Three Ways Teachers Can Empower ADHD Learners

Growing up, I was a difficult kid to teach. My imagination was out of control, often leading me off on chaotic tangents, taking my classmates with me. I rarely raised my hand and spent almost all of my time at school talking at warp speed, barely taking a moment between non-seqitors to breathe. I lost worksheets. I talked to my classmates during tests. On one occasion, I even convinced my grade three class to sign a petition promising not to listen to a substitute teacher on the grounds she was a witch. I drove my teachers insane with my incessant questions and insatiable appetite for a constant stream of fresh stimulation.

For my first few years teaching middle school, kids with ADHD terrified me. It was like looking into a mirror at my own chaotic, blissfully unaware past self. I didn’t know how to get these students to listen during lessons, or to put their homework aware instead of letting it slide onto the floor into a crumpled mess. What I did know was that I felt frustrated and exhausted. No matter what I tried to do, kids with ADHD could derail a class within seconds.

This year, during a masters course on developmental disabilities, something clicked for me. All this time, I was working to control these kids in the same way my teachers had struggled with me so many years before. I was trying to get them to become more organized, more able to conform to the routines of my classroom. What I was doing wasn’t working, and was possibly even harming my students’ sense of self by making them feel consistently inadequate, just like I had felt as a kid who couldn’t keep her binder organized or her bedroom clean. That’s when I stopped what I was doing and started working with my ADHD learners to help them harness their unique way of seeing the world.

Kids with ADHD learn differently. ADHD is a developmental disorder, which means that it impacts the way our brains work on a fundamental level. Trying to force kids with ADHD to behave like their neurotypical peers isn’t just futile; it’s ableist and denies the reality that they aren’t designed to operate in the same way as their peers.

Here are three practical things teachers can do to support and empower kids with ADHD:

1) Let the chaos be. This one is hard, especially for teachers. If you’re anything like me, you want your classroom clean and organized. For kids with ADHD, this is a struggle. We have a hard time with something called Onject Permanence, which means that we tend to forget things exist unless we can see them. That’s why so many kids with the disorder keep their belongings sprawled out across their workspace; they need to know where everything is, because anything they can’t see simply does not exist. ADHD students are going to be messy. Their desks are always going to be cluttered. This doesn’t mean you can’t support your students by gently encouraging them to put their things away, but don’t make it a daily battle. If their belongings are blocking aisles between desks, offer to help them move items out of the way. Trying to force kids with ADHD to be as organized or tidy as their peers is a losing battle that only ends in exhaustion for you and lower self esteem for the student who can’t meet your expectations.

2) Be careful with your tone. People with ADHD experience a phenomenon known as Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD). This symptom of the disorder makes us extremely sensitive. I have written a fair deal about this subject, as it has been one of the hardest parts of my own ADHD to manage. We can interpret the smallest shift in tone or the subtlest glance as an intense rejection. It’s important that we are careful when speaking to students with ADHD about their work habits or behaviour, because they are more likely to interpret criticism as an indication of their failure as human beings. Given how distracted kids with ADHD appear, it can be surprising for teachers to learn just how attuned these students are to their teachers’ emotions. Kids with ADHD are lightening rods for your feelings, positive or negative.

3) Go with the flow, not against it. Often, kids with ADHD have difficulty following the prescribed class activities. This is in part due to the fact that people with ADHD have something called hyper-focus, which is the ability to zone in on one task and block out everything else. Once we set our minds to something, there is little that can be done to redirect our focus. Kids with ADHD will get an idea for how to tackle a project, however wildly off-topic it may be, and they feel compelled to run with it. By embracing these left turns in a flexible way, teachers can help kids with ADHD stay engaged and positive in their learning. Find out what their idea is and see if there is a different way to integrate concepts the rest of the class is working with, while giving the student room to fully dive into their new obsession. Hyper-focus can be frustrating when you try to fight it, but when you let it run wild, the results can offer incredibly learning opportunities for kids who might otherwise disengage.

Teaching is a hard job. It can feel draining, like an endless uphill climb. When I stopped trying to manage my ADHD students, I became a kinder, more relaxed teacher. By accepting our neurodivergent students and giving them a judgement-free place to be who they are, we not only support them but also ourselves.