Anyone experiencing a great inclusion program?

[Jodi]

I almost laughed when I typed that. Is there such a thing?

Seriously though, I'm curious if there is anyone out there that feels their child is having a good experience with inclusion, and would be willing to share what it is they think makes it work so well.

Ryan is getting ready to transition to 1st grade (IEP is a little over a month away). I was told last week that Ryan was the first truly "included" child with his level of disability. He participates with the class, but not on everything (most math concepts are too difficult). When it's over his head, they either work on his goals, or do something along the same lines, just more at his level.

When we had the first IEP, I asked for the "full-continuum of services" and they looked at me and said "It's either SDC or nothing". I ended up getting him into a regular head-start program for a couple of years. He's been in the same kindergarten class for two years (in his second year).

Ryan's coordinator has learned over the past 3 years how to work with his aide, teacher, and therapists in adapting his school work so that it is meaningful to him. We still have a long way to go. I'm a little surprised that they really don't have a great deal of experience in this area. They have advertised for an inclusion specialist at the District for more than three years. Wonder why no one wants the job?

Anyway, thanks again for your valuable input!

Jodi

[MB]

We have a son in seventh grade and have had a wonderful experience with inclusion. Our son sounds like yours in that Math was and reamains his biggest challenge.

What made it work?

1. We had long term goals for our son going into school. Goals for him at the age of 21. Our IEPs reflected movement towards the goals. If he was developing in any of the following areas, the team was happy - social, academic, functional.

2. Adapting the curriculum became almost a game for all of us. We would try to outdo each other with ideas for my son to participate in the regular classroom. When it simply wasn't possible, he worked on individual goals that were on his IEP.

3. We rarely talked abouat the IEP. If he started taking us in a different direction, we went with him. He was supposed to learn money skills. He insisted on learning to sign his name instead. We were baffled but let him proceed because of his high level of interest. It all made sense the day he took my husband's credit card and tried to sign for something. He couldn't explain to his OT that money wasn't used in our family - plastic cards and signatures buy things.

4. We worked towards making him as independent as possible and removing as much time with a para as possible.

5. Academics were at the bottom of the priority list and yet he has been very successful, for a kid with Ds. His behavior was at the top and once he started behaving, he had nothing left to do but learn.

6. He showed us early on that he wanted to participate in the regular classroom and often received A's on projects that he didn't deserve because someone else (me) did most of the work. The team was never bothered by this because we parents were not counting these grades towards a high school diploma. He was so happy to present these projects.

7. His life is so enriched by what he has learned. He can do research in the library and on the net so his curiosity never wains.

I think it worked because we had goals that were realistic and short term objectives that we could all celebrate. We really worked as a team and liked each other. We felt we were making a difference in this kid's life.

There were challenges throughout the years, but we took an analytical approach and worked things out.

I still hold 99.9% of his teachers in the highest regard.

MB

[Jodi]

Thanks MB. Sounds like a great plan.

Sometimes I doubt myself and whether or not I'm making the right choices for Ryan.

It's a learning process. For instance, we started using sentence strips to teach Ryan new reading words. If the new word was "cow", then a picture of a cow appeared below the word. Unfortunately, they tried to teach him the concept of less/more with this method. The end result of that was a sentence like :Mom has more milk than Ryan. Under mom was two pictures of milk, and under Ryan was one picture of milk (but no picture of milk under the word milk which he didn't even know). I explained to his specialist that this was probably confusing, and more of a mathmatical skill than reading. So we don't use that anymore.

Yesterday they send home a worksheet of the seasons. Since we are in So. Cal, the only seasons Ryan knows are Sunny and Rainy. Haha! Needless to say we didn't even attempt the sheet, but we talked about "sunny" and "rainy" instead.

Jodi

[steffipoo]

hi!!!! I just have to add that the inclusion facilitator at our school is fabulous and we are soo lucky from what I am hearing from here to have one. K girls I am getting a book in the next 2 weeks or less called...

Teaching math to people with ds and other hands on learners
Book 1 Basic survival skills

By...DeAnna Horstmeier

Anyone have it? Liv is having a hard time with math BUT we found something that is helping her. I'd have to scan a picture of it though cause its way to simple toexplain with words and I would end up making it sound more complicated than it is.lolol... I'm FAMOUS for that yet LOL I can look at Liv and do a task analysis in the simplest terms.HUH???whoulda thunk...hee hee

Well I am getting th4e book soon I think its a woodbine not sure though HUGS Steff

[Jodi]

How funny, we just bought the book and it arrived yesterday!!! I will let you know.

How old is Liv?

We've been using the "Teaching Reading..." book (modified by me of course) to Ryan for about a year now. He is doing pretty darn good! He can read simple sentences like "Mom likes to play with Ryan" "I see a cow and a pig" etc.

Can I borrow your facilitator???

Jodi

[steffipoo]

hee hee oh yes please let me know how the book is I am sure it will give me tips that we have never thought of. Just hope they are successful. Olivia is 7 Jodi. Ryan is amazing he reads so well. Livs reading now too and the addition of giving her the sign for the word when teaching her a new word has been a HUGE success. And Olivia is very articulate I believe the sign is a visual cue that made reading so much easier for her as well as flash cards phonics and repetition repetition repetition. And YES I will share our inclusion facilitator on thurs and fri K??? LOL HUGS steff

I would love to hear more about Ryan

[momofrussell]

Russell is not in an inclusion program but does get "included" for PE, Art, Music and Library. So it's not FULL inclusion but I will say that this set up is working WONDERFUL for Russell! That being said, I think you are doing a FINE job with Ryan!

