Perspectives and Expertise of Secondary Ensemble Music Educators With ADHD

Data Collection

Data collection took place over a period of 2 months in Fall 2021. Data sources for each participant included an interview, an observation, and three reflective journal entries.

Analysis

I analyzed the interview, observation, and journal data through several iterative coding cycles. I first conducted within-case descriptive coding followed by code mapping to organize the descriptive codes into larger categories (Saldaña, 2021). I then conducted a cross-case thematic analysis to find similarities and differences between participants (Stake, 2005). Finally, I identified themes that encapsulated the meanings of the within-case and cross-case findings (Saldaña, 2021). This process resulted in three major themes.

I used pseudonyms and removed personally identifying information from the data to protect participant privacy. Trustworthiness measures included data triangulation, member checking, peer review by a music education graduate student familiar with qualitative analysis, and clarification of researcher bias by exploring my own positionality in relation to neurodiversity. Specifically, I am a neurodivergent music educator. Although the neurodiversity paradigm is personally relevant to my own identity and teaching, I chose to utilize it as a theoretical lens for this study due to its relation to disability rights advocacy efforts. To avoid inserting my voice into the participants’ stories, I used only the participants’ words as the basis for data analysis and elicited the participants’ feedback to ensure I represented their perspectives accurately.

Laura: Dispelling Stigma

Laura shared her lived experience of ADHD by correcting common misperceptions that lead to stigma. She expressed that many teachers and parents perceive students with ADHD as “bad kids” and equate the condition with misbehavior. Laura explained that the core challenges of ADHD are difficulty directing focus, a tendency to forget information, and a need for high levels of sensory stimulation. As an adult, Laura has advocated for her own needs, unafraid to ask for assistance or verbalize her struggles. She acknowledged that this self-advocacy could be difficult for kids, stating “It’s just easier to be the bad kid than it is to say ‘I don’t understand’ . . . [or] ‘I’m sorry, I did the best that I could. . . but I just could not concentrate’” (Interview).

Laura also described how positive traits of ADHD may be subject to misperception. She shared that creative hyperfocus, a state of extreme focus, could appear to be a lack of focus. Laura explained: “We’re so focused on, ‘I’ve got to get this down!’ And then we end up. . . missing the instructions. . . because we were trying to pay attention, but our brain was just focused on something else” (Interview). Laura stressed that ADHD and other forms of neurodiversity were nothing to be embarrassed about, “because how boring would the world be if we all did the same thing?” Due to the mix of challenges and creative benefits that she experienced, Laura did not define ADHD as a disability. Instead, she “view[ed] it as, our brains are just wired differently and that is what allows us to be more creative. . . This is what makes us unique” (Interview).

Jessica: Intrinsic Motivation

Jessica spoke about the power of intrinsic motivation for a person with ADHD. She described how tasks that were not personally motivated, such as making sub plans, felt so unpleasant or insurmountable that she avoided them. In contrast, tasks that related to her passions and required her creative skills felt far easier, especially when she designed the task herself. Whenever possible, she would seek an intrinsically motivating alternative to a required task. For example, when her school administration assigned a book study and essay to the entire staff, Jessica requested to write an entire musical instead, as she “want[ed] to do something that’s way more important to my life” (Interview).

Working harder than others was both a coping strategy and a manifestation of intrinsic motivation for Jessica. She characterized her ADHD as a disability, describing how at times, hard work was necessary to compensate for ADHD-related difficulties. For instance, she worked 60–80 hours per week at the beginning of her career to keep up with the demands of the job. However, her creative energy has led her to put extraordinary effort into projects to benefit her school community. Jessica believed that the high level of intrinsic motivation that she felt for creative pursuits was a positive attribute of “being ADHD.”

Sophia: Proactive Strategizing

Sophia described her brain as “organized chaos” that she managed through a system of proactive strategies. She prided herself on being known as a punctual and organized person. She achieved this through a carefully crafted long-range lesson planning procedure, a system for organizing her email inbox, and a daily routine of reviewing her to-do list. As a student, she had learned and developed these strategies to enable her academic success. As a teacher, she felt it was important to continue to use them so that her ADHD-related challenges did not negatively impact her own students.

Although Sophia’s organizational strategies supported her success at work, they required a significant expenditure of mental energy to maintain. At times when she felt overwhelmed or overstimulated, she “just kind of shut down” (Interview). To conserve mental energy, she implemented additional proactive measures such as never taking work home, delegating tasks, and reducing her task load on concert days. When she realized that she still was mentally depleted at the end of the workday despite these measures, she started taking ADHD medication to try to preserve some energy for her personal life. While Sophia always prided herself in her professional success despite her ADHD-related challenges, she recently shifted the goal of her strategic planning to achieving a healthy work-life balance.

