#first year I don't hate myself after 8+ years of various EDs

[your-greatest-queen]

I was in four different middle schools before I finally got to high school and the third one was my favourite because I was there the longest, but it's also the one that infuriates me the most.

They had a "special" program for kids with learning disabilities, like many schools do, but they did it so badly.

I am not and never have been mad at the kids in that program, I am mad at the staff/school system.

I remember being in the third grade, 8 years-old, and every week or so they would bring in this kid who was the same age to sit in the class for an hour or two.

(I'm pretty sure he had autism, but it was a long time ago so I can't remember exactly)

He would scream the entire time. We could not hear our teacher. We could not hear each other. We just heard him screaming.

And his teacher aid just. Sat there. SOMETIMES she would give him an iPad to play a game with the volume turned up all the way. And after an hour or two, she would lead him to the next class.

This went on for the whole year.

Now imagine being 8. You probably don't even know what anxiety means yet, let alone all of the various mental illnesses these kids faced. And there's a kid that comes to your class sometimes and screams for an hour.

What would that make you think?

The teachers never explained anything to us. He just came and went.

And that's just one kid.

There were kids in wheelchairs that couldn't move or speak, they just drooled and grunted. There were kids who were actually in their 20s and looked like it (and this school only went up to grade 8 so they looked very out of place).

Again, remember: the other students were not told anything.

I'm all for treating everybody equally, but these kids were HATED because none of us knew what was going on with them.

I remember seeing this kids that couldn't move and being terrified because I didn't know what happened to them. I didn't know if it was an accident or what.

The kid that screamed for an hour in class scared me without me ever knowing. I still have nightmares sometimes that are just the old echo of constant screams.

The adults? Yeah at that age you don't really understand why there are adults in your school that are students.

There were a few kids who honestly passed for neurotypical but even they didn't have anyone that liked them. And guess why?

Because none, none of these kids were allowed out at recess. They went on their own time.

So the staff showed us the worst sides of these kids, never explained why, and then didn't let us play with them and see their fun sides.

It took me YEARS to move past the stigmas that formed in my mind about mental illness.

I myself have a small list of illnesses now, probably had some of them back then too, which has definitely helped me with overcoming my old feelings. But still.

The school had the right idea about having them all there with us so we got to see that not everyone is the same and that it's okay. Bringing them into our classrooms was good too, but I'm 99% sure that kid wouldn't have screamed for two hours if he knew us and was in the class all the time. I never understood why they didn't get to just be in our class and have their teacher aid with them for support.

My high school has a similar program, but these kids are treated SO much better.

I'm friends with a few of them because they got to be in my classes and were treated like every other kid.

They do have some different class options, but I still see them regularly and none of the students treat them any differently (except the one kid who walks around school saying rude/bigoted/mean things to everyone. Doesn't matter if you're neurotypical or not, you don't treat people like that. We all don't like him).

But anyway, I'm getting off track.

The point is that my one middle school did a TERRIBLE job with their special ed program; gave and are probably still giving hundreds of kids terrible first encounters with people who aren't like them.

And I haven't even really touched on how this would have made the special ed kids feel!! I can't even imagine what that school experience was like for them.

I've managed to get past my internalized ableism, but it was a lot of work and I know a lot of the people I went to school with never will.

I will never not be mad at that school for how they introduced all of us kids to each other and I don't know all the right words to explain my feelings on this, but I wanted to get it out there.

(I was just thinking about it and I wanted to make a post that I could look back on when I figure out how to explain the issues with this. Someday I'd like to write to that school to see if they've changed their way of doing things because I can't stand the thought of them continuing to cause these problems).

If anyone that reads this kinda understands what I'm getting at, please reblog and put this into better words because I am so bad at organizing my thoughts.