by Dan Harrison

As soon as I said his name, she looked at me in shock, like I had said something forbidden.

“No way. I can’t work with him again.”

I was standing two feet away from Gracie. She was sitting at the conference table, now staring downward at her fingernails, noticeably upset. Her left knee was bouncing up and down.

This reaction confused me. “I thought you got along with Ryan,” I said.“You both seemed to work so well together last time.”

Gracie looked up. Her green eyes danced with intensity as they met my quizzical expression. Even Gracie’s jaw line seemed to tighten and her teeth, accented with pink braces, hardly moved as she spoke. She was angry.

“I don’t need someone to only criticize my work. No thank you.” With that our client turned back to her laptop and continued working on her essay alone.

My mind flashed back to Gracie and Ryan’s first appointment two weeks earlier when they were both sitting on the dark brown couch in the next room. Yes Ryan has been called “rude” on occasion by some students and teachers outside of the writing center; but in general he’s done well in consultations. In fact, I remember Ryan telling jokes and Gracie laughing as they sat down together last time. He then read her paper and complimented her writing — so much so that she thanked him. I remembered Ryan pointing out only a couple problem areas for improvement, but they seemed inconsequential in my view, and I remember Gracie saying that she would work on the revisions. The encounter seemed productive and pleasant, cordial and light-hearted. So, Gracie’s negative reaction when I suggested working with Ryan again caught me off guard. Was there something I was missing?

As our writing center’s director, anytime a client or consultant has misgivings about working with someone, I try to accommodate their preferences, if possible. There are instances, though, where there is nothing I can do. In Gracie’s case, I was able to have her work with someone other than Ryan.

Later, however, I couldn’t help but question my decision to do so. I found myself pondering whether I might be inadvertently creating a culture of avoidance instead of mutual respect. I asked myself, “Did I fail to adequately support Ryan’s consultation abilities?” Ryan was a competent consultant. That’s not to say he wasn’t distinctive, with his stimming, his flat tone of voice, and his rigid routines (like always having to sit in his favorite seat). He admits that he can be rather blunt at times. Perhaps Gracie felt uncomfortable with one or all of these “bodymind” differences and I hadn’t picked up on it. I had to be honest with myself: by pairing Gracie with a different consultant, was I unintentionally enabling social prejudices that some might have towards Ryan because he acts or speaks differently than they do? Our writing center operates at an independent secondary school that specializes in learning-differences. You’d think my first instinct would be to teach students to see the beauty in each other’s neuro-uniqueness, not allow for a mutual resistance to neuro-difference altogether.

If my writing center truly respects neurodiversity and embraces those with bodymind differences, atypical modes of speech and physical mannerisms should be accepted, right? Ryan’s unique way of being — as well as Gracie’s — should be centered in the experience as natural and not brushed off as simply “incompatible” if there are frictions.

If I had it to do over, I’d have taken over the session with Gracie and Ryan and (gently) worked to understand what was bothering Gracie about Ryan in the first place, with the aim of cultivating empathy while also helping her with her writing. Listening and demonstrating empathy would certainly be starting points; simply “accommodating” does not support a neurodiversity-positive atmosphere, which is what I initially set out to achieve in my center. This experience taught me that at times it feels convenient to ignore the necessity of repositioning my consultants or clients at the center of our resource spaces. Instead of reassigning those with idiosyncrasies, we should take the opportunity to sincerely value each other’s differences.