Growing up, I attended Catholic school. I’ll give you a minute to let that soak in. The same amount of time I give everyone I speak to when I explain my background—only a minute before I continue on with what I was saying, so people don’t have too much time to harp on that harsh word “Catholic.” These days, the word “Catholic” has an extreme connotation to it, so I try to steamroll right over it before anyone starts asking about my religion which, much to their surprise, is very laid back. So laid back, in fact, that we don’t really label ourselves anything at all, and if you hear the word “God” spoken in my house, I assure you it isn’t good.
But that’s not really the point. The point is, Catholicism is a strict religion and it shouldn’t surprise you that their schooling is not much different.
Back when I was in school, we had a dress code, we went to school wide masses once a month, and yes, we were taught by nuns. Needless to say our classroom setting was just as structured. We never had “wild” students. There was never an excess amount of talking until we got to art class—then we were allowed to socialize. And we never—repeat, NEVER—broke our dress code. If you did, you were sent to sit in the office until someone brought you a change of clothes that were up to standard, and you’d have to sit with the principal (the head nun, if you will) and have a discussion about how negatively jeans can impact a child’s education.
Of all of those things though the biggest thing that sticks out to me in my retrospective memory of elementary school is how I was taught. Again, it was strict.
I remember I had the hardest time learning my multiplication tables—I failed every “math minute” (where you have to answer as many multiplication problems as you can within a minute), every test, quiz, homework, and in-class assignment. You name it, I failed it. Math and I go way back, and they aren’t fond memories. In Catholic school though there’s no such thing as a good excuse. You succeed or you repent.
If you can’t understand a lesson, you aren’t focusing well enough. If you weren’t getting it, you were just being lazy. If you were failing, you needed to keep doing it until you got it right. Alone.
And so, I “did my time.” I spent every recess in the classroom doing assignment after assignment. I spent every lunch going over my work with my teacher, and I went home every night with extra homework, until I could get it right.
It took forever, but I did it. And you can bet your bottom dollar I kill the multiplication game to this day. Don’t get me wrong, it worked—mission accomplished—but that was the impression they left on me. If you don’t get it, you’re not trying hard enough. If you don’t succeed you fail. There’s no gray area in Catholic school.
Fast forward a year or two, and I’m in the middle of some pretty big life changes when my mom asks me, casually, at dinner one night if I’d like to go to Mountain View, the local middle school.
“What’s that?” I asked through a mouthful of mashed potatoes.
“It’s a public school. You don’t have to learn religion there.” She said. I was still a bit hesitant. “Chase, next door, is going next year and I wanted to know if you’d like to go with him. You can wear whatever you want every day.”
Okay, now I was excited. Every day was dress-down day? That’s blasphemy!
I’m in.
Fast forward once more to my first day of public school—I was pretty pumped to be wearing my favorite jeans and bright pink t-shirt, but aside from that, I was nervous and scared and I wanted to go home. It turned out that Chase was in another “team,” which I later discovered was a different class—something we didn’t have in Catholic school. There were only 20 or so of us and we all had the same classes together every day. Everyone knew everyone—when one of us had a birthday party, the whole school practically showed up. I’d never been in a school setting this large, or this…public.
My anxiety eased as I started talking to people in my new classes through the day. I even made a few friends! But the next daunting task was, of course, the school work.
I realized much to my dismay, that the curriculum difference between my old school and my new school was pretty dramatic. I wasn’t a good student to begin with, and I started to fall behind. It was frustrating to sit through and upsetting to take home F’s to my parents.
Then something weird happened.
I got called out of class, one day, to go down to the office. At first, I thought I was finally “caught”—that I wasn’t up to par and they had finally figured out that I don’t fit here. I thought I was in a lot of trouble, and I wasn’t sure what came next. I already felt like an outsider, and now I was sure they felt the same.
My heart was racing as I walked down to the office, and I tried to stay calm. I walked up to the desk and told them my name, and the woman actually looked happy to see me. She called over another woman I’d never seen before, and they both brought me to a room within the office and asked me to take a seat.
“We’re going to give you a couple puzzles to solve, okay?” They asked. I nodded, still shaking.
For the next hour or so, all I did was solve puzzles. They gave me some blocks of various shapes and sizes and asked me to arrange them into a square. As far as I could tell, I “passed” these quizzes, they weren’t all too difficult, and they sent me back to class.
