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Courtney Krueger
Professor Sullivan
Educational Psychology
December 12, 2018
Final Paper

1. ADHD (Question 1)

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is “a disability in which children

consistently show one or more of these characteristics over a period of time: (1) inattention, (2)

hyperactivity, and (3) impulsivity” (Santrock 186). These characteristics prevent a child from

being able to focus and especially limit them academically. People who suffer from ADHD have

a very hard time focusing as well as sitting still for too long. There is a debate about how many

more people are being diagnosed, and if they are being over diagnosed. According to the

documentary “Take Your Pills”, “In 1990, 600,000 children were on stimulants. By 2011, it

grew to 3.5 million”. Some say it is just because the disease has a name now and can be

diagnosed, where as other believe that things like the medicine business, lack of proper diagnosis

and technology can be attributed to the increase of diagnosis. I think that all of these factors

equally play a role into the increase of ADHD diagnosis, like many other disorders, ADHD has

always been around but for a long time it was not, yet a term or people did not know about the

term. I think that in some cases, the medicine industry could be linked to ADHD. According to

“Take Your Pills”, when Adderall boomed in 1969, there were 8 billion pills produced that year.

The medicine industry makes a profit for Adderall because of how many people use it. Even

though today production is more limited, the medicine business makes a lot of money from

people taking medications, so the more people taking medicine like Adderall, the better for them.

Technology could also increase the amount of people who have ADHD because we now live in a
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world where kids are glued to their phones and everyone gets instant gratification. It might be

harder for them to focus when they are used to needing technology to help them to sit still and

pay attention to something. For example, my aunt and uncle used to always give my cousin his

iPad from when he was 1 until about 3 or 4. They would give it to him whenever he ate, so he

would be distracted and sit still for the meal or not make a scene at a restaurant. But the problem

was he was so dependent on the iPad that he could not focus and eat without it. If he were to go

to school and have to eat lunch without an iPad, he would not be able to focus, which would

make him seem like he has ADHD and can’t sit or focus.

The documentary “Take Your Pills” taught me a lot about ADHD and the use of

medicine such as Adderall. I was not aware that the use of drugs like Adderall were so popular,

especially in colleges and being used for increased academic performance. And it is not

something that is new, “Take Your Pills” states, “The first article about college abuse of

amphetamine to study was in Times magazine in 1937.” A lot of people argue that taking

Adderall isn’t fair from an academic standpoint because it gives people an advantage which is

unfair. I agree with this statement, but only when it is applied to Adderall being dealt and given

to people that don’t actually have ADHD. For people with ADHD, it gives them an advantage

academically; however, they started behind everyone, so all it does for them is catches them up

to where everyone else was and levels the playing field. I think in order to prevent ADHD,

doctors should be 100% sure the child has ADHD before prescribing it, as well and making sure

to give them the right amount, so there is none leftover to sell. In addition, when faced with the

ethics of students without ADHD taking Adderall to get a leg up, they did a study to see how

effective it actually was. “In the end, we found no significant difference between Adderall and

the placebo, expect for one question: “Do you feel the pill you too today enhanced your
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cognition?” They go on to talk about how yes, these drugs help people to stay awake longer or

focus through a task, but they don’t actually increase your knowledge, and the side effects they

give can be enhanced without them for non-ADHD student. “The single, most universal effect

that amphetamine, Adderall, has on anyone who takes it, is a feeling that they’re doing better.”

This can be used to argue that Adderall is not considered cheating. The ethics of Adderall for

non-ADHD students is a largely debated issue that has a lot of support for both sides of the

argument.

My brother, Lance, has ADHD and after talking to both him and my parents about it I

learned a lot about the subject. My brother was first diagnosed at 1st grade and was given

medication for it in 5th grade, he then stopped using the medication in 9th grade. I asked my mom

how bad she thought his ADHD was and if she thought it could have just been because he was a

kid and was fooling around with his friend and not paying attention. She said that when he was

first diagnosed, his teacher was not the best that year and basically recommended all of the boys

in his class for ADHD. This is another reason that ADHD may be over diagnosed because the

symptoms for it are similar to how just a normal 5-year-old is going to act. But when all of the

boys got tested in that class, Lance was the only one who was found to have it. At first it was not

a big concern because he was still young, but in 5th grade it started to become a real problem. He

was not able to sit still and focus at all and was very disruptive to the class. My mom told me she

got phone calls several times a week. And this had been happening with every teacher he had

since 1st grade and was getting significantly worse.

