Neurodivergence in the Marching Arts: Finding Belonging Through Music and Movement
For Neurodivergence Awareness Month, MAASIN is amplifying the voices of neurodivergent performers and educators whose experiences often go unseen in the marching arts. We’re shining a light on their journeys, navigating diagnosis, self-understanding, and community, while emphasizing the need for empathy, inclusion, and support for every brain on the field and the floor.
When I was in elementary school, I was the rule follower. I lived to impress teachers, and the only “bad” thing I would do is read under my desk when I was bored or talk too much or too loud. When I got to middle school, I was “weird”. I got into every fad, wore embarrassingly bright clothes and make-up, and when I was unapologetically myself, people rejected me as “too much” or “cringe”. My freshman year of high school, pre-marching band, I dug into my studies and let that become my identity, along with being labeled a “talker” and a bit of a know-it-all. Then sophomore year, I decided to join my high school marching band because my best friend (who went to another school) could not hang out on weekends during the fall and I needed something to do.
Everything did not change right away. I still had issues relating to others at school and was beginning to dampen myself down so I was not “too much” for people, even though I felt every emotion deeply. However, as I was tasked with marching with good technique, playing the right notes and rhythms in tune with expression, dressing to the form, projecting up to the press box, anticipating the upcoming choreography, I felt my brain begin to go still for the first time. I was moving my body, I was getting into a character, I was working with other people, and I was good at it. At my first marching band competition ever, the Penn State Blue Band was performing in exhibition, and I vividly remember standing in the end-zone after performing, overwhelmed with emotion at not only the sound and precision of the Blue Band, but at how much fun they were having just being themselves parading in, and the pride that they marched with.
My junior year, after I had an amazing marching band championship performance, I realized “this is what I want to do with my life”. I felt I could be myself on the field, and that the things that ostracized me from my peers, like my strict adhesion to rules, my emotions (“too much”-edness) I put into the music when I played and moved, and my pent-up energy that fueled me every show, were accepted as strengths. I was able to ride that passion to march for four years with the Blue Band as a music education major at Penn State, become a high school band director with my own marching band, and earn my master’s degree in music education, focusing my research on marching band teaching behaviors.
Behind the scenes as my professional life seemed to unfold effortlessly, I was struggling. I was dealing with constant fatigue and was burnt out, and in my second year of teaching, I began experiencing debilitating migraine episodes. My apartment, office, eating habits, and personal life were all a mess. I started reading about how Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) can manifest differently in women, and I began wondering if it applied to me. After seeing a psychiatrist during graduate school who dismissed my concerns, I finally tried again this past December after a close friend shared how life-changing being diagnosed and medicated was for her. At age 29, with the help of a psychiatrist who asked the right questions and understood how hyperfocus drove me through success in academia, I was finally diagnosed with ADHD.
This was a sudden change. It all made sense: the excessive talking, the exclusion from peers (excepting my band friends, some of whom are also neurodivergent), the emotions that were “too much”, the struggle to stay organized unless it was something I found worth my time. Because marching band stilled my brain and I was so passionate about it, I was able to thrive in band-focused environments. The migraine episodes stopped as I took ADHD medication, and I began to conduct, teach, and even function outside of band settings much better. I am now working towards a Ph.D. in music education with the hopes of someday teaching collegiate marching band, and while I still struggle with executive functioning, the occasional emotional overwhelm, and rejection sensitivity, I can name those things and work on them with adequate dopamine levels provided by medication, talk therapy, and coping strategies.
I am sharing my story in the hopes that others in the marching arts can connect to it, especially those who are late diagnosed or not formally diagnosed with neurodivergence. I am lucky to have found communities like MAASIN, my high school and college marching band friends, and amazing band co-workers throughout my career; I know not everyone is so fortunate. I have also seen how the marching arts can be an unwelcoming place for those who are “other”, especially people with neurodivergence, and want to encourage those who have had bad experiences to seek different environments, because healthy marching arts communities that are accepting of differences are out there. Know that your neurodivergence is not a character flaw, a quirk, something you have to fix; it is simply just your brain lacking certain substances that most peoples’ brains have. For those in the marching arts who are neurotypical, know that for some it takes a lot of courage to disclose if they have autism and/or ADHD, and that neurodivergence looks different in every single person. Approach everyone remembering that they have a whole inner being and story that you may not know about, and lead with kindness and patience.
While I will not categorize neurodivergence as a “super power” because of the damage it has caused me and can cause others, it does make us creative, excitable, passionate, routine-loving, emotional, and discerning performers, instructors, and designers. This Neurodivergence Awareness Month, consider that as more neurodivergent folks become visible in this activity and as the marching arts continue to become more supportive of all types of people, future generations will feel comfortable to be their full selves on the floor and on the field.
Kate Sellers
MAASIN Research Manager
Kate Sellers (she/her) has served as a band director, drill writer, graduate assistant, visual caption head, administrator, and assistant director for a number of band and indoor color guard programs across Pennsylvania and Maryland. She has been a member of MAASIN since 2024 and is the co-manager of the Research Committee. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Music Education at the University of Missouri, Columbia, and works with the Marching Mizzou as a graduate teaching assistant.