Managing ADHD in the Classroom with Dr. Yosef Shagalow

00:00 Speaker 1 Hi, I'm Zalman Schneer. Welcome to the Everything Chinuch Podcast, brought to you by the Menachem Education Foundation. Here, you'll find fabrangens, workshops, live interviews, and more, all to inspire you, the Chabad educator. We hope you enjoy today's episode.

00:20 Speaker 2 Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the monthly professional development webinar offered by the Menachem Education Foundation. My name is Rabbi Mendy Levin. I'm from Cheder Chabad of Philadelphia, and it's my zchus to open tonight's session. This webinar is offered in partnership with the schools that you work in, and we wanna thank each and every one of you for joining and for the schools who are taking part. As I'm sure you know, the Menachem Education Foundation offers a whole range of services for educators, including curriculum, teacher and principal coaching, social emotional learning, and much, much more to support you in your shlichus of Chinuch. So take a look at their website at mymef.org to learn more. Tonight, we're honored to welcome Rabbi Dr. Yosef Shagalov. Rabbi Shagalov wears many hats. He's a shliach of the Rebbe, a rav of a shul, and a long-time classroom teacher with on-the-ground experience, and also a highly acclaimed psychologist in Minneapolis. Rabbi Shagalov is involved with counseling Chabad families, children, and teens, and has his finger on the pulse on the issues facing our community today. Tonight's session is about managing ADHD in the classroom. All of us had, have, or will have students with ADHD, and often have questions on how to approach and support them. And attending tonight's webinar is a testament to your commitment to your talmidim and talmidus, wanting to better understand their needs and to learn new tools to support their success and growth. Rabbi Shagalov will present for around an hour, following which we

02:10 Speaker 2 will have approximately fifteen minutes of question and answer time for questions that will be submitted by you in the chat. And without further ado, Rabbi Shagalov.

02:24 Speaker 3 Hi, Rabbi Levin. First of all, thank you very much for that introduction. Much appreciated. Uh, it's an honor for me to present for Menachem Education Foundation. This is not the first time. I had the honor to be at one of the, uh, c-conferences in person. It was a beautiful, beautiful event. I, I wanna thank Rabbi Schneer for the amazing work which he does and all the people who help him. It is truly amazing to see what the professionalism at these activity... at these presentations and the different things which, uh, Menachem Education Foundation offer. And this is a, a truly wonderful thing. Um, tonight I am gonna present about ADHD. I wanna start off by saying that the information I'm going to present is not exclusive. You can find this information if you wanna research it. This presentation was developed with... by myself and my wife, who's a special education administrator, and my daughter, who's also a social worker, Leah Shagalov. All three of them were very helpful in, in, in, in providing the information and the presentation for tonight's, for tonight's talk. I have a lot of stuff to present, and I'm gonna present it quickly, but I'd like to make some caveats. First of all, I recognize that each and every one of you teachers may be struggling with a few children in your classroom with ADHD. Tonight, we're gonna speak generally. I'm trying to... gonna try and provide some practical guidelines and some practical interventions which you can use in the classroom, but

03:57 Speaker 3 I recognize that we will not be able to resolve, we will not be able to address every single issue you are struggling with. Number two, it's important to announce, to make the statement, I started off and the name of this, uh, presentation was Recognizing and Managing Students with ADHD. And Rabbi Levin made a very important and relevant point that managing students is not a very empowering word, and I think he's correct. And tonight, I wanna change that, and I wanna highlight that what we're gonna be talking about is recognizing and supporting and helping s-students with ADHD thrive in the classroom as much as we can. So thank you for that feedback, Rabbi Levin. That is very important. Tonight, we're gonna talk about recognizing ADH- ADHD, number one. Number two, we're gonna talk about classroom strategies. And number through... three, we're gonna talk about the role of the teacher in this whole process, besides simply for being a teacher in the classroom. What is the role of the teacher, and possibly if we have time, what is the role of the administration. So having said that, let's talk about ADHD in general. First of all, ADHD is a very important issue because it is very prevalent in classrooms today. Nationally, the statistics are that ADHD occurs about six to eleven percent of, to six to eleven percent of the students in our classroom. That means if you have ten students in your classroom, you're gonna have probably one with ADHD, and according to some statistic, maybe

05:41 Speaker 3 a half of a student will have ADHD. I'm not sure exactly what that means. But if you've got twenty kids in your classroom, that means there's gonna be two children with ADHD. Take, for example, other issues like anxiety. Anxiety is somewhere between seven and ten percent, which is lower. Learning disabilities are five to nine percent. Autism is two to three percent. OCO oppositional defiant, which you would pronun- call chutzpah, is three to six percent. Speech and language disorders is five percent. As you can see, ADHD is going to be the most prevalent. And in teenagers, we find thirteen to sixteen percent of depression. And depression looks like it's even stronger than ADHD when you get into the teenage years. But that's misleading because ADHD, as it moves into teenage years, often develops into depression. And the reason for that is because of the ability versus achievement gap. And Rabbi Levin, we have an opportunity towards the end of the session, please ask me, what is that ability versus achievement gap, and what's the relationship with depression? And if we have time, I will definitely talk about it. It's important to understand that ADHD is not just a child with behavioral problems, and it's not just about a child with bad habits, a bad who cannot... a child who cannot control him or herself. What's really going on is we're dealing with what's called a neurodiversity. These children, these students' brains are actually different than kids and adults who don't have ADHD. They simply function differently,

07:27 Speaker 3 they see things differently, they perceive, see things differently, they make sense of the world differently. And that's why most often in a classroom setting where they're required to sit and learn in a structured setting, they don't do very well because they do not have any internal structure. It's very hard for them to create internal structure, while they can often understand things, make sense of things, and, uh, they can-- they appear to be able to learn. So because they appear like they're able to learn, but for some reason it just doesn't happen, they can't actually follow through well enough because of the difficulties of their ability versus the, the, the achievement. We have-- They struggle, and we have some behavioral problems. Now, you've all heard, I'm sure, as teachers about spectrum disorder, and we refer that, we call that autism. Autism is known as a spectrum disorder. The truth of the matter is ADHD is also a spectrum disorder. And I don't mean that ADHD is part of autism. It's not. It's distinct, even though there are strong overlaps. But what I mean is ADHD is a spectrum, which means it's like a bow. There's two parts, two spectrums which interact with each other to give us an understanding of how the AD-ADHD works in the classroom. What are those two spectrums? The two spectrums are, number one, severity of symptoms. We have some kids in our classroom who are gonna show mild symptoms. They may not be able to sit still. They may check out