My parents always had the option of medicating him, but they said it was never pushed

upon them and every time they went for checkups, they would leave the decision to Lance.

Lance’s best friend also had ADHD, and he had started taking medicine for it and Lance could
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see how much he improved and said to like it, so he made the decision to try it. He was given

Vyvanse which lasted him 12 hours and Adderall for occasion use which lasted him 4 hours. He

told me he usually took Vyvanse on weekdays because he needed it all day for school, and then

Adderall on weekends because he would only need focus for a couple hours a day. The medicine

definitely helped him in school and allowed him to read his academic potential and get better

grade. My mom told me that in high school, when he was no longer on medicine, he had taken

some intelligence tests. The results showed that he scored exceptionally well in a lot of

categories and they were very shocked. But that in all of the tasks that focused on concentration

he did very poorly on. These results showed that he was very smart and capable, but he just

couldn’t focus on school enough to display his intelligence.

The reason he went off of the medicine is because the side effect of it making him

antisocial, when he was on the medicine he did not say much to other people in school and

usually kept to himself. I remember people would always say to me “wow Lance is so quiet” or

“why does he never say anything?”, but meanwhile I knew that at home when he was off the

medicine he could not sit still and would be bouncing off the walls. Especially as he was about to

enter high school and was getting very active in social events like church activities, he didn’t

want the medicine to hold him back from the social experiences he was missing. However, I

remember when he did stop using it, he talked to me a lot about how it was very hard for him.

His grades dropped a lot and he was put in the “special” classes which killed his academic

confidence. He had trouble adjusting to playing hockey without the medicine because he was so

used to having the added focus. In addition, because everyone had seen him as this quiet person

for all of these years, he was labelled as shy which made it very difficult to speak out without

people doing a double take. I remember one time specifically, it was almost a year after he had
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quit the medication and we were on a mission trip and he was saying something in a big group.

And after he spoke someone said to him “wow, Lance just talked, that’s a surprise”. And I could

tell how much that comment upset him because even a year after the antisocial effects were over,

he was still mocked when he didn’t act shy like everyone saw him as. And on that same trip, one

of my youth group leaders was giving everyone on our team nicknames and the one he gave

Lance was “the silent warrior”. Now most people would have seen that as a compliment, and

that’s how he intended it, but to Lance it was more of an insult because he realized that he was

always going to be seen as quiet in school and in church. The one girl in “Take Your Pills”, who

took Adderall, said, “I remember I was concerned about not feeling entirely myself, too zoned

and I didn’t feel as funny as usual. But you had to pick and choose, and I wanted to pick getting

good grades and doing well on the SATs.” I think that this accurately describes the struggle that

people on ADHD medicine go through and is what my brother went through. These medicines

definitely help people academically, but at what cost? You have to pick between getting good

grades and being normal, and in my brother’s case he had to sacrifice his good grades to be who

he wanted to be.

2. Learning Disabilities (Question 2)

F.A.T. city workshop is a workshop that demonstrates what having a learning disability is

like and the struggles learning disabled students face in the classroom. F.A.T. stands for

Frustration, Anxiety and Tension, where are the emotions these students feel in class. The

instructor of this workshop talked extremely fast, it was hard to process what he was saying

because once you processed it, he was already onto talking about something else. This is how

children with learning disabilities feel, and it is very easy for them to get confused and behind
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because of this. This also leads to anxiety and fear of getting called on, which is something these

students have to deal with when they are trying to learn. The instructor did not give people

enough time to process questions and respond and would make them feel bad for not knowing

the answer right away. Because of that, people gave him less eye contact in hope that they

wouldn’t be called on. The instructor explained how if you have a child like this in your

classroom, a good thing to do is to tell them you will not call on them unless you are standing

right in front of their desk. That way if you aren’t standing there, they don’t have to worry about

being called on and can focus on learning instead of having anxiety. And when you do stand in

front of their desk, they will be prepared to be called on and will not be surprised and stressed.

