Taking on a Learning Disability

In the United States, approximately 2.5 million students are diagnosed as havinga learning disability and the majority of those children are placed in specialeducation because of an inability to read as expected. As a result of thisdiagnosis, these children may be placed in special education classrooms -classrooms that are separate from the ’mainstream’ population. For childrenwith learning disabilities, there is likely no place, other than in school, where astudent’s inability to read as expected leads to this separation from his/her peers.Once school is over, these children play alongside the kids in theirneighborhoods, participate in sports teams, and attend community activities.This book looks at the impact of being labeled as learning disabled andseparated from peers in school through the eyes of Samson, a middle schoolstudent described both as learning disabled and a non-reader. This qualitative case study explores how Samson,his family, his teachers and this researcher make sense of special education and the complexities of learning toread as an adolescent.Throughout this book, there is a contrasting of the laws and procedures designed to guide specialeducation, with the actual experiences of those impacted by these laws and procedures. Through the three yearsthat Samson was in middle school, this book investigates his perspective on his classes, his interpretation of whatit means to ’be’ a student in special education, and the process by which he learns to read. How disability getscreated, contested, and discussed is highlighted through the many contextsthat allow disability to be recognized and to fade into the background.