NCLD - Building Skills

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Building Skills

Life may change a lot for you over the next few years, but one aspect of it won't. Even after making the transition to adulthood, it's likely you'll still struggle with limitations due to your learning disability. Your success will depend on how well you know your strengths and weakness, how determined you are to succeed, and whether you can develop the sets of skills you will need in order to achieve your academic, career, or personal goals. Below you'll find some helpful ways to build the skills you need to be successful.

Self Advocacy
Self Determination
Getting Organized
Study Skills
Connecting Socially

Self Advocacy

If your learning disability is identified before your graduate from high school, self-advocacy activities should include your active involvement in the Individualized Education Program (IEP) process. Getting the help you need to be successful later on at work or in post-secondary school settings will depend upon your ability to be an effective and outspoken self-advocate, and these are skills that you can and should develop as soon as possible.

The key to success is knowing about your leaning disability and being able to articulate what specific services and supports you need to be successful. Being an effective advocate also means that you will need to have lots of self-determination. because once you leave high school, teachers, counselors and parents will no longer be in a position to make sure that your ongoing needs are being met. Effective self-advocacy comes from knowing yourself, valuing yourself, planning, acting, and learning from the outcomes of your actions.

IEP

An Individualized Education Program (IEP) is an education plan, required by law, created for each school-age student with a disability who receives special education services through a public school. Your IEP must include current levels of academic performance and educational goals, as well as a discussion of how future progress will be measured and a transition plan for how to meet those goals.

As an individual with a learning disability, you have the right to advocate for conditions that will help you meet success. Your right to self-advocate is primarily supported by the following disability laws: the Americans with Disabilities Act(ADA), Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Under these laws, in order to exercise your rights to accommodations and modifications at work or in education programs, you will have to:

Disclose that you have a disability and provide current documentation
Make a formal request for specific accommodations or modifications, based on your learning strengths and challenges

Self Determination

Individuals who are self-determined are aware of their strengths and weaknesses, able to evaluate their work and study environments, and successful at making informed decisions and solving problems that stand in the way of achieving their goals.

Below are the stages in the process of becoming a self-determined person. Ask yourself the questions following each stage to learn more about how your learning disability affects you.

Know Yourself

The first step is to know yourself well.

What are my areas of strength?
What tasks are difficult for me?
How would I describe my learning disability?
What do I love to do?
What kinds of activities do I avoid?
What would be my ideal job or ideal vacation?
What is important to me?

Value Yourself

Valuing yourself means accepting responsibility for your successes and your failures and having the courage to find your way in life.

How have my learning disabilities made me a stronger person?
What are my recent successes, either big or small?
Who helps me with things I don't do well?
What do I do for others that they appreciate?
What are habits I have that I know will get me into trouble?

Plan Ahead

Self-determined individuals are able to look to the future and set goals. Some individuals with LD have trouble thinking ahead and figuring out the consequences of their actions. Other people with LD are great at planning because it taps their creativity.

Do I set long-term goals?
Do I know how to take a long-term goal and break it down into manageable steps?
How well am I able to stick to a plan?
Am I willing to get others' input when I am making a plan?
How well am I able to match my strengths and work around my areas of need when I make a plan?
How well can I predict others' reactions to my planned activities?

Act

Self-determined individuals take risks. Taking action usually involves communicating with others. Skills such as listening, negotiating and compromising are important at this stage.

What are my communication strengths and weaknesses?
How well am I able to accept another person's point of view?
How do I respond when I get a negative reaction?
If necessary, am I willing to find another way to reach my goal?

Learn From Experiences

Taking steps to becoming self-determined is a learning process.

When your actions pay off and you get what you want, can you figure out what led you to success?
can you can repeat those successful action steps and meet with success again?
When things don't work out well, can you figure out what you might have done differently?

Environment

An important step towards self-determination is recognizing how you respond to challenges in different settings and how well you adapt to different environments.

In school, some instructors may do things that help you learn and feel successful, whereas others may teach in ways that makes it difficult for you to learn. Work environments are the same way. Some work environments may be set up in ways that pose obstacles to your success while others allow you to tap areas of strength:

How quickly must reading and writing be done? Can I use alternate approaches to demonstrate my knowledge?
Do I have time to check my work? Will I have an opportunity to resubmit work after receiving feedback from the teacher?
Are directions given in ways that I can easily understand and if not, do I know how to request an accommodation or modification?
Is competition or cooperation rewarded?
Do I have enough time to learn new work skills?

Creating a productive environment for work and leisure time is often not easy and usually takes time and a willingness to take chances. Trial and error is the key to knowing what does and does not work for you. This self-knowledge can help you self-advocate for what you need to be successful.

Getting Organized

While nobody likes to be disorganized, for students with learning disabilities, disorganization can spell certain disaster. Searching for lost assignments or course handouts can take up valuable time, and it's almost impossible to study and meet deadlines when notes from different subjects are all jumbled together.

