College Counseling with the NVLD Student
This chapter will provide practical suggestions for advising college-bound students with nonverbal learning disabilities (NVLD) and their families in the college selection and application process. A literature review found no research on this topic for st
- PDF / 264,408 Bytes
- 29 Pages / 439.37 x 666.14 pts Page_size
- 48 Downloads / 198 Views
College Counseling with the NVLD Student Jane McClure
This chapter will provide practical suggestions for advising college-bound students with nonverbal learning disabilities (NVLD) and their families in the college selection and application process. A literature review found no research on this topic for students with NVLD, and little for specific learning disabilities. What was found will be included in this chapter, but the strategies and suggestions discussed herein are largely based upon the experiences of seasoned practitioners in the field. As they relate to selecting and applying to college, the impact of NVLD on academic, organizational, and social difficulties will be discussed. Furthermore, this chapter will explore a variety of challenges facing the collegebound student with NVLD and his or her family. This will include the typical academic and social issues of students with NVLD, academic and social interventions and accommodations for working with college-bound and college-transitioning students with NVLD, a brief overview of relevant laws, and description of a model for how to think about differing levels of support provided by colleges for students with NVLD. Lastly, a case study illustrating this kind of work with a student with NVLD and her family will be presented.
Academic Issues In order to understand the significant issues related to college-counseling students with NVLD, it is helpful to know what selective colleges (those that don’t admit all students who apply) are looking for when reviewing applications in general. To begin with, college admission personnel are looking for students who have chosen a challenging curriculum within the context of what has been available to them at J. McClure, M.A (*) McClure, Mallory, Baron & Ross, 200 Lombard Street, San Francisco, CA 94111, USA e-mail: [email protected] J. Broitman and J.M. Davis (eds.), Treating NVLD in Children: Professional Collaborations for Positive Outcomes, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-6179-1_11, © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013
217
218
J. McClure
their high schools. It is to a student’s advantage to take some honors or Advanced Placement courses. It is also viewed positively if students take more than what is minimally required, e.g., 4 or 5 years of math when 3 years are required or 3 or 4 years of foreign language when only 2 years are required. Grades earned in all courses are important, of course, but getting straight A’s in a “weak” curriculum will not be impressive to a college admission counselor. College admission counselors may have to help students with specific learning disabilities to make choices regarding a challenging curriculum because SLD students may not be able to do as well in all subjects. Students with NVLD, specifically, often have difficulty with math and/or science (Whitney, 2002). Writing essays and papers, especially with the level of complexity and concept formation/abstract thinking that is required during the last 2 years of high school, is also very challenging for many students with NV
Data Loading...
