What Made Me Become a Trainer? The Influence of a Single Teacher on an ADHD child

What made you become a trainer?

At the time of being asked, I had no idea how to respond. Since the start of my apprenticeship, I came to realise I enjoyed helping those around me, and later as a qualified technician, I loved watching the apprentices I worked with develop their skills and become more independent with time. While these may be valid reasons for choosing my role, they feel a little empty, like something more was yet to make me go "ah, that's why!" Until I found my school report from year 5, all the way back in 2008.

It's a strange notion that a short school report from sixteen years ago can not only make my motivations for my work clear, but make me feel so angry and sad at the same time, make me mourn what I could have been or could have achieved while growing up, a feeling that many with ADHD have when looking back at our pasts. To add a little context, my father had just moved abroad to work full time, my brother was also having problems in school, and my mother was effectively a single parent trying to raise five children, four of which are neurodivergent. Life was stressful and chaotic, both of which reacted negatively with my ten year old raging ADHD and as a result, my school life took a turn for the worse. I was normally an extroverted happy-go-lucky type child who enjoyed learning and interacting with others, represented in the opening paragraphs of the report.

Initially, I had a good chuckle at the comments; "teaching Madeleine has been a real challenge this year" was reiterated in every report in a variety of ways. I was a challenge, constantly daydreaming, a racing mind hungry for knowledge that couldn't stand going at the same pace as everyone around me, while simultaneously underperforming in subjects that I considered uninteresting. But that chuckle nearly ended in tears as I continued, seeing my teacher write "she will complete tasks to a poor standard and do exactly as she wishes" while the following paragraph did little to help, the teacher telling myself and my mother that I was "mean" and would "deliberately wind up other members of the class," that unless I displayed a "kinder side, I [would] alienate [myself] more than I already [had]."

Imagine being a grown adult, a person to whom a class full of young impressionable children look up to, and telling one of those students that they're a problematic individual and the sole reason they have no friends. Reading my self-reflection from that year showed that those comments had an impact on the way I thought about myself, my confused brain concluding that I was indeed a bad person with the small hope that I could improve my attitude and behaviour the following year. This was a far cry from the previous year's impeccable report where I celebrated being in the "golden circle" (the best possible tier on a behaviour tracker on the wall), while my only worries for the next year were "the work might be too hard." I didn’t know or understand at the time that I had a condition that effected the fundamental workings of my brain, and the idea now of someone simply telling me to work harder or do better is laughable without any expansion on the topic. Had one teacher in that year listened to my mother’s situation report, or even asked the simple question, what’s wrong? They might have been able to work with me and my parents to develop strategies to improve my disruptive behaviour rather than giving up and stating "it will be up to her."

Ironically, thinking about how this teacher represented themselves in their comments makes me realise that this is likely similar to how they conducted themselves in class towards students like myself, which potentially factored into the bullying I faced in school due to their position as a role model. Reading through this report however, I get a glimpse through a window to my thought process all those years ago, and how I craved positive reinforcement and my peers to accept me as one of them, my masking skills obviously not working well enough. To those who don’t know, masking is a well-known trait for ADHD individuals, particularly those who were assigned female at birth, where we change our behaviours based on the people we’re with to fit in and seem ‘normal’. This is a mentally exhausting process characterised by examining those around us and how they interact with one another. Due to this trait, there is no simple way of teaching a child like myself how to interact as chances are, they’ve already figured it out. The assessment made by this teacher only scratched the surface and was damaging to someone simply trying their best to cope with difficult circumstances while also feeling like an outcast in school.

Now while I agree that constructive criticism has a place in school reports, abhorrent blaming of a child does not. I never realised how large of an effect these comments had on me until I read my own words, words that lay the foundation for myself in secondary school, believing I was a bad person which led me to push my peers away while resenting the idea of being there. Despite this, I’m thankful for the teachers I had as a teenager, many of whom could see my potential and attempted to push me in the face of my reluctance. I’m also sorry to those who had me for the subjects I enjoyed least as I would often find ways to distract myself which led to the disruption of the whole class, something we’re taught in our Level 4 teaching qualification to manage to enable effective teaching and learning. I never did live up to my academic potential, later choosing to work to my strengths in practical subjects and a career in vehicle maintenance and repair over A level maths and physics. But looking back now, I suppose that road led to where I am now and my ability to reflect on the impact teachers can have on their students.

As of now, school is thankfully a buried memory or an experience I wish to never repeat and I’ve managed to use parts of my ADHD to progress in my qualifications and career. In spite of this, some damage still remains; I’m constantly worried about people’s opinions of myself, choosing to work alone where I can, while becoming over-critical of my actions and the work I put out. I’ve grown up with a strong sense of fairness and justice and will use logic to assess situations to see how they could be improved while also using this method to self-reflect and improve on my practices. Since starting my current role, I've managed to achieve all of the guiding principles of the company including being kind, and put energy into other areas such as equality and diversity, something that I feel strongly about as a neurodivergent person. I've also reignited my passion for academic subjects by repeating my maths A level with the help of weekly tutoring sessions, hoping to later complete an automotive engineering degree which would merge my experience and love of practical work with academia.

So why did I choose my current career? It seems clear to me now that I want to give students the best experience possible, to not personally blame them for negative behaviour and to work through it like the positive role models I had in secondary school. I’m motivated by the idea of creating an inclusive space that allows individuals to learn in ways effective for them, and to push those who want to be pushed and to encourage them to be the best they can in their role. I appreciate these things are more easily attainable when working with smaller groups of adults rather than a large class of children or teenagers, but I believe that as a role model myself, I can have a similar impact on the individuals I see, and I want that impact to be the opposite of what I experienced early on.

If anybody has gotten to this point, I commend you for reading through my ramblings about something that I can barely remember and appreciate the time you’ve taken to do so. In addition to this, if you looked at the cover image and read through the whole of my reflection, I apologise for the comments made about RE and can confirm that I, now 26, love researching different religions and cultures, especially when paired with my strong interest in history, two subjects that are closely intertwined.

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