How well did you first settle into school?

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How well do you settle into school?
My first experience of school was complete disaster. I was expelled after a week of running away and being a danger to other children and my mother then enrolled me into a school that was primarily for girls with me being the excuse to start rudimentary co-ed program.

Last edited by paulsinnerchild on 06 Aug 2007, 11:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Well, I have only a few memories about my interaction with kids prior to 5. I get the idea it wasn't that great. From 5 on it got gradually worse. I never ran away from school, etc... but a few accidents, or illnesses on my part weren't that unusual. So much for perfect attendence! ALSO, at 6, the school was concerned that I wasn't fitting in.

I AM curious at how you ended up being the first boy at a girls school!

Both my parents worked, so I spent alot of time in pre-school...i was absolutely tortured by one of my pre-school teachers...she was constantly isolating me from the other kids for reasons I was completely oblivious to....making me sit in a cardboard box while the other kids ate their meal..and then having me eat my meal alone, or making me sit with my chair pushed completely into the table so I couldn't move my arms, and I wasn;t supposed to move my arms...while the other kids played..... I had another pre-school teacher say they wished the other kids were more like me, because I didn;t cause her any trouble. and I remember her telling them to all go to the pre-school across the street so she just had me to deal with me...there was another weird pre-school experience, where this one girl insited upon calling me dad, because I reminded her of her dad for some reason...(example of a few and far between friendship....)
When I was in kindergarten I was alot more like the boys...spent alot of time in "time out"...wet my pants and was sent to the nurses office alot...was also frequently sent out of the classroom for tests...and to this day, (aside from the repeated hearing tests (which I guess were obvious))..i don't know what the test were for...except I was one of very few kids who were sent out to take the tests...
In first grade, things seemed to rapidly grow worse...My teacher, Ms. Vinclarke REALLY had it in for me and was constantly punishing me in painful and humiliating ways and verbally abusing me...calling me "you little idiot" and jerking me around and whatnot...when i exhibited trouble with not knowing left from right. During most movie times I was made to stand in the corner..
In second grade, the student bullying increased, the teacher, Mrs. Roberts, was nicer though and attempted to defend me to the rest of the class who was constantly making fun of me. There were these quizzes that were constanly held that were awarded with prizes and I never got any awards..In third grade, the teacher was nice to my face, but told my parents I was a horrible student. These gangs of girls were constantly figuring out new and better ways to humiliate me....like pulling my pants down and then telling the teacher that I pulled my pants down.... there was this ritual where the entire class would cut in front of me at the water fountain line, so no matter where I was in line, I would wind up last or not get any water at all...I had one boy knock the wind out of me by flipping me over onto my back because one of the bully girls tols him that I liked him....letsl see ...it could go on and on...no I did not adjust well to school.

Hmmm, I hardly remember preschool. I started 3 at some church school but they didn't want me because I couldn't hold a pencil right. Went to a K4 in a bigger school. Still couldn't hold a pencil well but I learned. I wasn't around the other kids that much because I had to do this these classes with these other teachers where I like got lego pieces out if a big piece of clay, whatever that was for. Had speech with a couple other kids too. K5 wasn't that much different. I got along with the kids I guess. I was kind of in my own little world back then and didn't notice or care. I had two brothers to play with at home. I was pretty indifferent to going.

My first day of school when I was 5 years old was not good as I remember it. I remember Mother dropping me off in the classroom and leaving. People were throwing blocks at me and calling me stupid because I could not write the letter 'e'. This one girl at lunch time, tripped me over just infront of the classroom door on purpose and said that "I was a loser".
From then on, things deteriorated even more. Throughout my first four primary school years, the teacher seemed pleased with my efforts in the classroom. But whenever I got a school report, it said I was disruptive and having "social difficulties in regards to fitting in with the other students". In which that I was, but I was not disruptive as far as I can remember.
In my last two primary school years, I was teased, hit, manipulated and had no friends. I wanted to get out of that school so much. And when I finally left and started Intermediate school, I wished I was back at primary school, as things were FAR worse there.
In other words, I didn't settle great into school.

I fit in well enough, but I was a bit quirky at times maybe... once teacher I remember kept bothering my parents about getting me tested for ADHD because I always lost stuff, couldn't finish tasks, and had very obvious oppositional/sometimes antisocial behavior... like taddling on kids that I didn't like so much for kicks or just making up stuff... I got many experiences from which I was able to sharpen my lying skills too I guess I had the average social deficiencies of someone with attention deficit... nothing that made me stand out enough as a target to get bullied or picked on.

Teachers picked up on obsessive compulsilve behaviors but apparently didn't know what the hell OCD was so didn't understand why I did take 30 seconds washing my hands, erase and rewrite words until there were holes in the paper, asking to redo class work when mine was better than everyone else's...

me too, and i was a difficult case for the teachers. i was OK as far as i was alone. as soon as i was supposed to interact with other children there was always some conflict between us. (i just didn't understand the social rules i was supposed to follow and i was trying to force my point of view there.) then the teacher usually tried to yell at me to calm me down and i yelled back at her that she has no right to do that, since she isn't my mother.
i was always crying when i was supposed to go there.

My years at school this is interesting

I started to go to Nursery (Pre-school) when I was 4 years old and I was suspended for a week because they couldn't control at all. Then I was at primary school a year which I started from two months before my fifth birthday. I was there till I was 11 years old at that school they had a special needs department and I was taken in and out of it one minute I would be in that class the next minute I would be in the mainstream class. Then I went to secondary school (aka the dark years) they had a department for Autism/AS and my year was the first year so we guinea pigs it was awful I use to convince the teachers that I should be in mainstream but kept saying no. Reasn they did want me having any meltdowns and not telling anyone about it I was much safer in that class according to the teachers

That was my experience.