Another thing the instructor noted was how he did not give them positive reinforcement

when they did good, because in his mind the right answer was expected. But because of that, the

people did not volunteer to answer questions because if they got it right, nothing happened, but if

they got it wrong, they were humiliated. Being humiliated was not worth the risk if they didn’t

get anything out of it. To get people with learning disabilities more likely to engage, it’s

important as a teacher to make sure you are encouraging them, praising them when they get the

right answer, and not being too harsh if they get it wrong.

The instructor also went over how a common misconception with learning disabled

students, is that they are thought to not have enough motivation, and that they aren’t trying hard

enough. But this workshop shows how motivation isn’t the problem, the problem is often their

perception. The instructor demonstrates this by showing the class a picture and asking them to

write a title for the picture. The pictured looked like a skull so the one student said something

about death and the instructor got very mad at her. He said how that wasn’t funny and she should

be ashamed for her behavior. She was very confused why the instructor treated her like that,
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which is something learning disabled students struggle with because they often get in trouble and

honestly don’t know why. He then explained to the class the that picture was not of a skull, it

was one of those trick pictures and was actually of a woman brushing her hair in front of a

mirror. So, it makes sense why he was mad her title was about death, but she did not understand

that because she perceived the picture wrong. A lot of times learning disabled students are

accused of fooling around and trying to be funny when they just can’t process things in the way

that everyone else can. Noting this as a teacher can be important, if something like that

happened, the teacher could have asked the student why they picked that title, she then would

have explained because it was a skull. Then the teacher would understand she just misinterpreted

the picture and would explain the right way to view it.

The last thing that was explained in this workshop that I learned from was the idea of

fairness. Many teachers will not give special accommodations to learning disabled students

because they claim it is not fair to the other students. But the instructor explains how fairness is

not giving everyone the same exact thing, because not everyone needs the same exact thing.

Fairness is giving everyone what they specifically need. Some students need more help than

others, so it is fair to give extra help to people, so they are on the same page as the rest of the

class. It would actually be unfair to give everyone accommodations because unlike learning

disabled students, the average student does not need things like extra time for tests and to be in a

separate testing room. This workshop really opened my eyes to the struggle that students with

learning disabilities go through and provided me with helpful tips of how to help them in my

future classroom.

3. Motivation (Question 4)
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Motivation is the drive that pushes us to achieve our goals and is a huge factor in

education because without motivation, students cannot learn the material they need to. There are

many different views on motivation and what causes it, coming from different psychological

perspectives such has behavioral, humanistic, cognitive and social outlooks. The behaviorist

perspective “emphasizes external rewards and punishments as keys in determining a student’s

motivation” (Santrock 424). Behaviorists believe that incentives and rewards can increase

excitement about the task and make the student more likely to want to reach the goal. Examples

of these in the classroom are grades, starts, stickers, prize boxes, displaying work,

complimenting them, giving them rewards such as extra play time, etc. A big critique of rewards

is that it can get to the point where they student is only doing the work for rewards, and when

they grow up and are not given rewards, they will struggle to be motivated.

The humanistic view of motivation “stresses students’ capacity for personal grown,

freedom to choose their destiny, and positive qualities (such as being sensitive to others”

(Santrock 424). Abraham Maslow is a psychologist who has a humanistic view on motivation

and incorporated that into his hierarchy of needs theory. The hierarchy of needs stays that there

are levels of needs and a person must fulfill their primary needs before they can focus on

secondary needs. The most basic need in Maslow’s theory is physiological needs which include

things such as food, water and sleep. The second level of needs is safety, which includes shelter,

protection, survival and a feeling of safety. Going into the secondary needs, there is love and

belongingness which is affection, attention and security from other people. Maslow’s next level

of needs is esteem, specifically self-esteem, which is when a person feels positive self-worth and

good about themselves. And the last tier on the hierarchy is self-actualization, which is when a

person reaches their fullest potential and is a need that Maslow believed only very few people
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fulfilled, such as Gandhi or Mother Theresa. Maslow believed that in order to have things like

esteem or feel loved, that they first need to be fed properly and feel safe.