There's no "right" way to get organized. You'll need to be creative and flexible until you discover what works best for you. Here are some tips and suggestions from successful students and adults:

Tips for Organizing

If you work well with technology, use organizer software on a computer, a PDA (personal digital assistant, e.g. Palm Pilot), or organizer-wrist watch.
Retype your class notes and save them (with dates and course titles) on your computer. You might also want to save a copy on a CD or portable memory device.
Write reminders on self-stick notepads or keep list pads around your room, by your desk, in your notebooks, and even by your bedside to write down things as your think of them. Be sure to collect these notes and consolidate all of the reminders on a single "to-do" list every day.
Divide your notebooks into sections for each subject. Hole punch and insert handouts or assignments in the appropriate notebook sections. Be sure to use dividers, and consider using different colored tabs for each subject.
Create a system for tracking papers. A file cabinet might work well, or you can find a cardboard box large enough to fit file folders, label a folder for each subject, and insert papers in the appropriate file folders in the box.
Be sure to save and catalog your notes and tapes, and file them with other materials from each of your courses. Date all of your notes and tapes immediately.
Keep keys on a big ring so that you can find them easily, or use a brightly-colored key chain.
Keep extra coins handy for laundry machines, parking meters, buses, and vending machines.
Make a daily list of everything you need for classes, labs or meetings. Include reminders for money, transportation and food. Check the list every morning before leaving your room so that you know what you have to do.

Study Skills

Getting good grades isn't easy, and understanding how to make the best use of your time and effort takes careful planning. It also helps to be a strategic learner. That means you:

plan how you are going to learn and manage your time in the process;
use the skills you have to learn the task at hand;
keep track of the progress you're making.

Time Management Skills

Developing a system for managing time can be the single most important step you take. The pressure of trying to stick to a schedule can be stressful. It may take great effort, help, and practice to find a system that works for you. Start by asking yourself the following questions:

How long does it take me to get ready in the morning?
What time of day am I most alert?
How long can I study in one sitting?
What types of things distract me the most?
What rewards can I give myself to stay motivated?
How long do my different commitments really take and how much leisure time can I expect to have?

Tips

Study for short periods of time and plan to reward yourself after completing a predetermined amount of reading, writing or reviewing. Take needed breaks and be sure to monitor the progress you are making along the way.
Try to develop a study routine, and select a preferred time and place to study. If it helps, change your routine each week and try different places to study. Be flexible, but also be sensitive to what works best for you.
Find ways to stay organized. For example, try using index cards and wall calendars. These simple tools can be quite helpful in helping you to arrange and manage your time. A large monthly wall calendar can be useful and you might consider making copies of your schedule on index cards that you can carry with you. If you prefer to use a computer or PDA, there are numerous software programs available with built-in calendars and reminders. There are even watches available that have calendars that can be programmed.
To figure out how much time to set aside for long-term projects, first list all the steps required to complete the project. Next, estimate how much time you'll need to finish each step and then, count backward from the due date. Always allow more time than you think you will need for each step. If you are not sure about the project's requirements, speak to the professor, teacher's assistant, or learning specialist about how many steps are involved and what each step entails. This can give you a better sense of the time you'll need to finish the project. It also can help relieve some of the anxiety of the "unknown" in tackling a new project.
Keep the syllabuses for all of your courses in a place where they won't get lost. Make extra copies, just in case. Make sure that you know the due dates for each assignment. Sometimes you can ask the professor to set interim due dates for you to turn in parts of the assignment. This can help you get each step done on time.
Build in a little extra time for unexpected problem-solving. Be prepared for projects to take longer than originally planned.

The main goal of time management should be to strike the right balance of work, academics, and social activities. Smart planning will give you enough time for both work and play.

Connecting Socially

Self-confidence comes from knowing what you do well and using your unique strengths to accomplish your goals. Building successful social relationships may require that you use a different set of skills that may also be affected by your disability, such as the following:

Language Skills
Many people with learning disabilities have difficulty choosing the right time to speak, finding the right words or understanding what is being said. This may make it difficult to understand jokes, make quick responses in a fast-paced conversation, or offer questions or comments in return.
Reading Non-Verbal Information
People also communicate using facial expressions or tone of voice. They send messages, or signals, in the way they use their eyes or hold their body. These signals contain important non-verbal information. If you have learning disabilities, you may have trouble "picking up" and responding to a message that is being sent in a non-verbal manner.
Reading Different Situations
It takes experience and careful observation to learn what is socially acceptable in different situations. The way you talk to friends at a party is different from the way you answer questions at a job interview. A conversation on a first date is different from a conversation with a friend. Some people with LD have difficulty changing the way they talk and act in different situations. This can cause problems and misunderstandings.
Impulsivity
Knowing when to contribute to a conversation can be challenging for some people. Some individuals with LD are unusually impulsive in conversation and may tend to interrupt or blurt out an idea that might better be left unsaid. If you have LD, you may feel a need to immediately say what is on your mind from fear of losing your train of thought. And alking too much or at the wrong times can put a strain on relationships at school and at work.

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