What are the pros and cons of full inclusion?

Have you got two years to spare? Get a masters degree in special education in addition to your regular teacher training. Volunteer $20,000 or so to have at least 2 aides in your classroom. Plan on spending 15 hours of overtime weekly on your job to modify all your textbooks, worksheets, and tests to accommodate your disabled students’ needs. You might want to get some psych. courses so you can develop behavior management systems for your classroom for those with emotional or behavioral disorders or really low frustrations levels and poor impulse control from ADHD. Get a secretary to photocopy all the supplemental material you need to re-teach and reinforce skills for students who cannot retain or generalize from instruction, and donate a another $20,000 for multisensory and adapted materials and adaptive technology. That should make inclusion work for all students. But if you can’t do all that, they should still be socially much happier than if they are in special schools or special classes.
Fern

I find it very sad to see teachers displaying such negative attitudes about inclusion. Thank goodness my son’s teachers in the regular ed class have great attitudes and don’t consider him to be a burden.

The science teacher welcomed him with open arms she does alot of group projects and he’s great at getting answers maybe another kid writes it down.

I think it is very unfair to the kids if a teacher doesn’t have some positive ideas and input to scare teachers who just have questions.

BTHW where did the idea come from that one way of teaching will reach all the kids?

It’s not the student that is the burden. Many times a teacher welcomes a student with open arms — yet recognizes the realistic challenges that inclusion brings. THe challenges can be frustrating, especially when you really care about the students. (Actually, there was *nothing* negative about that post. It simply delineated some — not all — of the things required to do inclusion right. )
I would much rather have a teacher who saw the negatives and the challenges than a teacher who donned rose-coloured glasses and simply didn’t see the students being “included” who were not getting an education. Check out the Inclusion articles on this site.
If your student is succeeding (both gradewise and getting real backgtround knowledge) then I’m very, very glad for you. However, while you admonished Fern’s so-called “negative” attitude, you failed to address the time needed for modification of textbooks, worksheets and tests and the other true additional measures necessary to make a classroom truly inclusive. Which of the things she listed would you deny students who needed them?

I think inclusion works for kids with certain types of disabilities (nonverbal, asbergers) or for students with language based disabilities that have had a lot of remediation. My son, with global LDs, is now functioning pretty well in an inclusion type setting. He has had years of therapy and has a very supportive teacher. She doesn’t teach to him differently but he does have some modifications and accomodations. This is a parochial school which tries to serve kids with a wide variety of needs. I find though that we have to do a lot of direct teaching with him at home. Of course, the same was true when he was in a resource setting in the public school.

My son was basically babysat in regular classroom in second grade before we got him somewhat caught up. He went to resource room for both reading and math but the rest of the day went right past him. I think Fern’s description is pretty accurate of what it would have required to actually taught him the rest of the day.

Beth

I think inclusion has its limitations. There is a set of charter schools here that do only inclusion, and they seem to think thru it clearly enough and have some resources into it. But they don’t need to take every kid.

I don’t think that Aspergers or NLD, say, would automatically be better for inclusion than some others. Certainly you don’t always have spelling or reading to deal with, but there are some things about those disabilities that might make them harder to include, depending on the child. Such a kid may not get anything social about school, why do the kids put away the materials automatically? If the teacher says something you think is stupid shouldn’t you say so? How about when a kid says something stupid!?
Some of these kids will drive these teachers mad. It depends on the school, the committment to make it work and the child.

The so-called “negative” post, just illustrated the $$ needs and other needs to get every child included.

Actually I worked with severe profound multiply handicapped kids for awhile as well as severely autistic. I don’t think it would really be possible to include them. The best that I could see is to teach the normal kids about them and have them meet them with education going more for the normal kids. I think it is valuable and valid in itself.

—des

Des,

My thinking about NLD/asbergers and inclusion is based on posts from parents of NLD kids. Resource rooms are oriented towards teaching kids to read—trying to remediate language based disabilities. Typically, I think the difficulties NLD/asbergers kids have aren’t something that a pull out program can remediate. My impression is that assistance in the regular classroom is more useful. But maybe I am off the mark.

I do think it is impossible to teach kids with significant language based disabilities adequately in an inclusion setting. These kids need to be instructed differently—multisensory structured programs—that need to be administered in a resource setting.

Alternatively, both sets of kid can benefit from a setting where all is oriented towards the LD kid. Of course, this is just the opposite of inclusion.

Beth

:x To Fern,

Take a valium and chill out!! If you are not willing to “teach” then get out of the profession! Go flip hamburgers at McDonalds for awhile.

It is because of teachers like you that slow or behond students learn to hate school!!

Get out of the profession!!

As a “full inclusion” teacher, I have to make a comment on this…

I LOVE my job and I work hard at it! I spend most of my free time at night and on weekends modifying and creating supplements to the regular curriculum. I modify at 3 different levels (from K-5) in my 6th grade classroom… and I do it for the kids. I am not complaining. I am here to set the record straight… teaching is hard work. Full inclusion is even harder. My students range in ability, behavior and everything else… they require a great deal of support to succeed in this environment. Therefore, I do what needs to be done to help THEM! I find it hard to listen (or read) about others who show bitterness towards our profession. We all try hard and we are there for the kids. We do have budget issues and the lack of money does create obstacles in our daily classroom activities. But, we continue to work towards the same goal.. to educate the children in our classes. I’m not sure that full inclusion is the way to go for all students… but it does work for a lot of them. I still believe that pull-out resource needs to be incorporated into a school’s special education program for the students that present with greater gaps in education (2 or more levels below their current grade). There is a need for intensive programs and that is hard to fulfill in a full inclusion setting.

All in all, I commend all teachers for their hard work and dedication. And I do not say that because I am a teacher, I say that because I had some of the most wonderful, hard-working teachers in my past! :)