By B. P. Gibson
All names have been changed to protect the innocent and the not so innocent.
Michael
I was five when I found out my parents are different. Probably a lot of kids think their parents are different, but my parents are different. They are retarded. I don’t mean that, like what Ms._Ferguson calls a figure of speech. I mean, they are really mentally retarded. We live in an apartment that is part of Grandma’s and Grandpa’s house, so we have a separate place to live, but we are where Grandma and Grandpa can keep a close eye on things. I like it that way.
My grandpa is my best friend. He read books to me when I was little. When Grandpa read to me, I would point to a group of letters and ask, “What word is that?”
He would answer, “Truck,” or “Bird,” or whatever the word was. That’s how I learned to read, because they didn’t teach me to read at school.
Grampa also takes me places. Sometimes my mom and dad come along too. He takes us to the store. My mom and dad pick out their own clothes at the store. They also choose what clothes to buy for me. Everyday, Mom and Dad decide what they would wear and what I should wear.
I was five when we all went to the school to register me for kindergarten. That’s when I found out my mom and dad are mentally retarded. Grandpa said to the woman behind the desk, “Michael’s mentally retarded like his mom and dad. He’s going to need to be in a special education program.” The lady behind the desk took one look at my mom and dad, and one look at how I was dressed and registered me for special education. It was also the first time I heard I was mentally retarded, but deep down, I didn’t believe it. I knew I was smarter than my parents. I helped them all the time, because they needed my help. I liked helping. I was a good helper.
I was in a large classroom with other kids that were not regular kids. Darrel lay on a mat most of the day. Elizabeth had to be tube-fed with a big syringe. Kenneth would just stand in a corner and rock back and forth. Several of the kids had diapers. Many of the kids were in wheelchairs. Most of them couldn’t talk, only grunt now and then.
I tried to be good, so I helped the teacher and other adults as much as I could. One time I told the teacher Shelley was eating a foam ball. “Oh, thank you, Michael. You’re such a great helper,” the teacher told me. Another time I told the teacher Joey opened the teacher’s desk drawer. Again, the teacher thanked me. Still another time, I let the teacher know when Gabriel was tearing up pages in a book. “What would I do without you? Thank you so much, Michael,” the teacher said. Every time I told the teacher about something the kids were doing that they weren’t supposed to be doing, the teacher would thank me, and sometimes she gave me a candy. The teacher liked it when I told her kids were breaking the rules. I liked helping. I was a good helper.
Sometimes I would see the kids from the regular classes. They were in the hall outside our classroom one day. “What are you doing?” I asked them from the doorway. They told me they were on a scavenger hunt. They had to read a map, follow directions, and go from place to place around the school to find a prize. I wanted to do that, but I was in the special class. Another time we were outside for recess. Some of the kids from the regular class were handing packages to an adult on a ladder. The adult on the ladder handed the packages to an adult on the roof. The adult on the roof dropped the packages one at a time. Then they opened each package after it dropped.
“What are you doing?” I asked. They told me they made packages that were supposed to protect eggs from breaking, and they were testing their packages by dropping them from the roof and seeing if the eggs landed without breaking. I wanted to do that. Another time, they were sailing paper airplanes in the hall. Then they checked to see whose airplane sailed the farthest. One time, they were lined up and getting on the school bus. “What are you doing?” I asked. They told me they were going on a fieldtrip to the planetarium where they would see stars and planets. I really wanted to do that, but I was special, so I stayed with my class and told the teacher when kids were bad, so I could help the teacher and get candy.
There wasn’t much to do in my classroom, so sometimes I would take a book off the shelf and flip through the pages. I would try to find the words I knew from when Grandpa read to me. I also looked at the pictures and tried to figure out the story. I got pretty good at figuring out the words and the story, so I started reading to the other kids in the class.
When I went to middle school, I continued helping the teacher and reading to the other kids in the classroom. The teacher in the middle school asked me who taught me how to read. “I taught myself,” I told her. Not long after that, a man came into the special classroom and took me to a small room. He asked me a lot of questions, and he made marks on a paper when I answered. I didn’t know if the marks were good or bad. The next day he came back to my classroom and took me to the little room again, but this time he handed me a pencil and a test for me to read and answer on my own. He told me to do the best I could. I did my best. The next week, the man returned and talked to my teacher. I listened.
“He is very bright,” the man said.
“Does this mean I am not retarded?” I asked the man.
He didn’t answer at first, then he said, “You are not mentally retarded.”
“Does this mean I can drop eggs from the roof, fly paper airplanes in the hall, and see stars and planets?” I asked. The man looked confused. He didn’t answer.
I stayed in the special classroom, even though I wasn’t mentally retarded, but the next school year, things changed. I got to go to a regular class in seventh grade. It was a reading class. I was in my special class the rest of the day.
Ms. Ferguson
When Michael was assigned to my class, Katherine, his special education teacher, told me his story. She said Michael’s grandfather thought mentally retarded parents could only produce mentally retarded children. So, when he registered Michael for kindergarten, he told the school Michael was severely mentally retarded. Katherine also told me the school district didn’t test Michael in elementary school, because they assumed Michael had a medical diagnosis. I was appalled. I don’t know why it surprised me, because I knew of other kids who slipped through the cracks, but at least they had been tested.
