Special Education classes & Dyslexia

[Hope]

Like many school children with dyslexia, I was separated from other students and placed in Special Education classrooms for almost my entire public school career. There was little "mainstreaming" and we had little access to the other students at the school, other than passing them in the hallways in which us 'special education' kids were teased, ridiculed and called retarded by the other school students. In fact, we were segregated from the other students during physical education classes and even during lunch break we were required to sit separate from the other students.

But, this segregation and ridicule was nothing compared to being required to be separately bussed to a different school from the other children in my neighbor in a little yellow school van that all the other children named the "retard bus." I spent most of my childhood being bussed to school separately, attending a distant and separated school, instructed in separated classes, and even eating lunch separately from my neighborhood children. Not only was getting an education not easy, but making friends was even more of a challenge. I grew up not knowing most of the kids in my own neighborhood.

Additionally, there was almost as little opportunity to make lasting friendships among the special educations kids as there was in obtaining a proper education, given that the other students were also bussed to school from distant neighborhoods and communities. But, the greatest challenge to gaining friends and obtaining an education in this deep dark mysterious wast pit of special education was that even though the special education students were separated from the rest of the school kids (obviously not for the purpose of providing remedial education, but to prevent the special education kids from disrupting the normal education process of the normal students) they were not segregated within the special education classroom by type of learning and/or emotional disability.

These classes were made up of the educationally discarded waste with a cesspool of diagnostic labels that were used to define them in and out of the special education classroom. My classmates represented the spectrum of learning and emotional disabilities. Some of them only had moderate disabilities, but many had very serious learning and emotional disabilities. The students with emotional disabilities frequently disrupted class and made a normal learning environment impossible.

I vividly remember being physically attracted by my fellow special education classmates, and the classroom teacher discounting the harm done to me and taking no disciplinary action at all, presumably because this type of student behavior was expected within the confines of the special education classroom. Years after completing schools, I found a school yearbook with my photo in the middle of a page reserved (separated) for the students in my special education class. I was shocked to have discovered that many of my fellows had "Down Syndrome" and other obvious disabilities.

Once, placed in special education classes (what the other students called the "retard class) students never escaped the stigma or these classes to return to normal academic classes again. These classes were deep dark wholes that the learning disabled students disappeared into and to never be seem in regular classes again. There was little or no remedial education occurring in these classes. For that matter, there was really very little teaching and learning occurring in these classes. In the more than twelve years I had spend in special education classes, I had never witnessed a special education student ever escaping and returning to the "normal classes."

As a special education student, the stigma followed you for the rest of your public school career. Actually, whether in a more abstract or tangible sense, this stigma seems to have followed me for the rest of my life. In fact, after graduating high school functionally illiterate, learning to read and write on my own, and earning a Masters Degree, I returned to the school to teach in my old special education class, as a substitute teacher, for a few days. What I had discovered, many years after I graduated high school, was how little had changed! The classes were exactly the same then, as I have described them above to be years earlier.

But, what had changed was my old school principle's attitude towards me, after learning who I was!!! With great fan fair, excitement and enthusiasm, he fetched an old school year book and paraded me around the school, showing all the teachers he could find, my school photo on the special education page of the year book. Of cause this was done, on his part, not with out just a little amount of patronizing condescension.

But, it seems that no one in society will ever forget that I was a profoundly educationally deprived special education kid, and allow me to escape the stigma of the "retard class." Regardless of exceeding the expectations all had for me, regardless of my monumental efforts to simply achieve, regardless of the university degrees I have sorely earned, I have spent most my life unemployed, under employed, and earning an average income below the national poverty line.

In retrospect, I can not help but ask, was I a victim of the illness, or the cure? Was my problem that I was diagnosed with dyslexia, or that I was profoundly deprived a proper education that by law I was entitled to; and that the school system, the society, the nation, was legally required to provide. Another question I asked myself is, what debt of gratitude do I owe those that have given me so little and have cause such harm?

[Morning]

Your story should be given to every special ed. teacher, principal and district special ed. supervisor. Mostly, parents of LD kids should learn from your story.

I am so glad that you went back to that school so they could see that you made it.

I want to share a story that someone told me about their daughter. She was in special ed. and showed strongs signs of dyslexia, intelligent, etc. The school dystem gave up on the child. The school system kept lowering her goals. The father attended some advocacy group workshops, learned to read IEPS, etc. and the school figured out he understood his legal rights. Boy, did they get scared. They could not play around with his child, him or her educational goals. Now, that child is finishing college to become a teacher. What is odd--read this. Administrators who gave up on the child in the past and saw that the child "made it" came to the parent and said, " I am glad that you fought for your child--" Or, "my supervisor would not allow me to do such and such for your child," or "I could not tell you too much as I was afraid to lose my job." Or, "I knew what your child needed but the supervisor discouraged such. I was hoping that you would have gotten an advocate." The statements go on and on.

Sometimes, administrators and teachers don't know what to do. They are not aware, or they give up on the student. Many will not even fully tell the parents how to use their procedural rights to assert themselves.

I was a passive participant in my child's special education process until I "woke up" and thank God. It was an amazing journey to see administrators suddenly make things happen once I started asserting my procedural rights. Boy, a lot of stuff got done that should have been done in the past. Boy, it was amazing once I got an advocate how the nature of the PPT meetings changed from rushing through the meetings to the meetings becoming focused on the student, results focused, and focusing on progress and not just setting unrealistic goals.

Thanks for sharing your story--I hope more parents and teachers will read these posting and make a difference.

[yumimumi]

Your story is truely moving. I wish you all the best for your future. As a mother of a recently diagnosed dyslexic 8yr old this has given me every confidence he will suceed in his future!
good luck in your future achievements:)