To ask for ADHD classroom experience from the other side

[Nimbostratus100]

More specific than other threads currently running

If you have ADHD, please tell me what helped you most at school

Secondary teacher off sick here, just pondering returning to work some time this year.

I do my best for my students with ADHD, but always wonder if there is something I could do better. Of course everyone is different, and what works for one student might not work for another. And I suppose I am most likely to get a female perspective here, which might be very different to the male one. But any mums to sons with ADHD, insights very welcome!

But imagine yourself back to sitting in front of me in a secondary classroom as a young teen

Please describe what you would most want from me.

Thank you

Don’t assume I’m not paying attention because I’m not looking right at you. I’m damn tired of emailing the various teachers at my Y10 child’s school to remind them that ND paying attention doesn’t look like NT paying attention, and no she won’t be doing detention for getting angry at them after she’s pointed that out for the millionth fucking time. Same for doodling/other fidgets that are not negatively impacting anyone else whilst the lesson is being taught.

And also that kids who do well may have adhd. I do (and did). But because I got good grades noone explored how that was achieved and so I wasn't given support to develop better and more manageable ways of working other than leaving everything to the last minute and cramming. I also wasn't given the opportunities others had to amend their coursework after deadlines because I had rushed to meet them and got a good grade which teachers felt.was sufficient ignoring that I was able to do better and had only completed the coursework on time due to the hyperfocus fear. I wish those things had been spotted.

It's complex though and emotional immaturity isn't there for everyone with adhd. I've always been really good with emotional support for others and advice giving however where perhaps I have struggled is assessing when people are the right people to be around and their intentions. I can be a bit naive. I think that if people thought of emotional immaturity as behaving young they'd miss this in me as I always was described as an old head on young shoulders yet I did, underneath masking, have the naivete when it came to trust. I have been told I have autistic traits so perhaps that's why it mixes with my.adhd as it does.

Sometimes I needed to....

• just walk out for five minutes like pretend to go to the toilet just to breathe
• doodle while the teacher talked but I was listening
• the fear of being asked to answer a question made me want to dies my hand wasn't up because I couldn't be bothered it was because I could face speaking out infront of everyone
• same goes for reading out loud

This is absolutely me. Can't stand other people making noise but mine is necessary and fine lol

One example from my DD’s experience of having ADHD at school here in the US.

She is incredibly clever but disorganized.

At high school she got a C for physics because if you failed to hand in more than 2 pieces out of the 160 pieces assigned, you automatically got a C.

It didn’t occur go anyone that a smart kid who just got a top 0.5% SAT score might have undiagnosed ADHD, so no one ever helped her, or even stopped to wonder why she’d not handed in all 160 pieces of work.

So… step one… be aware of why your students might be disorganized or unfocused or fidgety. Consider ADHD.

Also don’t just try to help those who are diagnosed. Consider that many more are undiagnosed with processing issues
and/or ADHD, and try to set up your classroom practices to work for them all.

Also thank you for asking. You obviously care about your students.

Thank you for all your inputs. I am reading through all of these posts very carefully

Order activities with breathers. Now and then board or first, second, third. Visuals might help?

keeping instructions simple and short and clear. Chunk and check.

read the room. If a child has lost all focus allow a few minutes of throwing a soft ball or walking/movement/stretching before refocusing.

try deep breathing exercises before working ie breathing in through the nose counting to 4 and breathing out through the nose counting to 5. Repeat a few times.

Allow doodling at times

Ahhh… the doodling. Of all the things people have mentioned, that's the one I'd personally most like you to understand if you were the teacher standing in front of 14yo me.

I realise that for some students, they doodle because they're bored and then they get involved in the doodle rather than paying attention to you. I guess it's probably pretty difficult to give this student the support they need by not allowing them to doodle, while allowing the student next to them to doodle as much as they like. But doodling is almost essential for kids like I was.

It's like… inside your head, there's a menagerie of animals clamouring for attention, fighting each other, getting into mischief and just generally looking for some way to cause havoc. If you want to get anything done, you need to organise the chaos a bit — get the monkeys into their enclosure, set up a ball-throwing machine to entertain the labradors, occupy the guinea pigs with half a watermelon to eat, and mollify the cat with constant fusses (until it suddenly decides it's done with you, lashes out and stalks off). If at least some of the noisy, demanding, distracting creatures can be temporarily engaged in some other activity, you have a much better chance of success at the thing you actually want to do.

Doodling in my books occupies my hands, my eyes, and several different mental functions that aren't required for listening to and understanding a teacher (like limited spatial planning, motor coordination, awareness of physical sensations, aesthetic judgement, and so on), freeing up some of my limited attentional resources.

If I'm doodling, I'm listening to every word you say, and will probably be able to tell you your last three sentences verbatim, if you decide you'd like to try to humiliate me for "not listening".

If I'm not doodling, I might be listening, but I'm just as likely to be distracted by all the things I can see, or by some sensation I'm experiencing, or by thoughts flitting and skipping through my head.

