I wanted to be a professional ballet dancer. At the end of my sophomore year of high school, I realized that probably wasn’t going to happen for me. I quit dancing and suddenly threw myself into high school. Within a week I joined the track team, I joined mock trial, I got a boyfriend… I did all the things.
My decision meant I was going to go to college, but I didn’t know what I wanted to do. The only other thing I was really good at was tutoring. That was the one thing at school that I had done even before I quit dancing.
I wasn’t good about doing homework. I had a hard time sitting down and getting it done. So my math teacher arranged that I could get credit for the homework if I stayed after school and helped other people with the homework—and then she would mark off that I had done it. I really liked that. I was good at it. I got a lot of feedback that I was good at it.
It felt good to help people. And then I just went with it. I went to college. I majored in elementary education. Teaching is the only job I’ve ever had.
I went back to dancing as an adult, too. And now, my son dances.
I have ADHD. I wasn’t diagnosed until I was an adult. In retrospect, somebody probably should have recognized this a lot sooner; I was a really impulsive kid. I’m still kind of an impulsive person.
I was identified as gifted. That profile (gifted + ADHD) is not uncommon, but I think people are surprised by it. Or don’t think to look for it. I learned easily, and there was a lot that I really liked about school—but I don’t think my teachers always enjoyed having me in class. I don’t think I was an easy kid to teach. I do think that makes me a better teacher, because I try not to have those hangups. I like all the wiggly kids. I mean, I like the non-wiggly kids too.
I grew up in Mill Valley, California, which was very laid back, in a very Bay Area way. There were questions about my attention and focus, but no one seemed that concerned. My seventh grade science teacher used to say, ‘Thea is ethereal,’ basically saying I was spacey. My mom still tells that story and gets a big kick out of it. People would say, ‘Thea is just an indigo child,’ and let it go. So I got no support for ADHD.
My binder was always a mess. I had a friend who came over to organize it for me—she wasn’t there to hang out, she was there to get my life in order. My mom walked by and said, ‘Now, Thea, I want you to watch what Lindsey does and emulate her.’ I’ve tried for 30 years. I can’t.
It wasn’t until I was an adult that I truly realized, ‘Wait, not everybody has this much trouble organizing their life.’
With my particular neurology, I can’t clearly prioritize what I think about or what I notice. But in the same way that I’m distracted easily, I can see everything at the same time.
So if there are 30 kids in the room, I really can be paying attention to all of them at the same time. I can teach my lesson and notice what they’re all doing and kind of remember what they all did. I can walk around and see everybody’s work. I can notice mistakes while they’re working. I can see anybody take a phone out at any moment. I can hear everybody whispering. The kids don’t love that I can notice everything, but it’s really useful as a teacher.
In high school, I was a National Achievement scholar. I went to graduate school at Stanford. I always got great grades. School worked well for me because I actually find almost any topic really interesting, and all the coping things I do, like asking a million questions and being able to write quickly, work really well in school… not as well in other areas.
Maybe that’s also why I like being a teacher: I know how to do school really well, and I can help students who are different learn how the system works.
I’ve met a lot of teachers with ADHD. New things pop up all day. You don’t get bored. And you can set up your classroom space and routines to work for you.
When we opened this school, we didn’t have eighth graders yet; so I came on as a seventh grade teacher. I got to have that group of kids for two years—seventh grade, then I moved up with them to eighth grade. Everybody knew we were stuck together for two years, and we had to make it work.
In general, I always like my students. But every year there’s a couple of kids where I’m like, ‘I don’t know. I think this is going to be the one.’ And there was a kid that year who was just really not easy for me to like—but probably for all the reasons I was hard to like as a student. He was extremely bright and extremely ADHD, and oppositional. I felt like I wasn’t doing a great job of faking it.
Then his moms asked for me to be there at a school meeting about him. It was one of those meetings about accommodations (things like where you sit, or getting extra notes), so he could access school better. They asked about challenges and strengths, and his mom shared that he’d said, ‘I wish I could have Ms. Alexander for all my classes, because she just gets me.’
