Seven Steps to College Success: A Pathway for Students with Disabilities

In this episode of the Self-Driven Child podcast, I engage in an insightful conversation with Elizabeth Hamblet, a seasoned college learning disabilities specialist. Elizabeth unpacks the challenges and pitfalls students with disabilities may face when transitioning from high school to college and the measures they can take to navigate this often overwhelming journey. With anecdotes, expert insights, and Elizabeth's first-hand experience, this episode serves as a roadmap for parents and students alike, providing them with the tools to foster independence and self-advocacy, essential skills for navigating college life.

[2:36] What are things that a lot of folks just don’t know about college?
[5:17] When your kid turns 18, they’re protected by the Federal Education Privacy Act.
[8:12] If you want to know your kids' grades, you need to ask them.
[12:42] What is a Note Taker?
[14:39] What is a case manager? What does it mean?
[16:34] What is the approach avoidance continuum?
[19:08] How do you respond to an interview that’s "scary"?
[21:54] What parents should be thinking about as they prepare their kids for college admissions.

RESOURCES:

LD Advisory - Elizabeth Hamblet's website with resources and services for students with learning disabilities. https://www.ldadvisory.com/
 
About Elizabeth -  https://ldadvisory.com/about/

Prep Matters - Ned Johnson's test preparation, tutoring and college admissions planning services. https://prepmatters.com/

Remember that fostering independence is crucial for all students, but even more so for those with disabilities. The skills, tips, and knowledge shared by Elizabeth will undoubtedly help you or your child navigate the transition from high school to college with confidence and ease. This episode underscores that students with disabilities can indeed succeed and thrive in college, provided they are equipped with the right tools and support. As always, thank you for joining us. Stay curious and keep learning!

If you have a high school aged student and would like to talk about putting a tutoring or college plan together, reach out to Ned's company, PrepMatters at www.prepmatters.com

Transcript

Elizabeth Hamblet  0:00  
I have met and worked with over two decades very bright and you know, high achieving. And you know, just average students also with disabilities who have done well, students I found can be so resourceful and so creative in the way they solve problems. Many of them do seek out help. That's how I know them, they come and see me. And what's counterintuitive. I work with a bunch of students weekly, who don't really need my help. And what I mean is, they've got their act together, they have utilized the strategies, they manage their calendars, and they do the things they're supposed to do, but what they use me for is the accountability piece.

Ned Johnson  0:39  
Welcome to the Self-Drive Child Podcast. I'm your host, Ned Johnson, and co author with Dr. Williams pictured of the books, the self driven child, the science and sense of giving your kids more control over their lives. And what do you say, how to talk with kids to build motivation, stress tolerance, and a happy home? Oh, college admissions, what a fun glorious adventure for those of you who have children who have just finished up the process. Congratulations. For those of you who are just starting this process, we wish you all the luck in the world. It's a heady, exciting, sometimes slightly stressful time. What I want to talk about today is the challenge of not just getting kids into college. But how do we help kids be successful and persist? We know that roughly one in four kids don't make it through the first year of college. And this is probably no more true than for groups of kids for whom their added challenges to learning, have anxiety of learning disabilities and learning differences. So I'm excited today. I'm delighted to have in my studio, Elizabeth Hamlet, an expert on all these matters. But first, I'm Ned Johnson, and this is the self driven child podcast. My guest today is an expert in all these matters, and I really look forward to our conversation. Elizabeth C Hamlet has worked as a learning disability specialist in college Disability Services for two decades. In addition to working at a university, actually several of them she is a nationally requested speaker on preparing students with disabilities for successful college transition. The point of our conversation today, she is the author of seven steps to college success, a pathway for students with disabilities, and a concise guide on transition. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and online platforms, all kinds of summits, podcasts and everything you can possibly imagine, because she knows a lot of stuff. I'm delighted to have you share with us today, some of the things you know, so welcome. Thank you, Ned,

Elizabeth Hamblet  2:36  
I'm so delighted to be here. Appreciate it.

Ned Johnson  2:39  
For those who don't know, I have a son who is 21, who has ADHD I have a daughter who's 19 taking a gap year who has ASD and so I've walked this walk I wish I had known of your work earlier because I had a lot of bumps and bruises along the way. And I think my children will forgive me for it. But obviously, the work that you do is to try to make it easier for parents to help their kids for the kids to be successful, particularly as they transition to college. So surprises, what are things that a lot of folks just don't know yet about? College?

