Can We Improve? How Schools Handle Disabilities: Primary and Secondary Education Edition

I’ve been around the block when it comes to accommodations for disabled students. You would think schools would have this down, but many do not. I moved around a lot as a kid. By the time I was 9 years old, I had attended 3 different elementary schools in 3 different states. I will not speak of the first one as I truly do not remember my experience there, but I will speak about the second and the third.

The second elementary school I attended was in the good old state of Pennsylvania. I was there from 1st to 3rd grade. I had an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) for those few years. Under my IEP, I was given the accommodations of physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech therapy, and spent a lot of my class time in the resource room. The teacher in this resource room was an angel. I spent many hours of my weeks in her classroom, learning how to spell, write, solve math problems, and read. This classroom was my escape from the hectic environment of my normal classroom. In my class, there were around 30 kids, which is a lot for not only a teacher to handle but for me as well. I was unable to focus in a classroom with so many kids. My parents and teachers found it hard for me to remain focused if I saw other kids getting their work done before me. It caused me great anxiety to see these kids doing work so quickly when I was not working as fast, causing me to panic about not getting the assignment done. To ensure my anxiety did not spiral out of control, I spent a lot of time learning from the resource teacher, which had significantly fewer students in it. It was not only easier for me to forge bonds with these students as I was spending hours with them, but it also made for a more conducive environment to learn. I was able to work at my own pace and not stress about what everyone else was doing in the larger classroom.

Occupational Therapy was there to help me refine my motor skills. I still struggle with some things to this day, but I did learn things such as hand-eye coordination in the form of learning how to tie my shoes and seeing how quickly I could move a peg through peg holes in a board. This greatly enhanced my fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination. In Physical Therapy, we worked on balancing, which I’m still terrible at, but they attempted to correct it, as well as other activities such as skipping and galloping. Speech Therapy was used to help me correct my pronunciation of words and to ensure I could communicate with others properly. Each teacher taught me valuable life skills that would greatly help me in my journey.

The staff at this school was always trying its best to put my needs first. However, this school did not do everything right. Communication with my parents was only okay overall. This school failed to communicate well with my parents regarding my siblings or myself. The teachers I worked with personally did what they could, but the administrators did not work as well with my family as they would have liked. This school, while it did not do everything right, helped me to grow and played a huge role in becoming who I am today.

Due to a career change, my parents moved to New York State when I was 9. I would be in this school district for the rest of my childhood. This district did not have its bearings together when it came to helping me. Class sizes were smaller, only ranging around 20 people, but this school did a few things that confused me all these years later. Firstly, they took me off my IEP plan and replaced it with a 504 Plan. Since they moved me to a 504 plan, a few things changed. They had me do very limited Physical and Occupational Therapy for a year before they stopped doing it with me, claiming my skills were up to par now, which, to be fair, they were. Speech Therapy continued until I exited elementary school, which I appreciate now as I still needed it at that age. Those things remained the same.

It was in the classroom setting where my accommodations changed the most. I was now in the general classroom for almost every subject except for writing. They took me out of class for this as it was an area I struggled in. They eventually stopped pulling me when I made it clear it was a service I no longer needed as I understood how to write. Other than writing, all of the other subjects were taught in the classroom. In addition to these changes, I was officially given what is referred to as time and a half on tests, to give me extra time to finish exams and any timed in-class assignments. For those that don’t know, time and a half is when a student is given full time for an examination plus half of that official time. So, say an exam is timed for 60 minutes. A student with time and a half would be given the full 60 minutes plus another 30 minutes on top of that to take the exam, giving the student 90 minutes for the examination. I was also granted a separate space to take examinations due to the anxiety issues I faced.

Moreover, I started seeing a therapist in the school system. The move from one state to another was upsetting for me at that age. This was added to my plan to try and help me cope with the life changes and what was going on around me. I was struggling to adjust. I struggled to make friends, to communicate with people, and to do pretty much anything outside of my family unit.

Now, where exactly did it go wrong at elementary school number 3 where it didn’t go wrong back at elementary school number 2? To start, these people were even worse at communicating with my parents. I was at an age where I didn’t want to make my parents upset by telling them I wasn’t adjusting well to the move from one state to another. I cried every day in class, and nobody told my parents for months. Yes, I said that right. Months. Not within a week of school starting, not even within the first month of school starting, but months after school had started. My teachers did not tell them. I don’t know if they had assumed I would tell my parents this, but I didn’t. Alongside this, I just did not get along with nearly any of the teachers I was working with in Occupational Therapy, Physical Therapy, and Resource. These teachers were not the easiest to work with. The Speech Therapist was okay at best. My therapist was about as good as you’d expect a school counselor to be, just okay. The only teachers I liked within my domain were the teachers who taught most of my classes. They were kind and did their best to help me. Was it enough?

It might have been, but I was a stubborn kid at times. I have rarely dealt well with change in my life, especially when I was a child. I’m better at it now, but I was not good with it at that age. I shut out people that tried to help me at times. This did not help my situation. The good news for me is that I have not struggled to learn concepts as much as people would have expected. I was a straight-A student for my middle school and high school career. Academically, I turned out just fine. For the next 9 years, I would struggle hardcore at doing a lot of things. Academically, I had it down, but socially and emotionally? I very much did not. But that’s a story for another time.