ADHD
ADHD (Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder) is a form of neurodivergence that affects attention regulation, impulse control, and executive functioning. In school settings, students with ADHD are often misunderstood—not because they lack focus, but because their focus is dynamic, interest-based, and difficult to direct on command.
Common challenges include difficulty with sustained attention, time management, transitions, organization, and emotional regulation. But these behaviours are not signs of laziness or disrespect—they’re signs that the classroom environment is not built to accommodate different cognitive styles.
Students with ADHD may need to move, speak out of turn, or fidget to stay engaged. They may hyperfocus on one topic and struggle with others. They often have a strong sense of justice, high sensitivity to rejection, and a need for novelty, autonomy, and flexible support.
This tag gathers resources, reflections, and strategies related to ADHD in school—especially where punitive responses like exclusion, token economies, or discipline plans fail to account for underlying needs. We believe ADHD is not a problem to fix, but a difference to understand—and that the classroom must change before the child is asked to.
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Disgusted with myself: how school advocacy erodes self-compassion
Some days I feel my own face harden, the jaw locking and the air leaving my lungs in a clipped exhale, the eyes narrowing into a refusal that feels like muscle memory. It is the same recoil I have seen across the meeting table, the same signal that too much has been brought into the…
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The unseen wounds of advocacy: caregiver burnout, moral injury, and embodied grief
Caregiver burnout in BC schools reflects moral injury and systemic betrayal, as mothers fight exclusion and harm while advocating for disabled children.
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She called the police and the principal told them not to come
They used to be friends—Jeannie and Adam, two children who grew up side by side, navigating the same schoolyards, chaotic birthday parties, playdates, and a sense that their differences were both misunderstood. They went to the reptile show together and settled into the rhythm of primary school routines, and the kind of familiarity shared by…
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The cost of being careful: how punishment rewires the brain for fear, not learning
There are classrooms where children learn to think, and there are classrooms where children learn to be careful. Too often, we pretend they are the same. But when punishment—especially collective or public punishment—dominates the emotional tone of a learning space, what emerges is not intellectual risk-taking or social responsibility. What emerges is fear. Surveillance. A…
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She graduated and this is what she learned
On raising a badass advocate, unintentionally. I didn’t set out to raise an advocate—I set out to raise a child. A child who might feel safe in her body and steady in her breath, who might look out at the world and feel drawn toward it rather than braced against it, who might trust her…
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Not sick. Not fine. Not supported. Sexism in Vancouver School Board.
They said she was doing well. They said it with the softness of authority — that practiced tone that suggests neutrality while sidestepping consequence — a tone I’ve come to recognise as institutional, not personal, and absolutely not maternal. They said she was fine because she was quiet. Because she didn’t scream. Because she didn’t…
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What happened to your child is wrong
I didn’t learn about collective punishment as a teenager—reading about war crimes. I remember the moment vividly: the language was clinical, the violations horrific. Among the acts prohibited under the Geneva Conventions, there it was—collective punishment. The targeting of a group for the actions of one. It was described as a violation so clear, so…
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Rethinking accessibility leadership, training, and labour in BC public education
In accessibility work, most transformative insights come directly from disabled people. Lived experience is primary data; manuals and metrics are, at best, secondary literature. In schools, teachers are experts in pedagogy, yet few are trained in disability or neurodivergence. That absence is not incidental—it is engineered, and the consequences are everywhere. The current failure—and promise—of…
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Vancouver School District (SD39) district code of conduct: a neurodiversity-informed critique
The Vancouver School Board’s District Student Code of Conduct (AP 350) is an expansive and methodically constructed document. It commits to fostering safe, inclusive, and nurturing schools; it recognises systemic discrimination, promotes restorative practices, and articulates a detailed suspension framework with multiple levels of review. The document outlines procedural guidance for school leaders, provides template…
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Recent BCHRT decisions expose systemic failures
After reading through a couple of of the recent BC Human Rights Tribunal findings, here are some thoughts: Ongoing delays erode trust Several rulings show how procedural deadlines and scheduling gaps thwart families seeking essential supports. In one decision the Tribunal dismissed parents’ allegations about inadequate consultation and discontinued specialist services because the events in 2017 and 2018 fell…
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When autistic girls fawn and schools look away
They told her to be polite while she was being harmed. Now they call her difficult for saying no. Jeannie never screamed—never yelled or stormed out or flipped a desk or tore paper into confetti; instead, she froze, and in that freezing, she vanished from their view. No one interrupted the boy when he joked…
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She’s agonised inside and that doesn’t count?
Much of this unfolded in 2022 and 2023, during a period when my daughter remained undiagnosed as autistic, unsupported in any formal way, and largely invisible to the school system. The patterns described here continue to shape our lives. In this essay, you’ll hear the cautious hope I carried—that a formal diagnosis would unlock the…