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Notes -
When I was in Catholic school, I had very poor handwriting- and this was back when absolutely everything was expected to be cursive- so my teachers, rather than struggling, wrote a note asking the doctor to diagnose me with disgraphia(I think I spelled that right) so I could be put in the accommodations room for written work. The reason, of course, was so that my in-class essays could be typewritten. So far, so reasonable. But there was 1 accommodations room, everyone got the same thing. I remember extreme boredom from the extra time(we weren’t allowed to bring a book in- for reasons that seem understandable), but also if released to the accommodations room we had to stay there. I never witnessed anyone being read to; presumably Catholic schools just expelled students who couldn’t or wouldn’t learn to read in a timely fashion.
The accommodation room consisted of booths facing the wall, with dividers and an open back. Each one was equipped with a special silent typewriter but the desk was otherwise bare. There were two aids that monitored it, and one private booth for proctoring oral exams. In the third grade I managed to get permission to bring one of the special silent typewriters into the conventional classroom for spelling tests, and then traipse back to print it off- this seemed a treat to me at the time.
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