Doodling is a technique I use to occupy enough of my head-menagerie to free up my attention for you. It doesn't matter how many times you tell me off or make me pay 50p for a new roughbook because you think my doodles are wasting paper, I will keep doing it because the alternative is a skull full of shit-flinging monkeys and labradors eating guinea pigs.

I'm a primary school teacher and we suspect my 8yo DD has ADHD - the innatentive kind.

Lots of people here have said about kids needing to be able to fidget and make noise - but DD finds everything around her distracting and comes home daily complaining about the noise in the classroom and saying she can't concentrate. I do not think I have ADHD but as a teacher I find it extremely difficult to carry on the flow of my teaching when kids (or TAs for that matter) are making noise and I also find the visual distractions of fidgeting very difficult. I would also love it if parents could see how the fidget toys they insist their child should have access to are used in the classroom and the problems they cause - 9 times out of 10 they are hindering a child's learning rather than helping.

I absolutely understand that kids with ADHD or a whole range of neurodiversities need different things but my argument is that support for these kids simply CANNOT be this granular. It just does not work in a classroom with 35 kids. We ask them to be quiet and sit still (most of the time, with plenty of breaks for chat and movement) for a reason because we are there for ALL the kids in the class - not just the needs of a few.

I can sympathise with what you're saying in some ways there Quinoa — when another poster suggested making allowances for pen-clicking, my first thought was "only if you want the other ADHD kid to jump up and murder them with that very fucking pen". It would be hard to make a mainstream secondary classroom work if you had students making gratuitously irritating noises, jumping up and down and wandering around the room whenever they fancied a stretch and a change of scenery, or playing with attention-drawing toys. But there's a level of minor distraction that I think everyone needs to learn to deal with — another poster mentioned that the sound of another student doodling would distract them, and TBH the sound of pen on paper seems to me like the kind of thing kids need to learn to tune out in a classroom, and a kid who's seated somewhere where they can unobtrusively get up occasionally outside of scheduled breaks isn't usually disruptive enough to others to justify routinely preventing that IMO.

You can't let every kid with ADHD (or any other reason for particular needs) do everything that they or their parents think/say would help them regardless of the impact on others (including other kids who might find it particularly disruptive because of their own difficulties), but there must be compromises to be found.

I do absolutely agree with you - when it's possible to do it without negatively affecting everyone else's experiences we can totally do it, but we are seeing an increasing demand / expectation for individualised learning which is impossible to manage. I also completelt accept that everyone needs to learn to manage minor distractions, and I do not expect a silent classroom for DD. In fairness, she gets distracted from doing her homework by her sister just walking into a room or breathing sometimes and does her best work when alone in her bedroom after we've put her to bed for the night.

To be fair to her, some people's breathing can be INFURIATING. Especially siblings or spouses

6 could humming be accommodated when a child with autism is going ballistic because of the noise? And all the others in the class start up humming?

I think humming might come under "gratuitously irritating noises" 😐

my 14yo (boy) is currently going through diagnosis.

Genuinely don't know what would help him but he gets Inn trouble all the tone for talking. He's often not doing it to distract others and it's genuinely about the work but he's at a new academy school with v tight rules and it's a bag for. And you can ask him to stop talking and 60 seconds later he will do it again. He genuinely can't help himself, it must be really annoying for teachers but what helps is of they don't throw the rule book at him (ie enforce multiple transgressions which would normally result in hour long Head of Year detention) as he's got as much chance of being able to rein those in as he has of making his millions on You Tube).

It's also really helpful if he does repeatedly break the rules if you can ask him what he thinks is going on as he is unable to see things from another pov (ASD diagnosis ongoing too). He is often quite shocked when things are pointed out to him and that can help him in the short term.

Finally, just cos you told him something once don't expect him to think that applies always. He had to be reminded about rules/expectations all the time. Perhaps set these out at the start of every lesson and then half way through, maybe it will stick?

I do feel for you as it must be tough, it's such a shame as DS is very bright but will likely end up on a vocational pathway as the hands on learning will work better for him, the state sector is just not able to offer the learning environment that Ginn and kids like him need.

He seems to need multiple sensory inputs, being still and quiet is literally impossible for him.

Thank you so much for asking

As primarily inattentive-presenting, I was told off for daydreaming and not listening. It was also very stressful realising I hadn't taken in instructions and feeling scared to ask because I would be told I should have listened.

Instead of that I would suggest, if there are specific students with this issue, coming up and asking if they took everything in. If no time for that, maybe tell the class them can come to you for clarification.

Absolutely agree with this. I use a fidget toy, but obviously as an adult I don't want other adults to see me use it, so it's really discreet and quiet. Kids can use these to not disturb other kids in the class. Also a football under the desk to pass between feet is unnoticeable to other students.

One thing I hated at school (most my problems were primary school related as we had one teacher all day) was being singled out. I had support in place for dyslexia, a TA sat next to me in English and encouraged me to use a ruler to read. The other kids would pick on me for being slow/stupid. Keeping an eye out for this behaviour from others would go a long way.

