Tag Archives: Why Haven’t I Worked?

Why Haven’t I Worked? (Part three)

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The ongoing saga of advocacy running amok

2008 – Final weeks

Nearly a dozen weeks into the New Year, things were going to hell and a handbasket, but the teachers didn’t understand anxiety and behavior issues because they were not a “therapeutic program”. For them to think they need to be therapists or emotional councilors should look at themselves for allowing chaos at all costs as the only way to grow. Between Mass. February Vacation to March 12th, was nearly 3 weeks away; staff just wrote it off as another business day in the office.

Without repeating too much of that history, the involvement of the “transition coordinator” was literally my responsibility playing email and phone tag and trying to get someone to show up on a January day in 2008, no less than 2 months to my graduation. Is this what “self advocacy” really means?

Ironically other threats such as “we won’t be here after your 21st birthday” was also repeated. I say “threats”, because the manager type was drilling it down to cause panic to learn to cope. Some people I have spoken to have rightfully said that at this point family members should be supporting in that transition. Well unfortunately, my family was dwindling and my cousins that were the closest were not available, as a result just feeling so alone to begin with.

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Why Haven’t I Worked?

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Part of an ongoing series of feel-good ideals leading to hopeless outcomes

2005-2007

I was able to claim the “Class of 2005” in some ways, my second out of district program. In fact the Eagle Tribune had a photog, but none of the pictures ever got to print. I was hoping I’d have a moment. Again anyone with behavior challenges must be damned from soup to nuts, meaning we were the least underfunded program of all the programs at that site – because no one has sympathy to people who have chronic behavior issues.

The “school to work” program commenced at the start the 05-06 school year, with the summer time being spent 1/2 the day being what became my former program and what would be my new one. By end of the summer program, the program I left was 3 years to the day, the longest I would be in three out of district programs.

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[Multi Parts] Why Haven’t I Worked?

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I want to introduce you to a new feature that I have been contemplating for 14 years, starting with An Alleged Autistic/A Puzzling View on Relationships to the Hopeless Autistic, the story goes back to almost 20 years to the day in March. I’d rather start in 2005, when I was coincidentally turning 18 going on 15, and that still fucked up brain known as adolescence that was often shamed upon the child, the victim, the student.

§504/IEP Meeting, Spring 2005 (Undisclosed Location, Essex County Massachusetts)

Due to the interstate differences, the New Hampshire law required the student to attend their IEP meeting in full, as I was my own guardian. One of the reasons why I didn’t opt for guardianship was I thought I could use that as leverage for “advocacy” (spoiler alert, it failed)

This meeting included my speech therapist, my primary school teacher, the mis manager (er “Program Director” my mother and me including the head of Pupil Services, Brian Balke) and according to me scanning through a piece in the Useleess Leader and or channel surfing against WMUR-TV Manchester in the last couple of years, he’s the head of schools in Goffstown. Something is telling me the Fraud on Broad Street wasn’t in that meeting. I wouldn’t be surprised Bolick’s absence was by pure coincidence and nothing more (sarcasm implied)  in certain IEP meetings that were critical in nature. Other people would be in no show before and after.

At this time the team agreed the next path of my life was to go into a school to work program. I get it now, and possibly back then, but to have my entire day be entirely on life skills (that has become antiquated with the change of technology), social skills that made us extremely avoidant to dealing with superiors oh and the focus on sexual harassment was extremely stigmatizing and the force the birdie out of the nest by the 21st birthday was extremely anxiety ridden, I’d go so far to say this really lead into a turbulent 20s in my life. People who were in this position of authority had no business whatsoever.

By late spring (perhaps) May I caved in to their proposal.

I need to tell you something extremely disturbing about Balke, The head of Londonderry’s Pupil Services had the audacity to say “You’re going to get a Londonderry High School Diploma” in Spring of 2005, knowing I had repeated fifth grade 7 years before, that it was implied would graduate two years after my target year (Class of 2006) and again I was pushed to graduate later in 2008, specifically on my birthday. There was an attempt for me to get out as early as spring of 2007 but that was pushed by abuse of New Hampshire and Federal rights against the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ own rules, which violates Federal laws.

Leading up to 2005, I didn’t feel intellectually competitive against my own typical peers in education, but I don’t even know now because the millennials are dumb as rocks. In their thirties!

The next series will be those three years where I realized at that point my life was at the point of no return and why I didn’t end my life sooner and not before I was even 20 that I knew my life had passed.

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