09:09 Speaker 3 from time to time, and they have a hard time following rules. They may have a hard time organizing themselves, but they mainly function in the classroom because they've got mild symptoms. Then you've got extreme symptoms where the kid is flying off the wall, you cannot control them, they're angry all the time, they are talking back, totally disorganized, walking around in the classroom and causing havoc. That's the spectrum, from s-slight interruption to significant interruption, slight distraction to extreme distraction. That is the behavioral, um, spectrum which they are struggling with, from light to severe. There's another part to ADHD which we need to take in mind and understand, and that is the intellectual spectrum. Kids who've got ADHD have... Some kids have low IQ, which means low intelligence, and others have very high IQ. So you can have a child in your classroom who's not very intelligent, not very bright, who struggles and also has ADHD symptoms. You can also have a kid in your classroom, or even a teenager, a bachur, or a girl in school or in seminary, who has got extremely high intelligence or moderately high intelligence, but is also struggling with ADHD. And because of that, because of these two different spectrums, ADHD looks very different. When you've got a kid who's got a high intelligence struggling with ADHD, often the symptoms can be masked, and usually they are masked in the younger ages because they are functioning on their intelligence. They're using coping mechanisms to deal with their problem of attention, to

11:01 Speaker 3 deal with their problem of focus, or to deal with their problem of impulsivity. They are highly intelligent, and they're masking a lot of the symptoms. That's why we sometimes see at seventh to eighth grade, when learning becomes much more difficult, whether it's a boy going into Gemara, having to start to learn things not just by rote, but having to now start to understand things, think about things, where we start to notice ADHD symptoms which may not have been there before. Because it's hard for them to sit still, the subject matter is harder, it takes much more focus, and they're not able to do it. So that's also important to understand. There are lower functioning kids, there are higher functioning kids intellectually and academically, and we've to keep that in mind when we look at ADHD. Most of us know what ADHD looks like in the classroom when you've got your typical ADHD student. But the reality is there's a lot of kids in your classroom who may have ADHD who we just don't notice. We may think of them as the kids who are just checked out. We may think of them as the, uh, kids who, um... Are not listening. And by the way, girls and boys also tend to s- show different presentations of ADHD in the classroom. ADHD girls, for example, who have reasonable to high intelligence, seem to be very high achievers, working very hard to keep everything in order and to do well academically. But they are expending, they are

12:39 Speaker 3 using so much energy to do this that they look like or they sometimes act like a bomb ready to go off because there's so much energy being used just to function daily to be able to keep everything together. Boys tend to let out a lot of that energy. Now, what I'm describing is not a clear difference. It's something like a sixty/forty. Sixty percent of girls might show it one way, forty shows-- well, forty percent of boys might show it another way. But I'm just making a point that ADHD has many different presentations in the classroom. Okay, let's talk about some of the issues we're dealing with with ADHD. There are two types of ADHD in general. What I mean by two types, there are two presentations primarily. One of them is called inattentive type, which means that the child, the student, is showing signs of inability to stay focused. That's all it is. Inability to stay focused. Having difficulty with attention, have a difficulty staying on task. That's called inattentive type. There's a second type, which is called hyperactivity impulsive type. Those are the kids who are driving us crazy. Those are the children who can't sit still and may be disrupting the kids next to them, may be speaking out of turn, may be in-- blurting out questions and answers, may be looking for stimulation, and so they are very active in the classroom. There's also a combined type, which means children who are both have difficulty with inattention, they can't focus, therefore academically

14:24 Speaker 3 they're not doing very well, and they are impulsive also. They also can't sit still, and they're impacting everybody around them and impacting the classroom because of their inability to stay still. Those are two aspects, two different parts of ADHD, and they're diagnosed separately. Sometimes they're diagnosed with inattention, sometimes they're diagnosed just with impulse-impulsivity, and often they're diagnosed with both. But what does that look like in the classroom? Like I said earlier, in your classroom, you may have a child who's sitting in the back of the classroom, and most of the time he's not listening. And if they're intelligent, the typical thing a teacher will be saying is, "There's nothing really wrong with that student. She just has to try harder. She just needs to pay attention more." That's possible, but it's also possible that this child can't pay attention more. They just cannot focus as well as we would like them to, whatever reason it is. That's the inattentive type. Then there's the child who may be doing very well in class, but he can't sit still. He's always talking either to the child next to him, wants to get up, wants to move around, wants to answer a question. If he's not very academically smart, he may be just disrupting because he's seeking attention. Why? Because he needs to be stimulated to stay awake. And if he's not stimulated, he can't think, he will fall asleep. And so what he's doing is he's doing whatever he can to gain that stimulation to be able

16:05 Speaker 3 to stay alive and awake in the classroom. That's the impulsivity which we're looking at. Those are the ones we usually recognize. So let's go back and, and go aft-- go back over, over this. Examples in class. It-- Students who leave their seat and blurts out, starts but doesn't finish tasks, and they do this regularly. You give them a job to do, they get a little bit of it done, they can't do the whole thing. They can't follow multi-step instructions consistently. This is a very important one. They, uh, have a hard time of or putting things in organization. You might see it in their, in their, uh, bags. You may see it in their desks, which they are quite messy. Or you may see that when you give them a task, which is, "I need you to do this, this, this, and that," they remember the first part because they're hyper-focused on it, but they forget the next part, and they don't get it done. And sometimes they simply don't know which one to do first, and so they get lost in the task. Again, easily distracted, sometimes even with one-on-one support, which means even when there's somebody talk to them directly. Actually, what I have found is that one of the best things we can do for ADHD students is give them one-on-one intervention, because with one-on-one intervention, since they're talking to somebody and they're being responded to, often the symptoms are masked. And for this reason, attentive parents might often miss a child with

17:37 Speaker 3 ADHD. Because they're attending to them constantly, they're talking to them one-on-one, they may just not see that this child is struggling. And parents tend to constantly coach, prompt their children and say to them, "Do you have your bag? Are you ready for school? Is this there? Do you have everything you need?" And over-attentive parents or just attentive parents may be intervene-- in, in, in maybe supporting, and they may be what's called enabling their ADH-- their ADHD children and may not notice it until they go into classroom setting where there aren't those supports, and suddenly these problems become much bigger. Okay. So other things you might find in a classroom is constant movement and fidgeting, interrupting, blurting out, trouble waiting their turn, which may cause problems with their peers, emotional outbursts which will cause problems with their peers, difficulty completing tasks like I said. These behaviors, of course, change as kids gets older and they learn coping mechanisms. Some children will struggle more, some children will struggle less. Now, here's another interesting thing which we do not see in the textbooks about ADHD, and that is that kids with ADHD have something called time blindness. And again, this is on a spectrum. It doesn't mean you'll see it by every child. Time blindness means that the concept of time is much different to ADHD children and students than it is to others. The typical way of describing it is a kid who's got ADHD has two modes of time, now and never. That's the way it

