Literacy Narrative Essays - Education, Special Education, Euthenics

Literacy Narrative Growing up, one of the biggest intrusions getting into the way of my ability to read and write was my learning disability. Before identifying my learning disability (severe ADHD) after more than 20 years of suffering within the context of classroom settings and activities, I had gone through incredulous amounts of frustration. I could never understand why it would take me so long to read the same few pages of a book that my classmates breezed by within minutes. I could never fathom why I struggled to concentrate when sitting down to write papers, but never questioned it, attributing it to "a simple lack of interest". This learning disability would not just define me as a writer, but rather also bring about experiences and attitudes toward writing that helped shape my specific writing style inside and outside of the classroom. One specific encounter with this learning disability of mine resonates with me to this day. During my senior year, My English 12 class was assigned to read excerpts of Macbeth. Initially, this didn't seem to be too much of a daunting task. However, I soon realized that I would be forced to summarize the passage I was assigned to the rest of the class. Being that I suffer from ADHD, along with Dyspraxia, I was not able to summarize the allotted text in time to save myself from being humiliated. I faintly said "I didn't finish reading it", as my other classmates looked at me with piercing, judgmental eyes. I had not known such a somber feeling before, and vowed to put in twice the work regarding academics. A year after the story mentioned above, I decided that enough is enough. Countless years of feeling a step too slow compared to my peers, whether it be in recreational activities or academic readings/analysis, I became determined to figure out what exactly was wrong with me. I knew I could not be autistic, because school itself was never much of a challenge to me. However, focusing on assignments such as essays and timed essays would always give me significant challenges due to my severe case of ADHD. One Sunday afternoon, I took the initiative and web searched keywords such as "lack of attention" and "absent minded" to try and refine what exactly it was that I was experiencing since childhood. I was eventually lead to a variety of links, one of which directed me to my closest testing center to get a learning evaluation completed. Upon discovering that I had ADHD and Dyspraxia after testing, I was frustrated and angered. How is it that I had gone in between the public-school systems cracks, and was never helped through these disabilities? I recall multiple times where I would be pulled out of class in elementary for additional one on counseling, and looking back at it the only thing I gained from it was the humiliation of being the "odd ball". The explicit humiliation of being one of two kids pulled from class due to problems paying attention, and applying research/studying methods instilled through the rest of the class during our early years of academia. I remember immediately going home and writing away onto a composition notebook about how I felt. Little did I know that my disabilities would help shape my passion for writing spoken word poetry, due to my anguish and frustration of how I had been perceived by others due to no fault of my own. The more I would write about how exactly my learning disabilities would make me feel growing up, the more at ease I felt within my own individuality. I soon began recounting instances in which I felt I did not have the respect of my peers and friends, to crowds of strangers. Writing these spoken word poems essentially became therapeutic for me, because not only was I unaware of my learning disabilities since youth, but I simply assumed that I was intellectually inferior to my peers. This scholarly identity that exists within me today is also in large part of my heritage (African), being in predominantly white schools for much of my life. On top of my learning disabilities, I was the product of an immigrant family that