Sensory Disorders and Challenges

Why this matters

A child with sensory processing disorder can find going to school or eating a meal overwhelming in ways that are easy to miss without knowing what sensory seeking or sensory overload look like. The Baranek case study excerpt walks through exactly how SPD interferes with those everyday activities.

Synesthesia gets the attention in most classes because it's the stranger sounding condition, grapheme-color or sound-to-color, but I spend more time on SPD because it's more likely to describe an actual student in the room. Classroom accommodations are what I keep steering the discussion back to, the difference between knowing the term and knowing what to do when a student is overwhelmed.

From one teacher to another

I use this reading when we talk about how the senses can malfunction, since most students have never heard of sensory processing disorder or synesthesia before. My students match terms like sensory seeking and sensory overload to their definitions, then read the Baranek case study excerpt to explain how SPD can get in the way of everyday activities like going to school or eating meals. The short-answer questions ask them to discuss the challenges synesthesia can create in a classroom and why accommodations matter.