Asking For What I Need
Over the years, I have been incredibly lucky to have had various people and support systems to have helped me through my educational journey, and never had to worry that I would be left out in the cold in terms of accommodation. Having these resources meant so much to both myself and my family, but it wasn’t until I found out for myself what it really was that I needed that I think I began to use these accommodations in the most effective way.
IEP meeting after IEP meeting I would get the same complaint from my well meaning teachers, which was that I wasn’t accepting help when I should have been. In reality, I just didn’t need some of the support that they were offering. Though I was of course grateful that they had thought to offer to photocopy my assignments larger, I could honestly read many of the text fonts without trouble. Many teachers commented that I was resistant to use my magnifiers in class, and though I’ll admit that was the case once in a while, a lot of the time I just didn’t need them for that specific situation.
When I was younger especially, teachers and adults deciding what I needed did have definite benefits, and made situations where I really did need help a lot less stressful for me. However, it also led to numerous embarrassing situations and miscommunications that could have probably been avoided if I had practiced better advocacy. Having a teacher or authority figure tell you in front of your peers that they think you can’t participate in something because they’re worried you can’t do it or that you’ll hurt yourself leaves an icky feeling, and a lot of the time they’re wrong too.
The first time that I really started to think about what I needed wasn’t actually until middle school. Recognizing the big change, my vision teacher suggested that I write a letter to each one of my new teachers a couple weeks before school started. In this letter I described my level of vision and then explained the things that were hard for me and how they could best help me.
Not only did this help them to understand, but typing out this letter forced me to think deeper into my own vision and create my own solutions. Every school year since, I have used the previous years’ letter as a template and used the experiences I had gained since last editing it to improve my struggles and suggestions to be as accurate and effective as they can be. Slowly, this has helped me to learn exactly what does and doesn't work for me.
Asking for what I actually need not only positively impacts my own learning, but lets my teachers know that I’m doing my best and means that they don’t have to spend time worrying about whether or not they’re doing the right thing. Being able to tell people what I know I can do and what kinds of things I might need a little extra help with has aided me not only in school, but has extended to my job and my extracurriculars as well. It took time and a lot of trial and error to figure it all out, but once you start realizing what you need to be successful, there’s no stopping what you can accomplish!
by Acacia