The Team System

The Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired, TSBVI, divided kids into teams. Teams 1 through 6, sorted by cognitive ability and independence track. Team 5 was college-track. Team 6 was group home track.

I was Team 5 the whole time I was there.

The kids in Team 5 didn’t need a lot of academic support, and that was me. I had high verbal comprehension and superior working memory. I was academically gifted. But Team 5 also extended into the transition program, the one for the most independent kids. So they never thought to move me or rethink my placement.

The problem is that academic ability and overall functioning aren’t the same thing.

My autism evaluation documented the gap. Strong verbal skills, strong memory, real academic ability. But also major difficulty with daily living skills, socialization, coping, transitions, problem-solving, prioritizing tasks, and emotional regulation. My adaptive behavior composite was in the 4th percentile. My socialization was in the 1st to 2nd percentile.

The evaluation recommended more support, not less.

Staff refused to move me to the program for kids with higher support needs.

I asked. I knew EXIT, the transition program, was too much for me. I knew I needed what Team 6 offered. But the system had already decided who I was. They saw academics, verbal skills, and compliance, and they concluded I’d be fine everywhere else. When I said I needed more help, they heard “less capable,” which threatened their narrative about me. So instead of adjusting the narrative, they ignored the request.

That’s institutional sorting. Once they put you on a track, everything after gets interpreted through that original decision, even when the evidence no longer fits.

TSBVI is affiliated with the National Federation of the Blind. The NFB has a philosophy that there’s one way to be blind. If you’re not independent, not employed, you’re doing it wrong. Their slogan is “You Can Live the Life You Want.” My life has never looked like their ideal blind life, and it probably never will. I’m multiply disabled, not just blind. I’m chronically ill. I need daily support. Independence, as they define it, was never a realistic goal for me without major ongoing help.

But the philosophy underneath the sorting doesn’t leave room for that. It equates independence with success and dependence with failure. So when a multiply disabled student says “I need more support,” the system hears “I’m giving up” instead of “I’m telling you what I actually need to survive.”

The evaluation didn’t just recommend more support. It described someone who was already struggling. Increased need for staff support. Anxiety, distress, somatic complaints, panic-type symptoms. Difficulty with routines, flexibility, task prioritizing, independent travel, emotional regulation. Frequent health concerns.

That was me at 19. That same year, after the diagnosis, the school took away my valedictorian status, my BrailleNote Apex, and my scholarships. The diagnosis that should have brought more support instead brought punishment.

No full neuropsychological evaluation was ever done. The PDD-NOS diagnosis functioned as a catch-all and was treated with fewer supports than a full autism diagnosis would have been.

I wasn’t failing to generalize independence. I was never supported in the domains where I actually needed support. Initiation, sequencing, task-switching, energy regulation, sensory gating, and daily living skills live in different neural systems than academics. Being strong in one tells you almost nothing about the others.

Institutions sort people. That’s what they do. But the sorting only works if the categories fit the whole person, not just the parts the system can see. When a school for the blind can’t see past a student’s verbal skills to recognize that she’s drowning in daily life, the sorting isn’t support. It’s a trap.

I knew what I needed. I asked for it. The system overrode my self-knowledge because I didn’t fit their stereotypes.

That’s not a misunderstanding. That’s how institutions fail the people they’re supposed to serve.