What are special schools like?

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Did anyone here ever go to a special school for kids with disabilities?

I sort of did when I was little. I went to a preschool ran by the school district when I was 3-5 year old and it was for kids who needed extra help and there were bunch of normal kids and kids who were obviously handicapped. I was in a classroom for high functioning kids and some in there were more different than others. It was like a normal classroom because we had snack time, story time, did art, show and tell, did PE and had recess, did circle time, did board game activities, learned colors or shapes and numbers, I don't remember anything special about that class.

Then when I was six and seven, I was in a special classroom at a normal school. They stuck all kids with disabilities and behavior problems and all in one class which was bad. Then again it was like a normal classroom except they gave us the same school work over and over after I knew how to do it. We did board work where we had to copy a story from the board, then do name and address where you write your address down on the paper and turn it in and there was math and reading and we did story time after lunch, we had three recesses like normal kids, we also had PE and library and music and some of us went to home room where we go to mainstream for PE, music, or Library. We also went on lot of field trips and sometimes we went to occupational therapy or the therapist would come to one of our classes and do therapy in there with us. Sometimes our teacher would take us all to the playground that was in the park located right next to our school and we also did Thanksgiving in the classroom where we have other special ed classes come to our portable where the kitchen was and we all eat in there and in the classroom, we also did a vegetable party where our teacher would serve us vegetables. We also did Easter in there and always saw Santa every year. We also had toy time at the end of the day before school would get out. Oh yeah and some kids had their own rules and rules didn't always apply to all students and some of us had different assignments. One boy was allowed to run in our classroom with his pants down after going potty, one boy was allowed to shout out numbers during counting whenever we get to a number with a nine in it, one girl was allowed to scream when touched, one boy always screamed in our class and I was doing it too because the teacher let me and when my mom found out I was doing that, that was the last time she ever let me be in a special classroom and never wanted me in a special school either. But yet at my other school, rules applied to everyone in our class and we all followed them but yet we had this one girl for a while and she was allowed to run ahead of us in line, not sit in the circle with us. If it weren't for an outfit she always wore I liked, I wouldn't have liked her because she was allowed to break the rules.

Yep up until last year I went to a school for special needs kids / developmentally disabled kids. There were kids all over the spectrum there. Some kids had leg braces or back braces or were in a wheelchair. But most of the kids were autistic and PDD. I guess, because no one's disability was talked about. Since I was in a school like that from the beginning I was too used to it to see anything different or unusual about it. A lot smaller than my current mainstream school. It had animals. Called the teachers by their first name. Much more hands on teaching of course. And behavior from different students like described above and meltdowns were regular occurrences. But it was basically just school. I maybe returning next year since my try at mainstream school failed. Or might do an internet school program.

yeah,was educated in a full special school throughout entire childhood apart from infant/junior school [age ten and under] as parents fought to keep self there with sister,it was an awful oldskool roman catholic school where was thrown against walls and pinned down on the tables every day in 'restraint' for having very low mental capacity and was beaten with rulers.

the special school was a specialist in intelectual disability and complex needs but didnt have any speciality in autism,despite that,had progressed more there in one year than the few years had spent in mainstream infant/junior school where their idea of support was to treat like a burden on humanity,suspend every week and was on permenent formal report because of parents of bullies complaining that their little shts...sorry, 'darlings' were getting beaten up-was actualy just defending self.

the teachers were great, there wasnt any bullying there either,our classes were based on ability/mental capacity not age,was in a class with mostly much younger students but had not noticed any difference back then and it didnt matter.
teachers woud softly try to interact rather than force their way in to the world of mine which woud cause self to retreat further; like had done in infants/juniors.
however at fifteen had gotten expelled for severe challenging behavior and was never found another placement again;in the UK special school placements last until eighteen and often longer with their further education departments.
in the UK we have special colleges,which are excactly like special schools but for foundation FE/further education,,was given a placement at one special college but nearly ended up expelled for physicaly defending self against the children and teenage bullies;because the college was based within a EBD special school [kids who have usualy been expelled from every school going due to bad behaviors,usualy due to upbringing/family life and not specific conditions], didnt pass the course because the final part of it required a bit of writing [without using the computer] when am not able to write,didnt know about discrimination back then.

next,had tried another special college;a course specificaly for sports, but was expelled for challenging behavior towards self [ie,head banging/punching].

and now at thirty,have finaly found home in a much more specialist school & college for people who have complex autism with intelectual disability and epilepsy; the david lewis centre, am doing an animal management course,working with everything from chickens,to bearded dragons,to snakes,to rats, to donkeys.

