I teach a on 5th grade inclusion team on which the regular ed teachers are unfamililiar with the kinds of instruction that would be accessible to my students. It also seems that they are disinterested in learning or using multi-sensory or differentiated approaches. Consequently, much of the material is inaccessible to my students without reteaching and additional practice. Okay, I accept that. It’s my job. However, by 5th grade no one wants to be pulled because of the social implications. The stigma attached to it by this age is just more than most kids can deal with. I feel as though I’m between a rock and a hard place. My students are not learning as much as they should and I have been very unsuccessful in bringing my team members around to inclusive practices. HELP!
Re: pulling for small group work
Sometimes regular ed teachers resist because they already have their units and lesson plans in place, and differentiation is a *lot* of work initially. Perhaps you can create one differentiated lesson plan per unit for your team? We regular ed teachers loooooooove it when you guys do some planning for us :). Plus, it would give the reg. ed. teachers a chance to see how it works. It may be a drop in the bucket for this year’s kids, but you’d have something to build on next year, etc. I love differentiation, but the planning is very, very heavy.
Sometimes we have to make hard choices. There’s little to do about or with teachers uninterested in improving their teaching or reaching out to all their students.
Sometimes we need to sadly sacrifice some of the learning to keep the child socially and emotionally intact and you’re right, 5th graders are at risk for a loss of self esteem when they’re pulled from the classroom. What’s the impact of your students not learning as much as they should? Are we speaking of content information and what subjects? Are there test scores dropping? Grades dropping?