Janet Price of College Living Experience

Guest contributor Janet Price is the National Director of Admissions and Outreach at College Living Experience. She has 10 years previous experience as an educational advocate and has co-authored two books, Take Control of Asperger’s Syndrome, winner of the 2010 Legacy Book Award, and Take Control of Dyslexia, as well as numerous articles. Janet has been a guest lecturer for graduate programs at Towson University and American University and frequently presents at national conferences.

By now we have run out of superlatives to express the unprecedented sense of sadness and loss experienced by our Class of 2020 high school seniors. In addition to navigating the fear of a pandemic and disruption of life at every level, our young adults have had to do without the milestones that typically mark their transition to college. No graduation. No prom. None of the typical rituals of closure marking the end of their secondary school experience.

For students with special needs, transitions can be challenging under the best of circumstances. So, is it a good idea to continue with plans to attend college if that college is going to be all virtual this fall? There are pros, there are cons, and most importantly, there are options!

First, the pros. There are a lot of good reasons not to put the future on hold and to continue with post-secondary plans.

Maintaining forward momentum. Beginning college classes, even virtually, feels like a natural progression forward. Waiting until campus life returns to what it was pre-COVID-19 means that the next step toward independence and adulthood is indefinitely on hold.
Maintaining routines and good study habits. Once a student, especially a student who has challenges with executive functioning, gets out of the routine of studying and following a schedule, it can be very hard to re-establish good study habits.
Learning about college expectations. Exposure to the rigors of college, even virtually, provides an opportunity for practice so that the student will be more prepared when life on campus does resume.

Of course, there are cons as well. Many of these concerns are the same types of challenges that we all experienced with distance learning over the last semester.

Motivation. If my high school senior was not motivated to tune into his Zoom classes or complete assignments, how do I know that they will be motivated to do their college classes online?
Family harmony. Many families experienced significant tension trying to balance distance learning for their kids and working from home. How much support will your college freshman need to stay on track? Can you use the same strategies to hold a young adult accountable for homework that you did when they were in high school? Should you?
Accommodations. How will the college provide classroom accommodations in a virtual model? Will this be sufficient?

Virtual independent living skills ‘cooking group’ session

Fortunately, the decision is not a zero-sum game. There are options that lie between taking the risk to try virtual college classes without support and postponing college until things reopen safely. Some colleges offer additional fee-for-service supports that go beyond the limited accommodations available to students with special needs. Enrolling in a program like this can help your student to build a rapport and have someone to rely on to navigate supports on campus once in-person classes resume.

If your college does not offer such a program, there is also the option of hiring an executive function coach who can meet with your student virtually or socially distanced in-person a set number of times per week. An executive function coach can teach students to prioritize assignments and plan their study time, as well as help them maintain their effort. If neither of these options offers enough support to address all the concerns listed above, you can also consider looking into a more robust post-secondary support program with wrap-around services.

College Living Experience in Austin, Texas (additional locations in Washington, DC; Ft. Lauderdale, FL; Nashville, TN; Denver, CO; and Costa Mesa and Monterey in CA), is one such program. CLE offers support to young adults 18 and over in the areas of academics, career development, social skills, and independent living skills. Students live in apartments close to the CLE center. They have support in the apartments, from a Resident Advisor who is available after hours to Independent Living Skills instructors who help them manage their space, meal plan and cook, and even pay their own bills. The center itself consists of individual tutoring rooms where students receive daily academic support both in content and executive function. Students also receive support in career development and participate in supervised social activities.

Socially distant and masked CLE student advising session

Because students are living in apartments and not in dormitories, they are able to continue with the program and continue receiving supports virtually if necessary, even if campuses need to close. At the college level, that means that students are following a set schedule, taking their online classes independently, and receiving support from professional tutors, whether that is virtual in their apartments, or whether they are permitted to come to the center and use an individual tutoring room to replicate the experience of going to a classroom. This also removes many potential sources of conflict from the home, from arguments over chores to parents feeling responsible for making students do their homework.

As challenges continue to mount for now, remember that other options exist besides the extremes of continuing a distance learning model that may not have been successful last semester at home and doing nothing. Whether through exploring additional supports on campus, utilizing executive function coaches socially distanced or virtual, or moving to a post-secondary program geared toward supporting all aspects of independence, a new normal calls for a look into new strategies that allow our young adults to progress.

Janet Price

Scott Allen, Psy.D., is Director of Psychological Services at College Living Experience (CLE) in Austin, which provides wrap-around supports for young adults with learning differences such as Autism Spectrum Disorder and ADHD. His guest post explains the rationale behind using tabletop role-playing games to teach social skills in CLE Austin’s highly successful programs. An earlier version of this article appeared on the CLE website last year, and we are honored and excited to share it with Alt Ed Austin’s readers.

As a kid of the 80s, video games were a big part of my childhood. I was always interested in having the newest game system and trying out the hottest game. They were a refuge for me after a rough day at school, and a way for me to relieve the frustrations of everyday life. Anyone who has defeated a particularly difficult boss can attest to the senses of accomplishment and pride that accompany this amazing feat. At that point in my life, gaming was a relatively solitary activity that I used to help me cope with the stresses of each day.

