This and many other things were
said in a report about me when I was in first grade. According to the report I
could only read 23 words a minute and basically I could only write six words
from memory.
It wasn’t for lack of trying
that I could not read or write. I wanted to, desperately. I wanted to be like
my sisters and my classmates. It always seemed like the only thing that was
keeping me from doing so was myself. When I was younger I was constantly at
odds with what was going on in my mind. No matter how much I wanted to learn
something or to know something my mind would either shut off or tune out.
When I would pick up a book the
words would blend together in a mess of long strings of letters that I could not
even begin to decipher. I knew that letters made sounds and that sounds made
words and words had meaning. Still, I had a hard time believing this. No matter
what, when I tried to read the words the sounds always came out wrong and the
meaning was lost somewhere in the middle.
I was an awkward kid. My parents
didn’t know what to do with me. Both of my older sisters were labeled as gifted
and talented.
My Mom tried labeling everything
in the house in order to help me with my spelling. My oldest sister Julie, who
was twelve at the time, complained about how it made her feel like she was in
preschool.
“Why should I have to suffer
because she is stupid? I know how to spell T.V. because it has the letters in it.
Laura knows how to spell T.V. too. Don’t you Laura?” She said as she covered
the label on the T.V. I just stared at her. I didn’t know how to spell T.V. I
knew what a T.V. was, and how to use it. But I definitely didn’t know how to
spell it without looking at the label.
“Stop it Julie,” Mom would say.
“Are you serious? She can’t even
do that?”
At that point Mom sent Julie to
her room and tried to comfort me. By this time I had gotten use to my Mom
saying, “You are special Laura. You don’t know it yet but there is a reason God
made you the way you are. You are smart, and someday you will do something
great.”
Mom then went back to making
dinner. I ran to our playroom and got out a piece of paper and a crayon. I
wanted to make Julie learn a lesson. I wanted to prove to her that I was smart
too. I wanted to let her know how I felt. I wanted to write a letter that said,
“I hate Julie” and tape it on her door. However, the letter I ended up writing
did not say “I hate Julie,” it said, “I hat Julie” and she promptly made fun of
me for it.
I can’t blame Julie for making
fun of me. She did not know any better. My parents left my sisters and me in
the dark. Julie later told me, “Michelle and I didn’t know there was anything
wrong with you. Mom and Dad never let us ask questions. The only time I can
remember an adult saying anything out loud was when Mom and Dad were picking me
up from a friend’s house after they went to a meeting with you. My friend’s mom
said, ‘Well, thank goodness it was your last child and not your first.
Otherwise, you might have stopped having kids.’”
***
While my parents and the school never told me I had a problem, I figured
it out on my own. When you get tests and worksheets back that are completely
covered in red marks; when the teacher gives you fewer spelling words than
everyone else; and you are constantly sent to rooms that aren’t your regular
classroom for tests; it is fairly easy to realize that you have a problem.
My teacher did not know what to
do with me. According to the report an observer did about me, I spent
seventy-five percent of my time doing things other than what the teacher
wanted. I would put my head down on my desk. I would play with things inside my
desk. I loved rolling pencils and playing with glue. In fact that is one thing
I vividly remember doing while being in class. I loved pasting my hands
together. The teacher would let me get away with it too. It wasn’t because I
was good at hiding what I was doing. The teacher let me do it because I wasn’t
disturbing the class and they didn’t know what else they could do with me.
I don’t know why I did these
things. The reports certainly don’t say. After years of intervention, I know
that when I do not know how to do something I generally avoid doing it. But I
cannot truly say that that alone was my problem.
I went through a lot of testing
when I was in grade school. It always took place in a place called the vans. At
first, the vans were campers that sat alongside of the building. Later on the
vans were a trailer that sat in front of the school. I always thought it was
funny that they called them vans, because they were never vans.
All of the specialists I had to
see were crammed together in that tiny space. It was always dark because there
were hardly any windows. The specialists would always try to make me feel
comfortable by offering me candies and such while we were going through
testing.
The tests were always tricky. I
had to put pictures into sequence, I had to use blocks to make shapes, and then
there was the puzzles. The puzzles were always hard, in particular, the puzzle
where you had to make a soccer ball. I knew what a soccer ball looked like. I
knew that puzzle pieces only fit together a certain way, but I just couldn’t
get it right during the time they gave me.
