Reflections on Citizenship Part 2 — Assimilation and Recognition

My 5th birthday party in the special education class.

A memoir by Gabe Coronado

The first few years were tough, whereas in Guatemala my parents ran their own factory which produced cleaning supplies, in the United States they were forced to take on jobs as shoe store attendants, McDonald's workers, among other things. They also had to worry about raising my two other brothers.

Eventually, however, both our parents had a falling out and my dad left, so my mom was left as the sole breadwinner in our household. This meant that my two brothers had the responsibility of raising me since my mom was working 12-hour days to keep a roof over our heads and food on our plates. My oldest brother (who was 11 or 12 at the time) took on most of the responsibility of making sure that I and my other brother were fed, clean, and that all our school work was done. His own academic performance and social life suffered as a result.

Speaking of school and social life, mine was off to a rocky start as well. I entered special education at four years old. I really should have entered mainstream education, but because I was in a chair and could not speak English all that well at the time, the administration decided that I must be intellectually disabled. To be honest, being that I was so young, I didn't really understand what was going on at the time. I just knew that I was being dragged to meetings that had something to do with me. 

However, the event which retroactively foreshadowed my intellectual capacity was a day in which the teacher gave us all a simple one column maze with a few forks to complete. Instead of struggling like the other kids, I took the pencil from the teacher's hand and completed the maze in a few seconds.

I still vividly remember the teacher's shocked face as she realized that I was different—different in a good way—smarter. After this, it took a combination of my mother, the special education teacher herself, and my various occupational and physical therapists to push the school into mainstreaming me. Finally, after about three years I started in a mainstream education kindergarten classroom.

My time in mainstream classes was good for the most part. I started to quickly make friends and I was more or less accepted as an equal. I integrated well into the new social environment and was a good, obedient student. Things weren’t all sunshine and roses though…

Check back here next week to see how the story continues!

Author: Gabe Coronado