The information in this chapter gets my heart stirring. As a special educator, my passion is creating an inclusive school, and a lot of what I have done over the past 3 years of my career has been just that! All the inclusion information discussed on pages 172-175 is what I have recently gone to several conferences and workshops to learn about, and as I have been implementing some ideas to facilitate inclusion, I have seen WONDERFUL results!
I created a "Buddies" club where different clubs in the school (StuCo, Key Club, National Honors Society) host and plan a night to get to know my students by playing games, making crafts, and, of course, eating! This has really helped my students to form relationships with their peers in the regular division. We are also going to start a "Buddies" study hall to do the same thing! My school also currently has no co-taught classes, which as you can see by the information in the chapter, this doesn't align with the Least Restrictive Environment laws. Next year, one other special educator and I will be going into general education classes as true co-teachers and not just glorified aides. I am SO excited to see the results of this!
One of my favorite things we tried this past year is I came in as a guest speaker into the Human Relations classroom and spoke about forming friendships with people with disabilities. I taught the students about what it is like to be in the shoes of someone with a disability (eg. What does it feel like to have autism) and the students in that classroom were SO interested! I had never seen a classroom of high school students so engaged for so long! It was clear they wanted to learn, and the following day I brought my students into the sections of this course and the students in the Humans Relations class got to practice what they learned the next day. Out of this event, one of the students in the HR class asked one of my students to prom! AND another student was asked by kids in the HR class to be a bat boy on the baseball team, and he's been doing this ever since!
I definitely feel my strength is including people who perform below the average range. However, after taking that quiz Dr. Cantu posted in the resources section, I can see that my weakness is reaching out to the students who perform ABOVE. I usually would take all the approaches that were proven to be ineffective in that document (eg. More work, Helping the other students).
My question is: What strategies have YOU used in your classroom to enhance the education for the gifted students? What has worked? Is there any time-efficient approach that fits nicely into the curriculum for the rest of the students?
I can honestly say that I am on the opposite side of where you feel you are with helping students above and below average. I teach an advanced Literature class, and try to differentiate with questioning in my regular Lit classes. However, where I know I need the most assistance is how to help those who are at the lower end of academic ability. I too will be trying a new approach of co-teaching next year with the special education teacher in my grade level. I have a huge appreciation for special education teachers because I find their (YOUR) knowledge to be a great resource. I am both excited and nervous about the new strategy next year, but I am positive that it will be advantageous to the students in my classes.
ReplyDeleteYour blog on this subject captures my underlying concern perfectly! I wondered if the state guidelines and tools singled out students identified with exceptionalities whether over achiever or under. I wondered how alienated a child could feel as a result and worse still, what kind of character shaping it has on the students that are considered "normal". So being your module of inclusion through your Buddies Club is indeed heartwarming!
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