– Hi everyone. I’m Niya Bond, the Faculty Developer here at OneHE, and I’m so thrilled to be joined today by Karen Costa. Karen may be a familiar face to some of you. She has a course and resources already in OneHE. Just co-hosted a webinar on AI and async online education. But today we’re here to talk about a totally different topic, just as exciting, Karen’s new book. Karen, if you would, for those who don’t know you, introduce yourself and tell us about your book.

– Okay. Yes, I am excited to be here, and a little discombobulated because Niya and I are dear friends, and I’m trying to keep my author hat Karen Costa on, and not. And it’s weird to introduce myself to Niya who knows me very well, but we’re gonna push through and persist.

– [Niya] For sure. Yeah.

– So, yes, I’m Karen Costa. I’ve been working in higher education in a variety of capacities since about 2002. So I talk in the book about that I have ADHD, so I’ve probably, for that reason, I’ve done almost, I think, everything that you can do in higher education. I’ve worked as an administrator. I, for a brief period was full-time faculty. Primarily now work as an adjunct, and also do a lot of faculty development and support work. And as part of that role I write. So my first book was about creating educational videos, and my second book, which I actually have a real life copy. I have to show it like this because I love the blue spine. It’s “An Educator’s Guide to ADHD.” And yeah, as I mentioned, I’m ADHD myself. So I got diagnosed about five years ago, and had already been working with, you know, creating inclusive learning experiences, but that definitely shifted my approach and I felt even more called to do that work. And I really wanted to write this book to speak from both that combination of lived experience, and my experience as an educator through the learning sciences of how we can best support our students. And yeah, I’m fully online. I work fully online, teach fully asynchronous, present and write fully asynchronous, and I’m here in Massachusetts with my family in my kitchen.

– Well, we’re glad to have you. So tell us a little bit about the book as far as, you mentioned what inspired it, but what does it contain? What kind of wisdom are you sharing out?

– Sure, so the book is broken down into two parts. And as I say that, I’m kind of, there’s like an internal screaming happening because it took, you know, two years to get that structure clarified and in place. But it arrived in the right place. So the first part is focused on mindset, and it’s really about dismantling that deficit based mindset that so many of us, myself included, have been taught about what ADHD is, and this idea that people with ADHD have a lack or need to be fixed. And also, you know, another mindset I’m trying to dismantle is the superhero or superpower approach or framework. That is often very well intentioned, but, you know, I make the argument that if you watch any superhero movie, they are often the most miserable human beings on the planet. And I don’t want that for us. I want ADHDers to be seen as human beings who have this combination of strengths and challenges. So the model that I present in the book is strengths based, challenge aware, to bring that into sort of better balance and a more humanizing approach. I also, in that first part, mindset section, do a lot of work to dismantle some of our beliefs and assumptions about what attention is and isn’t. And this idea that sort of a single pointed, sort of that laser focused type of attention is the only way to express or experience attention. So I sort of broaden that out a bit and bring ADHD as one of the many ways of being in the world, one of the many ways of expressing attention. Part of what I call the vast variety within the neurodiversity model. So with that mindset in place, that was really, really important. I went through sort of that mindset reset myself, because just like I said, we’re all taught these deficit based models. That was really important for me to do. And then in the second part, I talk about practical strategies for faculty and all educators in terms of things like externalizing information, using metacognition or I use the term meta learning, building flexible structure into classrooms, reducing shame, and boosting and supporting our students’ creativity. So those practical strategies would not work and could potentially do harm if that mindset piece was not in place. So if you go into those strategies with a deficit-based mindset, it can often, again, be very well intentioned, but it can sometimes show up as trying to fix the, you know, a person with ADHD, or trying to make them act like a neurotypical person, which has very high potential to do harm. So we really want to, again, keep that strengths-based, challenge aware model in place, honor that vast variety, and then offer people supports and systems and redesigns to help them stay in their strengths, but also meet those challenges. And again, I weave, I think this is important to say, I weave that combination of lived experience along with evidence-based research, the learning sciences throughout the book, to provide what I hope is a unique and useful perspective.

