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For many young people who have suffered a significant head injury, going back to school is one of the toughest things they are going to face. A number of head injury factors will make this difficult. First of all, short-term memory problems may make it hard to learn new material. School is about learning new things. Second, school has a fair amount of fatigue associated with it. With head injury, even young people have limited energy. They may be good in the morning, but fade early in the afternoon. Third, returning to school involves a social dimension. Young people very desperately want to fit in with their peers. For some, having some friends that you can hang out with is their number one priority in school or college. Often, they put more effort into being social than into studying.
RETURNING TO COLLEGE
Many universities will help you learn new material if you let them know that you have a disability. If you are blind, most colleges will help you get books in braille or get a reader for you. A head injury is also a disability. Colleges are willing to help you, but you have to ask for help. In each college, there will be a "student services" or "special needs" department; the name of the department will vary with each college. You need to ask your doctor to write a letter to document that you have a valid disability. The college is then going to ask you, "What do you want? What sort of accommodations or special help are you looking for?" One of the things you could ask for is extra time taking a test. Many people who have a head injury don’t think as fast as they used to, and they need longer to think about some of the items. Ask to take exams without time limits. In other words, you would be allowed to just keep working on it until you are done. Ask to take the exam in a quiet room so you won’t be distracted by other students. Many people who take a test are distracted by people rattling their chairs, moving papers, or people walking by in the hall. If you are taking a test and you can’t filter out noise, you are not going to do well. Ask if you can take the exam in one of the offices.
Ask if you can get help with notes. Sometimes you can get the teacher’s notes or you can get another student’s notes. Why should you ask for notes? Many people with a head injury have a hard time concentrating on what is being said and writing at the same time, particularly if the material is very hard. For some people, doing two things at once makes learning impossible. In addition, getting another student’s notes will also help you separate what is important from what is not important. Basically, the question that you may need to ask in every class is, "What is going to be on the exam?" That is not always easy, but if you have another person to work with, you are more likely to figure that out. Try to get an "A" student’s notes. Also try to get someone who has good handwriting. If you set this up ahead of time, most people won’t mind doing this. In a college environment, most people are happy to help.
In view of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (as amended by the 2005 Act of the same name) most colleges adopt a code of best practice to ensure disabled students get the most out of their experience. Here is one colleges statement of policy regarding disabled students:
Aims and Objectives:
•To encourage all students of the requisite academic standard to consider applying to the School;
•To enable disabled students to make informed choices and decisions;
•To ensure that successful disabled applicants can participate in their chosen teaching programme, extracurricular activities and student life;
In order to achieve these, the School has:
•Appointed a Disability Coordinator with defined responsibilities in relation to disabled applicants and students;
•Made clear reference to the School and College polic for disabled students in its publicity;
•Ensured that its admissions and examination policies cover the needs of disabled students;
• Ensured that any special arrangements for disabled students are clearly communicated and in a timely manner;
• Ensured that the views of disabled students are sought and taken into account whenever possible when policies affecting such students are discussed or reviewed.
In order to achieve these, the School will:
•Ensure that provision in Departments is reviewed annually, via the Admissions Tutors’ Committee, the Student Liaison Committee and the Graduate Studies Committee.
Admissions:
• The School will provide information for departmental Admissions Tutors to make available to disabled applicants, which will include clear information about facilities for disabled people and points of contact;
•Applicants who are disabled will be encouraged tocontact the Disability Coordinator for information and advice, and to visit the College and relevantdepartment(s) before responding to any offer of a place;
•Applications from disabled students will be consideredon academic merit alone and it will be for the students to evaluate for themselves whether the facilities available will meet their needs; the School will ensure that studentshave sufficient information to enable them to make such an evaluation.
Current students:
•After they have enrolled at the College, it will be theresponsibility of a disabled student’s personal tutor toidentify with the student any special needs with regard to teaching and examination arrangements, to progress these with the appropriate College authorities and to ensure that all appropriate staff are informed of them;
•In cases of difficulty, disabled students will have access to the School’s Disability Coordinator, who will ensure parity of provision as far as practicable across the School;
•It is recognised that the needs of disabled students may change during the course of the year, and they will therefore be subject to review at any time.
Most, if not all, higher education establishments are legally obliged to cater for the needs of disabled students but it is up to the student to make such needs known so that provision can be put into place. The above policy statement is basically common to most establishments.
RETURNING TO HIGH SCHOOL
With apologies for getting a bit technical here and going on a bit but it is worth, to say the least, exploring in a little detail because education is so important and you need to know something about the legislative framework, and a schools duties within such framework, as applicable to a brain injured child of school age. From September 2002, all schools have had new legal duties under the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) 1995 (as amended by the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act 2001) not to discriminate against disabled pupils and disabled prospective pupils. These new duties interact and combine with the Special Educational Needs Framework and new planning duties for schools and Local Education Authorities (LEA).
The Act covers anyone who has a physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long- term adverse effect on their ability to carry out normal day to day activities. All schools are covered, including independent and publicly funded schools, mainstream and special schools, nursery, primary and secondary schools, non-maintained special schools and pupil referral units.
The duties in the Disability Discrimination Act are designed to dovetail with existing duties under the Special Educational Needs (SEN) framework. The main purpose of the SEN duties is to make provision to meet the special educational needs of individual children. The duties in the SEN framework are based on the definition of SEN in section 312 of the Education Act 1996. This says that: a child has special educational needs if he or she has a learning difficulty that calls for special educational provision.
A child has a learning difficulty if he or she:
• has a significantly greater difficulty in learning than the majority of children of the same age; or
• has a disability which prevents or hinders the child from making use of educational facilities of a kind generally provided for children of the same age in schools within the area of the LEA;
• is under five and falls within the definition at (1) or (2) above or would do so if SEN provision was not made for the child.
