JUST ANOTHER ANGSTY BLOGGER WITH WEAPONS FOR BOOBS

Through out high school people were always really surprised when I told them I wasn’t in an advanced class. You see, at the beginning of high school, I didn’t get to pick my courses. Hell, I didn’t even get to pick which school I wanted to go to.

Like most kids with an IEP, I was given an IEP at a very young age and was constantly told that I was different. I attribute a lot of my self-doubt to the way IEP students are treated in the Ontario school system. I wasn’t allowed to go on field trips, after I got my IEP. I wasn’t allowed to take french, because my IEP. I wasn’t allowed to have a reading buddy in the 6th grade despite reading at a high school level, because I had an IEP. I was constantly made fun of, because I had an IEP.

And when it came time to pick high schools I auditioned and got into two art schools, only to be told by my special ed teacher that I was going to this school in my area, where everyone else was going. It was an academic school.

And when I got my course selection for grade 9 I had to send it through her; I had checked off my two electives as, Programing and Music. I wanted academic Geo, academic Science and for the first time a french class. She changed it before she sent it. I went into Business instead of Programing, Drama instead of Music, a GLE (a free period for extra support) instead of french, applied science and applied Geo. 

I didn’t belong in applied anything and my teachers knew it. I took a summer school course every year to escape applied stream but by the time applied turned into college and academic turned into university, I still found myself in two applied courses. The two applied courses I had in grade 12 were college English (I had done university English in summer school the year before, and was really doing it because I needed one more credit) and college math advanced functions and college math data management in night school.

The one thing which is undeniable about kids in college streams, is the stigma which surrounds them. When you’ve been in a university class, its as if you can see the stigma floating from the mouths of educators and seeping into the pores of your fellow classmates in an applied class.

The school that I went to is ranked number 7 in all of Ontario. It’s a school renowned for turning out successful media moguls and business execs, Conservative politicians, doctors who get in on scholarships from the other end of the boarder, surgeons and professors. My school was what private schools aspire to be. In order to get on my schools honor roll, your average had to be a 95 or higher. This was because more then half of the school was enrolled in what’s called the MACs program, where you were a year ahead and if they didn’t keep an 80 average through out all 4 years, they were kicked out of the program which often meant being kicked out of the school.  

My school was either you were overachieving or you didn’t exist.

The exception to this rule was, if you were in applied/college stream. If you were on the honor roll because you were achieving an over 95% average in the college stream, you still didn’t exist. The applied/college stream kids were looked down upon. Not necessarily by the students (although I can give you more then a few examples of people looking down at kids in the college stream) but by teachers.

It never really hit me until my last year that the kids in applied stream had been conditioned to have lower expectations of themselves. Through out high school, people were always so surprised if I said I was in an applied course. I didn’t talk like an applied kid. I didn’t write like an applied kid. I didn’t act like an applied kid.

Yet here I was, editing the MACs kids essays and helping them formulate their arguments for the law class I had been told I wasn’t allowed to take. People looked at me like I was some kind of octopus unicorn hybrid when I was “I have applied this” or “I have college that” and I really didn’t think it was a big deal until one day in my college grade 12 English class.

We were having a discussion around intelligence. We were given the question “Is intelligence learnt or inherent” to talk about in our groups. Everyone at my table said it was inherent and it was somewhat implied in the way it was decided that they themselves felt they hadn’t been given inherent intelligence. I disagreed. I said that there is more then one kind of intelligence and that some is learnt and some is inherent; algebra may not be inherent knowledge to everyone, but you can learn it. Some people may understand algebra quicker because they have certain skills that are inherent, but someone without those skills can still learn algebra by developing skills that aren’t as developed as someone who has inherent math skills.

So many people in that classroom, had never heard that. This was like, a new revelation. Because in the applied stream, in the college stream, in the special ed classes and the IEP meetings we are told about our weaknesses, we are told we need support here, but never once, in my entire time in school was I told I could be something by an educator. And neither were they.

It was then and there I realized I really was a unicorn with an octopuses body. I had been oblivious to those around me who wanted me to aim low and cover my eyes. All the sudden I was reminded that I had been published in two separate issues of Urban Voices, but teachers were still willing to insist that one of my many learning disabilities had to do with writing. I had built a set of drawers, fixed a guitar, emptied my closet then made my mattress fall out of it and nailed all the shelves in my room to the wall, but IEP still said I had bad motor skills. I had sketchbooks full of designs and still my teachers said I had limited spacial recognition. I wasn’t supposed to be good at math, but I have a math award. There were all of these things I had done just because I knew no one was going to do it for me or because I had an idea, and I never going to change anyone’s mind about my disabilities, no matter what I did. 

I could write an entire novel on the subject of having a learning disability and the stigma that comes with it. It wouldn’t matter. Despite the fact, I have been told since day one of the first grade that my ADHD, the fact I read late, my bad spacial skills and my inability to stick to one task have predisposed me to failure, I don’t have any kind of higher education.

You can live with something your whole life, but someone who has studied sociology for 4 years or someone who has studied the human brain for 10 or someone who has 2 years of higher education with X amount of teaching experience, will always have more creditability then you do when they talk about the stigmas around learning disabilities and college/applied streams. They never have to walk a day in your shoes to have more credibility then you do on your own lived experiences, but maybe if they did, they would know, telling you what you can and can’t do is nothing short of disabling.  

I got an 78 in a class and had to fight for it because the teacher I had didn’t like kids with IEPs and gave me a 49. This was a SAP class and she flunked every kid with an IEP. A class of Sociology, Anthropology and Psychology taught by a teacher who will flunk you on the basis of a learning disability. But that’s not even the worse part. I’m the only one of 3 kids who failed that class because of their IEP who repealed the mark. They didn’t try because they thought they couldn’t do it. 

My grade 1 teacher told my parents that “your daughter should go into a field where thinking isn’t involved”. That same teacher was then allowed to run the special ed program for 12 years and told my parents in the 7th grade that she thought “your daughter is going to be a great writer”.

Having the label of an IEP has hindered me. I’m able. I’ve proved it. I’ve graduated. I’ve been on the honor roll. But everywhere I go, I will be that sped kid who can’t do things.

And it’s far worse for all those kids in the college/applied stream, who never saw they were capable of being anything more then a kid in a lower stream.