As a Teacher for the Visually Impaired (TVI), you can encourage student self-advocacy by making space for it in your own class, also known as direct vision services.   As teachers, we often focus on encouraging students to self advocate in their general education classes by asking for accessible materials, communicating specifically about their own visual impairment, or asking for accommodations that are documented on their IEP, such as extended time or a separate space for assessments. However, we often miss that self advocacy in the general education classroom can be encouraged and increased by providing a safe place for it during direct vision services.  Students who come to their direct vision services sessions, and feel comfortable letting the TVI know their need, are students who are more likely to feel comfortable self advocating in the general education classroom.

Student Self Advocacy during vision service sessions

What does that look like during direct vision service sessions? Well, I’m glad you asked! Students with visual impairments have needs for direct instruction in all areas of the Expanded Core Curriculum (9 areas in which students with visual impairments need direct instruction because they don’t learn incidentally in the same way as their sighted peers).  They also have needs in those same areas to share their concerns, to have their perspectives understood, to ask for instruction in areas currently relevant to their immediate needs, and to talk through how they might handle a situation in the general education classroom, their home, or community. When a student comes to vision services class distracted by how they performed on a test in their math class, upset by a social situation during recess, anxious about a grade due to  unplanned inaccessible materials used during science class, with a request for a play script to be shared to a braille note taker for an extracurricular  play audition, or asking for a future lesson in how to boil  water these are all opportunities to encourage self advocacy.

Encouraging self advocacy

Encouraging student self-advocacy starts with listening and not with speaking. Encouraging self advocacy takes a willingness to be flexible and change the lesson plan, set aside IEP goals for a session, or creatively respond to the student’s needs.  When students experience their TVI responding positively to their self advocacy they are way more likely to repeat it both during direct vision services and in their general education classes, home, or community. They’re also way more likely to ask for help from the TVI in the future, and sometimes that help is developing a plan for how to approach a self advocacy situation in the general education classroom, home, or community. Imagine students asking for help thinking through self advocacy?! It is a beautiful thing!  The most important step…truly listening! 

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