#3 Don't Lose Hope

College, Disabilities, & Success, Episode 3, Don't Lose Hope, is written for the uncertain parents of teens with disabilities who would like to go to college.  My goal was to encourage  those parents  when they aren't sure if college is even possible.  Throughout the podcast I share some information about struggles with disabilities in my own family, and stories about students who showed me that anything is possible!  I also included some information about specialized inclusive college programs for students with intellectual disabilities.  Additional information about supporting all students with disabilities can be found at https://www.mickieteaches.com/ 

Transcript

Do you ever worry about your child's future?

Do you wonder how that disability is going to impact their success and their ability to make their mark in the world?

Well, don't lose hope! There can be a future for everybody! Welcome to College, Disabilities, and Success, Episode Three, “Don't Lose Hope!”

When I was a little girl, I had an uncle who had a disability. We never knew what his disability was exactly, but he had a problem with some form of Muscular Dystrophy - that's what we assumed it was-where he eventually lost the use of all of his external muscles. He lived into his 80s, but when I was a little girl I remember he walked upright and very very stiff-legged, and as he aged so did his ability to walk, to stay upright, just to get himself up, to feed himself, and to do a whole lot of the things that most of us take for granted. He lived a full life in spite of the physical challenges that he had. He was working. He used to work in a lace factory. Eventually the work itself got to be too much for him. I   remember the mall opening up and we took him to see it. They (his brothers) attempted to take him to the restroom. At that point they couldn’t get the wheelchair through the door of the restroom.  There was a brand new mall that the whole world was excited to go to and see, and he couldn't use the bathroom. 

I want to offer some of my thoughts and insights into how we can best support someone with a disability - health disability, mental, emotional, learning- whatever type of disability it is - we can help and we can make a difference, so I thought I would take a little bit of time today and share with you some stories from my life and also from some of the students that I’ve met. Since we were talking about my uncle in his wheelchair, it reminded me about one of my students in a wheelchair.  I had a student who signed up for tennis and I asked her about it and how she was going to do that because of the wheelchair. The student and I talked about it for a while and I talked to her to find out her take on things. It worked out extremely well for her and the teacher and everybody in her class. I must admit it did throw the teacher for a loop in the very beginning because that was a situation she had never handled before, but they all worked out a way where she could play tennis from her wheelchair and move around the court and volley the tennis ball back and forth without an issue, and they made it work! That's the takeaway from that experience. My perceptions and the teachers perceptions of possible limitations that this young lady had were not her perceptions! It's not my decision to limit that student. It is important to understand though, that although I couldn't decide to limit that student, there are situations where the individual with a disability is unable to fulfill the requirements of the job or of the course or of the class and that is where things can get challenging, because the student must be able to show be able to show that they can perform the duties of the class just as anybody else - using appropriate accommodations, so they can get the grade they need to pass the course. It's the same situation when a person with a disability is looking for a job. They have to be able to perform the duties of the job.  There are limitations. We all have limitations, regardless of disability. We have to be careful not to include our own perceptions and shortcomings and put those on the person with a disability. It's very very important to talk with that person and be honest and true and realistic about the challenges that they're facing, and the tough road that could be ahead. As a parent, you're very, very close to your children. We all are, and you see the day-to-day issues that your child has had to face through the years, and that you've probably had to run interference on more than one occasion. The whole point of this podcast today is just to remind everybody not to give up hope. We can usually figure out a way through and around some of the challenges.

Another college student that I had, who was blind, took a TV production course. Now a tv production course, for those of you that don't know, is extremely visual. It's about sets and arranging sets and and filming and sequencing and editing film. It's a very, very visual process but he wanted to take the course. He needed to take the course. It was part of the major that he was in, and it was the same situation with the young lady that wanted to take tennis. We have to stop and figure out a way around the situation. So again, talking to the student, because that's so critical, because as an adult supporting that person with a disability, we cannot assume to know what they want. We cannot assume to just act on something without getting the input the information and the impression from the students themselves. So he and I talked about it, and then he and I and the instructor talked about it, and we looked at the class syllabus and the schedule of things that they're responsible for doing just like everybody else in that class. and out of the entire list - I think there were probably 25, 30 different assignments that were on that list for every student in the class to do- we were able to figure out a way to accommodate every single activity except one, and the one activity that we couldn't figure out a way around, the instructor provided an alternative exercise for that young man so he could get the full credit that everybody else was getting for that course. So here was another situation where my perceptions and the instructor's perceptions about what that student could and couldn't do or should and shouldn't do, did not match up with that student's desire to take that course and to pass that course. The reason that I’m talking about this today is because many of you have children who are thinking about college who would like to go to college, and I’ve seen a lot of questions and comments online with the groups that I belong to and so on about what to in that kind of a situation and whether or not an individual should go to college or not go to college. The reality is anybody who wants to try college should be able to. As long as they meet the qualifications for entrance to college, they should be able to try. As a specialist, one of my responsibilities was to support the student the individual with a disability and work alongside the student and the professors to come up with an alternative way of doing an activity that mitigated the disability part of it. College is different from high school. In college they do not accommodate for success. Don't get me wrong, they want every student to be successful because success means graduation, graduation means good retention numbers, and everybody's happy. So they want the students to be successful, but they do not accommodate for success. They accommodate for equal access. and in my next presentation I’m going to talk about that a little bit deeper. The bottom line is when a student goes to college and needs an accommodation, what everybody is looking for is a way to mitigate the impact of the disability on the assignment that the instructor is requiring at college. When a person graduates with a degree, the degree has nothing to do with a disability. the person with the disability and the person who does not have a disability get the exact same degree, so that means they have met the exact same standards for the course. So when we accommodate, we don't modify, and that's the difference. When you accommodate for a class at college, you are finding a way to mitigate and address the impact of the disability on the individual's ability to show what they know.  Let's say a student- every student -needs to learn the definitions for 50 vocabulary words. Well that might be a lot for someone with a learning disability or some type of academic disability. At the college they don't say,  “well, that's okay you just do 20.” Nope. That's not the way it works. The person with a disability still has to do the definition for 50 words, but what I could do to accommodate that situation is maybe split it up into two groups of 25 so that the person still does the requirement, but we have adjusted the assignment to allow for the time impact of the disability. So everything that is done in college is done providing equal access. The young lady –when she was playing tennis in her wheelchair - still had to do the same exact things that everybody else had to do - certain swings and certain movements with her racket and so on and so forth and hitting so many balls over the net. I don't know what the particulars were, all I know is she passed it and she did very well in it, but she didn't do less. She just approached the assignment with the instructor to consider the impact of the disability on her ability to perform the assignment and they figured out a way to accommodate her, but they never modified the situation. They didn't decrease or change the assignment to make it different. Even in the case of the blind student taking the tv production class,  the one section he couldn't do- the professor figured out an alternative approach to mitigate that one, so there's usually a way you can work around the situation.

