Got test anxiety? Want extended time? Need extra tutoring or resources, or alternative adaptive technology? Getting extra accommodations in school is possible, and you don’t have to have a visual or obvious disability to get help. My guest Dan Jordan discusses the when, why, and how of getting additional assistance to make college a level playing field for you to play on, alongside your fellow classmates.
This is PART 1! Watch out for PART 2 coming out in a few days.
Let’s goooooooo!!!!
Check out Dan’s podcast at --> After the IEP: College Transition and Success Tips for Parents of Students with ADHD, Learning Disabilities, and Mental Health
About today's guest: About Dan Jordan: Dan Jordan has worked as the Accessibility Coordinator and a counselor in higher education for over ten years, and is just completing his 15th year at the same school. With over 25 years combined in community mental health and in higher education, Dan has a passion for student success and wellness, advocacy, and ensuring students have the access they need. As a father of a son with dyslexia, dysgraphia, and dyscalculia, he also understands a parent’s perspective and concerns about accommodations in high school and college and the critical importance of self-advocacy.
Related Episodes:
320 - How to Find Scholarships for Students with ADHD, Learning Disabilities, ADD, & Mental Health Conditions
215 - Student Loans Gotcha Down? 4 Ways to Quit Drowning in Loans and Get Through College Without Any More
219 - I Found Her Over $19,800 in Scholarships & You Could Be Next!
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Topics included in this podcast: disability services, iep, learning disabilities, iep meaning, iep plan, iep meeting, iep in education, learning disabilities disorders, learning disabilities types, iep meaning in education, iep definition, learning disabilities for math, disability services office, iep advocate, dyslexic, dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, dyspraxia, disability scholarships, dyslexia scholarships, dysgraphia scholarships, dyscalculia scholarships, dyspraxia scholarships, add scholarships, adhd scholarships, mental health scholarships, college disability accomodations
(upbeat music) Hey girl, welcome to Money and Mental Peace. Do you wanna find scholarships and avoid student loans? You find yourself Googling, easy scholarships, and how to pay for college. You feel overwhelmed with life in general that you can't even think about paying for next semester. Hey, I'm Cara, and in college, I too was worried if I was good at money. I couldn't find scholarships that worked specifically for me, and I didn't know how to get started while juggling homework and all the things. But that changed through prayer and God's direction. I tested out of classes, learned to budget, and found those perfect scholarships, and even had $10,000 left over in the bank after graduation. At BTW, my parents weren't able to help me financially either. If you're ready to find scholarships specific to you, manage your money well, and just stop being broke. Then grab your cold brew and TA89, because class is now in session. All right, we're back, guys, with-- can we just call you Dan? We call on this, what everybody on the podcast calls you, as if they talk back to you through the audio. We're with Dan from the podcast Accessing College, and we're talking about related with students with disabilities that have IEPs, different accommodation potentials. And if you all have listened back to one of my previous episodes, I was on his podcast, and we talked about scholarships, finding scholarships for students, right, with-- have, for example, ADHD, learning disability, mental health conditions. I just went back and looked at episode 320. So if anyone's listening and wants to know about it, for the finances and scholarship aspects of it, episode 320. But here, we're going to talk to Dan more about the master, himself, on content just unlike question. This first episode is going to be more big picture on what we're talking about here in the next episode, whether the next one I bring out or two down the road are going to be, like, logistical steps, so to speak, and walking through it. That was a long inter-explanation. So I first want to say hi. Welcome to Dan, and can you briefly introduce yourself and your drink of choice, coffee or tea or whatever? Oh, wow. Yeah, absolutely. I caught you on the spot. I wasn't ready for that. But I am ready for that answer. So Dan Jordan, accessing colleges, kind of my website, the podcast is after the IAP. I deal mainly-- I'm concerned about that. Oh, it's totally OK. I deal mainly with students with hidden disabilities in the three categories of ADHD, mental health, and learning disabilities. I am a dad of a son who has dyslexia, dysgraphia, and dyscalculia. So I know, like, the high school portion of that, the grade school kind of thing, all the way through college and have done that, so as an accessibility coordinator for over a decade, really. So I did that piece at the same time I was doing his IAP stuff. Favorite drink. Favorite drink. Depends on the season. In the fall, love tea in just regular, I guess, regular. Like, if I have to pick one, it's