Artist, Illustrator, Published Author, Multi-modal Communicator.
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Solutions Driven Disability Advocate, Public Speaker & Content Creator
Marina Pinto Miller, Ph.D. is an extremely creative, visual storyteller, a strategic thinker, and a disability rich content creator. An experienced communications professional with outstanding advisory and stakeholder engagement skills, her passion for advancing self advocacy skills for people with disabilities and neurodiverse abilities, comes from her own lived experience of disability navigating through the world of work. She has presented her original material at Humber Polytechnic as part of the 2019 Transition to Work Conference and at TD Bank.
A FRAMEWORK FOR SELF ADVOCACY / preparing students with disabilities for employment
Marina Pinto Miller, Ph.D.
Reading Time: 6:30 minutes
Introduction I was invited to speak at Humber Polytechnic on Self-Advocacy in 2019. I was struck by the profound emotional response from students. They showed me the need for a tailored approach that aligned with the realities of living with disability. I realized, based on my 30 years of work experience in diverse fields; including academia, media, television, government, and corporate banking, that I could contribute. As a woman with lifelong visible disabilities and neurodivergence, I had learned to self advocate to survive and to thrive in the workplace. It is time to pay it forward by sharing what I have learned. Here are my tips on developing self-advocacy skills for students and career advisors in post secondary education.
What is self-advocacy and why does it matter? The journey to and through employment is built on self advocacy: the ability to ask effectively for what you need; knowing your rights and responsibilities while helping your employer to make work a better place to be. For students with disabilities about to embark on finding a job, or building a career, self-advocacy is the most important employability skill, but it is rarely taught. I have built my approach with four interrelated components in mind: self-awareness, self- marketing, self-disclosure, and self-advocacy. Here we explore how self-advocacy may be best presented to students and career advisors as a mindset that is inclusive of all abilities, both innate to the person - and derived from their lived experience of disability. In this view, we also explore how career advisors can best support students in developing a self advocacy mindset that sets the student up for success in interactions with prospective employers.
Self-awareness is built on the consideration that positive attributes and challenges/disabilities are equally important in defining career paths. Tip #1: Know your strengths and challenges down to the last detail. Self-awareness for students: Strengths are what you know you can do, can learn, and can master, with ease and enjoyment. Challenges are those aspects of you/your disability that take more attention, more effort, and more time. Challenges are opportunities for growth; they are often fertile ground for innovation and problem solving. They are just as important as your strengths for without them, your story is incomplete. This is true of everyone, however, with respect to people with disabilities, the additional challenges, whether visible, invisible, or intermittent, must be considered as materially significant to cultivating your success in the workplace. Self-awareness for career advisors: your role is to assist students in articulating strengths and challenges in a balanced, forward-focused way so that everything lands as an asset rather than a liability. Strengths are what is needed and valued in the workplace. Challenges may be seen as circumstances or characteristics that present opportunities to shape and build teams with the potential to instill leadership, collaborative, and inclusive behaviours amongst team members.
Self-marketing involves exploring the physical, social, intellectual environment of the workplace, based on use of equipment or disability supports and self management techniques that students with disabilities already use in their everyday lives. Tip #2: Know where you can thrive and strategize ahead of time, to manage your environments. Self-marketing for students: Turning your attention to your environment, look at what works for you and what does not, down to the smallest detail. Depending on the circumstance – there may be variance, but in all instances, the variance matters. How does your disability frame your choices and direct your path? The more you observe constraints, the richer your choices become – the advantage lies in learning more quickly from misdirection and wasting a lot less time in situations that do not work so well – in favour of those that do. Self-marketing for career advisors: your role is to observe and take note of what students may/may not be aware of/ unable to articulate due to fear about how they are perceived and treated differently due to their disabilities. Understand that these fears are real and justified. Disability is a matter of identity - and confidence can be built when students feel seen and heard. Active listening is all important.
Self-disclosure involves practice in presenting oneself, professionally in as many formats as possible, including writing, speaking, performing based on specific feedback provided. Tip #3: Become an expert on your disability and the accommodations you need. Self-disclosure for students: Once students understand these two major selves (body and surrounds), it is time to delve into disclosure. Disclosure is a heavily weighted word, but here is what it means: you speak with intention, purpose, and knowing that you have the right to set boundaries on how much you want and need to say about your disability in the context of employment. Disclosing facts as per specific needs, based on job requirements, is as far as you need to go, and no further. Self-disclosure for career advisors: consider rehearsal and role-play in a mock interview format. This preparation strategy would be most helpful in assisting students with disclosing needs for accommodation. The mock interviews should include spoken, written or mind map components, so that students can operate within the learning styles they feel most comfortable with. Have students complete mock up application process so they can anticipate real world scenarios – give feedback on language, style, and effective presentation.
Self-advocacy is developed from the circumstance that requires it, the application of good judgement and well practiced communication skills in addition to making a strong, fact-based business case for hiring people with disabilities. Tip #4: Present your disability as a signifier for competitive advantage for employers. Self-advocacy for students: Self advocacy is a step beyond asking for accommodations. It is the ability to stand up as necessary, to be included, to help create the conditions for your full participation at work and to assert your value proposition, inclusive of your disability, as an employee. Self-advocacy for career advisors: your role is to support and deliver constructive feedback on the value proposition provided by the student and to elicit from the student that their disability is in fact, a golden asset that can be leveraged at all stages of the employment process. By the time the student reaches this stage of employment preparation, they should be looking at disability as the productivity and morale boosting edge that employers are starting to realize they most need and want. This is the mindset behind successful self advocacy!