This week in tech we had guest speakers Kaori Lau and Tracy Humphreys who are a part of the BCEdAccess organization that is to support families and students with disabilities and complex learning needs. To start off the class Tracy did a sticky note demonstration to show exclusion in the classroom. Each of us got sticky notes and there were four different colours. Green meant that she didn’t have support so you could leave, blue meant that you could stay for half the class, and all the other students could stay the whole time. I thought that this was a really great way to represent what happens in elementary classrooms everyday. I had never been a student that couldn’t be accommodated and when she asked me to leave cause she couldn’t support me I felt very taken back. I think this was a great way to show able-bodied, neurotypical people how to feel to not be accommodated in the classroom. 

Another aspect of the presentation that I thought was really interesting was the procedure to get students funding and the resources that they need. Tracy discussed the different designations that students need to obtain to get different amounts of funding. I thought it was particularly interesting that the funding that the student receives is not tied to that specific student, but rather given to the school district for them to allocate where they deem necessary. One positive aspect of this way of allocating money, is that students that do not have a formal diagnosis can still get access to support, but can also cause students who have formal diagnosis to fight for the resources that they require. A big barrier for students obtaining a designation is getting a formal diagnosis from a psychoeducational assessment which can be very difficult to get through the public school system and can get quite expensive if done through a private practice. Overall I learned a lot from these guest speakers and I think it will be really useful information to have in the future.