– Can you talk a little bit more about that weaving with lived experience and evidence-based? How are you doing that in the text?

– Sure. So I am, someone who I write about in the book and who I follow on social media and I recommend folks follow is a writer, thinker, creator named Sonny Jane Wise. And they have some really great content about a balance and awareness of both evidence-based practices and research, and the value of lived experience. I have encountered a lot of people since my diagnosis, and certainly before, but I’ve been more aware of it since my diagnosis, who do not have the lived experience of being ADHD, and have a lot of ideas about what ADHD is and isn’t. And by and large, those come off as very deficit based. So if you go into, and I know Niya knows this because she is now Dr. Bond, and did all kinds of wonderful research and has experience in that area. So if you go into research thinking, for example, that ADHD is this terrible, you know, burden on the individual and on society, that will influence, from day one, that will influence the kind of research, you know, questions that you are asking. It will influence your approach to research. It will influence your data collection, and of course your results and your findings. So for me, lived experience is really important to bring into the book and into these conversations. Two authors who I cite extensively in the book are Drs. Hallowell and Ratey. They are medical doctors who also both have ADHD. Their book is called “ADHD 2.0.” And for me that’s really, it’s not to say that people who have just lived experience or just coming at things without the lived experience from the research can’t add value. But for me it just, it’s like the secret sauce, like it just doesn’t get any better than that when I know that somebody has actually had the feeling of, you know, 1000 galaxies in their brain at one time and is aware of, you know, quality research and evidence-based practices. That is, those are the people that I seek out. So I share that throughout the book. I weave in, you know, stories of my ADHD and what I’ve learned about my brain, which is very much still a work in progress. And at the same time, call in tons and tons of wonderful external research that I have sought out through the lens of my lived experience. So there is so much deficit based research on ADHD out there, I would say it’s 90%. However, we’re seeing it shift. So, you know, I have really curated the research and focused on high quality research and studies that also come from a place of strength-based, challenge aware, and weeded out all of the deficit based crap. I mean, I encountered people when writing this book who would tell me things like, oh, people, you know, there’s a chapter on metacognition and meta learning. I had clinicians who sort of like read early drafts say, “People with ADHD can’t do metacognition,” which is just, I don’t even, I know it’s preposterous.

– Yeah.

– It’s preposterous. But that is sort of, those are the sort of ridiculous statements and ideas that you can find in some of the deficit based literature. So, you know, but I thank them because, you know, I’ve got probably 10 studies in the book that talk about how wonderful metacognition and meta learning is for ADHD students, combined with examples from my lived experience as a learner and as a teacher. So it’s really, yeah, it’s really important for me. It’s a little unnerving in that this book is not just about ADHD, but it’s about me having ADHD. So it’s a little unnerving to bring it out into the world and talk about it, but it’s gotta be done, and I’m grateful that I’m able to do it.

– Well, I’ll speak for everyone in this moment that we’re grateful to have you do it. I think it’s needed and your approach is obviously needed with all that deficit driven research.

– [Karen] Thank you.

– Now you mentioned that the second part is full of practicalities. Without giving too much away, ’cause we want everyone to get your book and read it, can you talk maybe about some strategies for boosting creativity, reducing shame, or any of the other things that you noted are kind of foundational in the text?

– Sure. So let’s talk about creativity. Again, I sort of tack back and forth between this idea of mindset and then practical strategies. So I think there is a general awareness that there’s something going on with people with ADHD and creativity out in the world. What I loved doing this book, one of the most exciting, cool, fun sort of self-affirming parts of writing the book was finding this huge, you know, collection of research on folks with ADHD and creativity. And, you know, over and over, we outperform neurotypical folks in both real world and lab tests of creativity. So we really are the creative experts and geniuses in the world, and it was really fun to make a case for that in the book and to talk about, you know, the problems that we’re facing in our world today, and why I think ADHDers need to be supported, and of course paid and compensated to really lead those efforts, and the amazing asset that our creativity is. What I sometimes think of as like galaxy brain, like entire galaxies living inside of our heads, which is very much a challenge. We gotta be challenge aware, but it’s also a massive strength. One of the things I recommend that faculty can start with is taking sort of an inventory of their own creativity. That is a word that I think people associate with like being good at painting and drawing. And I really, you know, I know for example, because Niya and I are friends, that Niya is a plant mom, and is also someone who is very dedicated to taking care of fostering dogs, bulldogs, right?

