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One Quick Question: Is my child with a disability ready for college?
Fred Johnson, Senior Director of CA Next
Collegiate Academies, New Orleans, LA
[Fred Johnson] How’s it going? I wanna give you a few quick tips on how to help your student and really prepare them for college.
So one of the first things you wanna do is make sure that their academic habits are strong.
- Are they studying every night?
- Are they asking questions in class?
- Are they going after school for tutoring?
- Are they managing their time well?
- Are they planning out how they’re going to attack a homework assignment, how are they going to study for a test?
These are the types of academic habits that are definitely transferable to college. So you wanna make sure that academic habits continue to grow and continue to get strong.
Another thing you wanna do is just make sure, do they actually understand all the different components of their IEP and accommodations they are receiving. You want them to be as knowledgeable as the case manager or as their teacher about their accommodations and what they should be receiving, and you actually want to build up the independence for them to make sure they’re following up with the teacher on the quality of those. And of course you can do that together with your student, but the more independence you can build for them to really assess how that can get better, that’ll set them up to be great in college and do the same thing with their college professors.
You also wanna make sure you talk about how college is going to be different from high school.
The level of independence that students experience in college is huge. And so as much as you can prepare them to know that they’re going to need to be proactive in terms of asking for help, instead of reactive, that’s going to help a lot. So they should be the one asking their professors questions on a daily or weekly basis. And then just continue to build the confidence and focus on growth.
Thanks for watching!
You can learn more about transition to adulthood for students with disabilities at: Adult Transition Hub Page
