The "Holiday Blues" for Students with Physical Disabilities: Sandy's Story

For Sandy and many students with disabilities who attend school communities, the holidays can be a time of stress and depression, especially during scheduled and unscheduled school closures. When schools are closed due to the weather conditions or an emergency situation, that time of separation can be an especially tumultuous time for students with special needs who are conditioned to structured learning environments and instructional accommodations governed by IEPs (Individualized Education Plans).

In Sandy's situation, his IEP includes additional accommodations like physical therapy (PT) three times a week and weekly visits with a speech pathologist to work on verbal diagnostic issues, so he especially misses the structure of PT and working on his language and speech skills. After two days of school closure due to an unexpected winter snowfall, Sandy is feeling bluer than the coldest biting wind whipping up the flaky snow, and covering everything in Sandy's neighborhood and the city, including his favorite elementary school.

Sandy is a precocious 10 year old fifth grader, who loves to cut wheelies in his wheelchair out on the playground when he's not playing dodge-ball or basketball with his classmates. In Ms. Crowder's fifth grade class, Sandy is vivacious and incredibly engaging in class. He is a definitely a leader in exhibiting outstanding academic and social skills in his individual and group presentations. With his slight speech impediment, he is still able to verbalize his needs and wants in the class and students are so attuned to his voice, that they at times don't hear his mispronunciation of certain words like "cuq" instead of "cue." What Ms. Crowder has noted is that the other students listen attentively when Sandy presents because he is their valued classmate and friend.

For Ms. Crowder, Sandy is an ideal student academically and socially, but lately she's noticed with the impending holiday break that Sandy is out of sorts. He seems withdrawn and irritable which are a definite contrast to his usually sunny disposition. Sandy keeps asking to go online to see the weather report for the week which Ms. Crowder obliges initially. In speaking with Sandy's mother, Ms. Crowder learns that Sandy isn't sleeping through the night and he is constantly asking her about the weather and when will school start again. Sandy's mother thinks that her son appears to be coming down with a case of the "Holiday Blues," so she works with Ms. Crowder to figure out ways to help her son transition from the structure of daily school to the closure of school for the winter break.

In many school communities, Sandy and other special needs students see school closure and especially abrupt school closure as a breakdown in the consistency of a much needed and adhered to structured learning environment. Try using the following tips below to help students like Sandy see that school closure can become extended learning time to develop their favorite things to do beyond the classroom.

• Anticipate school closures and prepare for expected school closures. Winter break, Thanksgiving, Mid-Winter break, holidays, and teacher professional days are a given on the school calendar. Help students with disabilities prepare for school closures by providing them with a school calender and using the calendar daily to mark down the days to the first and last school closures.
• Have a larger sized school calendar visible in the classroom. Allow special education students to use a marker to put a check or x-mark on each day leading to holiday closures. Talk about what the holidays mean and how sometimes schools can close unexpectedly due to weather, emergencies such as a flood in the science lab or a medical outbreak like the flu.
• Create projects around holiday closures that can extend into the holiday season or the school closure. For students with special needs, this will extend the learning objective and keep them preoccupied during the school closures.
• Meet with student and parent prior to school closures and develop a game plan on school lessons, activities and special interest projects that students can engage in during their time off. Make sure that PT and speech pathologist schedules have built in make-up days during the school year.

In Part II, "Strategies in Dealing with the "Holiday Blues" for Students with Disabilities," Ms. Crowder will introduce additional strategies to use in addressing the "Holiday Blues" for students like Sandy and other students who may have difficulty adjusting to school closures and the void in their academic and social structures.