Event ID: 1198227
Event Started: 12/9/2008 6:50:07 PM ET
Please stand by for reel fame captions. -- for realtime captions.
Wright state university presents starting Wright. This program made
possible through a grant from the Johnson scholarship foundation. The
future, your future, have you thought about it? I mean seriously
thought about it? Believe it or not, now is the time to start making
decisions what you want to be and how you're going to be there.
Starting Wright is a series of programs designed to raise the awareness
of students with disabilities in technology based careers. Why choose a
career in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. What middle
school and high school classes should
be taking to prepare
yourself for college? How do you overcome stereo types and other
obstacles in your way. Remember if you have questions or comments you'd
like to share with us, starting bright is an interactive webcast. Feel
free to be part of the discussion. The demand for science and
technology-based careers is expected to grow rapidly. If you want to be
part of that future now is the time to start Wright. Now here is the
host. Jeff Vernooy.
Good evening everybody. This is Jeff
Vernooy welcoming you to another show of starting Wright. As you heard
we have this new introduction that's coming along and that person's
voice is none other than skip porter. He is someone that just joined
our notly crew. He is formally in the radio industry and he is working
with us helping as the creative consultant. You'll see some things that
make us little bit more like a radio show today as we go along. We'll
actually have different portions of the program. We're going to divide
things up a little bit, to make it easier to listen to. Excited about
some of the things we're able to do. We have new technology and I think
you're going to find that we'm make a drastic difference in your show.
Let's get started as we move along.
Tonight, we're going to
talk about getting ready for college one. This is the first step of
really getting ready to get yourself in to a college program. It talks
about something that's one of the more important aspects of successful
college environment and that's development of your personal skills an
attitudes.
Last week, we spent a good deal of time talking
about some of the things that had to do with actual support programs
that were provided in college for you to take a look at. The things
that we looked at were the academic support services, physical support
services, technical support services, and the vocational support
services. Each of those, each university or college will provide some
level of those support services in almost all cases. In some cases it
may be provided specifically by the office of disability services N.
other cases it may be a decentralized plan and divided amongst a number
of different offices like the career services office. Or the health
services program or counseling services program. But those are the
kinds of support levels that you would expect to find on most college
campuses and when you go do those. Then we talked a little bit about
how to go to those colleges and learn more about their different
programs and what they have for you and what makes sense.
Now
we had some homework. Our first question was to have a family
discussion about the support services that you'll need when you go to
college and make a list of these services. Kaleb from his for out of
campus exconsiderations. Assuming he means off campus exconsiderations.
Checks to see if breakfast and dinner is eaten. Make sure nutrition is
kept up and a morning alarm clock. Some of those services are available
on come pus and other cases come students may need to bring a piece of
equipment to make some of those things happen.
There are also
some parents who wrote in with some questions. I've got a couple of
them here. We'll be answering more over to next couple of shows in
those areas. We would like to continue to get questions both from
parents and from students if we have areas that we're not talking about
that you would like more information about, please feel free to write
us and let us know about that. We welcome that input when we plan our
future programs to help them cope with college.
I think
there's several things we do with students on ADAD on our campus. The
testing environment is an important environment for a student with ADHZ
and the least number of distractions is important. A room that could be
shut off to alleviate some of the noise around them by deadening the
sounds, providing a thing called white noise in the room that allows to
focus on the test questions and to answer those questions is one of the
things that we do. The second thing we recognize with attention deficit
disorders, sometimes they need to hear things from more than one
modality. A lot of our ADHD students use textbooks on disk as well as
on print. They'll actually sit and listen to their textbook and read it
at the same time. It helps them stay on focus. Sit down front in the
classroom. If you sit way in the back of an auditorium with 300 other
students in there, it's likely you will find more things to draw your
attention away from the faculty member than to draw you to. So sitting
in front and maintaining your eye contact with that faculty member will
maintain that attention you need to do that. Finally having an extra
copy of notes. Somebody else's note from that class that you could use
to review what you have so that you make sure that you picked
everything up. Of course, you always have the option of tape recording
that lecture if you want to do that as well.
Another question that came in from Elizabeth when should we start campus visits? Does disability affect the timeline?
Yes. It does. Many families visit the fall quarter prior to attending.
