Abstract:

The Attention Dynamics Protocols (ADP) are a series of intra- and inter- personal practices originally designed to provide students classified with attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder knowledge of practicable skills to obtain academic success and better parental interaction without recourse to medication. The program was highly successful on a small scale and can be modified in such a way such that it does not just focus upon ADD/ADHD students and could benefit school districts nationwide if they were systematized and adopted. This paper seeks to outline just such a project currently under development, as doing so should help non-ADD/ADHD classified students obtain similar results of better grades as well as improved relationships between children, their parents and their teachers on a large scale.

Some of the strategies for applying the ADP include creating greater principles of reflectivity, peacefulness and presence in the classroom. Several ADP principles have already been cited as beneficial for classroom interaction, such as using specific phraseology in lesson planning to illustrate the applicability of lesson plans to students lives and co-creation of classroom rules. However, this has not been systematically combined with other means of showing relevance to course material, does not recognize the benefits accrued in the classroom by having individually constructed codes of behavior that reflect the long-term goals of the students and doesn’t speak to the norms and means of maintaining classroom peace.

One of the difficulties in implementing such a program stems from changing patterns of teacher behavior. The predominantly disseminated means of maintaining classroom order in American classrooms is by the application of increasing disciplinary behavioral modification strategies such as detention, suspension and expulsion. Such behavioral interventions presupposed a certain level of rationality that has been widely dismissed by behavioral psychologists. Instead of presupposing a false maturity, ADP realized that by teaching meditation habits and bioenergetic practices to continually disruptive students moves away from a failed retributive model of discipline and towards a reformative model. This process encourages students co-creation in the learning process while also removing a false sense of personal entitlement that.

It is here we see that applying attention dynamics protocols isn’t just about stating classroom expectations for students behavior via their teacher, but also getting students to self-discipline and modify their behavior. Thus the application of ADP requires not only teaching student’s practices that, when applied, lead to the dissipation of excess energies that lead to distraction and disruption but also altering the prevalently disseminated teachers paradigm.