ADHD Unmasking as a Teacher (Free Resource - Sensory Break Menu with Timer)

Perhaps the single thing that has positively impacted my teaching the most in recent years has been receiving my own ADHD diagnosis. I was seeking support with depression a few years ago during a period of significant stress. My husband, then 9 month old daughter, and I moved across the country in 2020 at the height of the pandemic. A couple years after that I was still adjusting to life as a newish parent, my students had more needs than ever as we returned to school after the disaster that was remote learning, and I was still very getting used to life in Boston. I was so lucky to work with a mental health professional who recognized my ADHD traits and suggested that I get a neuropsych evaluation, which eventually happened in the summer of 2023. The evaluation gave me language around my strengths and relative weaknesses, and it put me on a path to better understand myself.

For the past few years, I've heard the term masking quite a lot, but it hasn't resonated. My focus has been on figuring out medication and lifestyle as well as understanding and working through my challenges with time estimation, prioritization, and transitions. This week, though, I was talking in therapy about what I'm struggling with as a teacher with a lot to juggle, and also my reflections on supporting a class with a significant number of students who have an ADHD diagnosis. My therapist mentioned masking and how exhausting that must be, and for the first time the term and everything that goes with it clicked. In particular, I pour so much effort and energy into systems for organization and making sure things aren't falling through the cracks, especially at work. I also constantly feel "behind" and frequently push myself to a point of overstimulation. We talked a bit about my childhood and the impact of growing up gay and ADHD in the south in the 80s and 90s. Getting by meant that I had to tone down my effeminate qualities, figure out how to sit still and look like I was paying attention, and get my schoolwork done at basically any cost. 

As we talked, I started thinking about my own students' experience in my classroom and how it's different and better than what I experienced, for sure, but also about how my own conditioning around the necessity of masking is getting in the way of me providing accommodations. This is still an open question for me, and something I'm just beginning to explore, but I'm thinking about how I can give myself and my students access to what we need rather than reinforcing a compliance based culture of pushing through and making it happen. My intention is to have a classroom where we can all be at ease because we have our needs met, are interdependent, and feel free to be ourselves. I want to read and reflect more on this topic in this last third of the year and come into next school year with systems and routines in place that are supportive of a range of neurodiverse learners. I'm excited because we are wrapping up a Greek Mythology unit in the next few weeks, and our last unit of the year will focus on neurodiversity. We're reading The Wild Book by Margarita Engle, which focuses on dyslexia, and we also ordered a bunch of texts for book clubs that touch on ASD, ADHD, and other forms of neurodiversity.

As a starting point, I'm considering a couple of adjustments:

• I'm reluctantly thinking about a schedule change. It has been so good to be in a rhythm with the schedule, but math in the afternoon has been quite challenging. I've been reading When by Daniel Pink, and he discusses the importance of putting our most cognitively demanding tasks at the time of day when we have the most focus, which for most people is the morning. So, I'm considering shifting our core blocks to the morning and reserving our afternoon block from 1:10 - 1:50 for word study and independent reading. 
• I want to build in more breaks for myself and students and explicitly teach students how to take a sensory break. I bought an inexpensive MP3 player (and might get a couple more) that I plan to load with calm instrumental music for students who would benefit from that, and I also created a slide that has a break menu and an embedded timer. I think we can do this for 10 minutes mid-morning and for 5-10 minutes after independent reading and before enrichment in the afternoons.

We'll see how it goes! More than anything else, I'm happy to be anchored in this intention and eager to see how it might be supportive and where it goes from here.