8 Tips for Explaining Inclusion to Parents

As I mentioned yesterday, I am a mentor for our Council for Exceptional Children organization and mentor a college student who is getting a degree in Special Education. My mentee mentioned a situation where a child was removed from an inclusion classroom but she didn’t think the parent had a clue about what inclusion was.

I know we explained this to the parent at an IEP meeting but I feel that the parents are so overwhelmed with information during these meetings that they really don’t understand the concept of Inclusion. At the beginning of the year, I think all of the parents of students in an inclusion classroom should be invited to a presentation that explains what inclusion is. Granted, some parents might not come but at least the opportunity is offered. Handouts can be sent to the parents who were unable to attend the meeting. This meeting should be well advertised in case some parents from other classes are interested in learning about inclusion also.

Every school handles inclusion differently so I can’t tell you how to explain your school’s inclusion program to the parents. I can suggest what I believe should be included in the presentation.

1. Explain that this presentation is an overview about the Inclusion program and not about individual students.

2. Offer to set up an appointment to talk about individual student’s needs.

3. Information about your school’s inclusion program and why your school feels it is important.

4. Discuss how inclusion meets student’s needs in the classroom.

5. Explain how everyone benefits and that general ed students are not held back. Give specific examples.

6. Have the teachers involved explain their planning process for lessons.

7. If possible, have parents of students already in the program speak about how it has benefit their child.

8. Allow parents to ask questions. If you don’t have the answers, admit this and offer to find the answers for them. Don’t try to bluff the parents because they can sense this.

Did I leave out anything? Feel free to give suggestions about what else should be included in a presentation for parents. I truly believe that communication is vital for any program to be successful.

Posted on the Successful Teaching Blog by loonyhiker (successfulteaching at gmail dot com).

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Making Inclusion Work

I am a mentor for our Council for Exceptional Children organization and currently mentor a college student who is getting a degree in Special Education. My mentee emailed me about a situation that occurred and I thought it would be a great topic to talk about in my blog.

If you came to this post thinking you would find the magic answer, I’m sorry but it just isn’t out there. I can make suggestions that might make your experience more successful though.

Suppose you are told that beginning the semester, you would be coteaching with a colleague in an inclusion classroom. There was no request or suggestion for this pairing but it is now written in stone. What do you do? How do you begin? Here are some ideas to start with:

1. Suggest a meeting with the other teacher to brainstorm ways to make this model work. Don’t wait or expect the other teacher to make the first step.

2. Suggest that you both write down your strengths and weaknesses in the classroom as well as preferences and bring it to the meeting. Sometimes I tend to think the worse or assume that another person may feel a certain way only to find out that I was wrong. If another person’s strength is my weakness, we can build on that.

3. During the meeting, someone should take notes that can be emailed to both of you so that you can refer back to this information when needed. Both of you may be in highly emotional state at this time and won’t remember what you talked about.

4. Talk about the elephant in the room. Acknowledge that you both may be nervous and have different expectations so communication is essential for both of you to be successful.

5. As the subject area teacher, I feel that teacher should come up with the list of topics/curriculum for the year. In some schools, this may already be standardized and expected. If there is a specific topic that interests you or that you have some great material, share it at this time.

6. Talk about classroom procedures. Decide on a procedure that works for both of you. Sometimes you may need to give in to certain procedures that you don’t necessarily agree with but it isn’t the end of the world. Fight the battles that are important and not argue over the trivial.

7. Decide who will introduce the lesson, how both of you will instruct and interact with the students, how will assessment be done. This is a great time to talk about accommodations that can be done as well as alternative assessments.

8. Talk about record keeping and who will be responsible for what.

9. Decide on a discipline that you both can live with. This will be vital because by nature, students will play 2 adults against each other when given the chance.

For those of you who have worked in this kind of model, what suggestions do you have that would help these teachers be successful? If you haven’t worked in this model, what do you think would help you if you were put into this situation? Thanks for sharing!

Posted on the Successful Teaching Blog by loonyhiker (successfulteaching at gmail dot com).

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Inclusion Ideas and Resources

I was recently sharing with my class some information about inclusion and thought I would share it with you. I think inclusion can be great if it is set up right but if there is not enough preparation, planning, and communication between teachers, it can be a disaster. Too often strong egos and power struggles can undermine the whole process. Hopefully these suggestions will help an inclusion program be more successful.

Preparing for Inclusion:

1. Identify the purpose of Inclusion and what it means for the students. Inclusion is necessary to meet the needs of students with disabilities. Strategies and projects may actually end up helping all of the students in the classroom.
2. Identify the roles of each teacher. Each teacher should have equal power and one teacher will not be used as a glorified aide.
3. Identify times and places for planning and the importance of communication. When and where will we plan for the lessons? Both teachers need to give input and share the responsibility of teaching the lessons.
4. Identify problems solving strategies that will happen when conflict occurs. If the teachers are having a problem, how will you work to solve this problem?) This needs to be agreed upon before a problem arises.
5. All of this needs to take place before classes start.

