001foreign hey everyone it's 12 28 so let's wait another minute and i can see there's one fern i remember our days as parents at um the full circle school and i saw your name and i thought that right away colleen okay so it is 12 30. can you guys all hear me okay all right welcome i can't tell you how thankful i am for all of you to take this time out of your day you all are doing such important work and you're so so busy and i'm honored that you would do this for me and for the students who are watching for the parents who are watching it's really important um so this is our first event of our autism awareness acceptance week for um 2021 and our first event here is a panel
002discussion with colleagues of mine from different colleges pretty local up to vermont a little out eastern mass way a little bit but um when we thought about what we wanted to include this year we really wanted to include something about what people can expect in at the college level in terms of supports and i really wanted to make sure that i got a range of colleges and i've done that because we've got and you guys will talk about this but we've got uh some standard four years in private some community college some specialty college all of that and i'm just really happy to have that representation at the same time this is only a very tiny option for our students so for people watching just to keep that in mind this is just one two
003three four five six different options um but there are so many more at the same time this will give you a flavor for how different supports can be in terms of at the high school level versus moving out into the college level where under whole different set there's a different paradigm of how support works and um that's something i want us to start talking about now so let me see i'll just tell you a little bit about who is here and then i'll turn it over one by one and you guys can take five minutes and just discuss how support works at your school and people watching can put comments or questions in the chat and then jessica asks you who is watching she's behind the scenes here and she's watching the chat we'll then
004pull from that to help us direct the questions okay so on my screen going across we have joy for huerta and she is from springfield technical community college stick and then we have colin caffrey from greenfield community college and then marie trope from holyoke community college also the transition to college and career program and then brittany goodwin from um is it dean yes dean of course and then fern bork from landmark college and then paula koche from curry college so thank you all again and if that order works for you guys just go in that order okay so enjoy them unless you don't want to be first no problem okay all right well thank you again kathy for your willingness to to host this and i think it's just very timely too to get this
005information out early i think early planning is also really beneficial to all our students just so that they can get on track and and have you know a couple months to acclimate to preparing for college and and just um being as prepared as possible so again i work at springfield technical community college and i'm one of the three counselors in the office of disability services and for students who want to make use of our services the first step is to provide us with their disability documentation so that's often their psycho-educational evaluation from high school sometimes that information is embedded in an iep or 504 but we really want as much information about their learning as possible because that gives us the most information to work from to coordinate accommodations and support services um and certainly
006if a student has difficulty getting that they often will sign a release and then we can reach out directly you know to the school we also have on our website disability verification forms that's another measure there are forms that students share with their medical provider or therapist to fill out and that information then it's pretty streamlined just so that we know the information um to best determine again accommodation so again the first step is to provide us with documentation and then we'll review it and then reach out to the student and these days we're coordinating um either via phone google me zoom um and we're eager for the day when that can be in person but until then you know we're doing our best to have those intake appointments which are a very big piece
007of the process where we have the opportunity to talk with the student um what's been helpful them you know to them in the past how we can support them at stcc and then we talk about specific you know accommodations maybe some things that they had in high school that um we can still offer and then some things might be a little bit different they're used to having an iep or a 504 and when they come to stcc we use an accommodation plan and that's a document that after we discuss what types of accommodations may be helpful to them i'll just use you know time and a half for testing as an example um we felt that plan together and then it submitted to the professors so that they are aware of the student's accommodation needs
008uh for the semester ahead and at stcc we asked that students felt that paperwork each semester just the nature of their classes change and their needs may change um so that's kind of the formal piece of of accommodations but then our office really is is a lot more than that um and it comes down um just to having a relationship with the students so that they can keep us informed um because there are a lot of additional supports available to all students we have a variety of different tutor centers writing centers you know we want students to be connected with their professors they have office hours we also have coaching services academic coaching we have assistive technology um so really it's it's really you know the student provides the documentation we meet with them and
009then we really encourage ongoing um meetings again whether it's phone email just because the more we can stay connected i think the better we can keep them in contact with the resources but we do follow their lead you know it's a different environment from high school and so i really encourage students to meet with me weekly um especially as they're settling in and then certainly you know always available via phone or email um especially these days um but really that's kind of the the nutshell version of of registering with our office and being connected and i'm sure as our talk continues you know we'll plug in some other details but but that's the gist for now thank you joy yeah you really covered a lot and i'm sure a lot of these guys have similar
