Instilling a Feeling of Specialness in a Special-Education Program : Learning: Speakers are invited to class to explain opportunities for success. ‘If it touched one or two, it was a success,’ teacher Mike Kline says.

In Carson High School’s room X-8, special-education teacher Mike Kline and assistant Sharon Kuaea try to coax miracles out of their emotionally and physically handicapped charges.

Try to teach some to read, and they might retort, “I’m too stupid for this.” Tell them they’re special, and some reply, “But the other kids make fun of us.”

Raise the spirit of one, another sits in frustration.

“Some kids say, ‘I don’t know how you can stand being in these classes,’ ” said Max Barrios, 18, a dyslexic senior. “I tell them you get used to it because they’re normal kids.”

That’s the attitude Kline and Kuaea wish all their students had. And it’s the attitude they hope develops through a new program in which they invite guest community speakers to the class to explain what they do and how the students succeed too.

Day in and day out, Kline and Kuaea confront the frustrations of their 17 students whose difficulties range from dyslexia and other learning disabilities to emotional problems to retardation.

Many of his students often do not get jobs when they graduate, partly because they don’t know the opportunities out there but also because they lack the confidence to try for jobs, Kline said.

“I would say most of them could at least get a job at McDonald’s,” Kline said of his most severely impaired students. “But I’m sure they could do a lot more.”

The program kicked off Tuesday with a visit from Victor Posod, the skipper of the San Pedro party boat Buccaneer Queen. The students also heard pep talks from the school’s principal, Dhyan Lal, who taught special-education courses for 10 years, and Emma Schmidt, a former special-education teacher’s aide.

In high school, as an exchange student from the Fiji Islands, Lal said he had to battle bigotry and ostracism at Glendale High School. Rather than let it get to him, Lal said he channeled his anger and sadness into a resolve to succeed.

“Imagine being in a high school this size (2,280 students) and being the only one who is different. They used to call me ‘jungle boy,’ and sometimes I would go home crying. Take those tears and those sorrows and make it work for you,” he said.

Then Posod offered his own words of encouragement and the story behind his rise from deckhand to skipper.

“When I was in high school I didn’t think I would become anything more than a fisherman,” he said, adding that in high school in San Pedro “I wasn’t the best student, but I wasn’t the worst either.”

Prodded by his love for the sea, Posod took Coast Guard classes to earn his master’s license, enabling him to skipper ocean liners.

All in all, the program got a mixed reaction from the students.

“You want to do this again?” Kuaea asked at the end.

A reluctant chorus of yeses and a few nos echoed through the hall.

Kuaea and Kline said they believe that, once the program gets off the ground, the students will grow to enjoy it. For next month, Kuaea said she is working on getting San Francisco 49er center Jesse Sapolu as the speaker.

Whether they have celebrities, the teachers said, they feel the program will work.

“If it touched one or two, it was a success,” Kline said. “You’re always going to have a few that if you brought the President of the United States in it wouldn’t affect them. But I think we reached a few.”

One who was touched was a 19-year-old recovering addict with emotional problems. Her teachers had already marked her progress this year from throwing books and pens around the room to her status as the class’s most improved student.

After the program the soft-spoken student summed up what she had heard.

“They said, ‘Look at yourself in the mirror.’ ”

And what do you see? she was asked.

“A good person.”