School Teacher Locked His Dark Secret Away For 17 Years. Now, Sharing His Story With The World
John Corcoran had a dark secret as a teacher that he kept hidden for 17 years. The secret was so hard to believe that even Corcoran’s wife was incredulous when he shared it with her before they married.
Corcoran was the image of success. He was athletically gifted and popular.
After his college graduation, there was a teacher shortage, so Corcoran accepted a job as a social studies and physical education teacher, yet he felt woefully undeserving of the position because of his secret.
Corcoran was a college graduate and teacher who did not know how to read.
He was a master at disguising his shameful secret from a young age.
Unbeknownst to himself, his parents or his teachers, Corcoran had difficulty processing language because of auditory discrimination problems. When he was young, teachers assured his parents he would eventually get the hang of reading and writing.
He never did catch up, and by middle school, his behavior reflected the battle within himself of wanting to be a good student but feeling doomed without the seemingly essential skill of being able to read.
In high school, he decided he no longer want to be a defiant kid anymore. His goal was not to learn to read, but to navigate high school successfully without reading.
Corcoran developed many other important skills that allowed him to get through school. He excelled in sports, friendships and math. He dated the valedictorian and cheated on tests by looking over his shoulder at others’ answers or even sneakily passing his tests over to classmates so they could complete them for him.
Corcoran continued his deception in college thanks to old copies of exams from his social fraternity and friends willing to help him cheat.
After he became a teacher, he felt like trespasser.
“Well, as you might imagine, I wasn’t very big on grades, given my history, and didn’t give term papers. To take roll, I’d have a seating chart and ask kids to repeat their names every day as ‘a way for them to get to know each other,'” Corcoran shared on the John Corcoran Foundation website.
At nearly 48 years old, he was convinced he was the only adult who did not know how to read until he saw former first lady Barbara Bush on television discussing adult literacy. He gathered the courage to find a tutor at the library who helped him get to the reading level of a sixth grader.
According to BBC, Corcoran concluded, “I cried, I cried, and I cried after I started learning to read — there was a lot of pain and a lot of frustration — but it filled a big hole in my soul … But I want people to know there is hope, there is a solution.”
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