A VOICE FROM EXPERIENCE

From: A Letter to My Grandmother

Fourth grade: The good day

My teacher had black, curly hair. Her name was Miss Johnson. One day she asked the class to write a paragraph on Thanksgiving. I wrote a poem instead. It went like this;


God, Why Don't You Celebrate?

God, you who made the earth,
You who made the sky.
You who made the fishing sea.
Oh, you must be up so high.
And you who made me.
We thank you for the food,
for your best gift, nature,
our thanks to you.
So, dearest God, why?
Why don't you celebrate
For all the hard, hard
work you've done?
Just to make the world
such fun.
Why?
Why?
Why?
You who made everyone.

When Miss Johnson read everyone's paragraph, she asked me to stay in during recess. I stayed in, waiting to be yelled at, because I hadn't followed directions. I had written a poem instead of a paragraph.

"Dale, this is a very good poem," she said. "Do you write poems often?"

"Sometimes," I replied.

"What do you do with them?"

"I send them to my Uncle Jack or give them to Mommy."

"Good," she said. "Well, let's do a secret project, just you and I, OK?"

I nodded, feeling like a grown-up as she told me about the secret. "I want you to make a poetry book. While the other students have their handwriting period, you can write your poetry in your poetry book!"

"OK!" I said.

"You wrote this poem very neatly," she told me. "I know you'll write all your poems this well, because we want people to be able to read them. Now, let's pick out some shiny construction paper to be the covers of your book."

I jumped up and down with excitement. I loved shiny construction paper. We went to the closet to pick it out. I decided I wanted red paper. I was so happy, I skipped out of the room.

"Why, Dale, I didn't know you could skip!" she said. "That's very good!"

If she hadn't been so nice to me before, I would have thought she was making fun of me. One of the problems with learning to skip in fourth grade instead of first or second is that nobody says "good girl" to you. You might feel happy as your body learns to do new things, but everyone else has learned it already and thinks it's babyish. So, Miss Johnson made me happy by telling me I was very good.

Personal Profiles

Steps to Independence

by Dale S. Brown

Editor's Note: Dale S. Brown is an author of five books about disabilities. She won several national awards for her leadership in the self-help movement for people with learning disabilities. She recently retired from twenty-five years of public service developing federal policy in the field of disability. The Learning Disabilities Association of America asked her to update Steps to Independence for People with Learning Disabilities, the first book she wrote. It is a self-remediation handbook that guides young adults with learning disabilities to become independent. In the following profile, she discusses how she wrote the first edition of the book:

I grew up with severe learning disabilities and was educated in public schools in ordinary classrooms. Nobody could figure out what caused me to struggle to read, write, and get along with other children.* . . .

CONTINUE READING THE PROFILE AT THE LEARNING DISABILITIES OF AMERICA SITE, here.

I Know I Can Climb the Mountain