They continued to call me down to the office every day for at least two weeks straight, making me solve more puzzles, simple equations, and having me look at pictures and explain what’s going on in them. It wasn’t long before I recognized that they were testing me in some way, but I didn’t understand what for until a couple months later.
The first time I heard the term “IEP” I was confused. One of my new friends was explaining that she had one, and I asked what she meant.
“I have a hard time learning stuff, so they help me. I have a case manager that has all my paperwork, explaining what I have trouble with and what I can’t do in class, and she gives it to all my teachers and has meetings with them about how I’m doing in school. I go down to her office with my work and she helps me with it.” She explained. “Didn’t you have those at your old school?”
IEP stands for Individualized Education Plan, and no, we absolutely did not have those at my old school.
Then, it hit me. The nice women in the office were testing me for disabilities—but I passed. They were testing me for ADD, ADHD, Dyslexia, and Visual Motor Deficit. I was doing so terribly in school; they tested me for 2 weeks, looking for a whiff of an excuse to give me this same type of help. But I passed those tests. What now?
Moving forward, I realized this meant nothing. I didn’t have an IEP, so I didn’t get any extra help. It was decided that there was nothing “wrong” with me—I didn’t have an excuse—and so they threw me back to the wolves. I continued to flunk. I advanced through grades with my peers, barely getting by with low D’s. I was dragged through grades 5-8 because the school system, as far as they were concerned, did everything they could, and it was on me now. New school, new curriculum, same attitude—sink or swim, it’s up to you.
Obviously, I needed help, even if I didn’t have a learning disability. I needed something—a push in the right direction, if you will. I needed help getting organized and adjusted, so the day I first set foot in Goffstown High School, I took it into my own hands.
I made my own system for organizing my work and managed my schedule. It worked exceedingly, and I actually did really well in school. For the first time in my life, I was bringing home A’s. Teachers liked me, invested time in me, and encouraged me to push myself further—something I had never experienced up to that point. Teachers before didn’t really bother with me, unless they had to tell me that I had about 6 assignments overdue and I was going to receive 0’s for them all.
I was chugging along, a whole new student, and a whole new person as my confidence level was rising, when I walked into my health class, sophomore year, with one of my best friends. The first day, our teacher explained to us that she recognized that everyone learns differently, and that, in her class, you should not be ashamed to have an IEP. Everyone learns differently, and that’s okay—if we needed help, she assured us she would be available to give it to us, all we had to do was ask.
So, naturally, when I failed our first test, I asked her for help and hoped she might let me retake it for a slightly higher grade.
She looked at me for a long minute. “Do you have an IEP?” she asked.
“Oh, no, I don’t.” I responded.
“Then no, you can’t retake it.”
I was stunned. It was like someone had just reached out and slapped me in the face. I wanted to ask so many more questions. I thought you said everyone learns differently? I thought you said that was okay? I thought you said we can ask for help?
Embarrassed, I walked back to my desk. I looked to my friend, sitting next to me. Though she had failed, too, she didn’t seem to care. She had an IEP, got a bad grade, and didn’t care to fix it. Now, I was angry.
Why isn’t the school system weeding out the difference between struggling and lazy? Why, when I was thrown into a new environment, with new materials, and started failing classes, didn’t someone ask if I needed help? I need an IEP for that?
Why was I put down and dismissed even when I tried my hardest? Why couldn’t teachers see that and give me the time of day? I’m lazy because I don’t have the word “IEP” taped to my file?
Having experienced both extremes in education, to think about how many other students like me might be out there—and how many may have fallen through the cracks—is both disturbing and frightening. There seems to be no balance between learning the “hard way” and giving struggling students extra help. It seems corrupt and imbalance to have a system in place that favors those who don’t try or reach out for help. To blatantly ignore the needs of students who don’t have an IEP when they start to fall behind is outrageous, and I know I’m not the only one who’s noticed students with IEPs taking advantage of the extra help. We’re teaching our children how to abuse a charity—how to avoid working hard for something, and how to complain the right way to get what they want. Is it any surprise that most “millennials” have an issue with entitlement?
What we really need is a better system in place to decipher who really needs help and who’s just looking for an easy way out. What we need is a system in schools that pushes those students to exceed, instead of giving them an outlet where they can get the answers to their homework without actually doing it themselves. We need to really reevaluate who’s getting help and why—it should stand out to the administration the same way it stands out to other students the difference between apathy and genuine concern regarding a grade.
End rant.
