Your Feelings About Special Ed

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Hi, I am a public middle/high school teacher, possible Aspie, and would love to get people's feedback on how you feel about special ed, whether you are/were in it or not.

How would you have/do you want your teachers to respond to you and any situations that might come up with your being on the spectrum?

Do you think it's good to be classified, especially if you are high functioning and don't necessarily need it?

What are the pluses and minuses of being classified?

Thanks!

I was in regular ed up until 10th grade as I couldn't keep up with regular ed work after that and was in special ed from 10th to graduation.

IMO, special ed >>>> regular ed, I loved the smaller room and class size.

If a lower functioning aspie is ever in your class, please, don't throw the kid under the bus whenever something remotely negative comes up involving said aspie kid. I'm not talking about behavior problems, I mean if the kid is a little slower than the rest of the class. Or other issues that doesn't relate to the kid being "bad" behavior wise.

Like some teachers will throw a aspie kid under the bus to the higher functioning kids, like if he doesn't understand or the teacher doesn't understand the kid's POV, he will called him ret*d to the students behind the aspie's back.

And also please don't let the higher functioning kids opinions persuade you, especially if its negative, for example, if a aspie stares at other students 9 times out of 10 he or she doesn't mean to do it!

In most cases special Ed stops a child from learning to his or her full potential. Plus you find a lot of shady people in IED schools like adelphoi

I'm not in one, but the whole thought of it kinda creeps me out, I honestly find myself smarter than most of the kids in my year and I think spec Ed classes would be unimaginablely painful, but I'm mild, so I guess there are people worse than me that actualy need the help, but I would not gain any benefit from being in a class of well... Spec Ed kids... No offense to any spec Ed peeps on here.

Eh, I'm gifted and my best year in school was a special ed class in the fifth grade.

But maybe the fact that it took me over a decade to figure out that it was special ed might have played a role in my suitability.

I was in some special ed in elementary but I didn't think anything of it from what I remember. I didn't know what it was maybe. Then I was changed schools and they said I did not need it but my mom insisted I did to the school. So I was in regular classes and stressed out especially in middle school and high school not just because of the work but because of environment and also changing classes all day and it felt like chaos and intense often.

Then at high school age my mom helped me get accepted this other school for students, it was not special ed or for dileiquents, but it was geared to individual person and it was organized differently and a lot less students. If I had help making a routine to use the bus and gett there and know what to expect and how to get here I would probably been able to go but I did not even think of the idea of asking for that back then.
I regret now so much because I liked the stability of it, less kids, small classes, less chaose and parts of it reminded me of a home.
I eventually left high schol to do a correspondance.

My counselor I go to now asked me if I was put in special ed when I first saw him but now he tells me it is probably good that I was not put in special ed but I forget why he said that. It is not because I am dumb, I have been told I am smart or bright but sometimes I can have trouble in some ways. I think he said sometimes kids who have different problems than me like behavoriol problems or something like are put in there. I don't recall what he said though.

I hated school so much.

Last edited by Jediscraps on 22 Jan 2012, 10:48 pm, edited 2 times in total.

When I was six and seven, it didn't do me any good except I learned the sounds of things like th or sh or ch or ee or oo and then learning to read and I learned my address and phone number and addiction and subtraction and counting to 1000. But then they never taught me anything new like normal kids do. They just had me do the same school work over and over it held me back in education. Then my parents had to get me out of there and they put me in normal ed and I mainstreamed special ed where I did 1st grade school work to catch up. So main streaming special ed was good for me and lot of normal kids went there but I hated the name I remember and didn't want to be in it because I wanted to be normal. Then when we moved to Montana, the schools there called it the resource room. I main streamed it and I got extra help with my school work or had it modified. I just accepted getting the extra help than pushing it away and failing since lot of kids were also in there getting extra help. I used to feel bad I needed help in everything so I thought I was ret*d, after years of being called that and being asked if I was or not finally convinced me that I must be. Of course mom told me saying that about myself can upset other kids and have them think I was making fun of them and if they had a ret*d sibling in their family, they might think I was making fun of them too. I didn't get it then but now I do after knowing people use that as a phrase than in a literal way and people connect it to people who actually have it. But seriously, someone who is calling themselves that and they are upset and frustrated should be obvious they mean it in a literal way and they aren't poking fun at ret*d folks. It just means the person thinks they are ret*d, not them poking fun at them. How I convinced myself that I wasn't ret*d was seeing my old IQ scores from 5th grade so I learned I wasn't that and everyone had been right all along and kids in my childhood were wrong.