19:21 Speaker 3 works. "I need it now. If I don't get it now, I don't need it," because there's no tomorrow. Saying to an ADHD child, "You won't get this. Okay, you did a very good job. Tomorrow, I'll give you a reward for this. Come to me tomorrow." Tomorrow doesn't exist for them. So what tends to happen is that reinforcement has no value to them. Another thing, for example, is, "I need you to do this today, I need you to do that tomorrow, and do this the next day." In their minds, they get so hyper-focused on the one task you gave them, they cannot think about, "Do this today, do this tomorrow, and do this the next day." All they focus on is the one problem in front of them, and everything else is irrelevant. And so because of that, think about why they cannot do sequential tasks. A sequential task means to keep in mind, "Do this first, do this second, do this third, and do this fourth." They, because they focused on one thing, they're gonna lose track of everything else which just comes after that. And so because of that, we need to chunk the information, and we'll talk about that when I talk about classroom interventions. Chunking, chunking, um, goals for them and tasks, giving them small tasks and breaking them up for them so they can deal with them. So for example, they lose track of time very easily. They, uh, have a difficulty thinking about the future. They cannot plan ahead. You

20:56 Speaker 3 give them a homework assignment and say to them, "You know, this is due in two weeks. Do part of it today, part of it tomorrow," they can't do that. What they do instead is either it needs to be done or it doesn't need to be done. So it doesn't need to be done until the day before the assignment, and then it needs to be done. The notion of do some of it today, some tomorrow is not something they can do on their own, but we can help them do that. Also, they struggle with transitions because a transition is, "You've gotta do this now, then do this, and then sit down." They get lost, they get hyper-focused on the next piece, and they forget to come back to what needs to happen. When they go out to playground, as far as they're concerned, school is over until they call back into class. That's the kind of thing we see with them. So these are some of the differences. They also have poor time estimation. They don't recognize how long things take. If you ask a kid who's got ADHD, "How long does it take you to say Ashrei or how long does Shemoneh Esrei take?" He'll probably tell you twenty minutes. How long does Shemoneh Esrei take? Five minutes. Why does he think it takes twenty minutes? Well, because in the five minutes he stands or she stands to say Shemoneh Esrei, in her mind, she has gone to Africa, she's gone to the moon, she's

22:17 Speaker 3 gone to some other planet, and she's come back, and then he's gone somewhere else, and thousands of things have happened in those five minutes in his mind. And so for him, so much time has passed because... And as a result, he can't measure time properly. And sometimes one of the interventions is simply making them aware of time. Another reason is why they're chronically late. ADHD children are likely to always put things off to the last minute. They think a job is gonna take just a minute. They have no idea how long it really takes, and it'll cause them to be late. Another thing is neurotypical children, which means children whose brains function like we expect, have internal cues. They have working memory, they have time awareness, they have a sense of when things need to happen. People with ADHD don't have that internal time awareness. One of the-- I have a little bit of ADHD myself, which is debatable. My wife might say I have a lot of it. But one of the most important things which has helped me is my phone, because I have alarms, I have a calendar, I have external things which keep me focused. One of the biggest issues I find with ADHD, and now I'm going a bit larger just for the sake of parents and teachers over here, because teachers also sometimes struggle with ADHD is they're... Interestingly, ADHD people prefer jobs which don't have a structure because they feel safest. They feel the most comfortable. It matches

24:01 Speaker 3 their brain. But the truth of the matter, most of the time, they are most functional in jobs which have external structure, like being a teacher, having a nine-to-five job. Unfortunately, it takes them a long time to realize that. Now, that's different for different people, but that's another example of ADHD. So we've discussed what ADHD looks like in the classroom, but what can teachers do and what should they do? So first of all, please be aware that you cannot diagnose ADHD. You may be a teacher who's been in this profession for a long time, but the moment you ADHD, you step o-- you diagnose, you step over your role, and often what's gonna happen is parents are gonna become very angry because of that. So instead of diagnosing, what you can do is report symptoms and reporting symptoms or track symptoms, which means track behaviors. You can watch a child, and instead of reporting that this child has for sure got ADHD, you might believe it, you might know it, you may be right, but I recommend not to speak that way to anybody, to the t-- to a, to a parent. Instead, you say, "Your child is having difficulty staying focused in class." And the reason why that's important is because simply you may be wrong with your ADHD diagnosis. It may be something else. It could be that it's anxiety. Anxiety sometimes looks very similar to ADHD. Or you may be right, the child may have ADHD, but they may also have anxiety, which

25:38 Speaker 3 we do not know. And if they just-- if they have ADHD and anxiety, and we diagnose them with ADHD, parent says, "Oh, teacher says they've got ADHD." They go to the, the, to the, uh, pediatrician. The pediatricians today will give you medication for ADHD, it's not a problem, but they may not make an accurate diagnosis because that child may also have anxiety. And unfortunately, a child who has ADHD and anxiety, the best medication for ADHD is stimulants, but unfortunately, they can actually exacerbate anxiety too. So that's why it's important to be diagnosed effectively. Teachers should not do the diagnosis. Parents shouldn't do that diagnosis. Administrators shouldn't do that diagnosis. Professionals need to do that to be able to rule out all the other possibilities and make sure the child gets on the right medication or on the right intervention which is needed then. So that is an important thing to know. So you as teachers, us as teachers, what we can do is we can observe and watch what's going on, and we need to have a system. And this is something I shall talk later on about because there's a part which the administrators need. Teachers can't do this in a vacuum. There needs to be a system in place. For example, typically, how long do we wait? When do we report that a child is behaving in a way which is disruptive? So a school usually has a system in place, whether it's at the first parent-teacher conference, whether it's after three weeks,

27:16 Speaker 3 or whether it's after two days, if it's a significantly, uh... if it's absolutely, uh, detrimental and the kid cannot manage in the classroom, then there needs to be, needs to be a system in place. There also needs to be a system in place. And teachers, for your own good, if a child is struggling, take out pen and paper, or take out the phone, or take out whatever recording device you have, and note down specifically what is going on. Instead of talking about generalities, say, "Child is not organized. He can't... goes out to the bathroom, can't come back on time. He can't get his, her things together. She's not following through, uh, bothering people around her," and things like that. Or bringing in homework, but bringing in assignments not finished, et cetera, et cetera. Talk about behaviors. Don't use labels. Um, that's the most important thing you can do is to track. Other things we can do. So here's very interesting piece of information. Most of the interventions which we can do for ADH students will actually benefit not only the ADHD students themselves, but they'll actually benefit the entire classroom. And so when teachers recognize that there are ADHD kids in the classroom and start to address overall guidelines and overall systems and interventions, they can do them for every, for everybody. It will help the ADHD kids. So for example, an ADHD intervention, which is specifically to a child with ADHD might be, kid gets very easily distracted. Move her or move him to

