As an advocate for our son, I had several different roles. Today, I will share one of the role's I had to play in my son's school while he was growing up. I believed my son could accomplish a lot but not in the way most other students did. A lot of my advocacy role was to convince educators my son could do it but also show them how he needed to have curriculum delivered. That was not always easy but it was a job I took on to help my son to grow academically.,,.
I remember an instance where my son was being tested for talented and gifted. He was struggling emotionally when he had to go back to the general education classroom. It was suggested, that his testing should cease and we all should just forget about this because it's just not right for him. A wise counselor who knew my son well suggested that the testing should be done in a different manner. He took the same test as everyone else being evaluated for TAG. I told those in charge that if we stopped testing him, he would say everyone thinks I'm stupid, Those involved said we don't want he him to think that. I reiterated the fact that he would feel that way if the testing ceased. Well, testing continued in a little different format and he scored one of the highest scores the teacher had ever seen in one of her students. He was in the Talented and Gifted Program for many years. His TAG teacher did additional study in Twice Exceptional Students(TAG and learning disabled) and became the biggest advocate for my son from elementary through high school graduation.
Another time I took on this role was in the latter years of high school. My son took college prep courses and many of the instructors had never had a student with learning disabilities in their classes. It's not easy to convince a chemistry or physics teacher that he needs to give a student accommodations. It took some work to bring teachers into understanding how to teach a twice exceptional student. Some of the ways that we finally agreed to try made all the difference between success and failure. One of those was to reduce handwriting on daily assignments. The teacher would come to my son's study hall once a week and he would do all the homework orally for each instructor. It didn't take long until the instructors saw that Isaac was a different student with that type of accommodation.
I believe one of the best ways to advocate for a child is convincing others that he can do a lot well if the presentation and expectations are based on mastery of the subject rather than the assessment method!
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