Disclosure

Laura, Jessica, and Sophia each felt differently about disclosing their diagnosis at work. As a result, they each received a different level of workplace support. Laura had openly disclosed her diagnosis to her principal and other teachers and felt that this openness led to them knowing how to help her. Although Jessica had not disclosed her diagnosis directly, she assumed that her colleagues knew about her ADHD because they worked together closely for a long time. She explained, “I think back in the day, even 16 years ago, any kind of neurodiversity was hidden. . . like this will be a shame thing and I can’t let people know” (Interview). However, she would now feel confident disclosing her diagnosis if necessary. Sophia also had not formally disclosed her diagnosis at work, as she felt her strong coping strategies enabled her to complete all required tasks without accommodations, although she did sometimes mention her ADHD in passing. On the rare occasion that she asked for assistance, her colleagues provided her with the support she needed “because they know that if I’m asking for help, it must be legitimate. It’s not something that I take advantage of” (Interview). Despite their different degrees of disclosure, all three participants felt that they had positive, supportive workplace relationships.

Self-Accommodation

The three participants employed extensive self-accommodation strategies to help themselves succeed. One support they used was ADHD medication. Laura and Jessica expressed that their medication enabled them to focus more easily while teaching, while Sophia felt it helped her manage her mental energy expenditure. Another strategy that Laura and Jessica used was keeping their hands busy by doodling or fidgeting to help them focus, particularly during staff meetings. Keeping a regular routine helped both Jessica and Sophia avoid becoming overwhelmed, and Sophia used her extensive organizational systems to ensure task completion.

All three elicited the help of their students to keep them on track. Laura asked her students to refrain from having side conversations, explaining, “I won’t be able to find where I was in my brain, so I’m going to have to start the whole lesson all the way over again, and. . .y’all don’t want that!” (Interview). Laura’s students also redirected her whenever she started fidgeting or lost focus, lightheartedly shouting “squirrel!” when she went on a tangent. Although Jessica allowed her students to use fidget toys, she insisted that the toys be quiet so that her train of thought did not derail due to distracting noises. Whenever Sophia’s students asked her to do something for them, she had them send her an email to help her remember to do it. Her extensive advanced planning enabled her to empower her students to run a rehearsal themselves if she needed to be absent for an emergency doctor’s appointment (Journal). These self-accommodation strategies helped the three music educators to function effectively at work.

Understanding Challenges

All of the participants expressed that the primary advantage of having ADHD as a music teacher was their ability to truly understand their neurodivergent students and their needs. The empathy that came from their own lived experience allowed them to acknowledge the challenges of their students’ ADHD while recognizing that they were not the students’ fault. Sophia admitted, “I understand why other teachers get frustrated, I get frustrated with them, even though I understand what’s going on” (Interview). However, all three music educators looked beyond their students’ behavior to address the unmet need that they understood was causing that behavior. For example, when Laura noticed that students were “having more behavior issues than usual,” she reflected on her own low enthusiasm level and “changed gears with the class” to start a new, more engaging activity (Journal). Jessica expressed: “Some of the most brilliant imaginative kids will be great in your music classes at learning music, performing, etc. but may never be great at bringing pencils. So just give them one and don’t worry” (Journal). Laura believed that even her most disruptive students “want to please you, and want to do well” (Interview) while Jessica “underst[ood] their pain” (Interview) of struggling despite that desire. Sophia stated that she used this deep level of understanding to try to help her students and teach them coping strategies rather than focusing on punitive consequences.

Supporting Students

Laura, Jessica, and Sophia drew upon their own experiences, preferences, needs, and self-support strategies as a guide for designing their instruction to be inclusive of students with ADHD and other neurodivergent students. Both Laura and Jessica expressed how they used their need for stimulation as a barometer of their students’ attention spans: “I know if I’m bored, the kids are bored.” This led all three teachers to design fun, fast-paced, engaging instruction. To prevent students from feeling shame about learning or attentional difficulties, Laura and Sophia both fostered a philosophy of embracing mistakes. Laura had her band students self-assess by continually asking them where they “messed up” and how they planned to fix their mistakes before trying again (Observation). Similarly, Sophia had her orchestra students play each scale warm-up twice in a row. When she asked the class, “Why do you play it twice instead of just once?” they responded confidently in unison “to fix our mistakes!” (Observation), showing that she took care to make sure they understood how this strategy supported their learning. She also reported allowing students to retake playing tests as many times as they wanted as long as they were working to improve. When Jessica noticed that a student was taking too long of a break in the hallway and missing instruction, she sent another student out with the direction, “please tell him to come back, we miss him” and responded to his return with a warm “we’re glad you’re back!” These approaches helped to create engaging, welcoming, and safe learning environments for the whole class, which benefited neurodivergent and neurotypical students alike.

