Last week I subbed for a half day at a local elementary school's first grade class. It was challenging because there was a boy in that class who clearly had undiagnosed ADHD and was driving me crazy.
The teacher, who had to leave for the afternoon and left me instructions while the students were at recess, warned me about this boy, saying that she was pretty sure he has ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), although he hadn't been officially diagnosed yet. She told me he may be argumentative and will have a difficult time following directions. Later, the teacher from the classroom across the hall let me know that if he got too out of hand I could send him to her classroom for a time out. I thanked both of them but told myself that I would not go into the day already on the defensive against a six year-old who could very well be a perfectly sweet child who was being unfairly labeled. And even if he did have some issues, I have worked as a tutor and teacher of many children with a variety of learning disabilities in the past, so I wasn't too worried.
The warnings turned out to be valid. He was disruptive throughout the day. He refused to follow simple directions and then reacted very emotionally when corrected.
For instance, I was introducing the students' math lesson about the value of a penny and a nickel. One of their activities was to play a little board game in pairs that simply involved allowing the students to practice counting pennies by ones. He did not follow directions, and arranged his game pieces all over the board, refusing to cooperate with his partner. Now, in my "non-teaching" life I am an actress and a writer (still struggling to be paid for both of those things, obviously) and so am very pro-creativity and expressiveness, and love making up my own games as well. So when I'm in the classroom I like to encourage students to use their imagination and think for themselves, too. But his partner really wanted to play the game, and I could see she was getting fed up with him and had begun to play on her own. I wanted to encourage him to cooperate and have a successful time playing with another student, since most of his classmates had grown tired of his repeated outbursts during the lesson already.
But to no avail. He was so wrapped up in the fact that I "ruined" his game, he couldn't see past his own sense of indignation.
Nevertheless, the day moved on.
We read a story that incorporated the math lesson. I had a large version of the story book propped up on an easel next to me, the students each had a smaller version to hold in their laps and read along. This boy was the only one who wouldn't sit properly and read it. Instead, he sprawled out on his stomach and kept kicking his legs at the girl sitting behind him, knocking her book out of her hands. After repeatedly re-directing him and trying to get him to sit properly, a little girl looked up at me and muttered, "He never follows the teacher's directions."
The most frustrating thing was when I was going over their seated desk work, a simple worksheet that showed the kids how to chose different combinations of coins for different amounts of money. The student in question got up and went to the bathroom, which is located conveniently at the back of the classroom so students are free to go whenever they wish, and stayed there for the entire time I was going over a few sample problems and explaining the directions. Then he came out of the bathroon, did his entire worksheet without knowing what the directions were, then brought it to me where I was giving individual help at a separate table. Of course his entire paper was done wrong, with the exception of one question. When I let him know that they were wrong but it was all right becasue he hadn't heard the directions, he started crying and was angry with
me that
he got all his questions wrong. I didn't make a big deal out of it, and tried to re-direct him to focusing on how to do the problems correctly instead of harping on the fact that they were wrong, but he ended up totally shutting down and pouting for the rest of the lesson.
The afternoon continued in much the same fashion, with all of the othe children more or less cooperating while this one continued to disrupt. It was so draining.
Now, I am against medicating children just for the sake of "calming them down" or drugging them into a stupor just because they may have some learning challenges that can be addressed in other ways. I basically view medication as the
ultimate last resort. It has traditionally been my knee-jerk reaction to feel angry when I hear parents of active students or children with learning disabilities talking about how school teachers and authorities are pressuring them to medicate their child for ADHD, but this experience gave me pause.
I can now understand why a teacher would want a parent to try medication, after having to deal with such a difficult student day after day. Not only that, but I could see the genuine suffering in that child's eyes. At one point we stepped outside in the hall, my hope was that without the stimulation of all the other kids in the class I could get him to focus on me and really listen. He told me how hard it ws for him to adjust to first grade with all the rules and sitting still, and I told him that I understood but to try to remember that all of his classmates are going through the same transition and it's not always easy but they do their best.
I know that he couldn't help jumping up and walking around, or calling out, or that a lot of his combativeness is most likely a result of anxiety and low self-esteem. I think he would secretly like to be able to participate effectively in class, especially because of how his behavior alienates him from his classmates, most of whom seem to view him at worst as a nuisance and at best as an occasional class clown. And I also feel for his classmates. His behavior was just as stressful for them as it was for me. Lessons took longer because I kept having to stop to address his behavior. Their individualized help and attention decreased as his disruptive behavior increased.
Lesson for the day: Untreated learning disabilities and behavior problems in the classroom are a miserable experience for everyone involved. I think parents need to be more open to the idea that their child could need some real help, whether it is simply enforcing rules better and making school a high priority at home; adjusting nutrition so that a child who already has high energy does not get pumped full of sugar, caffeine, and other foods that do nothing for the brain; providing enough time for exercise in the child's day; possibly prescription drugs if necessary, or even a combination of these things.
The earlier the intervention, the better. This student was a first grader. He is learning the major building blocks of reading, math, social skills, and study skills. If those blocks are weak from the beginning, the whole structure will be in crumbles long before he reaches high school. Situations like these, when left unchecked, create high school students who cannot read, and I have personally worked with plenty of those.