 I want to take another moment to talk about students with intellectual disabilities heading to college. The last four years of my career, I worked at a university, and I was a TPSID grant director. My responsibility was to start, support, and encourage inclusive on-campus college programs for individuals with intellectual disabilities. There are over 250 -the last time I looked  - probably more now- colleges throughout the United States that offer some kind of program for young men and women who have intellectual disabilities, and there are probably more now.  It's an opportunity for even the kids that we never expected to have that college experience, to now actually get into a college and be part of a program in a college in an inclusive way. There's a lot of types of programs. One of the ones I’m most proud of I worked on with several other people, and that was a vocational program where the students with intellectual disabilities would sign up for a vocational program, like culinary arts or carpentry or welding, and they would have to go to class the same as everybody else. But the difference in that program was that they went to school with everybody else to do what everybody else did, but they had the support of a team of people behind them to tutor, train, review, get them ready, practice whatever the students needed. They had classes that they went to beyond the regular skills class that they were taking. It’s a pretty amazing program. There is a model for the program. If anybody's interested in knowing more about it, you can just send me an email at mickieteaches@gmail.com and I can tell you more about it. It's called the Vertical program. I’m mentioning it here because it's another barrier that previously had existed for individuals with disabilities that is being broken. The barrier that is being broken is not preventing that individual from learning a marketable skill. My message here today is one of “don't lose hope.” As parents you see the challenges you see the difficulties and you may think, “I don't know. I don't see this here, and how my son or daughter is going to become an independent productive adult.” I think for those of you facing this challenge, it wouldn't hurt for you and your young adult to explore some of these programs, to visit some of the colleges, to find out the specific ins and outs of college. One of the things that I suggested to parents along the way when they had someone who wanted to go to school and they had a child who wanted to go to college, but they weren't sure about trying it out, was to check on community continuing education classes that most colleges offer. Those are not credit courses, they're usually special interest courses or certification programs, but they can also be accommodated for those kinds of programs. Students get accommodations if they're in college regardless of the program that they're taking, so if your son or daughter is taking a continuing education program on flower arrangement because they want to go work at a florist, they can still get accommodations for that class if they need it so. It's really important through all of this, for you and your young adult to see the Disability Specialist at the colleges of your choice because you might be surprised of the possibilities that are out, and hey, if your kid is in a wheelchair and wants to play tennis, it's been done. If your young man or young woman is blind, but they want to take a course - an art course - it's been done. Art appreciation is an interesting course when you're blind, but I have had students sign up for art appreciation and we figured out a way to accommodate that student so they could get a sense of what those paintings were so they could learn what they needed to learn and pass the class. You have to start with the conversation. You really and truly need to have that conversation up front. Be honest about the challenges that you and your child are facing, and be ready to offer some suggestions on how that might be mitigated, but always keep in mind that it’s a specialized program for a student with intellectual disabilities. If you're in a regular credit bearing college program, you cannot change the course requirements. You accommodate so the disability just does not impact the student's ability to learn and show their knowledge for the course, but you can't limit and make less what the student is expected to learn. So it's worth a conversation with a Disability Specialist. Now I probably left you with more questions than answers after today's podcast, so please feel free to email me. I am at mickieteaches@gmail.com

You can also head to my website which is mickieteaches.com . You might want to check out my course called College and Disabilities: 9 Changes from High School Every Parent Should Know. So I tried to cover a little bit of everything in the course that you and your student - your child - would benefit from knowing ahead of time, and you can also check out my blog,  mickieteaches.blogspot.com . I have a lot of resources out there, but if you can't find what you need, or you have new questions, don't hesitate at all to send me an email and I’ll see what I can do to help. I hope you have a wonderful day. Encourage your children to go for their dreams and above all, don't give up hope. Thank you

The information contained throughout this podcast has been gleaned from my own personal experiences, but to ensure accuracy, please contact the college of your choice to have first-hand information and the most up-to-date policies and procedures followed by your particular institution of higher education. The content in any of these podcasts is not intended as a substitute for information from legal, educational, or medical professionals. Always seek the advice of your attorney or qualified health care provider with any questions you may have with regards to legal, educational, or medical concerns.