A Self-Advocacy Story

Students at the UMass MAICEI Program audit classes they take and sometimes need accommodations to help them do so. This was the case for one of our new students, Max. For his first college course, Max decided to take a comparative literature course on science fiction with Professor Couch. Eager to learn about a topic he was already interested in, but still wanting to succeed, Max drafted his own request for modifications for the course and presented them to his professor. We at the MAICEI Program were proud that Max took on this initiative to help him in the course. To learn more about how he did this, we interviewed him on this process.

    The course required that students would watch the science fiction movies during an evening section and then would come to two discussion sections and write a few short essays to debrief after the films.  Max told us he knew he had to start thinking about modifications when he sat down to read the syllabus for the course:

“Like I wanted to create a thing that I could still be a part of the class because I don’t want to be treated differently. I wanted to modify the accommodations so that I could still do work”     

Max

    The first modification that Max had to come up with was when he would watch the movies. The evening showings did not work with his schedule so he and Mark Sena, the assistant coordinator for our program, had to discuss alternative ways of watching the movies. It was suggested that Max could watch the movies by himself, at a time that convenient for him. Max agreed to this because he knew he could make that commitment and stick to it. Max would search for the SYFY movies on YouTube first. If they weren’t accessible that way, he would then reference all the streaming services he had access to and even asked for help from his boss at the Pelham Library to see if they had the movies. Although he said that locating the movies was difficult at first because some of them were obscure, he was very persistent in his research and managed to find them. He found that watching the movies on his own was an enjoyable experience as he would often grab some popcorn and make a movie night out of it according to his mom.

    When asked if he needed modifications for the discussion portion of the course, he told us “Not really, I just listened a lot”. The only true modification Max asked for was that he would attend only one of the discussion sections. Although he didn’t feel like he needed to modify this portion of the course, he did say that the discussion sections took some time to become familiarized. He told us it was a big jump from the typical make up of a high school class since he had never taken a class such as this one before, “Yeah, there’s a different structure from like high school. Like you have to sort of know those common things. Like only answer a few questions so you don’t interrupt the class”. To work on this, he asked that his educational coach, Mary, would sit in the back of the class and give feedback to how he was participating if he needed it. According to him “it was a pretty laid-back class” so he didn’t need support from Mary “unless it was a big thing”. Max’s skills he used for the class allowed Mary to focus on specific aspects to the class. Mary says her primary focus with Max was his communication with classmates and Professor Couch. Additionally, when watching the movies, Max would mentally prepare by always making a point to remember some theme he observed, which he said helped him. Even if it was a jump from high school, he said he adjusted well and even found his college classmates to be very nice to him in class.

    The short essay requirement for the class needed more modifications than the discussion sections. The purpose of the essays were that they functioned as individualized checks for understanding but Max wanted to demonstrate his knowledge in a way that worked better for him, “I was trying to think of a way that would make sense and still fit the requirements”. Max’s solution was to use Google Slides because he believed a more visual format could help him better get his point across.

    Max took it upon himself to type up his ideas for class modifications on his own time. He reached out to Mark Sena to talk it over, along with his Educational Coach and his mom to help proofread.  All of content remained his own after these edits. He said the process for presenting the ideas to Professor Couch was relatively easy as he just emailed his ideas to him as an open request. Professor Couch was very open to the accommodations. We reached out to Professor Couch on what he thought about Max’s request and he told us, “…the idea was so instantly appealing”. The email was all Max needed, because once Professor Couch agreed, all of Max’s modifications were granted.

    Overall, Max thought his accommodations helped him participate, learn, and express his ideas in a way that worked for him. Professor Couch agreed with Max. When asked if he thought the accommodations helped Max reach the overall lessons he hoped all of his students would learn, he told us:

“Absolutely. The course looks at science fiction movies as cinema, and in the social context and cultural and social themes of the films, and Max was able to respond in fun and creative ways to the movies both as entertainment (and most are quite entertaining) and as social and cultural productions with relevance to issues”     

Professor Couch

    MAICEI students are not required to request modifications themselves, but Max’s self-advocacy shows initiative and dedication to the material he wants to learn. The MAICEI Program is very proud of the process that Max undertook to succeed in his class.

Max waiting tables during a kitchen and restaurant skills training through UMass MAICEI June 2019.

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