Including all of your students!

Hello all!

I guess to start this off, I can give you all a bit about who I am. My name is Zach Briggs. I am currently doing my student teaching in a special education placement in St. Albans, VT. I enjoy long walks on the beach, deep conversation, holding hands, romance novels, and pruning the garden. What? Too much?? Fine. I GUESS I’ll just keep it focused on our placements.

Sorry JT...

I, like all of you, am experiencing the TIME OF MY YOUNG LIFE being in a student teaching placement and, like it or not, we’re coming to the end of our time there and the real world is COMIN' IN HOT! We’re gonna be having our own classrooms, with our own students, and our OWN BENDY NECAP RULERS!!!

Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about.

I want to take my time here with this lovely blog post that's already going out of control to go over some of the inclusion strategies we can use for students who are in special education. I thought, with my current placement, it really makes the most sense and I can talk about some of the stuff that I see on a regular basis. NOW, I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that you’re probably thinking to yourself "Why are you telling me this? I’ve talked about inclusion strategies like 10,000 times” and to that I say, buckle-up sister! Cause this is 10,001!

*ding*

So let’s start with what inclusion means. Inclusion means supporting special education students by accommodating and modifying student work to help meet their needs. I believe that all educators should be doing this as much as possible. It’s not Ye Olden Days anymore, it’s time to get with the program and start teachin’ all the kiddos, not just the ones who are where you want them to be.

"Time to fight social oppression of special education!" - That guy.

Not to go into TOO much detail, cause again, we’ve heard it all already, let me list off some of the main examples of inclusion I have seen in my placement.

Scaffolding

Manipulatives

Strategic Grouping

Extra time (on assessments, time to think, support time)

Accommodating work (amount of work, differentiating to meet student level)

OF COURSE UNIVERSAL DESIGN OF LEARNING (UDL)

OH YEAH!

I want to go into one of these in more detail, Manipulatives. When I first think of Manipulatives I think of base ten blocks, play money, pattern blocks, and other math manipulatives but they really can be found all over. From puzzles and games to markers and other art supplies, manipulatives are anything that can give the student something to DO when learning. These items are multisensory, represent ideas in more than one way, promote communication, and increase confidence in a subject area. This idea helped create ACTION BASED LEARNING or ABL, which if you’ve never heard of it before, is a very kinesthetic way for students to move and interact with their environment and learn. Here is a link for more details on ABL and how you could be involved with it in the future.

Bright, beautiful, captivating, CoverGirl.

With that being said, you don't NEED to be a part of ABL in order to implement ABL's ideas. All classrooms can be action based and can have students interact and explore their environment. Even Middle and High school classrooms, which are typically more lecture based than exploring your surroundings don't need to be. The best part of Middle and High schoolers is they can be expected to do things without constant supervision (even though they don't always act like they can handle it. NO DISRESPECT TO THOSE STUDENTS, but I was one of them once and let's be honest. I probably STILL shouldn't be expected to do things without supervision). These are perfect times for students to go out and learn by doing. Have students plant a garden that they tend to every day and explore the life and water cycle. Have students go on nature hikes and explore their towns. have students find real life MATH (WHHHAAAATT?!) and find ways that it applies to their everyday life and real world implications from stop signs to money to dimensions of buildings and architecture all the way to the video games they play. These real life experiences are going to have a much longer lasting implication on these students and as far as I'm concerned, are the more important for students with special needs. 

COME ON, we all know that this game is actually FILLED with crazy mathematical concepts and students would be none the wiser.

So, to wrap it all up in a B-E-A-UTIFUL bow, I just want to end with this quote that I really believe are words to live by for all teachers:
"Our job is to teach the students we have. Not the ones we would like to have. Not the ones we used to have. Those we have right now. All of them." -Dr. Kevin Maxwell

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