Giancarlo Mariani was once plagued with feelings of being unworthy\u00a0 and foolish, but with the help of Disability Services at Sinclair Community College, he has learned to overcome.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I lived in Italy, my teachers used to call me stupid and lazy,\u201d Mariani, Sinclair student said. \u201cTo them dyslexia was fictitious.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a child, Mariani said he was reprimanded for not being able to finish tests, in-class assignments or complete writing assignments the right way.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn elementary school, I was sent home because one time, I was saying the words right but writing the words wrong,\u201d Mariani said. \u201cMy teacher thought I was being funny.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said that day was the day he realized his teachers and other classmates thought he was an idiot. For Mariani, it was a constant battle of trying not to feel helpless.<\/p>\n
And then he moved to Ohio and enrolled at Sinclair. His first quarter here he was referred to Disability Services.<\/p>\n
Students with physical, learning or psychological disabilities can get referred or seek out the help of Disability Services, according to Holly Brown-Wright, manager of Disability and Tutorial Services. First time students seeking help must fill-out a form and provide proper medical documentation to be assisted.<\/p>\n
Once the paper work is verified, disability services provide students with various accommodations, Brown-Wright said.<\/p>\n
While the accommodations needed vary from person-to-person, Mariani was given testing extensions, access to teacher\u2019s notes and the ability to record lectures in class. He said that has benefited him greatly with his education.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t feel brain damaged anymore,\u201d Mariani said. \u201cI no longer have to look at the watch during every test; therefore I am more calm, more relaxed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other accommodations disability services provide are adaptive equipment\/furniture, ADA workstations, larger prints, note-taking assistance, reader\/writer services and tutoring.<\/p>\n
Kristann Harrigan, an adjunct instructor for 14 years, believes that Disability Services has helped her in both her role as a teacher and as a student. While she teaches both philosophy and humanities, she said that there is always a need to further her education by taking classes.<\/p>\n
Born with cerebral palsy, Harrigan gets around the school in a motorized wheelchair. She described cerebral palsy as having a stroke that damages the nervous system.<\/p>\n
For Harrigan, accessibility is one key to her success at Sinclair.<\/p>\n
The accommodations that disability services offer her as a student include getting an extension on tests, because she writes slowly, and ADA computer stations. As a teacher, she has an accessible mouse, one classroom she stays in all day, a computer that has voice recognition and furniture that meets her needs.<\/p>\n
\u201cDisability Services is one of the reasons I have been successful here at Sinclair,\u201d Harrigan said.<\/p>\n
Brown-Wright also believes that Sinclair has helped a lot of students succeed, but there are so many students unaware of disability services.\u00a0 She hopes that raising awareness will encourage students to seek out help for their problems, because she feels that no student should have to struggle on their own.<\/p>\n
Something that Mariani is grateful for every day.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am getting better,\u201d Mariani said. \u201cI still have a long way to go, but disability services has changed the way I look at myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the nightmare of having dyslexia is something he deals with on a daily basis, he is grateful for the fact that there is a service that helps him manage. From being called stupid and lazy to having a more successful out look on his education, Mariani knows that he still has a long way to go.<\/p>\n
\u201cSinclair offers so many accommodations depending on what you need,\u201d he said. \u201cThere is a chance that what you\u2019re dealing with, Sinclair has a service for. All you have to do is speak up and who knows, maybe that is all the accommodation you will need to succeed at Sinclair.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Giancarlo Mariani was once plagued with feelings of being unworthy\u00a0 and foolish, but with the help of Disability Services at Sinclair Community College, he has learned to overcome. \u201cWhen I lived in Italy, my teachers used to call me stupid and lazy,\u201d Mariani, Sinclair student said. \u201cTo them dyslexia was fictitious.\u201d As a child, Mariani […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tartan-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-1vR","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5819"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5819\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5828,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5819\/revisions\/5828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}