Were You Mainstreamed?

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yea i had to take speech therapy classes between 1st & 3rd grade, but i still have a stutter..boy was that a waste of time

I was mainstreamed all the way through my education. Still am. My results were inconsistant, and varied enormously.

For example; In semester 1 of Grade 7, my rank in maths was 23rd; in the second semester it was 3rd.

I wasn't given any disability services ever, but that's because no one (including myself) had any knowledge of AS.

Mainstreamed from K-12. I graduated high school in 1980. No one ever even heard of AS back then. I was considered "highly gifted" and just weirder than most. I didn't even fit in with the other gifted students. But I met my husband in that public high school! Married 23 years this summer.

Our older two kids started out in public school, but I pulled them out and began homeschooling in 1994. They both graduated from homeschool and went on to college. I'm now teaching our 3 younger kids, who have never been to public school.

I didn't mention this but in my first years of school inculuding pre-school and kindergarten I was really in a full special ed. program in which there really were no grades at all. Actually I think I was younger than most of the kids, at least 1 or 2 years younger.

When I was 8 years old I was put into mainstream school for the first time completely (I transfered to a new district which probably didn't have full course special ed. with no grade level). So therefore my first full-grade was the 3rd grade. But I never really skipped kindergarten 1st and 2nd grade at all. When I was at the former school I actually was put in a kindergarten class when I was about 5 or 6, for maybe a period or so. A year later, a 1st grade class for math and a year after that at age 7, a 3rd grade class for math.

So I guess math had always been a strong side for me, even though I struggled in many ways, I don't know, maybe I was frustrated as crazy for some unknown reason because I am sure I knew the stuff.

So I've been in special ed my whole K-12 years whether I was in a sp. ed. class or not. Just to keep an eye on me and to help select courses for the upcoming years, just like in HS.

Regarding class selections did anyone have those one-on-one meetings with counselors to select upcoming courses for the following HS year?
As a special ed. studen,t usually the sp. ed. teachers were our counselors by default, so an advantage was that the teachers already knew almost all the students and some of our strengths and weaknesses, while a good number of mainstreamers probably had to go to someone they didn't know nor probably will have in their classroom. Vice versa for the teachers. So therefore we had someone who kept an eye on us more so in terms of knowing what classes to take and when or when not to drop the course.

I believe higher education offers the same concept in DSS (disabled student services).

All they said to me was that I was Communicatively Handicapped. Well in a way many aspies are communicatively handicapped, but to the resource specialists, they don't know much about AS so they only use basic communicative methods to help us. Some methods may work while others may not work at all.

I go - well, went, cos i finished my last exam about a week ago :D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D - to a private scool in Cheadle Hume, and i was in the specal classes for evrythin exept English and Drama.

Grades aint that grate. Genrally As in Drama and Cs/Ds in English, but i tended to fail pretty much evrythin else...

Is "mainstream" a government run school? I've gone to a small private school for most of my life, in the same classroom as everyone else at my level. Advanced in math, good at English (reading, writing, grammar), good at history and science and languages. I've never been good at the fluffy part of English...all those feelings and interpretations of the books we read.

Mainstream is the type of regular ed class that the vast majority of students are in. Sometimes advanced classes get called mainstream as well.

Mainstreamed here. In a lot of advanced classes, but mainstreamed.

Then I've pretty much been mainstreamed my whole life in school thus far. I've done a lot of work at my own pace, usually advanced but some other things on grade level.

Sean explained mainstreaming pretty well, but to further clarify, the missing key is that true mainstreaming takes place in a public or parochial school.

Right before Kindergarten, my preschool teacher recommended that I be tested for placement in a special education school because they believed I might be "slow". Back then, in 1980, AS was unknown and any indication of being withdrawn or other symptoms was looked upon as a learning problem rather than a social one. After I took the test, the administrator okayed my entry into regular kindergarten with a "wait and see" approach.

I took speech therapy and resource room from kindergarten to 3rd grade in which I was, by then, surpassing my classmates by reading on 6th grade level and making honor roll. My main boogerbear was Math. I have dyscalculia, the math equivilent of dyslexia, and math even until college was a struggle. I was always quiet and withdrawn, not making any close friends at all. But I didn't really want to as I was happy by myself. None of the teachers seemed to notice my social difficulties but that sure didn't escape the other kids.

Others would say I was "ret*d" or "You need to be in CDC!" (sp.ed. program) or because I didn't act or dress like the others. I didn't understand why I was thought to be dumb since I made better grades than most of them. This made school hell at times, especially in 6th and 7th grade and I think it contributed to me developing social anxiety disorder. (Do NT kids turn into little monsters when they hit puberty or what!?)

