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Photo courtesy Ronnie Sidney II
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Ronnie Sidney, right, with his former teacher, Ruth E. Tobey (Photo by Kelsee Scott, Scotts Focus Photography LLC)
Ronnie Sidney II remembers the day he first realized he was different.
The summer before he started middle school in Essex County, Sidney had to take a battery of unfamiliar tests. He felt “like a lab rat,” he says. Then a terrible realization struck him: “Maybe they don’t think I’m intelligent enough to do well.”
He was placed in special education classes, alongside other children with learning disabilities. It was tough. His friends teased him.
But Sidney’s special education teacher, Ruth E. Tobey, perceived his potential. “You’re not stupid. You just learn differently,” she told him. She taught him how to stay organized, giving him a planner to write down his assignments. She guided him to improve his handwriting. And Tobey reassured him: “This is not permanent. You can get out of this.” She was right.
Sidney graduated from high school, enrolled at J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College and received his bachelor’s degree from Old Dominion University in 2006.
He never spoke about his school years until he wrote a paper about special education in college. For the first time, he found himself looking back. He requested his school records, in which he read teachers’ comments and discovered his learning-disability diagnosis. “It’s almost like I saw myself for the very first time,” he says.
Image courtesy Ronnie Sidney II
As Sidney pursued his master’s degree in social work at Virginia Commonwealth University, he gave a presentation to the Richmond chapter of the National Association of Black Social Workers about his experience. He called it “Beating the Odds: How I Survived Special Education.” Encouraged by Tobey, he decided to share his story with a larger audience. He worked with illustrator Traci Van Wagoner on a graphic novel: “Nelson Beats the Odds.”
It’s a short but powerful story, peopled with reimagined figures from Sidney’s life: the diminutive but ferocious teacher who berates Nelson for his learning difficulties. The high school teacher who tells him he’ll never go to college. His parents, who struggle to decide what is best for their son. And Nelson himself, a smart but struggling African-American teenager who perseveres and eventually triumphs, diploma in hand.
Since Sidney self-published his book in 2015, he has been selling around 150 copies per month and speaking to students with learning disabilities — first in Virginia schools, and now in other states.
“Kids just relate to the book, because it’s less words and more pictures,” says Marianne Moore, a secondary transition specialist with the Virginia Department of Education. “He brings some reality to the conversation, because he’s been there.”
Moore manages the “I’m Determined” project, an effort to encourage students with disabilities to set their own course instead of feeling like a “silent passenger.” When a child understands his or her own disability, she says, that child can say, “That’s not who I am. It’s part of who I am.”
The book speaks vividly to the stigma of special education. “I remember him coming into class and saying, ‘Mrs. Tobey, I’m a ninja,’ ” says Tobey, who is now a curriculum coach for grades K-12 in Essex County. She thought Sidney had a vivid imagination. Then she saw the page in “Nelson Beats the Odds” that shows Nelson, masked in black, sneaking through the halls so no classmates would see him going to his special-ed classroom.
“I keep reminding my colleagues now that we don’t know what’s going on” in struggling students’ lives, Tobey says. “We just see the surface, and we have to be aware and understanding of that.”
In 2016, Sidney published his second graphic novel, “Tameka’s New Dress.” The book tells the story of an eighth-grade girl who’s rescued from an abusive home, goes to live with her grandmother and learns to stand up to a bully. He was inspired to speak to young women who feel humiliated because of their complexions, he says, and to tell them, “It’s really what’s inside of you that matters, not just on the outside.”
Sidney also created a free mobile app, the “Nelson Beats the Odds Comic Creator,” that allows users to add their face to the illustrations, create photo collages with accessories like a cap and gown, and share their own stories.
Sidney, who works as a therapist for court-involved youth in Warsaw, is now writing a third, darker story for teenage readers. “Rest in Peace, RaShawn” tells the story of a young man, the golden child of his family, who dies in a police-involved shooting. His younger brother, Jeremy, finds an outlet for his anger in joining a local gang. “I really wanted to illustrate the grief, the anger and the rage that people of color are feeling,” Sidney says. And, he adds, “I really think that this book can keep that conversation going.”
