One School’s Remarkable No-Ritalin Approach to Helping Children Learn and Succeed.

We’ve all read the stories about medicating hyperactive (ADHD) kids. The controversy shows no signs of ending, as parents and doctors debate the merits of diagnosing and medicating children at younger and younger ages. Chris Mercogliano has a strong opinion on the matter, and he enters the debate as an educator. In Teaching the Restless, Mercogliano issues an urgent call for a shift in how our society perceives hyperactive children—away from theories of faulty brain chemistry and toward an understanding of children’s lives.

Mercogliano co-directs the Albany Free School in Albany, New York. There, he and his faculty have developed numerous ways to help hyperactive children relax, focus, modulate emotional expression, make responsible choices, and forge lasting friendships—all prerequisites for learning-without assigning pathological labels to the children or resorting to the use of biopsychiatric drugs.

Teaching the Restless profiles a handful of Free School students, six boys and three girls. All were either labeled and drugged in their previous schools, or would have been had they not thrown in their lot with the Free School. Speaking both to parents who worry that their kids cannot attend classes without drugs and to educators who wonder how to best teach these hyperactive kids, Teaching the Restless should bring new hope into an overcharged debate.

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Chris Mercogliano has been a teacher at the Albany Free School since 1973, and co-director since 1985. His writing has appeared in numerous publications and he is the author of Making It Up As We Go Along. He lives in Albany, New York.