Post 7: Inclusion, Diversity & Systems

 Going on my fifth year of teaching and being primarily a special education teacher in both Elementary and High School settings for the last four years, I have been able to be a part of lots of discussions about curriculum, planning and assessment. 

However, when it comes to teaching and planning for inclusion and diversity I think there is still lots of work to be done. In our district we did a big planning session and workshops with Shelley Moore, who is the Inclusion "Guru" at the moment. When it came to planning for competency based IEP's, it really helped me understand what Shelley was looking at and targeting when planning the curriculum and new IEP format. Very much focusing on a strengths based approach (learner) rather than content and memorization (subject).

Something that I think we still struggle with especially in High School, is we have learners who are so far apart. We have our lifeskill students (true life skills, as their IQ is below 70, actually more like 50). And then we have students who if we were teaching based on their IQ, should be in mainstream classes, but there is something inhibiting the student from attending. 

The last two years I have probably had my most challenging yet rewarding year. Two students who come to mind, intellectually could be mainstream. One student has such high anxiety, they could not attend classes however, they could do the work. But because they were already in grade 9, and grade 8 was a wash of a year, we really did not have anything to work with or knew where to start when giving assignments. I had a case load of 30 students, and I could not plan for all subject areas. 

Then I had another student (grade 8) who could be in the mainstream classes but would not go to class. We finally got them on the bin system doing grade 2-3 level work. I never could assess his reading level and anything I would try to come up with that was out of the box, or I thought he would be interested in, would be a flop. Plus their attendance was brutal.

So, I know these are probably one of cases for most people but for me I had two of my four years of teaching with two students who are not mainstream and how do I plan for them?

In both cases, inclusion does not work in my opinion, I had to teach to their diversity and plan and create a space where they felt comfortable. That is what we did, and we were starting to see some great things. 

The moral of the story is we work in a system that does not plan for these types of students, some see them as alternate students however, they were in their mainstream school, and always had the opportunity to pop into a class if they so chose. The doors were never closed. Unfortunately, I don't think I got the back-up from admin or upper management, which is a shame because I left the school and the program looks like it is going to fold.

Schools, curriculum and districts need to put plans in place for these students. 

The silver lining for me was I learned so much, got to collaborate with amazing colleagues and really saw small, slow progress, but it was progress.