A year filled with horrible mistreatment and ableism
I once had a teacher named Karen, and yes that was really her name. Fresh out of college, with her signature Karen do, my teacher entered the halls of Lake Elementary in 1986 to teach the first grade – the third first grade class in the building. Unfortunately, she would get saddled with a physically disabled student – me.
When I was in kindergarten, the previous year, I was picked on unmercifully. Other students were cruel. Many of them would not play with me. I would get mocked as I walked down the hallway with a gait/limp. Even the teachers discriminated. My music teacher cast me as the duck in the school play because she said I was too disabled to be a bunny rabbit and duck was what kids called me to make fun of me because I “waddled like a duck” when I walked.
Needless to say, I was experiencing suicidal ideation for the first time throughout my kindergarten year of school. The only thing that kept me going was the fact that I had a remarkably wonderful kindergarten teacher who helped to cushion some of the blow from the mistreatment I received. Having a good teacher that cared about me and protected me as best she could made a world of difference. Unfortunately, my first grade experience was quite different. It was about to become a nightmare.
My school did not want me to attend and despite testing in higher grade levels the school fought to even allow me to attend. That means that I was often quickly done with work, bored out of my mind, and had nothing to do. At least one of the other kids who tested at a higher level was given work more appropriate to their age/grade level but for me I had to just do what I was given.
ID: Six-year-old Dom, a white female appearing child with medium-long light blondish brown hair hanging down past his shoulders, dark green eyes, rosy cheeks, wearing a gray dress with white animals on it and red heart with a white ruffle with red hem collar. There is a light blue background. This is a school photo from first grade
This meant that I was often done with school work quickly and before everyone else. I often spent time sitting at my desk alone. Karen was responsible for teaching three different reading classes while the rest of class was going on. She would work with each reading group individually. I was in the advanced reading group, but she didn’t like it when I answered things because I was over eager so she would mock me whenever I gave an answer or not call on me specifically if I knew the answer.
While she was teaching one of the other reading groups, we were expected to do busy work, which I always got done early. The first time I got it done, I quietly started reading at my desk. Seeing me reading a book, Karen interrupted not only her reading class, but the entire class. She demanded I get my work from the turn-in cubby, and she graded it in front of everyone. I got everything right and she could not yell at me. She had no choice but to let me go back to my desk and read quietly.
She was seething with anger and every time she talked to me the rest of the day she screamed at me
This was not the first time that happened though. The next time and every time after that she would demand I get my work from the cubby. Occasionally, I would miss one answer. It was rare but it happened. The first time I did it, she graded my work in front of the entire class and she berated me for missing one thing. As she laughed at me, content that I failed in her mind (by missing one question), she told me I had to redo the entire worksheet over again.
After multiple times of doing the work and getting things correctly, she told me I was not allowed to read at my desk. It wasn’t something I was assigned so I couldn’t read it. I was told that I was allowed to sit quietly at my desk. When I started putting my head down on my desk, I was yelled at for that as well. I was told I was not allowed to “sleep in class” even though I was not sleeping. I could sit still and do nothing. I was being punished for doing my work.
During the 1986/1987 school year, my older brother, who was in fourth grade, broke his arm. He had to go to multiple doctor’s appointments, and one of them was right after school. That day, my mother sent a note to the school telling Karen not to let me get on the bus, because nobody would be home when I arrived. I gave the note to Karen, and she pinned it to the wall. Unfortunately, she let me go home. I was too little to really remember or know that I needed to stay, and Karen waved me off to the bus.
When my mother arrived at the school I was nowhere. Karen didn’t remember letting me get on the bus. I was busy riding home. For some reason, I didn’t pay attention to the fact that my brother was not there because a few of the older girls who were in fifth or sixth grade were taking care of me. When I got to the bus stop though, at the trailer park where I lived, no one was there to pick me up. I was only 6, and my house was around the corner and down the street. I was not allowed to cross the street without someone holding my hand.
As I was crying, a girl whose sister sometimes used to babysit me and my brother, named Kelly, and her friend, saw I was crying and came over to me. I told them that I remembered my mom had to go to the doctor with my brother and nobody was home. Kelly knew where I lived, and she and her friend took my hand, so I could cross the street and walk me home. They stayed with me on my trailer’s porch until my mom got home.
