<p>My son had his big work-up in 4th grade. For college we just got a letter from his psychologist. I started emailing his college disablities office before Son even decided on the school. I’ve met with the lady in charge of the office twice in person and numerous times over the phone. It wasn’t until I actually asked for accomodations for Son a couple of weeks ago that she told me that the letter from the psych was not sufficient that that he’d need a full workup, on the adult scale. This is the kind of testing that takes all day and then 4-6 weeks to get the report, so of course it’s out of the question for this year.</p>
<p>Here is what one school in which the OP is interested requires:</p>
<p>^^That looks like a pretty standard scope of testing at least to my untrained eye. My son’s (small) public school requires those (Wechsler, Woodcock-Johnson, and/or Stanford-Binet) every 3-4 years to maintain an IEP. I can’t remember if he takes all three or pieces and parts of all three. It’s actually administered (by them) over 3 days. We generally schedule it during the summer so he doesn’t miss a ton of classes. Then the school psychologiest writes the eval. It’s a thick packet of “stuff” but fascinating reading through the years since elementary school. We have an IEP in a couple weeks and ACT/SAT and pre-college discussion is on their agenda…should be an interesting meeting compared to previous years no doubt.</p>
<p>What a great article, missypie! I wonder how often the author sees his clients (once per week?), how much he charges, and if a college disability office could also provide these services (or would it go beyond “reasonable” accommodations at many colleges?)?</p>
<p>He sees his clients once or twice a week. He personally has over 100 clients. He has a group of about 30 all attending the same school and he said their average GPA is higher than the GPA of the general population of the school. Ah, to be in NYC, where there is a large concentration of just about everything!</p>
<p>So, when you were told that you could not “get out of Spanish”, what accommodations did they wind up giving you?</p>
<p>I mean, if you “petitioned the academic standards board earlier in the year to get out of Spanish” and failed in that attempt, then I do not think that the UofM has just let you flounder about this long, right?</p>
<p>Was a proper reason given as to why the academic standards board refused your petition to “get out of Spanish” I would assume some explanation was given and an alternative to calling things a day on the class was made in the form of different accommodations? Have you tried whatever alternatives the UofM made for you out at all, Twisted? </p>
<p>Have you tried to speak to the instructor at all? Your very instructor might be more sympathetic to what you think your situation is than you might think.</p>
<p>You could even elucidate upon your situation in, oh I don’t know, an e mail or something to the instructor.</p>
<p>They did not give me any accommodations. The exact wording of my petition was that I was “requesting accommodations, or a substitution or waiver as you see fit if accommodations are not available.” Generally they do not give accommodations, they consider the waiver their accommodation, and so I figured if I got anything it would be the substitution, since technically you are only offered the option to petition for a substitution or waiver and I threw in a request for accommodations because that was what I really wanted. I was not granted anything at all from the petition. The disabilities office disagrees with this decision, but language faculty get to make it. I have been meeting with my professor and emailing her regularly to work out what we can, and on some issues, like I mentioned the dysgraphia issue somewhere, she is willing to help me but she can only do so much under the department’s nose. But since I already have a trainwreck of a thread going elsewhere I don’t want to disturb this one any more. You can take this issue to that one or PM me in the future.</p>
<p>That is the thing. You have many things floating about here and there all over this web site, basically and they are all variations upon the same theme. One could very well question the validity of some of your claims to be perfectly frank. </p>
<p>But, the thing is that you might need to just really gear up and start to focus on what you can do in the here and now at your University. </p>
<p>Do you know what I mean? </p>
<p>Really and truly try to work on harnessing whatever strength and self discipline you can find within yourself to get your own personal business tended to at your own personal University. I am serious because I really think you can do that if you try and maybe seek some on campus counseling or further assistance for a thing or two. </p>
<p>The bottom line is that you go to a huge University which somehow has a reputation for treating their students as more than just a number, Twisted. At the rate you are going you could very well just wind up being one of those people who had to wind up calling things a day at University if you are not careful. Do not let that happen, because I have feeling that if that does happen it could wind up being all of your own design. And, I am basing this all in fact because you have run the gambet of things with this never ending issue with you and your Spanish issues to almost no real avail for a really, really long time. And, I mean to almost no real avail on this web site. </p>
<p>Here is where I am even going to sound even meaner than I already do and I am sorry…</p>
<p>You go to the UofM not the University of College Confidential, Twisted. </p>
<p>Think of your future, Twisted. Think of your future.</p>
<p>I am sorry. Truly I am. But someone has to think of the future repercussions of all of this.</p>
<p>Y’all forgive me or ban me one and I would not even really mind at all and I am dead serious in that. Sorry. I cannot appologize enough, but someone had to say it by now because it has just gone on for a while.</p>
<p>Mildred: “Here is where I am even going to sound even meaner than I already do and I am sorry…You go to the UofM not the University of College Confidential, Twisted. Think of your future, Twisted. Think of your future.I am sorry. Truly I am. But someone has to think of the future repercussions of all of this.”</p>
<p>Just wow. Mildred – do you ask the vision impaired to just “get over” their blindness? To “think about the future repercussions” of the accommodations? It was this kind of thinking that kept people with disabilities out of so many colleges and graduate programs for so long. </p>
<p>Some folks have a deficiency of compassion. Maybe this isn’t a thread that’s healthy for you to read.</p>
<p>Mildred has compassion. She is not trying to insult Twisted, she is trying to help her by telling her that running away from failures, or expecting passes for failures, is not a successful strategy. Neither is spending hours on CC.</p>
