If you ask Dr. McCune… Every Child is an Individual

After many decades of enforced segregation in “contained” classrooms, often labeled with diagnoses that quickly became pejorative, children with disabilities gained the right to inclusion with their peers in the least restrictive environment compatible with their needs. Over this same period of time the inappropriate over-identification of disabilities in racial and linguistic minority children has been recognized and sharply declined. Today the recognition of a range of specific learning disabilities, in addition to those of sufficient severity to warrant special education has reduced the stigma associated with disability and opened the door to greater recognition of the needs of all children for some individual attention to their learning needs.

At the Lincoln Professional Development School (PDS) in New Brunswick, NJ, partnership with the Rutgers University Graduate School of Education (GSE) led faculty at the school to design a program of full inclusion for children with disabilities that suited an economically poor urban school. In two years of study and planning Lincoln faculty visited other schools, attended professional development seminars, and worked to determine what “inclusion” could mean for their students. They evolved a team approach, where for a given grade level two non-special education teachers, a special education teacher, and a teaching assistant would develop two grade level classrooms including approximately 15 non-identified and five special education students in each. Staff volunteered for these innovative assignments which would require close collaboration. There would always be two staff members in each classroom, and planning would need to include the team of four, initially with consultation from GSE faculty. This structure kept costs for the school district down, as the special education staff were freed for inclusion duty by incorporating the number of their assigned students into the inclusion classrooms.

Once special education teachers join the broader classroom team their emphasis on individual needs can find more complete expression. At Lincoln PDS the teams do not divide responsibility by disability status, but by child levels in various subjects, by subject matter interest on the part of staff and by staff talent, which for special education teachers includes recognizing and designing approaches to meet the special learning needs of all students. A visitor finds it impossible to identify the “identified” students in the inclusion classroom, and the children themselves seem to see each other as peers, all individual, all similar. In the four years since this program began, the original inclusive grade four has grown to include grades four to eight, and grades K to three all now include children with disabilities with appropriate support. #

 Dr. Lorraine McCune is a professor at the Rutgers University Graduate School of Education and serves as advisor to educational toy company, General Creation. She can be reached at www.generalcreation.com in the “Ask Dr. McCune” section.

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