I think special ed is good but it would depend on the school. I heard the schools up north of me sucked in Montana and they don't really help kids who need the help while in my school, they helped the kids. From my ex's experience, in special ed, kids who needed extra help in school were told to sit down and do their school work and the teacher leave and there be no help and this be in the special ed room. My ex barely passed high school.

I wasn't in Special Ed per say, but I was in a few special programs with an IEP, and I had to ride the short bus for two years, that was embarrassing. I would like intervention to be as private as possible, I do not want the other kids to see that I'm grouped with the "special" kids. To balance everything out I was also in really high math classes, so I played on those to convince everyone I wasn't ret*d and I was instead here because I was too smart.

I didn't know "riding the short bus" was supposed to be embarrassing until I saw people use it as an insult. And even then, I didn't really connect it to the fact that I rode a short bus until a few years after that.

I only rode it for one year, though. I actually liked it, and got along well with the others on the same bus (everyone in my class).

Oh, it's really embarrassing when all of the other kids on it either can't talk, or are constantly shouting nonsense or moaning, except for one other kid who is harassing you. There was at least one more short bus at the school I was at, and all the other people in the program I was in weren't on the bus I was on.

I'm just being grateful I didn't know it was embarrassing. I had more than enough troubles without that to add to it.

How did you end up on the bus without the rest of your program? I know the other students in the program I was in had stuff like ADHD. One student hated being in the class and flipped his desk over when I said "hello" to him. I also remember saying hello to him at lunch after he was moved out of the class and he got pissed again. I was advised to leave him alone because I wasn't getting the cue that he really did not want to be reminded of his horrifying three days in special ed.

I dunno. I think there was actually three special Ed buses, and everyone from any the special Ed programs, whether in the full blown special Ed for the intellectually disabled or just something like social skill classses, got thrown together on the buses and sorted based on where they lived.

How is it used as an insult?


I also rode short buses too until I was eight years old and then I started riding the normal school bus when I was placed in my new school.

It's used in a derogatory way to mean that someone is really stupid.

My experience in special ed was downright terrible. I wasn't classified AS, though. They just said generic anxiety and depression. My special ed class was downright terrible, basically, you'd never get more than like 2 pages read per class because of other kids' disruptions, and basically, just nobody cared about SPED class. Ironically, the class used to be called the acronym GRIMP for some reason. For me, SPED just totally ruined high school, I just gave up on ever learning anything from high school, and it made the situation with the harassment I got in school worse.

So I just completely gave up learning anything in school, and just became really hopeless.

Usually, the special ed kids do drugs, etc, and it's more just a way to manage behaviorally problematic kids rather than an emphasis on learning disabilities. It's all just "put all these bad kids in this room so they don't do anything stupid in the rest of the school." For me, I didn't do anything really disruptive ever, they were just like "Gee, he's weird, we don't want him in general population." More or less. So, off to SPED I went. While in SPED, the A word, autism, was never brought up once in regard to me, it was only after I finished school I got it diagnosed. They just thought I was some enigma. Some of the SPED teachers didn't really even think I should be there, as I was so polite to the teachers, they thought I was smart, etc. I have another friend with NVLD like me, with a sorta similar experience in school, though he went to a special school, and knew his NVLD diagnosis. His special school was more accommodating, and apparently actually helped him learn stuff, but the kids there was the same story.

So SOME special schools I guess could be OK, but really, I wouldn't bother. In my experience, what happened to me, once I got into SPED, I could never get out, even when I wanted to be back into mainstream classes. So, it'd be much better to stay mainstream as long as possible, because then you can go to SPED if it doesn't work out, but you're stuck in SPED if SPED doesn't work out, if that makes sense.

Overall I thought SPED was pretty terrible, and affected me extremely negatively. Really, if your kid hates school, just pull him out and homeschool him. If you can't actually teach him, there's tons of online schools and software available. For me, ah, it pains me to talk about this type of stuff, my memories from that era of school are so negative.

So, at the very least the high school level, I don't recommend SPED at all. Middle school wasn't bad, but high school level, no individual attention was paid really to you, it was just a classroom where it was a 70/30 split between kids who just acted up and people with actual learning disabilities/psychological stuff, with the majority just being kids who acted up.