As I am sitting here waiting for a Zoom meeting with my classmates, I wanted to do a quick reflection of some thoughts that I have regarding the inclusion of students with disabilities into the general education environment.
- Who should be deciding if a student is “right” for the inclusion environment? In my experience, the onus has always been on the special education teacher to “prove” that the student should be included, but is this a fair thing to do? My understanding of special education law is that the student should be educated in the “Least Restrictive Environment,” defined as the general education environment, unless any possible option to keep the student included has been attempted and been unsuccessful. However, it seems as though if this attempt at inclusion is unsuccessful a single time during a student’s career, then that student is excluded from point on. In addition, special education staff are the ones who have to advocate for the student’s inclusion and have to prove how they are a “fit.” I believe that this leads to many students who could be included under current conditions who wind up being excluded for the duration of their education career. I wonder if there should be some sort of mechanism to perhaps set up a trial run for the student where they are included in the general education environment.
- The obvious answer to the first question is that every student should be included no matter what, but one of the things that I have learned through my doctorate journey is that no single way of doing things works for everyone. If we get caught up in the idea that a child’s education should look a certain way, no matter what, then we will inevitably fail some students. It makes me wonder if the current vision of what inclusion is or could be is inadequate. Perhaps what is currently considered to be an inclusive environment is not inclusive at all.
- In my mind, inclusion should not be considered a place within a school or a practice undertaken by professionals, but instead an ethos that guides the decision making processes of stakeholders involved in the school community. One of the texts that I have read in the past year exposed me to some powerful questions which I believe should be at the forefront of the mind of any decision-maker: “For whom is this decision humanizing” and just as critically, “who is excluded by this experience” (Mehta & Aguilera). I believe that a principal, teacher, committee, or stakeholder with decision making power within a school utilizes these questions to guide their thinking will make more inclusive choices. Hopefully these choices would build upon each other over time to create an environment that only becomes more inclusive over time.
- I think that the purpose of building a more inclusive environment for students with disabilities should be explicitly defined by an organization and its staff. In my experience, one of the push backs against inclusion is that students with disabilities, especially disabilities which have traditionally been considered much more “severe” is that they aren’t making what the teacher considers adequate academic progress. However, the benefit for students in an inclusion setting may be the development of soft or social skills. This must be defined so that all teachers can stay on the same page. If a teacher isn’t buying in because their goal is different from the group, then that can really disrupt any plans made by the rest of the team.
References
Mehta, & Aguilera, E. (2020). A critical approach to humanizing pedagogies in online teaching and learning. Campus-Wide Information Systems, 37(3), 109–120. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJILT-10-2019-009
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