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Show page 4 , Spring 2005 disorders and panic attacks this year from the past two decades. Students with some disabilities are unprepared to deal with college stress alone and need the help of support programs such as the Center for Disability Services. As some students with visible disabilities face challenges of accommodation, students with hidden disabilities face different challenges, because they must fight against skepticism and uncooperativeness. The faculty might not want to be taken advantage of or misled to make the curriculum easier for one student over another. Whether a student has a head injury from an automobile accident or a disability to organize information, students who suffer from these disabilities receive frustrating responses from teachers who blame them for not being able to understand or not accepting that they need extra time or help to meet class requirements. When students get responses like this one after another through the years, it leads to low self-esteem and confidence to finish school. In my case, I only went to college because my family expected me to. I never expected to finish college when I was younger, because I didn't believe I could do it after such difficulty in school year after year. Then again, I was never aware of the disabilities I was facing. Now, I'm back in school knowing what I'm dealing with and have support of the Center for Disability Services and most of my instructors. The CDS introduced me to helpful options that I didn't know existed before. Some students place extra pressure on themselves to excel in order to prove to themselves that they belong in college. Other students just do what they can to get by and live with low expectations of themselves. In my college years right out of high school, I lived with the low expectations; now I struggle with putting too much pressure on myself out of the necessity to succeed. What these students need are faculty who legitimize their situation. Help the students correct the problems rather than over-looking their mistakes or just pointing them out. Don't treat the student in a condescending way or patronize them, and don't avoid them, either. The students may already fight their own criticizing thoughts and think that any time they do well in school it is because of luck, hard work, or the teacher's pity - not crediting themselves for having the needed knowledge and skill. According to Miller, McKinley, and Ryan, "Repeated failure, frustration, ridicule, and embarrassment result in anticipated failure and humiliation. Students said that they need help with their self-concepts; feeling good about themselves. And, the best therapy for counteracting these conditions involves successful completion of academic work, and to develop a sense of competency that will follow repeated successes. Most faculty seemed relieved when they began to understand the disability and how it may affect specific aspects of the student's performance." Wilson said, "The main thing I would like to get across to faculty is that they should talk to students and try to find out how the student is doing in the class. The faculty Teaching Tips From "College Students: Disabilities and Services" by C. Dean Miller, November 1979. First, faculty need to interact with the students to assess their perceptions of the immediate problems to be dealt with. Second, focus on the student's schoolwork by talking about each course and whatever problems the student is encountering in the course. Faculty found that they could learn a great deal about their perceptual problems by asking students to tell them what they were experiencing in relation to each specific school-related task. Third, discuss with students the kinds of information they would like to have in order to better understand their disabilities. And fourth, develop and experiment with specific remediation tasks. might find out that a few simple things can make a big difference for the student with a disability and at the same time, improve the quality of instruction for EVERY student in the class ... My point is that many of the teaching strategies that work for students with a disability can make the class as a whole learn better. The Center for Disability Services works for both faculty and students. Our primary duty is to arrange appropriate accommodations for students, but on the most basic level, our job is to protect the university and its faculty." The university is obligated by law to provide accommodations for students with a disability, and faculty are responsible for accommodating individual students in their classes. The staff of CDS determines if a student is eligible for accommodations and then informs the faculty member of the appropriate accommodations in their class. Wilson believes that the system exists to relieve individual faculty members from having to evaluate every request, and it is meant to maintain student confidentiality, as it provides a resource for both faculty and students to turn to for assistance. Currently, Wilson is writing a new policy document for the CDS. This policy would require students to provide records to substantiate their disability as well as clearly outlining the student process for requesting accommodations. Students are protected by a grievance process if they feel accommodations are not being properly implemented. The policy also stipulates the responsibilities for the student, faculty, CDS, and the university. "The new policy is intended to bring our practices up to date in areas such as the documentation we require to certify students, determining appropriate accommodations for students, and who is responsible for specific aspects of providing accommodations to students. We hope to have the policy in place sometime this spring," Wilson said. |