The family didn'tfied what schools they wanted to go to as early as the
winter -- in other words a year and a half before they are ready to
visit colleges. The Junior year in high school is probably the good
time to identify schools, particularly if you have a list of things
that you will want that you may need to talk to somebody directly to
determine whether those are there or not. I would recommend that you do
campus visits during the end of spring quarter or the first of the fall
quarter so you have the opportunity to be on that campus or have an
opportunity to talk with a couple of students with disabilities about
their services and their support programs. Nobody says it better than
the students that are on the campus as to how well they are
accommodated. I think it's important to do your visits not during the
summertime when campuses are partially it is down and there's very few
students. To focus on the fall or spring quarter to look at those
things. Finally, can you get astains with taking SATs and ACTs?
Yes. You can. Both the SAT and ACT have a procedure to ask for
accommodations. They require that you provide some documentation from a
high school guidance counselor or psychologist if that's necessary. But
they do allow students to have additional time or other kinds of
devices, calculators or other things in the testing area along with
them. But you have to follow this procedure. One thing you want to make
sure you do is ask well in advance of those kinds of things because
many of them have a timeline in terms of when you can request for
accommodations and it's not the day of the test.
Coming up
tonight, we're going to talk about the personal building blocks for
success in college. In burglar, we're going -- in particular we're
going to look at being independent, good resource finder and learning
to communicate. My experience in Wright state students who have strong
skills in these areas made very good progress while they were in
school.
But before we do that, we have a new little portion
of the program that we're going to do, which deals with great minds in
STEMM history. We're focusing on individuals with disabilities who have
those.
[ Audio recording. ]
With that simple phrase
from a nursery rhyme Thomas ed sin stepped in to the history bocks with
the first ever recording of the human voice. Would go onto create the
patent over a thousand inventions that influenced the entire world. The
flow scope and of course the electric lightbulb. Ed sin a dyslexic who
hated mathematics and suffered from significant hearing loss by some of
his peers and teachers. His success despite these obstacles is summed
up in his own words. Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The
certain way to succeed is always to try one more time. Thomasal baa ed
son a great mind in stemment history. Starting right.
That's
a new and interesting sideline that we're going to have and we're going
to try to keep these segments up. They'll teach you more about some of
the people that have gone before us that have had disabilities but were
very successful and some of if things they did to be successful.
Tonight I said we're going to talk about the personal building blocks,
becoming independent, being a good resource finder and learning to
communicate. The formula for independence involves three basic
activities. Several advocacy, confidence and per sis stance. Those --
persistence. Those thing things lead individuals to be independent.
When we talk about self-advocacy, we're talking act being able to --
about being able to explain the things that you want. Being able to get
the assistance that you need. That's not just a single cry for help.
Help, I don't know what to do. That's not being a self-advocate.
Instead being a self-advocate is to take the time to think about the
kinds of assistance that you need. I need somebody to move that book
from one side of my desk to the other. I need somebody to fix the laces
on my shoe and tie them. I need someone to write this number down for
me. Those kinds of requests are the things that begin the whole process
of self-advocacy. We stress the importance of using I statements. I
need this, I need that. Rather than just coming in and saying please
somebody help me and leaving it up to somebody else to figure out what
you need. It's far bet tore add degrees -- bet tore address individuals
with those I statements because it's -- thus your advocating for
yourself. Or self-advocacy. I had a student by the name of John who
didn't always do as well in school as he would have liked to. John had
taken a number of mathematics courses. But when he got to yes yom try
he had problems with the first -- geometry. He could have gone to the
teacher and said I need your help because I'm not doing well in this
geometry course. He sat down and evaluated on what happened on that
particular test. What he found was that he had to draw out each of his
drawings and then the drawing took additional time that he needed in
order to be able to solve the problem. So John sat down with his
faculty member. He said Mr. Jones I think I can do better in this math
course on this next test but what I need is somebody to help give me an
advance or do the drawings that I need in order to solve this class. I
with work out the math but the drawing part is something I have
difficulty with. Well his teacher and he worked out a system that
worked out really well and John did much better on his second test.
Confidence. Sometimes we call it self-efficacy. Add advocacy, efficacy.
