Making College Happen

Joe Hemphill

I have cerebral palsy and as a result I have difficulty speaking clearly and quickly enough for many people to understand me.  In order to make communicating with other people more effective, I use technology to move the process along. Sometimes I use low-tech methods like pointing to letters on a letter board to get my message across; other times I use high tech methods like my computer to exchange emails and documents with others.  I was determined to attend college, and relying on my technology, I registered for a course in writing short stories at a community college. I had taken this course once before and had encountered some obstacles; this time around I knew what it would take to enable me to have a positive learning experience and to fully participate in this class. 

Once I had registered, I went to the college to visit with my former teacher; he mentioned to me that he had already spoken to my new teacher and told him that I was going to be in his class.  He pointed to the new teacher’s office and said, “Go talk to him and tell him what you need.”  I went over to talk to the new teacher using my letter board to communicate with him so that he would become familiar with my speech and my letter board.  Over the years, I have found that most teachers are more than willing to help a student succeed as long as they understand what they can do to help a student with a disability.  I realize that the best way to do this is to have informal talks with the teacher before or shortly after the class begins. 
           
As a result of talking to the teacher ahead of time, he sent me the course syllabus as an e-mail so that I could read it with my computer.  Also, talking to the teacher ahead of time helped him to know what I needed.  This allowed him to devote his time to teaching all of the students and did not require him to spend an inordinate amount of time assuring that my needs were being met. Making arrangements for any accommodations that a student with a disability may require in college is the responsibility of the student. In my case, I used the internet to buy the textbook ahead of time; next I contacted the media department at the college.  The person at the media department offered to transform the textbook to digital format; having the book in digital format enabled me to use my computer to read the book.  Once the book was on my computer, I had to use my computer to separate the textbook into individual chapters so that I could find and read assigned homework sections. This was a lot of work but by doing it before class I was able to keep up with the reading assignments as well as the written work in the class.  The gentleman in the media department also scanned handouts from the class and e-mailed them to me so I could follow along with the lectures and discussions. 

Having taken a course before, I had come to realize that I needed a number of accommodations in order to take the class successfully. In order not to have to rely on others in the class to provide the support I needed like moving tables and chairs, setting up all of my equipment and putting on my glasses, I asked one of my personal assistants to attend class with me. This was a good decision for a number of reasons; by having someone to do all of these things ahead of time I was able to be more involved in learning and participating in class.   The first time I took this class I went alone and I had to keep my comments or questions to a one word response so that I would not take up too much of the class time.  I can remember moving my arms up and down to tell the teacher that the characters were waiting for an airplane.  Luckily for me the teacher realized I was referring to the story and not trying to fly.  Fortunately, he didn’t call the campus police to report that he had an out-of-control student in his class.  But, on the other hand, that would have made a good short story. 

Since I was unable to take notes in the usual way, I used a recorder to tape the lectures.  My tape recorder was a great asset because I could listen to it and type out notes about the points the teacher made; my notes from the tapes guided me in doing assignments.  A major part of the course was class discussion about the different aspects of developing a short story; due to my speaking limitations it was always difficult for me to take part in the classroom discussions.  To prepare for this, I would print out my comments for classroom discussions in very large type with each paragraph in a different color.  Before class discussions, my assistant would put what I had written about each story on the table in front of me.  I was able to look at my comments on the page and ask the teacher or my assistant to read them to the class so that I could participate.  I always sent these comment sheets to the teacher before class and he would sometimes want to use my comments to make a point.  He would remember reading them and ask if I brought a copy to class because he wanted to make them a part of the lesson.  Discussions in class were a big part of the grade.

Typing takes a significant amount of time and effort, even though I have word prediction software.  To save time and energy, I relied on friends and assistants who understood my natural speech pretty well to type what I dictated. While this was certainly helpful, I found that I still had to go back over what I had dictated and make changes.  When I speak, I use certain words that are more likely to be understood to get my thoughts across, but those words don’t always convey exactly what I want to say in my story.  So what I dictated merely acted as a guide for what I wanted to include in my story and later I had to rearrange the words and thoughts so that the story reflected what I really wanted to say. 

I submitted my homework both in printed format during class and by e-mail before the class; this enabled the teacher to send comments back to me that I could read on my computer.  Sometimes the teacher would pick out a comment from my homework to read to the class as part of my participation during class discussions.  By reading my comments, the teacher helped me to be a more active part of the class. The teacher also requested that the other students submit their stories to me by e-mail so that I could read them on my computer and make comments directly on their stories.  In addition, the teacher e-mailed me the outline of questions and some general points about making up a short story that I could refer to when reading and commenting on other students’ stories.  I enjoyed this and learned a great deal from e-mailing back and forth with other students. 

The evening that I was called upon to explain the plot on someone’s story, I was able to read my outline, while my assistant “translated” my natural speech to the class as I spoke.  The students were very patient and understanding when I talked.  There were times when my assistant couldn’t quite understand me but one of the other students got the word and repeated it so the class could move along. For those times when I knew I wasn’t going to get the idea across I would say, “I will e-mail it.”  Similarly, there were occasions when the teacher realized that I wasn’t getting my thoughts out clearly enough to convey what I wanted to say; he would smile and simply say, “You had better e-mail that one.”  This allowed the class to get through the material in a timely manner and I still got to say what I wanted or ask my question. 

The teacher was basing one third of our grade on reading and commenting on other students’ stories.  My computer has a program that reads aloud what is placed on its clipboard.  I wrote macros in Microsoft Word to let me to read only a paragraph or sentence at a time.  Using these macros, I could read and comment on individual sections of a student’s story.  I also had macros to put my remarks in a different color print so the teacher and student could easily tell my comments from the story.  Likewise, when it was time for the class to comment on my stories, the teacher requested that they send their comments to me by e-mail.  This helped with the final project of the class which was to rewrite a short story using or not using suggestions and comments submitted by the teacher and other students. Having their comments on my computer worked very well for me when explaining why I did or did not use their suggestions and I learned a lot in the process.

Taking this college class was successful because I took steps to make it a positive learning experience. Prior to the start of the course I made arrangements with the gentleman at the media center to make the text book accessible.  I met with the teacher ahead of time to discuss how I could use technology for assignments and class participation.  In addition, I arranged to have an assistant go to class with me making communication easier, thereby increasing my participation in class discussions.  Throughout the course I used my knowledge of computers to write macros to color and highlight sections of stories in my computer program, improving commenting on other students’ writings.  Using a number of features on my computer, I was able to register, make notes, exchange comments with the teacher and class participants and complete my assignments including the final project. Having such a good learning experience in this class, it truly shouldn’t matter what grade the teacher gave me but I was still anxious for the mailman to deliver that envelope with my grade. I think I'll save that part for the sequel!

Joe is a freelance writer and frequent contributor to the ConnSENSEBulletin.

© 2006 ConnSENSE Bulletin