Inclusion Voices

Country Wife is a teacher's aide in an Upper New York State classroom that includes kids with learning disabilities who has written a series of posts on the difficulties of inclusion. 

Lucas Baker has a new blog on  transforming education, including his thoughts on inclusion.

Background info on Special Education Inclusion

iep | special education| Learning Disabilities | ADHD | Autism | Special Needs | downs syndrome| down syndrome| dyslexia)

In Work Rant #3, she has a bad day with a child.

It's not fun to have a child spitting in your face, but it is better then having them claw your eyes out. So, I had first one and then the other sitting on my lap, spitting in my face as I held them against my body so they couldn't hurt anyone or themselves. After all, it is my job to keep all of these children safe. My rewards for this effort, which was a solo act because my co-worker went on his lunch break even with these children behaving this way...

In Woah! Like Minds!  she develops her thoughts further.

Quick summary of the rant: I feel that mainstreaming students with learning disabilities is generally a disservice to those students when those learning disabilities are severe. It is something that not only results in fustration for the students but can prove more then disruptive to the classroom and ultimately hamper *everyone* in their efforts of academic success. I feel that education should be to mastery of a subject and that students should be given the opporutnity to proceed at their own pace. This means that students should be taught to their abilities, not some predetermined standard. The rant rambles all over the place, including a description of problems due to mainstreaming as found where I work. But that's the gist of what I'm trying to say. :)

In Reprise of Like Minds,

Now, I feel that this is not a problem due strictly to mainstreaming LD students. I did not intend to present the idea that LD students would slow down classes at large. I actually think that LD students can benefit a class, but not in the present educational system that we have now. Our current educational system is focused heavily on rote learning of facts and the ability to regurgitate said facts onto a standardized test.

The flaw in our current educational system is that it fails to give all students the aid they need. Either you are brilliant and they press you into the more challenging classes (usually taught in the same format as the ones with less sophisticated material) or you have "special needs" and are shipped off to the Resource room. Once in the "special education" system, you may get lucky and have a teacher that works well with you.

Another blogger, Lucas Baker, has a series of posts on the problems with inclusion of special education students in the mainstream classroom. In , he writes  

  In 2002 I was the District Chairman of Special Education in a wealthy Rockland County school district. I worked as a cooperating teacher in an inclusion sophomore Biology class. This class was made up of forty percent sped students and sixty percent students “at risk”. In other words, it was “the slow class” and it was presented and taught just that way. It was as watered down and academically un-ambitious as the group of students gathered in the room dictated.     This was exactly the kind of thing that putting sped students into mainstream classes was supposed to eliminate. I found myself the director of a program that was perpetuating the same practice that I experienced in school as a teenager in 1964! The reasons for this kind of placement were the same.     School administrators, board members and teachers had never come to grips with their own negative beliefs and stereotypes about persons who learn differently. The result is that they don't follow through in finding the best ways to really meet the spirit of the law.     Inclusion class is just another title for kind of special education class. As long as the percentage of kids with special needs exceeds ten percent (or whatever is the ratio of person with special needs to persons without in the surrounding community) then the class can’t help but become a special needs class itself thus making the regular students attend a special education class. With the reputation of special education what parent wants that?

Baker's posts: Inclusion Abuse, Inclusion Class Is Not Real Inclusion,
Transforming Education: Special Education Inclusion ,
Special Education Inclusion Deception,
School Reform Denies the Rights of Special Education Students,

Dick Dalton wrote a great post on Rethinking Inclusion.

Previous I Speak of Dreams Posts Touching on Inclusion
Inclusion or Not?
Inside a Special Education Classroom
IEP Season
The Myth of Learning Disabilities

Comments

[gardengirl]

"I found myself the director of a program that was perpetuating the same practice that I experienced in school as a teenager in 1964!"

Okay, so what did you DO about it?