010i know have similar setups so you know you don't don't feel the need to repeat everything that joy did but you could underline certain aspects of it or add different pieces that apply to you thank you so much so hello i'm colleen caffrey i'm the coordinator of disability services at greenfield community college when kathy first told me i had five minutes to talk i thought oh my gosh how am i gonna fill five minutes and then i started writing some notes so forgive me for referring to them and just hope i don't go over so just some general information about gcc we're one of the smallest community colleges in massachusetts um with under 2 500 students maybe even under 2000 right now with the enrollment declines due to covet taking credit courses and most of
011those students are part-time for the 2019-2020 academic year my office sold just under 400 students 399 students which is about 16 of our student body and our office the disability office of disability services is part of the wellness center at gcc which also includes counseling services so i think that at gcc's small size is an asset for students with disability um the faculty and the staff all know each other so collaborating to provide support for students is pretty seamless in addition to disability services like what joy described we have a very robust peer tutoring service which also includes academic counseling and my office has a strong relationship with that group counseling which i mentioned earlier the women's resource center which actually serves students of any gender identity despite the name the veterans center academic advising
012food pantry and various studios in different academic areas such as the math studio where students can work one-on-one with faculty members just to give you an idea of some of the services that are also available to support students my office also includes carol who is our administrative assistant extraordinaire and usually the first face that students meet um when they contact the wellness center and cindy kunz who is a learning specialist and works uh 30 hours a week um so i meet with students and cindy also with disabilities one-on-one to talk about the challenges that they experience and to develop what we call academic agreements similar to joy's academic plans um this is how the process usually goes a student contacts our office we ask them to fill out our intake form to find out a
013little more about them and they submit any documentation they have or we also can help them obtain that documentation from their school so that they can send it directly to us um and then we schedule a meeting to talk about their needs um we also have been meeting mostly on zoom some phone and some google meet but um anxious to get back to meeting face-to-face with folks so the most common diagnosis of students that i see is adhd followed by anxiety often both together as of last october we had 22 students who identified as being on the autism spectrum and the most common accommodations are usually for testing extra time testing in a distraction-reduced environment but the accommodations aren't formulaic and and they depend on what each individual student needs um some accommodations that i've
014created specifically for students on the spectrum include like having access in class to stress reducing objects or doing hand work um getting support integrating into working with other students either in pairs or groups and taking breaks whenever they need to for like overexposure to sensory stimulations and things like that and gcc has a neurodiversity club which was started several years ago by a student on the spectrum who is actually now a phd student at umass in sociology but it's open to anybody who identifies as neurodiverse or not neurotypical last fall the neurodiversity club sponsored an event with a panel of students on the autism spectrum and we typically have an annual event to educate the campus committee about autism always featuring the voices of our students on the autism spectrum thanks for having me yeah
015thank you colleen that's really exciting stuff uh marie are you feeling ready yeah i am i love this circle on top of my head i keep trying to move one way or the other but i'm you know how the left right is different sometimes on the screen i'm just going to leave it there it's a nice nice little ornament for them it looks like one of those hats you know those small yeah exactly exactly so i'm coming to you from holyoke community college specifically a program called transition to college and careers and that is a program for adult students so that means young adults just out of high school 18 years old or or so um but it all it means adults of all ages and while our program is not specifically designed for students
016on the autism spectrum we find that every year we have a few students who are on the spectrum and do very well with the support in a program so what i want to say first is that transition to college and careers is a free program it's paid for by a grant so that's one nice thing about it and the whole point is to prepare students to be successful so we're offering career and educational advising we're trying to strengthen the reading math and writing foundational skills and then helping you to navigate the college in we have daytime and evening classes and right now of course we're fully remote but in the fall we plan to be you know partly in person partly hybrid and and and also have online courses so we we want to maintain
017the flexibility that the pandemic has kind of thrust upon us but um we know that many of our students benefit from face-to-face classes and many other students prefer fully online we have classes for fall and spring and and we also have a shorter program in the summer to help prepare for the fall um the only uh the only i guess requirement is is that you have your high school credential diploma or ged or high set and that you are um you know in intending to enroll in a degree program or certificate program after you complete transition to college let's see i'm looking at my notes too um we you know we teach things like study skills and computer skills and about the campus culture you know what expectations your uh instructors will have how that's
