My relationship with reading started in kindergarten when I was unsuccessful in learning the alphabet. The school wanted to hold me back, but my parents wouldn't let them. That summer my mother slaved away making flash cards to help me learn.
As my struggles turned into frustration, reading became a mandatory task instead of the empowering discovery it was for all the other children my age. As hard as my mother tried, I was still perplexed when it came to reading.
In the fall of first grade I was diagnosed as "learning disabled." I was now required to attend special education along with all the other children whose problems dwarfed mine. From that time through fifth grade I carried the stigma of "learning disabled." It was like a heavy rock in my pocket, it weighed me down and hindered my progress. I hated being taken out of normal class to go to special ed. Needless to say, I improved, but I still wasn't fixed. "Fixed" was not the term the public school system used, but that was how I was treated; as if I was broken, in need of repair. And so, I continued to stumble through reading, as if my brain wore a blindfold.
I wasn't stupid -- anyone who met me could tell you that. I walked at 10 months. My verbal communication skills where above average. This invisible block that surrounded my reading abilities mystified my parents, teachers and family, as well as me. As much as I disliked reading, I loved it too, because if I could read it meant that I was normal. My longing to read was so great that I would even fake it. I memorized books when people read them to me. Then I would "read" them from memory. I tricked a few people this way, but when they asked me to read something new, I evaded their request.
As I slowly advanced, and the more severely disabled kids floundered, I found myself helping those students at the teacher's request. But even then my progress was not enough; after five years in special ed I had plateaued. There was still one more locked door in my mind that crippled my ability to make sense of the words in front of my eyes. The teachers insisted that more hours in the special ed class would help. My parents had had enough and so had I. They searched for a school with a different approach. They found Pathfinder, a small school with a unique learning community. The Pathfinder teachers told my parents that I was not disabled, I just had a different learning style.
At Pathfinder, I was the new kid in sixth grade. I missed my old friends, and making new ones was hell. The kids in the class were a tight-knit group who took time to accept newbies. But at Pathfinder I was never taken out of class or mollycoddled with books for fourth-graders. The difficulty of work was unfathomable compared to any public school class; normal or special ed.
I read, I made mistakes, I dissolved into tears, I worked my brain raw, and then I understood. The social stigma of being learning disabled had been the last locked door. My label had become my disability. Once I overcame that, I was free.
At Pathfinder I discovered reading, I embraced the hardship because in the end I earned the praise. I battled through the barriers in my mind to read at my grade level. I was in sixth grade and I read at a sixth-grade level. I wasn't the sixth-grader receiving the praise of a fifth-grader. I had achieved what the public school system had made impossible by telling me I was disabled. I am different but I am not disabled.
Kim Kelderhouse is a senior at Traverse City West High School.
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