Podcast host Sonia Gray with Travis, 17, who has benefited from his time in a strengths-based education programme in Auckland. Photo / NZME
Podcast host Sonia Gray with Travis, 17, who has benefited from his time in a strengths-based education programme in Auckland. Photo / NZME
Creating art has always come naturally to 17-year-old Travis. But for a long time, he didn’t see it as something that had any real-world value.
Travis has ADHD, and like many neurodivergent young people he struggled for years in an education system that measured him against skills he found difficult,rather than recognising the ones that came naturally. By the time he arrived at The Hyphen Project in Auckland, Travis was in a mental health crisis.
Speaking to Sonia Gray in this week’s episode of No Such Thing As Normal, the second in a two-part series exploring strengths-based education, Travis says: “I came to Hyphen probably in the worst place I’ve ever been in my entire life ... I was like, if this doesn’t work, I don’t know what will.”
The Hyphen Project is a six-month programme for twice-exceptional teenagers aged 16-19 who have fallen out of mainstream schooling. The approach is deliberately different. There is no rigid curriculum. Instead, learning is built around each young person’s interests, abilities and goals.
Founder Holly Gooch is a former teacher with a background in educational psychology. She says the most powerful ingredient is not curriculum design, but something far more fundamental.
“What we actually found made the biggest difference was having a place where you belonged,” she says.
Holly Gooch founded The Hyphen Project, a programme for twice-exceptional teenagers aged 16-19 who have fallen out of mainstream schooling.
That sense of belonging matters. Many of the young people who arrive at Hyphen are anxious, burnt out and deeply disconnected from learning. Some have been misunderstood or disciplined for behaviours linked to overwhelm or sensory challenges. Others have simply stopped believing they are capable.
The programme focuses on reconnecting them with their strengths – whether that’s digital art, music, entrepreneurship or science – while also rebuilding confidence and real-world skills.
“Everything that I thought about how my brain worked, the negative things, I realised they’re not negative. They’re just different,” he says. “I’m different, but that’s not bad.”
Travis, 17, has ADHD and struggled for years in the mainstream education system.
The benefits of this approach extend beyond the individual. Dyslexia advocate Dean Bragonier says neurodivergent minds are often associated with creativity, innovation and big-picture thinking – all highly valuable in the modern world. But when those strengths are overlooked, the cost is not just personal, it is economic.
“What I think is the most compelling argument is the opportunity cost to society,” Bragonier says.
“There are very, very few populations that you can paint unilaterally with the potential that is being squandered when we fail to embrace and support them.”
“The reality is, the dollar speaks,” he says. “The faster industry understands that these are the people who can fundamentally improve society and add to the bottom line, the faster things will change.”
It’s not a model Bragonier believes in but it’s a pragmatic argument, and one that points to a bigger question.
Rather than asking how neurodivergent young people can better fit the system, initiatives like The Hyphen Project are asking something different: what if the system adapted to them?
Because when strengths are recognised and nurtured, the result is more than better education. It is confidence, purpose and potential that might otherwise have been lost.
No Such Thing as Normal is an NZ Herald podcast, hosted by Sonia Gray, with new episodes available every Saturday.
