Dreamers...butterfly chasers...star gazers

Today was an interesting day. This evening our first "home-maker" items came (some curtains I had made were delivered!), and we had a GREAT dessert-fest with all the people that live close to us. BUT, my day was consumed with an ADHD All-Day Presentation.

Although it was long and (at times) boring, the information was of special interest to me. At my last job I had a boy who became very dear to my heart, who was diagnosed with ADHD. His quirky actions and the way his mind just raced ended up being really neat, so I would say I now have a soft spot for students with this diagnosis. There were some fun things I wanted to share from the workshop!

First: Funny Quotes/Sayings (these have nothing to do with the lecture content, I just thought they were funny!)
1. Go suck a toffee
2. They lose things like pencils and rubbers
3. They seem allergic to chairs
4. Hormonal dancing
5. He's a complex cocktail
6. Dreamer, butterfly chaser, star gazer
7. Made window gazing an art

Second: Favorite Things I Will Take Away
1. PQ = Playfulness Quotient. MUCH more important than IQ! Definitely a goal to have a high PQ as this school year begins. :)
2. "It is not that he did not have the focus...it's that we couldn't give him a worthy cause to focus on." This was written in an apology letter to Michael Phelps from one of his middle school teachers. He was apologizing for not recognizing and helping to focus his amazing focus back then...instead, he classified him as lazy and unmotivated. HA!

Third: Personal Reflections
There were three areas of impairment that a student diagnosed with ADHD has to have:
1. Attention
2. Hyperactivity
3. Impulsivity

After hearing the definitions of each term, I'm fairly certain that I don't have attention of hyperactivity impairments. However, I DEFINITELY have issues with impulsivity! Here are some actions identified in persons with an impulsivity impairment.

- Not good at waiting
- Wants things now
- 2 kinds of time: Now or Not Now
- Lots of excitement: not much "stick-to-itiveness"
- Respond first, think later
- Talk before you think
- Easily bored/frustrated
- Gravitates towards high risk behavior

I felt like EVERY one of those bullets describes me to a T. Hmm...wonder what that means?!

Fourth: Personality Reflections
They presented some studies on different "intelligences" (kind of like Gardner's multiple intelligent theories, but a little wider range), and I thought it was interesting! Each of the following areas should be numbered from 1-10, (1=skill is non-existent, 10=perfectly skilled). These things are to me...not really sure where I'd put myself!

1. Attention
2. Memory
3. Language
4. Spatial
5. Sequential
6. Motor
7. Higher-Thinking
8. Social-Thinking
9. Naturalist
10. Bodily Kinesthetic
11. Mathetmatical
12. Intrapersonal
13. Interpersonal
14. Musical
15. Verbal

Fifth: The Flawed System
Like most things in life, the educational system is flawed. The group got into a really interesting debate toward the end of the day when medication was brought up. We spent the ENTIRE day talking about how bright these students are, how they're "sparkling", and "brilliant", they'll be the Einsteins of the world, and how we shouldn't "pigeon-hole" them. THEN, they started talking about what medications were available to these students so that they could function more "normally." Itwas a very frustrating paradox.

The discussion basically outlined that, since we teach in a flawed system, it may be (unfortunately), necessary to put some students on medication. As a last result...and after everything else has been tried...but if they're to succeed in this world, they may just need to be medicated! It felt frustrating to come to that conclusion, and I think a good group of us left feeling very passionately about providing opportunities to students with attention disorders.

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FUN TIMES:
***At supper tonight I met 2 girls that will be in my 5th grade general music class. And, we had so much fun! They were excited to come to class, and I'm excited to teach them in class!

***As of today, I am the new Varsity Girls Cross-Country Coach! I'm SUPER excited about it, although I quickly realized that I'd better start doing some hard-core working out, if I'm going to be able to coach without feeling like a hypocrite. Hmmm....should be interesting!