The participants’ empathy led them to go above and beyond when providing individual students with personalized support. As Laura succinctly stated, “I don’t mind doing all that because I would be glad if somebody would do that for me” (Interview). All three applied the same understanding to students with needs different from their own as they did for students whose needs they shared by using their own experience as a starting point, and then using the student’s feedback to tailor support strategies to the individual. Sophia would often say, “Listen, I have a hard time with this too. Here’s what helps me, let’s find what helps you” (Interview). By implementing both whole-class and individualized supports based on their own experiential understanding of neurodiversity, they provided empathy-based guidance for all of their students.

Focus on the Future

Owing to their experience as adults with ADHD, Laura, Jessica, and Sophia approached their provision of support with the goal of building their own students’ self-sufficiency. Laura strongly believed that accommodation of student needs should be a collaborative process with the student. She often asked, “What can I do to help you be more successful in the classroom?” (Interview) and tailored support strategies according to the student’s feedback. She then held the student accountable for using the strategy. When two students had not completed any SmartMusic assignments, she explained to the class that everyone needed to do their part to help the band sound better. To prevent embarrassment while still stressing accountability, she stated, “y’all know who you are, and you’ve got to get that fixed” (Observation). Sophia helped students to build independent practicing skills by telling them to “review with your stand partner, what are the things you have to remember so that we only have to play through this once?” (Observation). Jessica and Sophia both viewed their role as preparing their students for successful adulthood, which included scaffolding their ability to implement their own support strategies independently.

Practical Strategies

The three participants implemented numerous practical strategies to ensure their instruction was inclusive of their students with ADHD and other neurodivergent students. Throughout all of their teaching observations, I noticed that on a whole-class level, they maintained a fast instructional pace, incorporated fun and humor, wrote the agenda on the board, provided opportunities for movement, and created breaks during long rehearsals. Laura also supported her students’ development of organizational skills by requiring them all to keep their sheet music in a three-ring binder (Observation). On an individual level, the participants gave students who needed additional movement breaks permission to stand, walk around their chairs, get water in the hallway, or run an errand. For example, Jessica enabled students to rock in their seats or take a brief walk as needed as long as they were participating in instruction (Observation). The teachers all gave verbal reminders discretely and respectfully and taught students how to use planners or their phones to set their own reminders. They empowered individual students by channeling their energy into a helping or leadership role, such as passing out materials or leading sectionals. For students with additional learning needs, they reported modifying sheet music, playing with them during playing tests, and/or utilizing stand partners as peer-support (Interviews). Finally, they advocated for collaboration with students’ special education and academic teachers to learn from their knowledge of accommodation strategies (Sophia, Journal) and to build a community of support around them (Laura, Interview).

Nature of Ensembles

The participants all saw fewer behavioral challenges among students with ADHD in their ensemble classes than in their nonensemble classes. They believed that the nature of ensemble participation inherently supported focus and engagement. Sophia thought that “neurodiversity works incredibly well in the musical world as a way to channel that energy,” and that “they’ve learned that ‘this is something I can focus on, and that it does take work and determination’” (Interview). Laura expressed a similar sentiment: “We’re lucky with ADHD and being a musician. You have to focus while you’re playing the music, otherwise we’d never be able to” (Interview). Jessica attributed this phenomenon to a combination of class design and student factors: “I think it’s actually an intrinsic quality of the class setup and the students themselves. I mean they want to be in choir, it’s an elective, so they feel motivated. . . It’s just the nature of the beast” (Interview). Sophia and Laura expressed through their journal entries that their own music teachers’ encouragement supported their development of focus and self-esteem. Sophia wrote, “All of [my] music teachers believed in me, encouraged me, and supported me in my passion for music and music education” (Journal). Laura appreciated her own high school band director’s suggestion to play the bassoon because they “recognized my propensity to easily get bored and act up. With the bassoon, I was consistently challenged and I had to remain focused which left no room for misbehaving” (Journal). Although Laura, Jessica, and Sophia all used deliberate strategies to support student success, it was clear that the structure and motivational quality of music ensembles may provide a unique form of built-in support.