What is it like being a special needs school?

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I have looked at some some special needs schools but I've never actually been to one before as a student so what is it like?

I spent most of my grade school either in special ed classrooms or at special needs school. It sucks.

From all I know, they treat everyone as if they were ret*d.

I could already read at the third grade level, and read entire books every day. Yet they still continued to try to teach me my alphabet! I had to sit there colouring the letter S, meanwhile wondering if they were crazy.

I was moved from the gifted and talented track in mainstream school, where I'd been since second grade, to a special education school in eighth grade.

My experience was, it sucked for getting an academic education - though I did get a thorough education in "street smarts" from my classmates.

There was vocational training too (my class ran the school's kitchen) and that was actually pretty good. And by the end of the first quarter I was spending about a third my time at school tutoring other students, and THAT was awesome. PE was actually fun there, too. And I always hated PE.

So even though I resented like hell having to go, I did enjoy parts of it and I think it was a good experience. That was eighth grade at least.

High school, well, I went to six different high schools over three and a half years. Three were mainstream and I would just do the special ed resource room one period a day. The other three were special ed. I don't have anything positive to say about any of them.

The only good thing about my high school years was that I was able to exploit a loophole in order to graduate half a year early. But that's a story for another time.

Losing out on a decent academic education did restrict my college options significantly. I never got to study a foreign language so I could only get into community college, and I placed in remedial math when I got there. But I got my associates' degree and transferred to state university, where I majored in theoretical mathematics, basically just to prove I could.

I was in a "special school." It felt like a "regular" class, except that the class was within the "special school."

I was in a special pre school ran by the school district and it was like regular school. We did play time, show and tell, story time, snack time, PE, library, recess, sang songs, went on field trips to places, did arts and crafts, watched a movie sometimes, did a party on special occasions.

When I was 6 and 7 and 8, I went to a normal elementary school but I was in self contained class and it sucked. I didn't know it then but I realize now it sucked. Inconsistencies (kids had different rules, it was okay for one kid to do one thing but not okay for anyone else to do it), they didn't teach me anything new so they had me do the same school work over and over after I knew how to do it, they didn't give me the same work normal kids were learning in class, I was treated like I was slow or not very smart, we went on lot of fields trips, we also went to PE, music, and library and sometimes we would go to occupational therapy and sometimes they would come to our class or to music, I went to homeroom which was mainstream class and it was only for PE, music, or library but that wasn't enough, we also had toy time at the end of the day, we had story time after lunch, we did show and tell every Friday. The first year I was in that class, we had older boys who were hyper and one who was aggressive and a pathological liar and I was relieved when none of those boys were in my class again the following year. I did learn to read and I did learn addiction and subtraction but they never taught me anything beyond that, they also taught me my address and phone number and I learned to count to 1000. Then when I was eight, I was finally put in mainstream. According to my mother, I was bored in that class and very confused. But I didn't know any different and I was so far behind, I had to catch up by going to special ed in my new school and doing first grade school work. But I caught up.

I went to a school for dyslexia from middle of 6th through 8th grade & I liked it aLOT better than the schools I been to before. The classes were alot smaller & learning was a lot more individualized & I also wasn't bullied.

Smaller classes, more attentive teachers, kids more like you, lots of attention to special needs and sensory needs. The downside so to speak, is being around kids who will have meltdowns and other things. Overall it's a good experience and there's fun stuff to do.

I've seen some people mentioning that bullying was less of a problem for them in special education so I just thought I would add, that was the exact opposite of my experience. Bullying in mainstream school was name calling and the occasional fist fight that got broken up in seconds. Bullying in special ed school involves kids threatening to murder you and your family, and nobody will do anything about it because they're already in special ed. That was my experience at least.

I go to a school-college where basically everyone there has autism and we're learning computers languages and programs. The pros is that the classes are small so teachers can work with you more and it gives a sense of community which many of these students would just stay home all day doing nothing. I have made some friends there so that's good. One of the guys there, I play league of legends with.

The cons is that because there are some low functioning kids in it, the classes are slow paced. And since the school is relatively new and most of the instructors aren't professional teachers, the quality of learning isn't very good in some of the classes. Like I haven't learned a single thing in Photoshop from one teacher because all he does is talk and tells us to do this and that without giving us time to work on our own projects. Not to mention the social skills class is useless to me but I just go along with it. I hardly learn anything in HTML either (I learned more from 30 minutes with a friend then I did this entire semester! )

Actually this one guy who is no longer with us had a pretty bad meltdown back in February. He was super pissed that he spilled water on his iPhone and it woudn't turn on so he all of a sudden gets up and unplugs the monitor then he starts hitting one of the students but thankfully the teacher held him back. He didn't come back but later apologized saying that he is prone to meltdowns and he can't control them when he gets upset.