coffee. Really, it's coffee. Just got to have it, honestly. Just regular, straight coffee, just cream, no sugar, just no fluffy, fruit fruit, whatever. My daughter loves, like, the vanilla cold foam. I'm like, that's called whipped cream at home. Like, that's what that's called. I'm like, that's what that's called. She's like, no, it's different. I'm like, no, it's really not. Like, honestly. So anyway, she likes the bougie kind of stuff. I'm just straight coffee. Just give me that. That's it. Yeah, yeah. I love that. Yeah, I think I started with more. The coffee is dessert. The bougie coffee. And then it gave me a palette slowly to be able to just have either more. I don't usually drink straight coffee, but I could just have, like, a little flavoring in it, you know, just like a touch. So I commend you on that. OK, so you probably watch this segue, OK? You probably need a lot of coffee to do with all the people that have the many questions about college, right? And the disabilities and all the aspects. So that's my segue. I'm just going to kind of rapid fire some questions that are more the abstract or the big picture of, like, someone listening, does every college have an office for students with disabilities? And, like, how do you even know? And how do you know if you can ask them in qualified for something? Just think of them as to make a picture. That's kind of like three questions. But whatever you have to explain. The short answer is yes. As long as your school is taking federal financial aid or federal funding in some way, shape, or form, and that is 99.9% of schools. I think there's only, like, a couple of private ones that don't, that don't take anything. I can't name one, to be quite honest. But they are few and far between. So that encompasses your community college, that encompasses any post-secondary training, like you want to do HVAC or plumbing or carpentry, electrician school, culinary school. Any of those different schools will have an office or a staff person assigned to deal with students who have disabilities or need accommodation. Most colleges will. 99% will have that. There's that 1% that I can't name that doesn't take any federal funding. You're either under ADA or 504 or both. Most are both. And so you're covered under either of those two statutes. So they are quite common. It is something that does happen. And they are available pretty much most places. I'm hard-pressed to find one that doesn't. Very good, very good. That's important to note, because I didn't know it was related if there's government funding. So regarding that, so that's the concept. There's probably an office or someone to contact. So I'm imagining now walking in the front door. And I guess I would say, is it even worth it? Is it worth the hassle of figuring out and finding? And could people really get that much extra help from it? There's a big picture view on that. Why should they even step into this? Gotcha. Well, think of it this way. Without having accommodations in general, let me just start in a general kind of sense, since we're kind of doing the high kind of viewpoint. The viewpoint is it just provides access. So there's something about that, that if I don't have a disability, let's say you do, I don't. I'm here at one level. You have something that has you not performing or not having access to the same things in the same way as I do. Whatever that might be. Let's say we're running a three-mile race. I have shoes, you don't. Obviously, you don't have access to the same stuff as I do. And so obviously, if we train the same, we have the same talent, we run kind of the same type of thing, you're probably not going to run as good of a race because you don't have shoes, let's say. Accommodations and having accommodations for disability kind of fills that gap. It kind of levels the playing field. It basically gives you shoes. In another sense, let's use just a real world example. Extra testing time is one of the more popular and more frequently found eligible accommodations. It's one of the most frequent ones that's given. And so if I don't need that because I don't have a disability, let's say, then I'm there. But if it's a 60-minute test, but you do, my son has dyslexia. So obviously, he's going to take more time to read, more time to understand, more time to process that information. ADHD comes with some of the same stuff. So obviously, if there's more time, sometimes students like, I'm done with 60 questions in 60 minutes, I'm done. Some student might be at question 40. OK, well, obviously, there's a deficit there because I don't say deficit in a mean way. I just mean there's a gap there. You're on question 40. You could have gone to question 60. It's not a matter of intelligence. It's not a matter of how much you studied. And maybe he got a bunch of answers right. It's just not there yet. Correct. You could have. It's just you don't have the extra time in order to process. And that's the gap that accommodations fill. It levels that playing field. So let's say we both study the same amount. Accommodations level that playing field. So you show the same amount of information, show the same amount of abilities, show the same amount of memorizing the stuff, same mastery of