First Grade

I had no business being in a mainstream first-grade class. I was miles behind academically, light years behind socially. Most of my peers had been to regular preschool and kindergarten. They did not have to figure out how to talk or connect. They did not have to process what some kid meant when he sneered at them or what the teacher wanted them to do. They had social instincts, fundamental people skills, and an age appropriate grasp of right and wrong.

On my very first morning at Roosevelt Elementary School, I told a girl I had just come from flying an airplane. I was serious, absolutely convinced I had flown that plane. I was so nervous, I just blurted it out.

I had good reason to be nervous. Ms. Savage's first grade class was a huge change for me. I had never even been to the school before; many of the other kids had been there for kindergarten. Instead of a rug and shelves of toys, my new classroom had desks and 30 kids, more kids than I have ever seen at one time in my entire life. I wanted to impress them and make friends with them, but I was different from them in just about every way possible.

I looked different. Mom had dressed me, as usual, in a nice pair of pants and a tucked in polo shirt. None of the other kids wore polo shirts. Most wore Tshirts or regular buttoned shirts and jeans. They all seemed so much more relaxed and acclimated than me.

They were ahead of me academically, too. I had learned my numbers, ABCs, and a few rudimentary words in kindergarten, but the other kids were beyond mere word recognition. Most could already read and do simple addition. They were also more used to advanced concepts. Every morning, we sat down as a group and listened to our teacher read to us from a chapter book, too long to be read in a single class. It took Ms. Savage two weeks to get through James and the Giant Peach. No one had ever read a big story like that to me. I was used to short books like Good Night Moon or Runaway Bunny. I loved it, but could not always remember what had been read the day before. No one else seemed to have that problem.

My ability to learn was not on par with the rest of the class, either. After story time, the aides came in and we broke into groups to work on our reading. I was in the red thin reader group. Most of the kids got through that fundamental book pretty quickly and moved on, but not me. The discrepancy between me and the other students quickly became painful. I had trouble sounding out the words, and then more trouble retaining those groupings in my head. I still did everything by rote the way I had learned at Cedars, say word, get cookie but it no longer worked. I could not work my brain around the connections between those mystifying letter combinations and anything that made sense. It took so much effort to puzzle out each word that by the time I made it to the period, the sentence had no meaning. I could not comprehend, could not even fathom how what I was struggling to piece together had anything to do with the wonderful story-time books Ms. Savage read to us. They were two distinctly separate things and yet, everyone else seemed to be getting it.

When, as one by one, the other kids in my red thin reader group moved on to thicker books, I began to realize that number one, I was different, and number two, I was behind. I had never been conscious of either reality before. I felt exactly the way my therapists had feared I would, like I had been thrown into a wolves den. Way out of my comfort zone, I constantly scrambled to catch up with every assignment in every subject. I wanted to perform, I wanted to be successful, I wanted to be smart; more than anything, I wanted to get to that bigger reader. I tried my best, but those letters and sounds and groupings frustrated me.

No wonder the people at Cedars had recommended I go into a special day class. They knew I was neither emotionally nor academically prepared for a mainstream environment. If my mom had not fought so virulently for me, the administration would have put me into something like the Resource Class I had to attend. It was an hour of nothing every day. We did not learn anything, we did not have fun, we did not do anything! We just sat there. I enjoyed being in class, doing the exercises, and struggling with the words even though it was difficult for me. At least we had a routine, first, we listened to a story, then we broke into reading groups, then we did math, then we did something else, and finally we went to recess. All the while, the Resource Class did nothing. It was like prison, boring and stagnant. Some kids spent their whole day in that class.

Thank you, Mom, for saving me from that fate.

Comments? Questions? Email Here

© HowtoAdvice.com

How to Advice .com