Note for Audio: There is a little bit of an echo I couldn’t get rid of and my hello gets cut off in the beginning!! All in all, welcome to my podcast segment!! Here I discuss different approaches university or college professors can take in their classroom to make it a safe and accessible space for students with learning disabilities. These approaches range from simple ones such as shifting our ways of thinking about students with disabilities to actual changes in ways classrooms can be conducted.
TRANSCRIPT:
Hello and welcome, my name is Siara Morel-Ortiz. I am a senior at Umass Boston majoring in English. Today I’ll be addressing different approaches educators can take to make classrooms safe and accessible spaces specifically in a university or college setting, for students with learning disabilities. There are a lot of distractions that occur in classrooms. There are also a lot of outdated ways of thinking about disabilities which do not keep all students in mind, and a lot of outdated frameworks.
One approach is changing the way students with disabilities are helped from a “one size fits all approach” to more conscious, inclusive methods. According to Jo Boaler a mathematics education professor at Stanford University, and Tanya Lamar a doctoral student at the same university, schools or teachers should not emphasize narrow ways of thinking and should instead engage students in multiple ways of thinking as, “students who think more broadly turn away from the subject or worse, become labeled as having a disability”. The goal is to disrupt labels and recognize the various ways a student can be taught and engaged with instead of signaling out certain individuals.
Also, educators should shift their ways of thinking about disabilities, specifically moving away from medical and social models of disability. As mentioned in the article by Indiana University, “Creating Accessible Classrooms”, “medical models of disability view disabilities as a problem, deficiency, or abnormality” and “the social model does not fully consider the lived experiences of people with disabilities, separating impairments and disabilities”. Teachers should be comfortable with not identifying students with disabilities and exploring different approaches to learning as identification can lead to a student’s validity being questioned, and the spectrum of disability is wide ranging.
According to Professor Nicole Schroeder from Amsterdam University, who is also an openly academic disabled academic, various ideas for creating a more inclusive, safe classroom environment include designing courses with the “Universal Design of Learning”, shifting from hard-set deadlines to open-ended ones, allowing for students to provide feedback such as class expectations, introducing assignments with ample time, practicing vulnerability in the classroom, and so forth. Schools often present and offer certain accommodations such as quiet testing environments, alternative formats, note takers, captioning services but these methods are simply not enough and are not given to all students especially those with invisible learning disabilities or disabilities that have not been diagnosed yet.
All in all, these are just some insightful ideas that can implemented in university classroom settings to create accessible, and safe spaces. Below I will provide information on how to access these sources which might I note have extensive bibliographies to do further research if anyone is interested.
Works Cited and Consulted:
Boaler, Jo, and Tanya Lamar. “A Better Way to Teach Students with Learning Disabilities.” Time, Time Magazine, Feb. 2019, https://time.com/5539300/learning-disabilities-special-education-math-teachers-parents-students/.
“Creating Accessible Classrooms.” Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning, https://citl.indiana.edu/teaching-resources/diversity-inclusion/accessible-classrooms/index.html.
American University.” School of Education Online, 22 Oct. 2022, https://soeonline.american.edu/blog/disability-guide/.
Van Goidsenhoven, Leni, et al. “Disability in the classroom.” Tijdschrift voor genderstudies, vol. 25, no. 1, 2022, p. 79–, https://doi.org/10.5117/TVGN2022.1.005.GOID.