[nabs-l] Come to You or Go to It

[Christina Mitchell]

Well for me when I was between 4 and 5, I went to a headstart program
at the cerebral palsy center.  After that I never went back to school
because back then my parents didn't have resources to put me into a
suitable school.  They didn't know rather to put me in a public school
or if they had a choice of a blind school, they didn't know where.
They also didn't want me to get teased in school either so they were
confused on which schools I should go to.  So when I turned 10, I
learned the basics of braille and mobility at home before I went to
school.  I did learned to cook a little but had a bad experience with
the instructor I had which caused me to terminate her.  The second
school I went too in awhile was a school mixed with people with
various disabilities but I really didn't learn school stuff there,
just stuff that little kids do when they go to school.  Social workers
thought that just because I was blind that I was also mentally
disabled so they put me into this school for a year just to see what
all I could do in terms of following directions.  Fortunately I was
able to prove them wrong because while the other students were slow at
following directions, I was too advanced.  So the next school year
round I was transferred from that school and put into a public school,
but was in special ed classes until I got to high school.  In high
school I was in regular ed, but was a bit behind in catching up with
the other students in terms of note taking and the certain areas I was
weak in like Math and history.  So then came 10th grade and they put
me in resource and there I stayed until my senior year of high school.
 I did better in the resource classes and got all A's and B's.  If I
had to do it all over again I would choose to go into public school.
For cooking, cleaning, and mobility, I did a mixture of both (went to
centers and had training at home).  For ADL if I had to do it over I'd
much rather prefer to go to centers than do it at home.

On 2/17/09, Nicole B. Torcolini <ntorcolini at wavecable.com> wrote:
> One of the things that has always interested me is whether people have to go
> to resources and training or the resources and training come to them. Of
> course, some of us do not really have much of a choice, depending on what is
> available.  Just out of curiosity:
> 1. Did you go to:
> a. a school for the blind for most of your education
> b. a public school for most of your education
> c. a mixture of the two
>
> If you could do it over again, which would you prefer?
>
> 2. Same question for mobility training
>
> 3. Same question for life skills (cooking, cleaning, etc)
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-- 
Christina