Elizabeth Hamblet  3:11  
Oh, gosh, there's I mean, certainly when it comes specifically to students with disabilities, I find that there's a big knowledge gap about what actually happens with respect to the accommodation system and how that works. I think parents are, and more so frankly, than their students are unless you have and we do have some students who are very involved in the in the process for themselves at the high school level. I think and I've not seen in your research on this, that, you know, a lot more students probably just received their accommodations don't really think a lot about how those happen. And so at the college level, students are actually driving this train, but we're driving the bus, whichever vehicle works for you as metaphor. So they have to register with our office or you know, sometimes it's not even a proper office. It's like a responsibility of somebody who's the Dean of Students, but they have to initiate the process. They let us know that they have a disability, and then we respond, you know, with a review of their requests and their documentation. And then they have responsibilities once they are approved. Like every time an exam is coming up, they have to let us know. In a lot of cases we don't track their professors and what they're up to email them and say, hey, guys have an A midterms, you know this term. And so I think that that's a surprise to a lot of parents that we don't do the kinds of case management that they're seeing in the special ed arena of K through 12.

Ned Johnson  4:44  
Especially for parents whose job it is it has included being the scaffolder in chief if that's a proper term, right who have kids who indeed have the need for more learning supports, and who may often have shouldered a lot of that work for themselves, or as you as you I would have been the people who have played with contact or liaison between a kid who may be needing help and not reaching out for enough and a school who was willing to provide support, but maybe not reaching out enough. And parents often play that go between in high school. But in college, that's not a hat that you get to wear. Because case folks haven't thought about it yet. When your kid turns 18, in addition to running off to college with hopes, dreams and a suitcase full of your money, they're also protected by FERPA right? The federal education what's the rest of the Privacy Act? Thank you Privacy Act, right FERPA, that's what matters, which simply means that while you have had effectively a right to some insights and and some of the information about how your kids are doing both well, and not so well, in school, once they turn 18, that changes. And so you need to have conversations about your kids, if you want to have them sign a FERPA waiver. But even if they do sign a FERPA waiver, you're not on campus with your child. And I'm pretty confident and you can correct me if I'm wrong, Elizabeth, that people in your position, or Dean's of students really aren't that interested in hearing from parents who say NetBeans help with whatever. And so we really have to start this process early right to coach kids on how they ask for the resources because colleges are not obligated to chase kids around to make sure they get accommodations. Do I have the right?

Elizabeth Hamblet  6:21  
You have that? 100%? Right. Yes. Sometimes in my presentations, I joke that the only right you have as a parent is to get the bill.

Ned Johnson  6:32  
It's good to feel part of the team.

Elizabeth Hamblet  6:33  
Yeah. So and what's important, and I'm glad you brought up FERPA because some parents say like, Aha, well, FERPA waiver, I'll have my kids sign that, but they're still not the responsibility put on us in college disability services offices that your students high school case manager might have had. So on my blog, there is some bonus interview content from the book. And one of the questions I asked all these disability surfaces directors was do you communicate with parents? So you can see all of their answers? So with a FERPA waiver, some of my colleagues will, you know, answers, you know, sort of general questions like, literally down to did my kid register with your office, because that's not even something we can tell you if your student hasn't signed a waiver. Now, quickly, if your student hasn't predigested with our office, they haven't signed the waiver. And so you know, that's, that might be the one thing that they could tell you. Even if if the student says yes, please tell my mother everything. It's not our job to contact professors log into whatever the course management system is, see if the assignments have been turned in. If that even has that information, see what their grades are contact professor to say, well, Elizabeth, you know, has just been struggling with your assignment. It's not what we do.

Ned Johnson  7:50  
So no one sitting there with the app kind of hit refresh every everything every 10 minutes, as I know, some parents do to say has it been posted as a great gun up or down?

Elizabeth Hamblet  7:57  
Yeah, and even some of my colleagues interestingly, have said in situations where their office does have access to grades, they won't release that information. It doesn't FERPA doesn't specify exactly what information a disability, you know, that disability services office has to provide. And so they have said, I'm not going to tell you, your kids great. If you want to know your kids grades, you need to ask them, because they feel you know, even with the permission, it just feels like a conversation that should be happening between the student and the parents and not disability services and the parents,

