Published on 12, July, 2020
I'm just watching this Yo Samdy Sam video and already noticing (in spite of her posh, private school education - privilege alert!) that many of the teachers' observations are almost exaclty the same as on my own. Almost eerily, in fact, although I went to a very rough comprehensive in the North East of England. My reports were, on the face of it, rather good, but there are some little asides which indicate constant high levels of anxiety combined with my supposed "giftedness" (I was actually terrified into appearing "gifted", I now think). When I look back, I'm getting more of a feeling of, "My goodness - what did they do to me?" Very interesting, I think, And I'll probably reflect some more on this as I watch the rest. My "giftedness" didn't exactly carry over into most of the workplaces I got myself trapped in and I then experienced decades of anxiety and fairly poor mental health. So... and if you care to share, how was it for you? www.youtube.com/watch
Well, mine back from the 70s were useful for my assessment. Lots of reference to not mixing with other kids, but how great my imagination was...and the spelling, of the spelling! They did finally recognise the dyslexia at 18, even if not my autism until 56. So glad, I kept those reports.
I remember my first report in Junior School, the headmaster wrote, "Watch the spelling!" I am not dyslexic, but had been taught to read at Infant School using ITA - initial teaching alphabet. This was an entirely phonetic alphabet with separate letters for all the different vowel sounds, so the 'a' in hat was a different letter from the 'a' in hate, it also had single letters for 'sh, 'ng', voiced 'th' and unvoiced 'th' etc. It isn't surprising that I had problems!