29:04 Speaker 3 the front of the class so that you can see them, so that as soon as they get distracted, you can walk over and quietly tap them or quietly reward them some way to keep them on task. That's an individual interaction which you can do to help an ADHD child, or you can walk over and you can say to him, "Here, you look distracted. Why don't you draw a picture of what we're talking about in class?" So that he's got or she's got something to do, so she's not going all over the place. And putting something in front of them which gives them something to do, they often will help, will help them because an ADHD child, not like you, is can do three things at once and actually needs to do three things at once. Teachers will often say to an ADHD child, "You are not listening. I know you're not listening because you're playing with your pencil and you're doing such and such." In reality, that is when they're actually listening. Because their brain is occupied, they are staying in place, and they're able to focus. And that's why we give ADHD kids fidgets. Doesn't make sense to us, it makes sense to them. Giving them an extra fidget, giving them something to write on, to do while they're listening to something you're saying, sometimes actually giving them the ability to doodle, giving the ability to walk around or to do something specific, sometimes will help a kild- kid with impulsivity in a way

30:36 Speaker 3 which just sitting still won't help. Of course, sometimes that may be problematic if they're bothering other children around them, so that's something which needs to be recognized. These are direct interventions specifically for ADHD kids. But then there are larger ADHD interactions which we can do which will help the entire class. Here's an example. Give clear verbal and visual instructions, schedules, and routines. When you walk into class and you say, "From nine to ten, we are gonna be learning Gemara. First, we're gonna be doing Chazarah, then we're gonna be doing such and such," or, "We're gonna be doing math. In the beginning, we're gonna be giving you this, then we're gonna be doing that, then we're gonna be doing the other." Now, it depends how OCD you are, depends how detailed you wanna get. That's up to you. But the point is, when you put some structure on the board, that ADHD child will have a visual cue which will help him focus and know what's coming next. "We're going out to recess for fifteen minutes, then we're coming back." Keep it simple. Chunk it. Say it in small parts. You may have to go back and do it again if you've got a ADHD kid in the class. You may have to do it in the morning. You may have to do it after there's a break. You may have to do it again at lunch. Go through what the schedule of this... Put it on the board in short bullet points. That's very helpful

32:06 Speaker 3 for everybody. Allow for movement breaks. Give children an opportunity to get up and to move around, what they call brain exercise. Have the class stand up and do some exercises if the class is relatively manageable. That will often help ADHD kids because it'll help them dissipate some of their energy, and that's something which needs to be k- tailored based on the child. But that's something which you can do with the entire class. You don't necessarily need to do it just with them. Also, limit unstructured time. When you leave open time, some of the children will have no problem with, "Okay, you've got ten minutes just to read, to do whatever you want." If you've got an ADHD child who is impulsive and just, and, uh, hyperactive, they're gonna get into trouble because they cannot deal with, "Well, what should I do? I don't know what to do, so I'm gonna bother the person next to me. I'm gonna talk to the person next to me." And it's gonna become distracted. So what you may need to do is either say to the class, "You've got ten minutes now. I'd like you to read for five minutes, draw for five minutes," or something like that. If the child needs extra help, you may need to go over to that child and say to them by... That's called, uh, guessing or anticipating the, the triggers. When you know there's gonna be some unstructured time, you may go over to that child with ADHD and you may say

33:37 Speaker 3 to them, "Now, I would like you to do this, this, and that." Make it short, make it succinct, and give them a job. You may even have to walk over and say, "Do this. Now, how about doing that?" Because they're not able to make that transition by themselves. There's another example. Again, clear step-by-step instructions. If you're giving them a test or you're giving them assignment, be clear how you're giving it. So let me talk about this, an example of chunking. We call it chunking when you're giving an assignment. Let's say you wanna give the kids an assignment. They want them to write a, uh, an essay and choose an animal, three animals which are used as a carbon. If you're teaching a class and you just wanna tell them to te-- to, uh, to write about a state, something like that. Break it down for them. Number one, choose the animal. Write it down. Then find three facts about the animal. Then write down your introduction. Write one paragraph for each fact. Write a conclusion. Then go back, edit, and check the spelling. Notice how you've broken up into pieces. That person can follow an external structure which has been provided to him or her, and that will help guide them to get them where they need to go. These are the type of kids who, in school, get lost because write an essay about an animal, and they scratch their head. They do not know where to start and what to finish. They may

35:11 Speaker 3 have so many ideas flying around in their head, but they cannot contract their brain to do what needs to be done. You can add a timeframe for each thing. You can say to them, "Do the first task for five minutes, then go to the next one. Go to the next one," depending on how much direction they actually need. Why is it helpful? It reduces what's called the cognitive load. They don't have to use their entire brain for each and every task. A lot of the work is sped up and makes it easier for them. Keeps students from shutting down. If you give them a task, you've got a ten-page essay. They get overwhelmed by the first task, and everything shuts down. Increases their motivation because each time they do a small piece, they have the ability to say, "I finished that piece. I can now move to the second one." Those small rewards, and ADHD children are very reward-driven. The reward doesn't have to be money. It can even be social status. It can be a positive comment from a teacher. It can be, uh, some small thing they look forward to, or it could be something bigger, depending on the child's age. And all of those things, when there's small rewards, helps them get through the task. So finishing something is a reward which motivates them to try the next thing. If you tell a child, "I'll give you a million dollars to sit straight for a year," that's a tremendous amount of money.

36:47 Speaker 3 Now, a kid without ADHD is gonna get that million dollars. But if you say to a s- kid with ADHD, "I'll give you a million dollars for you to sit straight for the whole, for the whole year," he's gonna, he's gonna actually give up right away because a year is something he cannot do. And some ADHD kids, that's the entire day. If you say to them, "If you go through the entire day, you will get a reward," they will give up. But if you say to them, "Look, every fifteen minutes you sit still, still, I will give you a check," or, "Every hour you sit still, I'll give you a check," and you give them that check, that will work for them because that's much smaller and easier for them to focus. And the first success is what motivates them to do the second one, and the third one, and the fourth one, and they feel closer. And that's why it's also a good idea for younger children to intro-- use, uh, token systems where you give them a token every hour or every certain amount of time when they're sitting still or when you can redirect them and they do the redirection. That's a great thing to do for them. So those are examples of strategies. There are other issues which we have in the class which we need to take care of, and that is kids with ADHD will often have emotional outbursts. What do they look like? I wanna talk about some

