Hi, I'm Olga

How it all started

For most of my career, about 23 years, I taught in a special education school for students with intellectual disabilities, and later in inclusive classrooms too. Neurodivergence was never the exception there. It was just part of our everyday life. Every one of my students had their own way into learning, so we built our teaching around that from day one: routines you could see, a calm room, tasks broken into small steps, and a break before things got to be too much. We never thought of it as a special program. To us, it was simply good teaching.

Those years taught me to slow down and really look: what does this student need right now, so that learning can happen?

Then an accident turned my life upside down and sent me down a new road. Today I work as a teacher and coach in a pilot project, where I support neurodivergent students one-on-one and online, students who, for the moment, just can't find their place in a regular school.

Oregon, my second home

My love story with Eugene, Oregon, began 40 years ago. My aunt lives there, and my two cousins grew up there. Apart from my husband and my children, she is my absolute favorite person in the whole world. I have been coming back to her ever since, again and again, and her home has always felt a little like mine.

In Eugene I spent many long days in the library of the University of Oregon, digging through research for my thesis, the big final paper of my German teacher training.

After that, I worked with people with intellectual disabilities in Oregon, right at the time when schools and communities were starting to open their doors to inclusion. Seeing that change up close stayed with me, and it still shapes the way I teach today. So in a way, part of my teaching story was written in Oregon, and this English site feels a little like coming home.

The lessons the pilot project gave me

That's where it really hit me how wide the gap is. Many of the students who come to us go to regular schools, and their teachers try so hard. But nobody ever prepared them for this. What had been my everyday life for years barely showed up in their training. And between thirty students, the curriculum and the next test, who has time to figure it all out alone?

So I started to translate, in a way. What from special education can work in a regular classroom? What works with a full class, in a short period, in a math or science lesson, right before a test? And most of all: what helps one student without making them stand out?

The best ideas turned out to be the ones that help everyone. A simple task checklist, a timer everyone can see, a routine you can count on. Nobody has to explain themselves, nobody is put on the spot. And for some students, it changes everything.

Why this site exists

Since I started in the pilot project, neurodivergence has been at the center of my days. Every student brings me the same question: which path is the right one for you? There's no recipe for that. Usually a lot comes together, school, family, and the story each person carries with them. That's exactly what makes this work so challenging, and so beautiful.

And then more and more teachers started reaching out to me. Colleagues from middle and high schools who want to help but were never trained for it. They get so little information, and still they face huge hurdles every single day. This site is for them. It's for you.

A little more about me

I'm the mom of two wonderful grown-up sons, a wife and an entrepreneur, and I live in Westphalia, in the northwest of Germany. I'm completely, head over heels in love with artificial intelligence, and I still see both sides of it: what it makes easier, and where we need to look very carefully. With my company, HEADUPHIGH GmbH, I help businesses use AI in a sensible way. And this site? It's my heart project for schools.