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able to concentrate . But for students with ADHD , because those things are difficult , they need to get their dopamine however they can get it , because they crave it . And so that ’ s why we see attention seeking behaviours . They know that they can ’ t get dopamine from the teacher because the teacher ’ s not going to praise them because they ’ re naughty a lot of the time .
You recently published a book called ‘ Flicking the Switch ’. So what does it mean to flick the switch ? It took me a long time to come up with my book title . Essentially , in the context of students ADHD , it refers to the positive approach that teachers can use when they ’ re working with kids with the condition , which helps to shift their focus and attention and behaviour onto what it should be on . And it ’ s about teachers changing their approach from bringing a negative and punitive approach to being one of understanding and demonstrating empathy and catching them doing good things so that they can obtain their dopamine in positive ways .
So flicking that mindset that teachers have of these kids on their behaviour as well as flicking the switch on the teacher ’ s mindset from being punitive and negative to being positive and understanding .
What are some of the strategies teachers can use to better support and manage the behaviour of students with ADHD ? My book has 25 strategies , I ’ ve picked out a few of the best ones . My first strategies is to fake it until you make it . When I ’ ve interviewed teachers , they will say to me , I just don ’ t know what to do with these kids . And , and so they feel intimidated at the notion of , I ’ m going into a class and I know Johnny ’ s going to be a pain and he ’ s going to disrupt my class . They expect that to happen , and it does happen . So fake it until you make it is basically going out of your way to make sure that the student with ADHD thinks that they ’ re your favourite . So if you can fake it and pretend that , that he ’ s your favourite student in the first three minutes of a lesson that makes a huge difference .
Usually because they ’ re classically being thought of as , or think of themselves as being , I ’ m the one the teacher doesn ’ t like . So you ’ re flicking the switch on that . Another one is pretty obvious one . We know positive reinforcement works . Positive reinforcement works so well for students with ADHD , and they just need more of it than normal students because neurotypical students receive positive reinforcement all day every day because it ’ s easy for them to be at school . Students with ADHD need more positive reinforcement to counteract the fact that school ’ s hard , they find sitting in a classroom really difficult . So if we can give them a thumbs up , a smile , you know , high fives , praise them , talk to them like they ’ re our favourite student , that flicks a switch on their behaviour .
A lot of teachers , and I understand their reasoning for it , a lot of teachers don ’ t like students having headphones on or listen to music because they think that it ’ s a distraction , but it ’ s actually the reverse for students with ADHD . They ’ re able to focus more effectively if they ’ ve given permission to listen to music . Students with ADHD are able to concentrate better while they ’ re moving . In fact , I ’ ve had countless students say to me while I ’ m being forced to sit still and being told by my teacher , sit still , sit still , sit still , while they ’ re being forced to sit still , their brain is not able to concentrate on the lesson because their brain ’ s thinking about , “ I ’ ve got to sit stil ’”. In order for them to concentrate , they have to be moving . So there ’ s things like hand rollers , which is a type of fidget that they can have in their hand , which they roll and that satisfies their
need to move , but it doesn ’ t make a noise and it doesn ’ t distract other kids in the classroom .
What could schools do to better support teachers training and also students with ADHD ? I think there ’ s a real need for professional development so teachers can be taught these strategies and be supported in implementing these strategies , but they need to be conducted by experts in the field . So I think up until now when it ’ s been one of my biggest frustrations , most of the books in the literature written for teachers about kids with ADHD have been written by psychiatrists or doctors who are telling teachers how to deal with kids with ADHD in their classrooms . But these people who are making these presentations aren ’ t actually teachers . So they haven ’ t really got lived experience of what is reasonable to expect a teacher to do in a classroom . A psychiatrist or a psychologist doesn ’ t really have that lived teacher experience . And so a lot of the things that they suggest are unreasonable and would just increase the teacher ’ s workload . But we need schools to acknowledge that they need to train their teachers and then just do it , and really get some some professional development happening so that the staff don ’ t feel like they ’ ve got their hands tied and don ’ t know what to do with these kids because the strategies are not difficult . They ’ re actually quite easy . ■
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