Codes

John Williamson

Codes

My students have codes

Special education codes

Colds, viral, pathological, easy to catch

Codes, more serious in their grim munificence

They linger long beyond school

When our daughter was little

My wife and I spoke in code

For her own protection

From what was too intense, too incomprehensible

As most parents do

We've stopped now that she's older and can decipher our codes

Our cat didn't "go the farm", he died; she was old enough to know almost everything

Now she speaks in code with her friends

Their interference thwarts our interference

And we're the baffled ones

Maybe special education codes are meant to protect too

Euphemistically muting diagnoses

Problem is colleges don't speak these codes

If our students want the same accommodations there

They can't say they were coded

They have to learn to call themselves disabled

We call this self-advocacy

Some students with 54 codes

Have trouble with printed codes we take for granted

A computer programming code can be made to have machines read to them

Reading out loud like the ancients did

The first silent reader a witch

But now they say most readers read well silently

Except for some code 54s

Whose brains over-recruit for visual tasks

They see so damn well, even in 3 dimensions, that

When silently reading they lack synapses to hear the words in their . . . h e a d s

Or so the research says

Code 42s have trouble with the code of conduct

And the code of conduct has trouble with them

Like musicians the conductor can't get to play in time

Like they don't conduct electricity or conduct it too much

A code 44, severely medically disabled, could have autism, troubles with social codes

Or leukemia, thousands of tiny gene coding errors we're only starting to crack

An IQ test has a coding task

Which means copying, which you're not supposed to do in school,

Except off the blackboard

Which is a sign of intelligence

From what I'm told (thanks mom)

If they had them back in the day

I would have had a code in school too

I was, apparently, so clumsy that I was tested and found wanting

In visual motor integration

The doctor called it mild brain damage

Then, as mom cried, he shrugged and said maybe I'd outgrow the worst

I do remember I couldn't write neatly, copy off the board, count little dots, play sports very well

These were valued codes in school and I wasn't very popular

But sometimes my mom recopied my stories for me and teachers read them to the class

And no one could believe it

And I got bigger, not much but enough

And I learned I was better at contact sports

With their own codes of violence

So it all sort of worked out but not before I got the feeling

That I was the only one in the room who didn't know the code

Which has never quite left me

But maybe feeling this way could be coded as normal

Would I have been better off if there were codes when I was a kid?

That's a code I'll never crack

Last year the Alberta government was going to get rid of codes

Action on Inclusion – the new black, the new sheriff in town, the latest thing,

The going concern in special education

Said codes, despite the good intentions,

Were too clinical, too medical, too negative and exclusionary

Codes' days were numbered

Suddenly, Action on Inclusion is dead

And the codes are back, with a vengeance, their cancellation cancelled,

Termination terminated, bells unrung

Codes unbroken