I am a college student who is currently taking a class based on inclusion. How can I ensure fair treatment towards students who need special education? Since I am interested in teaching early elementary grades, I think it would be hard for them to understand why certain students are getting the special attention that they need.
Re: fair treatment
Jackie,
Sara is absolutely right. Kids are not given credit for both being aware of differences, but also 99.99% of kids will be understanding, helpful and nice to kids with differences.
The more I read from teacher’s point of view of inclusion I believe that a few of them think the whole notion of inclusion would be too much trouble for them.
My firm belief is that if inclusion is to work properly the class should have a regular teacher and a teacher to assist any kid that need additional help. It is not only sped kids that need help this is a total misconception.
Check out the results of the 4th grade reading tests nationwide. Anywhere from 20-39% of the kids cannot read at grade level. So there are plenty of kids that need help and they are not all LD kids.
Re: fair treatment
I must agree with Marion. As a parent of a child who benefited from inclusion. My 9 year old PDD son was in a mainstream class from K-2. The benefits he received was the role modeling of “normally” developing peers. The teachers found it difficult to work out the academic piece as no one knew what he was capable of due to being considered untestable. But the gains he made behaviorly and socially were well worth it all. He has become much more social(although still not sure how)and more verbal. He made such strides they were finally able to test him at the end of second grade. They found a discrepency between his ability and his achievement and he was moved to a small instructional LD class. This class is included though in a regular social studies and science class. During this time the special ed teacher and the student teacher go with these kids and help co-teach the class. All the students seem to benefit and the LD kids do fine with this type of instruction. On the last social studies test my son scored an 80 which is very reasonalbe. I think the right attitude needs to be there along with the right support. We can not expect the regular education teachers to do it on there own without support.
Children deserve more credit than you’re giving them. Children are very aware of differences between them. A teacher’s honest explanation that we try to meet everybody’s need appeals to a child’s sense of justice.
Helping the children to understand it is the easiest part of the job. Actually insuring fair treatment of children with learning differences is the hard part.
Understandably you idealize the classroom but meeting the needs of children with learning differences in it is not easily done. IEPS mandate far more than is possible and sadly often work more to placate parents and meet the letter of a law than they do to actually make a difference in these children’s education.
At present our society does not have a way to offer fair treatment to children with learning differences. The standing legislation in regard to this issue simply does not work in any one’s best interest.
Stick around on the BB and see if the parents or the teachers who post it feel that children with learning differences are being treated fairly or are “getting the special attention they need.”