Winifred Montgomery has been with LWHS for 16 years, and has been working in the field of neurodiversity for over 30 years. Get to know her in today's Spotlight!

Q: What was your experience of being in school like?

I tell students here all the time that high school was the worst 200 years of my life. I went to public school, and it was an excellent education—but nobody ever figured out that I had a learning difference. I just thought I was kind of stupid about some things. 

It wasn't until many, many years later that I realized "ohhhh, that's what that was!" If they had known I had a learning difference, if I had known, then I might have gone ahead in math, for instance. I always understood the concepts really well, but I could not do the math. It wasn't until years later that I realized that I have no rote memory. So I never got the times tables on automatic. I was always sitting there counting on my fingers while everybody was whipping ahead with their algebra.

Q: Did you have a particular teacher who had an impact on you?

Yeah, many. But in particular, it was a math teacher, Carol Brady. She was very, very tolerant. She never mocked me and wouldn't let the other students mock me. I would sit and have lunch in her office because it was the only safe place in high school. Every single day when I did my homework, I would draw a little monster on it. And she would cut them out and put them up around the ceilings. So by the end of the year, my little monsters went all the way around the classroom.

Q: If you weren't doing what you do now, what do you think you'd be doing?

I'd probably be a glass artist. I kind of already am, but I don't make a living at it. It's just something I do out of joy. Before I realized what I wanted to do with my life, I ran offices, I ran an acupuncture clinic for many years. I'm great at that kind of stuff, and it certainly has given me a lot of sympathy for people who work staff in high schools. But once I started learning about being a therapist—which I use every day in my work—and about neurodiversity, I never looked back. It's such a source of joy and fascination for me.

Q: You say your job gives you joy and fascination. Tell us more!

I will often have a student come to meet with me who thinks they're secretly stupid and who is maybe acting out because they feel like they don't belong here. We have an incredibly competitive academic environment and they just don't think that they can ever be successful.

When I am able to explain to them how to study—so many of our students come here and they never learned how to study—they finally get it that actually, there's nothing wrong with me, I'm doing this wrong, and there's a better way; if I do it that way, I can learn anything.

That is what I live for. Helping people change their trajectory and become the people they really want to be. You tell me who you want to be, and I will tell you how to get there from here. It's such an honor that people trust me with this kind of stuff.

How people think is endlessly fascinating to me. Everybody's a little bit different and everybody has a different pattern of thinking and I just never get tired of it. It brings me so much joy to help people understand how they learn.

Q: What's something you're proud of having done with the students here?

I'm really proud of our intern program. Right now, it's juniors and seniors who feel really passionate about spreading neurodiversity awareness and changing the culture. We had our neurodiversity luncheon earlier this month and from that we've got several sophomores who want to be involved next year. I think that's a really beautiful thing. It's just the opposite of stigma culture. There are still ignorant or uninformed comments, but fewer and fewer. And my students are much more comfortable pushing back against that and wanting to spread the word about neurodiversity. That’s something I'm really proud of.

Thank you for sharing your stories and perspectives with us, Ms. Montgomery!

Pictured above, Ms. Montgomery with Emily Friedman, Class of 2019