Every year, the Academic Skills Center (ASC) opens its doors to help new students manage the whirlwind of commitments at Andover and the school’s demanding academic workload. Due to a recent rise in the number of reported concussions and learning disabilities, however, the ASC has been forced to forgo appointments with students who seek academic assistance to prioritize those with learning and temporary disabilities. The number of students requiring disability accommodations in a full year has grown from 33 in the 2011-2012 school year to 51 students in the 2012-2013 school year. As a result, the ASC has had to cut 16 students from the previous 87 one-on-one appointments. The rise in accommodations for issues such as concussions and learning disabilities, however, has not emerged from a sudden increase in students with disabilities, but rather from a growing awareness about disabilities in general, according to Patricia Davison, Director of the ASC and Coordinator of Student Disability Services. Disabilities can be medical, temporary or learning-based; among these three types, ASC has seen the largest increase in learning disabilities, said Davison. The majority of students that approach the ASC with learning disabilities have Attention Deficit Disorders (ADD) or anxiety disorders, which can cause distraction, lack of organization and lack of priorities—all major academic skills. “We probably weren’t taking [concussions] seriously enough until recent years. There was the lawsuit against the National Football League that was settled in the defendant’s favor… I think more kids who had concussions who weren’t treated in the past are now being treated, which is a good thing,” said Davison. “The stigma that may have once persisted around having a disability I think has lifted greatly. People are much more accepting and understand that it has nothing to do with how intelligent or capable you are.” The ASC’s disability accommodations normally consist of working with students’ parents and teachers to arrange for extra time, moving assignments and assessing students through different methods. “Every [disability accommodation] is complex and very involved, and there are a lot of players that need to be part of, for example, a conversation about concussion management or any sort of situation that doesn’t neatly fit in the box. It’s a time-intensive process to do it well, to make sure that you’re handling each situation differently,” said Marlena Ysalguez, Academic Skills Specialist at the ASC. As the ASC staff shifts its focus to helping students with disabilities, one-on-one academic skills appointments are becoming few and far between, forcing the ASC to rethink the way in which it helps students with their academic skills at Andover. To compensate, the ASC now hosts group appointments, featuring discussions of organizational and planning skills for large groups of new students during advising periods or at night before finals week. “If we can offer one session about organization to 20 kids in an advising period, that might be a better use of our time than scheduling 20 one-on-one appointments. So we’ve been trying to find ways to deploy resources more efficiently,” said Davison.
