The Essential Skill Students With Learning Differences Need

It’s not enough for schools to help students with learning differences or disabilities shore up their academic weaknesses. Students also need to learn how to communicate with others—particularly adults—about their unique needs, experts say.

Self-advocacy is a vital skill for future success in college and the workforce for students with dyslexia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or other learning challenges. Throughout their lives, neurodivergent students will find themselves in situations where they must explain the particulars of their learning differences or disabilities to teachers, coworkers, and employers as well as what accommodations they need to succeed—whether it’s a formal individualized education program, extra time to perform tasks, or simply what they know helps them do their best work.

They won’t always have their parents or a school psychologist there to help them, say experts, so it’s important that schools start teaching students how to advocate for their needs, starting as early as elementary school.

“I’ve had to push for IEP accommodations specifically my entire life,” said Jacquelyn Taylor, a student at the University of Rhode Island. She is also an advocate for people with learning disabilities, sharing her experiences as a student with dyslexia and dyscalculia.

“A lot of students go through this,” she said during an Oct. 17 Education Week K-12 Essentials Forum about how to help students with learning differences.

Taylor said convincing high school teachers she was struggling was particularly difficult because she was a straight A student.

“On the surface level, it seemed like I’m totally fine, I understand the material,” she said. “But beneath that, I was spending so much time on a specific assignment that probably should have taken kids 30 minutes. I was spending an hour-plus.”

She also sought out a lot of additional help from friends and family members to complete her assignments. Taylor said she had to learn to speak up in her IEP meetings and push back against adults in her school who said her grades were an indication that she was doing fine, when she knew she was struggling.

Asking for help can be very difficult for some students

For some students, self-advocacy comes naturally, said Danielle Kovach, an elementary special education teacher based in New Jersey and the past president of the Council for Exceptional Children. But others will need help flexing those muscles, she said.

“A lot of times asking for that help is so difficult—it doesn’t happen overnight,” she said, speaking on a panel for the Education Week forum. “As educators, we encourage them, move them along, and teach them leading by example on how to advocate for yourself.”

That means teachers need to notice when students with learning differences are struggling or getting frustrated in class, she said, as well as asking students if they need help and what could help address what they’re struggling with.

It’s also important for teachers to develop strong relationships with students and create supportive classroom environments, experts say, where those students feel like they can take risks and voice their challenges and needs without fear of getting shamed.

That starts with educators assessing their own sometimes misguided perceptions of students with learning differences and other neurodivergent conditions, Kovach said.

“I hear sometimes from teachers, ‘Well, I can’t do this for them. That’s not fair. I can’t give them extra time when the other kids don’t get extra time,’” she said. “It’s important to realize that when we accommodate students, when we differentiate, we’re just leveling the playing field. We’re making it equally as challenging for that student as it would be for anyone else.”

Students should learn how to explain the details of their learning differences

It can also help students better advocate for themselves if they know and can explain some details about the learning difference they have been diagnosed with, experts say. For example, specific areas of their brain related to, say, language or quantity may process information differently.

These skills are especially important when students transition into post-secondary education or the workforce, where professors and bosses may have little to no information about their students’ or employees’ learning differences.

Edward Hubbard is an associate professor of educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies dyscalculia. He said during the Education Week forum that he frequently makes changes to his classes based on feedback from students with specific learning needs, and he finds that his other students also benefit from those accommodations. For example, he started providing recordings of his lectures with captioning to all his classes based on the accommodation he was asked to provide to one student.

Because of privacy rules, Hubbard said he receives very little information on his students’ learning differences. That’s why it’s important for students to learn how to advocate for themselves before they get to college, so they feel confident to approach their professors—or bosses—with their needs.

“Your professors can help advocate for you if you are able to go—and willing to go—and talk to them about what you need to be successful,” he said.