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Bringing Global Affairs Literacy to Neurotypical and Neurodiverse Students

Walk away with two classroom-ready ideas to make CFR’s resources accessible for neurotypical and neurodiverse learners.

Two students sitting side by side doing work in a classroom. One student has headphones on and is working on a laptop, the other is writing in a notebook.

By experts and staff

Published
By
Haley Grime, CFR Education Summer Intern & Graduate Student at Vanderbilt

How do educators make sure neurotypical students understand the world around them? This is a question that comes to my mind as a graduate candidate at Vanderbilt University studying International Education Policy and Management with a bachelor’s degree in Special Education. 

I believe EVERY student deserves access to education. As a CFR Education intern this summer, I applied my passion for inclusion to global affairs literacy. Adapting foreign policy lessons for neurotypical learners showed me what’s possible when accessibility and global awareness meet. 

In the sections that follow, I’ll share an in-service special educator’s perspective on viewing CFR Education’s materials through the lens of Universal Design for Learning (UDL). These strategies are written for comprehensive classrooms, where special educators support learners through accommodations and/or modifications. General education teachers can adapt them too, since UDL holds that flexible instruction benefits every student, so feel free to adjust the pacing or depth to fit your own classroom.

Looking at the Numbers

The number of neurodivergent students is sizable and continues to grow. As of the 2022-23 school year, 15 percent of public school students in the United States received special education and/or related services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) (NCES, 2024). Sixty-seven percent of those students spend the majority of their school day in general education classrooms (NCES, 2024), shedding light on how students with different needs are learning together in the same classrooms. 

Students in general education and special education classrooms alike deserve instruction that accommodates their needs, not instruction they are expected to adapt to. CFR Education’s resources can be flexed to meet a wide range of learners. 

Two ways CFR Education resources appeal to diverse learners is through visual frameworks and timeline supports.

Learning Through Visual Imagery

The visuals within CFR Education’s resources let students learn through imagery, not just alongside it. They create teachable moments, opening space to ask why someone might feel a certain way, and give students the ability to connect a foundational global affairs concept to individual stories. Topics like migration can easily flatten into statistics and policy debate, losing the individual story. But CFR’s resources resist that by pairing big-picture context with images that keep a human face in view, offering students both the overall perspective and the individual story. 

Tips for framing a video in the classroom

  1. Set up: Pause the What is Migration? video at 1:30 (or use any other video of your choosing)
  2. Engage first: Ask students to analyze the same image asking “What do we notice?”
  3. Validate second: Repeat the observation and prompt additional discussion: what else do we notice? 
  4. Reveal context: Share what’s occurring in the picture
  5. Discuss: Invite students to reconsider the image asking them:
  • Now that you know what’s actually happening in the picture, does it change how you see the person’s expression?
  • How might an individual who is migrating experience many different emotions at once, even ones that seem to contradict each other?

Using Timelines to Support Instruction

Sequencing historical events is not just a memorization task; it’s one way students build a mental model of cause and effect over time. Timelines let students learn the shape of history, not just the facts within it. They create a shared visual reference point that students can return to throughout the lesson, giving them the ability to see how individual events are part of a larger pattern.

CFR Education offers a number of timelines embedded directly into lesson plans. For example, the Isolation and Engagement in U.S. History lesson plan uses the Essential Events timeline and a Timeline Sort activity, that asks students to physically arrange event cards in chronological order before reading. This supports learners who need to see time made visible.

CFR Education features not just this single lesson but 13 timelines across many topics. The same support template applies to all of them, with scaffolds adjusted to fit the content and the learner.

Tips for using Timelines in the Classroom

  • Before presenting a new timeline, state explicitly what students should get from it (“notice the order,” “notice how close together these events were,” etc.). Ambiguous open viewing is harder for students who struggle with inferencing.
  • After viewing, use a short matching or sequencing activity (digital drag targets, or verbal “what came first” prompts) to reinforce rather than just moving on.

Global Affairs Literacy Starts with Inclusion

During my time working in CFR Education, I was excited to learn that its resources not only build global affairs literacy but also can be modified for neurodiverse students. Every student has the right to learn about global affairs in a way that is most accessible for them.

Haley Grime holds a bachelor’s degree in Special Education Comprehensive K-12 Licensure from Lee University, along with minors in Deaf Studies and Teaching English as a Second Language. She is now pursuing a Masters in International Education Policy and Management with an emphasis in Social Impact Design and Evaluation at Vanderbilt University.

Works Cited

National Center for Education Statistics. (2024). Students with disabilities. Condition of Education, U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cgg/students-with-disabilities/

National Center for Education Statistics. (2024). Students with disabilities, inclusion of. Fast Facts, U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences. https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=59