Comment

Comment by Joan Azarva on May 18, 2010 at 12:49pm

From 1993 - 2006, I served as the Learning Specialist at a community college. In the early years, either fewer students with disabilities were attending college, or fewer were disclosing their disabilities.

I was able to see students 3 times a week for hourly appointments and teach them what they needed to thrive in the college system.

By 2006, there were so many students requesting services, I could only see students once in two weeks. To supplement my help, they either went to the tutoring lab for college students at-large, or they met with an adjunct instructor. The consistency was gone, and I saw far fewer success stories.

In 2006, frustrated by the alarmingly high failure rate among this cohort, I resigned. I have dedicated myself full-time to preparing high school students with learning disabilities, as well as their parents, for the unique challenges of college.

I KNOW that with proper preparation and a probing college search, motivated students of normal intelligence need NOT experience failure upon crossing the college threshold..