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Growing up in the 1960s and 1970s as someone with learning disabilities wasn’t easy for Sumica Williams, because her teachers didn’t know how to help.
'I wasn't dumb'
I’m Sumica Williams from Shaker Heights. I was a kid growing up in the 1960s, long before the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed. I had a hard time learning. I never knew I had a learning disability. Teachers never told me. I thought I was just odd, and they always thought I didn't fit in with my grade.
I usually ended up changing classes, because they couldn't focus on me not being able to read or remember my math. Sometimes I ended up in sixth grade, sometimes in fifth grade, and I would just sit in class. I started getting in fights in school because people said I was dumb — I wasn't dumb.
'I just stopped talking'
At the age of 9, I was admitted to a mental institution because school staff couldn't figure out what was wrong with me when I stopped talking. I just stopped talking.
At various institutions, they gave us morning medication and afternoon medication to treat us. You didn't go to therapy. You usually just sat around on medication. There was no being a kid.
From 2022-23, 7.5 million, or 15%, of all public school students received some form of special education, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
By age 16, I was released from the institution to high school. A counselor there fudged my grades when he first saw them. He gave me Bs. That's how I graduated.
After high school, I got a job stocking parts at UPS. It was so racist that I didn't understand it.
Passed the test
I used to talk to people. I would help them. I would play with kids in the store. I still do that now.
"Sumica, I think you should go and try to get a job [as a] school bus driver," a friend once suggested. So I went and applied for the job. They hired and trained me.
I had a good trainer who would write down instructions and say, "This is the way you do it." It was all the little steps you had to go through, and it helped me. That's when I discovered that I had a learning problem. He was so patient. I passed the test with a 98%.
Grade school may have failed me due to my disability, but finally being able to identify it and find people who respect me for who I am led to a job that gave me the life skills and the A-grade that I'd been looking for all along.