As a School Psychologist, I mostly provide counseling services to students with Disabilities through either their IEP or sometimes 504 Plan. Counseling students with disabilities is not always, but definitely can be a bit different than counseling children that do not have disabilities. This is because you have to consider several factors, such as the type of disability, cognitive functioning, developmental delays, communication ability, and even academic delays.
When counseling typically developing children, you can often engage in discussions, ask challenging questions, and work on self-reflection at their developmental age level. When counseling students with disabilities, however, you may have to get creative with getting them to engage in an activity, talk about their feelings, and learn social and emotional skills in your counseling sessions.
Activities may need to be modified or changed all together to accommodate their ability to communicate their thoughts, express their emotions, and practice skills taught. Activities also need to typically made fun, engaging, and novel in order to keep these students wanting to come to your office…week after week, often for an entire year.
Considering the Type of Disability
When counseling students with disabilities, you need to first consider the type of disability that the student has. Students with a learning disability are going to require different types of activities, as well as modifications in curriculum, than a student with average academic skills or cognitive functioning.
Students with ADHD or Autism may also require the use of flexible seating and sensory items while engaging in your lesson or activity. For example, I have Play Doh, mini Rubix Cubes, and lots of squishy balls in a basket in my office. Students are often allowed to hold these items if I am showing them a video lesson or as a reward towards the end of the session. Don’t forget your disinfectant for when the session is over, however!
Other considerations should be made for students with learning difficulties, as they will likely not be good candidates to do worksheets or journaling activities with due to low academic and writing skills. Accommodations for these students may include using worksheet questions as discussion topics and writing information in for them if you need something filled out. In addition, students with behaviors often have writing as trigger for their behaviors. Counseling is not a great time to trigger behaviors. Plus, writing is not too fun, right?
Modifying the Counseling Curriculum
One of my modified arts and crafts activities is my “coupons of appreciation book” that I like to have students make for their parents for the holidays or Mother’s Day. In this activity, student can either write their own chores in their booklet that they would like to help with, or they can cut and paste a pre-written chore from a list of chores. By providing the pre-written sentences, students are able to participate on the activity, without the anxiety of writing.
Other modifications may include using materials that are adjusted for the student’s cognitive functioning. Just last week, I provided a lesson on Size of Problems to a Special Education classroom of Kindergarteners that I modified from playing it as a BINGO game to a coloring Small, Medium, or Large Bubbles. To do this, I quickly created a “bubbles” paper worksheet using power point. Modifications like these can help students gain access to your lessons at their level, so that they can participate, be engaged, and learn.
Planning a Curriculum to help the Student Meet Specific Goals
Students with disabilities have had their parents and IEP teams decide their fate, often for an entire school year. This means that you need LOTS of activities to help them meet their IEP Goals if you are seeing them on a weekly basis. This is why pre-made curriculums are a key to success when counseling students with disabilities. Pre-made curriculums provide structure, variety, and reduce your planning time. And time is your most valuable commodity when you are a school counselor or psychologist!
I don’t know about you, but kids like novelty. They also like to have fun. This is why I have created several different curriculums that focus on specific topics, such as Social Skills, Coping Skills, Emotional Regulation, and Self-Esteem. Each one combines instruction through videos, games, and arts and crafts activities. This helps keep kids wanting to come to counseling with…YOU! Not only do they get out of class, get an adult’s undivided attention, but they get to have fun while learning important social and emotional skills.
To check out any of these Counseling curriculums below, just click on the picture below!
