How Ezra Reimer Built a Classroom Where Neurodivergence Thrives<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Ezra Reimer left a 15-year career in graphic design and branding at Red River College to become a teacher, he expected the challenge of a new profession. What he didn\u2019t expect was how difficult the transition would feel, not because of the students, but because of the gaps in his own working style. It wasn\u2019t until a psychologist suggested he be tested for ADHD that the missing piece clicked into place. Reimer was diagnosed in his thirties, and suddenly the struggle made sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI had come from an environment that was unconsciously built around supporting my neurodivergence,\u201d he explains. At Red River, he was surrounded by systems that filtered distractions, streamlined communication, and allowed him to focus solely on creative work. He had a manager who acted like a \u201ctraffic controller\u201d and managed requests, phone calls, and all the administrative aspects of design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Teaching, by contrast, was the opposite – frequent interruptions, endless organizational tasks, and an assessment process that was both time consuming and frustrating. \u201cI kept trying new systems and watching them fail,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019d think, \u2018Oh, I\u2019ll build a spreadsheet,\u2019 or, \u2018I\u2019ll set up Google Classroom this way\u2019.\u201d Every effort that he tried just made things harder for himself and his students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That four-year period of trial and error eventually led Reimer, now the Interactive Digital Media and Photography teacher at Niverville High School, to a guiding philosophy: If a system works for the ADHD brain, it will work for everyone<\/em>. Instead of creating separate accommodations for individual students, he redesigned the structure of the entire class so that he and his neurotypical and neurodivergent students benefit equally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He identified four key barriers for learning: organization, time management, feedback and accountability, and balancing big picture thinking with small details, and began rebuilding his course around them. To his surprise, the solution wasn\u2019t more technology, but less.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Reimer realized that for many students, especially neurodivergent ones, the tablet or computer was a dopamine machine. \u201cThere are so many ways it can interrupt learning as opposed to support learning, because it’s got too many easy paths to where we don’t want to go. And, digital things are abstract, and digital pathways are longer than we think.\u201d Computers meant too many steps, too many tabs, and too many ways to drift away from the task. \u201cIt was an entire series of executive functioning steps that have to be executed before you can even start your work.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n His answer was analog project management. Every student receives a printed project booklet outlining the entire course, broken into small, trackable milestones. Nothing lives in a digital inbox. Nothing gets lost in a Google Drive \u201csock pile.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The classroom whiteboard echoes the same structure: every student\u2019s name, every checkpoint, all visible at a glance. Students cross off progress boxes themselves, and Reimer checks in and signs off each step, keeping them accountable. No student can move on without direct feedback, and no one can quietly fall behind. And the organization and documentation along the way make final assessments much easier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The result is a studio-style environment where students own the process of their learning. They build portfolio websites, design board games, create 3D-printed models, and in the extensive Grade 11 project, spend three months designing and programming a fully playable 2D video game from scratch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The effect on both classroom culture and student output has been very positive. \u201cMy Grade 9 students are doing almost triple the work my first group ever did. It\u2019s made a difference for all of us.\u201d Reimer says that above all, he\u2019s trying to build those softer skills with his class. \u201cThe technical is important but it’s really the project management stuff that serves them best long term. And I\u2019m a better teacher because I\u2019m more involved in their projects and I know exactly where they\u2019re at.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Students seem to know it too. They work outside of class, revisit old feedback, and push projects beyond \u2018good enough\u2019. Last year Reimer had a group of students who built a board game complete with an entire book of rules, and almost 30 individual 3D model game pieces. Another favorite project was a 2D video game about a pina colada, where you could switch between two characters – a pineapple and a coconut. \u201cIt was professionally done, with great coding and animation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Reimer recently presented his classroom model at a GAME MTS PD Day session, sharing templates and strategies with other teachers who are looking to remove learning barriers in their own classrooms. He says, for him, teaching is a lot more fun these days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI hate marking. I hate admin,\u201d he says with a laugh. \u201cSo, if I\u2019m not ramming my head against that all the time, it just makes it so much easier. I love teaching.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When Ezra Reimer left a 15-year career in graphic design and branding at Red River College to become a teacher, he expected the challenge of a new profession.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":3265,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-food","post-thumbnail-displayed"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mbteach.org\/mtscms\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mbteach.org\/mtscms\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mbteach.org\/mtscms\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbteach.org\/mtscms\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbteach.org\/mtscms\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3264"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbteach.org\/mtscms\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3282,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbteach.org\/mtscms\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3264\/revisions\/3282"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbteach.org\/mtscms\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mbteach.org\/mtscms\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbteach.org\/mtscms\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbteach.org\/mtscms\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}