An NFL player talks candidly about the childhood pain of discrimination from having a learning disability

From the South Florida Sun-Sentinel :

DAVIE, Fla. - When the story begins Ted Ginn Jr. is in first grade at St. Agatha-St. Aloysius School in Cleveland. He's 6. He's faster than everyone on the playground and slower in the classroom. Teachers can't understand why he can't understand. He flunks first grade.

"That hurt, no question,'' he says.

By fourth grade, he arrived for the first day of school and was told by a school official they "couldn't accommodate me anymore,'' as he says. He needed extra tutoring. The school, he says, didn't want to provide it.

That morning, as his friends were ushered to class, Ginn was ushered out front to the curb of St. Clair Avenue. Alone. When his father arrived to pick him up, he was crying.

You want to get at Ted Ginn Jr.'s heart? Isn't that what Dolphins fans have wanted since he arrived two years ago? They watched him carry the football out of bounds once or twice and concluded he's faint of heart. Or saw him disappear from a game for a while and said he has no heart.

If it stung, as it might have, Ginn wasn't going to tell you where he put the pain. He'll do something else, though. He'll show what he's been through to toughen his heart so outsiders don't matter. All his life is a lesson.

By fifth grade at his new school, a teacher asked Ginn to spell a word. He couldn't. The teacher asked again. He still couldn't. He clammed up. Wouldn't say anything. The teacher became mad.

"He told me, 'Your life is going to be flipping burgers at Burger King,'" Ginn says.

In junior high, he could only play on a sports team before the first grading period came out. His grades weren't good enough to allow him to play after that.

"Then, in eighth grade, I was diagnosed with a learning disorder,'' he said. "It was explained how it took me a longer to answer questions, to process the information. It might take someone two times to read something and understand it. It might take me six times."

Here's the interesting part: He kept working. He kept believing in himself. So did his father, then a high -school security guard and football coach who got his son into special-education classes.

By the time Ginn reached Glenville High School, he was back in regular classes. He was succeeding, too. By his junior year, he carried a 3.5 grade-point average. As a senior, he had a perfect 4.0 semester. He ended up graduating in the top 10 percent of his class.

Life, the older you get, is what you learn more than what you know. And Ginn learned the most important lessons about himself. He learned how to work and succeed despite some issues.

"All that shaped me into the person I am now,'' he said. "All the negative talk. All the people saying I couldn't do it. You don't let people bring you down. You just keep working."

Ever since he arrived as the ninth pick in 2007, everyone has wanted Ginn to be something more. That's understandable. He only has four receiving touchdowns. It's why coach Tony Sparano challenged him in these offseason workouts.

Maybe, as with school, it takes the fastest guy on the team a little while to get up to speed. You won't know until September. But Sparano sees enough to rank Ginn in the top two players who have grown the most since last year (he didn't name the other).

"Just with the way he's handling himself out there. The way the whole offense has started to slow down for him a little bit for him that way. I really have seen him be, in some situations, pretty dominant,'' he said.

"You can see his confidence is really at a high level right now. He's running better. Playing a little bit stronger. I mean, even handling kicks back there I've seen a little different guy."

Ginn shrugs. He's more comfortable. He's more knowledgeable. But he's the same guy he's always been, the one whose heart ached as a kid, the one who worked to overcome problems, the one who's not flipping burgers today.