38:11 Speaker 3 of those things. And please excuse me, because I'm gonna refer to some of my notes. It's late at night, and I can't remember everything. So for example, younger children, when they have emotional outbursts, they might cry or yell suddenly because they're frustrated. Um, maybe that's because they can't solve a problem or because they got distracted and they lost focus. They don't even know what the class is talking about. They may have tantrum-like behavior. They may be overreacting-- reacting to when you try and correct them and try to get them to sit down. They might say, "It's not fair. You hate me," and things like that. They may have strong mood swings. They're happy one moment, angry, upset, things like that. Older children, they may start arguing. They may be sarcastic. They may back talk, which we know is chutzpah. They may have emotional shutdown, which means they put their head down, they refuse to engage. They may disrupt class when they're overwhelmed, making loud noises, walk around. They may blame, accuse a peer or a teacher for something, and what they're trying to do is they're trying to escape from the pressure they're feeling because they're not succeeding. Older kids may internalize these signs. They may roll their eyes, they may withdraw, they may be defiant. They may suddenly become really explosive when they feel like they're being criticized or when they're failing. They may shut down, they may skip class, storm out, or they may go into depression, which happens quite often. They may

39:47 Speaker 3 lash out at authority or peers verbally or emotionally. And these things are often triggered by transitions, frustration with tasks, social conflict, being corrected or embarrassed all the time because they need to be redirected. But we need to figure out a way to redirect them in a way which works for them, doesn't embarrass them, and doesn't make them feel foolish, and actually makes them feel that they have some control. So let's talk about it. Number one, to deescalate these kind of kids, first of all, stay calm and neutral. Use a calm and-- calm tone and a body language. Take out any sign of blame. Avoid arguing, escalating the situation. Something like, "You look, you look tired," or, "You look like you need to take a break. How about just stepping outside for a few minutes and take a five-minute break?" That's an example. Create a calm down space. Have a quiet corner. Use a hallway pass or a permission or reset area. Offer it as a break, not as a punishment. Instead of saying, "Get out of my class 'cause you're being disruptive," you go over to that kid and say, "You know what? Looks like you want some-- need some extra time. Why don't you take a break for five minutes? Come back when you settle down." Things like that, those are calm down spaces. Give time, not pressure. Allow space for them to cool down. Address the issue after emotions settle. Instead of saying to a-- somebody who's just got into a fight, "Why

41:27 Speaker 3 did you do that?" Instead say, "Hey, why don't you take a break. Why don't you sit down?" And later on, when things have calmed down, that's when you deal with the issue. Because at that moment, the kid is overwhelmed, and you're not gonna get anywhere. Not only that, the issue's gonna get even worse. Use nonverbal clues, which is simply visual hand signals for breaks. You know there's a kid who's struggling, you might just go to him like this, you know, with your finger, which means you can go. Or you wanna make a deal with a kid, and you want him to be able to go to the bathroom when he needs to, have him or her put up a finger, do something small, and you give them a signal so that it happens naturally, and they feel respected. That's a simple way to do it. Private check-ins, which is you asking, "How you doing?" He gives you an answer back. You have a predetermined sign to check in with that kid in a way which is respectful. Remember, these kids become disrespectful simply because everything you do to them feels like disrespect, because you're constantly telling them to do something which they cannot do. And after a while, they just lose trust in their teachers. Um, acknowledge. Don't argue with them. For example, instead of saying, "Why are you upset?" Just say, "I see you're upset. Let's take a break." Validate feelings without fueling the behavior. "Looks like you're angry. Looks like you're upset. Let's

43:03 Speaker 3 take a break for a while. We'll talk about it." And do talk about it later. Watch for triggers. Preempt outbursts by noticing early signs. Don't wait until the problem becomes big. If you see the kid starting to walk around, or you see the kid starting to get into trouble May say something to him or her to preempt it, as for example, to redirect them in a different place. Debrief them when they're calm. One on walk talk-- One on one talk later. Ask them what happened. What can we do next time? By debriefing when they are calm, not in the moment, you will get very far. They will absorb this information, not as quickly as you like. Remember, we are not curing ADHD, we are just giving them skills to manage their ADHD so that they can thrive. Avoid public discipline and shaming whenever you can. You can redirect in public if you need to, which is, "You guys, you know, it looks like it's being disruptive. Why don't you go here and go there? And you know what? After class, we'll get together, and we'll talk about the problem, which is going on between the two of you." Instead of saying, "Who's-- What is going on here? Who's at fault?" Et cetera, et cetera. Um, let's talk about some other issues. Jeez. We got forty-five minutes. I wanna talk about something else, uh, before we continue, and that is let's talk a little bit about medication. ADHD is a very, uh, uncomfortable diagnosis. Parents do--

44:47 Speaker 3 Some parents do not like it at all. And parents often are resistant to give their child medication. And I understand that. I understand that personally, and I understand that professionally. It's very uncomfortable. It is not an argument you need to have with the parents. It's not a good idea, especially not teachers. That's an argument, that's a discussion which a professional should have with them. But what's important for parents to understand is that ADHD, when it is extremely disruptive, usually medication is the best intervention. There's a lot of research out there about sugar. There's a lot of research there about diet. I cannot speak about all of those. That's not my expertise. But what I have seen, that most of the time, seventy to eighty percent of the time, the cost-benefit analysis is that medication is extremely, extremely beneficial. There are, in general, two or three types of medi-medication which we give for ADHD. One of them is called a stimulant, and it works like coffee. Surprisingly, it actually stimulates the brain. You'd be surprised if it stimulates the brain, why would you stimulate a kid who's already overstimulated? And the answer is because a kid who's stimulated, it's the extraneous, it's the side parts of the brain which overstimulated, but the execu-executive functioning part of the brain, which is physically the frontal lobe, is not getting enough energy, is not getting enough blood, is not getting enough serotonin. And so the medication helps to stimulate that part of the brain. There are many different remedies

46:35 Speaker 3 out there. My experience is none of them can touch what these medications can touch or do. Sometimes it may not be it. Sometimes it may be a, an allergy or something like that. Those things are possible. The problem is, like I said earlier, kids with anxiety can't take those medications. Why it's important for you to know this is because if a child comes into class one day and their behavior is totally out of line, which happened to me as a seventh-grade teacher. One kid came into class one day, and he was acting really strange. He was poking everybody else in the back with a pencil, with a sharp part of the pencil all the way, actually making them bleed. And this was weird, and he had a smirk on his face when I was bringing it to his attention. And I said to his mom, "You know, Mom, uh, the child was acting pretty strange today. He was poking the kids. I'm not sure what was going on. Can you give me some help?" And she goes, "Oh, he probably didn't take his ADHD meds this morning." She had never told me her child had ADHD. I never knew it, but I found out that he had ADHD, and suddenly... And, and he was taking medication without my knowledge. This in seventh grade, and I s- realized what was going on. So sometimes that's, that's an issue which might be happening. There are other medic-- Now, ADHD medications, which are stimulants, usually make children lose