018different from high school um you know things that may not um be obvious at first but are really useful um when so we do work so we have an office on our campus called the office of students with disabilities and deaf services we work very closely with them so a student in our program would have an advisor in our program and an advisor in the office for students with disabilities and we also have a neurodiversity club on campus so that's another possibility and um the the model of our class is that um students are taking non-credit versions of credit college classes and then we are um working toward after if they earn a c minus or better we are working to get them credit for prior learning afterwards um so we we have a few
019departments that have already agreed to that and we're working on expanding that um but that's how we're doing it and that way people can students can really sort of test the waters and feel um a little bit like the risk has to is taken out of it and you can only gain because if you don't do well then there's nothing lost but if you do well and you you make the grade then um you or you can earn credits for that so um i'll talk a little bit about our our intake process we um usually ask folks to do an in-person or a zoom um short meet short meeting with us about 45 minutes and we just um fill out the application with you and have a conversation so we really get to know you
020and what your what your needs are what your story is where you're coming from let's see uh and then what we do is um we have two advisors who help you through the process their names are irving and krista and i i know kathy has all that information um so happy to answer any questions that you have um at the end if that's how we're doing that yes thank you marie yeah so the audience knows yes i have connections with all of these people um i've had students in each of the three that have spoken already go through their programs or work with them with some great results and i'm really happy with that so i can connect anybody after their questions that come to people's minds later uh brittany hi everyone um so dean
021college is we're located in franklin massachusetts we have about 1200 students both in undergraduate baccalaureate and associates degrees um i'm gonna focus in an effort to stay within my five minutes i'm gonna focus mostly on the uh arch program today but we do have a lot of the things that folks have already talked about like the accessibility services and tutoring and and all of that we have at dean but i'm going to kind of focus mostly on the arch program which i think is kind of different and unique to dean college um arch serves about um 200 students uh it's about 20 of our student population um we are a comprehensive four fee program uh for students with learning disabilities um and developmental disabilities across the board so we're pretty open in how we define
022students that um qualify for the program the goal is to taper our support start kind of heavy in the support and taper students to independence as they graduate and be ready career ready when they graduate our program is um a key component of our arts program is our academic coaching each student is assigned an academic coach who they work with one-on-one for the duration of their time in the arts program in the first year they meet with their coach three times a week for an hour for each meeting um that's scheduled like a class so the student goes to the same place same time each week to meet one-on-one um they're really working on executive functioning type of support in those meetings um going into our learning management system together to look at the course
023requirements the assignments making to-do lists uh review the assignment requirements make sure they understand what they're supposed to be doing those types of things um it's really individualized based on the student needs um the let's see where where am i in my notes um for first-year students the coaches are given a description of kind of what we think the students need based on what we've collected in their application process and then the student also does some advocating too so we don't expect the students to come in a perfect advocate on their first day and we do give them a little bit of a head start but then the student can kind of chime in as well and practice those advocacy skills that hopefully they've been working on um in preparation for college um let's see
024um for students who may need some support but don't think they need the full arch program um academic coaching is available available for fee um for students who just want kind of an hour or two hours a week of academic coaching and that is something that students can opt into without the full arts program or if they kind of graduate out of the arts program and want to continue with academic coaching that is a possibility for them in addition to academic coaching each art student has a designated arch academic advisor um the success and career advisor for arch all have backgrounds in working with students with disabilities we're located in the morton family learning center which gives us access to collaborate quickly and easily with the academic coaches and with the tutors and with all
025kind of the general different support people which is really helpful uh we work closely with faculty families coaches um athletic coaches as well uh we do have quite a few athletes in our program and campus resources to help students address concerns quickly and come up with plans to move forward successfully we do have ferpa releases for 100 of our student population in the arch program we don't require it um but that seems to be the way it works out um so we do communicate very frequently with our families and the student is kind of the lead of that communication but we do understand that families have often been a huge part of the advocacy team for students k-12 um and we don't kind of cut them off at the pass when they start in college
026and um we understand that sometimes having the parents involved is really helpful in term in terms of um moving forward with helping students come up with a success plan um while the arch population is fully integrated into the dean community and the curriculum is not at all modified we do have some specific arch classes that are designed with our population in mind uh the arch courses are core courses that every student has to take but specific arch sections are created in areas that tend to be more difficult for students with learning disabilities so like our core math class our core english writing class our public speaking class those that create some anxiety for our students with learning disabilities we do create art sections for they're taught by somebody who has chosen to teach a room