that information. Whereas if you didn't have it, you're at question 40. I'm done at question 60. Obviously, your grades are going to be a little different. And I say this all the time that having access is not equivalent to success. That's like a K through 12 kind of thing. So getting away from that. But I'm hard pressed to find how having accommodations doesn't lead to success. Because if you have that level playing field, obviously, you're probably going to be more successful than you would have if you didn't have them. So here's a real world example from an actual student. So a student didn't have them for half of a semester. Came to me and was like, I didn't know you existed, which is part of that office kind of thing, right? Which is not hard to find, right? It's not hard. It's just sometimes people just don't know that they have a disability. And they kind of take that time. They are read it on a syllabus, or they talk to their professor, and they're like, I'm having trouble. I'm like, OK, well, hey, here's an office that you may want to look at. And they're like, oh, I didn't even know I could do that. Yes, you can. And so this person found me mid-semester. Got the accommodations pretty quick. Then I didn't see her for maybe three or four weeks after that. And she literally sought me out. She ran after me on campus. She was like, Mr. Jordan, Mr. Jordan, Mr. Jordan. So glad I saw you've been meaning to stop by your office. And I was like, what's going on? What's happened is she was all-- she was a little bit more animated, let's say. She's like, I just want to let you know. Thank you so much for letting me have the accommodations. And I'm so glad that I found them. I went from having a C to now having an A. Oh, wow. And she was like, I am doing-- I knew the information, but I'm so glad that I asked for accommodations. And I'm so glad that I got them. Because this is now what's happening. And she was like, in a high performance, high stress related kind of major. And she was like, my stress level was like half. She's like, so many things are better. And that's an example of-- now, I can't guarantee somebody's going to go from a C to an A. But I'm going to say that most of the time, anybody that hasn't used accommodations-- and I have numerous examples of things like that. Students who had them, but chose not to use them. And then I was like, how about for kicks and giggles, you use them this semester? Just kind of, let's do it for every class, every kind of thing. Let's just do that. Let's not pick and choose. And when from like a C to a B, right? Now, that's awesome. That's kind of the norm. So if you don't have them, obviously, you're probably not going to have as good a grade as you probably could have if you did use them. And that's just simply because of access. Everything else being equal. You spend the same amount of time studying, same amount of time doing homework, mastering the information. And let's say it gets to be test time. You don't have the accommodations. Obviously, there's going to be a deficit there in your score, obviously. And that's what access does. Access just lets you level that playing field. And now you really get to show exactly what you know. You get to show that on papers, tests, whatever presentation, all these different kinds of things where you get graded. You get to show that information. You get to show exactly what you know in a way that you know it. And that's kind of the best of both worlds. Like you kind of have the world where you're a student, but you also have a world where you need access for certain things to either get the information or give the information. Either way, you need access. And once you have that, then you're free to go ahead and do what you need to do for yourself. You're free, just like everybody else, to go ahead and show the information that you know, or don't. Maybe you didn't study. OK, cool. No accommodations are going to make up for lack of studying, but it will make up for whatever the deficit is that's caused, or whatever the gap is, whatever those limitations are for you, disability, it's going to make up for that. And it sounds like, well, that's fantastic. An example on just the time and the space and whatever, but not whatever flippantly, but I just mean all of that. But I think coming from me, I probably would have been like, but then I'm not learning to thrive in the right amount of time. I'm quote unquote supposed to be doing a test in or whatever. And I would say to myself, if that was me, of like, well, what is college for? It's just learning. It's this being able to present the facts back. It's this being able to-- it's not like-- now, sometimes in the quote unquote real world, which I say college is also the real world. But I mean, in like a working career world, sometimes there might be timeframes and deadlines on things. But a lot of times, it's just being able to present things. And like, so what if you take a little longer? Because even though I wasn't per se-- well, maybe I did have something, but it didn't have an IEP. I remember taking one of the longest on tests. And I think that's because I just double checked my answers. But I usually got a better grade from that. If it wasn't