STEAM Safety for Students with Additional Needs

Jacqueline Monteith joined Safer Ed in 2023 to explain how educators can support students with additional needs, including the difference between accommodations and modifications and what universal design offers. A new section below applies those ideas to STEAM classrooms and labs, where safety planning has to fit the student.

For this episode of Safer Ed, special guest Jacqueline Monteith shares how developing an informed perspective on keeping students with special education needs safer in schools. As an instructional coach and mother of a child with additional needs, Jacqueline is uniquely qualified to provide a framework for supporting students with special needs. 

Challenges of Learners With Additional Needs

The conversation begins by discussing challenges that students with disabilities and additional needs come across and educators’ ability to support those different needs. As Jacqueline points out, each student with specialized needs has a wide range of challenges depending on their individualized needs ranging from physical, social, emotional, and cognitive difficulties. It is important to remember that these challenges are not monolithic, and even two students with the exact needs can have different accommodations. 

To make students safer and more successful in learning environments, educators need to recognize the unique needs of these students and work to accommodate and modify learning with them in mind. Part of that accommodation/modification structure is Individualized Education Plans (IEPs), a significant focus of the first part of this discussion. 

Accommodation vs. Modification for Students with Additional Needs

An important distinction to understand when working with students with IEPs is accommodation and modification. As Jacqueline discusses, accommodations are adjustments made by the educator to ensure that a student can actively participate in classroom goals and learning objectives. With accommodations, there are no changes to curricular outcomes. Standard accommodations include dedicated physical spaces and additional instructional or emotional support from support professionals. 

In contrast, a modification is a curricular change in which educators and administrators change a particular learning objective to support a student’s individualized learning journey best. 

Opportunities for Growth in Supporting Students with Additional Needs

In the second part of the episode, our guest discusses how educators and stakeholders that can make schools more inclusive and supportive of students with additional needs. These growth opportunities include universal design, improving the identification of conditions, and creating structures for student support. Each of these opportunities for growth addresses all kinds of learning environments, from specialized schools to home schools to traditional public school environments. 

Jacqueline astutely points out that even though students with additional needs require different support structures, every learner is unique and reacts differently to learning environments. With this in mind, Jacqueline discusses a framework for more equitable learning – the universal design framework.

Universal Design Framework 

The universal design framework is a movement towards building curricular content around learners rather than building a curriculum and adjusting for the needs of your students. This framework is groundbreaking as it truly challenges educators to identify the needs of their students and build a curriculum to what they’ve identified. It is a very learner-centric framework that could help provide more equitable learning. 

Overall this conversation sets an excellent groundwork for supporting students with disabilities and how schools, educators, and administrators can best support students with additional needs. You can learn more about Jacqueline’s platform and thought leadership below. 

STEAM safety students with disabilities: planning the lab around the learner

STEAM safety for students with disabilities begins with the question Jacqueline Monteith raises in the episode above, which is what each student needs in order to take part. Monteith, an instructional coach and parent of a child with additional needs, separates accommodations, which change how a student takes part without changing the learning goal, from modifications, which change the goal itself. In a science room, makerspace or art studio the same distinction has a safety side, because a change to how a student works must still keep that student and the classmates protected. This section sets out how the pieces fit and what a school can do before the first lab of the year.

Accommodations, modifications and the team that decides

The Parent Center Hub explains the difference in its guidance on accommodations. A modification is usually a change in what is taught to or expected from the student, while an accommodation is a change that helps a student overcome or work around the disability, such as giving answers orally when writing is hard. The student with an accommodation still learns the same material. The IEP team, which includes the parents, decides which supports a child needs, and those decisions are written into the individualized education program (IEP). For edCircuit’s fuller treatment of these terms, see the Special Education guide.

For a STEAM teacher, the practical point is that the lab or studio needs a place in that conversation. An IEP written without the science teacher may say a student needs extra time or a quiet space but say nothing about handling glassware, heat or power tools. Asking the case manager to include the STEAM teacher, and the student when appropriate, closes that gap.

What a physical access check looks like

The University of Washington’s DO-IT center, in a knowledge-base entry updated in June 2025, lists lab safety points for a student with a mobility impairment. They include an adjustable-height table, doorways and aisles at least 32 inches wide, thresholds under half an inch, wheelchair-accessible exits and safety equipment placed within reach of a seated student. If a student has limited hand use, the entry suggests pairing the student with a classmate who can do the fine-motor tasks while making sure both students contribute. It also recommends that all students know where the safety equipment is, and it describes the student as the best source of information about useful accommodations.

That entry deals with one kind of disability. Other needs, such as vision, hearing, sensory sensitivity, attention or a medical condition, call for different checks, and the right sources for them are the IEP team and the student, together with the school’s safety officer.

Designing for variety from the start

Individual accommodations are easier to manage when the lesson already offers more than one way in. Monteith describes universal design as building the learning around the learners rather than adjusting it afterward, which matches the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework. CAST released UDL Guidelines 3.0 on July 30, 2024, organized under three headings: engagement, representation, and action and expression. In a lab those headings can translate into several ways to receive the safety briefing, such as spoken, written and demonstrated, and several ways to show understanding. UDL does not replace an IEP, and it does not reduce what a lab requires for safety.

A short checklist before the first lab

1. Ask the special education case manager which students have STEAM-relevant supports and invite the case manager to walk through the room.
2. Check pathways, workstation height and the reach to eyewash stations, showers, extinguishers and exits.
3. Give the safety briefing in more than one form and check that every student can follow it before work begins.
4. Plan partner roles so that no student is limited to watching.
5. Write down any change in procedure and share it with substitute teachers.

This section complements edCircuit’s separate article STEAM for Students with Additional Needs, part of its Science Safety series, which readers can use for hazard planning. Teachers and leaders who want the full set of laboratory practices will find them in edCircuit’s Lab Safety guide, and the STEM Education guide places safety within wider program design.

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