027full of students with learning disabilities they work closely with the arts advisors to kind of understand who's in the classroom and what a class might look like that's designed for those particular students uh they're taught multimodally with collaboration from the arch staff um those instructors are ready to pivot quickly when something maybe isn't working in their class i mean they work um quickly to kind of come up with a new plan um things like when they went online this past year uh and a lot of our instructors were putting things putting together discussion boards realizing that that maybe was too much writing in conjunction with the writing uh assignments that they already had planned um allowing students pivoting quickly and allowing students to put things up in video format or in um in um verbal
028notes or things like that was something that our instructors were really um responsive to right away um finally first year students in the arts program moved to campus three days before the rest of the first year student population for art orientation during this time they participate in programming designed to familiarize them with the physical campus campus resources each other the arch staff we understand it's important for students to be comfortable on campus and aware of their support and comfortable with the people before we expect them to go to all of those things for help on the first day of classes so we spend a lot of time kind of building those relationships with students in those first few days before classes begin and i think that's it for me right now i'll pass it over
029thank you bernie i look forward to for a time when i might have a student who goes to the program and hearing about how it actually pans out on the ground thank you very much fern well thank you kathy for inviting me to participate today i'm going to talk to you all about landmark college which is a very small private liberal arts college in putney vermont we have only 450 students they hail from all over the country and from 12 different countries as well we have a six to one student to faculty ratio which results in really small classes our average class size is eight to 12 students but what's really different about landmark is that we are an accredited college exclusively for neurodiverse students it is not our curriculum that sets us apart the
030curriculum is a traditional rigorous liberal arts curriculum what sets us apart is the fact that all of our students identify as neurodiverse landmark is built on the belief that neurodiversity is a strength that new ideas insights ways of viewing the world new ways of viewing the world come from diverse minds our students are likely to think of their learning difference as their superpower at landmark accommodations and support services are embedded into the very way that we teach um into the very fabric and functioning of the college the services are integrated they exist in and out of class the central person in the support system is a student's advisor and from the time students come on campus they meet with their advisor weekly so they really get to know one another no students slip through the
031cracks together with their advisor students establish their short and long term goals and if they desire executive function coaching all of our advisors are trained coaches in that as well all colleges have an academic support center at landmarks drake center students get one-to-one services and support both in content and in study skills from faculty or trained staff people who are specialists in teaching unique learners there is assistive technology available to all of our students and maybe the most loved support system on campus is our therapy dog program we have nine certified dogs on campus who can be found with their handlers all over the campus and because they actually have office hours students can arrange times to be one-on-one with one of our dogs mental health services i think are an important thing to think
032about when you're looking at your college options even if you find a perfect fit college can be a stressful experience we find at landmark that sixty percent of our students use the services of one of our counselors at some time during the semester or throughout a semester but i also want to specifically talk about services for students who are on the autism spectrum at landmark it begins as a does a dean with an early orientation students come to campus three days early to get acclimated to the campus to learn how to navigate to get familiar with the social pragmatic staff who are going to be supporting them to uh work with peer mentors to begin to establish relationships in a small safe supportive group we do very very careful roommate matching we are a completely
033residential campus and we understand how important that is for students so we approach it really analytically and in addition uh every dorm has a residential director who is a professional supported by student residential assistants who are available throughout the night to offer any kinds of support that are needed by our students the program that i get most excited talking about is a program called peers program for the education and enrichment of relational skills it was developed at ucla in the early 2000s by two doctors who wanted an evidenced based program for teaching motivated adolescents and young adults the social skills that will enable them enable you to establish and maintain really strong friendships and also romantic relationships as well so that is a really successful program on our campus our social pragmatics team are all
034certified peers trainers because of the success of the program which by the way includes meeting one-on-one with a peers coach we have recently developed two uh really great offshoots of the program we have piers dating boot camp which uh was inaugurated this past winter break it was so successful that it isn't an ongoing part of the program now and we have peers to careers to help set you up for success in interviewing in internships and in making uh yourself career ready to pursue the path that um your college studies lead you to i think that the most incredible thing for me about landmark is the community when you get 450 or so students on campus all of whom are neurodiverse all of whom are working on some kind of challenge everybody gets it so it