Part of what makes ANY program work, Russell's included, is having a TEAM that THINKS it will work! You can have the best plan on paper and if only part of the team thinks this is the right thing to do or if it will work, you will be defeating the purpose of "appropriate placement".

Also, on the math... has Ryan done the "Touch Math"? I know Heidi, Ashley's mom posted about it a while back and then when I went to visit Russell's class a few months back, they are using that with him too! I didn't even know. I hear it's good, does Ryan do something like that?

A.

[MB]

I am worried that I used the wrong terminology in my previous post.

I said that my son was in an inclusion program. The goal was to keep him in the regular classroom as much as possible. Extra help or alternative work was often delivered in the resource room. We had what I call a "free float." Whenever needed, he was floated out of the class to the resource room and whenever appropriate he came back to the class to participate. I am worried that I gave some of you the wrong impression.

Sorry.

MB

[momofrussell]

Well, MB, if you think about it... even with Russell's... they ARE included. I guess it all depends on how you you look at that term. I guess the question would be are we talking FULL inclusion with NO pull outs EVER.. or inclusion with "help".. or like Russell who is in a "self contained" class but is mainstreamed (included) with his typical peers for certain classes every day.

It's all inclusion if you want my semantic view on it.

A.

[Jodi]

MB - I like your 'begin with the end in mind' approach.

Ryan's first year in kinder was more like his body was in the class, but he hardly participated in group activities or did any independent work. And this is what they called "inclusion". His aid was always beside him prompting.

This year his teacher includes him much more. He participates in circle time, story time, calendar time (the best to his ability) and much more. The teacher has taught sign language to the class. One time when I went there, a child was telling Ryan to sit down on the carpet while using the "sit" sign. It was great. When its time to work in their journals (usually dictation or independent writing), Ryan will copy sentences from strips.

He gets speech and ot therapies. Speech is twice a week, and that is the only time he is out of the class. His ot guy is wonderful, and has actually helped the team to be mindful to get Ryan to work more independently.

MomofRussell - I agree with you! I guess that what we are doing is working, because Ryan is progressing. I'm a little worried about 1st grade, but what the heck. I guess we try it out and see how he does.

Ryan has a wonderful aid this year who gets it. She is willing to try anything for Ryan. I sure hope we get to keep her for next year. I worry that, since she doesn't get a great deal of support and is still the primary teacher to Ryan, that she will burn out.

Thanks for sharing your experiences with me. I should be meeting with the program specialist in the next two weeks to visit classrooms and see what our options are.

Jodi

[Emilysmom]

Jodi~
I have hesitated to reply to this thread because I have had a few problems with Emily's inclusion experience this school year. Then, I started thinking that hey.......it has been a GREAT experience up to this year and she really has benefitted from it, so I can share what has worked well for us. And, as many have said, inclusion is done in so many different ways.....IN school and in the community, etc. So, if one area is not working out that well, we have so many options to provide inclusion experiences for our kids otherwise.

Emily has been what I have always referred to as fully included at school from kindergarten until 6th grade. We were also told that she was the only one in our area to be so fully included with her level of disability, but we pressed on and wanted to try it. From the very beginning, at her kindergarten IEP the principal suggested (yea! I didn't have to ask for it!) that they would provide Em with a one-on-one aide so we would not be "setting her up to fail". He said they could pull the aide out if it turned out she was not needed. I then suggested that this aide be available to help all the kids around Emily so she would not appear to be "velcro'd" to Emily, and I think that worked really well. The teachers loved having the aide around, and she was able to do whatever Emily needed her to do while being available to the other kids too.

In first grade, she began to be pulled out to a resource classroom for math and reading....an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon. For me, it was very very important that she be considered to be a member of the "regular" 1st grade classroom but to go out for extra help......along with lots of other kids who were struggling to read and needed extra help with math. This, to me was a bit different than if her "homeroom" was the self contained classroom and she was brought into the "regular" class a couple times a day for inclusion. HOWEVER......that is another way that many kids are very successfully included!! For Emily, this routine of being pulled out to the resource room twice a day worked wonderfully until this past year. Her assignments were modifed a bit more as she got older. I have insisted that in most subjects, she is to be responsible for learning the 3 most important concepts in each section, and to be tested on those concepts. Otherwise, she gets bogged down and frustrated. Peer buddies have also been very very helpful over the years, and I think the buddies have learned a lot from Emily too!! We have used a communication notebook so that we could work on the same things at home that the school is working on from day to day. She has been in her school's Girl Scout troop for several years, and I can't say enough GOOD about that experience!!!

I won't go into our situation this year (sigh...I've whined about that so so much already!!), but I hope we are going to be getting back on track with a more inclusive environment., starting next week. There are SO many different variations of inclusion, and different things work for different kids and in different schools. In Emily's school, I feel that the self contained classroom is VERY restrictive. They are not always like that. Hopefully, Ryan's school has some creative people who can help you make it a great experience for him.

Susan