My name is Natalia Rivera.
I'm a doctoral student.
And well, doctoral graduate, actually.
And in the Department of Hispanic
Languages and Literature at the
University of Pittsburgh.
I'm also a Spanish Instructor and I
specialize in Latin American,
Italian literature and
critical disabilities studies.
So my interests, my academic interests
are intimately tied to my personal
experience as a student and
now instructor with
a learning disability and co-occurring
anxiety.
So, the first memory that I remember,
just on a personal level,
recognizing that there was some access
issues or some degree of
especially in the high school level.
Some degree of
a lack of knowledge, really, of
different types of learning styles
and different types of processing speeds
because of my diagnosis of Attention
Deficit Disorder. One of the key
components of how that,
you know, how ADD affects me is that
I have a slower processing speed.
So while my reading comprehension is
strong,
my processing speed affects my
writing speed so I'm not always
able to produce a paragraph in a
timely manner. So, we often
had problems in English class. This
was in tenth grade and
the expectation was that we would be
able to write a paragraph in half-hour.
And often times I would need double
amount of time. I would need an hour.
And sometimes I wouldn't even be able
to finish one simple paragraph
in an hour.
And I remember my English instructor,
at the time,
after class when I sort of approached her
and said,
"Uhm, hey. Not withstanding the
original time. I wasn't
really able to finish my paragraph."
And I remember she looked at me
incredulous and said to me,
"If you can't even write a paragraph,
a simple paragraph in one hour,
I don't know what to tell you.
So, I remember that moment. I
also remember later on
when I was preparing for her AP Exams.
This also happened in high school.
This was my junior year. I was taking
an AP World History class
And I remember that I approached my
instructor, already knowing on my own
'cause I had already had plenty of
experience advocating for myself since
I was a child. I already knew that
all standardized testing
had a process for requesting
accommodations.
So, I remember approaching my AP
World History Exam and-
I meant, my AP World History teacher
and explaining to him
that I was registered with disability
resources, that I had a documented
disability and that these were
the particular accommodations I needed
time and a half. It was a very common
accommodation.
And I remember him telling me, "I don't
have a problem providing you
classroom accommodations. I'm just not
sure that
that extended time is provided on the
AP Exam." And I was just
flabbergasted that an instructor would
actively misinform me that way
because even I knew at the tender age
of, I don't know, sixteen!
that ATS always provided a process
for requesting
accommodation. So, I was stunned
that an adult felt that he could
just misinform me that way. And I
know
that misinforming me not necessarily
with a negative intent, but he
genuinely had no notion of the
process. And
yeah. So, it's un-willful misinformation,
but
the effect is similar. Because imagine
had he said something like that
to a student who had no idea how
to request accommodations.
You know, how to attain an
evaluation to substantiate
the need for accommodations. So
it's just a lot of misinformation
Enabled with ignorance, not so much
malice.
But just the complete lack of information
out there just really compromises
student's ability to advocate for
themselves
In my personal work with the
disability rights
community because I worked two
and a half years at a disability
rights organization called Autistic
Self Advocacy Network
and meeting a lot of people my age
a lot of students don't find out that
they have a diagnosis until much later
in life. Once they start noticing, picking
up on their own symptoms they seek
out individually supports. So I
certainly, on a personal level, benefited
from my
mother's knowledge and from her
experiences as a parent advocate.
I think my awareness of a level
of discrimination