035is a welcoming inclusive supportive community nobody is ever on the outside looking in everyone feels that they are an integral part of this very vibrant and dynamic learning community landmark helps students become confident self-aware great self-advocacy practitioners and helps students develop the skills and strategies that are going to serve them not only while they're in college but they're going to draw on for their entire lives and i can speak in a very personal way about the transformative experience that landmark can be for students because my own son aaron graduated with an associate's degree in um and through aaron i was drawn to to this position at the college so again thank you kathy for inviting me uh to participate with you today a pleasure it's always so inspiring what goes on at landmark thank you
036um paula you want to wrap us up i always tell my student to go first during presentations because they can sit back and relax and here i am going left now let me remember to remind them to do that again well you're being a good sport thank you thank you um fernan was great listening to you i have had students transferred to curry from landmark and they've done very well they transfer in to get their bachelor's degree so thank you for joining today too thank you all i'm happy to be here um from curry college my name is paula kochi and i'm a senior lecturer in the program from advancement of learning pal um if you're not familiar with curry it's a small liberal arts four year liberal arts college in milton mass which is
037about seven miles from the boston border we have about 2 300 undergraduates 87 majors minors and concentrations five master's degree programs and fifth year master's degree programs in business administration criminal justice and education the pal program is part of the college community and it's a structured support service for students who have learning differences to be admitted into pal the student first applies to curry and applies to the pal program at the same time there's a checklist on the application process to do that the pal program requires that you submit the psycho-educational testing and then we will take a look at the profile of the student based on the psycho-educational testing that was submitted to pal and the application that was submitted into the admissions office at curry college then pal admissions and curry admissions gets
038together and we talk about the entire profile of the student about 20 of the curry population participates in cal at one point to the other um we do admit students with average to above average intelligence you know they have to be capable of doing the college coursework if your participants take anything away from today it's that colleges will provide accommodations for students but not the modifications they may have received in the high school level that's no longer the law so the pal program is structured and supportive in that once the student is admitted into the pal program and into curry they are matched up with a pal professor who meets with that student at least twice a week and the student remains with the same pal professor throughout their experience in the pal program we
039meet with them and talk about their their psycho-educational testing we actually review that with them and talk about their strengths um and how to utilize their strengths to overcome any areas of concern we go over their college course work based on the needs of each student whether that's study strategies time management organization of materials just navigating the whole process of receiving the accommodations that may be required we do offer academic credit for the first year of attending pal it's a credit and a half per semester for the first year so it gets the students a few extra credits towards graduation um the best thing that pal has to offer right now that the students really seem to be benefiting from are the peer mentor programs that we have in place we have pal peer mentors
040that help us study strategies and social skills and acclimating students to the campus and the pal program and we also have pal peer mobile tutors who are other students who are very adept at using the um the ipads that we give all first-year students and the applications for study strategies and any accommodations they might use so they are connected with the pal peer tutors and the pal peer mo mobile tutors if they would like to participate in those programs i mean this is in addition to being connected with the pal professor before the student arrives at pal they are offered a summer transition program which is called the summer pal program before covid it was offered as a three-week residential program where the students come and live in the residence halls they take many courses
041they work with pal professors they meet of course other students who will be attending in the fall so it's a great transition in that they learn the campus they learn to navigate things like the student center and the cafeteria and the residence halls they meet with pal professors they become familiar with some of the academic professors on campus they learn their way around campus and they meet a very cohesive group of other pal students so it takes the social anxiety out of arriving in the fall and all the students have to do is concentrate on the courses that they'll be taking in the fall once they do arrive so if you are thinking about applying to pal and takari that is the program that i would highly recommend this summer it will be offered online
042again and we're hoping to go back to the residential program next summer um i think i have sorry covered everything um i'm happy to answer any questions during the live session um and again thank you for having me on board thank you so much it's really exciting to hear about you know your program and britney's that i didn't know i heard a little bit about but i wanted to understand more about um and all the others i i was familiar with and it's just wonderful um it gives me a lot of hope you know i work with these students and i really hope that i'm sending them off to something you know and there is something right there sometimes we hear about oh everything drops off after high school and not necessarily um and part
