Community Power: Preparing Chinese Families of Students With Disabilities for Remote Learning

• In Event: Advocacy and Agency: Centering Families in Special and Inclusive Education

Abstract

Due to COVID-19 pandemic, all U.S. students were forced to move to remote learning beginning in March 2020. Schools scrambled to identify ways to continue educating their students. Families, especially ones from low socio-economic and diverse backgrounds, struggled balancing their work schedule and their children’s remote class schedule and lacked skills to support them. The purpose of this study was to share how one community-based parent support group prepared Chinese immigrant families to support their children/youth with disabilities and advocate for the special education services they needed during remote learning through technological training and advocacy support. Recommendations on what schools can do to eliminate the barriers parents faced are provided.

Authors

• Lusa Lo, University of Massachusetts - Boston

• Kathy Tsang