– Yep.

– Yeah, and those are both what I would say are sort of lesser known but perfect examples of creativity. So sort of broadening your idea of creativity from being good at drawing and painting, which are definitely examples of creativity, to things like taking care of plants and taking care of animals are other examples of ways we can express ourselves. And I think it’s hard to bring creativity into the classroom if you think it’s drawing and painting. So expanding your definition of what creativity is is a great place to start. It’s hard to teach what we don’t know. And then from there, you can take an inventory of your class and look for places in your class where you allow students to express their creativity, and a great way to do that is just by bringing in a little bit of choice on your assignments, giving students the option to choose their research topic, or giving them the option of, instead of a paper, you can also do a slide deck. Like those are really low risk entry points. And from there, you know, once you get, you know, I don’t like people to redesign their entire, try to redesign their entire course ’cause they’re probably not paid to do that and they probably don’t have the time and energy. But maybe adding in little pieces of choice into your classroom. And talking about creativity with your students, and talking to them about what’s your definition of creativity, and how your class and their learning experience can be expressions of creativity. And then you asked about reducing shame, and that’s a big one. I cite some work in the book that talks about shame as being the most challenging part of ADHD, even more so than what I call sort of our porous working memory and challenges there is the shame that we’ve sort of gathered up and collected over many years in formal schooling and education systems. So, again, the best thing that educators can do is to check their own mindset and to ask themselves, “What assumptions am I holding about ADHD students in my class? What stereotypes do I hold?” And just start to make that shift from, I’m gonna move from deficit based or superhero based into strengths-based, challenge aware is going to change everything. It will color and it will inform every one of the conversations you have, the emails you send, shifting from this student is a burden in my class to the student is an asset. And the last thing I wanna say about that is the number one thing I hear from educators, well, maybe not anymore in the AI era, but until like a couple months ago, the number one thing I’d hear from educators in my faculty development work is what do they most want help with? Or what do they most want to improve upon? And they would always say, “I want student engagement, I want more student engagement.” And I think to some extent that is able to sort of hold that AI conversation, that the reason we’re all in a tizzy about AI is that we want our students to be engaged and we want them to learn. So I talk about this immense creativity that our ADHDers bring into our classrooms. We’re justice oriented, we’re passionate, we’re energetic, we’re fun, we’re silly, we’re weird. We are little sort of sparks of engagement that when we are supported, when we are seen for a combination of our strengths and challenges as awesome human beings, we can really light the fire of engagement in a class, and, you know, boost the engagement of a class. We have a very contagious type of energy that I think can really bring a lot of life into a classroom and support not only that student, not only the entire classroom community, but that educator as well. So looking at ADHD students as partners and as assets to that goal of student engagement can really be a way to reduce shame and support student learning.

– I love that, and I see now why the first part of your book is so essential to kind of like establishing the foundation for being able to do that.

– Awesome. Yeah, no, the book, the structure of the book really evolved. I think I, you know, I feel like maybe I wrote five drafts at least, and it really eventually landed in this place where I was able to clearly see that mindset was the priority. People could read the book, and I talk about this in the introduction. People can read it in reverse. Like, it’s really important for me to normalize varied approaches to learning and reading. People can read the book backwards. People can read like the odds and evens. But you know, if you were to start with the practical strategies, I think it’s important to recognize that you gotta go back at some point and have a conversation with yourself, and take a look in the mirror and say, “How much of this junk of deficit-based approaches have I absorbed and been taught?” Because that is the majority of what is out there. You know, the word, ADHD is a term I use. I do not use the term that it stands for, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. We’ve literally got the word deficient, you know, deficiency in the title. I don’t, and I’ve had people argue with me and say, “It’s not deficit based.” It’s got the word in the title. So yeah, if that’s not obvious to folks, I can’t help them. But yeah, we’ve got a lot of work to do to dismantle those, even those of us who have ADHD, or love folks with ADHD, or teach people with ADHD, we’ve got some work to do. But, you know, I write from a place of experience. I have absolutely gone through that journey myself of realizing like, oh gosh, I really did have and hold those deficit based views. And it feels wonderful to be out on the other side of that with the neurodiversity paradigm in mind, and moving forward in a more realistic and sort of humanizing way.