48:05 Speaker 3 weight. And as a result, if a child is already very thin, sometimes a doctor will not be willing to put them on ADHD medications, so they will put them on a non-stimulant medication. And that is something like... So stimulant medications, you'll hear names like Adderall, Ritalin, methylphenidate, and, uh, Vyvanse. Those are typical for... There's Concerta, things like that. Then there are non-stimulant medications, which are actually the opposite. They don't cause a child to lose weight. They actually can sometimes cause the child to gain weight. Those are Strattera and some of the antidepressants which have anti-ADHD, uh, properties in them. So it's important just to know about some of those things out there. Again, please remember that your job is not to diagnose, your job is to report. But it's also important to work as a school to have a system in place. And here's why I talk to administrators, and it's so important. Administrators, it's so important that there's a protocol in place how and when to contact parents if there's a problem. You want to contact parents early to say to them, "Your child is having a little bit of a difficulty in class, and we're gonna be monitoring it so that when you come back, and you say we're concerned, we need-- your child may need an assessment." They don't hear this the first time at parent-teacher conference, where they're told, "Your child is impossible." What they need to know is that it's coming. You might say, "Look, we're dealing with it. We're

49:46 Speaker 3 gonna try and put in some interventions, like move him to the front of the class, move her to the front of the class, maybe accommodate this per-- this child." And there needs to be some system how the behavior in the classroom is being, is being, uh, communicated to the parents so that everybody's on board. My experience is that if you have a system of how you let parents know about this problem... And these are things which we can provide trainings. There are trainings which are provided to schools about how to do this kind of communication, how to set up these protocols. These things are available. Uh, my wife does this t-typically 'cause she's a special ed-adminis-- education administrator. She trains schools. There are other people who do it. There's books about this, how to set up these protocols in the school so that you address these issues in a timely manner, so that the school is, is, is, um, supporting the teacher, and that there can be a joint plan and a joint expectation what the intervention is going to be, what we're gonna do next. So if a child's got some, uh, difficult behavior, we call the teacher in, we say, "This is what we're gonna do next. We're gonna watch it and see how it happens, and this is our expectation. If it doesn't happen, we're gonna need to go to the next step and maybe do an assessment," and things like that. That's what the, uh, that's what the school can do,

51:13 Speaker 3 uh, to, to collaborate. Um, anything else which I haven't covered over here? We are running, uh, out of time. I think we could end over here, and we can start taking questions. Okay.

51:33 Speaker 4 Okay. Thank you very much, Rabbi Dr. Shagalov. Um, to all of our participants, if you would like to ask a question, please type it in the chat. I don't know if we're gonna get to every question, um, but we will try to get through as many as we can in the next fifteen minutes or so. Okay. The first question we have is, "Dr. Shagalov, what are good resources, books, links, videos to look over that provide practical tools to support oneself or others with ADHD?"

52:05 Speaker 3 Nowadays, you don't even have to do much work. You can go onto your phone, and you can type into AI. Whether you've got WhatsApp AI, which is Meta, or if you've got Gemini, or if you've got ChatGPT, just ask the question: What resources can I have? My child is seven, twelve, fourteen. My student is twelve, fourteen, is flying off the wall. She is not focused. What are some interventions I can do? And you will get a wonderful list just like mine because ChatGPT, AI will do that for you. So the resources are right there on your phone.

52:45 Speaker 4 Okay. Thank you. The next question we have, practical question, is, "I find it hard to give constant rewards or checks during a packed day because our schedule is dense, so it takes me away from the rest of the class."

52:58 Speaker 3 You can... It's a very good point. Excellent point. You don't have to give rewards right away. You can have a child have a piece of paper, or you can have a piece of paper and simply keep a record of the child, hour one, hour two, hour three, hour four. It may be quarter one, quarter two, quarter three, quarter four. And you mark it, or maybe have in your pocket some tokens, not some rewards, but some tokens. And as you walk by the person's desk, you drop one onto the desk. You drop a white one, a red one, which means different things. A white one mean-- may mean a positive things. A red one may mean a negative. And but you try not to give negative ones. The... But what you do is you can give these tokens easily and quietly if you have a system in place.

53:48 Speaker 4 Okay. Thank you. We have a lot of questions about the medication, and I might chunk them together, um, and share a few of the questions, even though they're somewhat different. One question is, "Are you saying that medication is extremely worth it, mostly in cases where the child is disruptive?" Um, you know what? Let's do one at a time because they are different types of questions.

54:12 Speaker 3 Let me, let me, let me give an introduction, and I think I'll answer some of these questions myself.

54:19 Speaker 4 Perfect.

54:19 Speaker 3 With regard to medication, first of all, medication is never the first intervention. The first intervention is to try and do these things. Parents are gonna ask you, "Have you tried to intervene? Have you moved the child to the front of the class? Have you been doing chunking? Have you done some of these things to reduce the stress in the classroom? Have you moved the child from one place to the next?" Once you've seen that you've tried everything you can and you have not been able to make any difference with this child, and they're still struggling, then there's the question of medication. If they're doing well academically, the school may be willing to tolerate a little bit of disruption without medication. If the child is losing out because they're losing friends, even if they're doing well academically, or they're just not achieving very much, then it becomes a cost-benefit analysis. We need to do something for this child. We need to do an intervention. My experience is, after a child has been put on intervention, most parents regret that they didn't do it any earlier. Now, some teachers and some parents are concerned that when they put the child on the medication, the child loses their excitement. Now, that's a very important point, but here's the truth. Sometimes you have to ask the child how the child is doing. The child may sometimes be like they're doing a lot better. And yes, they are not as lively as before. They're not as disruptive as before, but

55:55 Speaker 3 they may be more productive. If they're not more productive, and if they become zombie-like That just means they're on the wrong medication, or it means they're on the wrong dose. Because sure, nobody needs a child to become a zombie. Nobody needs a child to lose their personality. Is it possible that the child may lose some of their what looks like creativity? Yes, I will be honest. Sometimes a child might lose what looks like their creativity, but in reality, what they're losing is, is their pisur hanefesh. They're losing their scatterbrain-ness. Of course, if they're losing too much of it, like I said earlier, it's a cost-benefit analysis. That's not something the teacher needs to worry about. That's something the teacher can tell the parents, "This child looks like a zombie in my class today." But it's really a conversation the parent has with the, with the psychiatrist or the pediatrician or the psychologist who's talking to the child and asking the child, "Is this medication working for you?" Most of the time, pediatricians give the child medication and send them into the classroom, and that's fine if it works. When it doesn't work, you wanna have a professional who's interacting to the-- with the child to get a sense of what's going on, when the medication is working, what about it is working, what's not working about it. That's something which parents need to know. They can't just have a doctor prescribe it every time. Sometimes it'll work. Sometimes they'll need a therapist and a psychologist

57:31 Speaker 3 or a psychiatrist to go along with this process to monitor it. And a teacher can be helpful to describe what's going on in the classroom. Now.

