Tom's Story

I was six years old when I first heard the words “retarded” and “stupid.” At the time, I didn’t know about my learning difference, and I didn’t know why learning was so difficult for me. People would make fun of me because I could only pay attention to something for a few minutes. I could barely read and spell the smallest words. At first, my teachers thought I wasn’t trying hard enough, and they would yell at me and keep me after school. Eventually, my teachers and classmates wrote me off as stupid or retarded. In fact, the only class that I was good at was math.

The first time I received any help was from my first grade teacher. She tried to help me control my hyperactivity, but instead, I learned by watching people who were walking and talking. I turned my head as they moved, and this allowed me to daydream without being caught. Later, she would help me learn to read, but I was only able to read basic sentences on my own. During the state issued standardized testing, I would either space out or start filling out the bubble answers just to make pictures. I was barely able to keep myself from being held back. Near the end of second grade, my parents finally decided to take me to a testing center that focused on learning differences and mental retardation.

That was the first time I heard about Dyslexia, Dsygraphia, and AD/HD. The testing was supposed to make me feel better, but instead it made me hate my learning difference. To me, my learning difference was to be blamed for all of the names that I had been called. I was taken aside for special education with students who were truly mentally impaired. The classes didn’t help, because I began to fall further behind academically, and it made me believe that there was no way to overcome my learning difference: I was truly stupid.

Two years later, there was no improvement, and in fact, my learning difference was getting worse. My parents decided that public school wasn’t working for me, and that I should try a private school. I was then transferred to a private school. I was slightly less miserable there, because the students all had AD/HD or Dsygraphia to some extent. However, there were no accommodations for Dyslexia, and I was still called names, because I couldn’t read. After two years of no improvement, my mom decided to take matters into her own hands. She searched the Internet, and found a class called Alphabetic Phonics. She enrolled in a class where teachers from the Shelton School were training AP therapists. She needed to practice on someone for her training, and she chose me. For the first time in my life I was treated like I was smart, and I excelled at my new training. In half a year, I had surpassed most of my classmates in reading and spelling classes! That was the day that I realized that I wasn’t stupid or retarded, I simply needed to be taught differently. 

That was the biggest changing point in my life. For the first time I began to apply myself in my classes. My mom insisted that I read at least an hour a day to improve my reading skills, and we continued with our AP sessions. By eighth grade, I saw the fruits of my labor. My spelling accuracy was two years above my grade level, and my reading speed and comprehension were above college-level. 

In the following years, my learning difference stopped being a curse, and became a blessing, because it made feel special. It meant that I could overcome anything, even the way my brain worked. My friends often tease me because I can start a book at the beginning of a week, and finish it before the week is done. I now know that I have out done all of my former classmates who called me those names.