Knowing you have the ability to complete the task. Sometimes having
self-confidence results from having done other thing -- done other
things prior to that that would lead you up to that. For example, you
might start out doing public speaking and do a short speech that might
involve 30 seconds or less. The next time you increase that to 45
seconds and then you go from there to a minute, to two minutes. They'll
ask you to talk for hours. Believe it or not I started with 30 second
bites. The other thing is to develop a system so that you feel
confident act the knowledge that -- about the knowledge that you are
gaining. Let's say in a homework situation. The student who waits for
the night before to take an exam usually have very little confidence to
answer those exam questions, however, a student that spent the last
three weeks reading five to ten pages a night on the required chapters,
making notes in their book and the night before the exam, sitting down
and reviewing those materials, usually walks in the exam situation
knowing much better. That's what marry one of our -- Mary one of our
other students did to improve her time. She had a terrible time but she
also waited until the last minute to study. When she went in to the
final exams she didn't do well. The following quarter she sat down at
the beginning of the quarter, took a look at her syllabus and looked at
how many pages she needed to read and divided them up over the nights.
She was going to read this number of pages a night. One or two nights
before the exam, she would have completed all of her reading and go
back and review the materials. That contract that she made with herself
meant significantly improved performance. Mary walked in confident
because she's worked out a health odd to be able to study -- method to
study effect Tivoli.
-- effectively. Persistence. Of all the
building blocks or all the personal traits that I can think of that
will lead you to success, persistence is number one. We heard in our
previous bite on ed son that was one of the things that led him to be
successful. People trying and trying over again is probably the best
way to do it. If you try something once or twice and throw up their
hands and say I can't do it, it doesn't usually mean you'll get that
particular thing. So being persistent and being willing to continue to
try to talk with people, get ideas, other kinds of ways of attacking
various things, those attempts over and over again will lead you in a
good direction and ultimately allow you to be successful at those
particular things. We have a final course here at Wright state called
math 095 and it's the final development course before you begin the
college algebra series. A number of our students that come to Wright
state don't have the best math skills in the world. But by the time
they complete that they're very successful. Sometimes they have to take
it once or twice in order to be ability to do it. So persistence pays
off. You feel much better after that's all done. Earlier today, we were
messing around with new technical equipment we have here in our room.
We had a board that we had purchased, a mixer board that we purchased
to be able to do some of the music and some other things. We thought we
had it ready to go. About 5:00 we came in to test it out once again and
it didn't work. Well, the person that does our technical things, paren
don't sat there and continued to work and continued to work. He didn't
throw up his hands and walk out of here and say I can't do this. He
stayed with the problem. He thought it throw, broke it down into little
blocks and aeried at the answer to fix it. Here we are. Persistence
pays off in all kinds of things and it's a very important skill to
have.
The second group of building blocks has to do with
finding resources. Finding resources and information is really, really
important because it can help you to solve all kinds of problems. The
first thing though that you have to do when you are starting to look
for resources is to just like with self-advocacy, begin to think about
what do you need? Ask the right questions. Ask the person, I need
information on this, this and this. Or I'm looking for some
information. So you need to first of all, just conceptualize what
you're needing, what kind of information you need and put itinto a
question format and ask those questions. The second thing is to be open
to many resources. You can get information from many places. The
internet provides lots of opportunities. There are literally
thousandses of websites -- thousands of websites out there that can get
you all kinds of things. Last but not least people themselves may be
resources. I know that if I wanted to know what kinds of things went on
in college chemistry classes, the person I would go to is a student
that was taking those classes and talk with him about that. In other
cases, you may find other individuals that do various occupations and
they can be great resources for you to find out those things. Then
finally, don't just look at thing from the perspective of the way
others have done them. Think outside the box. Think about new and
innovative ways you can think of, the kinds of resources that you need.
Maybe there's a particular kind of a resource that you'd like to find
and you never figured out where to ask for it or who to ask for it.
Maybe you can come up with another way of accessing that. For example,
if I wanted to find out more information about photography, I could
certainly talk to a photographer. Okay? But I also might go to a
photography store and find out what's available there. There may be
other ways to get that information about those kinds of things. So
think outside the box helps you to locate those resources that maybe
you haven't seen before.
The third building block has to do
with communication. Probably another very, very important aspect of
your life is how well and how effect Tivoli do you -- effectively do
you communicate with individuals. Learning to express your feelings and
needs both verbally and in writing is an important task. It's something
that really, really needs to happen. Sometimes you want to start
verbally but soon after that, you need to learn how to put it in
writing because written requests sometimes get answered first before
verbal ones.
