Were You Mainstreamed?

Post Reply New Topic

Mainstream. But I did get a lot of questions from the other kids asking if I was "spastic" and why I wasn't in the support unit.

I went to pre-school for 1 semester at a mainstream school. I would correct the high school helpers, read notes that my teacher sent home to my mom, and I read the newspaper during that time. My teacher was surprised when she found out I could read, but my mom wasn't; I learned to read when I was about three and a half. The only things I remember about pre-school were sitting on our hands (we traced and cut out cardboard prints of our hands and they had our names on it and that determined where we sat. I got worried because the teacher told us to sit on our hands, and I thought she meant to sit on our actual hands, so that's what I did, and I thought that was weird. I talked to my mom about it, and the teacher talked to her and me about it) and not fitting in with the other kids, and having to play with Lincoln logs by myself, but I didn't know how to put them together.

Kindergarten was slightly better. I went to a Christian school for most of the year, which was really fun. We learned about a lot of stuff, like Australia. My mom would come in to help kids learn to read, though, and I would act up when she came in, like the one time when she came in and I cut my hair. I got yelled at a lot for that. I made one friend, and didn't really pay attention to the rest of my classmates. I had to move, though, before finishing up the year, and I ended the year at a rural public school, where I attended elementary school and junior high. That school wasn't so great. I got made fun of by a lot of kids, and didn't make many friends, I learned a lot of bad avoidance skills that I still use (like if you yell and swear at people enough they'll leave you alone, and that if you act like you can beat someone up early on then people won't mess with you), and I was never accepted into the gifted program (even though I took the test at least 3 times) because of my difficulties with thinking logically and spatial reasoning. I was told I could skip a grade in 1st grade, but my mom wouldn't let me because I was socially immature (and I still am--big surprise.)

I moved to a suburb outside of Pittsburgh for my 9th grade year and attended yet another public school--the one I'll be graduating from. The people here are smarter and more ambitious than the kids in my previous school were, but other than that, it doesn't seem much different. I do well in school, I guess. People tell me I do, but I'm such a slacker. I could be doing way better. I'm a senior, though, so most people are slackers after this point. I was diagnosed in 10th grade after I found an article on Asperger syndrome on Yahoo! Health or something (I was looking for a current event for Health class) but I didn't--and still don't--receive special help with anything, even though I appealed to the Special Education teachers (one of which was an "expert" on AS) and they tried to convince me that I don't have AS, and that I was just trying to fit in somewhere. I don't know what I'm going to do for college. I think I might take some classes at a local Community College or take classes online, and then transfer those credits to a university, if I find one I like. I've been looking around for a college that has programs for AS, and I was going to attend Marshall University, but that fell through, so now I don't know where I'm going to school or even if I'm going to go to school, because I might just hate college altogether. I'll probably end up being a computer programmer who works at home, like my boyfriend, because even though I can think of things I'd be good at, they're mostly just hobbies or they require too much social interaction.

I have always been mainstreamed, my family is too poor to send me to a private school. And I never had any special classes,although I had speech therapy when I was in Pre-K.

Mainstreamed? What's that?

No one knew about AS when I was young. But, even functional autistic children were mainstreamed. I was almost entirely in "honors" classes however. At least until high school, when I started to self destruct.

i was mainstream w/ no help k-3rd garde. then had to go to public school to recieve services (i was not progressing with the other kids) 4th-6th grade i was still mainstreamed w/ some help on the side. 7th and 8th grade was mainstreamed with an aid for me in all classes. 9-12th grade was all special ed classes with other special needs people. i also had some classes in an EBD classroom.

I was "mainstream." I went to regular classes and was also in a class for kids who could read well in middle school and in a gifted class in elementary and middle school. In elementary school the gifted class was fun because I was able to get out of regular class.

Mainstream. Although we have the 11+ where I live so I went to a grammar school for high school, that might have helped.

I went to a private school and in regular classes,but I started homeschooling when I was in eighth grade.


-SpaceCase

I like mainstream because it toughens my skin.

Yeah, it didn't work out until I was in Jr. High. I started SED at 2nd grade.

I was in 'special ed'. Nothing special about it.

Yes, and though I hated most of the mean NT kids, it toughened me. I was in the special needs class for almost a year, but that changed because of my grades, and I got into mainstream. I've had alot of school support, but I didn't like taking it, except for exams. I was shifted around three high schools because of housing instability, when my dad married a rotten monstrous hag, who was fussy about housing.

Mainstream school sucked because of the kids, and I would have prefered home schooling. Still, it did its job. I daydreamed alot though, and I was an above average, but not straight A pupil.

I was mainstreamed with pullout for gifted class, two hours a week. I was too good at school work to be put in special ed, but I probably would have done much better if I'd been in smaller classes, especially in high school, which I didn't end up finishing.

I remember in 8th grade I had to be in an anger management class for about a week, with only maybe five or six other students, most of whom were in special ed. I wished I could be in a class like that all the time.