In his own words, a learning disabled graduate tells his story

June 11, 3:23 PMSpecial Education ExaminerRobin Hansen

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The following true story is told by a student who is graduating from high school this spring.   He has dyslexia, oral and motor apraxia, adhd (inattentive) and an auditory processing disorder. 

When I was in elementary school, I had a hard time.

I didn’t know why, but I felt different. I went to Rooftop, a public school in San Francisco. I had a really difficult time understanding what they were trying to teach me. I also had a really, really, hard time reading. Every time I read, I felt embarrassed because I read the words wrong. When I was reading out loud, some kids would make fun of me. I was mad all the time because I was made fun of all the time. I was felt like I was alone even though I had friends. I still felt alone because of what I was going through. No one else knew my pain.

In second grade, I was put into a special resource class that was one hour per day, five days a week. That class, it was sort of fun, but the teacher didn’t teach. Her aide did all the work. We played most of the time with cards that had words on them. Then I would head back to the regular classroom with dread.

Every day, I wanted class to be over and the day to end.

Every night, I would worry about school and wouldn’t get any sleep. Throughout those years I wouldn’t get sleep, unless I was on vacations or sometimes weekends.

 I stayed up late doing homework for hours. I felt like I was an idiot. Every day I would always try to keep a smile in school. But when I would get home and late at night when everyone was asleep, I would cry.

When I got to fifth grade, I was in hell. Fifth grade was the worst year of my life. All the assignments! I stayed really late up to do my homework. I would usually stay up all night that year. I wasn’t learning anything. Everything my teacher was saying was like foreign to me and he would go so fast in teaching. I couldn’t keep up so I kind of stopped trying to keep up and just do the best I can. I got all F’s in everything. I was so depressed with myself; I didn’t want to go to school any more. I was trying my best but it wasn’t good enough. My parents wanted me to switch schools. My parents fought the school district so they would help pay for a special school for kids like me. The school district wanted to send me to a low functioning class in another public school. The kids were at a much lower reading and math level than I was. My parents were shocked that they wanted to send me there. I was too. So my parents looked for a school for kids with learning disabilities.

They managed to find one, but it wasn’t in San Francisco, it was in Oakland. That school was Raskob Day School. When I went there for a visit, I learned more there in one day than I did at Rooftop in a year. I really wanted to go there. But how would I get there? That was the only problem. We found a special service cab called East Bay Paratransit. They go to your house or wherever, pick you up and drop you off at your destination. We were thrilled about the school but the school district wasn’t.

The next year I went to Raskob Day School to start sixth grade. I started to improve. My math level and my reading skills increased a lot. The three years I was there, I had fun learning.

When I graduated from eighth grade I was really proud of myself. I went from a kid who was failing all the time, to a successful graduate.

But I was worried about high school since there weren’t any in San Francisco. The school district tried to put me in another low level class. My parents would not let them. I was really scared.

Luckily one of the staff that was working at Raskob wanted to start a high school. So I really wanted to go there. We only started with freshmen. We became Raskob High School. We were near Raskob day school. In the second year, we added sophomores.

We knew our area was too small, so we looked for a bigger place to add juniors. We were looking around and found a catholic school site that a church owned and wasn’t really using. They agreed to rent the place to us. During the summer, we moved all of our stuff there and we changed our name to Bayhill High School. The next school year, we added juniors. The year went smoothly and was a lot of fun. Finally, we added our first senior class this school year. I’m one of those seniors. I’ve learned a lot over those four years.

I want to continue learning. I’m planning on going to City College of San Francisco to eventually get my Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics. I scored well in my placement tests.   I will go directly into college Algebra.

For more info: http://www.raskobinstitute.org/   and  http://bayhillhs.org/