Students' Perspectives
Students' Perspectives
Growing up and going to school during a time where neurodiversity was not widely promoted meant that I didn't have too much support going through elementary school, in particular. Before I started going to school, I was somewhat nonverbal. I struggled with using words, especially when it came to someone directly addressing me. Thus, I was instructed very clearly to speak when spoken to. While learning how to act in a classroom, this became a bit of a problem. When the teacher would speak to the class, I would know, based on what I had been told, that I needed to speak. Of course, not understanding the cue that I had to sit and listen instead in this context, I would verbally respond to every sentence the teacher said to us! I also had problems as a younger child with sensory overload (admittedly, I still do, I have just become much better at dealing with it) that made standard social interaction with my peers in a loud classroom impossible. I often acted out or ran away, and even with my diagnosis on file as having both autism and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, I got a reputation for being something of a "problem child." It took tutoring and hard work from all parties to figure out coping skills for me that would make me able to work and behave appropriately.
In middle school is when I can really say that things started picking up in terms of the actual institution stepping in to help me. I was eligible for extra time on my assignments and tests, and was able to access a tutor when I got overwhelmed due to my issues with perception and with some types of logical thinking and spatial reasoning. One thing I would seriously critique, however, was the way that disability services were handled. The students who needed extra time on assignments were often inadvertently outed by professors, and this meant that sometimes people got bullied or ostracized. High school was the same, effectively, with strong support for students academically, but socially not as much.
Now that I'm in higher education, it has actually been something of a boon. Class discussion and academic research is one of the few contexts where my neurodevelopmental disabilities really come in handy. My ADHD actually means that because of my short attention span, I ended up diving down a lot of rabbit holes research-wise that no one else would have. As a result, there were many situations where I could make connections to the text we were analyzing or the activity we were doing that my peers could not. My autism makes it somewhat easier for me to multitask and memorize things; as a result, I've become quite adept at learning languages. I've also been fortunate enough that my past and current SIs (special interests -- things or topics that people with autism fixate on to an extent that some might deem as unusual) have all been very academic concepts (ex: Norman Sicily, French post-impressionist painting, James Joyce's Ulysses, the Corsican Crisis, the works of Leo Tolstoy) that have been able to worm their way into a research paper or two of mine. Overall, my experience with being neurodevelopmentally disabled in school has had a lot of ups and downs, but I know that the times have changed and accessibility is now far more relevant to the interests of most educators.
Related Objectives
· Empathize with the difficulties experienced by students with disabilities
· Learn how to empower students by promoting self-determination skills
Empathizing with Students
Imagine that you have just been diagnosed with a disability. You do not know how your friends, your parents, or your teachers will react. You do not understand what exactly your disability entails, so you start doing research. You learn that there are other students like yourself who have been diagnosed with the same or a similar disability, but how do you know who they are and how to connect with them? What will this mean once you are looking for a job someday?
In a study conducted by Melissa Jones (2006), she found that teachers are often surprised to learn how little their students know about their own disabilities. The study also exposed the alarm many teachers feel regarding the number of students who view themselves negatively because of their disability (Jones, 2006). One student said, "I always knew I was different, but I never knew exactly how I was different. It's good to know how and to know that it's not bad to be different from the other kids in my class, because before I thought it made me stupid" (Jones, 2006, p. 16).
When we feel different than others, it is important to connect with those who are in similar situations. Knowing this, Gabriela McCall Delgado created We Connect Now in 2008 to allow students to improve their awareness, connect with others, and self-advocate. The organization provides college students with access to stories from other students with disabilities, student organizations, events, employment opportunities, and links to relevant articles and informational Web sites regarding topics like disability law.
Check out how Lily-Grace navigates around her school day. Lily-Grace Hooper is an eight-year-old that was born prematurely which has affected her sight. The short clip is titled "Understanding Vision Impairment in Children" by RNIB (Royal National Institute of Blind People). (4 min, 48 sec).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wGP_k_UP9c
Promoting Self-Determination
One important way that librarians and educators can help students with disabilities is by empowering them to develop self-determination, or the power to control their own lives.
Some ways to promote and foster self-determination skills are to:
· Facilitate personal goal setting
· Facilitate the creation of solutions to obstacles faced with these goals
· Incorporate decision-making practice based on personal preferences
· Encourage the creation of action plans to achieve goals
· Facilitate the self-assessment of daily activities
· Encourage students to think out loud
· Provide feedback for goals, outcomes, and reflections
Adapted from "Self-Determination and the Education of Students with Disabilities" (Wehmeyer, 2002)
For college students, self-advocacy is essential to receiving accommodations from a college or university. Students must be able to act on their own behalf, independent of their parents, to describe their specific disability and communicate with professors or administrators about potential accommodations. For example, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act requires a college student in need of auxiliary aids to provide notice of their disability to the college, and to assist in identifying appropriate aids. Libraries can serve as hubs of information and support throughout this process.
What are some ways you could encourage students to advocate for themselves to secure the accommodations they need?
References
American Council on Education. (1999). Section 504: The law & its impact on postsecondary education. LD Online. Retrieved from http://www.ldonline.org/article/6126/
Jones, M. (2006). Teaching self-determination: Empowered teachers, empowered students. Teaching Exceptional Children, 39(1), 12-17.
Office for Civil Rights. (1998). auxiliary aids and Services for Postsecondary Students with Disabilities: Higher Education's Obligations Under Section 504 and Title II of the ADA. U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved from http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/auxaids.html
Wehmeyer, M. (2002). Self-Determination and the Education of Students with Disabilities. Retrieved from http://www.cec.sped.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Home&TEMPLATE=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&CONTENTID=2337