Special Education Weight

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This will likely only apply to those on high-functioning levels, but I know I am not the only one who has felt this way about public school special education treatment. I've always felt that it has never helped at all, that I've been weighed down by it. I rejected special education help in high school, and achieved significantly more in life without having it.

I'd say somewhat in my case. When I was younger I was put in an intense program called NILD, which was designed to help with dyslexia and correct my issues with phonetics, hand writing, etc. It taught me how to sound out words and working on my spelling and issues with swapping numbers around in math. For that, I'm grateful. In high school, I hated that I had an IEP and accommodations and rarely used them because I felt ashamed of having issues with school. People told me I was smart but yet, I struggled with learning in a classroom environment. With my anxiety, I hated to ask teachers for help, so I refused to use my accommodations and ended up barely graduating (this was also due to my father becoming extremely ill during my high school years and the fall out from that and my mental illnesses).

I feel as if I would've done better if I had been home schooled and allowed to move through the curriculum at my own pace and taken several college courses during that time as well.

For me, academics weren't the problem. My problems were in the social and physical areas. I was different, pure and simple. People thought I was smart, but I was socially inept and physically clumsy. I think if I had found a sporting passion and had a coach like my tennis instructor today, who stresses a balance between the physical and mental domains (indoor and outdoor life balance), I would have performed much better.

Oh, well, like Denis Istomin, "I'm here now." I will hang on to that.

I was fortunate in being able to go to a private school for kids with disabilities. Special education in the public schools was a disaster in the 1960s.

The school I went to emphasized academics.....and discipline a little too much.

I was in a special class in first grade because I didn't know English. English immersion was the only special education I had. I was in entirely mainstream classes from second grade on.

Although I wasn't diagnosed until a few months ago at age 36, I was a really good learning assistance program in first grade, in which they apparently told my parents that I "had trouble seeing the trees for the forest".

Although the program was really good, it does lead one to wonder why, if they identified that in first grade, nobody thought I might be on the spectrum. Sure seems to me that they knew I got fixated on details and couldn't see the big picture anyways...

Yeah I've been in private special ed too. Big difference I'm sure.

I only have about less than a year of Special Education due to finances. And why is that not because of academics -- it's because of something social related.

It's not that Special Education itself I got benefited from when I had attended it... I end up benefiting something else that happened to be tied with Special Education.

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I narrowly missed it. I had failed Years 8 and 9 and there was talk after seeing the school psychologist that I be moved to Special Ed. So I changed schools and completed Years 10 and 11 just fine.

I was in Special Ed through elementary school and I had a few classes in the resource room each year through high school. It didn't really help me in elementary school. I felt very under stimulated and unchallenged by the school work I was given. It helped me some in high school because I got the social and emotional support that I needed.