Special education provision means:
• for a child of two or over, educational provision which is additional to, or otherwise different from, the educational provision made generally for children of the child’s age in maintained schools (other than special schools) in the area;
• for a child under two, educational provision of any kind. Provision is made for special education under the School and School Plus stages and through a Statement of Special Educational Need (SEN).
It is important to note that the DDA duties on schools do not require them to provide "auxiliary aids and services", for example, a teaching assistant, or information in braille or on tape, or to make any changes to the physical features of their buildings - such as installing handrails. It is assumed that these will be dealt with through the SEN framework.
There is also now a new Disability Equality Duty which is a new positive duty on all public bodies to promote disability equality. There is a process to go through to establish whether a child has special educational needs before a school will recognize the existence of such needs and make provision accordingly. It will be necessary to apply to the Local Education Authority for an assessment of those needs. If you already have a neuropsychologist, speech therapist, or other person who has done some type of testing, it would be helpful to submit the results to the school and the LEA.
All primary and secondary schools maintained by a local education authority, and all local authorities themselves, are covered by the Disability Equality Duty. This means that, alongside their existing duties, schools and local authorities will have to take proactive steps to promote disability equality for pupils, employees, and service users.
WHAT DO SCHOOLS HAVE TO DO?
They have a duty to promote disability equality which requires all public authorities, when carrying out their functions, to have due regard to the need to:
• Promote equality of opportunity
• Eliminate unlawful discrimination
• Eliminate disability-related harassment
• Promote positive attitudes towards disabled people
• Encourage disabled people’s participation in public life
• Take steps to take into account people’s disabilities, even where that involves more favourable treatment.
Certain listed public authorities are also covered by specific duties which set out certain measuring, action planning, and reporting mechanisms that you need to take to meet the general duty. The most important requirement of the specific duties is to produce a Disability Equality Scheme. This will contain an action plan. Ask your school what their action plan is under their Disability Equality Scheme.
If you are returning to high school, with or without a Special Educational Needs assessment, what help do you need? Some of the things we have already talked about above (under Returning to College) include no time limits on tests, and getting notes (maybe even teachers’ notes). Someone should be asked to help you review your progress in your classes (possibly someone from the schools special education department). You could meet once every week or every other week to review how you are doing in each of your classes. They might need to meet with your teachers if you start to develop a problem in one of your classes.
You could create an academic journal. Make a folder that lists each class with the homework and upcoming tests for the next couple of weeks. If you have a test in a history class, you need to prepare in advance. Short-term memory is impaired in head injury and it takes many repetitions of the material to learn it. You need to plan ahead and not wait until the last minute.
You should perhaps avoid studying in the evening. Many people do better studying in the morning, because they are alert and the brain works better then. Getting up in the morning to study is much better. If you can’t do that, plan it for early in the evening. The other thing is to study at the same time every evening. You are going to commit yourself to studying from 5:00--7:00 every night, only breaking for dinner. Set a time, whether you need to study or not, just to keep reviewing your materials. Get in the habit of making yourself study for 2 hours per night. Some people may have to increase that amount. In general, 2 hours is about the maximum that most people can handle. During those 2 hours, you will need to take occasional breaks, so you don’t burn yourself out.
You could ask the school system to give you copies of your books. Most secondary schools only lend out the books. Normally, you cannot make any marks in the books, and you will have to return them. You could ask the school to give you the books outright so that you can use a highlighter in the book. Highlighting is necessary to help you figure out what is the important material (in other words, what’s going to be on the test). After you have highlighted, you may want to go back and reread it. Some school materials have questions at the back of the chapter. Most people avoid them. You should try to answer every one of them. Go back and go through the material and keep trying to do the questions as best as you can.
You could get a study group or a "study buddy." Get with a partner or group and try to figure out what is the most important material to learn. If you study the wrong material for an exam, you’re going to get a bad grade even though you worked hard. This is particularly true with tests that have essays. A study partner will give you a new perspective by saying, "No, I think this is really important and this is why I think the teacher is going to ask this." So you cover what you think is important and cover what they think is important. Nine times out of ten, you are going to get it.
Essay exams are the world’s toughest tests. A teacher told me that she was basically looking for key words when grading papers. If an essay needed three separate elements to get full credit, she would look for the key word or phrase as she was reading the essay. Before you even start answering the essay, try to outline the main points by scribbling them on the side of the paper. Once you are organized, start writing. Always start the first line of the paragraph with the main point you are going to cover.
One of the difficulties for most people is that they learn their material in the order that it was presented in class. The mid-term or final exam will not ask questions in that order. The problem is that you have memorized the material in order and you are going to have a hard time retrieving that information. Buy yourself a deck of blank file cards. Put a test question on one side of the card, then flip it over and put the answer on the back. First, learn the cards in order. Once you have got all the answers and questions correct, shuffle the cards and try to answer them again. In this way, the order of information will not be a factor. The other thing you can do is review every card one or two days before the exam. Sort every card you got right in one pile and every card that you got wrong in another pile. Keep working on the wrong pile until there are no more cards left in the wrong pile. If you are serious about getting good grades, this technique will work.
The social part of school is very important, and it probably is one of the things that people like the most. The problem is that socializing can get out of control if you don’t spend the time on your classes. You have to set your own limits and apply discipline. Don’t get behind. This is a crucial mistake for most head-injured people in school. If you need help with discipline, ask family members or friends to push you to study. Turn off the radio and the television when you are studying. Avoid distractions. Easier said than done, but you can do it.
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