HOW TO TEACH SELF ADVOCACY SKILLS

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Do you advocate on behalf of your high school students with disabilities? Hopefully, all SLPs firmly answered “yes.” Do you teach your students how to advocate for themselves? This is as important, if not more!

RESPECT to the school districts that teach students about their educational rights well before their transition meeting, but knowing your rights is only one part of self advocacy. I would also support self advocacy being introduced earlier than the transition meeting. Why? Part of self advocacy is understanding your personal learning style, something that benefits our students much earlier than transition meeting time (ages of 14-16 depending upon state).

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Three Important Self advocacy Skills

Self advocacy involves numerous competencies, I think most fit into three sets of skills:

Understanding your own unique strengths and challenges,
Knowing what services, modifications, and accommodations you need to compensate for the weaknesses, and
Knowing whom to ask, how to ask and where to go to ASK for the supports you need for successful learning.

While this post is specific to students with disabilities, many of the concepts and skills apply to students without disabilities.

Self advocacy: understanding your strengths and weaknesses

You can start this step by introducing a “fake” speech therapy or high school student. Dissect their strengths and weaknesses first, as shown below. Then, move on to identifying the strengths and challenges of your student.

If you are a speech pathologist, you probably understand the learning strengths and challenges of your students. After all, that’s the heart of the IEP, right? If your student does not have an IEP, the standardized test scores (given annually to students in the US) might be a helpful resource.

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Or, you can give them a learning style test. You’ll find them online or check with your school psychologist or guidance counselor. One resource, the VARK questionnaire can be challenging for students with reading or language difficulties but you can modify it or use select portions.

Learning Models

There is more than one model used to explain how we learn but most include some aspect of the sensory modalties used for learning:

Visual learners: are individuals who prefer to take in their information visually—from maps, graphs, diagrams, charts, graphic organizers and other visual supports .
Auditory learners: learn better when they take in information in auditory form, heard or spoken. They are prone to sorting their ideas after speaking, rather than thinking ideas through before. For them, saying things out loud helps them understand concepts.
Kinesthetic learners: learn by touching, feeling prefer to learn by doing, touching and feeling. They prefer a hands-on experience.

Also, some models include reading/writing learners who absorb information best when it’s in words, whether that’s by writing it down or reading it. For them, text is more powerful than any type of visual or auditory representation of an idea. These individuals do well on written assignments.

Are you working with autistic students? Make sure you consider strengths specific to autism such as the ability to hyperfocus. Check out these Autism strengths from Embrace Autism.

Self advocacy: what supports do you need?

Once students understand their own learning styles and strengths and weaknesses, they are in a better position to see the types of strategies or supports that make them successful learners. In this step, we focus on teaching them about:

understanding their rights,
understanding the supports and accommodations they need to be a successful learner, and
understanding their ieps.

For example, if a student is a “visual learner,” a verbal lecture alone, with no visual supports, media, etc., might leave them bored or frustrated. An accommodation could be listed on their IEP such as “provide graphic organizers and visual supports when introducing new concepts.”

Accommodations is one of those “IEP lingo” words that we throw around. No need for our students to know what it means, right? Wrong. Using these “IEP lingo” words can be powerful when used appropriately in the right situation. If I had to choose one IEP-related vocabulary word to teach my older students, it would be “accommodation.” Why? If they are not getting help when requesting specific supports, they can try a vocabulary word that might get the attention of adults! Here’s a list of special education terms from Understanding Special Education.

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A word about IEP law. The basis for most IEP law is found in three federal statutes,

The Individual with Disabilities Education Act,
Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and
Family Educational and Privacy Rights Act.

State law can mandate more protection than IDEA, but not less. However, each state uses different criteria to determine programs and different guidelines for qualifying students for special education. IEP laws were developed first at the federal level and then at the state level.

So, if you wish to teach a students about IEPs in general, take a look at the parent rights or student rights handbook (if there is one) for your state on your “local” dept of education (or some similar name) website for your state. If they have an IEP, I would simply use that document.

We don’t want our students to reach their eighteenth birthday (in most states) and have educational decision-making rights transfered to them…and find out they know little to nothing about their rights.

Self advocacy: asking for help!

If you are an SLP, you might find yourself focusing heavily on this step.

Here, we teach students:

who to ask? Identify their allies at school or in their setting.
how to ask (assertively, calmly, what language to use). I tell students they can go beyond “asking” and “explain” their needs when talking to adults because there is a difference.
that speaking their needs is actually their responsibility!

If you haven’t incorporated assertive communication into your lessons with older students, you might be surprised how difficult this is for many students. Try contrasting assertive communication examples with passive and aggressive styles.

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Check out this blog post on teaching assertive communication for more information.

Know your Values!

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Character traits and values make for great literature or language activities. Hopefully, the opportunity has presented itself to cover them in your speech therapy sessions with older students. Understanding what values mean and deciding which ones govern our lives is life-shaping stuff for high school students. Knowing your values can guide you in your career choices.

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Check out this blog post for a list of values that influence how we solve problems and make decisions.

A Product for Teaching Self Advocacy

Advocacy is about knowing yourself. Are you interested in helping your middle and high school students know and understand themselves and their learning and advocate for their needs? Take a look at this print/no print set of mini-lessons on self-advocacy for students with disabilities.