F A C U L T Y
P R O F I L E
Welcome to the Club “The story of how I came to Forman means a lot to me,” says Cognition and Learning Teacher Jane Benson ’76. “My memories of that time are precious.”
Jane Benson ’76 grew up in the Boston area and was living in Brookline by the seventh grade. Her academic experience had been frustrating. Like many Forman students, Benson had strengths and weaknesses. “I was very good verbally,” she recalls. “I could hold my own when it came to delivering zingers and expressing myself. No problem.” But she wanted nothing to do with math, reading, or writing. In the seventh grade, Benson was diagnosed with developmental dyslexia in reading, written language, and math. (It was later determined she had issues with attention deficit as well.) Her school wanted to put her into a self-contained class for students who were struggling academically. “Quite frankly, they said I was mentally retarded,” says Benson. “That’s what they called anyone with, in their term, developmental disabilities. There was no concept of having learning differences.” Her stepmother, a special educator who worked with hearing-impaired students, was not happy with that course of action. The school was focusing on, and
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defining her by, her problem areas. And ignoring her obvious verbal abilities. “She said that the phrase ‘mentally retarded’ was for students who fared poorly in all academic Jane Benson ’76 (lower right) areas,” says Benson. with her Forman classmates “That wasn’t me.” Around this time, Benson, frustrated by her experiences in school, began to gravitate toward a bad crowd. With the dire situation in school, and the troubling social developments, her parents, unbeknownst to her, began to seek options for her. “They worried about me going down the wrong path,” says Benson. “With good reason.” One day, in January of eighth grade, Benson’s parents took her on a mid-week road trip. As she watched the scenery roll by, Benson had no idea where they were going
