I was in American special education in a new school every year until late middle school where I got put on a different 504 plan with checkups throughout the year. I have some type of aphasia so I struggle with speaking and understanding spoken language (though I did greatly improve over the years) so I was in speech therapy from kindergarten to 10th grade (11 years).

It wasn’t the worst since I was still good enough to stay in the regular or advanced classes but I’d get pulled every few days for speech therapy which wasn’t bad at most of the schools. Since I was being dragged around different rural schools every single year I was usually the only one in speech therapy but there were a few times where there were others with different disabilities but I didn’t get to know them since we had to move at the end of the year. The sessions mostly focused on keeping a good internal rhythm and figuring out and practicing ways to get around certain speaking issues I had such as blocks, slurring, and lisp.

All was pretty good until we moved to a suburban hell school for one year where the speech therapist wouldn’t even be at the school most of the time so the teachers would just pull me from class and make me sit in an empty room for an hour until someone finds me or I walk back by myself. In the beginning I’d just sit there the entire time but towards the end of the year I’d wait 15 minutes and just walk back to class with the teachers looking confused.

The worst part about everything was being bounced between regular busses and the short bus. I remember in 3rd grade I had lots of friends from the regular bus until the school suddenly forced me to take the short bus quarter way in the year then all of them got distant since I was a now a “short bus kid” except for Lexi; she was the only one that actually stuck with me. Thankfully the teachers were actually pretty good for shutting down any bullying in most of the schools (rare case in American schools) until I got to middle school but by then I was put back exclusively on regular busses and was mostly able to fit in with regular students and we stopped moving around every year so I had a decent social circle so I just had generic middle school bullying.

My 504 plan gave me some extra time and a text to speech reader phone thing (no idea why they thought that was a good idea. Never used it) attached to a special computer for some tests but I opted into just joining the regular test sessions since I had no issues with written language. It was only in one certification test I was forced into the special extended time and text to speech reader session for some ADA compliance reason.

Though one thing I loved was foreign language classes since the teachers were so forgiving on the speaking portions for me so the written portions were the parts I had to fully focus on.

As an adult, the years of speech therapy did give me a really good sense of rhythm so I’m pretty decent at playing instruments without a metronome or other tempo aids. My friends did point out that most of my actions are unusually rhythmic as well such as typing, moving many close objects, chewing, walking, and other repeated tasks where I’d have a strangely consistent rhythm between actions according to them. I never noticed it until they pointed it out but I guess the 11 years of rhythm exercises did that. As for my actual speech, I’ve gotten considerably better and can mostly function in the real world. Still absolutely abhor giving presentations, video meetings, or phone calls through so I try to do everything over some text or written format.

In college, I have no special treatment so I’m pretty much just a normal student except for being very quiet in class and rarely ever speak unless I have to which hasn’t been much of an issue since I do most of my interaction over text, email, or other written/textual formats.

Why where you there? What was it like? How did you do later in life? And did it have any effect as a adult?

I shouldn’t have been in special education, but I was. Home life was a nightmare. My mom and dad would constantly fight and take it out on me.

That meant once I left school for home, there was zero chance of ever getting any homework assignments done. I would get straight A’s on tests, yet would get all zeros on homework assignments.

The school wouldn’t listen, nor cared about, the abuse going on at home. They were always short staffed and short on budget, so special ed was their bandaid solution.

The special ed teachers ptotested time and time again as I clearly didn’t belong there. Sometimes the class would read aloud a book together. We would go in a circle, each reading a paragraph. Everyone else struggled to get through it, I breezed through it.

The teachers wouldn’t let me participate anymore as I was unintentionally embarrassing the other students. There was no internet or smartphones at the time. So I spent nearly all of high school, reading any and every book I could get my hands on, silently.

Honestly it ruined my life in significant, permanent ways. The social ostracization that happens by being in different settings, prevented me from learning a lot of basic socialization skills until my 20s.

I’ve struggled my whole life to ‘catch up’ to people my age, so many of my friends are not in my exact age bracket, instead being in mid to late twenties instead of forties and most are surprised to find I’m as old as I am because I don’t look or act it.

It took me three decades to get out of poverty and have my first career job.

0/10 would not recommend.

I was there because of multiple learning disabilities. I was smarter than most kids my age is the funny part. I just sucked at learning the way they taught us. My whole life people told me I’m smart but I never believed them until recently. I’m at the part of my life where I feel trapped now, partly because everyday I go to work with people dumber than sacks of shit and it takes a toll on me mentally. I’m told things get better.