I later found out that they were
giving me an IQ test. The average person’s IQ is around 100. On the IQ test
they gave me I had an IQ of 115. This stunned my teachers. I could hardly read
or write but I had a high enough IQ to be in the school’s gifted and talented
program.
The school said I had a learning
disability. All that means is that my IQ was considerably higher than my
performance level. They wanted my parents to send me to a psychiatrist for more
in depth studies. My parents refused.
“I wanted them to help you,” my
Mother said, “not label you. I figured that if you went to a psychiatrist, that
since I was paying them they would have to give you some sort of label. Who is
to say it would have been the right one? They said that you had a learning
disability. That alone gave you the help you needed. What could more labeling
do?”
I was placed in my school’s then
developing special needs program. At that point my teachers and parents were
still at a loss, they didn’t know what to do with me. At first the teachers
thought that if they could redirect my attention in class, my skills would
improve. Between first and second grade my ability to pay attention did
increase. The observer in my class even stated that only every now and then, on
difficult tasks, I would put my head down on my desk and color.
***
Even though the teachers were able to keep me on task, my understanding
of the content they were trying to teach me did not improve. By second grade I
could still hardly read or write. I barely grasped the concept of what adding
was.
At that stage in my life I remember being frustrated a lot. People
expected me to do things I didn’t want to do because I didn’t understand. My Mom
wanted me to write letters in purple sand when all I wanted to do was make a
sand castle. My teachers stopped answering my questions during the class period
and would make me come in on recess to go over the things I didn’t understand.
I didn’t understand why I had to do the things I did and my sisters and other
classmates didn’t.
I thought that when I got to be my sisters’ ages I would be alright. I
thought that when I was older I would be just like them. I thought that such
characteristics came with age. I thought that I would be a smart, neat person
who was expected to get A’s on tests. I thought that because that is what I
wanted. I wanted to be like my sisters. More than anything I wanted to be normal,
just like them.
***
When I was classified with a learning disability it did give me the help
outside of the classroom that I needed I visited with an intervention
specialist for an hour every other day during music class. Together we would go
over basic phonics and spelling skills.
Inside the classroom however, I still struggled. The lessons being taught
seemed so far above me that I quickly lost faith in myself. Some of my teachers
did try to help me. Many failed to see that even with the help I was receiving outside
of the class I still needed their help in the classroom. Most became frustrated
with me when I asked questions. They did not know how to help me, or what to do
with me.
My third grade teacher grew tired of me asking how to spell basic words.
She put a dictionary at my desk at the beginning of every day. Any time I asked
her how to spell a word she would say without looking up at me, “Look it up in
your dictionary.”
I would return to my seat and attempt to look up words such as “house” or
“flower”. The problem was I hadn’t the slightest idea how to spell the words. I
knew that house began with an h but after that it was all jumbled.
My teacher was constantly shocked when I would misspell words on writing
assignments. After grading my paper she would call me to her desk.
“Laura, do you own a horse?” she would ask.
“No,” I would reply to the floor. I hated looking people in the eyes. Particularly
my teachers’, because all I saw in them was judgment.
“Well in this sentence you say, ‘I have a small horse made of bricks.’ If
you do not have a horse, what do you have that is made of bricks?”
“A house.”
“A house,” she would say, “You spelled horse. How do you spell house?”
“H-O-S-E” I would say to the floor.
“That is hose. Look up how to spell house and write it five times before
the end of class.”
During lessons, whenever I had a problem understanding something the
teacher would assign another student to help explain the concept to me. While
this may seem unimportant, it played a key part in my psyche all throughout
grade school.
Anytime another student would
have to explain anything to me, it brought on many different feelings. I felt
embarrassed because I didn’t understand the concept being taught and the other
students did. I would feel jealous of the student who had to explain things to
me because they were smart enough to understand what was being taught. It also
made me feel alone and stupid.
“You don’t know how to spell
house?” The student next to me would say, “How do you not know how to spell
house?”
“I don’t know.”
“It is H-O-U-S-E,” they would
say quickly, “Now stop talking to me.”
