My First Accomplishment!

You’ve already read my series about my struggles throughout my life with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Learning Disorders (LD) from my previous series called “You Will Never Go To College.” If you haven’t read it yet, please feel free to read it first. It is one of my major accomplishments.

After being transferred out of Altama Elementary School, I returned to the best elementary school in the county, Golden Isles Elementary School. My main teacher was Ms. Trish Fehr and her para-professional Ms. Read. I loved them both and still do. They were a major contributing factor in the remainder of my elementary school life. They worked with their kids and didn’t make them feel unwanted or even hide them from the class because 1 had a disability. Although, I do recall hiding out in the play area from time to time. In my recollection, I loved looking at the books with sheet music in it. Ms. Fehr had asked if I was interested in it and I said yes. Personally I thought it was interesting to see the ledger lines, clefs, and most of all the notes. I didn’t understand what they were or how to read them. To this day I still don’t know how to read a lot of it; however, I can get a rough idea for the basic components.

In addition to attending a main educational setting, I also attended 2 Special Education classes, each in different wings of the school. One of those classes was with Ms. Smith and the other was with Ms. Clara Fried (pronounced freed). Both classes, in my recollection, assisted me in English and grammar in addition to Speech.

Ms. Fried’s class had lots of learning toys and at least 2 computers, both McIntoshs (bulky grayish-tan units with the colorful apple logo). One of my favorite games on those computers was called Grammar Games by Davison & Associates Inc. developed in 1995 (sourced from https://marisahsu.wordpress.com/2013/08/06/grammar-games/). Just looking at the images from those games today brings back some memories. My favorite of the 4 mini games was Rainforest Rescue and Falling Fruit. This game worked on both sentences and proper punctuation.

Ms. Smith’s class was very simple, you sat at a desk and she gave you papers to work on, in addition to instruction. These sheets had fill-in-the-blanks with pictures of nouns in them. Let’s just say there was a noun that I kept getting wrong. That picture was in black-and-white and always looked like an antique cash register; however, it was a water dam which they wanted called a dam. It was in this class where I finally learned how to spell my first word. That word was apple. I was so proud of myself and Ms. Smith was as well. Because my general ed’ class was going to have a spelling bee in the next session, Ms. Smith asked if she would call on me to spell the word apple when it came up. When I arrived to class, the word came up and I raised my hand as high as I could, then I was allowed to spell the word apple. I spelled, ” A P P L E!” She proclaimed correct.

It goes to show you that when you have determination to learn and compete, you can achieve what you dream to achieve. Let’s just say this, I had a para-professional in Mr. Michael Zito’s class in High School named Ms. Krauss who doubted that I didn’t use spellcheck on a spellcheck disabled device to spell supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. She found out quick not to doubt me. Always keep your chin up and move forward in what you want to accomplish.