timed, if it was just like a span of time. And so like, why not? It's not like college is going to learn stuff in a certain time frame. It's going to learn. And even whether that is more time for testing, like you said, or I will throw out there, I took longer to get through college. Both because I was figuring out how to do it debt free. But also just I felt like I could process stuff. I'd rather have three classes. And in my brain, I could be like, I got done with these two classes. I only have one left of homework for this week, versus all this other stuff. So with that all in mind, I totally understand what you're saying with that. That would be something that would hold me up, that would feel like a barrier, personally. And until I talked to myself through it, like, oh, I should be able to do it in the same time, very whatever else. So I really like one of the questions that you had suggested we talk about today, which was what are some of the barriers to students applying for accommodations? And I don't know if you had meant that in like a their mind sort of way, or also just like actual physical barriers. But I think that's a good big picture thing to talk about. Yeah, the barriers-- sometimes it's a lack of information. Sometimes it's the individual. So like piggybacking off of what you were saying. That's kind of a barrier. That would kind of be something that you, as an individual, would have to deal with and make that effort to work through that belief that somehow you just didn't need them, or it just didn't kind of apply to you, or whatever. You'd have to work through that. And that sometimes is a barrier. Sometimes students don't realize that, hey, if I don't have an IEP or it didn't have a 504 in high school, well, maybe I just don't need them. Maybe I don't qualify for that. That's one. And I don't know whether or not any individual walking around on the street has a disability. That's sort of-- that's why it's hidden. You can't tell just by looking at somebody or speaking with them whether or not they have something going on that would need to be accommodated. And the role of being classified as a disability, that could be a barrier, too. Well, I don't want to be disabled, really? Like, no, no, it's a legal definition. That's pretty much it. K through 12 uses different words for that. And sometimes parents use learning difference or neurodiversity or any of these other different things. Those are fine. There's nothing wrong with those terms. It's just when you get to college, if you're going to think that you need accommodations, one, they're available to you. That's one thing, to know that they are available. And two, you just maybe somebody who can qualify for some of that. And the threshold is really low for that. So working through some of those myths and some of those kinds of things is kind of the first step. You have to sort of say, OK, what is it that I have and how is it affecting me in school? And then you're kind of working through those things. Like, do I really want to be disabled? Like, is that really a thing? Like, it's not a bad thing. Nobody's going to know on your transcript whether or not you had any kind of accommodation at all. OK, that's that's good to catch. So that might be a myth. I'm sorry to interrupt you just-- Yeah, no, it's OK. The barriers, you're also-- it's great. You're also asking my question about the myths, that it's not like someone's going to go to a job interview later and be like, oh, well, we see that you had longer to take your test. Right, yep. And it-- well, it's a barrier in terms of a student saying, well, I think-- I know I have something, but I don't want everybody to know. They're not. They're not going to know. You have to be found eligible. And once you're found eligible, you have certain accommodations that are appropriate for you that eliminate the barriers that the disability kind of has. So let's say it's ADHD or anxiety. And you just need a distraction-reduced environment for testing. Great. Awesome. We can make that happen. Let's say that's the only thing you need. Cool. Awesome. Well, that's what is your professor going to know. They're not going to know that you have anxiety. That's for the disability office. And it's probably just one person in the disability office that knows that. Your professor only knows the accommodation. That's it. Now, do they know, because you have an accommodation, that you have-- you are a student with a disability? Yes, of course. But that's only so that they can do their due diligence to make sure that they're giving you the access that you need. That the school has said that this person in this office has said that you absolutely need for tests. And so that's something that's kept private. So how that information is used could be a barrier. It's like, I don't want everybody to know. Cool. You don't have to. You don't have to. This is why it's self-disclosure. Students have to say it themselves. They have to seek it out, which is the first barrier. Knowing that it even exists is the first thing. And where do you find that? Now, you find it. You can probably ask your advisor at school, your admissions counselor to find that office and give you the information. You