NPR features a series on students with disabilities preparing and transitioning to college with the following segments:

Q&A: Prepping Kids With Disabilities For College-NPR

Roger Diehl (photo left), a freshman at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has Asperger’s, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and depression, and his mother Sita Diehl, who runs Tennessee’s National Alliance On Mental Illness (NAMI), answer questions about getting ready for college.

Roger emphasizes the importance of focusing on the individual strengths and interests of students while learning social rules. Sita says social support is essential, particularly family and good friends, when considering placement.

See earlier post on Roger Diehl here.

10 Tips For College Students With Disabilities-NPR

Clinical psychologist and author Kathleen G. Nadeau shares strategies from her book, “Survival Guide for College Students with ADHD or LD” for developing learning and organization strategies to cope with learning disabilities at college.

Learning To Thrive With Attention Deficit Disorder-NPR

Emily Algire shares her story of transitioning to college as a student with attention deficit disorder (ADD).

“I think she’s got very good self-awareness” says [Emily's mother Betty] Overby. And all the tools she’s been taught for coping with her ADD are helping her feel strong.”

Editor’s note: Are Emily and Betty any relation to NPR correspondent Peter Overby?

(NPR photo)

By Sue Shellenbarger in the Wall Street Journal:

Students with learning disabilities are applying to colleges at five times the rate of the 1980s; colleges have only recently begun to provide services for qualified students with disabilities and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Attitudes and programs vary widely between schools.

While federal law has led to standardized jargon and services in K-12 education, the law for colleges simply requires them to make “reasonable accommodations” for students with disabilities.

Colleges lack universal labels to describe their supports, and guidebooks and educational consultants use no less than a half-dozen terms … to describe various service levels.

Shellenbarger offers tips and resources to help parents cut through the thicket, and says campus visits are crucial in selecting a school.

See also : Peterson’s: Colleges for Students with Learning Disabilities.

NPR follows 18-year-old Roger Diehl as he starts his freshman year at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Roger was an A-student throughout high school, but the prospect of leaving his Nashville home to go to college has been especially challenging for him and his family. Roger has ADHD and autism, and has had recurrent bouts of clinical depression.

He and his family have made college plans that build in supports for him, and have obtained legal documents that will allow a family member to make medical and financial decisions on Roger’s behalf if he becomes incapacitated. “I actually feel that it’s adding to my independence, because I feel they’ll be more responsive to my wishes than someone I don’t know,” he said.

Also on NPR: Why my autistic son misbehaves — commentary by Jennifer Hendrick

From Time Magazine, the New York Times, Bloomberg News and elsewhere:

With eight gold medals, swimmer Michael Phelps has become the greatest Olympic athlete ever. He’s known for his ability to concentrate intently on his sport — all the more remarkable considering his childhood history of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. (A grade school teacher once told his mother he would never succeed because he couldn’t focus in class.)

“It really shows that no matter what you set your imagination to, anything can happen,” Phelps said at a news conference. “If you dream as big as you can dream, anything’s possible.”

(AFP photo from Time Magazine)

Georgia eighth-grader had been repeatedly locked in seclusion room for up to seven hours at a time, according to court documents

From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Jonathan King, who had ADHD, had told teachers at his alternative public school that he couldn’t stand being locked up. He threatened suicide several times before hanging himself in the seclusion room in 2004 with a cord a teacher provided him to hold up his pants.

A lawyer for the Alpine Program in Gainesville said there is no law addressing the use of seclusion rooms in schools, and that under Georgia law the school can’t be held accountable for Jonathan’s actions.

While there are data available on suicide in public schools, there are no specific data on suicides in seclusion rooms.

Officials for the Georgia Advocacy Office say Jonathan’s case points to this lack of data and oversight.
“This is not an isolated incident. In Georgia, we don’t have any particular rules about seclusion rooms and restraint,” said Ruby Moore, executive director of the Georgia Advocacy Office, one of 50 state offices providing advocacy for the disabled.

From the Washington Post:

Inspired by his son Casey, Kirk Martin developed a business called Celebrate Calm, which uses workshops to coach parents and teachers on helping kids with ADHD and other conditions. (Kirk at left, holding a brain model, with son Casey.)

The key to Martin’s approach: His belief that “intense” kids need adults to model calm behavior.

His thinking is not that something is wrong with “intense” children, a term used to describe children who can be volatile because of conditions such as ADHD, oppositional defiance disorder, and sensory integration and anxiety disorders.

Instead, Kirk says, he believes they are simply wired differently and have “gifts, talents and passions” that are not compatible with traditional educational settings. Rather than asking how to “fix” these kids, he says he asks, “What are the advantages, what are the ways we can work with this mind to obtain good results?”

(Washington Post photo)