57:40 Speaker 4 Okay. And I, I think that answered a number of the questions about medication. Um, as people are posting questions, I know the last thing Dr. Sagalov spoke about was medication. But if you want to also ask questions about some of the interventions you-- we can do as teachers or understanding ADHD a little bit better, um, feel free to ask questions on those as well. I'm gonna a-um, share a couple of questions. Rabbi Sagalov, one question we got was any suggestions for a class of twenty with more than half are focus challenged and disruptive? And I think we're seeing more of that these days.

58:14 Speaker 3 So the statistics usually say that that is-- shouldn't be happening, and the statistics say that maybe something else is going on. And there may be a few things going on. As we know that discipline, most discipline problems in the classroom are actually curriculum issues, which means that if the curriculum doesn't fit the, the, the population of the students, you're gonna have a lot of disruption. So sometimes what's needed is a more structured curriculum, a lesser curriculum, a tighter curriculum, a looser curriculum to be able to address some of these problems. Sometimes we're Chabad schools, so we let anybody in, so you might get a big concentration of ADHD students. But if you're getting in a typical school, a large group of students who are disruptive, having a different time, it would be a good idea for the teacher to get some resources to figure out how can we adapt the curriculum. Is there something else they can do in the classroom? Uh, sometimes it's just very difficult. I've-- I have had run classes where I've had three or four children with ADHD the same day, and it's overwhel-- in the same class, and it's overwhelming. And, you know, I got reflux that year. That happens sometimes. There's another issue, and that other issue is there's something called pseudo-ADHD, which is not an actual diagnosable term, but that is just the short attention span we see in today's generation. Our kids and many kids are exposed to extremely highly stimulating information. They're watching short videos. They're

1:00:04 Speaker 3 watching highly rewarding things on their smartphones and at home, et cetera. And school is just practically is boring. And that's a fundamental problem we are dealing with in today's society, that a lot of the kids are coming in, they're not-- they don't know how to read, and they're doing things in class which they don't, which, which they don't do at home. They're expected to read. Some kids just don't know how to read. And if the kids don't know how to read, they're gonna have a hard time if you're trying to teach them out of a Chumash. They're gonna have a hard time. That's when you have to step back and say, "We need a school intervention here to deal with these problems." We can't solve that just by giving kids medication. We can reduce it a little bit sometimes, but most of the times, that's a larger community, and it's a whole different topic, which we shouldn't-- I'm not gonna get into tonight, but it's something which, yes, we're seeing more and more in the classroom, more and more in the schools, and it's becoming a issue of how... I was in, for example, I was in Nevada. I was in Nevada, and I watched certain teachers who were using technology. They were using smart boards. I was so impressed. And sometimes using this technology, it's not easy for us as teachers, especially when I'm old, that I'm not going back into the classroom. But learning these technologies can-- bring them into the classroom can

1:01:30 Speaker 3 sometimes help because what we're doing is, it's called gamifying learning. And gamifying learning is adding stimulation, adding activity in the classroom to help these issues. That's just a long, uh, long and short way to answer your question, that question.

1:01:48 Speaker 4 Okay. Um, and if a student, first grade, needs constant redirection to stay seated, what's a practical way to help them stay in their seat and not go around and disturb their friends?

1:02:02 Speaker 3 Sometimes a very practical way is if we're not talking about ADHD, you may have a child who's slightly immature, and he hasn't learned to sit still. You may have to raise the reward level. I'm-- To be honest with you, I'm not an expert in early childhood, but I would say you have to rais-raise the reward level. Or if you see he just cannot sit down, you may have to, um... You may have to give him an opportunity to have a timeout place. This kid's distracting. Like I said, you ask him to go to a timeout place so that he doesn't have to sit in the same place, or she doesn't have to sit in the same place as everybody else. If this is an ongoing problem, that's a behavior you wanna talk about with a... Once you've tried one thing, you tried another, and the child just can't go back, sometimes you can put the child on medication. Here's a myth which a lot of parents and teachers have, and that is that a child who's put on ADHD medication means they're diagnosed or they're on medication for life. It's incorrect. ADHD medication doesn't only help children with ADHD. It actually helps their brains form better because it gives them the capacity to slow down and take in information which otherwise they wouldn't be able to take in. Children who've taken early intervention medication, it's true, there may be side effects sometimes, but children who've taken early intervention medication have shown to succeed later on

1:03:35 Speaker 3 in life, even when they're not taking the medication, because they have integrated important social and academic information, which they would not have been able to integrate if they were not on the medication. And so it's another important thing to know. These children, those are very specific questions about giving them alternative options if they can't sit still, but if they're too disruptive, it may be time for them to be assessed.

1:04:05 Speaker 4 Okay. Thank you. We'll do just a few more questions. A lot of the questions that have been asked are different versions of the same question or asked in a different way or different situation, but the same underlying thing. So I'm not going through every single question. But if I missed a theme in my-- in the questions that I've presented, um, please type it up again, and I'll do my best to ask it. We have another just a few minutes of questions. Um, so we had a question before about how young would you go for, um, looking into medication as an option.

1:04:39 Speaker 3 Depends how disruptive it is. If it's too-- It's really a cost-benefit analysis. I'm a therapist, and I do not work directly with children at a young age, but I do work with parents who've got children at a young age. If that child cannot sit in a classroom and the school says, "We cannot handle that class-- child," if they're five, may be a good idea to put them on medication. If you can't keep them at home and maybe they need some time to develop, who knows? Maybe they're immature. But that's what we call a cost-benefit analysis with a, with a, with a teacher, with a parent and, and the professional about how early you intervene. I've seen some kids who've been so from the womb, literally, they just cannot stay still. But, you know, when a child is a year and he's disruptive, mother's watching him and keeps redirecting them. You know, you don't have to put them on the medication. There is some evidence, you don't wanna do it between one and two years old, but four, five years old, I've seen children being put on medication. It's again, how bad is the problem? How serious is it? Is a question which is between the mother, between the parents, and between the professional to decide whether it's worth it to do that or not. Usually, by classroom age, it's already important because a child who is not treated for ADHD and has ADHD is much more likely to become an addict later in life. Today,

