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Cecilia Drops Out of School and Learns
to Read
Verbal abuse from Miss Terri, a home room teacher's assistant, had broken Cecilia down. Although the school fired Miss Terri for abusing students, Cecilia no longer had any enthusiasm for learning. She grew anxious about school. The anxiety had never been worse. Now she was vomiting spontaneously. And there were more problems. Now she picked at her face. Pimples formed where she picked, and then she began picking at the pimples. Cecilia came home from school with bloodstained clothes. She washed her hands compulsively "to get the blood off." Our Lady Macbeth did not tell us what she was planning to do about school, but it soon became apparent that she had decided never to return. On the morning of September 18, about a month after the school year began, Cecilia put on her T-shirt backward. This (intentional?) mistake signaled the beginning of the end of Cecilia's career as a student. When Joe gently pointed out the fact that Cecilia had her shirt on backward, Cecilia became enraged. She shouted for a several minutes, stamping around the house. Then she began to cry. Linda sensed that Cecilia was not angry about her T-shirt or Joe's remark. It was something else. Cecilia said she felt sick. She could not go to school. She hated school, she said. Then she corrected herself. She did not hate school - she was too sick to go to school. There was no point in taking her to school in this mood, so Joe called Cecilia's teacher and explained the circumstances. Cecilia stayed home from school for two days, then announced to Linda that she would never go back to school. She wanted to quit and never go back. Neither of us had ever suggested to Cecilia that dropping out was an option, but apparently a student at school told Cecilia that "after you turn 18, they can't make you go to school." Cecilia was 18. She announced that we could not make her attend school. Each time Linda suggested that Cecilia would "miss her school friends," Cecilia violently shook her head and shouted, "No!" When Joe told Cecilia that she could attend school half a day, Cecilia's eyes glazed over. "No!" A twenty minute temper tantrum followed. Joe telephoned the school and asked Cecilia's counselor, Nita, if she had any ideas about how to convince Cecilia that she should go back to school. "Tell her she will miss her friends," Nita suggested. "Tell her she can come back for half days." These ideas already had not worked, Joe explained. Were there any other methods we might try? "Put her in the car and force her to go!" Our respect for Cecilia was such that we would not "force" her to do anything she felt so strongly about. Besides, we were no longer able to tolerate Cecilia's temper tantrums the way we had years before. Frankly, it didn't seem worth the trauma, pain and effort it would have involve if we tried to "force" Cecilia to attend school. Cecilia played hooky for another few days. Each day we tried but failed in our attempts to gently persuade her to return to school. It seems now, a few years after this event, that we had been preparing for this moment during all twelve years Cecilia attended school. In the back of our minds, we knew school frustrated Cecilia. Close contact with hundreds of children made her feel anxious and "different." Attending school had not been as traumatic for Cecilia when her Special Education classroom was separate from the other classrooms, but her current classroom opened up on a busy and noisy hallway. Worse, Cecilia's school district believed in "mainstreaming" the Special Education children. This meant Cecilia had to change classrooms during the day. This proved to be a disaster. Instead of enjoying the cocoon comfort of one room, Cecilia had to walk unassisted from one classroom to another four times a day. The noisy students who jostled and teased Cecilia as she walked to her classes produced feelings of overwhelming anxiety in her. Joe repeatedly attempted to convince Cecilia's home room teacher, Miss Tiffany, and counselor, Nita, to keep Cecilia in one classroom. No. Impossible. That would be against County rules. Well, couldn't we bend the rules a little? No. Impossible. "Mainstreaming," Miss Tiffany said, "really helps the kids."
HOW TO DROP OUT OF SCHOOL BY TELEPHONE
With our options seemingly exhausted, Joe telephoned Nita one last time. He announced that Cecilia would not be returning to school. The counselor argued. But there could be no more arguments. Cecilia had made up her mind. Nita told Joe to call the school administration office. Joe followed her instructions, and soon they erased Cecilia from the student roster. "After all these years of filling out forms for Cecilia's special education classes, and signing hundreds of IEPs, I was shocked by how easy it was to drop out," Joe said. "It took less than five minutes."
HOME SCHOOLING
Now lawfully a homebody, Cecilia decided she wanted to learn to read. She and Joe spent an afternoon at the library, selecting easy reader books about cats and dogs. At home, Cecilia was only interested in the illustrations. Even after trying to memorize the text one letter at a time, most of the words were too difficult. But she did not want to give up. A week later, we found a series of books published by Scholastic which included flash cards for each word in the book. After a few days, Cecilia memorized the words. Eventually, she read the books with relative ease. For the first time in her life, Cecilia was reading! She had accomplished at home the achievement that had eluded her in school. With the anxiety of school removed, she could learn. Her esteem grew, and we had never been more proud of her. But she wanted more. For a full morning, Cecilia diligently rummaged through every closet in the house until she found her McGuffey's Eclectic Primer book that we had purchased for her when she was small. She presented it to Joe and said, "Now I want to read this book." Since childhood, McGuffey's Eclectic Primer had been Cecilia's Holy Grail of reading. If she could read McGuffey's, Cecilia believed, she would be reading a "real book." Written by William Holmes McGuffey, and first published in 1836, the McGuffey's Primer has taught millions of America children and adults how to read. But the book isn't magic. When Cecilia was younger, she failed to learn any of the words past the first page. Now 18 and free from school anxiety, Cecilia not only learned the first and second pages in just a few minutes, she learned most words on the first four pages within days. It almost seemed too good to be true, so we tested her. We copied the words from the first four pages in block letters on her white chore board in a haphazard manner. She could read all the words. A week after Cecilia dropped out of school, Nita, Cecilia's counselor, telephoned Joe and asked if there might be some way to bring Cecilia back to school. "Everyone misses her," Nita said. Joe enthusiastically told Nita the good news: Cecilia is learning to read! "After all the years she's been in school without learning to read a word, at home Cecilia is on lesson four in the McGuffey Primer!" Nita was not impressed. "I think she would be happier in school." Happier? How could Cecilia be happier in school? Did it make her feel happier when she vomited
every morning before school? Joe said, "No, I think she's happier here." ------------------------------------------------------------- Please also read Mainstreaming: The Most Hideous Days of High School and |
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