Inclusion Project: Team Lead
Project Rationale
On my school site, there are 3 Special Day Class (SDC) classrooms for students with Autism. Many of the students in the primary SDC classroom are ready and capable of mainstreaming into a general education classrooms for a portion of the day. In cooperation with the primary SDC classroom teacher, I wanted to create a way to mainstream students into various first grade classrooms during the school year. The marginalization of special education students can be stopped in the early grades by beginning the mainstreaming process in the primary grades. First, I wanted the SDC teacher to give general education first grade students a series of awareness training lessons. Then students would join the SDC classroom for a few days a week to acclimate students to one another and ultimately there would be more free inclusion of all students within the two realms.
The series of awareness lessons were successful in creating a way for young children to understand personal differences. The students began with 20 minute segments of joining the SDC classrooms. By the end of April, most of the SDC students mainstreamed into the four first grade classrooms for English Language Development lessons. Mainstreaming also occurred for the Arts program as well as for physical education (PE) portions of the week. Currently, the students in first grade all know students from the primary SDC classrooms and play together during recess. Teachers have noticed a definite inclusive spirit among the students and staff. Inclusion Lesson
Leadership Activities
My main leadership role was to coordinate with the SDC classroom teacher and the general education classroom teachers in first grade and pursue our agreed upon goals for inclusion. First, I approached the SDC teacher to present the general education classroom with a few awareness lessons. Early in October, she taught a series of six awareness lesson that covered the following topics: Be smart, Be patient, Be inclusive, Be sensitive, Be brave and Be yourself. Through the short lessons, she taught general education students about her students and their special needs as well as how to interact with her students. In the process, the lessons raised awareness in the general education teachers as well. In addition, in researching the positive effects of inclusion, I gained significant insight through reading articles, especially written by Theoharis.
In November, SDC students mainstreamed with first grade in the Art program and also joined my class for PE lessons. After discussion with the first grade teacher team, we also began in-class inclusion for ELD lessons and computer lab time in December. The SDC teacher and I coordinated with the Art and Dance teachers to include both classes each week in these activities.
I used consistent emails to create a collaborative team with an open line of communication. It was established in September that the entire first grade team and the SDC teacher would meet during our Wednesday lunch time and discuss refinements of our program. At this point, the goal for next year is to include other grade levels in this inclusion team’s process this year.
The project went fairly well according to plan. By November, we had a team of teachers who were all open to inclusion and working with the SDC teacher and students. The difficult part was finding specially dedicated time to meet as a whole group. The SDC classroom teacher’s schedule was fairly packed with IEP meetings and other requirements for her classroom. Due to everyone’s schedule conflicts, we did not meet each month on a particular date as we had hoped. We participated in numerous electronic communication and I had to work as a liaison to bring the process to the entire team. We did reserve a portion of our Wednesday business lunches to include discussions about inclusion.
The team’s goal was to include the SDC students into the morning routine of our classrooms, however, we had difficulty finding the right timing for the students to join regularly. We are still in the process of including students from the SDC classroom into our morning routines.
CAPEs Connection
My activities in implementing the inclusion project connects to the following CAPEs:
CAPE 1 (Developing and Articulating a Vision of Teaching and Learning Consistent with LEA’s Vision): By working with both general education and a special education teacher, my team worked to create an optimal, inclusive learning environment for all students. The process was consistent with the district’s goals listen on our homepage, www.lawndale.k12.ca.us
CAPE 2 (Developing Shared Commitment to Vision): The vision to include students with disabilities into the regular education curriculum as much as possible, was shared by all the teachers who were involved in the team. The program first started in one general education classroom, however, with a shared vision, all four of the first grade classrooms were participating in inclusive activities by the end of the year.
CAPE 3 (Leading by Example to Promote Implementation): Understanding that equity in access must be provided to all of our students, I began the inclusion lessons with my class and encouraged first grade teachers to open classroom for inclusion.
CAPE 12 (Instituting Collaborative, Ongoing Process of Monitoring/Revising Growth Plan based on Outcomes): As a team lead, I engaged the members of the team and the school community to support the creation of a collaborative community that meets the unique needs of all its students, especially students with special needs. We set aside time during specific lunch times to address issues and new learnings from the inclusion process.
CAPE 13 (Modeling Life Long Learning and Professional Growth): I participated extra professional reading and discussions with peers and experts to understand the learning processes of students with special needs.
CAPE 16 (Understanding and Managing the Complex Interaction): In the process, I used technology to facilitate communication and to manage information between the teachers. In addition, the SDC teacher, extra-curricular teachers and I coordinated the schedules and personnel resources within school to allow for ease in inclusive activities.
CAPE 18 (Implementing California School Requirements and Regulations): With respect to inclusion, with the help of the special education teacher, I shared special education regulations with my team regarding the importance of inclusion. I worked to provided the least restrictive environment for learning for students with special needs through our inclusion project.
Reflection
In the beginning, I thought that my role would be mainly that of a liaison and required me to work with the fellow general education teachers in transitioning SDC students into the general education class. However, my role became less of a liaison and more of a lead collaborator when the first grade general education teachers responded extremely positively to inclusion. For many of the inclusion events, the transition was seamless and easy. In addition, during our Wednesday working lunches, we were able to discuss logistics of the inclusion program on a fairly regular basis. The only disadvantage was that our team could not set up a designated, regular meeting time outside of the lunch meetings with the SDC teacher to discuss the inclusion project.
For all of the teachers on the team, the experience has been positive and rewarding. The only challenge was that we had forgotten about the paraprofessionals who would be accompanying some of the SDC students during inclusion and did not include them in our planning for inclusion. Since the paraprofessionals work directly with our students, it is important to survey their thoughts and include their insights into our inclusion process. The paraprofessional’s insights as well as parent insight are aspects of the inclusion project I will most definitely fortify next year.
