Josée from our East Anglia office shares her personal experience with ADHD in recognition of ADHD Awareness Month.
October is ADHD Awareness month, and at the moment, I am very aware of it – as I was diagnosed with Inattentive ADHD in mid-September.
When people think of ADHD, especially in education, quite often it’s the pupils who struggle to sit still, seem to be always “on the go” and are often dysregulated and distracted that they think of. For some, that’s very much the way it presents. It wasn’t, for me.
In my case, I was a stereotypically “good” pupil, very focussed on my schoolwork in class (though homework was an absolute non-starter), and hard-working (but very forgetful, and a recognised “chatterbox”)! I loved primary school, with my single detention being for forgetting a cereal box to do an art project with, and I enjoyed secondary school, though found that I really struggled to engage in Geography and PE lessons (amongst others). My first piece of English coursework was 3 weeks late and 8 pages too long – I’d analyzed every line in the first half of the first scene of Macbeth. I probably should have realised that I was a little bit “different” to my classmates at that point, looking back!
I grew up in a neurodivergent household, with my younger brother having diplegic cerebral palsy and he had been diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome (later considered to have been PDD-PDA (Pervasive Developmental Disorder – Pathological Demand Avoidance) but he had been diagnosed before it’s recognition) and ADHD at a very young age. Because of this, neurodivergence was always my ‘normal’; I did my undergraduate degree in Special Educational Needs and have always had a particular affinity for working with those with Social, Emotional and Mental Health challenges.
When I undertook my teacher training and entered primary teaching, my (then undiagnosed) ADHD was both a blessing and a challenge. I had a huge amount of craft and creative skills that I could draw on to create engaging cross-curricular lessons; mummifying tomatoes for our Ancient Egyptian unit, and creating a “Dragon Trail” for our pupils to explore and then do a unit of work on chronological report writing was fantastic. My hyperfocus on the topic, and the plans to make it run perfectly, meant I could work a full day at school and follow it up with working on activities and lesson plans until well into the early hours of the following morning, without feeling too run down. It also meant that when the hyperfocus ended, I was entirely exhausted, and really struggled to manage both my physical and mental health to recover. I was reliant on to-do lists on post-it notes and writing down anything I might forget (which parent I needed to speak to, which homework was due in etc.) and I found that visual timetables were not just beneficial for the pupils, but for me!
I went into supply teaching and found that it worked well for me. I wasn’t working in a deadline-blitz state of focus (which got me through most of my University and PGCE life, but is impossible to maintain long-term) to ensure my lesson plans were where they needed to be, and that marking was up-to date every evening. It meant I could focus on the lessons I was teaching, giving the pupils my full attention. I loved working with pupils with additional needs, and some of my proudest moments (in both supply and direct work through schools) have been in working with those pupils who found mainstream school really hard.
In the office, working with schools, teachers and teaching assistants, as well as with my colleagues in the East Anglia team here in Norwich, my ADHD has again shown two sides of an interesting coin. I love education, so my brain revels in the conversations I get to have with our teachers and our schools, but I have to be careful that I don’t end up getting so caught up in those interesting conversations that the rest of my duties slip away from me. To-do lists are also a massive boon – I have one for every day – and if things don’t get added to it when needed, I know there’s a risk it won’t get done! Compared to some of my colleagues, my desk is busy. Piles of paper; notes and lists and calendars, all ready at hand if needed. I have a mini-whiteboard (you can take the teacher out of the classroom…!) with tips and reminders of things that have tripped me up in the past, and I have a folder of useful documents for anything that comes through that I might need. My internal, mental organisation is haphazard at best, so my external organisation has to be top-tier.
Even now, I’m still a chatterbox – I do get distracted by conversation and the odd random weather event (and I still laugh at myself for being that pupil commenting “it’s snowing!” every now and again). I want to help, and sometimes it can be hard to suppress that and continue to focus on the thing I am doing when someone asks for support. Jamie (my manager) is good at giving me a gentle nudge every now and again to reroute me back on track, and the team have accepted that (like everyone) I have my idiosyncrasies, and they roll with them. I feel safe and comfortable as part of the team which makes everything so much easier.
My journey with my ADHD is just beginning; it will take time to process the impact it has unknowingly had on my life so far, and to develop a more empathetic response to some of the challenges I faced, now knowing what I do. Having the diagnosis confirmed was both intimidating and freeing, and it’s been nice to have friends and colleagues feel able to turn to me about my experience on that assessment journey, and to know that I might be of help.
To find out more about ADHD Awareness Month please click this button below:
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