***
By the time I was in fourth
grade my reading skills had gotten better. I was not reading at a fourth grade
reading level, but I had vastly improved over the years. I however did not see
this progress. I had grown accustomed to the idea that I was not very smart. I
never volunteered to read out loud in class. I never raised my hand to answer a
question. I never voluntarily did anything in class because I knew that even if
I thought I knew the answer, I was probably wrong.
It wasn’t until one not so extraordinary
day, while riding in the car with my mom, that I started to gain faith in
myself. We were driving somewhere new, and my mom was trying to figure out
where to go. I was sitting in the front seat while my sisters sat in the back.
“Keep an eye out for Clark Rd,”
she said while looking at my sisters through the rearview mirror.
“We just passed it, one light
back,” I said.
“Are you sure?”
“I don’t know.”
My mom turned around and sure enough
it was the street we had just passed. “Laura, can you read that sign?” Mom
asked.
“Clark Road,” I said.
“What about that one?” she
pointed off to her left.
“Chinese buffet.”
“Try that one,” she pointed to
her right.
“Smith Family Restaurant.”
It continued on like that for
the remainder of the ride. She would point out streets signs and billboards and
then I would read them. I do not remember where we were going that day, what
the weather was like, or which car we were driving. I will forever remember the
pride I saw in my mother’s eyes and the sense of accomplishment I felt in
myself. Reading signs may seem like a simple task for the average person, but
that day it made me feel like I could do anything.
***
I never read much outside of the
stuff I had to read for school or things my parents made me read. I found
little joy in it because I viewed reading as work. It was something that I had
to do. When I had free time, reading something was the last thing on my mind.
In sixth grade there was a program
called Independent Reading. Each student had to earn a certain number of Independent
Reading points per quarter. The points were earned by reading books that were
on a preapproved list. Each book was allotted a certain number of Independent Reading
Points. The idea was the harder the book you read the more points you earned.
In order to prove that you did read the book you had to take a quiz.
When they told us about the
program my friend and I looked over the list for an easy book that was worth a
lot of points. At the very top of the list was the book Peter Pan. We
both thought it was too good to be true. We thought that Peter Pan was a
child’s book and probably the easiest on the list. Yet there it was at the top
of the list. It was worth all of the points we had to earn that quarter.
That day we both went down to
the library and checked out a copy. We said that we would police one another
and make sure that we each at least read a chapter a night. When I got home
that night I finished all of my homework and started reading. The first chapter
was easy and actually very enjoyable to read. Since I had gotten through it so
quickly I decided to read the next chapter. That way I could brag to my friend
that I did not only read the first chapter, but I was also a chapter ahead.
When I finished the second chapter I moved on to the third without thinking.
Before I knew it, it was time for dinner. I hurried through dinner then ran
back to my room to continue reading. I stayed up well after my Mother told me
to go to bed, and finished the book that night.
That was the start of my love
for reading. After that I devoured books. I couldn’t wait to go to the library.
Not only did I read books like Harry Potter, I also loved to pick up obscure
ones. Books that had collected dust on the library shelves. Books that not even
the librarian knew about. It made me feel special knowing that I was one of the
very few people to enter the world that was written on the book’s pages.
My new found love of reading
seemed to be the final connection I needed to make. I was by no means a perfect
student, but I had the tools in my mind that the school deemed necessary for me
to succeed.
The following year I was released
from the intervention program I was in. Throughout the rest of my academic
career I had my share of ups and downs. High school was by no means a cake walk
for me. It took me a long time to realize that I would never be like my
sisters. Because I am myself, and that is okay. Not everyone is the same. That
is what makes us human. If we were all the same life would be very boring.
Through my struggles during
grade school, high school, and even college I have seen the best and the worst
teachers the world has to offer. In the end that is why I decided to become a
teacher. I wanted to be an advocate for students some teachers may not know how
to deal with. I want my students to know that with hard work they will
eventually gain understanding. I want to help students help themselves. I want
my students to know that I care whether they fail or succeed.
Most of all I want my students
to know that you are only stupid if you are not willing to try. I want my
student to know that you can actually accomplish anything you put your mind to.
I want them to know that they should see themselves as individuals and not try
to be carbon copies of one another. But above all else I want my students to
know that if they have faith in themselves and the will to succeed the world is
already theirs. No matter what anyone else says.
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