These stories are inspired by a teaching experience of mine in a Further Education College in England. The experiences are fictionalised. Letting the writing flow, names and identifying details were anonymised. With the characters composed of multiple selves, these are the stories of lecturers and students everywhere, of teachers expected to teach in neurotypical ways, and of neurodiverse students expected to learn in conventional ways. These stories recognise that teaching and learning is not only about the humans in the classroom: all bodies (human, nonhuman and more-than-human) act in relationality. For ‘Jake’, like so many others, the noises of other students, of anxiety, of a beeping fire door, the heat, all combine to drive him from the classroom, potentially from the college. Simultaneously, these forces provoke the courage to ask for help. ‘Jake’s’ class is typical of those I have encountered in Further Education Colleges in England: Jake could be a student at any or all of them. These stories question and resist conventional teaching and learning practices, which so often fail students, in the hope of opening up possibilities for genuine second chances for all.