043of my hope today was that i would bring that forward um and one thing i know that makes the difference is how much a student can advocate and how much they can reach out to get that you know in high school we might chase after them so to speak and that's not so much what's gonna happen when they're adults and i guess i wondered if if you had any of you had things to add to that or if there are um pieces that you say you know if you could work on one thing that i don't know that you're working on in high school it would be this to help them be prepared so i guess anybody could unmute and chime in well i'll start with a short one and that is simply we tell
044all of our students it's really important to learn how to ask for help and you'd be surprised and is even even adults who are in their 30s or 40s um they i had one student say to me recently you know i thought because i'm an adult i thought that i was supposed to know how to do all these things already i didn't know that it was okay to ask for help and that's that's the one thing if you can ask for help um you're halfway there because there's plenty of resources on campus but unless you tell someone that you're struggling we won't always know um sometimes we can see it and sometimes it's not visible so you're being aware of that and telling us and taking that step is is the most important piece i
045appreciate that when you become an adult it just doesn't happen to you that you have all the knowledge of how to do things and i think sometimes we put it out there as if it is so i appreciate that i'd like to add that if a student can practice at the high school level describing his or her learning difference and why they require the accommodations they do that's very helpful in talking to professors at the post-secondary level yes thank you we would probably all agree that any self-advocacy skills that you learn while you are in high school are to your benefit i don't know um what standard practices are at the school kathy but you know i always recommend that students learn to lead their own plan meetings you know so that they can do
046what paul's talking about articulate their learning difference because they are going to need the confidence to be able to talk about it and ask for help when they get to college i also want to add something about expectations at landmark our logo involves a very curved path students should not expect that from high school to college and to graduation is a straight line that it's a clear path you know it weaves in and out as you learn and i think if you approach it with that expectation um it will it will benefit you to understand that there will be certain challenges that you will have to meet along the road i really appreciate that i i just recently talked to a student who was so surprised to hear that there were older adults who attend
047college and it opened up so much hope for them oh i don't have to just follow this linear because that's what they've known to follow the linear path that doesn't have to go that way it's really important to point out thank you apollo alluded a little bit when she was talking about curry as well about moving away from modifications i think a lot of students think like i'm going to go to college and i'm going to everything's going to change in terms of how i have my accommodations and my modifications and also the work is going to be a little bit harder and if you could not do both of those things at once that would be great yeah so if you could move away from your modifications and start getting comfortable with assistive technology
048and things like that and then move to some of the more rigorous work it would be helpful to do those things separately makes so much sense yeah thank you i i think to add to what marie said about it being important for students to ask for help i think often students who have had an iep or a 504 plan in high school sometimes feel some reluctance to contact the support services particularly an office called disability services just may feel stigmatizing to them and i just want to assure students and their families that it's really a different environment in college there's no concerns about bullying and labeling most other students don't know if students have accommodations or not and if they do know they really don't care thank you important yeah i guess i i don't
049have too much more to add because i think so much of it um yeah relies on how how to ask for help and communication and i think um in recent years more of those kind of executive functioning coaching strategies um i think just learning that students sometimes are afraid to ask or as it was alluded to they don't like being the kid on the iep and asking for help but if you remind them many of the campus resources are available to support everyone and and sometimes just bridging it like these days our tutor services are remote too and students will know they exist but i think there's that apprehension of reaching out so it's like okay i'm just going to introduce you to them via email you know and then you can take it from
050there your comfort level still trying to give them some authority over it you know if they give me the go ahead then like let's open this door kind of virtually because again gone are the days at least for an hour i can just walk down the hall where there's that comfort of like a face-to-face meeting and then they kind of feel like okay i know where i should go um but just asking those questions that maybe like they have a stumbling block that we didn't anticipate because it was like i'm not sure what the next step is or i'm not sure what question they asked those sorts of things and just again getting them greater awareness of how to articulate their learning needs and how to ask for help i appreciate that joy i've definitely
051noticed and heard that in terms of i could make this referral or i could introduce you do you give me permission would you like me to do that and it puts them in the driver's seat and that that's huge and i appreciate when i've heard that so we have a few minutes left i don't actually know if there are any questions um from the audience that people wanted to ask but if anybody watching does have a question you could pop it in the chat you've been so comprehensive people just get it i see a comment that says students helping students is so important not only does it give confidence to the student who's helping out but it gives confidence to the student who's asking for help some of the students who come in as mentees