There was another side of gaming that I knew about but did not explore in my youth. I had a small group of friends who would talk about playing D&D (Dungeons and Dragons). I thought I would somehow be considered uncool for playing D&D, so I dismissed offers to play the game. As a kid, I was a “closeted geek.” Boy, did I miss out!

Flash forward to my time at CLE. In our Austin center, I have placed great efforts on making our social programming interesting and fun for our students. My approach to teaching is mostly interest-based as I feel that students learn best when they are truly engaged and enjoying their activities. One of my colleagues introduced the idea of tabletop role-playing games (RPGs)—the broader category of games that include D&D and other games requiring participants to take on the roles of characters—as social-teaching tools. I overheard her leading some games in the lounge, witnessed the student engagement, and took note of what great social opportunities these games are.

With my support, my colleague led several tabletop gaming groups. For anyone who hasn’t played, here’s a quick primer. Tabletop gaming has a few general facets:

Players assume the roles of characters who are not themselves (though they may integrate aspects of themselves into their roles). Players stay “in character” during the game and interact with each other as their characters would.
Games are loosely structured, giving players quite a bit of leeway in making decisions in the game.
There is a Game Master, or GM (a Dungeon Master, or DM, in D&D), who leads the adventure. GMs can keep the game very structured, leading the group down a preset adventure, or can be very unstructured, with a more improv-based approach.
There is opportunity for adventuring parties to coordinate and discuss plans for the game. The best games have characters with varying skill sets, allowing the party to take advantage of each character’s strengths.
Despite all the planning the party may perform, there is still an element of chance in the game, usually in the form of a dice roll. When characters use their skills, they roll dice to determine success or failure (called a check in gaming terms).
There are usually elements of exploration, interaction with non-player characters (NPCs), and various forms of battle in tabletop RPGs.

In my experience as a social-skills instructor, it is hard to think of approaches that are more effective in teaching social interaction in a completely nonthreatening way. Our students love this approach, and we have seen evidence of the generalization of skills outside the gaming setting. Tabletop gaming is also a great way to work on executive functioning components, such as planning, prioritizing, flexibility, and emotional control. Below are a few of the many skill areas that can be addressed using tabletop gaming.

Perspective Taking: It’s hard to think of a time in the game when you do not have to take another person’s perspective, as you are acting out a character the entire time. Players also interact with NPCs, often requiring them to understand how to gear communication in order to reach an optimal outcome.
Flexibility: Anything can happen in tabletop games, and parties must adjust quickly to rapidly changing conditions in the game. One important concept in tabletop gaming is called the hidden third option. Often in the game (and in life), we encounter situations when we seemingly have a limited number of choices. In a tabletop game, you might run into a situation where you must fight or avoid a rat, for example. The hidden third option might be to use some cheese to lure the rat to distract a bigger enemy, allowing you to slip by.
Teamwork/Cooperation: The best tabletop adventures require a wide range of characters with different skill sets. When presented with a strength-based challenge, the team needs to have a fighter or a warrior in order to be most effective. However, a mental challenge might require a wizard or a cleric. In addition, parties might encounter puzzles or team-based challenges that require players to work as a group to solve them. When one player struggles, the team must step in to help that player, or the entire party might suffer a grim consequence, like a Beholder wiping the party off the face of the world.
Planning: Although much of the game is done on the fly, skilled parties often plan sequences of actions that depend on the success of prior actions. Sequencing and coordination of actions is very important in battle situations and puzzle solving during the game.
Communication: Non-player characters may respond differently to players’ characters, based not only on what they say but also on how they say it. For example, if a player demands an item in a rude way, the NPC might respond in kind, refusing to give the item, destroying it, or fighting the party. This allows players to have “real” opportunities to work on communication skills without having to deal with the consequences of an embarrassing interaction in real life.

My experiences playing these games at CLE led me to seek out others who enjoy tabletop games in my outside life. I have joined a group of tabletop gamers and have learned to embrace my inner geek in a way that I never had before.

A couple of year ago, unfortunately, my colleague left CLE, and we were in need of new GMs. How did we handle that? First, I gave myself a crash course in how to run a tabletop gaming group. I have been able to run games with premade stories and alter the games based on the needs and goals of the participants. For example, one week I set up a situation where the party needed to utter the magic word help in order to move forward in the game. The reason I added this element to the story was that a student was struggling with asking for help in their everyday life. I am currently running a brand-new group with students playing as superheroes. This will be my first time generating and executing a completely original story.

Second, we have had CLE students volunteer to run tabletop gaming groups with staff assistance. We currently have a student who has made his own tabletop gaming system based on a popular video game. It has been great to see this student lead the game, ask the group for feedback, and integrate the feedback into the game.

Learning how to socialize can be seen as boring or useless for many of our students, but the social skills they learn at CLE are among the most critical in terms of job success and building lifelong relationships. It’s sometimes difficult to talk about areas of life that are challenging, and socialization is often challenging for our student population. The use of interest-based techniques, such as tabletop gaming, helps to take the “edge” off social training, making it fun for both participants and instructors.

Scott Allen