An e-mail I received from a parent

Posted on 28. Jul, 2010 by Joan Azarva in Articles

Joan, I just got your link off a KY SPED listserv and I wish I would have known about you five years ago. I have a son who is getting ready to start his second year of college, but is still a freshman. I also have been mentoring for the past 15 years 3 African American male high school students who live in poverty and have learning disabilities. All four have graduated from high school and entered college. One has dropped out, two are hanging on by their fingernails (one of which is my son), and one is just starting.

I have watched each one of them enter college and fall off the cliff. It is heartbreaking. The one that just graduated makes me wake up with nightmares because I can already see him falling off the cliff. I am trying to warn him, but I have great fear that he won’t seek the help he needs. He is at a college 2 hours away from me and I can’t directly help him.

Sometimes I wonder if a fatal flaw of our kids with LD is that they learn best through experience. Sometimes I think I can tell/prepare them for things till I’m blue in the face, but it doesn’t sink in until they fail and then the light bulb goes off “Oh, now I see why she was always warning me to do this.” In any case, trying to prepare them for the college cliff the summer before they go to college is toooo late. Our high schools are failing our kids miserably by not understanding what I am quickly learning and you already know.

Anyway, in reading your background, I felt like I was meeting a soul sister. Thank you for your many years of service to our kids with LD and for sharing your knowledge. I look forward to learning from you, helping to spread your knowledge in KY and getting to know you.

Best,
Cindy Baumert
Email: cbaumert@readfluent.com

Tags: email, postsecondary failure, risks of postsecondary transition, why students with LD fail