accommodations for neurodivergent students (Josi Health). Further than this, it costs between $1,000 to $5,000—without insurance—to receive a diagnosis in the first place (PsyD), further complicating the process and making it less likely for individuals to truly want to pursue a diagnosis. Assuming that an individual has gone through the seven month wait time and has paid to receive the diagnosis, receiving specific accommodations may take time, often requiring a system of trial and error that steals more time away from precious school time. The question, therefore, lies in how teachers can directly support students—as much as they can under their jurisdiction—with the tools that they have.

Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, funding covers around 10% to 13% of the costs associated with providing special education to neurodivergent students, which results in estimates to be around $1,800 per student (Dragoo). The other 87% to 90% comes from funding at the local district level, which is already limited due to funding needed for other purposes. In addition to this, teachers are often inadequately trained to best support neurodivergent students in their classroom. When discussing neurodivergent education with an expert under Brightmont Academy (name kept anonymous for privacy reasons), this expert mentioned how teachers may label a lack of motivation or focus as characteristic of the student. In reality, the student may be experiencing symptoms that are the result of an invisible learning disability. When it comes to categorizing students as neurodivergent, it is up to the teacher to use their observations to label students, especially when many of the students lack a formal diagnosis. Beyond this, however, teachers require a specific structure that can best support the different learning struggles that neurodivergent students struggle with, including hyperactivity, ADHD, a lack of motivation, sensory overload, and any communication barriers that may arise.

One way that students can support neurodivergent students is through the structured teaching via the TEACCH method, which stands for the Treatment and Education of Autistic and Related Communication-Handicapped Children (Berek). This method relies heavily on visuals to help individuals that are presently on the autism-spectrum disorder, but it can also be applied to other students who have their own learning disabilities. Visual teaching styles often provide students a clearer way to absorb information, with tools including visual timers, slider boards, colorful schedules, color-coded choice boards, and more. By implementing a visually-structured lesson plan, instructors are a strength-based model to convey concepts that may appear daunting in other forms. Neurodivergent students often excel at comprehending and interpreting visuals, and the use of a visually-structured teaching empowers neurodivergent students to experience more autonomy as learners.

I began to notice these disconnects during my time as a volunteer at a local nonprofit focused on supporting neurodivergent students and families by providing enrichment programs focused on cognitive and tactile activities. In some classes, I began to observe talented students fail to engage with the content that they were presented with. Some students would merely run off, fail to verbally participate, or would zone out during classes. These behaviors showed me the disconnect between students and accessibility to the content of a lesson. While I began by providing one-on-one tutoring to many of these students as a way to supplement their enrichment programs at the nonprofit, I soon learned that there was no one approach that I could apply to all students. Each student needed their own version of a visually-structured lesson that organized the information based on their studying habits. While I was able to tailor the curriculum and sessions per individual student, my work still did not account for the many other students at the nonprofit.

A deep desire to help all students experience more independence as learners, I got to work researching visual tools that helped many neurodivergent learners, utilizing statistics and success rates. My research would ultimately culminate in the creation of a visual toolkit I would call the Adaptive Resource Lab, which would hold multiple visual tools including water timers, laminate cards, a visual slider board that I created, squishes, an adjustable schedule board, and more. You can learn more about this lab, find documentation, and seek guidance on how to implement one at an educational center near you here. Implemented over thirty of the nonprofit’s enrichment programs, I would train the staff and volunteers on how to integrate different tools into different scenarios based on my research. I would also implement a 20-page user manual that went into detail to provide other volunteers instructions on how to best support their neurodivergent students during classes with these tools, instead of simply using these tools when the students are disinterested or unfocused.

By implementing this system across the nonprofit’s large client base, I was able to contribute to enriching over 1,000 hours of student-learning. Visible efforts were seen in increased verbal participation and engagement seen from the students during the nonprofit’s many enrichment programs. Furthermore, this project offered a streamlined approach to helping the nonprofit’s teachers by fully informing and training them without any additional costs. More importantly, this initiative utilized a strength-based model that empowered neurodivergent students to better comprehend the information presented to them in a form that they excelled at utilizing. By implementing these strength-based teaching styles throughout the educational system, we can equip students to learn in supportive and well-suited environments that allow them to truly grow as autonomous learners.

Berek, Daniel L. “Treatment and Education of Autistic and Related Communication Handicapped Children (TEACCH).” Research Starters, EBSCO, 2021, www.ebsco.com/research-starters/communication-and-mass-media/treatment-and-education-autistic-and-related/. Accessed 7 Oct. 2026.

Dragoo, Kyrie. “The Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) Funding: A Primer.” Congress.Gov, 29 Aug. 2019, www.congress.gov/crs-product/R44624. Accessed 7 Oct. 2026.

Josi Health, Solon at. “How Long Does an Autism Evaluation Take? Timelines, Waitlists, and What to Expect.” Josi Health, 22 Mar. 2026, josihealth.com/how-long-does-autism-evaluation-take/. Accessed 7 Oct. 2026.

PsyD, George Sachs. “How Much Does Adhd Testing Cost? A Clear Guide to Pricing and Options.” Sachs Center | Autism & ADHD Testing and Treatment | Your Home for Autism & ADHD Testing and Treatment, Sachs Center | Autism & ADHD Testing and Treatment, 15 Dec. 2025, sachscenter.com/how-much-does-adhd-testing-cost/. Accessed 7 Oct. 2026.