Laughter fills the space between the small seven-year-olds as they scurry around, tagging each other and hiding behind objects of various size and color. Their feet pick up the pace as they chase one another, their worries never extending past where they should hide or if they can make it to the safe place before they are touched. Despite the number of participants in today’s game, their class is not full. An individual is missing – a boy.
While his peers are running around, he is sitting in the doctor’s office as examinations are run on him. He will not have the opportunity to be ‘it’ today. Instead, he will wait with his parents for the test results that turned his life upside down: at age 7, Mr. Blake Sammons was diagnosed with dyslexia and attention deficit disorder.
“I used to be very embarrassed about my disabilities,” co teacher Mr. Sammons said. “Now, rather than be embarrassed about having disabilities and receiving special ed services, it’s something that’s a point of pride because now I can teach through a first person point of view.”
Mr. Sammons has been teaching at the school for only a year now but already enjoys it, despite never believing he would have been an educator in his youth.
“Ten years ago if someone had told me I was going to be a teacher, I would tell them they’re a liar,” Mr. Sammons said. “I was an rambunctious, athletic, class-clown type of kid. So, I wouldn’t have believed it.”
To his youthful shock Mr. Sammons is not only a teacher, he has recently been awarded the Texas Council for Learning Disabilities Special Education Teacher of the Year.
“I feel like ‘in shock’ is not a good enough term,” Mr. Sammons said. “It was unbelievable. It was so unbelievable to the point that it took me a few days to realize that it actually happened.”
Oct. 2, Mr. Sammons and his wife will fly up to Philadelphia for the 36th Annual Conference on Learning Disabilities where he will receive the award and dedicate it to his parents.
“My parents are very positive people,” Mr. Sammons said. “They’re always there and they never let me quit, even if that involved really pushing me or finding creative ways to help me do my homework or my tests.”
Not only were his parents motivators, they were also allies in ways other people couldn’t be.
“Disabilities are sometimes heredity and I get mine directly from my dad,” Mr. Sammons said. “My dad was always there to tell me it’s gonna be tough.”
Through the hardships he found a way to succeed and conquer, developing a philosophy to help him deal with the bad days, which he borrowed from a man named Joel Weldon as he listened to his CDs. The philosophy is you have to turn your biggest weakness into your biggest strength.
“That was one of the hardest things for me to do and to be proud of,” Mr. Sammons said. “[But] it’s a matter of being open and never taking no for an answer.”
