The Special Ed Kid

Thei paper is about a special ed kid. with disabilities and how many people came to help.

The Special Ed Kid

I am sitting at my table on the left side of the classroom; I take a look around the room. There are a lot of people in this class. I'm a little apprehensive about this class. It is very different from the Early Childhood course I have taken in the past. I start to feel a little anxiety setting in now. I think to myself, am I going to like this class, is there a lot to accomplish, am I going to like this professor or is he going to like me? In walks a tall, average built man, with a light Hawaiian like shirt with palm trees that flowed in the air when he moved. His voice is kind, yet stern. He is to the point. He expects his students to respect him as well as themselves, and our classmates. If you didn't do the assignments then you would be given an opportunity to leave the room.

I am a dedicated student. I have a purpose for my education. I try to keep up on my assignments. It is not always easy. Over the course of time, I have found some things that work for me and discovered some that don't.

Looking back at the kind of student I once was, brings back some memories of me when I was a child. I believe, in my early years of elementary school I was a hard working student. I felt as though I had to work harder than all the other students in my class. Learning was hard for me and in my early stages of elementary school the teachers all discovered my disabilities. Yet, my mother was not facing them. She kept fighting the school for something she didn't want to believe. Why? I will never know.

When I was a child, a family member thought I was having difficulty hearing. They even told my mom I was lip reading. "Aw go on." She would tell people. She believed I was ignoring her. When it came time for me to do my homework it was beyond me and usually ended up in a battle. I didn't understand any of it. My mother would get upset and start to yell at me. I usually ended up crying. Grandma would come and help me. There were many times I remembered Grandma giving me pre-spelling tests. I would write the words I got wrong 5 - 10 times each. I actually liked the pre-tests. They made me feel confident in my test taking. In fact, I still give myself pre-tests.

I always hated the beginning of the year because I knew the school required the vision and hearing tests. I remembered sitting in a hard, cold metal chair. The person giving the test would tell me to simply raise my hand on the side where I heard the sound. The tester would then put on these very heavy ear phones, which fit snugly on my head, and sometimes pinched my ears. The pounding of my heart made me feel as if it were in my throat. I was scared. I didn't like tests. The word test alone would make me very nervous. The hearing test became a very repetitious task for me as a child. The more hearing tests I took the more I hated them. Finally, the day came when I was diagnosed with a significant hearing loss to my right ear. The majority of my hearing is done by my left ear. I was devastated! I knew I was having trouble, but telling my parents, I believed, would be letting them down. It was obvious how they would react when others told them their opinion. It was time; I must get a hearing aid and wear it to school.

I always remember needing extra help with every little bit of my homework. The fighting with my parents was not helping, so I was given a tutor whom my parents paid to help me with my homework. It was nice to be able to sit with someone and get the help I needed with whatever it was that I needed help with. It often took us two or more hours to finish my homework but, we did. Pam and I made it fun. We would be silly however, my attention was on homework.

I was in a Special Education class for most of my elementary years. I really didn't like it, because the groups were smaller and some of those students had more disabilities than I did. Yet we were all together. At the time, I knew it was hindering my popularity. I didn't feel I was as smart as the other students. I thought I was always second best among them. When I would put my idea or thought out there, it usually got shot down. When we turned in our shadow boxes theirs were, in my eyes, a lot better. I was not as pretty as the others; at least I believed this to be true because of my hearing aid and large framed glasses I wore. I was teased a lot being in the "self contained rooms" as I believed they were also called. I was teased about the undecorated looking projects that were due. I was teased for things I had no control of such as, my gym class, which consisted of a total of two people. What kind of gym class was that?

I managed to get through my elementary days. I couldn't wait to get to a new school! I was hoping for a new start. I remember talking to the adults. The principal liked me. I knew he was the same one who knew my older sister. He always hugged me when he saw me. Then once he became aware of my hearing situation, he would shake his pointer finger at me and look for it. It was embarrassing. I wanted him to leave me alone! Everyday I wore it to school and then hide my ear with my long hair. I was very self conscious about it. It was a pain because my ear would get sweaty, I would put my hair behind my ear, accidentally hit the volume and the aid would buzz really loud during class. Sometimes it even fell out, or the battery would die out in class. I didn't like it -- that was that! Yet, I knew it helped! I'll never forget the time I was writing my homework, and every time I wrote with the pencil I heard a noise. Finally, I mentioned it to my mom. She didn't know what I was talking about. Every time I put my pencil on the paper to write; I would hear it. Finally, mom figured it out. I was hearing the scratchy sound from the lead of the pencil moving along the paper. Mom had a tear coming from her eye.

I still didn't have many friends; I was far from popular. I had low self esteem, was very self conscious about my glasses, hearing aid, and then...zits. I thought my school days were just going to all be over with. I will never be anything in life! I wanted to be the better student among my siblings. I knew my older sister was a cut-up. My younger sister was still in elementary school doing ok. I thought I was going to make my parents proud of me. Not at this rate!

High school! Now this is the real world, I had been told, a place where the experience prepares you for the outside world. There would be no messing around here. I had to do something different. I had come to realize I was too quiet. I wanted friends. I just needed to develop