can find it on the website. It's there. You may have to search around a little bit. Accessibility or ADA office or something like that. You may have to put in different names. But once you find it, that barrier is taken care of. Now you have to go, OK, well, do I apply? Do I do that kind of stuff? And do I really want to be a student with a disability? It's merely a moniker that nobody is going to know. Really afterwards you get new. Sorry, I thought you were finished. I was going to say, it doesn't even sound like that. That even to go in a more distraction-free environment or take longer on a test or have additional something doesn't even seem like this huge extreme change compared to what studies show us help people in school. It's not. I mean, it seems like, honestly, any student could benefit from it. Why not go and take all of the resources provided connected with the school that has federal funding and all this other stuff? Exactly. It doesn't even seem-- it's not like they're handing you the answers to tests. That would be an extreme difference. It's honestly something that just sounds like it's just wise studying and learning. It's-- well, it's beyond wise studying learning. Yes, you have to learn how to be a college. For sure, you have to learn that. It's like everybody has to learn that. But if you have a disability, that's kind of like an added sort of thing. That's the gap. We could be studying just as much. We could be doing just the same amount of stuff. We could know the same skills as a student to learn the information in the same way. But when we hit that test, if we don't have-- we're that person with anxiety, and we don't have distraction reduction, wow. OK. Well, there's an impact on that test. You're not going to show everything that you know. In the same way that everybody else would, who's not disabled, who doesn't have that kind of stuff? Does that make sense? It makes so much sense. That's part of that kind of thing, and that's the gap. And so sometimes it is, do I have a disability or not? We'll go to the office to find out, honestly, and figure it out. They'll tell you whether or not you do or not. And they'll tell you what accommodations will help you figure that stuff out. So that's kind of part of it. The other thing is a barrier is sometimes is I don't want to have an advantage so that other people don't have. It's not. Is running barefoot in a three-mile race an advantage? Probably not. Probably not. Most of us are not Zola Bud from the '90s, right? Loose, like this Olympian from wherever that ran barefoot, right? Most of us are not that way. Most of us don't have that. Most of us can't compensate for that. So in that sense, like, yeah, do you have what you need? No, you don't. So let's give you what you need. So it's not an advantage. It's not an undue thing. We're closing a gap here. That's what we're doing. You don't have the ability to close that gap independently without it. Because if you could, there'd be no need. You wouldn't have a disability. That's what that would be called. You would not have a disability. We wouldn't even have an office to make sure accommodations are a thing. And we just wouldn't have it. And you wouldn't go, because if you did, we probably wouldn't approve anything for you. So if you have that gap, we fill that gap. That gap is not an advantage. You're at a disadvantage. So accommodations don't do anything other than level playing field. And that's it. So students, right? Why not? Why not? And it's not just let's take every advantage. Let's take the advantage that I need to have to make sure that I have a level playing field. That's different. That's much different. Wasn't that great? This is actually just the first half of our recording with Dan. So come on to the next episode. Watch for that for part two when we get a little more in-depth, step-by-step things. Looking for accommodations, right? This is a little bit more abstract big picture, then we'll go smaller and in focus. And go ahead and check out Dan's podcast, link in the description below. Or if you're ever wanting help to find scholarships for your particular situation, whether with certain issues going on with college, career plans, scholarships, or with specific disabilities, mental health issues, ADD, ADHD, I can help you out. Come plan a scholarship strategy session with me so that we can talk about your plans for college. I can give you any advice that you need. And then we'll talk further. If you're ever interested in hiring me, I can find you between $10,000 to $30,000 in scholarship opportunities for college. If you'd like to hire me to do the scholarship research for you and find the scholarships for you to apply for, find me at calendly.com/moneyandmentalpiece. So you can plan an appointment for this free scholarship strategy session, again, that's at calendly.com/moneyandmentalpiece. All right, until next time, thanks guys. Bye. Hey, girl. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If so, would you take 30 seconds and share it with a friend who wants to get scholarships and avoid student loans just like you? OK, now I'm off to hopefully play some ultimate frisbee. I'll meet you back here in a few days for another episode. Bye.
