Five Tips For Supporting Students With Disabilities in Classroom Settings

Hello, my name is Adrianna Matthews. I am a former VSA Texas Work Study Student and Project Assistant. I was first introduced to VSA Texas in April 2016 through discussing my interest in disability and art with Celia Hughes. Shortly after that conversation I got involved with VSA Texas and began to think more about student-teacher relationships in terms of working together to accommodate students with disabilities in a classroom space.

Photo of me working with students in our It's My Story Workshop

My first experience teaching students with disabilities was facilitating VSA Texas’ It's My Story Digital Storytelling Workshop of February 2017. This was also the first time I worked as a teacher who identified as a person with a disability, so at times, it became quite challenging to balance my personal needs with my students’ needs. Nonetheless, I quickly learned how to accommodate both my students and myself.

It is important to make sure students with disabilities receive their accommodations so that they feel supported and can work and engage effectively in their academic abilities. I know this from my own experience in graduate school. I have also witnessed how unsuccessful students with disabilities can be and feel when they are not accommodated.

Circle of students and volunteers sharing stories in It's My Story Workshop

When creating the curriculum I was more prepared to work with individuals with visual impairments than any other types of disabilities. This was because I have a visual impairment myself, and so I tend to focus more on how visual limitations may impact academic success than anything else. This became especially apparent in working with a deaf student in the workshop. I assumed that since I had two ASL (American Sign Language) interpreters I was prepared as a facilitator to effectively engage with this particular student. However, what I didn’t realize is that ASL interpreters tend to sign with clients across the room. So when I initially tried to help the student complete her assignment, I accidentally stood in the way of her ASL interpreter! I was actually just trying to get closer to her computer screen to read her work because my visual impairment means I can only read things up close. Through this experience, I realized I had to be more conscious of how I positioned my body when interacting with this student so that both of our needs could be met. But I probably could have avoided this mistake had I done more research on working with students with different disabilities and learned effective strategies to better engage with them.

That is just one of the many lessons I have learned through my experience teaching students with disabilities. Here are some other tips that can help teachers work more effectively with their students:

1. Always acknowledge students’ accommodations.
2. Provide training for teachers, aides, and assistants to effectively and inclusively work with their students with disabilities.
3. See the student first and the disability second, but acknowledge the disability and the students’ needs.
4. Encourage students with disabilities to move past their challenges and achieve their academic goals.
5. Teach students without disabilities how to effectively work with and support their fellow classmates with disabilities.

Telling Our Stories

We have been hosting a series of Digital Storytelling classes this spring called “It’s My Story” for young adults with disabilities ages 16-22. So far we have had an introductory class taught by our UT work-study student Adrianna Matthews, a stop motion animation class taught by Johnny Villarreal of The Edge of Imagination Station, and a theater/improv class taught by Dana Sayre. All three classes were small, with six students in each. I think small was okay in this case because the students were expressing their own stories, so having an intimate and safe space was a good thing.

In the Introduction to Digital Storytelling class, we learned three different computer programs: Voki, Slidestory, and GoAnimate. All three programs were fun and different. Adrianna wrote about her experience teaching this class in her blog It's My Story: February 2017. After the class, she reflected that “each one of the students in the It's My Story class had powerful unique stories and journeys to share. Their creativity and knowledge both inspired and amazed me as both a teacher and an artist.”

The next class was Video Storytelling over Spring Break. In four days, our team of students, led by Dana, identified a theme, chose characters and settings, created backdrops, brought in props and costumes, improvised scenes, wrote a script, and then acted out the scenes, which were edited into a movie.

It’s My Story students Sydney and Christian review their lines with instructor Dana.

I was amazed by the teamwork of this group. No one tried to take over with their own ideas of how to create this final movie. They seamlessly blended their ideas to create "Music is Good," an 18-minute movie that touches on the subjects of alcoholism, mental health challenges, and morality with a cast that included a drifter, a ghost, a priest, Britney Spears, Justin Bieber, a guy named Ben, and his fairy. All of the students stepped into their roles with enthusiasm and their final product shows that. I encourage you to take the time to watch "Music is Good" on our YouTube channel or below:

Finally, we have also been working with our longtime friend Johnny Villarreal to bring his stop motion animation skills to a select group of students from the AISD GO Project. The students visited Johnny in his studio once a week and created short animated films with topics ranging from the environment to fairy tales to new endings to classic video games. See the GO Project students' animated videos on our YouTube channel here.

Tobin takes in the applause after playing his animation at the showcase, while Johnny pushes play to show it again.

Our next It’s My Story class is Digital Storytelling through Stop Motion Animation with Johnny Villarreal. So if you liked what you saw from our GO Project students, think about signing up for this class coming up on Saturdays in May. Details about all of our upcoming classes can be found on our website here.

Happy Storytelling!

It’s My Story: February 2017

Hello, my name is Adrianna Matthews. I am a VSA Texas Work Study Student/Project Assistant. I was first introduced to VSA Texas last April through discussing my interest in learning more about disability and art with the Executive Director of the organization, Ms. Celia Hughes. That very same day, I signed up for an Opening Minds, Opening Doors (OMOD) six-week workshop with Chris Strickling. To make a long story short, I fell in love with this organization and its dedication and commitment to promote both art and disability in the most positive ways ever. I immediately knew that this was a place where I wanted to work. The stories created in the 2016 OMOD workshop were so inspiring that I could not leave without at least trying to get my foot one step closer to being part of VSA Texas.

Photo from the second week of our It's My Story workshop shows students working on digital stories.

Now here we are in February 2017 and I just finished teaching the It’s My Story: Introduction to Digital Storytelling three-week workshop. It’s a privilege for me to go from student to teacher and have my first real experience doing something that promotes disability rights and at the same time connects to art and storytelling, the two things I love most in this world. The students I worked with, along with the volunteers and Artworks Director April Sullivan, made this journey magical for me. They brought so much life and energy to our digital storytelling community. I am so grateful for the opportunity to engage with each and every one of them.

Another photo from the second week shows the class gathered in a circle and sharing responses to the writing prompts in preparation for making digital stories using the Slidestory application.

The first week I taught the students the basics of creating a digital story as well as the steps necessary to make the story compelling and complete. After going over the digital storytelling process, the students were each assigned a partner to work with in completing a selection of nine interview questions. This gave the students an opportunity to learn about each other as well as practice how they can tell someone else’s story through an interview process.

Pearl working on her GoAnimate video in the third week of the It's My Story workshop

Once the students finished their interviews, they took a few moments to go around a circle and share what they had learned about each other. The next goal was to have each of the students choose one of the questions they had answered about themselves and turn it into a full story. Once the students finished writing their stories, they learned their first digital story application called Voki, which is an educational technology with a free collection of customized speaking avatars. The goal in using this application was for the students to take their stories and create their own personal avatars to tell these stories. During the next two weeks, the students used similar creative writing prompts and produced more digital stories using other applications, including Slidestory and GoAnimate. Take a look at two sample digital stories made using Voki and GoAnimate below.

Click here to see Marielle's Voki.

Watch Sydney's "Deciding" story made with GoAnimate below:

If you want to create your own digital stories, then I strongly encourage you to register for one of our next It's My Story digital storytelling workshops! You can find out more information about the It's My Story program here. Don’t miss your chance to create some dynamic digital stories!