Making Inclusion Work in Wilson County Schools, by Jennifer Ankney, 8th grade ELA/Exceptional Education Teacher at Mt. Juliet Middle School

Fairness is not giving everyone the same thing.  Fairness is giving each person what they need to succeed.  Fairness is what lies at the heart of inclusion.  According to the Individuals with Disabilities Act Section 612.5 A, all children with disabilities are to be educated to the “maximum extent” with children who do not have disabilities.  There are different inclusion models schools can implement.  The model that is most effective is the co-teaching model.

Dr. Rebecca Hines, Ph. D, is an expert in inclusion.  She firmly believes the co-teaching model is the best choice in the inclusion setting.  She lists "old school" proven steps to teaching (Gagne) that, if implemented will result in good co-teaching, which in turn, will result in student achievement.  The co-teachers decide who will be responsible for each step.  Ideally, a co-taught classroom should have twice as many instructional interactions happening, and twice as many layers of instruction.

1.  Gain students attention.

2.  Bring to mind relevant prior learning.

3.  Point out important information.

4.  Present information in an organized manner.

5.  Show students how to categorize (chunk) related information.

6.  Provide opportunities for students to elaborate on new information.

7.  Show students how to use coding when memorizing lists.

8.  Provide for repetition of learning.

9.  Provide opportunities for overlearning of fundamental concepts and skills.

Below are some suggestions for how I have made inclusion work.  This is my third year teaching inclusion at Mount Juliet Middle School.

1.       Plan with your teachers.  When you don’t have time to plan together, ask the general education teacher to send you the lesson plans for the week.  As the exceptional education teacher, look over the plans and add in strategies to aide in student understanding. 

2.       When looking at plans, think about how you can meet the needs of visual learners, auditory learners and tactile learners.  Use videos, technology, read aloud, tutorials, etc. when possible. 

3.       At the beginning of the year, give your co-teacher your roster of exceptional education students.  Ask for his or roster of general education students.  While you only need to keep track and enter grades for your roster, it is still a good idea to have the names of the rest of the students in your gradebook.

4.       I grade papers for all students in my class.  This includes my inclusion roster and the general education roster.  This has been beneficial for me in order to see how the exceptional education students are performing in comparison to the general education students.  If you do this, be sure to get the papers graded in a timely manner and given to your co-teacher to record.

5.       Have a designated place on the board to state the learning goal for the day.  The format I use is the following:

·         Today I will…

·         So that I can…

·         I will know I know it when I can…

6.       In our ever-changing technological world, students are using Chromebooks, IPADs, and even cell phones in our classrooms.  Have a designated area in your classroom for headphone storage.  The headphones can be used in your class, and it allows for the instruction to be differentiated, in that each student can be watching tutorials, videos, or listening to an audio version of a story or lesson based on what he or she needs.  I ask that students bring headphones to class, and I put each student’s headphones in a Ziploc bag.

7.       Below are some resources I use frequently in my inclusive classrooms.

·         www.brainpop.com This site has videos for all subjects, quizzes, activities, and graphic organizers.

·         www.readworks.org This site contains fiction and nonfiction for kindergarten through 8^th grades.  You can search by content, grade level, literary skill, or Lexile level.

·         www.learnzillion.com This site has lessons for each state standard along with quizzes for students to take afterwards.

·         www.newsela.com This site has up-to-date current event articles written on the Lexile level you choose.  This is great for differentiated instruction, as the students can read articles containing same content with adjusted difficulty level of vocabulary.

·         www.readwritethink.org This site has useful graphic organizers.

·         Google Classroom

·         Edmodo (like Google classroom)

·         www.classdojo.com This site is great for classroom management.

·         www.studyjams.com This is a math and science site for audio and visual learners.  There are videos for different skills with practice and quizzes.

Karen Clay said, “The severity of one’s disability does not determine their level of potential.  The greatest barriers that persons with disabilities have to overcome are not steps or curbs, it’s expectations.”  Students with disabilities deserve to be held to high expectations like their general education peers.  When we have high expectations and hold all students accountable, the students will rise and meet our expectations.  In the end, the goal of co-teaching is not to bring two teachers together.  The goal of co-teaching is to serve students.