education and disability

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Comment by Lisa on March 30, 2010 at 10:49pm

WOW amazing. I so agree that ppl learn it different ways. I am a visual learner.
When I was taking adult ed classes I did math via a computer program rather than in a class room type setting. I actully began to understand and LIKE math.. algebra, gemoatry, and alittle trig. I LOVE IT!

I am hope to continue with adult ed, then go to collage. Git to start somewhere :)

Comment by Charles-A. Rovira on March 30, 2010 at 10:25pm

You should be. Education in all and in any of its forms is a great boon to us all.

When I was learning English in the seventies I used comic books. My speech was peppered with zips, zams, zowies and zooms but I kept trying and trying and eventually got it.

It was the same thing with math. I struggled like a fool for years with one teacher who was just wretched, (Old Twitchy who had Parkinsons disease, a lousy disposition and had been brought back into teaching by the post-war baby boom.)

I was just not learning a damn thing until I found a teacher who diagnosed my problem.

He said Oh your a visual thinker. and in one afternoon taught me Eucludian and non-Euclidian algebra, functions, trigonometry, differential and integral calculus and I went from getting a failing a failing grade to the honors program the next term.

Sometimes, when you fail, its not a reflection on your lack of skills, its a reflection of the teacher's lack of imagination.

When you're having a problem understanding something, always ask if this is the only way to learn this subject.

If the teacher answers yes, find somebody, anybody, else to teach you.

There always more than one way to learn.

I mentored someone in maths who had a problem different from mine so the solution had to be different too.

Everything had to be explained as a story. As long as the story made sense, she could see and get the point. Functions became the story of a wise old Arab who lived on the out skirts of desert town near the Wadi Al Gabrar (A Wadi is what they call a dry wash in the Sahara.)

She went from being a very frustrated woman in secretarial roles who was slowly drinking herself to death to being a successful project coordinator for the same company.

Her old boss, who happened to be my boss, had a problem with women and couldn't see them as anything other than baby making machines. He'd been glad not to have the unpleasant task of firing her and was relieved when I took over.

Instead of getting rid of her, I did some thinking and started thinking up stories wrapped around practical math problems.

The last time I saw her was as a woman dressed in a spotless blue pinstriped "power suit" sensible shoes and a serious expression on her face as she wen to work on the problems of the project team. (I was practically tearing up on my way out the door from that company.)

Comment by Lisa on March 30, 2010 at 9:43pm

thank u SOOO much Charles! I am excited as well.

Comment by Charles-A. Rovira on March 30, 2010 at 9:39pm

Go Lisa,

we'll be here for you with encouragement. (GTH [Give 'em Hell! ])

Do your best.

That may be all the encouragement you need. :-)

Comment by Lisa on March 30, 2010 at 9:27pm

I wanted to let u all know that I am starting my journy again. I hope to keep ya all updated So, i have a support system if i get discoraged.

Comment by Charles-A. Rovira on March 11, 2010 at 8:57pm

If you got any kind of document from a board of ed you can use it. Wield it like a weapon. :-)

I graduated high-school in 1970 and had to try to get my paperwork from Lachine, Québec, Canada and I know for a fact that the high school had been turned onto a bunch of things before being leveled in the 1990s.

I wrote to the city's board of education and they dug it up and mailed it to the college I was applying to in 2005, 35 years after I had graduated and years before the internet and the web.

And start writing down your horror stories.

SERIOUSLY!

Its great catharsis and a relief to get it off your chest and it will give you something tangible, something you can work at making into a book and a legacy.

I firmly believe that everybody's got a book in them and some are more fascinating to read than others.

Yours would be one of the fascinating kind.

It might take a few rewrites, a lot of editing and some perspective that having actually written your book brings, but I'm sure that I would enjoy the tears that went into it. The tears of pain, frustration, relief and finally triumph.

Comment by Lisa on March 11, 2010 at 6:33pm

I have learning issues big time.
BY the schools I was STUCK in special Ed, but my parents i wasn't wanted.
I can't say I learned ANYTHING! they actully held me back in ways.
I could tell ya all the horrors i went through at home!

NONE cared about me.

IS there somewhere to HELP me figure out what to do now? Where to go?

I was EVEN abused by my TEACHERS!
well u said ssay something about the NO child left behind.. well that went in effect LONG after I LEFT SCHOOL! i graduated in 1991! I can't use that!

Comment by Charles-A. Rovira on March 11, 2010 at 3:54pm

Tell those people that you were left out of the system because you were blind.

As such you are to be treated the same as someone who was home schooled.

Whoever told you that was, uh, lets be polite here, uh, ill informed of your options and rights under the law.

Tell them to:
look at the Federal "No Child Left Behind" law,
look up the specific state education bill for provisions about Home Schooling
look up the specific state education bill for provisions about disabled access
look up the FISA and other sources for grants (not loans, grants,) so you could get the schooling for FREE.

Good luck to you and get the help that available to you, if you know enough to ask for it. (Sadly, your mom had no IQ and now you're stuck playing catch up.)

Ask for what we are paying our taxes to provide for you after all.

The problem with these systems is that they all depend on our asking for them. Anything else we consider unpalatable governmental intrusion.

Since US citizens don't trust their government, the state is let off easy because all they have to do is shut the hell up and you're out the tax money you've paid and the agencies that are supposed to provide something don't have to, unless you ask.

Momof3 ... Sick 'em.

Go and demand what our tax dollars are being collected for.

Comment by Momof3 on March 11, 2010 at 11:59am

Hi, I have problems with the educational system. When I was in school they told my mom I had no IQ and I was mentally retarded and could never learn. They also told my mom to put me away in a mental hospital which she did. I am only blind. But I guess they did not ever figure that out.
So I never got thru school of any kind.
I want to go back to get my GED just have been told since I have had no school that I would not beable to past the GED test.
Michelle

Comment by Lisa on March 11, 2010 at 11:36am

well money will always and has always been an issue.
Inow am on disability and get 461.00 a month.
i took some adult ed classes b4 i met my bf and I don't know where to start again.
i actully miss it, specailly algibra.. i loved it.

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