SUN Program Works to Train Entire School Districts to Support Neurodivergent Students

Kelly Beck, PhD, LPC, CRC, assistant professor of psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, directs the Schools Unified in Neurodiversity (SUN^™) Program, a professional development initiative designed to help public schools better support neurodivergent students. Rather than focusing solely on special education personnel, the SUN Program trains entire schools and districts, including general and special education teachers, counselors, aides, and administrators to create classroom environments that better meet the needs of autistic students and other neurodivergent learners.

The program addresses a challenge in education. Although about 15 to 20% of school-aged children are neurodivergent, most general education teachers receive little formal training on developmental disabilities during their professional education. As a result, many educators are responsible for supporting students with diverse learning, communication, and sensory needs without having received practical guidance on how to do so.

Dr. Beck's research focuses on understanding and reducing the elevated rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide seen within the autism community. Over time, she and her collaborators have shown that many of those challenges begin long before adulthood. Experiences in school, including adverse social interactions, sensory challenges, and learning environments that are not designed for neurodivergent students, can shape emotional well-being over many years, making schools an important setting for early intervention.

"We were meeting with our community advisory group to talk about the high suicide risk among autistic adults and what we should do next," Dr. Beck says. "I kept trying to steer the conversation toward adult work, and they kept telling me, 'No. We have to start with schools. It starts really, really young.'"

A Priority Identified by the Autism Community

Like much of Dr. Beck's work, the SUN Program was developed through a community-engaged research model rather than only by investigators. Dr. Beck directs the Pittsburgh Adult Autism Research Community Collaborative (PAARCC), a long-standing community partners group of autistic adults, parents, clinicians, and other community stakeholders who help identify research priorities, shape study design, and guide dissemination of findings.

Members of that group repeatedly pointed to the cumulative effects of school experiences on later mental health. Rather than focusing exclusively on interventions after mental health problems emerge, they advocated for helping schools create environments that better support neurodivergent students from the outset.

Co-Designed With Educators

Developing the SUN Program followed the same collaborative approach that Dr. Beck applies to her entire research program.

Instead of developing a training curriculum independently, she assembled educators from several Pittsburgh-area school districts together with researchers, advocates, and community members. Every member of the collaborative was either neurodivergent or the parent of a neurodivergent child, combining professional expertise with lived experience throughout the design process.

Working during a single summer when teachers were available, the team used community-based participatory research combined with human-centered design to develop the curriculum, implementation strategy, and supporting educational materials.

"Every person on our team either has a developmental condition themselves or has a child who does," Dr. Beck says. "That shared perspective shaped both the content and how it was delivered, down to the detailed agendas, sensory breaks, and multiple ways participants could receive and share information during the design process."

Dr. Beck's research seeks to develop interventions that fit naturally within the environments where clinicians, educators, and families will ultimately use them. For the SUN Program, that meant designing a professional development program that schools could realistically adopt rather than asking educators to fundamentally change how they already work.

A Practical, School-Wide Approach

The SUN Program is delivered as a six-hour professional development course that trains an entire school or district at once, creating a common foundation across general education teachers, special education teachers, counselors, paraprofessionals, and administrators. Instead of concentrating expertise within a small group of specialists, the program accounts for the fact that neurodivergent students interact with many adults throughout the school day and that each plays a role in creating a supportive learning environment.

The curriculum is organized into four modules covering the neuroscience of neurodiversity, fostering safe relationships at school, creating inclusive classroom environments, and preventing and responding to emotional distress. The materials are tailored for elementary, middle, and high school settings and include sensory checklists, communication cards for students in distress, classroom resources, infographics, and training videos, several featuring neurodivergent students describing their own school experiences.

"We explain that one in five kids have some kind of need in this area, so that's a lot of children in a classroom who may not have special education services," Dr. Beck says. "Our training is about small, practical changes and how you arrange the classroom and the learning groups so a child with these differences can learn better and succeed socially without creating more work for the teacher."

The SUN Program focuses on modest changes that can improve learning, communication, and social participation for neurodivergent students while fitting within the realities of a busy classroom. It does not ask or require educators to implement a new instructional model. It works in tandem with how they already teach students.

Early Results From the SUN Program

Dr. Beck and colleagues published on the development and initial evaluation of the SUN Program in a 2025 paper in Autism. The study documented the collaborative process used to create the program and its first use in a Pennsylvania public school district serving approximately 4,000 students.

The district dedicated a single in-service day to the six-hour training. Among the 192 educators included in the final analysis, knowledge of neurodiversity and confidence in supporting neurodivergent students both increased significantly following the program. Educators also rated the training and classroom tools as acceptable, practical, and feasible to implement, with more than 85% indicating they would use what they had learned.

More than 30% of participating educators were themselves neurodivergent or were raising a neurodivergent child. Although those educators entered the training with greater baseline knowledge, the difference largely disappeared afterward, suggesting the program benefited educators regardless of their previous experience with neurodiversity.

"Our training is about small, practical changes," Dr. Beck says. "How do you change your classroom slightly so that a child with these differences can learn better? How do you organize learning groups, so these students are more likely to succeed socially? Those are things teachers can do while managing a classroom."

The next phase of the research is examining whether those changes in educator knowledge and classroom practices can improve educational, social, and mental health outcomes for neurodivergent students over time.

Expanding Access While Measuring Long-Term Impact

Interest in the SUN Program has grown beyond the Pittsburgh region. In 2024, the program received the $100,000 Research Brilliance Award from YourMomCares through ShrinkTank, a competition conducted in partnership with the UPMC Children's Hospital Foundation. The award is supporting continued implementation and expansion beyond the program's original partner districts. Schools, districts, and state education leaders from across the country have also expressed interest in adopting the program.

"We get calls and emails constantly, and we even heard from someone in Georgia who wanted the training for the whole state," Dr. Beck says. "We're always trying to figure out how to roll this out sustainably because we don't want it to be that only the districts with resources can get the training."

Future studies on the SUN Program will examine what ongoing support educators need to sustain these changes over time and if the improvements seen by teachers translates into better academic, social, and mental health outcomes for autistic and other neurodivergent students. By helping schools create environments that better support neurodivergent students, the program aims to address some of the earliest experiences that can influence lifelong well-being for autistic people.

Further Reading

Learn more about Dr. Beck, the Schools Unified in Neurodiversity (SUN) Collaborative, UPMC Children’s Behavioral Science Division, and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine Department of Psychiatry.

Reference

Beck KB, Ionadi A, Wagner T, et al. The Schools Unified in Neurodiversity Collaborative: Co-Designing a Program to Enhance Educator Knowledge and Efficacy Supporting Children With Neurodevelopmental Disabilities. Autism. 2026 Feb; 30(2): 412-425.