Baila hunches down into her seat in her 2nd grade classroom. Her teacher is leading a math game on the blackboard to see who can solve 2 digit addition and subtraction problems the fastest. The girls are broken up into 4 teams and the winning team will get matching multicolored Rainbow Loom bracelets. Girls squeal and laugh, flitting back and forth like fairy nymphs as they race to take their turn at solving equations on the blackboard. After their turn, they fly as if on wings to hand the chalk off to the next girl seated behind them.
Baila’s heart races and her small hands feel moist. There is an uncomfortable prickly heat, like a sunburn, at the back of her neck. She struggles to understand why one girl’s answer is correct and another’s incorrect. The teacher stands at the board making immediate pronouncements and adding up tally points under each team’s name in a corner of the chalk board.
As the previous smiling team member flounces back to her seat and tosses Baila the chalk, she rises against the strain of internal resistance and forces her feet to move forward towards the front of the class. The numbers jumble before her eyes, and she feels the competitor to her left busily working out the math problem, while Baila stands at an impasse.
“Come on Baila!” her teammates call out. “Hurry up! Rochel is almost finished!”
“No giving out answers!” the teacher admonishes, standing over the two contestants with her own chalk poised to record the next scores.
Finally, Baila blindly writes down 3 random numbers, and hurriedly makes her escape to pass the chalk to the next girl, and slump back into her seat. When the teacher pronounces her answer incorrect, losing her team the point, Baila acts as if she hasn’t heard. She bores her eyes down into her desk, pretending to examine the carvings and ancient marker drawings of its previous tenants. Although Baila avoids the pointedly annoyed stares of her teammates, she can’t help but hear their sighs.
Baila’s mother has spoken to her teacher many times over the last year. For some reason, 2nd grade changed Baila from an outgoing and fairly confident student, to one of growing self doubt. Although Baila was starting to show signs of slipping in all of her subjects, Math was the worst. When Baila’s mother asked if she could be taken to the resource room for extra help, she was told there was a waiting list. So many students at Baila’s growing school needed a bit of extra assistance – Baila simply wasn’t a critical case – yet. “Yet” was the word on the minds of Baila’s parents, every time a new report card came home, showing slipping, but passing grades.
After one particularly stressful night of homework, leaving Baila tearfully pronouncing her stupidity, and her parents at their wits end, a fateful conversation took place. Maybe it was time to put Baila in the special education program that rented space at the school? The program took kids who had learning challenges too difficult for the main school to handle, and provided them with a modified curriculum in a smaller teacher to student ratio setting. The goal was to eventually integrate the students into the main school’s classrooms. Perhaps some subjects would be taken with the regular classes, and some in the special education classrooms depending on the need.
The problem was the stigma. Nobody wanted to admit their child had learning issues severe enough to warrant pulling them out from the regular day school and enrolling them into the special education school. Even though the two programs were housed in the same building, they were technically separate institutions with separate tuition and funding. Having a child in the special education school reflected on the parents and family as a whole. It stigmatized the student and their siblings. The children in the main school would often shy away from the students in the special education program, sometimes mistaking their learning challenges for other issues; issues even more stigmatizing in the community.
The” issues” special education students were often accused of having were emotional or psychiatric problems. There is the misconception that psychiatric problems or emotional challenges go hand in hand with learning disabilities. This misconception often happens because of the fact that many children with learning challenges are also helped by speech therapy, occupational therapy, and social work therapy to cope with self esteem issues that often develop as a result of shame over academic failures. These therapies, often provided through the special education programming, are sometimes misinterpreted as some kind of psychiatric interventions. Any academic or behavioral assistance with the word “therapy” attached to it is thought to have something to do with psychiatric/psychological therapy to the uninformed.
Could Baila’s parents expose her or their family to this type of stereotyping or stigmatization? Although she was growing shyer and more cautious because of her academic difficulties, Baila had never had problems making friends before. Would being labeled as a special education student ostracize her from the other girls?
Baila’s parents sent her for educational testing, where it was discovered that she had a processing delay. Baila was able to learn, but it took her a bit longer to process new information, and she learned best taking in information using a variety of different senses and techniques. The lecture and listen method alone did not work for her. After speaking at length with the special education administration and the main school’s resource department, Baila’s parents decided to take the step to enroll her in the special education program. It was a difficult decision, and Baila’s parents rightfully knew that they would be sacrificing social success for academic success, but they hoped that as Baila’s confidence grew along with her academic achievement, she would have at least a core group of close friends who would stand by her.
