My life in education and work

by Aimee Grayston

Throughout my childhood and adolescence, people doubted my chances of success in education and that I wouldn’t come to anything. These opinions frustrated and hurt me, but they also motivated me to prove them wrong.

And I did just that. I would like to share my story about my life in education and work with you, which will be split over two blogs. This one focuses on my schooling.

I began my schooling at a school for children with disabilities at the age of four. The children in my reception class spent the day playing instead of doing any schoolwork, which had a detrimental impact on me academically.

I had never used a communication aid before I started at the school. The staff, assisted by my Speech and Language Therapy team, taught me how to use a communication device with a head switch. The device was very basic and had about 15 words and phrases. The staff spent many hours showing me where the words were and helping me learn how to use a switch with my head. I quickly learned how to use the device and could soon hold simple conversations. Although I suffered academically by not having any teaching during this time, training me to use the device was the best thing the school could have done for me. I credit it with being the key to all I have gone on to do.

When I moved into year one, the school day still revolved around play. However, I received one-to-one maths and English sessions from my teacher as the school realised I was academically capable. Yet, these sessions only covered basic content and never got on to more age-appropriate topics. The staff also worked with me to keep developing my skills on my communication aid. I eventually moved on to a new device with 128 different types of vocabulary, which allowed me to engage in more complex conversations. Even though I wasn’t doing proper English lessons, the device helped me develop basic English skills by writing in sentences on it. For some unknown reason, myself and the other children were kept in the same year a couple of times. When I was seven, my mother, advised by the school staff, moved me to a mainstream school. This is because my current school could not cater for my academic needs.

When I started at my new school, my maths, English, and science skills were significantly below the average for my age group. I improved my English skills fairly quickly, thanks to my natural ability in the subject. However, I struggled to progress with my maths and science skills. There were two main reasons for this. First, I was not naturally gifted in maths or science. Second, I was disadvantaged because I could not properly engage with the work as the other students could. For example, I could not work out a sum on a piece of paper myself to get to the answer or draw charts and graphs. My teaching assistants had to do these activities for me under my instruction.

Moreover, they had to complete science experiments on my behalf. Back then, communication aids were only mainly used for communicating with people. Nevertheless, I could have engaged with the work almost without help if I had a modern-day communication aid. This is because many devices nowadays also have computer systems on them. Therefore, my assistants could have downloaded some apps on mine so that I could engage in the work virtually. For example, they might have found some software I could have used to conduct science experiments. Engaging in tasks myself without assistance would have helped me grasp what I was learning.

I continued to excel in English and struggle in maths and science throughout my time at that school and my high school. I also did well in other subjects, such as history.

At my high school, students had to take a foreign language throughout Key Stage 3. I was signed up for French lessons, but my mother asked the school if I could be excused. We thought I would struggle to learn a language with a communication aid. However, the staff declined her request, as they felt it would benefit me. To help me in this subject, my classroom assistants created many pages of French vocabulary on my device, which I was learning or would be learning in the future. My Speech and Language Therapist also found and downloaded a French voice on my machine so that it could pronounce the words correctly. Despite these factors, my mother and I still thought I would struggle in French class. However, I unexpectedly excelled in it and grasped the language. I got on so well that I later chose to do a GCSE in the subject.

I also took maths, science, English, and geography as GCSEs. Typing on my communication aid, using a switch, used to take a considerable amount of time. Therefore, as I always did when it came to exams, I was given extra time to complete my GCSE assessments. This meant most of my exams lasted between 2 and 9 hours. If they were more than two hours, I was allowed to have regular breaks to keep up my energy. Although this was a challenging and stressful period, I coped quite well. I got good grades in English, French, and, surprisingly, science.

In conclusion, I was hardly given any formal teaching from my first school. Nevertheless, they gave me something more beneficial, setting me up to learn later in childhood and adolescence and achieve so much. If the staff had never taught me how to use my first communication aid, which would have meant I could not have gotten a more advanced one, I could not have gone on and had a proper education. It would simply have been impossible to do any substantial learning without it. Undeniably, I experienced many challenges using it in education, and there were things I wish it could have helped me more with. However, what I achieved with it was worth putting up with these difficulties and not having the features that would have helped me more.

As I have shown, communication aids don’t just assist people in communicating. They can be vital in helping them access regular parts of life. Furthermore, I hope I have shown that young people with ACC can achieve massively in education, despite any problems they might face and what other people may think.

Find out what I got up to after my GSCES in my next blog.