During the School Year:

1. Brainstorm ideas for teaching a certain topic. Try to think outside the box in order to make the topic interesting and meet the different learning styles of the student.
2. Don’t be afraid to try something new.
3. Look at alternate ways to assess the learning. Offer different options and allow the students to choose.
4. Review the lesson and make sure each teacher understands their role.
5. Evaluate the lesson afterwards to see how the next one can be improved.
6. Don’t take criticism personally but rather a way to help better meet the students’ needs.

Nine Types of Adaptations:

· Size – reduce the number of problems as long as the student can show the skill is mastered.
· Time - extra time may be needed, timeline given to complete the task, or tasks broken down into time chunks.
· Level of Support – peer buddies, tutors, teaching assistants
· Input – visual aides, concrete examples, hands on activities, cooperative groups
· Difficulty – allow use of computer, simplify directions
· Output – verbal response, podcast, drawing, Voicethread, comic strip
· Participation – find roles that student can be successful doing (helper, assistant etc.)
· Alternate – adjust the goals for the student
· Substitute Curriculum – different instruction and materials for the student.
from Adapting Curriculum and Instruction in Inclusive Classrooms: A Teacher's Desk Reference, by Deschenes, C., Ebeling, D., and Sprague, J., 1994.

Great example of inclusion that works:

South Paris Collaborative Site : http://www.herricks.org/webpages/spcollaborative/
Lisa Parisi and Christine Southard teach fifth graders in NY. Lisa is the general ed teacher and Christine is the special ed teacher. They decided to make this a true inclusion classroom and combined their names to form the South Paris Collaborative classroom. Both teachers have equal sized desks and equal say. They spend a lot of time in planning and communicating with each other. They also use the Universal Design for Learning to plan lessons for their classes and meet their students’ needs. Technology is used every day in their lessons and they collaborate with other classrooms around the world. This is a great example of how inclusion can work successfully in the classroom

Universal Design for Learning (http://www.cast.org/)
“Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework for designing curricula that enable all individuals to gain knowledge, skills, and enthusiasm for learning. UDL provides rich supports for learning and reduces barriers to the curriculum while maintaining high achievement standards for all.”

Resources:

Inclusion home page http://www.uni.edu/coe/inclusion/

Special Education inclusion article: http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/curr320.shtml

If you have any other suggestions to help others, please feel free to leave a comment!

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Successful Inclusion Classes Do Exist!

Yesterday I used Skype to call Lisa Parisi and Christine Southard in Long Island, NY from my grad class here in SC. My class was learning about inclusion and I wanted them to talk about their class, how it is set up, how they work together, and what kind of projects do they do. It was so exciting to do this!

Luckily I only have 3 students because I couldn’t get my laptop hooked up with the big screen in the classroom and still have the camera and the microphone reach to the students. So I couldn’t set it up that way. Instead I put my laptop on a desk where all three of them could see the screen and put the camera on the three of them with me in the background. That seemed to work.

The call lasted about 30 minutes and my class seemed to be really impressed. They didn’t seem to have any questions about it at the time but maybe after they had time to process the information, we will discuss it this morning. Of course, I was impressed but I always am impressed when I talk to them and I love to hear about their class. I think the reason I’m impressed is because I never really believed that inclusion could work. I know I read about it in textbooks and articles but they always seemed like words on paper. I could not get my mind around any real life situation where it actually worked…until now. This, for me, is almost like finding out that Santa is real and that the Tooth Fairy lives close by!

Of course, I rush home to share this wonderful event with my husband and he is always good about keeping me grounded. Our conversation had me thinking and asking questions. Is this situation a one-of-a-kind situation or can it happen elsewhere? I have not heard of any situation elsewhere where inclusion is successful like this. Sure, I hear some teachers say, “I teach inclusion and it is…okay but….” This is the first time I have heard “We teach inclusion and it works!” Period. End of statement. My husband asked if these were just two exceptionally great teachers who happened to find out that they can work together well? I don’t know.

I think this is possible to do elsewhere if other classrooms use the same kind of set up. Of course, I see the main reason for success is that these teachers leave their egos at the door and work together to do what is in the best interest of their students. They continually work on communication with each other and collaborate on the lessons. Neither teacher says this is “my” classroom and instead they say it is “our” classroom. They even figured out a name for their class that incorporates both of their names (South Paris Collaborative) so the rest of the school gets the same message too. Christine mentioned that this was like a marriage of sorts and they sometimes disagreed with each other but that was okay. The main key seemed to be communication. Too many teachers let their egos get in the way and either clam up or go into “control” mode. That won’t work in an inclusion classroom.

If you know of another inclusion class is actually a success (without the “but”) please let me know. I am really interested.