I want to go to collage

About two years ago I was substitute teaching in Fairfax public schools. The job I took that day was a special education class that was mostly LD. I had about ten high school students in the 10th and 11th grade. The teacher that was absent that day did not leave a lesson plan, so I decided to just talk to the students. I assumed because the students where in one of the top school systems in the U.S. they would not be confronting the same obstacles that I faced in the South Bronx, ten years before. Unfortanly it was the same s*&$ that I had to endure, many of the students in this class had the aspersions to go to collage, but some of the teachers where telling the students that they would only get an IEP diploma. The major reason was because of the SOL exams, in the state of VA, one most pass all SOL's to get a "Regular Diploma" and if you have an LD, you could be an A student in every subject and pass your SOL's, but if you can't pass that one SOL in math regardless if you got A's on other SOL and all your classes one will not get a diploma. This was the same system in NY, where I went to school with the regents. As LD students our whole life depends on test like this, they make us or brake us, and the sad story is most of the times they break us.

If I was passing the laws, I would not hold LD students to the same standards as students with out an LD. If a students passes every class, and a majority of standard test they should get a diploma. For the most part special education teachers are doing their jobs, but from experience a good number of them need to find a new line of work, because of their negative words . That day I was subing, I went to the break room where the special Ed teachers had lunch and the jokes about their students where endless moreover since I had a hearing aide one of the teachers told me to leave because she was thinking I was a student. This is Fairfax public schools not the South Bronx. I want to make clear a few bad apples could mess it up for the hard working special education teacher, so we need to get rid of the bad apples.

When I was in High school I had very positive and very negative teachers, for me I had to prove myself to the negative teachers. When I felt like dropping out of collage, I would remember the teachers that told me I could never go to collage. For my positive teacher who told me I could do anything I put my mind to, I love them and wish I could say thank you a million times over Mrs. Judy Rock, and Mrs Goldsmith of Walton H.S. of the Bronx, NY the best teacher ever.