Ned Johnson  8:29  
if I can, and I'd like to make a point about that. Because if you know, again, some kids are going to need more support. Some kids may also even want more support at the need in the water, of course, different things. And at the same time, we were trying to help young people transition into being more completely independent in college, they may still need or want some of that help. And it seems to me that the roots for planting the seeds, to have kids be open to mom or dad helping those start a lot earlier. Right. And so if parents have been in kind of command and control and monitoring and checking everything and the Nagrand chief or their minder and chief or whatever, all the way through school and vertically into high school, you're really positioned your children poorly, to be able to run their lives independently and to be open to help from other people, including people who are available on campus. I you know, I so often hear parents saying, well, we just want we want our kids to advocate for themselves. But then we spend a lot of time and my wife says and educator taught these the term of pursuing rescue, right? Pursue and rescue right and if we as parents are doing that, and then expecting that someone that university is going to do that. We're going to be disappointed and our kids are going to be filled with left high and dry as well. And it sure seems to me that because in university you're gonna want your son or daughter to reach out to people like you, right or to a writing tutor or to you know, a TA or or or or, you know, a note that we take from the self-driven child is for parents to start or earliest they can positioning into being a consultant, rather than, you know, rather than the manager of the process because we can start with kids and you know, at age six or 10 or 12, and say, Hey, is you got a plan for that? Fantastic? Is there a way that I can help you with anything on this? I'm here for every way I can, but to break out of that pattern of staying on them on them on them, because you're setting them up to think that there's a Calvary to come and help. And they they're there won't be one in college about right.

Elizabeth Hamblet  10:28  
I would say yes, absolutely. You know, our office is not checking in with students on a weekly basis. Can your you know, we've seen students all the places that I work at,

Ned Johnson  10:38  
but for all the money we're paying, I'm teasing you, but I can I can imagine that's the thinking of a lot of parents. Right? You know, are you kidding me? I'm spending $60,000. And no one's checking in? The short answer is, is is a hard No. Yes.

Elizabeth Hamblet  10:49  
Hard. No. Yes, yes. And so look, I'm a parent, my two kids are now like, I went to college. I am empathetic to that it is an unconscionable sum of money for anybody to be spending. So I understand the expectations, the laws that dictate what happens for students at college, really don't talk about any of that stuff. If you were to drill down to the exceptions of things colleges don't have do, there are some specific services they mentioned, we don't have to provide like a reader for personal study. But nowhere in there does it say we need to, you know, do check ins have specialists keep track of students. And so it's a vest, you know, 504 provides most of the guidance, and then the ADA adds some some additional stuff. But there's nothing in there about us needing to look after students with disabilities, we are there to remove barriers and level the playing field. And so I think there are lots of neurotypical students going to college who aren't prepared to look after themselves and seek help.

Ned Johnson  11:53  
So if I can repeat that back soon, so because of the ADEA, in the 504, in the in the in all the legislation about this, colleges, and people with your expertise into your position, are required to make sure that accommodations that are approved by the right documentation that those things are provided. So the kids aren't effectively discriminated against or disabled because of their learning disabilities or differences. But and this is important for parents to know, it doesn't mean that you are obligated by anyone's law to do everything necessary to help kids be successful, particularly because they're young adults, now, it's your job to be available to them, but to not to be constantly on them to the degree that parents might have expected, right? I mean, if you were in high school, it's maybe a different relationship than it is at university is that to again and to have about right?

Elizabeth Hamblet  12:42  
I think that that's very well put, yeah, it is a very different relationship. So where I work and where I previously worked in, I have a very specialized position. See if I can describe this in as few words as possible. So the main point of contact or liaison for students where I work is called the coordinator. And so they literally coordinate the accommodations. If a student has been approved for a note taker, I forget actually, what our office because I'm not involved in this, I don't remember if we vet no takers in any way. And actually, parents might be surprised that a lot of schools if a student gets approved for a note taker, and anecdotally, I would say, just from the conversations in my professional community, there's more of a turn toward providing students with technology, rather than shoot here notes.

Ned Johnson  13:29  
That's our whole world, by the way, but carry on. Let's replace people with apps but but anyway, as we go,

