Supporting Students with Nuanced, Creative Care

In educational settings, students come with a rich tapestry of needs, strengths, and lived experiences. Renewed Perspectives centres on truly seeing the young person in front of us—beyond behaviours, diagnoses, or labels—to understand what they might be communicating through their actions, energy, or silence.

Many students, especially those who are neurodivergent or highly sensitive, spend their school day using enormous amounts of energy to "keep it together." This might involve masking—suppressing or camouflaging their natural responses to fit in socially or meet classroom expectations. While this can help them manage in the moment, it often leads to significant dysregulation at home—either before or after school—when the emotional load finally spills over in the safety of familiar surroundings.

Even parts of the day typically thought of as “breaks”—like recess and lunch—can become additional stressors. For students with lagging social skills or social anxiety, these unstructured times may require even more energy than classroom learning. Navigating friendships, conflict, noise, and overstimulation can drain their remaining "spoons."

This is where Spoon Theory can help us understand what’s going on. Imagine that each student starts the day with a certain number of “spoons”—units of energy. Some kids use up most of their spoons just getting through the basics: arriving at school, coping with transitions, managing sensory input, or trying to meet invisible social rules. When we understand the invisible effort behind the surface, we can respond with compassion—not confusion or blame.

An important part of this support includes helping students (and their educators) identify what truly restorative breaks look like. Not all "brain breaks" are equally effective. What’s calming or recharging for one student might be overstimulating for another. By helping young people learn what an authentic and helpful brain break feels like in their own bodies—and making those breaks available regularly—we can create opportunities for them to add spoons, not lose more.