Disabled Youth Get Help on Way to College

Teacher Sandra (Sandy) Ball calls her effort to gain college admission for youngsters with learning disabilities “Project Turnabout,” but the name also applies to her life.

As a student at Claremont High School in the 1960s, Ball read so slowly that teachers advised her not to bother taking college entrance exams. Ball said she was afflicted with a seizure disorder for which she was given medicine that dulled her learning abilities.

“I was made fun of something awful at school,” she recalled.

Her dream was to go to college and become a teacher, but she was told: “You can’t go to college. You can’t be a teacher. You’re disabled.”

Because Ball could only read at one-fourth the normal speed, any class that demanded extensive reading became a challenge. She excelled at typing and home economics and struggled with the rest.

“Some said it was a miracle that I graduated from high school,” she said.

But Ball did better than that. She went on to earn bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Cal Poly Pomona and won a full-time job as a teacher at a Pomona junior high school.

And now she is trying to help learning disabled youngsters, who are facing the same sort of rejection she overcame, to prepare for college.

Ball’s own college career began poorly. She dropped out of Mt. San Antonio College after a year of poor grades. Discouraged, she went to work at a savings and loan and at her father’s pharmacy. Meanwhile, she married, had two daughters and got divorced.

In 1976, doctors discovered through a CAT scan that her condition had been misdiagnosed and that she had been taking the wrong medicine for years.

“All the learning abilities were always there,” she said, “but locked up by the wrong medication.”

Suddenly, goals that had seemed beyond reach became attainable. She enrolled at Chaffey College in 1977 and earned straight A’s.

The change in medication changed her life, but it did not eliminate her learning disabilities. Ball said her reading speed is about 65% of normal now, and her math ability is limited too.

She compensates by working longer and harder.

Perhaps because of health problems--a risk of seizures that prevents her from driving a car--Ball could find work only as a substitute teacher for seven years after earning her degrees.

Then, three years ago, Frank Garcia, principal at Fremont Junior High School in Pomona, hired her to teach home economics. Garcia said colleagues questioned his judgment.

“Some people said, ‘You hired who ?’ ” Garcia recalled. “I said, ‘You have no idea what this lady can do.’ ”

Her performance as a teacher has been remarkable, Garcia said. She has given students extra time.

“I’ll see children in her classroom at 5 p.m., making a meat loaf or just talking to her.”

At Christmastime last year, the principal said, Ball and her students served a full Christmas dinner to more than 100 staff members.

“It was fantastic,” Garcia said. “The whole staff started to see what this lady was capable of doing.”

“Sometimes she has blackouts,” Garcia said. “One time she even blacked out at an assembly. So what? We just take care of her, take her out and go on with the assembly. The kids all know and love her, and no one gets shocked about it.”

Ball, 44, a resident of Claremont, began Project Turnabout seven years ago to provide tutoring for high school students to prepare them for college. After she started teaching at Fremont, she also began offering the program to eighth-grade students there.

Although some people may think college is too ambitious for slow learners, Ball believes there are ways to smooth the path. For example, she said, through Project Turnabout college professors have been persuaded to allow students to complete a one-semester course over two semesters--taking notes and doing the reading during the first and concentrating on tests in the second.

Project Turnabout students have enrolled at local community colleges, the University of La Verne, Azusa Pacific University, Pitzer College and Cal Poly Pomona.

Retired teachers and others serve as tutors to students at weekly sessions.

High school students and college freshmen meet at Griswold’s Smorgasbord Restaurant in Claremont.

Fremont eighth-graders are tutored at their school, although Project Turnabout is seeking a grant to buy a van to transport them to Griswold’s so they can be tutored there.

Griswold’s provides without charge a meeting place, refreshments and sometimes dinner.

Before admission to the program, students must write an essay on the topic: “Why I want to go to college and what I would like to do with my life.”

One girl wrote:

“When I started the project I was very nervous. However, I had a deep desire to have more, to be more than a factory worker or flip fries at McDonald’s for the rest of my life. I am not saying anything against these jobs. I am just saying that I want more in my life.”

Howard and Rita Goldenstein of Upland said they brought their daughter, Dana, to Project Turnabout four years ago. Now 18, Dana is beginning her freshmen year at Cal Poly Pomona as a music major. Without Project Turnabout, her mother said, Dana “wouldn’t be going to college, I can tell you that. They’ve given her the confidence she needs.”

The Goldensteins said their daughter’s learning problems have included a reading deficiency, an inability to deviate from routine and a difficulty in coping with pressure. The problems were so severe, they said, that Dana had a breakdown when she was 13 and they feared she would have to be placed in an institution.

Rita Goldenstein said she pushed Dana to excel because she wants her daughter to be accepted by others and to fit in with society. She said she tells her daughter: “You can do it. It may take you a little longer, but you can do it.”

Dana credits Project Turnabout with helping her through high school and achieving a 3.72 grade-point average. The teen-ager said that, ever since she saw the play “Annie” at the Shubert Theater in Los Angeles when she was 5, her ambition has been to play a musical instrument at the theater.

“Without help, I’d still be trying to get out of geography class,” she said.

Ball said Project Turnabout has worked with more than 80 students so far, including three who have graduated from college and 14 others who are enrolled in college this year.

Project Turnabout is beginning to receive national recognition. The National Organization on Disability has given it a community award and James Brady, the group’s vice president and a former White House press secretary, has invited Ball to take three or four students to Washington next year. Brady was wounded in the head during an assassination attempt against President Ronald Reagan in 1981.

Project Turnabout is planning to raise funds for the trip by selling tickets to a performance of “Showboat” in March at Griswold’s Candlelight Pavilion Dinner Theatre in Claremont.

Barry Morrow, a Claremont resident who won an Oscar in 1988 as co-writer of the screenplay for “Rain Man,” is president of the Project Turnabout board.

Morrow meets with students from time to time, but he said it is Ball who is the driving force.

“I’ve been a friend and confidante of hers,” Morrow said. “I’m willing to go along with just about anything she wants to do.”

He said Ball grew up being told, “You can’t achieve. You’re not quality material. You won’t succeed in life.”

But Ball has succeeded anyway, Morrow said, just as Kim Peek, who was the real-life inspiration for the developmentally disabled character portrayed by Dustin Hoffman in “Rain Man,” did far more than anyone expected.

The goal of Project Turnabout, Morrow said, is to find those who have aptitudes that have been overlooked, or hidden, and help them develop.

“We all have gifts,” he said. Project Turnabout “is a treasure hunt for the gifts in each child and student.”

Ball said one of the most valuable services the program provides is to instill confidence in students who have faced rejection after rejection. The teacher said she might not have gone back to college if others--particularly her grandfather--had not insisted that it was within her reach.

Ball said her grandfather told her: “Go back and get that education.”

“He didn’t say maybe you can do it. He said you can do it.”

Ball said she is trying to give similar encouragement to youngsters, setting her sights on “the rejects. The ones no one else wants. They’re the ones I take, because I was one of them.”