052become mentors after a while they learn how to navigate that leadership role so it's been great absolutely just pausing giving some wait time well so just in terms of you know what you might recommend to students or parents that they could do now i mean i know that there are a lot of virtual tours going on virtual events um that people can sign up for um should they just you know take to google and find that or do you would you have any more advice of people who are just starting out and feel kind of overwhelmed i mean we have people at the school and at every school there's somebody like a guidance counselor and such that can help them navigate that but from your angle what would you direct people to i think that
053there are a few if you could call it forgive me silver linings to covet um one of them is while students aren't able to physically be on a lot of college campuses right now in a way it opens you up to experiencing more open houses more virtual experiences so colleges have all gotten really really creative about the kinds of experiences we provide right now at landmark for example students can take demonstration classes during our open houses there are parent panels student panels and all colleges are doing so much to provide these virtual experiences so i think it's an opportunity to visit a lot of different kinds of colleges you know big and small urban rural colleges that are traditional colleges with disability services support and colleges that have specific programs but you can do all
054that much more easily right now and you can also ask for other kinds of virtual experiences even those that the college isn't necessarily putting on their website for example colleges will connect prospective students with a current student who may have a similar learning profile or similar interests so i think it's really actually a great time to start those kinds of explorations and explore many different kinds of colleges thank you i was going to say the same there's i i would also say don't just do it once so like if you go to a school and you see what they have in a month they might have 10 more things um there's like kind of a constant factory at most schools of kind of what's being put out in virtual content i also wouldn't assume you
055can't visit places i've had a lot of conversations with folks about you know it's so terrible we can't visit and we are doing campus visits um so do your research look at what it might look like if you do want to get on a campus you know there's restrictions there's things you have to do there's hoops to jump through but if you do really want to get onto a campus there are some campuses you can visit so um don't make assumptions kind of just look into the rules of the different colleges and i i would highly recommend setting up interviews with both the programs that you may require services from and in the admissions office not only does it give admissions personnel an opportunity to meet you and hear what you have to say but
056it's the students opportunity to ask questions you want to know if it's the right fit for you so um it's definitely an opportunity to shine and to learn more about on any of these schools that you might want to attend thank you i think just continuing on that same theme again the early planning and the ongoing communication because i think the more you can help the students see what to expect um the more comfortable they'll be if you can answer a lot of those questions now and in the summer time so that they you know can work on making the steps whether it's participation enrollment admission placement whatever those processes are um because then there's a level of comfort because i think sometimes a lot of anxiety is built up because they don't know and
057they're trying to make decisions and they're feeling pressure so you know i love that it's only april you know and we're having this conversation so there's still time to um coordinate those meetings and have questions answered because it's incredibly overwhelming i mean i think sometimes i have to do like a little overview and i'm like this is my daily life but when i have to sit in on a presentation for someone else it's like that's a whole lot of information you know for another department so just um the opportunity to come back and ask questions and make sure the students really comfortable with the next step so that they can you know develop those relationships with the different departments you know as they move forward so they know hey this is a really good fit
058for me and i feel like i have an ally with this person and they're going to walk me through the process thank you i appreciate that and i've um i've really been impressed with the neurodiversity groups that many of you have and it really is it's that community it's that connection it's that life of the school you know and a lot of times high schoolers you know they think okay maybe not but some may think oh college is just more school there's so much more and whether it's you know somewhere where you live or you don't live there there's still so much community going on and so i've really appreciated um i had a high schooler that connected with the neurodiversity group at gcc and that made the difference as far as the student actually
059wanting to try to go there so it means a lot so thank you very much parting words well i'll jump in um parting words understand the importance of your supports and your accommodations i think a lot of students underestimate just how important they are to their success and feel as though in approaching college they want to establish a new identity independent of their disability i would encourage you to set your foundation for success by recognizing that college is going to be more rigorous not just on an academic level but on an executive functioning level it's more rigorous in every in every way and so utilize your supports because they can be key to your success thank you would underline that absolutely well i won't keep you all because like i said in the beginning i
060know you're all very very busy and changing over to have being people in person or preparing for whatever you know we're just constantly pretty overwhelmed right now but um taking this time actually for me is everything because it gives me the energy to go back and do that hard work so thank you and enjoy your your rest of your day thank you you