What my childhood ‘special class’ taught me about supporting kids who struggle in school
I’m leaning against the dented side of my minivan last Wednesday, twisting the wrapper of a half-melted lemon popsicle, when a small group of kids files out of the side door of the elementary school. Their aide carries a box of half-finished art projects, and one boy waves wildly at his grandma, sneakers untied. I recognize the hallway they just came from: it’s where the learning support classes meet now, just like it was when I was 8. That’s when I started thinking about the special class I took when I was little.
It was 1996, second grade, and my teacher called my mom in for a conference. She told my mom I never finished my worksheets, spent too much time drawing horses on the back of math papers, and got up to wander the classroom three, four times a lesson. The decision was made: I’d pull out twice a week for 40 minutes to go to what the district called resource room. All the kids just called it the special class. The first time I left the main room, a boy across the aisle leaned over and whispered, “You’re going to the stupid class, aren’t you?” I wanted to cry. I walked all the way down the hall with my head down.
Mrs. Henderson’s room was half the size of the regular classroom, with five small desks, a frayed couch by the window marked with a big purple grape stain, and a fish tank holding one orange goldfish named Bubbles. I was the sixth kid. On my first day, I didn’t say a word. She didn’t make me do any work. She just handed me a peanut butter cracker and pointed out the squirrel that came every day to steal acorns from the oak outside her window.
For the first month, I thought I was there because I was stupid. That’s what the other kids implied, that’s what I picked up from the hush-hush way the office ladies talked about the class. One week after I got in a shoving match with a boy who called me slow, I told Mrs. Henderson I didn’t want to come back. I crossed my arms and stared at my scuffed sneakers. She didn’t give me a big pep talk about how I wasn’t slow, she just nodded and said, “Okay. Tomorrow you can be my classroom helper instead of doing work. We need someone new to feed Bubbles, since the last helper moved.” That was my job for a month. I’d go, pour fish food into the tank, straighten the crayon bin, and we’d talk about that squirrel. By the time I started doing small lessons again, I didn’t mind being there.
We didn’t do extra worksheets, like I thought we would. When I couldn’t wrap my head around three-digit subtraction, she pulled out a jar of marbles and let me move them around instead of just writing numbers on a page. When I had to write a story for class and couldn’t sit still long enough to get the words down, I got to lay on the grape-stained couch and dictate it to her while she typed on her clunky old computer. I spilled my own grape juice on that couch a year later, turned bright red, and she just laughed and said, “Good. Now it’s got your mark on it too. No one can say this couch isn’t ours.”
When my own son got a recommendation for learning support a couple months ago, that old shame crept up fast. I sat in the parent-teacher conference nodding, and all I could hear was that boy’s voice in my head: “You’re going to the stupid class.” I drove home thinking all kinds of panicked thoughts, and then I started thinking about Mrs. Henderson’s room, the marbles, and Bubbles the goldfish, and I realized I’d gotten it all wrong back then, and a lot of parents and teachers still get it wrong now.
That special class wasn’t for fixing me. It was for giving me space to learn in a way that fit me, when the regular classroom was too big, too loud, too rigid for my brain that wanted to wander and look at squirrels and touch things instead of just read them. That’s the practical thing I wish more people knew: you don’t have to treat extra support like a dirty secret, and you don’t have to adjust your kid to fit the system. You can adjust the system a little bit for them.
What does that look like in real life? It looks like not tiptoeing around the name. I told my son straight: “You’re going to a small class twice a week where they do work differently than your big class, because what works for 25 kids doesn’t always work for you. That’s not a bad thing. That’s just how it is.” It looks like asking the teacher for a small, normal job for your kid there, so they don’t feel like they’re only there because they’re bad at school. My son is now the official scissors passer for his support class, and when the other kids ask where he’s going, he just says “I have to pass out scissors” and that’s that, no shame. It looks like small, low-cost adjustments at home, too: I don’t force him to sit at the kitchen table to do homework. He stands on the rug, or bounces on a $10 yoga ball we got at Target. When he gets stuck on math, we use his Lego bricks instead of flash cards. That’s all it takes, it’s not fancy or complicated.
I know the conversation around inclusion is different now than it was when I was a kid, and that a lot of the old pull-out systems had real flaws. I don’t think every kid needs a separate special class. But I do think every kid needs a space where they don’t have to fit the mold to be allowed to learn.
Last week, my son came home with a paper fish he colored for his class’s bulletin board. He taped it right next to my third grade horse drawing that’s still on our fridge. He told me his teacher lets him squeeze a slime when he’s bored during lessons, and the squirrel that lives by their playground comes right up to the window sometimes. I still have days where I worry. I worry about labels, I worry that people will underestimate him. But I also know that the things I learned in that small room with the grape-stained couch weren’t just how to do subtraction. I learned that it’s okay to need different things than everyone else. Right now, that’s enough. We’re taking it one day at a time.
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