"And I am sure that was all confusing" my mom would say when I told her those things about the class I was in. She even thinks that was why I had problems when I was older with figuring out what the rules are and how to act. That is one of the problems with special education and sticking kids all in one class. Also if you have a child that copies everyone and mimics behavior, you do not want them in that class or in a special school so it makes it a catch 22 if the mainstream schools are bad too. Homeschooling would be the only option for the kid or moving to an area where schools are smaller and there aren't many kids in the district so that way the kid gets more attention and help they need and bullies stand out more so they are less likely to do it. My middle school had less than 200 kids in the building and in high school we had 400 kids and then it shrunk to 350 so they had to do layoffs. That's how small our town was.

not quite sure what it was called, but I went to a kind of "slow-starter" school because I didn't start talking until I was about 4. was placed with children with CP, autism, intellectual disability...don't remember that much of it.

i went to mainstream when i was a child, although i dont know why because i was nothing like the other kids and had to have a mentor with me all the time. i couldnt even talk until i was about 8-9, and was delayed in other mental development too. but it was only the 70's after all.

but i went to a special school when i was 11-18, because my parents and the teachers feared i might have got bullied at mainstream high school, and also not being able to keep up intelectually, as i do have intelectual learning disability as well as autism .

the special school was much better for me. there wasnt any autistic kids in my class because where i went they put kids in groups depending on their iq and learning pace. i was very dim, which was why they couldnt give me a diagnosis for autism. so i was in a group with a lot of kids with down's syndrome.

most of the kids still liked playing babyish games when they were like 15 but i didnt want to. but it was either that or go to mainstream school where i probably would have fell behind acedemically and got bullied for being a bit different. i must admit, i was a very 'tantrumy' teenager.

I went to mainstream school until my sophomore year of high school. Then I went to a school for "bad kids", the other kids were there due to fighting, drug dealing, gang activity, etc. I was there due to truancy because of my un-diagnosed Asperger's. It was the worst experience and I developed PTSD going there.

Anyway, since those times my school has since developed a school for people with autism and it just opened last year. The bad kid school is still open too but hopefully no undetected aspie is being sent there anymore.

Where was the school located? Was it located in NYC?

mine was a theraputic special school for people with intelectual disability,and owe them a lot in life for helping self-was a lot more low functioning and locked in autism than am now prior to going there when was in infant/junior school.
they were not accepting of any misunderstood behavior though and was expelled at fifteen for regular extreme challenging behavior and never found another placement.

am fed up of the stereotypes of special schools being one size fits all-it depends on the individual school, the ones in the the UK are placements based on individual development,am also fed up of the whole integrate severely disabled kids into mainstream schooling idea- so the government can look good for promoting integration and equality when there is no equality in being bullied and unable to defend self,being in a brutal social arena where difference;especialy the very obvious is abused and taken advantage of, and inability to relate to many people of the same thinking and ability, plus we are regulary blamed for disrupting the education of high functioning students,that sort of burdenism placed on us is a heavy weight many of us have beared all of our lives and it is mentaly damaging.

Yeah.

The only benefit was really less kids in the class.

Maybe we were just further behind back then, but that certainly didn help, we learned almost nothing. I didn even learn english in that special class. What few english ability i have is entirely selv taugh.

Not to talk about important stuff kids learn, didn learn any of that. What special school really was here back then, was more of a, "we have to put these kids somewhere", at least thats how it felt. Like in a room and throw away the key. They didn ever understand what problems we had, and taking all the kids with problems and putting them in a room doenst help anyone. Nobody knew i had autism back then, they just knew it was odd , wierd and lazy.