Immediately upon entering the program the following fall, Baila met a few other kids in the special education program in her age group. They stuck together, and although Baila found herself not having as much interaction with the girls from the main school, she had this core group to socialize with, as her parents had hoped. During her first few years in the program, she and her friends would run from their mainstream school classes, back to the special education floor, hoping that no one would see them.
For the first few years, Baila actually believed that the main school girls didn’t realize she was in the special education program, because of how careful she was to sneak back and forth. As the years passed by, it eventually became obvious that not only did the main school girls know she was in special education, but some indeed attributed unrelated labels to her beyond the actual reasons she was in the program. She was called stupid and thought of as slow, whereas before she had entered the program, she didn’t suffer such an opinion. Some girls implied that she had emotional, behavioral, or social issues. Again, these labels were unfounded, but based on the fact that she was shy and in the special education program.
Being a bright girl, it didn’t take long for Baila to thrive on the personal attention she got from her special education teachers. One of the most important skills they taught her was how to organize herself and takes notes that she would understand to use for homework and studying for tests. With a lot of hard work and determination, Baila and her teachers devised a system for academic success. With this formula of scheduling, note taking, studying, and the cheerleading her special education teachers provided, Baila turned into a straight A student.
One of the goals that Baila was working towards was winning an award for academic achievement upon graduation. The special education students graduated at the same ceremony with the main school, but apparently, it was a courtesy only. Technically, the special education students were not part of the main school, and as such, not eligible for any main school awards at graduation. Baila was offered the special education achievement award offered through the special education school. However, she turned it down. Her goal had been to prove to all the students or adults who thought she was stupid or had “issues” that she was not only as smart as they were, but smarter.
After years of straight A’s, Baila had harbored hopes of being one of the Valedictorians, or at the very least, receive the annual award for Most Improved Student. She imagined herself, in cap and gown, being called to the front of the stage, to the amazement of all her doubters, and being handed an award for academic achievement beyond what any of the main schooler’s had achieved. Alas, it was not meant to be. A student not officially enrolled in the main school could not receive a main school award.
However, although she had not received official school recognition, Baila most certainly received recognition from her family, friends, and teachers who couldn’t have been more proud. An additional recognition of her accomplishments came with doing well on her high school placement exams and enrolling in the local high school in their mainstream program. Getting straight A’s on her first semester high school report card sealed the deal that Baila’s academic trials were behind her. Although the social stigmatization did leave a mark, her continuing successes with academics and in making some good friends, have done much in the way of healing old hurts.
The story above is an adaptation of my own daughter’s academic struggles in elementary school. I am so grateful to the special education staff who helped my daughter find the path to academic success and confidence. I am also proud that my husband and I did not let the stigma of involving our family in special education keep us from making that decision for our daughter. There are so many families in our community who make a different choice, maybe to the benefit of their family’s reputation, but to the detriment of their child’s well being. That being said, with the stereotyping that exists, it is unfortunately a difficult decision.
My wish is that someday special education and the mainstream schools will no longer be divided. That every opportunity will exist for special education students to fully participate in student life, and not be held to a different standard than the main school kids. Tuition, enrollment, and salaries for special education teachers should all be funneled through the main school, as well as fundraising. There should never be a question of whether the special education school will cease to exist or if programming will be cut if funds can’t be adequately raised each year from parent body volunteers. Special educational isn’t optional – it’s essential.
Day school children who have special education needs are an underserved population. Think of how much the stigma would be removed if special education programming was a part of the regular school, and no more intrusive than the current general school resource programming? Think of how many more parents would be willing to get their kids the services they need if it didn’t require to pull them out of their main school and enroll them into a separate special education program? Some parents don’t even want to attend the annual special education school fund raiser and admit they have a child in the program. Imagine how the child of such parents feels about openly attending classes? Even our own daughter, whose father was co-President of the special education school for many years, and whose parents openly advocate for its existence, slunk off to classes in the beginning hoping that no one would see her. Eventually, she would grow to spend most of her free periods there, schmoozing with her teachers, who had become some of her best friends.
Inclusion is everything. Children with learning challenges and special needs are a part of Klal Yisroel, and can make such amazing contributions to the future of our people. Having a learning disability often has nothing to do with a person’s IQ or innate intelligence. It just means that person learns differently, and the key to unlocking how they process information has to be found. It’s time to stop being afraid of stereotypes and time to start claiming our children’s places in our Jewish educational system.
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