80’s child
My stories
My School Story
Looking back I found school a terrifying place.
At the time I didn’t have the words to explain how I was feeling or any insight into why I was feeling that way.
I was well behaved and tried but I found everything hard especially reading, writing and maths.
The effort I put in didn’t really reflect in my achievements.
One of my earliest memories of school was being walked to school with a childminder and on the way I would start to cry, for apparently no reason, I remember I didn’t want to cry but I couldn’t help it, it would be 20 mins or more of sobbing all the way from one side of town to the other all the way to the school gates, I would have been 5 or 6. It went on for weeks but one day the childminder told my mum that she would have to stop taking me if I didn’t stop, and mum was upset because she was a nurse and she needed to work.
I stopped crying and just bottled it all up.
There were other things I remember from first school, being made to do my PE lesson with no white vest and just my knickers on because I had forgotten my PE kit.
I crossed my hands over my chest to cover my nipples that had already started to develop more than the other girls.
My face burned and in tried to stay at the back of the school hall and make myself as small as possible.
I remember one teacher who always singled me out to answer something, or read aloud and her disappointment or disgust when I struggled, she took my struggles as evidence of laziness.
I remember little tabbaco tins that were used to keep and take home your spellings in, I remember that when it came to spelling tests it didn’t seem to matter how much I practiced. I remember being different, not being able to choose the same books to read and sitting with a table of disruptive kids to have extra support.
I felt invisible, unworthy and stupid.
Middle school was the same, I spent nearly 6 months struggling to settle and crying every day, and it wasn’t until my GCSE year that my parents paid for a dyslexia assessment.
When asking for help from the school my mum was told by the headteacher that ‘not everyone’s child can be a genius’.
At the time I didn’t have the words to explain how I was feeling or any insight into why I was feeling that way.
I was well behaved and tried but I found everything hard especially reading, writing and maths.
The effort I put in didn’t really reflect in my achievements.
One of my earliest memories of school was being walked to school with a childminder and on the way I would start to cry, for apparently no reason, I remember I didn’t want to cry but I couldn’t help it, it would be 20 mins or more of sobbing all the way from one side of town to the other all the way to the school gates, I would have been 5 or 6. It went on for weeks but one day the childminder told my mum that she would have to stop taking me if I didn’t stop, and mum was upset because she was a nurse and she needed to work.
I stopped crying and just bottled it all up.
There were other things I remember from first school, being made to do my PE lesson with no white vest and just my knickers on because I had forgotten my PE kit.
I crossed my hands over my chest to cover my nipples that had already started to develop more than the other girls.
My face burned and in tried to stay at the back of the school hall and make myself as small as possible.
I remember one teacher who always singled me out to answer something, or read aloud and her disappointment or disgust when I struggled, she took my struggles as evidence of laziness.
I remember little tabbaco tins that were used to keep and take home your spellings in, I remember that when it came to spelling tests it didn’t seem to matter how much I practiced. I remember being different, not being able to choose the same books to read and sitting with a table of disruptive kids to have extra support.
I felt invisible, unworthy and stupid.
Middle school was the same, I spent nearly 6 months struggling to settle and crying every day, and it wasn’t until my GCSE year that my parents paid for a dyslexia assessment.
When asking for help from the school my mum was told by the headteacher that ‘not everyone’s child can be a genius’.
My Home Ed Story
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How I think schools could be better.
Teachers need support, proper training around neurodiversity and to be allowed to care in their classrooms rather than just push academic attainment.