Huh? Okay! Wait. What? ADHD, Covid, and the Nightmare of 24/7 Teaching
How is it so bright outside already? What time is it? Only 700AM? How long have I been zoning out in front of my laptop? God, it’s so dirty. I bet every smudge contains billions of weird particles and flecks of skin. I’ll clean it later. I got school work to do. Jeez it’s bright. I forget how freakishly early the sun sets and rises in the summer. Ooo! There’s a cardinal perched on my fence staring at me through the window. That really is a great state bird. HOLD ON. What’s that squirrel doing? IS IT DIGGING A HOLE IN MY BACK YARD? Those holes are massive and my baby could accidentally put their foot in one and twist it! Hold on let me go scare him off. Hmm. You know, now that I’m out here, the lawn really could use a fresh mowing. I know I did it last week, but the grass grows so fast in the spring. And the last time I mowed the lawn I stepped in dog shit. Okay, let me go get my winter boots; those things are old and gross and already covered in like five years worth of accidentally stepping in stuff. I should probably go to the bathroom first and get my headphones too. Do I want to listen to something old or new? OH! Trivium just released their new album! LET’S GO! I think my AirPods are out of juice which means I need the wired ones. Where were they again?
According to the internet, human beings are distracted by something on average every 12–40 seconds. After the distraction, it can take another sixty seconds for the brain to refocus on what it was doing. For someone with ADHD like me, you gotta move that decimal point one position to the left. A distracting impulse threatens to derail my train of thought every 1–4 seconds. At least. It blows. My brain is neurodivergent. While I’ve developed some coping mechanisms (near comical amounts of To Do lists and routine redundancy), I spend most of my day trying to figure out what I’m supposed to be doing.
What I do, when I do it, the jobs I’ve been able to succeed in, the relationships I’ve had, the very way I perceive the world, it’s all influenced by my lack of focus, a non-existent memory, and a level of hyperactivity rarely seen outside of someone who isn’t a toddler. Thank goodness my spouse is absurdly organized and detail oriented, otherwise I’m not sure how I would have made it this far.
WAIT! I’m doing it again. FOCUS. Stay on task!
Okay, so the Coronavirus quarantine has been brutal on my ADHD. One of the biggest struggles has been work. Everything takes AT LEAST twice as long to complete. Fortunately the school district in which I work has pretty realistic requirements for what teachers are supposed to be doing during the shutdown. Thank god because there’s no way I could manage any sort of meaningful virtual teaching from home.
If I were at school, things would be different. One of the many things I love about my job as a teacher is the obscene amount of rules and procedures and systems that envelop the average public school experience.
For example, I get to work at 600AM, but the electronic locks at my school don’t open for teachers until 630AM. So from 6–630 I sit in the attached community center and fine-tune the day’s lesson. When the doors open at 630AM, I hustle up to my room and make sure it’s ready for the day: supplies are out, copies have been made, desks are organized in groups, the agenda has been written on the walls along with any anchor charts, etc. Before I know it, students are pounding at my door and it’s time to GO!
My work day is segmented into 42 minute chunks. Each chunk has a purpose (at least one) and everything follows from this purpose and leads into the next. I gotta hustle to keep up with the breakneck pace of the day, and I love it. For someone with ADHD, these chunks help me stay focused. They keep my eyes trained on what matters and propel my brain into whatever task is next.
It’s like a bowling alley with the world’s most restrictive gutter ball bumpers. And if this quarantine has shown me anything about myself, it’s just how much I need these bumpers. Without this sort of over-scheduling and sign-posting, I struggle to complete all of the random junk I’m supposed to be doing.
Schoolwork that would normally take me thirty minutes now yawns, stretches its legs, checks a few social media tabs, refreshes the news for the umpteenth time, pops some gum, and dares me to complete it in less than four hours.
ADHD doesn’t only affect your thoughts, it also yanks at your emotions. And since we know cognition and emotionality go hand in hand in the brain, it makes sense that distress in one can lead to disarray in the other. My anxiety has spent the majority of this shutdown caroming between OHSHITWAITWHATFUCK and the dog from the popular “This is fine” meme. As a result, getting my diverse and shifting responsibilities done in a timely manner has been incredibly challenging.
The structures and systems OF school are essential to DOING school. Every piece of the system is interrelated and contingent upon the other pieces. There’s never enough time to do all of the absurd demands placed on teachers, but there are so many redundancies and paths and resources of all kinds that I’m able to somehow make it work. So when I leave for the day and get home, that’s it. I’m done. (The weekend is another story. I suspect I’ll be lesson planning on the weekends for as long as I’m a classroom teacher)
Except now work has metastasized. It has replicated itself and mutated into new pernicious forms that care not for the rhythms of work and life I have been able to jerry-rig through years of trial and error.
Everything is confusing. The various components comprising my day to day existence are all messed up and out of order. This leads to a brain bending situation where I’m constantly unsure about what I should be doing, when I should be doing it, and on what platform it needs to be done.
If the structure of school changes, so must the demands placed on teachers.
So. Do I answer this parent’s email about a question if I’m not exactly sure what the answer is? Or do I send it to someone who I think knows the answer? But I’ve already sent a few parents that person’s way this week, so I need to think of a different answer. Hey, this song cranks! I’m hungry. It’s too early for lunch but too late for a big snack. On the other hand, I did go for a run this morning. My shin splints are getting to be prohibitively painful. Maybe I could find some YouTube videos on shin splint treatment. Maybe I should get some insole supports for my shoes. Hey! That squirrel is back! Also the recycling is getting pretty full, maybe I should take it out. That way I could hector the squirrel when I walk through the back yard to the recycling bin. What did the county’s email say about recycling collection? Hey! Where are my shoes, again?
