Alternative School
By angel_smiles
@Lolaze (5092)
St. Louis, Missouri
August 11, 2015 7:03pm CST
Just a month into my freshman year of high school, I was basically kicked out. My mom made the mistake of telling the school how I'd spent 4 days on a psychiatric unit over the summer and was on medication. This made the school not to thrilled to being with at having me as a student. This was a public school though, so they couldn't refuse to educate me without a good reason.
Without meaning to, I provided them with that reason. The summer before 9th grade - after my hospitalization - I began to self harm. I cut my body with sharp objects. I was also having a very hard time going to school and staying the entire day when I did go. One day, panicked about staying at school through the afternoon, I disclosed to the school nurse that I cut myself. By the time my mom arrived an hour later to pick me up - I was being put on homebound instruction and told I was no longer welcomed at school.
About a month later, despite a doctor saying I was more stable, the school was not willing to make any accommodations for me to return. My parents ended up seeking out an alternative school that had 3 hour school days and computer based instruction. Eventually, it was taken over as an at risk placement for local school district students and I just remained there, once again a public school student. Being at the alternative school helped me in many ways. There were no changing classes or crowded hallways to fight through. I also missed out on a lot though. I didn't have real friends or attend prom, a lot of my learning was self taught because I worked through school assigned work extremely quickly in some subjects. It had its good and bad points but it probably saved my life at the time.
2 people like this
3 responses
@Lolaze (5092)
• St. Louis, Missouri
12 Aug 15
I actually regret not dropping out after sophomore year and getting my GED. My junior and senior years were basically spent as a tutor to other students and a teacher's clerk. I'd exhausted all the language arts and social studies curriculum, had all my science credits, and finished my math credits by October of junior year. My last 2 years of high school were sort of a waste.
1 person likes this
@inertia4 (27978)
• United States
12 Aug 15
@Lolaze I felt useless in high school. Mainly because I went to a catholic grammar school. And that was not a pretty picture. Those nuns were nasty, evil and mean. I got hit many times and my mother had to come up to the school a lot. I have a hatred for those people now. I will not respect them either. They has no right to hit me or mentally abuse me. And to this day I am bitter about that. So high school, being a public school, I was a total outcast.
@Jackalyn (7558)
• Oxford, England
12 Aug 15
I didn't go to school much as I hated the place. I did not get put into an alternative school and probably would not have gone to that either. I was just better learning alone. Had the Internet been around then that would have been perfect. Wierdly, my two kids were not good school attenders either and I took one child out as they had glandular fever badly and undiagnosed thanks to a negligent doctor. Both my kids did well. One has an art degree and the other has level three qualifications. School is not the right place for everyone and I don't think we suited the system, any of us. I also have letters after my name. ALL my education was done after school.
I think it is appalling that a school rejects someone for self harming. I realise you may have needed some specialist help, but if you wanted to be in a normal environment they should have made the effort. It is just a personal thing that I dislike school environments.
