Self-advocacy is a critical life skill for teens and young adults. In short, self-advocacy is the ability to problem-solve, speak up, and get your needs met. It’s a skill we all use every single day from expressing our emotions and sharing opinions to asking for help and telling someone “no”. Simply put, self-advocacy is a skill kids and teens need to thrive.
While there are many different strategies to build self-advocacy skills, real-life scenarios are a meaningful tool to boost these abilities for kids and teens. Ultimately, a scenario is a real-life situation that might happen, such as losing your homework assignment or not getting along with your partner on a group activity. Discussing each situation gives real-life practice in a safe way where teens can brainstorm ideas, think about the challenges, and make choices on how they might proceed. Most importantly, this provides the perfect path for discussions and learning from each other.
One more point to keep in mind: Using scenarios also allows educators to integrate evidence-based practices into the learning process, such as group conversations and journal writing.
Self-Advocacy in 5 Steps
Use the five simple self-advocacy steps to help kids and teens learn to speak up and get their needs met. Here is a quick summary of this 5-step approach:
- Stay Calm. When you are calm, you are better able to make sound decisions. Check in with your feelings. If you’re feeling overwhelmed or upset, take a minute to pause. To get back in a calm frame of mind, you can use relaxation strategies such as positive self-talk, mindful breathing, stretching, or taking a walk.
- Understand the Problem. Self-advocacy is problem-solving in action! Pause and think: What is the problem right now? How big is this problem? What do I need to be successful? What are the challenges or road blocks standing in my way?
- Problem-Solve. Use problem-solving skills to brainstorm how you might handle the situation. Consider the consequences for each and choose your best path forward.
- Express Yourself. Use your words to confidently and respectfully assert your needs. This may look differently depending on the situation, such as telling a friend how you feel or asking an adult for help.
- Reflect. After the situation, take a moment to think back. What went well? What could go better next time? This is the time that helps you learn and grow for future situations.
Using Self-Advocacy Scenarios
Below you will find some example self-advocacy scenarios to use with teens and young adults. Introduce each scenario, talk about it, and walk through the steps together. As an extension, students can write individual journal entries for how they would work through each situation. Each situation below walks you through how you might talk through each of the steps together.
If you love these activities, use Self-Advocacy Scenarios to work through more real-life situations with academics, friends, families, and more.
Self-Advocacy Scenario #1
Imagine you left your glasses at home for the day. You can’t see the board well and the teacher wrote down something important for an upcoming test. You feel frustrated and upset with yourself that you forgot them again and can’t see the board. What do you do?
Step 1: Stay Calm. You feel frustrated, so it’s important to practice some calm-down techniques to help you think your best. You slowly breathe in through your nose to the count of 5, and slowly breathe out to the count of five. After a few breaths, you feel more calm and ready to move forward. You also remind yourself, “It’s okay. We all make mistakes sometimes. You can work through this.”
Step 2: Understand the Problem. The challenge here is that you can’t see important information that you need for an upcoming test. You will need to find a way to get this information to make sure you can do your best.
Step 3: Problem-Solve. There are multiple ways you could go about solving this problem. One strategy might be to raise your hand and ask the teacher if you could move up to see the board. Another strategy is to ask the person next to you if you can look at what they wrote down. Lastly, you could opt to take a picture of the board with your phone or tablet so you can refer back to it later.
Step 4: Express Yourself. You decide to raise your hand and politely ask to move closer to the front board because you left your glasses at home. This is respectful and helps you get access to the information you need at the time.
Step 5: Reflect. Thinking back, you realize that it’s important to bring your glasses to school. You did well advocating for yourself, but you’d like to work on the root of the problem. You decide to make a checklist for yourself at home to help you remember your materials, including your glasses.
Self-Advocacy Scenario #2
Imagine you get paired with someone by your teacher for a science lab activity. Within minutes you notice that your partner is not doing their fair share of the work. Then, they start fooling around and talking to people in other groups. You feel annoyed. What do you do?
Step 1: Stay Calm. You feel annoyed with the situation. You might pause and remind yourself, “You can work through this.” You might also stretch and take some deep breaths. Whatever works to calm you down in the moment!
Step 2: Understand the Problem. Your problem is that your partner isn’t helping. You care about your grade, so it’s important for you to do well.
Step 3: Problem-Solve. You consider that you have a few different ways to work through this challenge. One option might be to talk assertively to your partner. You might remind them what you need to do or give them a specific task to complete. Another option might be to talk to your teacher.
Step 4: Express Yourself. You decide to directly tell your partner, “Hey, I could really use your help on this. We need to both put in the work or we’re going to get marked down.” If you’re working on a science lab activity, for example, you ask your partner to measure the mass of the items and list those on the worksheet.
Step 5: Reflect. You think back and consider that you did a pretty good job being assertive with your partner. You remind yourself that being an assertive communicator is a great skill to keep building.
Self-Advocacy Scenario #3
Imagine that a friend asks you to lie to their parents. They want you to say that they are sleeping over your house. It makes you feel uncomfortable. What do you do?
Step 1: Stay Calm. You feel uncomfortable about the situation. In order to think clearly, you might pause and take a few deep breaths.
Step 2: Understand the Problem. The issue here is that your friend is asking you to do something that you are uncomfortable with. The act of lying to an adult puts you in a bad spot and disrespects your boundaries.
Step 3: Problem-Solve. You realize that you need to talk assertively to your friend and let them know that you don’t want to. You can’t avoid the situation and also want to stay true to yourself.
Step 4: Express Yourself. You honestly and assertively tell your friend, “You know, I’m really not comfortable doing that. I want to help you out, but I don’t want to put myself in the middle of that and risk getting in trouble myself.” Not only does this help you share your feelings, but it also teaches about your boundaries.
Step 5: Reflect. Thinking back about the situation, you feel proud of yourself that you used your voice confidently. You encourage yourself to speak up more for yourself in the future.
Teaching Self-Advocacy
Teaching self-advocacy skills is increasingly more important for kids and teens. Use this complete set of Self-Advocacy Skills Lessons to concretely teach learners when, why, and how to advocate for themselves. Each of the 11 lessons is broken up into smaller activities, giving learners bite-sized chunks of information at a time. With over 50 activities, the lessons are designed to give lots of practice and strategies along the way.
Self-advocacy is an important skill, and it’s worth the time to teach to kids and teens.
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