My performance depended on whether the subject interested me. I was in advanced English my 8th grade year, took foreign language class a year early, was among best in art classes, and by high school, everyone said if they made grades like mine, their parents would've probably given them new cars.

I ended up going on to university, which was fully expected of me, never imagining not going to college. And I graduated with a BA in, of all things,...communications and journalism!

I always tested high on standardized tests, so they wouldn't have ever considered putting me in special education classes. When I started school in the 1970s like others hear, AS was unknown.

I started off kind of slow I think because I never went to kindergarten. Where I grew up at the time, kindergarten was not mandatory and for some reason, my parents, my mother especially, didn't want to send me. My 4 older siblings all did kindergarten and I don't know why I didn't. The result was I started 1st grade at a disadvantage.

I did first grade at a Montessori school where I had 2 teachers, one in the morning, one in the afternoon. They were both cool and willing to help out a kid who was having problems. I caught on to things pretty well, especially math, I had alot of trouble with penmanship and learning to write. My teachers gave me extra help and I managed to do OK. In an end of year evaluation, one teacher said I don't live up to my capabilities but did well and was a happy child.

Second grade was at the same school with a different teacher, who wasn't so nice. She often ignored me, didn't help me or answer questions, and sometimes tried separating me from the other kids. It got to a point where I didn't want to go to school and ended up being kept out for short time while my parents tried to resolve the issues with the school. They did agree to rectify the situation and the poor treatment I was getting stopped, but then started up again. When my parents complained, my teacher basically took a "my way or the highway" attidude, so we took the highway.

My parents applied to another school, which gave me an entrance exam I did very well on. They explained the problems I had in the other school and how I was behind but fortunately, the second grade teacher agreed to tutor me during lunch breaks and recess to get me caught up. She gave me a crash course in cursive writing and helped me in other areas, and it helped for the most part. I went from being behind to being near the top of the class and she, my parents, and the principal were all very proud of me for that. The only problem I continued to have was poor penmanship, which I still have today almost 30 years later.

I stayed there through 3rd grade and part of 4th grade when for some reason, my parents decided I should go to the same school as my sister and since the school I was in was all boys, they couldn't transfer her to my school. They gave me all kinds of reasons as to why I should leave the school I was in, but I never believed any of them. They also kept at me until I agreed to quit my old school and transfer out. I did for the most part, get good grades, but they weren't what I used to get, and the respect I had earned for being a good student from the school and my peers went out the window. I sometimes actually got ridiculed by other students for making good grades.

This school placed a big emphasis in sports, football especially, and those boys who weren't athletes weren't treated very well. Athletes often got special treatment in the school and some teachers, including the one I had for 4th grade resented this I think. She would sometimes belittle male students in one case she ranted at the class about how all the problems in her class are caused by boys and not girls, yet some of the girls weren't well behaved either.
Alot of the male students labeled me things like "queer", "sissy," "weakling," and so forth because of my lack of interest and ability in sports.

I stayed there for the remainder of 4th and all of 5th grade. I would try to tell my parents about the way I was treated but they often blamed me for it because my sister, who had been there longer than I had, didn't experience anything I did and refused to believe boys were being treated differently than girls were. My sister also instigated some bullying by students in her class, which my parents chose not to do anything about even though she never denied doing it.

After talking with other parents, including one who's son almost had a breakdown while in my 5th grade teacher's class, they began to think something was wrong. My sister had some problems with her teachers as well, and the school was unresponsive, so we both got taken out of there at the end of the school year.

Sixth grade was my one year in Catholic school. There were three levels of classes, and I was placed in the middle. We found out after the fact the reason I was placed in the middle level was the principal did this with all transfer students. My grades were OK and I didn't have too many social problems, but did have problems in one class, English. I was lax on doing assignments in that class, but did well in all my others.

I had difficulties there because I didn't want to grasp the fact my parents had lied to me less than a year and a half before. Some of the reasons they said the all boys school I attended was bad were in the Catholic school. The Catholic school had recesses and made us wear the same brown khaki uniforms the all boys school did, two criticisms my parents made of the school. The Catholic school didn't have sports or music, two other criticisms my parents made. This was also the first school year after the summer my parents began forcing swimming on me as I described in another post. I didn't want to talk much to my parents that year because of those things, and some of the assignments I didn't do required things like interviewing my parents, which I didn't want to do.

