Middle school. For most of us these two words conjure up difficult, awkward, and cringe worthy memories that we wish we could forget. I must laugh at the reaction I typically get when I tell people that I’ll be teaching 7th grade. Many people end up saying that middle school was the roughest time for them or that they were “so awkward” in middle school.
Middle school for me was a time of increased awareness and anxiety.
Gym class was always my worst nightmare in 5th grade as that was the time when my physical challenges stood out. As part of a warm-up, we had to skip one lap around the gym. I hated skipping because I physically couldn’t do it. I couldn’t jump twice in a row on my left foot which was required for skipping. So instead of skipping correctly, I did my own version of skipping. I always ended up being one of the last people to complete the warm-up laps, which included jogging, karaoke, running backwards, skipping, and galloping. Sometimes I acted like I was tying my shoe and would skip one of the laps so I wouldn’t be so far behind. Some days I lied to my mom and said I felt sick, so I didn’t have to go to school because I just didn’t want to go to gym class that day.
During the time I was in 5th and 6th grade, more adults began asking the questions that classmates had asked me in elementary school. “What’s wrong? Why are you limping?” “What’s wrong with your leg? Are you okay?” To adults, I usually responded with, “Yeah, I’m okay. I was born like this.” To which they always responded: “Oh I’m sorry.” I never know when these moments are going to occur. One of my soccer coaches in middle school didn’t ask me about my limp until after our last game of the season. My 6th grade teacher asked me months after the school year started.
In 6th grade, I learned that I had a disability. After my IEP case conference, I read my annual IEP for the first time because I was curious. For the first time, I read words like “hemiparesis,” “craniosynostosis,” and “periventricular leukomalacia.” I kept these terms in my head. After learning that I had a disability and the name for it, I went to google for answers, but there weren’t many. When I searched hemiparesis, most of the results came back with sites for hemiplegia and cerebral palsy. But that’s not what I had.
While I found many YouTube channels and blogs by moms of children with physical disabilities – specifically CP – I couldn’t find a blog by a person with a physical disability. I hoped that if I could just find someone who shared the same experiences as me, I would feel better about myself.
Instead, I started feeling sorry for myself.
Going into 7th grade, I thought that if I could make the school soccer team then I would feel better. But after only a few practices, I was cut from the team because I couldn’t keep up with the rest of the girls.
Finding out I had a disability in the spring of 6th grade and not making the soccer team at the beginning of 7th grade, made for my most difficult year of school. My self-esteem hit rock bottom. That year I didn’t play rec soccer in the spring because I was too scared. That year all I wanted was for my hair to be naturally straight because I thought that would solve my problems. That year I felt like the only people who cared about me were my friends.
In the spring of 7th grade, I went to an optometrist for the first time instead of my normal ophthalmologist that I had been seeing since I could remember. The eye doctor prescribed glasses and recommended that I try patching my right eye two hours a day to help strengthen the muscles in my left eye.
I hated this. I tried getting the trendy frames to make me feel better about having to wear glasses, but that didn’t work. I still hated how they looked on me. Because my mom made me, I attempted to wear the eye patch for two hours a day after school. But I hated every second of it and took it off after only 20 minutes. I felt stupid. Inferior. After one of my sibling’s friends made a pirate noise at me while I was wearing the patch, I refused to wear it again.
Towards the end of 7th grade, I sat in on my first IEP conference. During the meeting the school district representative asked whether I sat on the first or second level of the computer labs. I told her that I usually sat with my friends, so typically the second level. I thought that was a stupid question. As far as I could remember I could always easily walk up steps. I thought to myself “Why wouldn’t I sit on the second level if I wanted to?”
AND YET. She put in my IEP that I should be seated on the main level of any classroom that had two levels and I should be seated at the front of the class. There was no point in me being in that meeting if she wasn’t going to listen to what I said. (As I’m writing about this moment, I’m fuming because this still infuriates me to this day.)
8th grade was a much better year. Although I didn’t make the soccer team again, I stayed on as a manager and made the best of the situation. I was the editor of the yearbook. I gained more friends and more confidence. Throughout the year I slowly began to accept that I had a disability.
That year in gym class, we simply had to jog for a set number of minutes as a warm-up. By the end of the semester I could jog a pretty steady pace for the total 12 minutes, and I ran a mile under 10 minutes for the first time that spring. I know that seems super slow to most of you, but that was fast for me. When it came to physical activities, I tried as much as possible to stop comparing myself to others and instead focus on beating my own self.
However, there were still moments that made me self-conscious because I still didn’t want people to learn that I had a disability.
In algebra class, the teacher told me I could take extra time on one of the tests if I needed it. Since I didn’t want to be treated differently, I rushed through the test and earned a D rather than taking the extra time and getting a better grade. I thought if I took extra time on a test that meant I was dumb. At the end of the year he had me take the ECA (End of Course Assessment) in the special education room, so I could use the extra time if I needed it. Again, I hated being treated differently than my peers, but it did make me feel a little better that another classmate took the test in the SPED room with me. It’s ironic because we ended up finishing our tests before the rest of the class, so we got to just hang out in the hallway and talk while we waited.
The difficult memories I have from those four years made me scared to teach middle school. But after working with 8th graders last fall I realized I love the relationships that a middle school teacher can form with their students. Now I want to be the teacher that I needed as a 7th grader. I want to make sure my students are given the opportunity to use their voice when it comes to their education. I want them to feel seen, heard, and represented. Most of all, I want them to know that they matter just as they are. I never want any of my students to feel as alone as I did during middle school.
In last week’s post I mentioned that children need to see themselves represented in the media and the people around them for children to believe that they belong in the world. On August 5th, 2019 we lost Toni Morrison. Through her writing she allowed black people to feel heard. She empowered black people to speak up against the injustices that they face every day. She gave them the chance to be represented through her writing. Prior to writing this, I read a thread of tweets by a woman who said her black friend who was raised by a white family didn’t read a book by a black author until he read The Bluest Eye in college. According to the woman’s tweet, he told the class: “I didn’t know Black people could write like this” (@sjjphd via Twitter).
I will never know what it feels like to be a black person in America. But I do remember feeling so alone in middle school because my experiences as a PWD weren’t represented in the books I read, the movies I watched, or the blogs I could find on the internet.
Representation matters.
“I tell my students, ‘When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else.’”
Toni Morrison
a-symmetry 