Preparing Students with Special Needs to Advocate for Themselves

In this thoughtful article in Teaching Exceptional Children, Juliet Hart and Julianne Brehm (Arizona State University/Tempe) suggest ways to empower elementary students who have special needs to advocate for their own accommodations when teachers don’t provide them. Hart and Brehm imagine a classroom scenario in which a third-grade girl has been prepped to be appropriately assertive. She’s studied all week with her mother and feels quite confident she can do well on the test, but her reading disability is making it difficult for her to understand the word problems independently. “I know I can do this,” she says to herself. “It was so much easier when Mom read the problems to me at home. Maybe I can ask the teacher to read the problems to me.” She gets out a cue card and recalls the role-play she did earlier. “Do I need to have the problems read aloud in order to be successful?” she asks herself. “Yes, I do. I know I do better if the questions are read aloud. Am I allowed to have the problems read aloud to me? Yes, my accommodations list says I can have math problems read aloud. Next, I need to get Ms. Smith’s attention. What am I going to ask? I should probably say, ‘Ms. Smith, may I please have the questions read aloud?’ I think I’m ready to ask.” 

Here are the steps that Hart and Brehm have developed to make a scenario like this a reality:

• Obtain parental consent. Parents are full partners in this process, but are not on the scene at the crucial moments in the classroom.

• Help students set academic goals. What are the IEP goals, what does the student want to accomplish academically and career-wise, and what are the resources and skills needed to get there? Hart and Brehm have developed a one-page worksheet for all this information.

• Introduce accommodations and IEP concepts. Simple, jargon-free phrases should sum up what the student has difficulty with and how to deal with it – for example, It’s difficult for me to complete homework, so I write homework assignments in my agenda every day.

• Investigate and model accommodations. Students should be involved in reviewing a comprehensive list of possible accommodations, helping decide which will be most helpful, and talking through what each one will look like in the classroom.

• Help students determine where and when they receive accommodations. For example, having extra time to finish assignments, using a calculator, or being able to work with a peer.

• Help students understand the importance of their accommodations. Students need to understand (in an age-appropriate way) that their accommodations aren’t intended to give them an advantage over classmates, change the content of the work, or weaken academic rigor. Students should also be coached to understand that teachers are very busy and may forget to give students their accommodations or might not know that a certain student is entitled to a specific accommodation. 

• Help students decide how to ask for their accommodations. “The thought of asking an adult for accommodations can be overwhelming for many students,” say Hart and Brehm, “so it is imperative that students have access to cues to remind them of the important steps in making the request. Students should be able to practice the skill repeatedly before they are expected to independently advocate for themselves.”

• Introduce cue cards and role-play the interaction with the teacher. This is an essential step to building confidence.

• Describe and practice action steps if the accommodation is not given. It’s important for students to know how to handle this situation respectfully and effectively. 

• Monitor student progress and troubleshoot areas of difficulty. This might occur in weekly check-ins and brief conversations with the responsible special-needs teacher or administrator. 

“Promoting Self-Determination: A Model for Training Elementary Students to Self-Advocate for IEP Accommodations” by Juliet Hart and Julianne Brehm in Teaching Exceptional Children, May/June 2013 (Vo. 45, #5, p. 40-48), no e-link available; Hart can be reached at Juliet.Hart@asu.edu. 

From the Marshall Memo #483