LDA Reaches the College Level
Kellie Burnett, Aquinas College

Entering my senior year as a Learning Disabilities major at Aquinas College I began looking for opportunities to better prepare myself and fellow students for the classrooms we would soon be entering. I began to investigate what the college had to offer. While I was able to find student chapters of professional educational organizations, I was unable to locate anything focused on helping the future LD teacher. With this realization, I looked towards LDA. After much brainstorming, I decided to explore the possibility of starting a student chapter of LDA. With the idea in hand I began to research, my goal being to contact the president of a college chapter and ask for some advice. To my surprise however, after plenty of searching and contacting affiliate support at the national level, I determined that LDA had not yet branched its affiliates to the college level. My mission now was to take an idea and desire to learn more about learning disabilities and bring it to fruitfulness by organizing the nation’s first college affiliate of LDA.

 
I realized that this venture was something more than I could handle alone. As I spoke with my peers, I found many were interested in this idea as well. Soon a group of five juniors and seniors had come together with a goal in sight. We began meeting near the end of spring semester with hopes of having an organization ready for students to join by the coming fall.

We began our process by contacting the LDA of Michigan office and gathered information about how to begin a local affiliate. Following these guidelines as well as those set in place by our student senate we set to work writing a constitution and bylaws. With the paper work and technicalities behind us, we now had to determine exactly what it was we were hoping to accomplish by starting an affiliate of LDA.

 
The five of us put our heads together and concluded that we would like to become and organization that was able to provide opportunities for all education students at Aquinas to increase their knowledge of learning disabilities. We also wanted to provide opportunities for Aquinas students to work with individuals with learning disabilities. With a plan in mind, we approached our student senate for recognition as a school sponsored organization as well as the LDA of Michigan Board of Directors in order to receive affiliate status. Both attempts were successful and we are now officially recognized as the Aquinas College Affiliate of the Learning Disabilities Association of Michigan or as we like to refer to ourselves, AQLDA.

 
With these recognitions we had reached our primary goal. This fall, at the opening of the academic year, we were able to introduce a new organization to the student body. Currently we have registered almost thirty students with LDA at the national level. This group of students is taking great pride in the organization. As an organization we are sending Aquinas students to volunteer working with students with learning disabilities in the elementary through high school setting. We are also trying to work out the logistics of starting a peer mentoring program for college students who have a learning disability. We also have plans to have professional development conferences on campus. In fact AQLDA is currently collaborating with two other student chapters on campus (CEC and ASCD) to host an all day event later this academic year.

 
We have planted the seed for what I hope to soon take root and become a very strong program. By educating students in teacher training programs about learning disabilities, we will be able to spread interest and awareness so that students do no have to suffer through school because their teachers are uninformed or misinformed as to how to help these students.

 
If you are interested in starting a student affiliate of LDA at your school and would like some support, or have questions regarding the work that we have done, feel free to contact us at AQLDA@hotmail.com.