Self advocacy is essential for all students to acquire for future planning, especially individuals with disabilities. Individuals with disabilities need to speak for themselves on what accommodations work and do not. With self advocacy they can better succeed in the future. The following resources can guide individuals with disabilities on how to obtain self-advocacy.
Special Connections
http://www.holland.isd.tenet.edu/admin/bbc/Newsletters/Nov%2004%20English.pdf
Special Connections is a newsletter that is specifically designed for connecting individuals with disabilities, families and schools. This particular newsletter is geared toward learning about self-advocacy/self-determination for students with disabilities. It shows the importance of self-advocacy and how it can help the individual in their future. It also provides some important steps in learning self-advocacy skills and how they can accomplish these steps.
Youth hood
http://www.youthhood.org/
This site is said to be where “childhood meets adulthood”. It has many centers that help students determine what they want to do when they reach adulthood. My favorite section is the hangout section; it is for feeling comfortable and getting to know yourself and others around you. The government center section is for understanding your rights and taking control of your future and staying positive about it. Plus they have many more useful sections individuals with disabilities should read.
Advocating Change Together (ACT)
http://www.selfadvocacy.com/index.htm
Adovacting Change Together is a non profit organization that is run by and for people with developmental disabilities and other disabilities. This organization works together to bring individuals with disabilities together to make friends, share struggles and enjoy life. With this mutual support, individuals are willing to take risks and practice leadership. They help build skills of those individuals with disabilties by providing them with information, skill building, and leadership opportunities. ACT provides different programs that help build self advoacy in personal empowerment, disability awareness and systems change system.
We agree that Self Advocacy is a critical skill that empowers students throughout their entire lives. These are great resources for information on self-advocacy and self-determination. All of the resources had similar steps in learning skills of self-advocacy and self-determination. The www.youthhood.com was my favorite of the three resources because they offer different information on things such as: job center, community center, government center, health clinic and apartment. This is great you can find a ton of information on this one website. As a teacher I would definitely use all resource materials to promote self-advocacy and self-determination and disability rights for persons with developmental disabilities.
ReplyDeleteOf course my favorite resource that you listed for students and adults was the YouthHood.org. Our group also used this when our focus was on Self-Advocacy and Future Planning. This website is young adult friendly and truly goes through every aspect of what being an adult means after high school. I really like it because it puts things into understandable terms rather than just confusing lingo. If I teach junior high or high school I plan to use this website with my students. I would like to incorporate it somehow into my monthly lesson plans. Possibly thirty minutes a week or so on topics within it. This is such a useful resource for everyone. I also like the short but simple article titled: Special Connections: Learning About Self-Advocacy/Self-Determination for Students with Disabilities. This article is a great reminder for parents and educators about the importance of having and learning self-advocacy skills for children with disabilities. This would be so simple and easy to hand out to parents at the beginning of the year, before ARD meetings, or during parent-teacher conferences for parents to look over. Any information that helps a parent to support and develop their child into becoming their own advocate, allows for all involved to help achieve the master goal of helping to promote the best future outcomes for the child.
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