And if you enjoyed getting picked on and bullied, oh just wait until you join special class. The other classes loves to pick on the special kids, ret*ds and what other names they called us. Oh yes the memories, getting bulllied alone or as a group doesnt really make a difference still painful.

Its no wonder i dropped out of school from 9th grade.

But hopefully its not like that anymore. now that there is hopefully more awareness about kids with disabilities. at least there wasnt really here in Denmark in the 1990's

Cant say i ever had a good experience with going to school, normal class was bad, special class was worse. There seems to be more focus on bullies and such as well now adays, but its no wonder that you sometimes hear about kids trying to or commiting suicide..

To sum of my experience of special class, first week i think it was, i was locked to a pole in the school yard, and they took my clothes besides my under wear. Funny how stuff like cant be forgotten easily.

Not trying to scare or anything, just make sure to do the research and stuff before going there. Can make school a nightmare.

Clark County, Nevada.

Was temporally miss-assigned in Grade 4 and thrown in a school therapy(read behaviour reform) program for about a year. I'd say about 10 children in the class, half ASD, ADHD etc. and the other half juvenile delinquents, the curriculum was watered down and structure was created to deal with the delinquents. As you might imagine the juvenile delinquents bullied the poor undiagnosed ASD children like myself and knew how to get away with it. The place also had a locked seclusion room for children who were non compliant or being violent(like a jail cell made out of a storage closet) and a residence for some of the really messed up children who lived there during the week. Some of the teachers and other staff were abuse in there discipline using physical punishment, each class had one teacher and one assistant(read security guard). I was re-mainstreamed pretty quick as it was clear from the first week that I did not belong there at all, I was top of the class essentially, that made making friends easier yet also made me even more of a target for the bullies looking to tear me down. I often wonder what become of the other children there, some were already essentially hardened criminals unfortunately.

I went to Montessori preschool and kindergarten. It was a great school for me. I learned basic reading in preschool and I could read basic picture books in kindergarten. I think reading is the most important thing I've learned in school.

In public school there was the resource room. Some of them stuffed me in with the noisy low functioning kids which I didn't like and some of them even had normal students. I was also in a resource room specially for HFAs. It was okay there, but I was ashamed of being there.

About two years ago I went to a very small private school specially for people on the spectrum. It was very poorly organized. They left the noisy kids in the warm area with reliable internet connection and the high school students in a cold area with barely any internet connection. They should have put the noisy kids in the cold area because you don't need good internet to run around and scream. I only went there for one year because I didn't like being associated with autistic people and dealing with all those distractions.

I was mainstreamed throughout my entire education, however I did have a 504 for my physical limitations and lack of organisation. The teachers didn't make much of an effort to hide the fact that they were accommodating me, and it was very embarrassing to be treated differently in front of all the other kids, who doubtless thought it was strange. Because I was born four months premature, I had growth and metabolism issues, so I was given candy at random intervals throughout the day to keep my sugar levels up. That was really awkward because I definitely felt like the other kids were wondering why I was given special treatment. In third grade I also had two desks because I was so disorganised that I needed twice as much space, and that was uncomfortable too, because it was so obvious I was different. In seventh grade my English teacher made me use a portable microphone in class because I have a quiet and raspy voice (thanks to the feeding/breathing tubes put down my throat for months after I was born), and she couldn't hear me. I used it once or twice, but hated it and felt completely ridiculous. I think I would have preferred being in a special ed class.

that "sounds" really fun.

I went to a regular school but was in the special ed class full time till high school in high school it was 50% of the time

they never taught in the class just gave us packets of busy work everyday

after a while I just stopped doing it and stared at the wall

in 3rd to 4th grade the classroom was a storage room with a floor that was not even close to level and no windows

I only really learned English from playing computer games my math skills are severely lacking because I never learned the basics and was dumped into algebra 1 in high school which I failed over and over
I was also bullied a lot by people in school and my neighborhood so it was pretty lonely growing up

all and all it was pretty bad