At school, my mom was frantically searching for me. Nobody could find me. Maybe I was playing a joke and I was hiding somewhere? My family was frantic, and my brother I think missed his doctor’s appointment as a result. My mother ended up having to drive home, where she found me with tear streaked cheeks. Kelly and her friend had stayed with me until they got home and I was safe, but if they had not been there I would’ve been trapped at the bus stop, or I, a little disabled child who might’ve gotten tired walking home on their own, might’ve been stranded somewhere between my trailer and the bus stop if I had been foolish enough to try to walk home on my own.
The worst thing Karen did though was let me and my mother get stranded in a national park, because she didn’t want to deal with me taking too long. We had a field trip at Pearson Park, and she decided to abandon me in the park with my mother, who has no sense of direction. I was taking too long, and going to slow so my class left me. My mother became disoriented and got turned around and lost in the park.
I was forced to walk, which I could not do for long distances. We ended up finding the road through the park, and started walking down it in hopes that we could find our way back. Finally, one of the bus drivers found us walking down the road and picked us up, and drove us back to the rest of the group. Had we not been picked up we would’ve been stranded for who knows how long.
Karen didn’t want to be bothered with the disabled kid so she disbanded my group and told everybody to leave me with my mother. She was my mother after all, and even though she was supposed to be a chaperone, Karen was content she could figure out how to get me out of the park. The problem is my mother doesn’t do well with maps or directions. In fact, as I became older I became responsible for that because she is so bad at navigating.
Karen didn’t want to deal with me and this was her solution. Everything she could do to find ways to get rid of me she would because the thing is Karen never wanted to deal with the disabled student. It didn’t matter that I was “smart” or worked hard or did all my work or tried my best. She had made up her mind that she didn’t want to deal with me so everything I did was wrong, and everything she did was to try to not have to give me anything. If a teacher is meant to help children on their path to success Karen wanted me to be a failure.
Being in Karen’s class meant that the parents could also discriminate against me. This was the year that I applied to be a Daisy Scout. This is the first scout level for Brownies and Girl Scouts. My family has a long history in any type of scouting with my grandfather running multiple scouting troops. I desperately wanted to join that family legacy, and work my way through the ranks, but the parents in charge decided to “lose my application.”
My mother found out from Karen’s teaching assistant, who was her friend. She was the mother of my best friend at the time, who became a Daisy and later a Brownie. We were supposed to go through the program together but halfway through the school year, after my mother realized I was not ever contacted about joining, and there were Daisy meetings happening at the school, she asked my friend’s mother why I was not invited. My friend’s mother said that the mother who was the troop leader told her to “lose my application” because they didn’t want people like me in their troop.
Karen encouraged others to not include me, and she also encouraged punishment for me whenever she could. Sometimes, I deserved some form of punishment, but she wanted me to suffer all the time. Take for example the time I let said best friend whom I previously mentioned borrow my homework. At the time I didn’t understand that it was cheating. I was in first grade and I didn’t know if you let someone copy your answers, it was wrong. I honestly thought I was being nice and helping a friend who could not do math very well.
Both my friend and I were put in the hallway, but Karen especially berated me because apparently I should always know better than everyone else. I was always held to a standard beyond everyone else.
Other teachers got involved, as they saw us in the hallway and she told them what we did and how horrible we were. I felt especially bad for my friend because I don’t think she would’ve been punished as much if not for the fact that I was involved. Karen wanted me to suffer and she did throughout the entire year.
My suicidal ideation was at an all time high when I was in first grade and it was because of Karen. She was such a bad teacher that she was not asked to return the following year. I’m glad no other kids were tormented by her at my school, but I learned recently that she got a job at the school down the road from me, and she taught there for many many years.
There are lots of disabled children that go to school. Karen probably taught many of them. I’m sad thinking about the fact that she probably was not a very good teacher. They most likely endured the same kind of abuse that I experienced. I wasn’t even that much of a problem. She could’ve had it much worse. I needed very little accommodation, so I imagine if kids needed more, she was not going to give it to them. She probably made them suffer and go without like she did me.
I was a human being and Karen treated me like I didn’t even deserve to be in school. I can still remember the way she made me feel and the humiliation I experienced during the many times she tried to grade me in front of everyone and then made fun of me if I missed even one question. Karen should never have been a teacher, but unfortunately there’s no system in place that actually protects disabled students from this kind of harm.
My only hope is that I can better educate the world, so that future generations don’t experience the kind of hatred and terror I did from Karen. I and so many other disabled kids deserve(d) so much better.
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