I felt like I didn’t get him. But I remembered what it feels like when teachers don’t get you—when you’re really smart, and not a good student, and you don’t know what’s wrong. This was toward the end of the first year, and I said, ‘Next year, my only goal is to actually like this kid.’ It required actual effort. But I did end up really liking him.
Every kid needs a teacher who gets them. Every kid needs a teacher who wants them to be there. I think it’s really important that I show them they don’t have to be a different person to be cared for and liked. They can be liked just as they are.
I am a people-centered person. I teach math, and I do really like math, but mostly I like teaching. I’ve been teaching for 19 years.
I’ve made a commitment to myself that I’m going to like every student. That’s my classroom management secret: I really like my students. I just try to like them—each individual one. I enjoy spending time with them. I’m happy to see them when I see them. I try to know who they actually are.
Earlier in my career, my students knew me really well, and I hardly knew them—because the dynamic was that I stood up and talked and they listened. So I started greeting them at the door.
They enter one at a time, and I talk to each one every day. Sometimes I give them a hand stamp or put a sticker on their hand so they have to pause for a second. Some just say hi and keep walking. Some stop and tell you something. Sometimes I bring goofy questions—like, ‘If you worked in a potato chip factory, what kind of chips would you make?’ They have a really good sense of humor. I try to see what makes them funny.
We do a whole class riddle or family game night in my classroom once a month. No new content lesson. Just board games. You can’t be on a screen. You can’t do something by yourself. You have to do an analog thing with another person, and you’re not allowed to argue. I want them to listen to each other, and trust each other, and be able to work together—and it’s hard to work on those skills while you’re also working on math.
A lot of people really don’t like math—they have a dysfunctional relationship with the subject. It hasn’t worked out for them. It doesn’t make sense to them. So it’s fulfilling to get kids to like math.
Math is one of the ways we try to find order in a chaotic universe. Figuring out how to get things organized is hard for me. What I love about math is that it’s already organized. I don’t have to do it myself.
Math tells us, ‘This is not random, there are patterns.’ And once you find something that works, it works every time. If it’s the truth, it is the truth. It doesn’t change. It’s not subjective. It just is.
I didn’t plan to be a math teacher. I planned to be an elementary special educator. But my first job interview out of college was at a middle school, and I loved the principal, so I took the job. I started in special education, and then I ended up doing more and more math support. After a couple years, I was like, ‘Oh, yeah—I’m a math teacher.’
I wish people understood that teaching is a profession. It’s its own skill set. I’m good at getting people to learn things. And it’s a hard job—not just because of the structural things, like not getting to go to the bathroom. Even in the best fantasy situation, teaching is hard. It requires particular skills. And it’s okay to want to be a teacher for your whole life, because you will keep growing as a teacher your whole life.
I questioned staying during the pandemic. I need to be able to like my kids, and during that time, I didn’t know them. It felt sterile. It felt more adversarial. Some teachers can do that authoritative conflict. That doesn’t feel good to me. I didn’t feel good at it, and for me, loving teaching is knowing that I’m good at it. I told myself: I can’t do another year like that.
So I changed what I could. I made the room feel the way I wanted to feel in my class. I got rid of the giant, dark tables. I brought back the rug. I put up a Sudoku board. I made decisions that made me excited to come back.
The year we fully came back, that class of eighth graders totally restored my faith. I remembered, ‘Oh, I am a good teacher, and I love doing this.’
The other day, I was sitting in the Calm Corner with two girls at lunch playing SET. It’s a card game where you don’t take turns—you’re all looking at the same cards looking for trios that go together, and you call out ‘set’ when you see one. It’s a good game for chatting, because the rhythm can just be whatever.
I have some students who are brand new to the country and don’t speak a lot of English. We find ways to connect, but I don’t really speak Spanish, and they don’t really speak English. I don’t always know them that well.
But we got through a whole conversation. And during that time, I found out that this girl had walked here from Honduras. She walked here. She came on foot without her parents, by herself, with a coyote.
I said, ‘That sounds really scary.’ She said, ‘It was really scary.’
She’s 13, and I’ve had her in my class all year.
I just try to find out who they are as people.
–Thea Singleton Alexander
Teacher in Montgomery County Public Schools
Kensington, MD
