Reach 111 Session #3 article

I chose to read the article about ADHD and ADD since I have two students who have been medically diagnosed recently with each of these. One comment that I found particularly interesting in the article,"A New Approach to Attention Deficit Disorder" is the following: " ADD is not a problem of willpower, however. It is a chronic impairment in the chemistry of the management system of the brain." As a teacher who has been in classrooms for many years, I have had students every year who are diagnosed with ADD and ADHD. Some are more severe cases than others and have tested by patience as a teacher. I have been caught up with that same thought that if you can do it behave or be on tast sometimes then why can't you do it all the time? This actually brings me back to a training that I had when I worked in San Jose Unified. We had one whole day's worth of training on ADHD and ADD and one of the issues raised was that teacher's get baffled and frustrated by the simple fact that we see on occasion students with ADD or ADHD perform tasks perfectly and then become confused when they fall back into their not being able to organize, prioritize, focus, sustain effort and manage their emotions. If you can do it once why can't you do it all the time? What is important here is to remember exactly what this quote says which is it is an impairment due to chemicals in the brain that are not being received or delivered to a specific area of the brain. The article stresses that medication for the treatment of ADD/ADHD will not cure it but can be looked at like a pair of glasses to correct the visually impaired individual. It will alleviate those symptoms for the hours of the day that the medication is active in the brain. Since the most recent students to have been diagnosed with ADHD and ADD this year, only one is one medication. She seems to be focusing a lot more and I have noticed a significant improvement in her attention in class. However, the other student's parent put him on medication for one day and decided that she did not like how it effected L, so she stopped giving him his medication. I can respect that decision although I do not understand it because I as a parent would want to try anything that would help my child to do her best and be successful. It seems that one day was not enough time to determine what effects the medication would clearly have on L, so this article is a good reminder that medication although one of the ways to help manage ADD/ADHD still the student needs accomodations. I completely agree that early identification of ADD/ADHD is so critical because if left untouched a student can "become demoralized by repeated experiences of frustration or failure." Finally, there are a lot of myths out there regarding ADD/ADHD, and it is important for me as a classroom teacher to be aware of them and educate myself on what it is exactly and the appropriate modifications that I can make in the classroom that will allow a student with ADD/ADHD to thrive at his or her best. What called my attention is that a person with ADD is six times more likely to have another psychiatric or learning disorder than most other people are. ADD usually overlaps wit other disorders. This particular disorder fascinates me, and I want to continue to learn about it and prepare for those students who come to my classroom with the disorder diagnosed already or those who still do not. Statistics say that 7.8% of children in the U.S. ages 4-17 are currently diagnosed with ADD or ADHD which translates into 2 students er class. That is definately a number that wakes me up!!!