Inclusion - Third Installment

A significant amount of effort is spent on advocating for students to be included and shifting how the institution works to make this possible. After we get the students in the room, then what do we do?

Inclusion is more than admittance. We must modify and change the instruction to make it both accessible and challenging. Sometimes we even need to reframe for ourselves what it is we are teaching. If the middle school learning goal is to analyze recurring themes in literature, then we might need to deliberately teach how to build knowledge as a student reads – not only what questions we might ask.

For instance, it might feel instinctual to invite students to identify the motivations of the characters, reactions of the characters, conflicts in the story, and themes the author touches on. And there are many instances where a teacher has to teach and reteach what these things are… theme, conflict, characters, etc. However, we can help many students by breaking down the thinking that is involved in analyzing and showing students how to organize this mental information. This might look like character maps that helps students make visual connections between characters and space or characters and other people and/or helping students predict all the possible unwritten things the character could be thinking. For many kids accessing their mental process, “I read________. I think ___________. I connect___________. I ask___________.” is incredibly challenging and teaching what happens at each step VERY DELIBERATEY is, at minimum, a first step.

Collaborative teaching allows for great teaching opportunities. My favorite collaborative teaching model this week is Alternative Teaching. Here one teacher teaches the lesson one way and then the other teaches the same lesson a different way. With aides in the room you could even modify this to  repeat the same lesson again or break the lesson down into smaller parts for a few students. The trick with all this is to keep the instruction hemmed in and brief. Maybe one teacher would start out with a 5-7 minute lesson, then the students would work for 20 minutes, followed by the alternative 5-7 minute lesson and ten minutes or more of work. I think it would be great to lead with the lesson the teachers deem “most accessible” for all their students.

We are still figuring out what to do once we get them into the room and sometimes we are struggling to keep them there once they are included. I will continue to ruminate on inclusion, graduate school, and learning. Until next time…