Elizabeth Hamblet  13:36  
well, it makes students more independent. Frankly, the note taking human note takers are a morass for our office for a lot of reasons, including finding somebody who's willing to do it, making sure that their notes are actually legible, for instance, or, you know, challenges is also that sometimes do students are not pleased with the quality of the notes they get. And I was just reading you know, this book that I just can't stop talking about Daniel Willingham, outsmart your brain talking about note taking and how that process goes. So, if I am a student in a chemistry class, I am chemistry dumb. If my note taker knows anything about chemistry, their notes are not going to probably contain a lot of the information that I'm that I need, what a good point because they know that stuff and so to track back, the coordinators, so when your student has an exam coming up, again, we don't contact the professor's the student sends us a form that says Professor Johnson is holding his sociology exam October 15. And then the coordinators reach out to the professor to make sure we get the exam in time to get it to the room where the proctor you know, get a proctor to do all of that stuff. So that's a coordinator. But case manager to me means somebody who's really managing your case, so we weren't checking in with Professor service. Now I read four columns a year for this for this journal for higher ed and I have done columns about schools that do have like warning systems, but those are just for students with disabilities. Any student, you know, whose GPA is low or something might get a notification. So what happens after that is up to the student, you know, if you get a notification that says, Well, Professor Johnson says, you're you know, you're you're not doing so well in his class, it's still incumbent upon the student to go see Professor Johnson go to the writing center. And so all of these things are on the student, it is a very different kind of environment perhaps and some have been accustomed to, and you talk about it and and Daniel Willingham talks about help seeking. You know, I have friends who do college admission, consulting, and, you know, both neurotypical and students with disabilities, some of their clients are getting tutored every single day after school.

Ned Johnson  15:58  
I realize I'm talking to the government No, no, no, what I'm talking about is I had a student I worked with some years ago is a really nice kid, but a lot of ADHD, some learning challenges. And his mom took a slightly different approach about this than Bill and I would from the self different child of being consultant and, and she was explaining to me that she had lined up a tutor to work with her son four days a week for two and a half hours at a time. Yeah. And I looked at it, and I was aghast. Yeah. And she said, Well, without the tutor, he won't do any work at all. And I said, Well, respectfully, it looks to me like with the tutor, he's doing almost no work at all. And, you know, in psychology, there's this thing called the approach avoidance continuum, right? Certainly, you know, because of COVID, most many of us, particularly people with developing brains have spent it you know, to your experiment and avoid, avoid, avoid, and we got to work hard to get kids to go the other direction. But, and this is important, I think, for parents to know, if it feels like you're working harder than your kid is right, and you spend 80 units of energy, they're spending 20, you get stressed, you go to 90, they go to 10, right, we don't change that until the energy changes, in part because it's so stressful for me to feel like you're trying to control me and tell me what to do all the time. And even more. So if you're my parents, I've got that relationship in jeopardy, because it's so stressful to have other people tell you what to do until controlling. And the major manifestation of anxiety is avoidance, when we as parents are stressed, and therefore over controlling, we're conditioning our kids to avoid what may be in their own best interest doing the homework, but we're also conditioning them to sort of try to hide and avoid us, then we want them to turn around and approach you know, Dr. Hamlet for the help Ed University. And that conditioning your church appoint the bit before we want to start that as early as possible. Because otherwise kids get to college, and they they've not been practiced, of looking around. So boy, this is hard, who is the person who can help me, right?

Elizabeth Hamblet  17:54  
Yeah, and I think, you know, help seeking is a skill, which is something else, you know, that Dan Willingham says, and you guys, and so if you have support, waiting, every moment has been developed a sense of when you are truly struggling, when you're just bored. You know, this notion of students not being able to do any work without somebody sitting there is a problem. Because there's, I mean, you can go to the library, and some students do find that, you know, being at the library around other people who are studying them staying on track and helps motivate them. But many students end up alone somewhere or, you know, with a sleeping roommate at one in the morning trying to finish work, and they've never had to do it without anybody kind of sitting over them, it's going to be a challenge. And again, that's not what we're there for.

Ned Johnson  18:38  
Yeah. It's probably easy for parents to imagine that what was provided to them to their kids in school in high school, either by themselves or by the school will naturally fall in place for them in college. Apart from you know, a Nagrand. Chief, I'm being unkind to parents, if you're doing that. I know you love your kids, but still, apart from that role not being played, or their accommodations that kids have in place in high school. They won't necessarily follow them into college that students or parents should be mindful of. Yeah,

Elizabeth Hamblet  19:09  
that's a great question. I want to start by saying something that's a slippery respond, responded to an interview have done recently and said, Well, gee, Elizabeth, you know, we already know it's scary. And could you maybe find something positive to say so I'd love and that's fair. I find sometimes that depending on what I'm reading about in the research, or what my commute is talking about at the time King color, you know, what I'm thinking about when I come into these interviews. And so, you know, I do want to say I have met and worked with over two decades very bright and you know, high achieving, and, you know, just average students also with disabilities who have done well who are students I found can be so resourceful and so creative in the way they solve problems. Many of them do seek out help. That's how I know them. They come and see me. And what's counterintuitive I think, is Is that I work with a bunch of students weekly, who don't really need my help. And what I mean is, they've got their act together, they have utilized the strategies, they manage their calendars, and they do the things they're supposed to do. But what they use me for is the accountability piece.

