This is my 31st year teaching. I have taught from 4 year old child development through 5th grade with the last 4 years in resource (pull out) for grades K-5. I really enjoyed working with my students in this way and have been able to move most students close to, if not above grade level.
I have been offered a position in a school close to my home for next year and with gas prices as they are it is very tempting, however the school uses “inclusion” for the resource students and I have concerns about this. I really believe all my resource students, through the years, have been included in the regular classroom for instruction as well as all extra curricular activities. Each student is on the reg. ed teachers roll and only comes to my class for 1 hour a day. They are required to do the same work as other students in the reg. ed class with some acc. and mod. in place. My concern is that I will be expected to see all my students within the reg. ed. classroom and I just have no idea how this can be as successful as the pull out has been. This is a very poor school district that feels inclusion is what they are suppose to be doing under the law.
Does anyone have experience with this type of program? I do not wish to become a teacher assistant after all these years and I wouldn’t want the classroom teacher to resent my presence. I also do not see how I can take a 4th grade student reading on 1st grade level and really help him fill the learning gaps while in a 4th grade classroom with 4th grade skills being taught.
Any suggestions would be welcomed, Kathye
Resource model and inclusion
Thank you for you reply and suggestions. I really think this school is trying hard to do the right thing, but may just be misguided. The Sp. Ed. director really wants me to come to this school, so I hope they will be responsive to suggestions to improve the program. Occasionally I have students who with some acc. or mod. will do well in the reg. classroom and do not require pull out.
I really feel lucky after reading about the situation you were in. Sometimes we need to remember that it can be worst.
Thanks again, Kathye
Re: Resource model and inclusion
Just a suggestion on creative things — I was in a situation somewhat similar due to lack of space and silly open-plan design once; if you can’t really pull the kid out of the classroom, you may still be able to manufacture a separate workspace.
The open-plan school had big barn-like spaces with four classes and four teachers in them. The teachers took all the things that normally clutter up the class, cabinets, portable bulletin boards, movable blackboards, etc., and made dividers where there were none. (The school administration actually had some sense and they also built a new wall whenever they had the money but rebuilding the whole school was a slow process) It wasn”t pretty, in fact looked horribly tacky, and there was still some carry-over of sound, but basically the teacher could teach the class. I was tutoring in one of these divided-off spaces — so yes we were still in a regular classroom, but there was a movable blackboard between us and the teacher on one side and a couple of cabinets between us and the teacher on the other, so we did pretty well concentrating on our own work.
Doing something like this would require full agreement and cooperation from the teacher and administration and you should also check with the parents — if they insist inclusion means doing exactly the same work as everyone else, period, you can’t work effectively. But it is worth asking.
You’re right on all counts.
Inclusion, done properly, would often include pullouts to build skills. When a school district is doing something because it’s what they are legally required to do, then it’s a huge red flag to me. When I worked for one like that, any ideas that were designed to make actual learning happen were not considered — “what we’re doing is legal.” (For example, I had a resource class with 8 students, four different grades, four different classes going on at the same t9ime from Science to History to “resource” — the idea that we should make any effort in the future to set things up differently just wasn’t worth the effort since we didn’t *have* to.)
I’d want to observe a class & talk to teachers — and get a sense of what else goes on, too. That school was, essentially, a prison culture — many of the students attended because a judge had told them if they went to school and didn’t assault any teachers, they wouldn’t be put in jail. (I’m not kidding.) These students used classroom phones to make their business deals from, had a terror regime going in the lavatories, and simply wasn’t a place I’d send someone into without making them aware of just what was happening. (There were also some *excellent* teachers with a missionary attitude, so it wasn’t totally depressing — just rather like a war zone.)
If you connect well iwth the regular teacher, then sometimes you can be flexible and make things work and be creative in your interpretation of “inclusion.” http://www.powerof2.org is a good website for constructive ideas for making incusion work. There are also a couple of great articles on this website about “watering up” the curriculum for diverse students.