I only stayed there one year then transferred to a Christian private school my parents had transfered my sister to at mid term of the previous year. I suffered alot of bullying at this school to, some of it instigated by my sister. My class was made up mostly of students who had either been expelled from or flunked out of other schools, so I didn't fit in at all and faced alot of harassment from those kids as well. This school's only admission standard was if parents could pay tuition, so they took alot of rejects from other schools, the kind of people I didn't fit in with.

Eighth grade I went to a public junior high school and my sister went to a public high school. I was tested for placement there and tested high so I was put in the top classes. I figured I would be in with people like myself so I wouldn't be picked on, but I was. I was often picked on about having a deep voice and not being athletic. I also got harassed because I listen to shortwave radio. I wrote a paper on this topic for class and my teacher read it out to everyone and it went further downhill from there. My grades were OK but the constant harassment and the school not doing anything made it hard for me to function there, and my grades dropped. My parents didn't understand and of course, blamed the problems on me accusing me of "acting goofy" yet wouldn't explain what it was I did that was so bad. I ended up being punished for the entire summer afterwards which meant no TV, music, reading, or contact with other people, just sitting around waiting for my sister to tell me it was time to go swimming, which I also wrote about in my swimming post.

Grades 9-12 were difficult as well. I was sent to a Christian Private school and my parents promised me a school where I wouldn't be harassed, where high standards of behavior were expected, where there would be discipline, order, etc. The prospect of this made me look forward to school, but I wasn't given what I was promised.

I was expected to subject myself to a humiliating hazing week where seniors could make us do things like wear outrageous costumes, push coins down the hallways with our noses, dive to the ground when someone yelled "air raid," and other humiliations. I refused to do it and was warned by the principal, vice principal, and cousellor that if I didn't my life there would be miserable. I was pretty much an outcast for not doing it, yet I'm glad I didn't to this day. Ironically, my parents actually criticized me for not doing it after seeing pictures in the yearbook. My mother said "you should have joined in an acted goofy with them." In 8th grade, I was condemned for allegedly "acting goofy" and now I was being criticized for not "acting goofy."

I stayed there until graduation with grades being up and down. I faced harassment for not wanting to be involved in school activities, not going to games, dances, etc., not wanting to date or have a girlfriend, and was for the most part an outcast. I did make a few friends, but those friendships never meant a whole lot.

One of my more amusing memories was this blonde girl who used to aggravate me all the time. Today I could probably sue for sexual harassment but back then, I just had to deal with it. One day I told her to "shut up you dumb blonde!" and it kind of became my catch phrase. She'd say something to me or about me and I'd tell her she was a dumb blonde, and it would get a laugh from everyone.

The harassment was bad my first 3 years but my last year, it seemed to lighten up. I graduated and went on to college and did OK there. The fact there was no forced socialization was nice and I could just be myself. I made a few friends, but never really got close to anyone. I made good grades there and for the first time in many years, I found a place where I could be happy. After college, I went to work in state government, and have been there ever since. That has it's ups and downs too, but now, I'm in a good place where for the most part, I'm treated well and actually respected for my abilities. If they'd just let me put them to better use would be great but either way, I get paid.

Sorry to get so long winded, but this is an interesting topic and thought it deserved a good post.

I often wonder that myself. I've even heard other NTs say those years, Junior High, ages 12-14, were some of their worst. I got accused of acting that way too and didn't know why even though like you, my grades and test scores were better.

I wanted to go somewhere where respect was earned through academics, not all this other stuff, but never found that place.

I did go to college too, graduating with a business degree. I didn't fit in socially there either, although I did well in my classes.

This is sort of a nick-pick BUT

Special education doesn't have to mean "slow." It doesn't even have to mean outside of the regular mainstream classroom, at least as defined by state law here and, I beleive, IDEA (US federal law).

For example, for most of his elementary school education my son D was "special ed." He was in mainstream most of the day and in advance math classes. "Special ed" meant he saw the speech therapist (Grades k-5), and recieved special tutoring on his writing (4-5) as he is dysgraphic as well.

Next year he will be in a separate area for most of the day. This is what most people think of when they think special ed, ie special area. Yet, he circulrum will be what is taught in mainstream and he will take the "high stakes" tests that all the other students take. This area is for the AS and HFA and according to one teacher, they actually often test more advance than the mainstream. It the same education but in a smaller setting.

Having said that, I will add that it is a struggle to get the mainstream teachers to take D serious for the part of the day he is with them. *They* haven't learned that special ed does not = slow.

BeeBee