I have seen Maslow’s theory in action with so many people and I believe it can be

applied to the classroom as well. I have been on a lot of mission trips throughout my life, and I

went to the town of Butler, PA for a week for 7 summers in a row. The people I dealt with in this

town were people who did not have their primary needs fulfilled, they were starving and came

from awful home lives where they were scared of being beat up in their own homes. And I could

see how greatly it effected if they felt loved or how high their self esteem was. I remember there

was this one girl who I became rather close with, and as I was talking to her and I told her I

loved her, and she legitimately did not believe me. I will never forget the words she said to me,

“how is it possible that someone can love me when my parents don’t love me enough to feed me,

or if I don’t even love myself?” This is a perfect example of Maslow’s theory and how things

like self-worth, love and protentional are not obtainable without necessities being met first. This

can apply to the classroom in the sense that I might end up having students in my class who do

not have their basic needs met, and it is important to understand how that will affect their

motivation and success in the classroom. All the children I conversed with while in Butler were

all doing poorly in school, because how are they supposed to focus on a math problem when they

are too busy worrying about when their next meal is? Understanding this concept is important as

a teacher to understand why some students might not being reaching their full potential and

providing them with extra patience and help.

The cognitive view of why people are motivated believes that “students’ thoughts guide

their motivation” (Santrock 425). This perspective believes that students are in control of their

motivation and can increase it by themselves by setting goals and their expectations for success.
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The behaviorist outlook thinks that external rewards can motivate students, but the cognitive

outlook thinks that students can motivate themselves. They learn because they want to increase

their knowledge, accomplish their goals and better the world around them. Lastly, there is the

social perspective believes that motivation is called by the need or affiliation or relatedness,

which is “the motive to be securely connected with other people” (Santrock 425). This view

suggests that some people are motivated by friendships, attachment to parents and having a

positive relationship with teachers. This relational desire causes people to achieve more and be

more engaged in their learning. This also plays in to the belonging mindset and how some people

who do not feel like they belong in their school struggle to learn.

All of these perspectives can contribute to the psychology behind motivation, as well as

the concepts of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation is “doing something to

obtain something else” (Santrock 427). This is receiving outside, tangible things to increase a

person’s productivity and to encourage people to reach their goals. For example, a major

extrinsic reward that motives people is money. A lot of people work solely to make money, even

if it means they are miserable, because money is what puts food on the table and allows them to

function in society. In the classroom, extrinsic motivations are incentives, which the behaviorist

view believes best motives children. There are rewards for good behavior and learning such as

grades, prizes, stickers etc. I saw extrinsic rewards many times throughout my observations, one

of the 3rd grade classes I observed had a point system. When the class was being very well

behaved and focused on work, the teacher would reward them with a point. And when they were

not listening or goofing off, they would lose a point. And if they got to a certain amount of

points, they would get a prize and then the points would reset to zero and the process would

repeat. Many people believe that extrinsic motivation does work, but it should not be the only
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thing motivating students. Intrinsic motivation, which is “motivation to do something for its own

sake”, is a big component of students’ motivation. Humanistic and cognitive approaches to

motivation believe that intrinsic motivations last longer than extrinsic motivations and are more

effective.

In my future classroom, I plan to incorporate some extrinsic rewards, but I mainly want

to encourage intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation can be very effective, but I believe it

teaches the students that they will always get rewards when they do good and will teach them to

rely on that to get things done. If we teach children that, when they are older and aren’t given

extrinsic rewards, they will lack motivation. I believe that intrinsic motivation also promotes

happiness that isn’t situational. Students who truly want to learn and better themselves and

others and the people that are going to thrive no matter what obstacles are thrown at them. I

believe that intrinsic motivation is much more powerful and is the reason I want to become a

teacher. I could have picked a profession that pays a lot more money, but in the end, I would not

be happy with what I was doing, and I believe I would be very unmotivated to do my job. This

reminds me from a line in the song “Remember This” by NF that says “if money’s where you

find happiness, you’ll always be poor. If you don’t like the job you have, then what do you do it

for?”. Teaching is something that I feel passionate about despite not getting extrinsic rewards for

it and I think that is the kind of thinking that should encourage in the classroom and taught to

students.