Working With Disability & Neurodiversity
Dr. Cort Schneider, UR's Director of Disability Services, first visited Eng. 383 October 13, 2022. These notes will help all Consultants, and I will add it to our course syllabus so it has some permanence. He has continued providing advice and workshops that will in time be provided to all Consultants and tutors working in the Weinstein Learning Center.
Background and General Advice:
The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 was the world's first such law and has spawned similar protections (key here is equity, not equality) in several other nations.
15% of our students have some disability. For neurodiverse learners, these disabilities (ADHD, ADD, Autism, anxiety, depression) will be invisible.
Small victories help writers with anxiety or depression: breaking tasks into pieces with discrete deadlines.
Same for ADHD writers, using my schema from my (I hope) forthcoming book Governing Claims: bias statement-->focus statement-->prototype governing claim.
This is an inherently inclusive pedagogy. Teachers should try this breaking of assignments into discrete steps with individual deadlines.
What to do in conference?
"Don't let perfect be the enemy of good" (great advice for you perfectionists--I am one too). Getting something DONE needs to be told to writers.
Good to ask in this order: What do you hope to learn in the conference? Then: Who is my audience? Why am I writing this? What do I want to say?
Note to Consultants: This seems more inclusive than starting with "What is the most important thing you want to say?"
Specific Disabilities:
Autism: Those on the spectrum can be very concrete and direct, so in a peer-edit these students might say "this is the worst writing I've ever read!" when not being a jerk, but literal.
Those on the spectrum may need more concrete advice about assignments and will benefit from proofreading. This breaks some of our long-standing rules but it also helps those with dyslexia and other language-learning disabilities. But it also resembles an approach advocated for English-Language learners.
Those who fail to meet deadlines can benefit from talking out a paper. Word and Google Docs have good voice-to-text features (Dragon Dictate is expensive) but that can help writers who struggle with transcribing or anxiety when entering text by keyboard.
Some writers will never, for neurological reasons, be able to master (say) the spelling of certain words. For this reason they will need editing of the sort we have been taught by our writing-center theorists never to do. Now we need to rethink the advice of scholars like Stephen North.
Dr. Schneider thinks that we might invest in Grammarly for the Writing Center to help such writers. Ms. Ball looked into pricing; the best option appears to be the free version you can use.
We will need to be more flexible about when to become directive with writers.
Workshop Materials from Summer 2023
Dr. Schneider led our first Disabilities Specialist Consultant and me through a four-day workshop. Below are links to his slides.
Collaborating With Students Who Have ADHD
Collaborating With Students With Autism and Psychological Disabilities
Working With Students Who Have Language-Based Disabilities