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| Hunter Church-Gonzalez, a Disability Resource Center counselor, shows how a special reader device works at College of the Sequoias in Visalia. |
Mike Navarro has a learning disability that makes it difficult to process and retain information. As a high school student years ago, he worked with a resource specialist as part of his Individual Education Plan (IEP). He wasn’t sure about college, but a few years ago he decided to give it a try.
Navarro, 33, attends College of the Sequoias (COS) in Visalia and is thriving. He will graduate next year and plans on attending a four-year college and getting his degree in organizational leadership. He gives much of the credit for his success to the Disability Resource Center (DRC) on the campus.
Many people with learning disabilities such as Navarro are delighted to find that community colleges are eager to help them, even if they struggled in high school, says Kathleen Conway, a learning specialist at COS.
“And you don’t need a high school diploma to go to a community college,” says Conway, a member of the College of the Sequoias Teachers Association (COSTA), a chapter of the Community College Association. “I think a lot of people don’t know that.”
The DRC provides services to students with physical, communicative, learning and psychological disabilities. In addition to providing students access to all classes and activities on campus, the center is designed to offer individualized services to aid each student’s independence, productivity and self-esteem, says Conway.
“We allow students to come into college underprepared or without diplomas, and offer classes to help bridge the gap and their skills base so they can do college-level work,” says Conway. “Many of the students that come here say they got through high school by the skin of their teeth, and many dropped out. Sometimes they have wasted a lot of years before coming here, and a little help earlier on could have made a big difference.”
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| Learning specialist Kathleen Conway. |
Some students find their way to the DRC because they were diagnosed with disabilities previously. However, other students who were undiagnosed in K-12 discover that they have been struggling with a learning disability throughout all their academic years.
“Most of the students I see are not straight out of high school,” she says. “Most of the students I test have given up on education because it was so difficult, frustrating and time-consuming. Then they go into the world of work and realize that there are limits to what they can do without an education. That drives them back into the education, and that’s when we catch them.
“They’ll come in and say, I don’t have a disability, I just can’t do math. They say they struggled with school, but that they are not disabled. Or that they don’t have a problem with reading, they just need to read things a few times,” she explains.
Based on these clues, Conway administers tests to determine whether students do, in fact, have learning disabilities that will qualify them for DRC services. And once students learn they are eligible for extra help, says Conway, the word “disability” becomes much more palatable.
Students are happily surprised to discover they have access to services that may have been unavailable to them in high school. For example, someone else can take notes for them in class or read test questions to them aloud, provided it’s not for a reading class. Students have access to other resources such as books on disk for their classes. They can use adaptive software to help with writing that allows them to dictate information to a computer instead of writing it down. And students can have extended time to take tests in the Testing Center.
“I can sit there and take a test for as long if I need to,” says Navarro. “There’s no hurry, and it’s really quiet. I took one of my finals there, and that’s how I got an A.”
Hunter Church-Gonzales, a DRC counselor, serves as an “advocate” for students to make sure their needs are being met by teachers when it comes to instruction, homework and testing, since students with disabilities may have difficulty expressing their needs.
“They may not feel comfortable approaching a teacher or may worry that if they complain, the instructor will give them a bad grade,” says Gonzales, also a COSTA member.
“I serve as a resource for instructors, too,” adds Gonzales. “I can explain how they can best help students with disabilities. Success for these students requires cooperation between the teacher and DRC staff. I see part of my job as increasing awareness and sensitivity among school staff.”
Sometimes DRC staff can help students obtain a waiver or substitute certain classes for others based on an individual’s learning disability. A student might petition for a waiver from algebra, for example, especially if it does not pertain to their area of study or major, and then substitute it with a course in basic math or critical thinking.
Conway and Gonzales think it’s likely that the DRC will have additional students as high schools deny diplomas to learning disabled students who have not passed the California High School Exit Exam. Unfortunately, those students will not be eligible for federal financial aid without a high school diploma.
“Community colleges are really the key to an education for so many people,” says Conway. “That’s why we are the workhorse of the system.”
