The ideal school/education for the ADDers

[Véronique St-Martin]

Hello everyone !

I dont know if you're like me but I always had difficulties to maintain my attention at school. I didn't find any interest in the majority of the subjects teached and I understood long before the other students did (I dont want to pride me on !) and I could foresee what the teacher was about saying... Consequently, I often lost interest in my courses and I couldn't answer to the questions of the teacher, because when he was talking, I was elsewhere but in the class. I succeed my courses because I wanted to succeed and because I read my school manuals, in the evening, after the classes.

Now I sense I didn't keep nothing or so few thing of what I was supposed to learn... But I noticed that when I'm really interested in some subjects, I can maintain my attention for long time and keep a lot of things...

So, as I think that many ADDers are like me, I'd like to ask you a question :

What could look like the ideal school or the ideal education system for the ADDers ? What could be his structure ? His working ? His subjects ?

If you have some idea, please share it with all of us. It could be so interesting and helpful !

[jo elleman]

Tia, I am glad you brought up the connection of ADD/HD with giftedness. I beleive there is a fine line between the two. If you search up giftedness, you will find that they have so many things in common that I have wondered for some time that perhaps the two are synonomous (sp?). Last year I printed out the criteria for giftedness and took it in to show one of the behavior specialists at my children's school to make them aware of the possibility that my children exhibit the intensity and other traits of gifte children.

[Véronique St-Martin]

Yeah, I always thought that there was a connection between ADHD and giftedness, that the two had a lot of similar points... It's not really surprising because we just have to think about Albert Einstein and Leonard Da Vinci, who are renowned for having ADHD and who are, according to me, absolutely genius !

[Véronique St-Martin]

Anybody else has an idea ?

[hope4josh]

Boy, this is a great question. Although I don't think I can truly answer it for all ADDers, I can tell you about our story.

My son is 13 years old with ADHD and anxiety. He went to a small private christian school all his life until 7th grade. Although this was a great placement for him in his younger elementary years (only 16 kids in the classroom and teachers that were very accommadating), once he reached 4th and 5th grade they expected more of him and he couldn't deliver. School became a nightmare for him, with a much bigger work load and behavior expectations that he wasn't able to conform to. By 6th grade I had a defeated, low-self esteem, depressed little boy. That's when I knew things had to change.

I've been homeschooling my son for a year and half now, and for him it has been a Godsend. Although I don't feel I'm the best teacher in the world, he is now able to learn on his own terms. He can take all the time in the world to understand a subject, work on a paper, and pick his own interests. He still has to do "the basics", which he hates, but when he finds a subject he loves, we throw all the "boring stuff" into that interest and he learns. Somedays he's in his PJ's till 3:00 pm, and I don't care. When I see him under a throw blanket reading away for hours, my heart jumps. Before I brought him home, you'd never catch him reading a book. He has found out that he loves Greek Mythology (who would have known?), is studying WWII in great depth, and has read more books in a year and a half than he read in his whole "school" career.

So for us, homeschooling has been the best choice. I don't know how long we'll continue (high school is next year...eek), but we take it one day at a time. :)

[Mel Taylor]

Okay I tried to read through this entire discussion before responding, as is the polite thing to do, but had a sudden attack of tl;dr (it's been a long day!) so I will just add my two cents.

My current instructors at college are pretty good usually at keeping things interesting. They don't lectuare a whole lot, and use a lot of small group discussion in their classes.

I have found the most success in classes with few assignments and/or flexible deadlines for assignments, the dreaded groupwork (my ethical drive to not let my groupmates down means that I will have my part done by hook or by crook, even if it means pulling an all-nighter the night before the project is due), and classes in which I have a classmate who needs me to explain everything.

I tried doing school by correspondance for a year and a half in high school (half of grade 8, all of grade 9) thinking that I would get ahead if I could be allowed to work at my own pace instead of being "held back" by a classful of people who needed things explained multiple times and still couldn't understand. Much to the contrary, I lost a lot of time there, as I had serious problems with starting, continuing, and finishing tasks (surprise) and with self-monitoring (also surprise!). I need to be in a formal setting in order to successfully be a student. Self-directed and distance learning are really not for me.