SECTION 9: Collaboration & Advocacy

Deaf+ students need a web of support—not a single heroic teacher. Thriving isn’t about one great year or one amazing staff member. It’s about a system that supports students across all environments, through all transitions, consistently.

This means:

• Schools can’t work in isolation.

• Families can’t be left out.

• Services can’t be siloed.

When everyone speaks a different “language” of support—spoken language vs. signed, behavior charts vs. sensory plans—students are the ones who suffer.

Let’s build a shared framework.

🔹 Build Collaborative IEP Teams

Your IEP team should include people who understand the whole picture:

• A Deaf educator or ASL-fluent professional

• An autism specialist with trauma knowledge

• An occupational therapist familiar with body awareness, interoception, and sensory regulation

• A speech-language pathologist who respects sign language as primary

• The family as experts in lived experience

Ask at the start of every meeting:

❝ Is this team built to understand this child’s operating system and hardware? ❞

If not—stop and fix it. This isn’t extra. It’s required to meet FAPE.

🔹 Families Are Not Visitors—They’re Experts

Many Deaf+ families:

• never had early intervention

• were denied communication access

• had to fight for basic rights

• are still learning sign language themselves

And yet—they know their child best.

Support them by:

• providing interpreters and translated documents

• sharing visuals and home supports used at school

• asking: What’s working at home? What’s not?

• honoring their cultural, linguistic, and disability identity

This isn’t a courtesy—it’s compliance, and more importantly, it’s community.

🔹 Teach Advocacy by Modeling It

Deaf+ students won’t know how to speak up for themselves unless they’ve:

• seen someone model it

• had the words or signs explicitly taught

• had a system that welcomes feedback, not punishes it

Use real phrases like:

• “I didn’t see that.”

• “I need a break.”

• “Please sign again.”

Model it when adults forget. Model it when things go wrong. Model it every time access is denied.

That’s how they learn to protect themselves.

🔹 Break Down Systemic Barriers

Most school systems still divide services into:

• Deaf/Hard of Hearing

• Autism

• Behavioral

• Emotional Disability

• Sensory Integration

But Deaf+ students don’t come in parts. The systems that silo services must shift to interdisciplinary teams and language-first planning.

Change the system by:

• Requiring cross-training in both ASL and autism interventions

• Providing Deaf+ professional development for all staff—not just the “special” ones

• Including Deaf autistic adults in training and planning

• Creating shared language for regulation, transitions, and support between general ed, sped, related services, and families

🔹 Empower Students to Participate in Their Plans

Even young or nonspeaking students can:

• choose between two visuals

• point to what helps them calm

• identify a preferred communication partner

Don’t wait for “readiness” to invite them in.

Make student-led IEPs accessible by:

• creating visual preference cards

• letting them sign or choose supports during meetings

• asking, What do you like? What do you want to change?

Self-advocacy doesn’t start in high school.

It starts when we ask children what they want—and honor the answer.