Re: The joy of school…

[Anonymous]

There are teachers who are still in the dark and there are ones that are in the know. Why is it still this way?

Probably because you only have to open up a newspaper or turn the TV or radio on and you’ll hear another ‘expert’ denouncing the ADD/ADHD diagnosis as just an invention of the drug companies. Hey, I’m a teacher with ADHD who even finds herself questioning the diagnosis some days.

If I start to question the validity of the disorder, what are the non-ADDer people out there in the real world going to be thinking (some of them being those rotten teachers that we all like to complain about). The non-believing teachers are all thinking to themselves- “Oh, this parent with the ADD kid is just another one of those parents who’s trying to excuse away their kid’s horrible behaviour.

You would not believe the lame excuses that some parents come up with these days just because most of them do not want any kind of consequence for their kids’ lack of work/lack of character/or lack of whatever.

So then the kids with the ADD (who are not AT all easy to manage in a large class of bouncy energetic kids) can end up being ignored. Last year I was in a regular classroom and I used to look forward with great anticipation for the new excuse that I would be presented with each day by one of my ‘students’. Some of the excuses he brought were ever so imaginative and each one of his excuses was carefully planned and orchestrated by his mom, the Enabler. Natural consequences aren’t allowed because that would mean the teacher was insinuating that a mom’s excuse were entirely made up- (in other words, a big fat lie!)

If I out and out declared a parent’s ‘excuse’ as a lie or rubbish, I’d be having a lot of unhappy moments. Heck, that kind of thinking would get me into really big troule!

Parent’s excuses are usually far-fetched and totally unbelievable. Creative yes, believable, no. Then, there are those nasty teachers that we are supposed to believe no matter what. I think most of the teachers just don’t have the resources to deal with ADHD. One student I had last year took 25% of my time. Sad thing was, I had 2 other books for the students to work on.

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