EDUCATION; Teaching in the ADHD Era; Variety of Learning Disorders Makes Instruction More Complex

By Lane Lambert; LANE LAMBERT

The Patriot Ledger

WEYMOUTH On the third day back from February vacation, Kate McCue-Day is all business with her sixth-grade social studies class at Chapman Middle School.

Animated and personable, she packs a lot into the 50-minute period, from plans for an upcoming research project to a question- and-answer discussion of the climate, culture and topography of the Middle East and southeast Asia – pausing at a mention of low-lying Thailand’s raised houses to note, “You see that when you go to Marshfield and Scituate.”

As she talks, one of the 19 youngsters repeatedly stands beside his seat, leans onto his desk top, and flips through his textbook before he sits down again. His classmates seem to barely notice. Across the room, another student silently leaves midway through the class and returns 20 minutes later, from a counseling session.

For McCue-Day, as for most other public school teachers, making a place for kids like those – and others with a variety of learning disorders – is a big part of what the 21st-century classroom is all about.

“He’s a good student,” she said of the restless boy. “He’s doing his work. He just can’t keep still … and you deal with it.”

These days, dealing with such behaviors is a fact of life for every teacher.

A decade after the Legislature adopted comprehensive education reforms and six years after lawmakers revised the state’s disability standards, the classrooms in which McCue and her fellow instructors work have become ever-more complex places for teaching and learning.

At any grade level, 10 to 20 percent of students may be diagnosed with anything from the now-familiar ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) and the autism-related Asperger’s Syndrome to a range of less-known emotional, time-management and learning conditions.

Statewide, an increasing number appear to be taking Ritalin and anti-depressant prescription drugs.

“You pick up on it”

Teachers are well aware of the moods and conditions their students carry into their classes, and they take it all in stride, as they try to meet the state-ordered goal of including everyone in the pursuit of achievement.

“It’s a constant adjustment,” Weymouth High art teacher Michael Cuoco said.

Cuoco and a dozen local teachers recently shared their tales of school in the ADHD era as they gathered for a weekly professional development course at Brockton High.

The course, taught by teacher-consultant Francis Garcea of Brockton, aims to provide educators with strategies to juggle the spectrum of student behaviors along with daily lessons.

Garcea’s group included younger teachers and, along with veteran instructors from Weymouth and Hanover to Bridgewater and Easton, they’ve seen almost everything that can happen in a suburban classroom.

Fights are rare, but a few teachers have been cursed at to their face. Most weeks, a larger number contend with students who refuse to do their assignments. A handful of students must be coaxed into participation from the withdrawn, autism-like symptoms of Asperger’s Syndrome, while others seem sunk in silence – perhaps, teachers say, because they’ve witnessed or suffered anger or abuse at home.

“You pick up on it,” Cuoco said, “even if you don’t know exactly what condition a student has.”

State education officials and specialists say the accounts of these teachers are typical for the 386 public-school districts and 976,000 students across the state.

Statewide, 16 percent of all students have some disability or condition that qualifies them for an individual education plan, according to the Department of Education.

The department has no estimate on the number of students now on prescription medication. Most teachers aren’t sure, either, though longtime Chapman Middle School physical education teacher Chris Dion said the use of approved “meds” is on the rise, based on her contact with the school nurse.

“Do it four ways”

For University of Massachusetts-Boston special education professor MaryAnn Byrnes, comments like Cuoco’s are evidence that teachers are getting increasingly skilled at managing and engaging their diverse classes – in part because they’ve had to.

“School is not the same as it was 25 years ago,” Byrnes said.

Byrnes and state special education director Marcia Mittnacht said this demand for more flexibility from teachers is the product of a series of state-imposed education reforms that gathered force in the late 1990s.

As part of those reforms, old-style “special needs” were redefined as disabilities and disorders. Along with students with more obvious, physical problems, added attention was now also given to others – capable kids with reading difficulties, who once might have been labeled “slow learners,” and those with conditions like Asperger’s, who once would have been sent to separate “special ed” classes.

In Kate McCue-Day’s class, for example, most of her half-dozen students with individual education plans have reading and comprehension difficulties with English and math. Those students go to special-ed classes for those subjects and return to McCue’s sections for social studies.

In past generations, “a lot of those students would have just dropped out of school” as teenagers, Byrnes said. Those now diagnosed with ADHD would have been told to sit down and pay attention.

But that was then. While school systems still run separate classes for some special-ed students, general classroom teachers now get more of those students – and they must figure out how to match everyone to their best learning style.

“You do it four ways,” as Chapman Middle School pysical education teacher Chris Dion put it.

Some schools are trying multiple ways to fit students into the best classroom, too. At Hanover High, English teacher Chris Fay said one of her teenagers is now in his third different section.

“It’s like a badge of honor for him,” she said.

Fellow Hanover High English teacher John Hopkins isn’t sure things are so very different than when he was in high school in the 1970s.

“Kids are kids,” he said. “There were defiant kids when I started teaching, and there are defiant kids now. … They try your patience, but if they know you like them, they will respond to that.”

Lane Lambert may be reached at llambert@ledger.com.