“Fairness does not mean everyone gets the same. Fairness means everyone gets what they need.” (). First and foremost, it is important to create that atmosphere in the classroom. When you create a community atmosphere in the classroom where everyone works together for the good of everyone, it is easier for students to understand when students need to receive accommodations. However, accommodations can become a crutch for the student if they are not faded at an appropriate pace to the student’s growing abilities. When the adults working with the student allow accommodations to become them basically giving the student the answers over and over again, that is enabling the student to not do the work themselves, but rather depend on those around them. The line must be drawn at the place where it allows the work to be somewhat challenging for the student while not becoming so difficult that the work is at the point of frustration for the student, in other words in the proximal zone of development. We must remember that if we give a man a fish, we feed him for the day, but if we teach him to fish he will eat for a lifetime.
Question/Prompt: Considering the importance of students being provided with accommodations and modifications to access the general education curriculum with their non-disabled peers, where is the line in which accommodations enable the student versus empower the student? If a student has been on an IEP. They are accustomed to the accommodations & modifications. More often than not, students benefit from having concessions made while in a school setting. Accommodations are known as Supports to help students access locations, opportunities, and the general curriculum and validate learning (Smiley, Taylor, & Richards, 2019). Accommodations are necessary to measure the academic achievements and actual performance of a child. In most cases, accommodations make it possible for students to bypass their disabilities and better access the general curriculum; however, for many students, the line in which accommodations enable the child versus empowering them can be thin.
While accommodations are meant to support the students in their needs, they can enable a child. Nurturing involves interfering with acquiring new competencies, reducing a personal sense of self-control over one’s life, or reinforcing old behavior (Smiley, Taylor, & Richards, 2019). A primary example of enabling is excessive accommodations that do not permit a student to gain control over their disability or demonstrate accurate acquisition of skills.
accommodations that do not permit a student to gain control over their disability. When it comes to students with disabilities, the goal is to empower them to gain enough stability to work independently eventually. Empowering students promotes personal growth and increases competencies, encrypt, increases a personal sense of control over one’s life, and encourages new coping abilities to replace certain behavior(Smiley, Taylor, & Richards, 2019). For students, appropriate accommodations help them be successful learners in all environments and increase student independence and self-advocate advocacy skills as they progress throughout the school. To empower student accommodation should be based on their strengths Anne help them demonstrate their knowledge (Smiley, Taylor, & Richards, 2019) As an educator, we need to remember 1 John 4:4 when it stated,” you, dear children, off from God and have overcome them because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world “(NIV). While enabling and empowering can have a thin line between them. We can always support our students’ needs through appropriate accommodations that permit them to gain independence and strengthen their educational environment success.
