Promoting Self-Awareness and Self-Advocacy for Students with Disabilities

Using the ME! Lessons for Teaching Self-Awareness & Self-Advocacy (Cantley, Little, & Martin, n.d.) as a guideline, I created "bell ringers" to teach transition age students with disabilities about self-awareness and self-advocacy in rewards to their disability and IEP. I taught these skills to a small group of four students. Every day, these four students met for 10 minutes during the start of the day. The research conducted is self-study research (Hauge, 2021). For all students with disabilities, especially at the transition age, self-awareness and self-advocacy is so important. To be able to continue teaching these lessons after this experience, I reflected on my teaching of these skills, the gathering of materials, how well the materials encouraged student growth, student involvement, etc. I conducted this research to improve myself as a professional educator. I reflected on the challenges in these lessons and how to work through them.