As a student with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), depression, and anxiety, I’ve had academic accommodations nearly my entire life. The first thing I remember being told in elementary school about my diagnoses were my strengths and challenges. My parents, teachers, and psychiatrist wanted me to understand that I struggled in ways my peers didn’t, but that I also excelled in ways they may not: my academic challenges didn’t mean I was incapable of achievement.
As part of this ongoing conversation with the adults in my life, I was introduced to the idea of accommodations. They told me that I could take longer on tests and use a four function calculator because it would help me show my true ability and learning. My accommodations would “level the playing field” and let me perform on the same level as my peers. However, as I’ve started to examine my experience with the benefit of hindsight, this well meaning saying ultimately hurt my ability to use accommodations appropriately.
Leveling the playing field
The sentiment behind “leveling the playing field” followed me throughout my education: because I struggled with things like attention, memory, and motivation, I needed a metaphorical step stool to reach the academic bar set by my peers. Without accommodations, I wouldn’t be able to show my learning as well as my classmates who took organized notes and finished tests with plenty of time to spare, and I would receive grades that didn’t match my true ability. This is what I told my friends when they said I was lucky to have more time than them or a calculator. The unintended subtext was that my accommodations compensated for the things I did worse than my peers. Over time, I learned that the way to overcome my challenges was to accommodate them away in order to perform on the same level as my peers.
Self esteem instead of agency
In trying to help my self esteem and sense of competency, my sense of agency over my learning never fully developed. I knew that I was different, and proudly so. I understood that my brain worked in a unique way that wasn’t automatically compatible with school, so I needed some extra help to fix it. And I took pride in straight A’s that I earned with my accommodations. This attitude remained firmly in place until I began struggling more in high school. My depression and anxiety worsened, which in turn made it harder to manage the challenges I already had. In middle school, I needed 1.5x time on tests in order to finish the test and check my work. By sophomore year, I was barely finishing within the 1.5x time I had. In junior year, I was leaving questions unanswered, and I had no idea what to do except ask for 2x time.
My new 2x time accommodation worked for the first semester of my senior year, but by the second semester I was leaving tests incomplete again, even with double the time others were given. I felt frustrated and lost on how to go back to thinking faster and remembering more like I had done when I was younger. It felt like my academic abilities were going away because I needed more and more time to complete similar work. When I went to college, I was worried that my 2x time wouldn’t be enough for even harder and more advanced assignments. But I was surprised to find myself completing assessments with enough time to check my work and take small breaks, without changing anything about how I studied or learned.
How academic accommodations can support agency
This is what I wish someone had explained to me as a kid. Accommodations reduce barriers to students using the skills and tools they already have. Instead of compensating for something I can’t do, accommodations give me space to use strategies I’ve learned in therapy and executive functioning lessons. In my junior and senior years of high school, I struggled with depression, anxiety, and chronic pain that drained my energy and made it hard to complete schoolwork. At the time, I didn’t have the right tools to manage that, and my schoolwork suffered. However, now in college, I have learned how to manage those symptoms and regained a sense of autonomy over my learning. My 2x time in high school couldn’t help me past a certain point because I didn’t know how to reduce the anxiety I felt. The more tests I didn’t finish, the more anxious I became. When I was given double time, I didn’t know that breathing exercises, stretching, or getting some cold water would help. Instead I spent the whole time trying to fight the anxiety preventing me from completing work which only made me more anxious that I wouldn’t be able to finish. Even though I was getting more accommodations than ever before, they weren’t helping because I didn’t know how to use them yet.
This is not to say that I never get anxious on tests anymore. In fact, I get just about the same amount of anxiety now as I did at the start of each test in high school. But now I know how to reduce that stress. I take time to reduce my anxiety before and during assessments. I sleep in, have a slow breakfast, and head to the room I need to be in early so I don’t need to rush at the last minute. The night before, I pack any materials I’ll need including fidgets, a small snack, and ice cold water that stays in my fridge until I leave for the test. During my tests, I know that I can use those tools to regulate myself and return to my work without running out of time. I have extra time so that I can pause to use the tools and skills that help me, not because I need more time to compensate for an inability to think faster. This is what it means to have agency over my learning. The accommodation isn’t the thing that lets me succeed, it’s my own abilities, both academic and emotional; the accommodation just gives me time to use them.
How this mindset can be helpful when considering academic accommodations
The first step is to understand what is preventing a student from succeeding such that accommodations are required. For example, as a kid I missed points on assessments for incorrect mental math that affected my final answers but not my process. I also struggled to organize arguments in my head and put them into concise essays. But as I got older and learned strategies that helped me organize my thoughts, I struggled with assessments because of anxious thoughts distracting me. This is why finding the root cause is so important: completely different challenges can present similarly. One student may struggle to sit still in class due to anxiety while another student needs to fidget.
The second step is to evaluate if a student knows the skills they need to overcome challenges. While I knew how to manage my distractibility and tendency to skim in high school, I didn’t know how to manage my anxiety, which is why I couldn’t make use of my extra time effectively. Showing students a wide range of strategies and skills and letting them experiment freely can help them find the ones that work best and feel the most natural to integrate into their work. Again, this is highly individual, even for the same challenge and can change over time.
The last step is to understand what accommodation would help students use the strategies that they find helpful. When I was younger, I needed more time to thoroughly check my work and use techniques to organize my thoughts in order to catch the small mistakes I made frequently. But now I need time to use anxiety management skills on top of the organization skills that are habit now. For some students, the accommodation that helps the most is something that better integrates the skill into the academic situation, like extra time to use a skill, a private testing room to use skills that may be distracting to other students, or noise canceling headphones to prevent extra noise that would distract a student from the skill they need. For other students, the barrier is remembering to use a skill or how to use it in each situation. For example a checklist of steps to complete a strategy, visual markers like highlighters to make strategy applications stand out more, or a signal from a teacher to remind students when skill use is needed.
An example of this mindset being helpful in finding accommodations that help me use skills is my housing accommodation. When I was accepted to college, I was faced with accommodations I had never considered before. So how did I decide to request a single dorm accommodation? The first step was to understand what I need in order to feel comfortable and perform my best. For me, this means a consistent, familiar space that doesn’t have anything new or changing to distract me. It also means somewhere I can move and talk freely. This allows me to use the skills I’ve learned like talking aloud which helps me work through problems, and moving around which lets me focus on my work rather than focusing on sitting still in a public setting. I also need the privacy to use my anxiety management skills when work feels overwhelming. All of these clash with having a roommate. Another person brings unpredictability in the space itself and an inability to guarantee privacy. My single room is the right tool that allows me to use all the skills I need, and has been something I use that way nearly every day.
