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• Think of a student with a disability you have now or in the past. Describe ways in which their disability affected their learning in your class.
• I recently taught a student who was visually impaired as well as Orthopedically Impaired (MS), and TBI. She loved to draw comic characters, and would resist doing the assigned work, and I believe not due to her physical limitations, just preferred activity. I would give her several options to adapt her work to 'fit' with the assigned work and her interests, but sometimes there was not much flexibility for that to occur. Her para came up with lots of creative ways to adapt the assignments, but the thing that worked the best was positively reinforcing the most minor progress, sort of like a bread-crumb trail. By the end of the year, she would do the work with almost no prompting, and at her end-of-year IEP wrap-up it came up in discussion that maybe her auditory senses were the most active senses she had, and that she gravitated towards that good feeling as an intrinsic motivator, rather than just the other carrots like being able to read a comic at the end of class or end of week. My experience with her reminded me that while it is important to focus on ways to help equitably support your student's areas of need, you can't forget to focus on the things they are able to do!

• Describe an example of adapted assessment you have successfully used in the fine arts classroom for students with disabilities.
• At the end of unit, I asked students to complete a graphic organizer to demonstrate their understanding of the content. A girl who had ADHD and could become very disruptive did not want to do the assignment. I recognized it was not active enough for her. I asked her what she had in mind. She wanted to perform a rap song. I agreed with the stipulation that the song had to be planned and hit all the same points that would have appeared on the graphic organizer. She was so excited to write and perform the song for the class that she did not realize she did way more work than everyone else. (That same girl is now a Master Drill Sergeant in the U.S. Army!)

• Last year I taught a student who was visually impaired and could only see about 2 to 8 inches in front of her, and also had difficulty with depth perception as well as attending to any task for longer than about 3 minutes. For an assignment for understanding how to mix colors, I used a document camera that was trained on what her hands were doing, which allowed her to see better and she was able to not only do the assignment, but also engaged her beyond just the assignment- she would often prefer to use the screen for other tasks such as writing. Once she got over the difficulty of not looking right in front of her at what her hands were doing (it was hard for me to even model!), she became used to it and enjoyed the class rather than avoiding effort and assisted her with making some amazing work that she was proud to share with the class.