Also if there is scope for a homework club could you work with the parents to accommodate this? This could still be open to all students, but the class would in general be less busy and more time can be taken with the students that need help.

My daughter has ADHD, along with ASD and dyspraxia.

She struggles must with executive function (basically the ability to organise herself).

When she started secondary school although she was academically working at age related levels, she just couldnt cope with the organisational aspects of secondary school.

She was persistently late to class, she lost her belongings, or forgot them, and didn't remember any messages given out by the teacher, didn't know what the homework was, didn't know what was going on at all. She stacked up behaviour points and spent time in detentions, and got told off in front of the class, even though she's a well behaved, quiet, wouldn't say boo to a goose type of child.

Teachers couldn't understand that a seemingly bright child could also struggle with organisation so much, and thought it was behavioural, and thought she would learn if they kept punishing her.

It caused her so much anxiety, she started having anxiety attacks in school and she eventually couldn't attend, and when she did spent hours each day out of class.

Diagnosed adhd as an adult here, combined type.
If there are any videos have the subtitles on as it helps me understand. Same for English, suggest they listen to it on audible whilst reading it.
I was always a 'good' child so they sat the naughty ones next to me who completely distracted me and made it impossible to learn or hear anything. Being near the front added to the bullying I received, I don't know the solution but just to be aware.
Exams terrified me and one exam I forgot my own name and couldnt write a single thing. The teacher wouldn't believe me and I sat there in tears whilst others laughed at me. Some way of doing less pressure internal exams would be good.
It was really uncool to ask questions if you didn't understand so a way of texting or emailing questions and checking understanding.
Why do we always have to sit still why can't history or maths classes be taken standing up, sat on desks or the floor or in the field in the summer.
Well done for asking. I suspect like snowflakes you will get a million different answers.

My 8 year old is currently out of school because of ADHD. His teacher is kind but just reacts to any request as though she has to go through a legal process.

What my son wanted is this:

• to bring his wobble stool to sit on
• to be given a choice of three levels for each task
• to be allowed to stop writing when he felt he needed to
• to not be asked to do any homework

My ask was:

• to employ errorless learning techniques. Stop the negative criticism ie: "you should have written three paragraphs" and instead set goals at the beginning of the task which was more manageable, or: "When you have written one paragraph, it is your challenge to write three more words please?"

So much bloody pressure and now my son refuses to go to school - he has cracked with anxiety.

This was me at school. My teachers used to ask me to stand outside the class because of my inability to organise myself.

Hilariously, I was a teaching assistant at a secondary school a couple of years ago and got told off all the time for being unable to follow the fucking complicated timetables.

Lots of practical suggestions here, that I can try out, some that would not be possible. Thank you all for your suggestions

ANY ball brought loose into a classroom needs to be left behind the teacher's desk. The only exception I have made in 25 years was a child who was seriously disabled who needed to be doing physiotherapy for a few minutes every half hour, and even then, it was an emergency measure to allow it for a couple of days until the physio brought her a more workable alternative

This is such a lovely, thoughtful post. Thank you.

Teachers who will have a place in my heart forever were the ones who didn't try to make every blessed thing a teachable moment about responsibility. The teachers who helped me the most were able to model for me that forgetting and losing stuff does happen, even for organised people, and that when it does there's generally a way to rectify the situation, and your energies are way better spent on sorting it out than on abject apologising and self-flagellation. It was genuinely a light bulb moment. Throughout my life I'd been made to feel that there was nothing I could do once I'd cocked something up but beg for forgiveness and promise to stop being so hopelessly shit in future. The idea I could do something to make things better was totally new to me. (Thank you, Mrs Thomas!)

I also loved the teachers who recognised my struggles and still had high expectations of me, in the subjects where I had natural ability. It felt so good to get a bit of tough love from a teacher who got my difficulties and still believed in me enough to push me a little. It made me feel less like a pitiable mess and more like someone with agency and autonomy, who might have some kind of future. (Thank you, Mrs Sheridan!)

Also, I really appreciated it when a teacher recognised I had hit a hard cognitive limit (I've got dyscalculia and dyspraxia as well) and gave me permission to drop subjects that were never going to cause me anything but frustration, rather than harping on about the importance of always trying my best and growth mindset, etc. (Thank you, Mr Slattery!)

Also - I'm showing my age here - but hardly anyone was diagnosed with ADHD back in the 80s & 90s when I was at school, but it meant SO much to me that the teacher in charge of pastoral care said, like it was no big deal at all, that I was 'different', and that one of his favourite parts of his job was helping 'different' kids navigate the social turmoil of secondary school. This was the first acknowledgement I had that (a) people could see I was different (because everyone was very investing in telling me there was nothing wrong with me at all, I just needed to work harder and cheer up) and (b) my difference made social situations difficult for me. The fact that he'd seen it before, that he enjoyed working with people like me... it's stayed with me all my life.

Little things make such a big difference. And I remember the good teachers so much more than the bad ones.

Thank you for giving this so much thought! Your students are lucky to have you.