They tested Julie and decided she was mentally retarded until three years later when they realized she was deaf. They fitted her with hearing aids and retested her the following week before she had time to learn the language or get caught up. The second test still indicated she was mentally retarded, but that child was no more mentally retarded than Einstein. In seventh grade, she was mainstreamed into a combined seventh/eighth-grade computer class I was teaching. That class focused on computer programming. She ran circles around even the eighth graders. The students in that class wrote web pages with raw HTML code. Julie caught on right away and had the best web pages. She even understood how to use the hexadecimal system to mix RGB color and make her own unique colors for her background and text. She didn’t have any problem learning how to use code to make tables and size the cells within the tables. Julie created animations using NIH software. She programmed in Basic, as well. Julie was not mentally retarded, but the school district had its rules. According to Mr._Callahan, Julie’s special education teacher, once a child was tested twice, the school district did not allow testing a third time, and since Julie was tested before getting a hearing aid and right after getting a hearing aid, well, it was too bad for her, she wouldn’t be tested again. Mr._Callahan told me Julie was stuck with the mentally retarded label and special education classes through high school, even though he also recognized she wasn’t mentally retarded. He said there wasn’t anything we could do to change things, because of the school district’s rules.
There was also George. George showed every evidence of being mentally retarded. When they finally tested George, he managed to squeak by into the normal range in one category by guessing his way through. Since he managed to barely score normal, albeit by the skin of his teeth, in just that one category, he was classified as learning disabled. I asked a special education teacher who knew George if she thought he was mentally retarded. She agreed. It was crazy to put George in all regular classes when he couldn’t possibly keep up, but that was the way our school district worked.
Michael was a different story. He was in school from kindergarten to sixth grade before he was tested! That’s nearly seven years! He tested normal in reading and language arts, even though he never received instruction in reading, language arts, math, or any other core classes. Michael missed math instruction from kindergarten through sixth grade, and he had no exposure to math terminology, algorithms, or even basic math concepts. The school couldn’t just place him in pre-algebra with the other seventh graders, because he hadn’t been taught how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide. He had no clue what exponents and variables were. There were no classes for kids in Michael’s situation: normal intelligence with zero math skills. Since he taught himself to read and write, he was placed in my seventh grade reading class. Oh, heavens. Seventh grade is socially difficult for most kids. I knew it would be more challenging for someone like Michael, who never learned any social skills and never interacted with his normal-intelligence peers.
Michael was in my reading class about three days when one of his classmates came up to me and asked, “Is that kid retarded?”
I told him, “I cannot discuss any particular student with you, but I can tell you no one in this class is mentally retarded.”
It was no wonder the kids thought Michael was mentally retarded. Michael looked every bit the part by the way he dressed, and his behavior was, well, not like the other students in my class. Michael wasn’t a behavior problem, but he acted kind of goofy and different. Maybe Michael was emulating his mentally retarded parents. On the other hand, his peers for the previous seven years were special education students, not the mildly special education students, like those with learning disabilities, but the severely special education students who were basically babysat and not instructed while at school. That was Michael’s world ― spending all day with special education kids and then returning home to mentally retarded parents. I guess it was kind of like being raised by wolves and then behaving like a wolf, only they weren’t wolves.
Michael
Ms._Ferguson’s class was different from my special class. We had desks, and we had to sit in those desks. In Ms._Ferguson’s class, there were rules. I wanted to help Ms._Ferguson the same way I helped my teachers in the special classrooms. I was just in Ms._Ferguson’s class for one day when I saw things I knew were against the rules.
“Ms._Ferguson,” I called in my loudest voice, so she would be sure to hear me, “That boy is folding a paper airplane. Those two girls are chewing gum!” Everyone in the class turned around and stared at me. That never happened in my special class. I would call out something someone was doing wrong in my special class, and all the kids kept doing whatever they were doing. Only the teacher would look up, and the special education teacher was always happy I said something, but in Ms._Ferguson’s class, everyone stopped what they were doing and stared at me, not just stared, they all looked angry. Even Ms._Ferguson didn’t smile. She didn’t even thank me for telling her.
The next day I tried again, “Ms._Ferguson! Those two boys aren’t doing their work, and that girl just passed a note!” Everyone in class turned around and glared at me. It was weird. I don’t know why they gave me that look. I was just helping the teacher.
Ms._Ferguson called me up to her desk. She whispered and told me not to call out what other people were doing wrong. She told me to write it down on a note and put the note on her desk. I was a good helper. I wrote lots of notes. I put about ten or more notes on Ms._Ferguson’s desk each day, but I don’t think she read them. I don’t think she read them because she wasn’t at her desk much. She was at the front of the classroom explaining the assignment. She was walking around the classroom, helping kids with their work, but I kept watching for kids breaking the rules, and I kept writing notes. I liked helping, and I was a good helper.
Ms. Ferguson
After that year, Michael no longer attended our school. He probably wasn’t in any of the schools in our district. Maybe he went to a charter school.
I have two wishes for Michael. My first wish is that he found someone or someplace that would help him get caught up with all the academics he missed over the years and that he would grow up to be a successful adult, able to socialize and prosper in society. My second wish may not sound so kind. That second wish is this: I hope he sues the crap out of the school district.