What are special schools like?

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I went to a special school back in the 70s for grades 8-10 and one thing I can say is: Special education IS NOT quality education! You will not be prepared for college and will have a bad experience later. I am in my 50s and still have horrible memories. My parents were in denial about math, subjects and how well I was prepared (I wasn't). So if you received education, I am not sure if a career requiring a college degree is even possible.

Those types of schools are usually good. They accept autism better then special ed programs in public schools. They let the kids stim and stuff and sometimes even have progressive based models such as DIR Floortime which I really like. They also have dance parties and trips to fun places like indoor playgrounds and restaurants. There are even good therapies like music therapy and occupational therapy in a big sensory gym with swings and trampolines. Where I live though sadly is very ignorant and there is only one autism school which does ABA. I went to a special ed program at the public schools here and it was terrible. They had to supervise me 100 percent of the time even when walking to the bathroom and the bathroom was right there. Some of the teachers also didn't like me stimming and I was made to work like a dog at a department store 3 days a week 6 hours a day with no pay. I was only 17. My school also had the loudest fire alarm in the world and the teachers sadly hated it when I covered my ears before the alarm went off. But the best part of me being there was working in the school store for half a day on the days that I didn't work at the department store. I got to sit there, play on my phone and talk to the classmates that were working there too. But one of the teacher assistants kinda didn't like me working there because she thought I wasn't being productive enough. But i'm sorry I worked 3 days a week really hard at the department store so I deserved the break. I'm glad she didn't try to get me out of working there every single time though but once she saw me reading when I was working in the school store and she got upset that I wasn't working and took the book away. Now that made me upset. It even made my teacher and the teacher that ran the school store upset. I'm really glad he was my teacher that year because without it I wouldn't been working in the school store that year.

I went to a preschool for underprivileged and foster children and went to regular public school from kindergarten to 4th grade. I was home schooled from 5th to 11th. For 12th I went to a credit recovery program which was for anyone over the age of 22 who did not have a high school diploma or GED. I I'm pretty sure I wasn't the only autistic person to ever attend; nor were autistic people excluded, it just wasn't specifically for them.

I don't know much about the preschool program because I was 3-5 when I was going. But when I was in 4th grade I was in "special education" which may be great in other schools, but in mine it was just a daycare service.

I went to a special school from Kindergarten to 5th grade. Then 9th grade till high school graduation.

During all those times, I wasn't officially in a "grade." Though I did third grade work in third grade, for example.

The discipline was strict. If I acted out, I was thrown out of class and made to "think about it."

I was in a special day class (SDC) for preschool. After that, I was no longer in an SDC and moved to mainstream schooling, albeit with accommodations. I also had to go see a speech therapist, have an after-school therapy session with an aide, and and have a shadow aide. (I still have the shadow aide.)

I was in a special class for a year in the first grade because I didn't speak English when I started school. (My first language was German, which was my primary language until I was six years old). I mainstreamed in second grade. I learned so much in that first grade classroom that I was reading and writing English at a fourth grade level. From second grade on, I was always mainstreamed. I went from knowing no English at six to getting a Master's in English at 26. I was never told what, if anything was wrong with me. I was mislabeled as "hyperactive" as a child. Nobody knew what Asperger syndrome was in the 1970s. The only mention of autism at all was descriptions in books about children in institutions.

I was in special education in elementary school and high school, but I spent middle school in a special school. To be honest, the one I went to I really liked...the education was much more catered towards my learning pace, the teachers and assistants were very nice and understanding, and I naturally made a lot of friends with my classmates - some with autism, some with emotional issues and some with developmental disabilities. I think I really thrived there, which made the transition back to public high school pretty rocky.

I went to a mainstream school with a Special Needs Unit. The name of the Unit was ‘Communication Disorder Provision.’ It was a unit that mainly specialised with Autism. More on the High Functioning. It was ok. We were omitted from some subjects to do ‘Social Skills,’ ‘Communication Skills’ and ‘Life Skills.’ It did help it did have it’s positives but it did have some negatives as well. Generally the students that were in the unit generally got on well with each other. The negative was you are in a school that although there was an Autistic Unit the students outside of the unit didn’t always quite understand you so you would end up sticking to your small social group.

I left the school in Year 10 because we had to relocate. Where I moved to they sent me to a special school and I lasted 1 day there. It was horrible I felt restricted, I felt as if a lot of my independence like I had at my previous school had been taken away, I felt like as if all the student were treated like primary school student not secondary. I even heard a teacher be abusive to a class because of me. I was getting on with my work and the others were struggling which I felt that there was no call for.

There’s a school for kids with autism in my area. I’ve heard that it’s not very good, though. Some public schools pay to have their “problem” kids (from all places on the spectrum) sent there, so when parents choose to send their kids there, thinking that it will be a positive and progressive option, the kids often end up learning bad behaviors from the other kids and are worse off than before they started.

Academically, it’s lousy, too, because most of the school days are spent dealing with problem behaviors. Academic study is kept to a minimum.

I was surprised by all of this because the school is located in a progressive area. I guess it’s just poorly managed and run. The group that runs the school does have a poor reputation.

I briefly considered sending my son there until I found out how lousy it is. The public school that he’s currently in is autism friendly and is, oddly enough, better for autistic kids than the autism school.

I've heard that it varies greatly. I went to special school for junior high, and it had it's good and bad sides.

Some good sides:
- Majority of the teachers understood things like sensory issues and physical limitations caused by physical disabilities
- And so did many of the students. If one didn't understand something, another one did. Even if you were the "odd one out", there were usually at least two of you who were odd in the same way.
- The bar was set lower, making it easier to get good grades and not feel so bad about oneself.
- The days were shorter than they were at normal schools (only six hours every day in junior high in the school I went to.)
- We had more home economy classes than normal students did, probably because many of us were expected to struggle with basic life skills far more than average students (they got me there.)

Some bad sides:
- The bar being set lower made it harder to make it in normal schools afterwards. Of course, this only ever affected those who managed to get in to a normal school and didn't get kicked out fast.
- The days being shorther did mean less time to learn, too.
- We had no chance for voluntary classes like reading German, French or taking computer lessons. In most schools, even in the small one that I would've gone to if I have't gone to a special school, those were options. But not our school, we had no voluntary classes. This is also why I'm the only one in the family who doesn't speak German -.-' (or Swedish, but that's another story and my fault in the end anyway.)
- Having gone to a special school does leave a certain stigma, at least around here.

To put it simple: going to a special school often makes things easier at the moment, but in long term it closes some doors to the future or at least makes them harder to open, so it might be better to put only those kids who have no hope for a "normal" future anyway in to those schools and try to help those who might "make it" in the society in some other way.

Sounds a lot like the public school autism program I went too here. It's funny because in the previous school I went to that was 6 hours away up north in a major famous city letted me walk around the school and to places like the bathroom alone. When I moved down here though it all changed. I feel that the more progressive the city is the more acceptance and independence that they give the autistic people is better.

This sounds exactly like the school I attended in 7th-8th grade, sans the animals and calling teachers by their first name. I don't miss being a student there in the slightest, though I still have contact with my 8th grade teacher and he occasionally invites me and a few of my former classmates to come in and talk to his current students about what to expect after leaving this school.

Did they have a sensory gym with swings and trampolines?

It had a small "OT Room" with a lot of cool sensory swings that some of us were allowed to use to decompress from time to time, but no trampolines.

What did you learn at that special needs school?