Dear Teacher,
Sorry for the sparsity if my communication with you lately. I have wanted to write. I have wanted to communicate with you. I have needed to try to talk to you. But there has been so much going on.
How are you? How is the school year? How is everything going? Did you get a lot of snow?
Things have been crazy. Not that crazy is anything outside of normal for the life of a teacher. Actually, I guess I should say that things have been normal. For me only one thing has changed. Perspective. This one change has set my world into a temporary spin, though.
In December (I think), I finally came to terms with the fact that I have ADHD. I have not been officially diagnosed, but I now know it is the truth of my reality. I have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (a name for my thinking style that I find completely offensive, but more on that later).
I have been fighting accepting this for years. Everyone was far more sure of it than I was. I do not know why I fought it for so long. There is nothing to be ashamed of. However, I felt like it was accepting a lesser lot in life to accept that I have it.
This self-diagnosis has changed a lot for me. I was pretty sure that I was not “normal” before, but now I am quite sure of it. I do not think like most people. I struggle to stay focused on one thing at a time. I do not have a typical train of thought (it is more like a system of zip-lines). I am not like most people.
I have ADHD. I probably am not thinking what you are thinking. That is it. It is a reality. I have to deal with it. In some ways, so do you.
I am sharing this for two reasons. One is that I want explain about the absence of new posts to the blog. The second is that I want to explain why the topic of ADHD my pop up here from time to time.
Coming to grips with my ADHD has taken up a lot of my thinking “free space.” When I have time to blog, I really have not been able to focus on what I would like to write about. A part of ADHD is the ability to think about more than one thing rather deeply at once (which I see as a strength and not a deficit). I used to be good at that. It is one of the reasons that I was able to write so much here before. I could balance everything in my life and still have extra room in my brain to open one more “app” and be able to write something thoughtful here. Now that app-space is taken up by my analyzing how everything I do could be a part of the “disorder.” Sometimes I can not help what I think about. This is one of those times.
So, that explains that for you. 🙂
Now on to why I might mention ADHD from time to time. Accepting that I have it and analyzing why I do everything that I do has taught me A LOT about teaching. It has also taught me a lot about my students. I now have a special connection with some of my hardest case students because most of them share the diagnosis of ADHD with me. I have been able to understand them better. I have been able to see their strengths and weaknesses. I have been able to help them better work with themselves and start to control their thought life better.
There is something cool about that, though.
I have found that if it works for my ADHD students, it works for all of my students! It has been a really cool progression over the last couple of months. I really want to share some of what I have learned.
In closing, I want to ask you to be patient with me. Please don’t give up on the blog! I will be back. I will get back into the swing of things soon. Hopefully, as I come back from my ADHD journey I will bring back some helpful thoughts and ideas to help you be a better teacher.
I hope that all is going well for you! I hope that you have been able to recover from the missing school days if you have had a slew of them like me. I know that you are probably doing great. You know why? Because you are awesome! Please keep being awesome! I know you will because you are amazing! Keep on teaching, Teacher!
Love, Teacher
Dear Teacher/Love Teacher 
Dear Teacher,
Thank you for your honesty, and thank you for the courage you have in sharing your point of view. I say that I am ADD (self-diagnosis). My attention gets split & divided, which can be beneficial, but sometimes very frustrating. I do feel like I empathize with my students who also think in similar ways. See the positive.
I had been wondering about you and the absence of your posts! You are missed. Keep sharing, please. You are a super encourager! 🙂
I am 42 years old and have been teaching high school for 19 years, always running around, always working later than everyone else because I never seemed as organized as they were, and always changing gears. Then in October I was officially diagnosed as having ADD myself. Wow – no wonder my mind goes in a million directions and why I could never get all those essays graded in a timely way. I’m actually more conscious to stay on a task in my classroom before I jump to a new activity. Awareness has helped me be a more effective teacher.
Are you on medication?
Thank you for your honesty! I appreciate that your thoughts, whatever the topic, seem to mirror my own on certain days. I share your blog with my fellow teachers when I feel like what you have written will touch them in a positive, encouraging way.
You are appreciated, your words are appreciated, and I, for one, will patiently wait for your musings, whenever they happen to come.
Are you on medication?
I am not on medication. I am trying supplements right now. B complex, Ginko, and Fish Oil. It is helping some.
What a relief to find this during my online search. I’ve been teaching high school for 15 years, and have had a slew of temporary teaching assignments since then, in some tough school cultures and environments. I have a preliminary unofficial diagnosis of ADD, and I’m in the process of getting a thorough evaluation. I know I’ve struggled with some form of it for a long, long time. Cindy Jo, I am exactly the same way – always jumping around, never quite fully focusing on grading my essays. I will say, though, that having to deal with newer assignments, on top of dealing with constant student harassment from my latest assignments, hasn’t helped me stay focused, organized or sane.
I thought I might have been the only teacher who’s had to deal with this. So glad I am not alone anymore.