Well I loved pre-school but from i could remeber i didn't have friends there but i didn't really know what a friend was so i didn't mind i was only 3/4. When i was 4 I started primary school which was rather amusing because I decided to go home early..... It was lunchtime and i thought it was the end of the day so i decided to go home. Lucky that they noticed that i had gone and i had the enjoyment of watching the head of the school office sprint down the long path Then there was year 5... The worst year of my life There was this manic called Adam Gregory Who was a real ass and picked fights with everyone, Shoplifted, and was excluded on a weekly basis. I tried to tell my mum how bad the whole class was but i couldn't find words strong enough, So she decided to come as one of the helpers.... What she saw was incredable people fighting, running with siccsors etc. I just sat there looking on at mum with a "I told you" look. In fact it was so bad she made arrangements to pull me out of the school the next day. So half way through year 5 I went to a new school which was better but still i was buillied andd isolated however my new teacher spotted my AS and thats how i got a diagnosis. Then there is secondary school. Im in my 3rd year (year 9)
i'll be year 10 after the summer and I luckily have friends but i never get to see them. So yeah school for me was crap.

I was told that I initially fit into to school quite well, and was interested in everything that was going on. My kindergarten teacher misdiagnosed me as hyperactive. AS was not a known diagnosis then. I was an anomaly in that I actually liked school, at least the academic aspects of it.

Initially school was hell and I had loads of discipline problems including knocking a girls two front teeth out. That was the last straw so at aged 8 I was packed off to boarding school about 50 miles away from where my parents lived.

Boarding school was much MUCH better because a) I was away from my parents and b) the whole place was run under a much more structured formalized basis. I just slotted right in and by aged 14 I was winning prizes for my schoolwork. My parents however remained a problem, examples of this include:

1) Telling a biology teacher that he was one of the damned and he would be sent straight to hell (because he told the class about Darwin's Theory of Evolution).

2) Just under a hundred letters to the school about the curriculum, standard of teaching, amount of work handed out by teachers etc etc.

3) A teacher forging my fathers signature on the form to give permission for me to have sex education lessons. By that time they knew what my parents were like.

Ed Almos

wow, that's amazing what the teacher did for you, though.

By the time of the forged signature all of the staff at the school were well aware of what my parents were like. The letter was just a formality but they knew that my parents would probably have another argument with the school then make sure that I was the only pupil that year who didn't attend sex-ed. This was the easiest solution.

From what I remember (it was a LONG time ago) there wasn't much to make a fuss about. We poked around in a couple of fertilized hens eggs, there was a line drawing of a naked man and woman in the textbook, and we finished with a movie that showed the development of a baby in the womb.

Now the practical sessions and the field work a few years later, they were fun

Ed Almos

I can remember my first day of school very vividly. I was six years old and I was tricked into going and lied to by my mother. I think I would have been fine if I was told exactly what was going on. My mother and her friend drove me to the school. My mother walked me into the class. I wouldn't leave her side. She said she had to go out and talk to her friend for a moment and would be right back. I waited and waited, would not sit at a desk, cried like crazy and sucked my thumb. Finally, after about two hours I realized that my mother wasn't coming back (forever for all I knew) and after the teacher called me a cry baby in front of all the other kids, I resigned myself to the truth of the matter and sat at my desk. Fortunately I was sitting next to another crybaby thumb-sucker so that made it a little better. But the thing I find most remarkable now, is how literal I was even then. When we had advanced in the first grade to the point of learning basic addition I could not comprehend how it was done. Paper after paper would be returned with all of my addition problems marked wrong with a big red X. This was because I had taken the teachers words literally when she said "I know this is difficult boys and girls, but pretty soon you will find that the correct answer will be the first to pop into your head." Aha, I said. So that's the secret. And of course, that's how I got the answers that I put down on my paper. Whatever number popped into my head was the answer I wrote down for the problem. It took the teacher awhile to figure out what I was doing, and only after much questioning and I revealed how I had been getting my answers just as the teacher said I should.

I never had trouble with the academic aspect of school, but I hated the social aspect. I was picked on pretty badly in elementary school, particularly in grades 4 and 6. It still amazes me how young kids can be so mean.

After such a disastrous start at the first school my mother was on bended to get me enrolled in an all girls school where my three older sisters attended to lessen the separation anxiety from my family. Bathroom issues were the biggest obstacle at first but there was a single conveniece near the laundry that eventually got them around. So I was the first boy which was then followed by two others. One of those boys in my class was the former Victorian Premier, Steve Bracks, who resigned as Premier in July 2007, and that was the first of nine years I was in the same class room as him. From prep to grade 2 in Sacred Heart College and from grade 3 to form 2 at Villa Maria. I had no bullying issues at all with him like I had with most of my school peers. He was an all round nice guy.

Teasing and bullying did not really hit home until I moved to the all boys school, Villa Maria at Grade three. In the years of prep, one and two I was in a room full of largely girls and there were just two other boys in my class and one of them was Steve Bracks who was never into bullying anyway. I did not socialize with the girls at all. For a start I could not skip with a rope and due to my terrible motor skills I could not learn no matter how hard I tried. By the time I moved to Villa the bullying was on with a vengeance. I was kicked and punched and pulled and dragged around the oval mercilessly like a rag doll and the nuns did nothing to stop it. The whole scene was like a litter of puppies picking on the runt.