Attention deficit disorder is always a hot topic among educators. The science behind what is appropriate in helping students with this label is constantly changing. Updates to medications, diagnosis, heredity seem to change everyday including the recent DSM update which only uses the ADHD label even if a child does not present with hyperactivity. How are parents and educators best able to support and help these children when changes occur so rapidly?

CHADD, the national resource on ADHD may be a place many parents turn to.

http://www.chadd.org/Understanding-ADHD/About-ADHD.aspx

Yet, many articles exist reporting that medicating children is a terrible idea.

http://ideas.ted.com/the-neuroscience-of-adhd/

What can science tell us about ADHD? Most scientific studies to date have focused on diagnosis and treatment. It is just more recently that researchers have begun to look at the biological causes of the the disorder. 

http://www.nimh.nih.gov/news/science-news/2016/distractible-mice-offer-clues-to-attention-deficit.shtml

Perhaps future studies will enlighten us with more information about ADHD. I have learned more about living with ADHD from the following TEDx talks:

I love the categorization of voluntary attention and involuntary attention! What a great way for educators to think about the attention of students! Salit Mahamane even tells us that voluntary attention runs out. Any smell, sight or sound can distract a student from what they had been focusing on. Isn't that what every teacher should be aware of?

Stephen Tonti suggests that instead of labeling students with a "disorder," we chould consider them cognitively different. Not bad, just different. These two speakers, who live the lives of those with ADHD, spoke more to me about classroom implications than all the articles I could find on attention issues.

As more scientific studies are completed and learning in schools takes a new turn, I wonder if the negative implications of ADHD will continue to exist. Salit's list of postive aspects of ADHD, brainstorming abilities, navigating outside the comfort zone, resilence, being able to adapt and passion, seem to be just the quailities that would make a successful learner in the self-directed, twenty first century