A number of years ago I taught a teenager who had big dreams for her future which included having a job, a boyfriend and becoming a mother. This girl also had a mild intellectual disability. The school that I taught at did not believe that students should attend individual planning meetings or that they should have a say about their education. Compounding this, the student’s mother would often talk to me about problems that her daughter faced at school, yet she refused to allow her daughter to be a participant in these conversations. As a teacher my hands were tied. I could not support this student to achieve her goals, despite the fact that these goals were reasonable. This student had barriers placed in the way of her own self-advocacy and she failed to realise her dreams. Self-advocacy is an important skill for all students, but even more so for students with disability who have many ‘experts’ in their lives

The term ‘self-advocacy’ has numerous synonyms including self-determination, assertiveness, self-awareness and empowerment. Self-advocacy refers to the ability to make decisions and have control over one’s life and it is a human right that is acknowledged within the United Nations Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Teaching students with disability to advocate for themselves has numerous benefits within the school context, including improved behaviour and increased school retention rates and social capital. It’s also a helpful skill to avoid bullying and abuse. Self-advocacy is a vital component for the successful transition to adult life. However, students with disability are sometimes presumed to lack competence and consequently may be denied the right to self-advocacy. Teachers can play a key role in supporting students to develop self-advocacy and this blog focuses on providing this support through the individual planning process.

Individual learning plans are the starting point for developing self-advocacy skills. Students with disability should be an active participant in the individual learning plan process, regardless of cognitive ability or mode of communication. Establishing these expectations early on in a student’s school life provides valuable life skills in leadership, goal setting, problem solving and choice making. However, the skills of self-advocacy need to be explicitly taught in the classroom for the student to be able to take a lead role in the individual planning process. Below is an example of goals and objectives to teach these skills with students with various needs. Within the student description the diagnosis is written at the end as this provides the least information about how to plan to support students. It should be noted that plans should be drafted at the meeting in a collaborative manner rather than beforehand. When plans are developed before the individual planning meeting it sends a message that the input from the student and parents is not valued. At the meeting students and parents should be encouraged to actively participate and voice their questions and concerns.

To conclude, developing the skills of choice-making, goal setting, leadership and problem solving and are a means of developing self-advocacy skills within the individual planning meeting process. The skills that students require to self-advocate within this planning process include understanding their own strengths and weaknesses, knowing each person at the individual planning meeting, what their role is and how they can support the student to get to where they want to be as well as determining long term goals and how to get there through micro steps. All teachers of students with disability should incorporate self-advocacy skills into each individual learning plan.