What does the word “special” mean to you? In the dictionary it’s defined as ‘distinguished by a unique or unusual quality’ but if you add the word education or ED people will define it with words like ‘retard, idiot, dumb, slow or stupid’

I think any one who thinks that is the real idiot!

Special Ed isn’t a place where the ‘stupid’ people go so the other students won’t get distracted, actually it’s the opposite. It’s where we go so we don’t get distracted by the other students.

First people say if you have a learning disability then you’re dumb. WRONG! A learning disability means a person (boy or girl) thinks differently then others. Something in there brains don’t connect to simple tasks like others. For example people with Dyslexia, like me see letters form a word but have trouble figuring the sounds that they make and often mix up a word with another word like density and destiny.

ADD (attention deficit disorder) students have trouble paying attention. Weather it’s because they are thinking of an answer to a problem and miss something said or simply trying to understand something more easily by relating it to something that appeases to them.

The list goes on. Dyscalculia, dysgraphia, ADHD and more but it doesn’t matter to the other students that don’t have them.

Before you judge just remember, Einstein got kicked out of school because of his LD and now we study his scientific thoughts, Thomas Edison never finished school and we use electricity every day now because of his experiments, Walter Disney had LD made writing hard for him so he made cartoons instead like Mickey Mouse.

I just think people shouldn’t think a person is any less intelligent then anyone else just because they have a learning disability. In fact thirty-three percent of people with a learning disability are smarter then the average person.

But some people think differently. I’ve seen the way they look at me when they find out I have dyslexia and ADHD. I know what they think when they see the word ‘Special’ in my schedule.

What do you think the word ‘Special’ means?