Educational Support Plan

This online guide is our new format for giving you Educational Support Plan information regarding those of your students who have documented disabilities.

How to help in your classroom: simple and direct advice about what you can do to help this student. This is given in the form of a check list and two pages of trenchant advice that fits almost all students with disabilities.

If you want to know more: a section that supplies extra insights into the academic implications of this student's disabilities - further recommendations may also be in this section.

Other resources: services this student is receiving which you might like to know about.

Thanks for your attention and please call us if you need any clarification or assistance.

How to Help in Your Classroom
- or -
An Educational Support Plan Request

for (student)___________________________________
re. (Instructor & class)___________________________
statement of disability____________________________

This is a brief list of adaptations/modifications which should help this student master your course material. Those things which will be provided by SSS are so noted. If you need our assistance, e.g., with testing, advance notice of 4 class days is appreciated.

Test Administration

1 Psychology	2E Speaking	4B Seizure Dis	6B Blindness
2A Learning Dis	2F Listening	4C Head Injury	7 Speech & Lang
2B Reading	3A Physical Dis	5A Chronic Medical	9 ADD
2C Writing	3B Dexterity	5B List of Chronic	10A Hearing Impair
2D Math	4A Neurological	6A Visual Dis	10B Deafness

Other _____________________________________
__________________________________________
__________________________________________

___________________________		___________________________
SSS Advisor / Date		Student Signature / Date

Things generally helpful to students with disabilities:

It would be nice and tidy if all disabilities and educational challenges responded to exactly the same treatment. And as a matter of fact there are some general strategies that do apply to most all of them (and that even help so called able-bodied folks). Moreover, a lot of these are pretty common sense!

TALK TO THEM
The expert on what any student needs in a given class situation is the student her/himself. Please talk to students about what they know works for them. Creative solutions are possible

Include a general statement about disabilities at the start of each semester (you can even put it in the syllabus) e.g., "If you need course adaptations or accommodations because of a documented disability, if you have emergency medical information to share with me, or if you need special arrangements in case the building must be evacuated, please make an appointment with me as soon as possible. My office location and hours are..."

PREPARATION and CLARITY
Folks with Attention Deficit Disorder will find it useful to get hold of a syllabus three weeks early. (Though 5-6 weeks are necessary to get a Book on Tape made.) -- Clearly SSS is more likely than instructors to have contact with a student that early. It is usually our obligation to send the student to you for this scenario to happen.

All students do better when they have a clear idea of what major projects are due, when they are due, and have a notion of how to break the project into manageable pieces.

Not only is this true for big projects, it even helps if students can see an outline of how today's class time will be spent or where today's lecture will meander etc.

LEARNING and TEACHING STYLES
All students can benefit from receiving instructions both verbally and in written form.

Hearing impaired students along with everyone will benefit from being able to see your face when you say anything to the class.

Some students especially like to learn in small groups and enjoy co-operative situations.

All students will take in material better if it is presented in a way that allows them to talk about it, write or draw pictures about it, or just plain do it and move their bodies in relation to it.

Most teachers are auditory learners but at best only half of the general population is. Many students need to be addressed with visual and kinesthetic (hands-on, lets get in there and do it) modes if they are to really learn up to their potential.

Remember, stage actors learn large quantities of lines partly in relation to their blocking. Movement and learning go together.

Again, only ½ of your students will lead in a left-brained, logical, sequential way -- the rest will lead with a more right-brained, gestalt and meaning oriented way. Because of this, many students (esp. when stuck) will be more motivated to learn if they can be given a context in which the subject at hand can be seen as important. The more you can make it relevant to them the better. They often need to be connected with the big picture (to know where they are going ) before the details of a procedure or assignment are repeated to them.

ANXIETY vs. INTEREST
So many issues related to Learning Disabilities and Psychological Disorders stem from anxiety and chronic stress. Under the influence of such anxiety students are unable to use stress positively to stay concentrated on a subject. One way to address this is to emphasize the actual learning of subjects vs. making an ?A' -- One learns more about a subject by playing with it and finding out what approaches to it do not work, than one does by staying with what one already knows, in order to be right.

Bringing a subject into the actual lives of our students in a vital and interesting way helps cut through the anxiety of performing scholastically for the sake of some future reward. --- (Making money with a salable skill is a good thing, but if used as a motivator for study it can leave a subject area awash in a sea of survival anxiety -- and that's not good for learning.)

Personal Note: I believe the task of rooting an academic subject in our students' world and doing so in an interesting way is not always difficult. But, easy or difficult, it is a worthy goal that can create wonderful results.... I'm beginning to garner ideas that may help with this goal but I'm very much interested in what is working for you already -- and in what difficulties you face in this regard.

ANXIETY (part 2)
There are several other things that can be specifically done in the class room to minimize student anxiety. First, you probably have some techniques of your own and I urge you to start there. My own suggestions include: 1) Drink water and eat just a bit of protein. Hydration is proven to calm the central nervous system allowing for greater concentration. Protein helps stabilize blood sugar (and most folks with ADD have hypoglycemia). 2) At the start of class take 3 or 4 deep slow belly breaths and do some stretches either standing or sitting. Both are relaxing and stretches, when held for at least 8 seconds, actually diminish the brain stem's fight/flight response. Calf muscles, shoulders, feet, hands, eyes and face are all good and can be accessed while seated.

Admittedly, many people might feel strange about such a relaxation protocol at first. But it can be framed straightforwardly: e.g., "Really learning something is not about ?trying hard' but about ?relaxing and doing our best'. We do not do our best thinking (not for very long) when we are stressed, instead, we pay attention when we are interested and make our most creative associations when there is a sense of play. The easiest way to relax our brain is to relax our body. People in over 30 countries ranging from students, to business people, to Olympic level athletes are using this sort of protocol to increase their performance. Let's give it a try for the next few weeks and see what happens to the performance in this class."

One last un-stressful attitude: It has got to be OK to not already know things or else we would never be able to learn anything that is new.

If You Want to Know More . . .
Further insights and suggestions regarding particular disabilities and how to implement the plan for this student. Only material relevant to _________________________ has been retained in the section(s) below.
____________________________________________
____________________________________________

___________________________		_________________________
SSS Advisor / Date		Student Signature / Date

Detailed Information is available on the following disabilities:
Physiological
Specific Learning Disabilities
	Reading Writing Math Speaking - Expressive Oral Language Listening - Receptive Oral Language
Physical
	Mobilitiy Dexterity
Neurological
	Seizure Disorders Epilepsy Head Injury Traumatic Brain Injury
Chronic Medical Conditions
Speech
Attention Deficit Disorder
Hearing Impairments
	Deafness
Visual Disabilities
	Blindness

EDUCATIONAL SUPPORT PLAN:
Additional services or adaptations this student is receiving.

__________________________		_________________________
SSS Advisor / Date		Student Signature / Date

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