– I love that. And as you’re saying this, I’m gonna take a break and speak as your friend. My daughter, who openly has ADHD so she wouldn’t mind me saying this, and recently held up a sign at a band concert that announced that as something she was proud of, something she proud of.

– Amazing.

– I want to like read this with her and like show her all of these things that you’re talking about.

– Yeah. Whenever, I talk to a lot of folks who will either say like, somebody I love, kid, family has ADHD, or a lot of people, a lot of people say, “I have ADHD but I don’t talk about it publicly,” or a lot of people say, “Maybe I do have ADHD.” And it’s just, it’s something, you know, speaking about it publicly is a little nerve wracking, but I am very much motivated by the next generation and a desire that I have to make the world better for that generation and for my fellow ADHDers, like your daughter. I never, I didn’t know I had ADHD, but even so, I never had a single teacher or professor, and I did, I’m all but dissertation, so I don’t even know how many, what’s that? Like 20 years of education. How many teachers and professors did I have? Not a one ever said that they have ADHD. And that’s, you know, I recognize that people have a right to keep that private because there’s a lot of stigma and harm that can be done with sharing. But it is so freeing to me when I have students in my courses who say they have ADHD and I get to say, “Oh, I have ADHD too.” Your professor has ADHD. I can’t imagine what that, you know, the difference that that alone can make, because I never had a single role model. So it’s really important I think to create conditions where people can share that, hold up that sign and can talk about it. And the more of us, you know, who are able to do that, the better these conditions will be, and the more people will be able to follow and share their total, true, amazing selves and their amazing brains.

– I love it. Well, tell everyone one more time the title of your book. Even hold it up if you would.

– Oh, yeah.

– And when and where they can get it.

– So, January 20th, 2026, the book will be out. Johns Hopkins University Press published it, so it’s on their website. You can get it on, you know, the place that we probably shouldn’t name that I’m trying to avoid. And I know Johns Hopkins often has, they just had a 40% off sale, then I saw a 50% off for holidays. So you might be able to go the small is all route and save yourself a few bucks, so check out their website and look for deals and look for that, yeah, look forward to that blue spine. I love it. When I got it in my hands. I knew the cover was gonna look like this, and then I turned it to the side and I love colors, and I love, blue’s my favorite color, and I was like. So yeah, January 20th, 2026. And I so appreciate you, and I appreciate everybody’s support in buying the book, or getting it from the library, or asking your library to get it, or, you know, sharing it on social media. Anything that folks can do to support me in this book. My goal is, you know, as I said, to just make the world a kinder, better place for ADHDers and to, again, sort of call in this amazing creative expertise that ADHDers have because we got some problems. And I really think that creative mindset of imagining and designing new worlds can help us move forward and move through some of these problems. So I hope that folks will read it and share it and support it in any way they can.

– Thanks, Karen. One more thing, you have a website. You do lots of other work in higher ed places and spaces. Can you just tell everyone what that is and where you’re active?

– Sure. You can find me on 100 Faculty, the number 100faculty.com. I am currently active on LinkedIn, I expect. I take random long social media breaks, but typically, generally I’m around there. My website has a contact page though, and that goes to my email, which I do check pretty regularly. I’m on Bluesky, but to be honest, I haven’t been active there. So LinkedIn is kind of my home base for social media now. Folks can find me on 100faculty.com. And I do check my email and I try my best to reply to emails from folks who are reaching out. And there’s a workshop request form on my website if folks would like to hire me for a virtual talk on ADHD or other topics.

– Amazing. Well, it’s always a pleasure chatting with you professionally and personally, so thanks for your time and thanks for being here.

– Thank you, Dr. Bond.