Learning to express your feelings and using your
I statements what you want or what you need is really important. The
second thing that has to do with communication is to know that you may
not always get exactly the answer that you want. People may not say
well sure. I'll be glad to do that. But instead, they may come back and
say well, I really can't do that today. You as the negotiator can say,
how about tomorrow? Or how about the next day? Or could we work it out
over a series of days? Being able to negotiate and come up with
different alternatives to solve the things that you want or need is an
important aspect in communicating. Then finally, always make sure that
you are willing to express your appreciate and your continuing concerns
about any situation. Summarize. Gee, you have been very helpful. Thank
you very much. I appreciate all that you've told me. Or I still have a
couple more questions about this. I don't quite understand what you
meant by -- that way you get the information that you need. So make
sure that you always follow up at the end of the communication by
expressing and communicating -- first of all that you got all the
information that you need, express your appreciate to the person that's
assisting you.
Okay. We're going to go to another great minds in STEMM history an we'll be back in a moment.
He is considered the greatest physicist of all times but late as age
nine he spoke very little and was thought to suffer from ADHD and a
mild form of autism. [ Indiscernible: Speaker/Audio faint and unclear]
[ Audio reporting being plaid. ]
German board -- played.
Revolutionize how we think of the universe advances in physics. It
earned him the Nobel price in 1921. Saying it's not that I'm so smart
it's just that I stay with problems longer. More often than not, people
are shaped by the difficulties they overcome. We all have obstacles to
face. Just like Albert ion einstein.
Okay. You know as we
always get through our programs we'd like to make sure that you begin
to get some of if resources -- some of the resources that are out there
to help you take a look at these kinds of things. One of the resources
that I think is really important to know about is the job
accommodations network. It has ideas about resources for study, work
and work accommodations both it's at www.JAN.WVU.EDU I need an
accommodation to be able to write or to spook or to do other -- speak
or to do other kinds of things. They'll come up with ideas and devices
that can assist you in doing those. Getting out of the box that you may
be in, thinking outside of the box is a really good website called
www.youtube.com/watch? V. Self-advocacy and transitioning to college.
There's a website at www.BRS.state.CT.US/schooltowork guidemost. At the
idea of self-advocacy and how to do the transitioning to college.
Congratulations to our homework winner. Elizabeth from beaver creek
answered the question and her name was drawn out and she is going to be
receiving the Wright state sweatshirt that we have on the picture for
folks. Tonight's homework. We'd like you to work together -- once
again, we stress that students and their families work together on
these projects because we think that helps women communication within a
family and beginning to let each other know where the other is going
own feeling about that whole process of going to college. We want you
to work together to list five activities that you the student are
confident that you do well. The second question is we would like you to
describe one situation where you have used good communication skills to
get what you needed. And then number three, to give an example of a
situation where you were successful because you persisted in doing
those kinds of things. We want you to send your answers to starting
Wright at G mail.com by Friday December 12th. If you do, your name is
going to go in to a writing for:the homework answers for the Friday
will be given a chance to win one of four $10 block buster gift cards.
We know winter vacation is coming up soon and maybe something you'd
like to do is play a new video game or watch a movie. So these gift
cards will come in handy to assist you in doing that. Our up coming
programs. Our next upcoming program those do with preparation for going
to college. We call it getting ready for colleges II. During that time
we're going to talk about what courses should I take in high school? To
academically prepare me in the field of STEMM and to go to college.
Working with my school, my IEP, my planning, my class room
accommodations for STEMM studies for developing the things you need to
be successful in those areas. Actual college planning and then STEMM
students outside of the schoolroom. Other places where you might be
able to go maybe over the upcoming Christmas break to learn about the
field of STEMM. Our next program is Tuesday November 16th at 7 p.m.
Once again if you would like to see this program again, you can go to
our website and the online conferencing systems.com WSU/archives HTM or
to request a copy of this program please contact starting Wright at G
mail.com.
You've been listening to starting Wright. Getting
ready for careers. This program made possible by a grant from the
Johnson scholarship foundation. And Wright choice incorporated.
Starting wright is a production of Wright state university.
[ Event Concluded ]