A Teamwork Approach to Teaching a Child Who Has ADHD

The first time Tyler Day tried first grade he failed.  

Diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, the then 5-year-old spent much of the first grade wriggling out of his seat, running about the classroom and asking questions at inappropriate times.

“He was out of control,” says his mother, Dixie Day, 43, of Taylor Mill, Ken. “It seemed like every time I turned around, the school was sending home a negative letter. I was in tears that entire year.”

But the following year, just before Tyler was to enter first grade for the second time, his mother switched him to a different school and his doctor suggested a new combination of ADHD medications. Tyler started taking a pair of stimulants to help him concentrate: He took Metadate CD (a long-acting form of methylphenidate, the active substance in Ritalin) in the mornings followed by a low dose of Ritalin in the afternoons. The boy who couldn’t sit still finally did, and his disruptive outbursts and constant noisy chatter stopped. Even better, Tyler’s new elementary school had a principal and staff well versed in educating children with ADHD. And this time, Tyler passed first grade with a report card full of exclamation points and smiley faces.

In the United States today, some 4.4 million school-aged children, about 8 percent of that population, struggle with ADHD, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Teachers interviewed for this article seem to agree; they estimate that for every class of 25 students, at least two kids will have ADHD.

Teachers also agree that educating children with ADHD is not easy. In fact, it can be outright exhausting, says Megan Hill, age 27 and an 11th-grade English teacher at Environmental Charter High School near Los Angeles. 

“You have your racers and your spacers,” says Hill, referring to the two main symptoms of ADHD sufferers: hyperactivity and inattention. “The kids who are really hyper draw the most of your attention and require the most energy. They’re your racers, and you’re usually preoccupied with them,” she says. “But the spacers—the spacers will just sit there with blank stares on their faces. Getting them back on task may be as simple as just tapping their paper and telling them, ‘OK, you need to get working now.’ But they’d just sit there and stare all day if you didn’t get them going again. They need your undivided attention, too.”

“Schools are not set up to give individual attention to people who need individual attention,” says Harold Meyer who co-founded and co-directs the New York City chapter of CHADD (Children and Adults With Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). With 200 local chapters nationwide, CHADD is the country’s leading nonprofit organization for individuals with ADHD.

“Teachers also complain that they get very little training,” says Meyer. “For many of them, the special education lesson [in college] is just one day–so the teachers are sent into the classroom unprepared.”

English teacher Hill, who has a master’s degree with a special education focus from Harvard, agrees that, “not all teachers have a bag of tricks.” Oftentimes, they must enlist a variety of visual cues (such as hand motions signaling quiet time), verbal taglines (even-toned, clear reminders to follow the rules) and backup plans (designated time-out spaces in other classrooms, for example) to get through to kids with ADHD. “But, many teachers just get frustrated,” says Hill.

And if teachers are dreading the school week, chances are their students with ADHD are deeply miserable at the thought it. “All kids come into school with a love of education,” says Meyer, “but oftentimes, children with ADHD get that love of learning quickly knocked out of them.”

In the worst-case scenario, kids with ADHD are labeled as troublemakers, says Cathy Barwell, the principal at Ryland Heights Elementary in Covington, Ken., where Tyler, now 10, is set to enter the fourth grade this fall. “School becomes a bad place and the kids start to get discouraged,” she says. “Communication breaks down between the school and the parents, because who wants to hear that their kid is doing something wrong all the time?”

But in the education of Tyler Day, the lines of communication have stayed open, and people seem to talk and listen in near-perfect proportions. Each fall, Dixie Day schedules meetings with her son’s new teachers. “I introduce myself, I give them my support and I let them know that I’m free for phone calls anytime,” she says.

At Ryland, all the students ferry a notebook between school and home on the weekdays. This program fosters daily communication between Tyler’s mother and teachers. The adults use the notebook to keep tabs on Tyler’s homework assignments, but also to discuss his behavior each day.

Last year, Tyler’s third-grade teacher Cathy Elkus, 49, arranged sit-down meetings with struggling students to plan how their class schedules or surroundings could be changed to create a more productive workspace. Tyler, who had recently bonded with two male classmates, worked hard to behave in exchange for a seat next to his new friends. 

Elkus also arranged for students with ADHD to take supervised gym breaks with the physical education instructor as a reward for good behavior. When Tyler had a particularly productive school day, he would head to the gym for 15-minutes where he could run around and expend some of his endless energy. 

“It is a teamwork approach,” says Elkus.

And for her contribution, Principal Barwell spends the summer months reviewing class records and staff profiles, always aiming to piece together perfect teacher-student matches for the upcoming school year. She also holds regular meetings with her staff members to discuss the educational needs of each student with ADHD.

“If just the teacher is doing all the work or just the parent is doing all the work, you run into trouble,” Barwell says. “It takes all three sides working together—the parents, the school and the teachers—to make the classroom a pleasant place for a child with ADHD. And it’s not always good news; it’s not always easy.”

“But all any parent really wants to know,” says Barwell, “is that we care about their child and that we want their child to be successful, no matter how many bad days they have.”

Today, Tyler’s behavior is under control, and he isn’t the only one looking forward to the new school year. “I’m excited. A little apprehensive always but also excited,” says Dixie Day. “You know why?” she asks with a laugh. “Because now, when the teacher sends notes home, they’re all good notes.”