Thursday, February 3, 2011

Inclusion – First of Three Ruminations






Inclusion is a complex and yet simple vision. It is a process, a way of living, learning, and teaching, but sometimes is misunderstood as a goal or a place to get to, instead of paradigm shift or a way of being.

I work with and parent children that would be considered “low incident,” another way of saying complicated and not many kids with their particular challenges out there. They are outliers even in groups of students being served by Special Education. Because they are complicated and some of their parents happen to look like and sound like those who are almost about to sue, they receive a lot of attention and some “extra” services. And when educators talk about “full inclusion” they aren’t talking about these kids – they cannot even wrap their brains around what it might look like.

They have intense sensory needs, they struggle to access language, not to mention curriculum. They have been known to flap, scream, fail to sit in a chair for longer than five minutes, have little expressive communication that doesn’t touch on their own specific needs, and they get stuck in their own feedback loops. Often educational institutions respond to these students by providing one-to-one support and/or “self-contained” rooms for specialized instruction and intervention. We refocus the lens on behavior modifications and marginalize these students’ access to grade level materials and teaching. 

I think institutions should reconsider. Most of the time inclusion is appropriate for students, and separating some students out from larger student populations fails to provide all students with an accurate understanding and picture of their whole communities.  Plus, when you contain a population of students you “contain” their families, their teachers and their assistants. Inclusion is a hard process, I get that it is not a magical solution in the struggle to meet an individual student’s academic needs. It’s easy to say full inclusion and harder to put meaningful inclusion into practice. Inclusion not only means a seat at the table or in a desk, widening a door or putting in an elevator, but it also means modifying instruction and curriculum, recreating class room norms, and encouraging patience in ourselves and others. It often requires teachers to work closely with other teachers and assistants, which can be challenging in itself.

Next time I would like to touch on what I used to think would work best for my deaf stepson who has Autism and a host of other quirky disabilities, and what I think now after working in schools. It won’t be pretty.