Ned Johnson  20:19  
I love it. Yeah, I love it. Can I innovate, if I may, I'll share a story about that. So my son who's again, an ADHD, and his real bet, Noir is writing papers. And you know, so often, you know, kids are ready to put it off, put off, and then they're the wavefront of anxiety to build to finally get the brain activation to finally feel like doing the thing. But as you noted before, that could be at one o'clock in the morning, blah, blah, blah. And the school that he attended every year had this history, research paper, and that was just not quite his jam. And I remember, I think it was in junior might have been his sophomore year, I'd seen the year before how this was really hard for him, and frankly, a little intense for his parents to watch him not doing work for so long. And I asked him, I said, Hey, would you want to work with a tutor on this? I never want to push it just offered. I said, let me explain what's going on, you know, because I can see that he's a really good writer. But But oftentimes, you're getting kind of behind. And I said my colleague, Kate, who is just terrific. I mean, she's brilliant, and warm and kind and adds a little structure in ways that can sometimes be helpful. So would it be would you want to try a meeting with her a couple times and see if that's helpful to kind of, you know, stay on the path with when the rough draft is doing all this kind of jazz? is sure. And he made me met with her a couple times. And he said, Dan, I feel like I'm wasting her time and I'm wasting your money. And I said, well, well tell me more. And he says, Well, we have this stuff we need to do we meet every Sunday at 11. And I do it all the last minute, like if I'm you know, at 10 o'clock, and to do this right before I show up, and then we show up and kind of what are we going to even talk about? And I said well, for what it's worth, I think it's working perfectly. Because what she has done the partly because you like her so much. And she's great and and you're respectful kid, you have effectively created interim deadlines for yourself. And then you're responding to those interior getting stuff done last minute, but if you didn't have a cage in your life, you will be doing all of that stuff, you know, in the last five weeks. Right? So last question for you. Yeah, is there anything else that parents might not be thinking about? That they really should be thinking about? You've talked about the importance of kids need to run this process, there are things they need to know that you don't know yet. And all the which is in your book in beautiful ways. We want to make this transition earlier, not later, anything else to take away the parent should know as they help their kids put things in place as they head off to university,

Elizabeth Hamblet  22:39  
a thing just work on their independence as much as possible. We've talked about this throughout this, what I really want is for them to feel confident going into college and so they'll they'll learn that the self efficacy piece, if they have the experiences before they go that will build their self efficacy.

Ned Johnson  22:58  
Just to echo that. I mean, just like he talks about this so beautifully that that confidence comes from competence. And you only develop competence by doing things for yourself maybe with support, right? But but you know, getting an A with 10,000 hours of scaffolding by tutors or parents or whatever, is not the same thing of you know, I filled out through a form I reached out to Elizabeth, I've got these things in place and knowing that you can do those things is so important. Okay, last question. If people want to meet with you, where can they find you? Well, I

Elizabeth Hamblet  23:28  
have a website LD advisory that they can go to and there's a contact link there. I have a huge Facebook group that they can join. Find me on all the socials on there. I'm working on my tic tock following Ned's lead. Slowly, slowly, but yeah, there are lots of places to find me and there's lots of information on my site to help them learn more about the college thing and if they want a really comprehensive guide,

Ned Johnson  23:54  
beautiful, beautiful, thank you so much. So Elizabeth say Hamlet, a voice of wisdom and a whole bunch of knowledge, particularly for kids and families who have children with learning disabilities. The book is terrific. It's seven steps to college success, a pathway for students with disabilities. Thank you for your work. Thank you for your wisdom. Thank you for time with me today on this self driven Job Podcast. Hey folks, Ned here. Over the past 25 years, I've talked with 1000s of parents of high school students, parents who care deeply about their kids education and how they deal with stress and the pressure to succeed. But these parents need to work with the team they trust won't just pile on more pressure to achieve better grades and scores. This is why I started prep matters in 1997 to create a different kind of experience for test preparation, tutoring in college admissions planning. This podcast and my books reflect our company's philosophy and approach to helping students if you have a high school student and we'd like to talk about putting in place a plan, please get in touch with us, visit our website at prep matters.com or call 301-951-0350 That It's 301-951-0350 Thanks

Transcribed by https://otter.ai