<p>A college of any reputation worth going to is not going to allow a student to avoid every topic that the student labels a ‘dys’. Accommodate a learning and testing requirement yes; avoid, no.</p>
<p>It can very difficult, and certainly a matter that requires sensitivity, to distinguish a student who is failing due to disability, from a student with disabilities who is failing and would fail even without a disability. I wonder if Twisted isn’t using her disabilities as excuses some of the time.</p>
<p>There is a big difference between providing a relatively minor accomodation (like a quiet room for taking exams for a sound sensitive person or a notetaker for a person who has a hard time writing) and waiving a required series of classes, allowing a student to complete only a portion of the classes, or automatically increasing the students grade to “make up” for the disability.</p>
<p>I’m not speaking for TwistedXKiss, because I don’t know the specifics, but I do know that some people on the autism spectrum find it virtually impossible to learn a foreign language. My Son has a friend further in on the spectrum, and his friend would go outside and SCREAM after Spanish class because he was so frustrated. His mom finally decided that it was okay for him to receive the state “minimum” diploma rather than the “recommended” one, so as not to put him through such frustration another year.</p>
<p>BigTrees and EricLG, would you find it to be an equitable result for those who are neurologically incapabable of learning a foreign language to live their lives without a college degree? People who may have a great future ahead of them as a software engineer or actuary or medical researcher? Of couse, Bill Gates made out okay after he dropped out of college, but most people find that a degree comes in handy. Should someone’s future employment be forever limited because he could not pass four semesters of a foreign language?</p>
<p>My college degree (as those of everyone else that I knew in college) didn’t require a foreign language, so the fact that a person is incapable of learning a foreign language doesn’t prevent someone from getting a degree. Some colleges are big in foreign lanuages and others are not.</p>
<p>If a school deems foreign lanugage to be essential to a particular program of study (as Michigan did in Twisted’s case), I don’t see a reasonable reason to exempt it. Without completing the foreign language requirement, the school deemed that the student has not met the requirements to be conferred the degree. I support the university in this case.</p>
<p>Finally, Twisted was capable of learning a foreign language. She passed multiple terms at a community college and tested in the 40th percentile (without accomodations) on a standarized test at her school. Her problem isn’t that she is inheritently unable to learn a foreign language, she is simply unable to learn it at Michigan.</p>
<p>Missypie and all-- everyone benefits in our society whenever anyone is performing to the best of thier ability.</p>
<p>Bigtrees-- I don’t really know what it is you are attempting to accomplish here, or what your real point is, but maybe it’s not completely appropriate to this particular thread unless you actually work in a disability office or have some kind of experience with this which is outside the scope of speculative opinion. I’m sure there is a place for what you are saying, and maybe you could write an academic paper on it, or do some actual research, but at this point, I’m not sure what you are trying to accomplish.</p>
<p>Could you clarify for me how you think you are “helping?”</p>
<p>I actually saw what Mildred was trying to say, how she was trying to “help,” in a kind of pick yourself up by your bootstraps, you can do it twisted! way. I’m not sure what you are saying, exactly, though, or why.</p>
<p>I would come into this foreign language debate somewhere in the middle. Doesn’t one chose the college because it’s a good fit? Would someone who deeply struggles with learning a foreign language be wise to choose a school that had an extensive language requirement? Son’s school is actually renowned for it’s language program and international studies degree, but the actual requirement is one class, not a proficiency. Some majors strongly encourage a proficiency, but not sure if any “require” it. The point is really that I agree that the University has a right to determine what it takes to graduate from their college, but it doesn’t come close to denying kids diplomas across the board. When a kid has academic or social struggles, understanding all the requirements of a particular college or university will go a long way to avoiding future frustrations. </p>
<p>I really think you need to know which requirements will trip you up in some way and have a pretty good understanding of the process (and likelihood) of altering them. Or figuring out a way for you to scale the mountain with the best chance of success. For me, I was not very good at a languages, but ended up taking four consecutive summer school classes where it was the only thing I did. I passed with a good grades, but couldnt utter a word of portuguese today if I tried. The point is, I found a way to pass the requirement despite it having absolutely no impact on my life in any way except to prove to myself, if no one else, that I could.</p>
<p>My point: Does the college require profoundly deaf political science students to pass the language classes without accommodations? Does a college require a blind political science student to pass an art appreciation class? Is a paraplegic political science student required to demonstrate swimming competency (which is still a requirement at some schools, FYI)? Does a college waiving any of these requirements somehow devalue the political science degree that college grants to those students? Most people – including most people on this thread - would quickly agree that it is sensible for the college to make adjustments for these students, and that these requirements are tangential to a political science degree.</p>
<p>Just because Asperger’s is not as visible a disorder doesn’t mean that students with that condition do not deserve reasonable accommodations. Many of the posters here seem to be of the belief that Twisted “got what she deserved” when the school refused an accommodation, and that if she only sucked it up and figured out how to get past her imagined problems that all would be fine. Would you say the same to the blind, deaf, or paraplegic student?</p>
<p>I know someone who was in a college swim class with someone who was so obese that he could barely walk (got around campus on a scooter.) The various lap swimming requirements were dramatically altered for him and he pretty much did whatever he could do. Should he not have been allowed to pass the class because he could not swim as many laps as the course formally required? Most schools have some sort of physical fitness/gym requirements. Should the morbidly obese or otherwise not disabled but way out of shape students not be allowed to graduate if they can’t keep up in these classes?</p>