What Is My Role as a Teacher Working in an Inclusive Classroom?

Question

Answer

What is our role as teachers, and what do we expect from ourselves as we're working in inclusive classrooms? Of course, we want to be engaged with all of the children that we serve and we want to find ways for them to be successful. We don't ever want anyone to feel like they're not part of our group. There are many things that you can do to lead the charge in creating an inclusive environment and making sure that you have the support you need to be successful.

Here are some things that you can do.

• Assess and Partner with Families to Refer Children with Developmental Concerns
  • Several years ago, there was an initiative from the federal government called, Birth to 5: Watch Me Thrive. Its intention was that all early education settings would conduct developmental screenings to identify developmental concerns. If you work in Head Start or Early Head Start, you're already doing that, as it is required through the Act. The idea is that you're constantly looking for red flags or anything that might show that a child needs early intervention services, special education services, or additional support.  You would have that conversation with families because you only see that child during the day, and the family lives with that child and may have some similar concerns.  It's a process that you and the family are in together.
• Engage Children with Disabilities in All Classroom Activities
  • Engage children with disabilities in every single classroom activity. That means that sometimes you will need to get creative about what those activities look like and what your expectations are for all children in the classroom. It also requires a lot of individualization.
• Create Space for Specialists in Plans and Your Room
  • Create a space for specialists in plans and your room. Make time for them and make space for them so that they have a place to go and something to do in your classroom. In one of the Head Start classrooms that I worked in, the speech therapist led activities for the entire class. She had half an hour every Tuesday and Thursday. She had two or three students that had speech goals on their IEPs and she would deliver those services with the rest of the class. She also did some individual therapy. The fact that everyone in that class had access to those specific activities was a way of making everybody feel included. The children loved her and when they saw her coming, they would go right to the meeting area because they looked forward to the fun activities she had for the whole class.
• Identify and Share Strategies to Problem Solve
  • Identify and share strategies for individualization among partners, including families. When you do a specific activity and use a strategy to individualize for a child that works well, share it with the family and the other partners who are working with that child. They will also share with you. I worked with one child whose parents came up with the strategy of highlighting specific things in books with tactile cues. These helped to keep the child's interest, helped the child to learn to turn pages, and helped the child to get the most out of book reading. They told me about it and showed me some of the books. I started doing it in the classroom and I shared it with the early interventionist. I've been a general education teacher and a special education teacher in center-based settings, and I'm also a parent whose child has received speech therapy, and so I share multiple perspectives because I've held many different roles.
• Consult with Specialists to Problem Solve
  • As a teacher will consult with specialists to problem solve. Issues might come up in your classroom that you can't figure out how to address on your own. Contact the person on your team who has expertise in that area and have them come and help you think it through. An example from my experience is a child who was in a general education classroom who had a lot of trouble behaving. The child may have tantrums, running away behavior, and leave the classroom without permission. The teacher brought me in to solve some of those problems. We came up with strategies to help motivate the child, like using a time interval reward system. Essentially, that means that we kept track of how long he stayed focused and engaged in the activity, and engaged in positive behaviors. We extended the intervals over time. It started with just a couple minutes, then it increased to a couple of minutes more. If he reached those time intervals without any issues, he got to choose a reward. That worked well in keeping him focused and engaged and he had immediate gratification that worked for him.  That consultation was critical to the teacher's success in keeping the child on task and keeping his behavior issues at a minimum. I would not have been able to help her if she hadn't asked for help.
• Coordinate with Partners to Communicate with Families
  • Families hear from many different people. We've talked about the different people that are on the team, and that doesn't even include the pediatrician or healthcare provider or other specialists they may be working with that are outside of your program. Coordinate with other partners to ensure that families are always getting consistent messaging from the team and that you are building on one another's strengths and perspectives. Coordinated communication is critical to the role you play in supporting these families. 

This Ask the Expert is an edited excerpt from the course, Collaboration to Support Children with Special Needs, by Amanda Schwartz, PhD.