The Challenges of Working for Students with Disabilities: A View from the Front Lines.

Abstract

In accepting the charge to design and implement developmental school counseling programs that address the needs of all of the students they serve, school counselors face a number of challenges. The purpose of this article is to reflect on some specific challenges school counselors experience as they work with and for students with disabilities and to present one elementary school counselor's personal account of how she responded to several of these challenges. Her challenges included (1) assuming responsibility for expanding and enhancing her own professional development regarding her understanding of the needs of students with disabilities, (2) responding to the needs of students with disabilities within a developmental school counseling program, and (3) designing a teacher in-service to enhance others' perceptions, attitudes, and understanding of these students as whole, capable persons. The Challenges Over the past two decades, increasing numbers of students with disabilities have been educated in the public schools of the United States as a result of the historic passage of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (PL 94-142, 1975). With the passage of PL 94-142, Congress legislated access to free, appropriate education for all children with disabilities with the provision they be placed in the least restrictive environment. That is, the children's educational placement must be consistent with their educational needs; and, insofar as possible, they are to be educated with their nondisabled peers. This landmark legislation brought school counselors fully into the front lines of serving students with special needs and required counselors to define their responsibility for working with the students, their parents, and their teachers (Kameen, 1979). Challenges in Attitudes and Perceptions More recent Congressional legislation passed in 1990 extended the educational and civil rights of persons with disabilities (Hallahan & Kauffman, 1997). The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA, PL 101476, 1990), amending PL 94-142, and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) brought changes that school counselors need to recognize in working with students with disabilities. One of the IDEA changes is that the term children was changed to individuals. This change emphasizes that as students progress in school they transition from childhood to young adulthood. It highlights students' changing needs as they experience different developmental tasks and stages. Knowledgeable about human development, school counselors are challenged to help teachers, parents, and the students themselves understand how developmental changes may be more complex and complicated depending upon the nature of the disability. The term handicapped was changed to disabilities, a significant perceptual and attitudinal change reflecting that a handicap is a limitation imposed by society and a disability is an inability to do something, a diminished capacity to perform in a specific (Hallahan & Kauffman, 1997, p. 7). School counselors can help educators shift their perceptions and attitudes from viewing students as handicapped to viewing students as persons with disabilities who are able to perform certain tasks and less able to perform other tasks. Internalizing this attitudinal change can make a profound difference in the way students with disabilities are treated in schools. The 1975 mandated academic and social integration of students with and without disabilities became commonly known as mainstreaming. Mainstreaming has been defined as the social and instructional placement of students with exceptionalities in a regular education classroom for all or part of the school day (Schulz & Carpenter, 1995). Across the past 20 years, mainstreaming has created extensive and pervasive changes within schools for all school personnel. Regular classroom teachers have been required to teach students with a broader range of abilities and the challenge to school counselors has been to support teachers' efforts. …