Students with neurodiverse conditions like ADHD and autism can struggle in the classroom. These challenges can manifest as behavioral problems, in academic performance, and a failure of basic time management. Addressing their needs and creating the necessary accommodations can improve their educational outcomes, but many teachers often need additional supplemental training to understand how best to work with and support students with neurodiversity.
Institutions, schools, and individual teachers can support students with ADHD by deploying some basic tools, but understanding the underlying challenges is an important first step. Neurodivergence often affects executive functions – these are fundamental skills like planning, organization, scheduling, and meeting deadlines. The good news is executive function skills are learned behaviors. Many neurotypical students begin developing these abilities on their own – but children with ADHD or autism often struggle without assistance.
Executive function is a term describing multiple processes employed to problem solve and respond to the world around us, including how we interact with other people, control emotions, and start and complete basic tasks. Executive functions are our brain’s CEO.
One of the biggest challenges for people with underdeveloped executive function skills is in planning or organizing. They struggle to start tasks, not because they do not want to complete the task, but simply because they lack the ability to structure the problem into solvable solutions. These students sometimes even lack the ability to concentrate on a single task long enough to properly plan out their work.
The difficulty in planning impacts everything. It's impossible to meet deadlines if you can't plan a time to do the work. Missing deadlines can end up snowballing too, by creating a short-term crisis and anxiety when they attempt to complete a task like handing in a homework assignment. The same time management crisis can even distract from future planning. Because neurodiverse students also have difficulty focusing on details, these students easily end up missing key elements of assignments.
Multitasking is another executive function skill. Students with neurodiverse conditions struggle with juggling more than one task at a time and will have the best results when they can focus their attention. Through support and coaching, students learn techniques to assist in prioritizing objectives and grouping tasks together. These are skills that can be taught and practiced.
Finally, many students with neurodiverse conditions tend to have big emotions and often struggle to manage them. Difficulties in regulating emotions, can lead to outbursts as they struggle to deal with those feelings that build up and eventually overflow. These students can ultimately manage many of these symptoms by manipulating their environment and identifying emotional triggers.
Time management is a significant problem in the classroom setting and outside of school. Deadlines for homework assignments and turning in material are a significant component of classroom performance, and it is often one that students with ADHD or autism struggle the most with.
Anxiety is often a side effect of neurodiversity that can often lead students to feel the need to achieve perfection – and ultimately this leads them to avoid a task altogether out of fear of failure. This procrastination can be treated by teaching students how to identify their barriers and set their own reasonable goals.
Teachers may not recognize how students with neurodiverse conditions struggle to plan their time and use the time given wisely, and how simple accommodating those students can be. Sometimes all students need is additional help creating deadlines and breaking down assignments into easily digestible components.
Meet Joey, a friendly, active high school freshman who was diagnosed with ADHD about a year earlier. Joey plays soccer, enjoys art class, and despite showing aptitude for higher-level classes, struggles to keep up his grades. To his teachers, Joey seems like most other kids in his class, although he often forgets to hand in assignments on time and is known to often misplace things like his backpack. He has a reputation for procrastinating on assignments, and some of his teachers think he's lazy or too caught up in soccer.
It's true that Joey often forgets things. Just the other day, he almost forgot to bring his soccer uniform to school. He remembered it at the last minute, but in the process of grabbing it, left behind his backpack with his math homework.
Later that afternoon in English class, his teacher is discussing symbolism in The Great Gatsby– but Joey was thinking about other things like the upcoming soccer match, the video games he played that morning, and the eBay auction he was bidding on. Then the teacher calls on him asking what he thinks is the meaning of the green light at the end of Daisy Buchanan's dock. Joey responded, "present," and the classroom erupted in laughter because he was obviously not paying attention to the lesson. Joey is extremely embarrassed and upset with himself.
At the soccer game that afternoon, the defender on the other team keeps shoving Joey. After a particularly close chance of scoring, Joey ends up yelling at the referee who hasn't called a foul–and Joey earns himself a red card and is kicked out of the game. Joey was clearly upset and fought back tears while sitting on the bench for the rest of the game.
Later that night, after eating dinner and watching some television, Joey sits down to work on his history paper. He spends the first half hour of the evening researching whales and dolphins for a science report – but the science report isn't due for another week. The history paper that is due tomorrow seems like a lot of work. He decides he needs a snack before starting such a large project. In the kitchen, he talks with his mom, takes the dog for a walk, and helps his sister solve a coding problem she was struggling with. He forgets about the history paper he's supposed to do until just before he's ready for bed. He decides to finish it in the cafeteria before school starts in the morning.
When Joey finally heads to bed, he keeps thinking about how his soccer team might have won if he hadn't yelled at the referee and was kicked out of the game. The anxiety keeps him up much of the night, and he sleeps late, missing his chance to finish the history paper in the morning.
Joey is showing classic symptoms of executive function disorder. He struggles to organize his life, like when he forgets his math homework. He can't stay focused, like when his English teacher is talking about the symbolism in the novel. His emotions are difficult to regulate, like when he yells at the referee. When he distracts himself with other activities instead of starting the history paper, he's struggling to stay on task. He has a negative view of himself and has very low self-esteem. Finally, anxiety keeps him up at night. These are all symptoms of trouble with executive function, a common side effect of ADHD, autism, and other spectrum disorders.
Luckily for Joey, his parents recognized the issues he was having. Now he works once a week with a tutor specializing in ADHD and executive function. Joey, his parents, and his tutor are working with his teachers to develop a plan to ensure the educators can fully support him and his needs.
With the help of a professional, Joey and his family feel much better about the plan forward. More importantly, his teachers are also learning new ways of supporting him like making clear schedules and providing specific instructions for completing tasks. When they provide assignments to Joey, they offer step-by-step directions and clearly lay out expectations.
One trick that has helped Joey complete his assignments is encouraging him to use text-to-speech software, so he can speak his answers out loud instead of trying to type them out. This method allows his thoughts to flow naturally, and be recorded as quickly as he has them.
Joey's school performance improved quickly thanks to some of the techniques introduced by his tutor, and helpful support from his teachers. In English class, he has a big semester report due, and one of the ways his teacher helped him prepare for success was by breaking the larger project down into smaller assignments along the way. Instead of burdening Joey with a single, large monolithic task, he was able to fulfill many smaller ones.
Not all students will have parents with the resources to hire private tutors, and in many cases, executive function disorders may not be visible. That's why it's so important for teachers to have the professional training to recognize problems before they become a crisis. Without augmented training, many teachers simply don't have the resources to identify students with special needs, and they often lack the training to help them.
Things to look out for
Students with these symptoms often need just a little bit of accommodation to help them succeed. The toolkit to build on that success is not necessarily taught without additional supplemental training, but that's why continuing education is an important part of teaching.
Training sessions from Abramo Advising are available as half-day, full-day, or in multi-week cycles, and can be offered in-person, online, or a hybrid of both. Find out more or request a proposal today.