1:06:15 Speaker 3 that means smoke marijuana, watch porn, get into car accidents, not do well at work. All of the risk factors are greater for a kid who's unmedicated in ADHD or not properly medicated. That's just a fact. One of the things I hear so often from parents is, "I don't want my child labeled." My response to them is, "I appreciate it, and I understand that, but your child is self-labeling. If they don't get a diagnosis of ADHD, they'll get the diagnosis of being a terror, being a hoodspiniac, or some other-- or being a sleepy kid or being a failure." So they're self-diagnosing. That's a choice. Parents have to understand what's happening. I'm speaking directly. When I speak to parents, I'm definitely a little bit kinder about this 'cause I understand it. I have had to deal with it personally. I've had to deal with ADHD and finding out about a diagnosis, and I understand how sensitive we as professionals, we as teachers, we as administrators have to be to share information with a parent that their child is struggling with something and is not going to be exactly typical. That's something which we really need to be sensitive to and understand that's a difficult thing to deal with.

1:07:37 Speaker 4 Okay. If we could touch briefly on the last few questions that came in, and I'll just go in whatever order it is. Um, I think each of them could have another half hour. But briefly, one question that was asked is, um, what about helping through other interventions like neuroplasticity interventions from Dr. Reuven Feuerstein's methods or other types of activities that could heal the ADHD or other types of more, um, new programs?

1:08:09 Speaker 3 I've nothing against them. I actually cannot... I have to be honest and say I've not explored every single one of them. I'm familiar with some of these and not with others. But you gotta keep in mind, we live in an frumer world, and once we live in a frumer world, we're quite limited is what we can do. Sure, you can put your child into a public school classroom, which has got all of these supports available, and have the child have an alternative curriculum, and they'll do great, and they may do wonderful. You can put them into a Montessori school, you can put them into another school, and you may have to do that if the child is struggling too much. The reality is, we don't all have those resources, and not all those resourc- resources always work. And so sometimes it's like I said, it's just a practical thing that medication can work and works well in most situations. Again, I'm, I'm a little concerned that I'm ask- answering these questions to teachers because these questions are more the questions related to parents, not so much to teachers. Yes, it's true, teachers can try and do these intervention... inven- interventions if you're aware of them. Neuroplasticity exercises or what I call brain, brain, um, exercises, those are great things which teachers can do. And I will tell you this. When I was a teacher, I was not very organized, but I was very personal and very close, connected very well with my students. One of

1:09:44 Speaker 3 the things I noticed was that my ADHD children suffered a lot from it. Other kids did very well. The next teacher was highly structured, had a very strong curriculum for his classroom, would direct the kids with everything. "Now we're taking out the pencils. Now we're taking out the Chumashim. Now you're putting back your stuff in your desk. Now you take this out. Now you take that out." He had those ADHD kids doing very well in his classroom. So sure, there are a lot of interventions we can do, but it's important to understand that most of those interventions are temporary. They're not long-term. Intervention is a neurodiversity. It's not just a bad behavior.

1:10:33 Speaker 4 Great. Thank you. Um, in addition to a lot of the questions, there are some great comments in the chat, and encourage everyone to read them. Um, I will... we'll do one... There are two more questions here of, at, at the end of interest. Um, we'll tr- Ra- Rabbi, if I could ask you to also try to answer them briefly so we could wrap up here. And if it needs more than that, I'm sure we, we could find another opportunity, Be'ezras Hashem. So one question that was asked, I think you touched on this before, but any tips for how to juggle giving over the information you're teaching while also needing to monitor kids' attention and giving them feedback? What if you need to mon- mon- monitor multiple kids, multiple corrections, and still need to cover info? And I relate to this question.

1:11:18 Speaker 3 Um-

1:11:18 Speaker 4 I see it in so many classrooms.

1:11:20 Speaker 3 That's a very good question. One, one simple answer is teachers should not be sitting down by the desks. Teachers should continuously walk around the classroom, and because they're walking around, and they have pre-discussed, pre-determined cues and things like that, that's an ea-- uh, not, that's a way to deal with that problem. So they've got, um... You've got... Yes, that's a very good line somebody just put up there. "You're not teaching content, you're teaching students." It's a very good point, and, uh, from a very good ed- from a very good educator. So, um, I, uh... My point is simply that you can walk around, and by walking around, you have the ability to keep focused on a lot more children. We're used to doing standing up in one place. Sometimes it's not, it's not so easy.

1:12:15 Speaker 4 Okay.

1:12:15 Speaker 3 And by the way, mo- modification of students simply can mean that a child should not be in class a full seven hours or full eight hours. I wanna make a shout-out to our teachers and to our schools. One of the things I hear a lot is, "It would be a wonderful thing if our schools were more trained to do these things." Well, one of the things that Lubavitch Rebbe, the Rebbe taught us was we first do and then we fix. Because if we wait till we do it right, it'll never get done. And so that has been the shitah of Chabad all along. We open up a school because children need to learn. Then we figure out that, you know what, some children have special needs, and then we figure that out. And yes, teachers and school, teachers and students and parents, I'm sorry, teachers and administrators need to continuously evolve, but we're not perfect. These problems are going on in public schools, but we just don't have the funds. We don't have the funds to create the perfect environments for our students. Sometimes the student is struggling with something, even though it's uncomfortable, the reality might be that the school just cannot provide what that kid needs. We can try as much as we can, but at some point, we need to say, "If this isn't working, school can't do it." Now, the reality is, as we get bigger, we're gonna have to provide these things, and those resources are available. When you have

1:13:42 Speaker 3 two hundred children in a school, you cannot get away with saying you do not have a resource room. A resource room is a requirement in a school that large because there needs to be a system in place. These things can be done. There are professionals who can help schools acculturate and learn how to do these things. These things are available. In every school which has got sixty kids provide every single service, it's not always possible, and that's unfortunate reality which we live in. It's sad. It would be nice that we could, but it's not always possible, and, uh, it's a sad reality because these children are suffering, and they need an intervention. So sometimes we just gotta be as, do what, do the best we can. Thank you for this opportunity. Thank you for moderating this, this, uh, uh, presentation. Um, and thanks to everybody out there for listening. Uh, much appreciated. And, um, if anybody has any questions, you're welcome to email me. My email is drshagalow@gmail.com. It's one word, DrShagalow, D-R-S-H-A-G-A-L-O-W, @gmail.com. If it's a short question, I'd gladly answer it. If it's a therapy session, I will bill you, and I'll ask you to make an appointment. All the best. Kol tuv.

1:15:09 Speaker 4 Thank you for listening. Wishing you much hatzlacha in your vital shlichus.