On Tuesday, January 29th the Urban Educators Cohort of MSU's College of Education brought in a panel of urban educators to talk about special education in the urban setting.
Panelists included:
Lori Abbott
Principal, Gier Park Elementary
Lansing School District
Virginia Acheson
Principal, Sheridan Road Elementary School
Lansing School District
Elizabeth Coverson
Teacher, Schulze Elementary School
Detroit Public Schools
Troy Mariage
Professor, College of Education
Michigan State University
Charles Tutt
Teacher, Holmes Gender Academy
Flint Community Schools
Jessica Henning
MSU sophomore
Katie Murphy
MSU freshman
Shalayla Williams
MSU freshman
Dr. Troy Mariage began the guided panel discussion by discussion what he calls the Deficit Problem within the current educational setting. Teachers and experts have become so good at identifying a student’s weaknesses and those areas where students struggle that they’ve completely lost the notion of highlighting students’ strengths. As special educators one of our biggest tasks is working with our students and their parents. Dr. Mariage went on to stress how much it means to the parents of a child who receives special education services to find their child’s strengths. Parents of children with severe cognitive impairments or children with physical impairments have spent a significant amount of time with doctors who tell them everything that’s “wrong” with their child. Most parents of children with special needs need someone to find something “right” with their child.
Elizabeth Coverson is a Kindergarten teacher at Schulze Elementary in Detroit, a school that has failed to meat AYP for 4 consecutive years. She admits that a school such as Schulze gets a lot of help from the government, however, she said “…it’s not the students who are failing, it’s not the teachers, it’s the system.”
Charles Tutt is a middle school/high school teacher of Civics, Government, and History. Charles teaches in the Flint area in a school that is known for its inclusion program. During his talk, Charles mentioned the push-out, push-in program that his school has for students of all academic backgrounds.
Lori Abbott, principle at Gier Elementary (here in Lansing) was a special educator for many years before she assumed her administrative role. As an individual who has put in the hours of being a teacher and is now in a leadership role for a group of teachers, she believes that the key to special education is training the teachers. General education teachers need to be trained on how to work with special education teachers and special education students. One of the training methods she has brought to Gier Elementary is differentiated instruction. She believes that it is her staff’s responsibility to “…meet the needs of all of the students in your room, no matter how many students you have, no matter the differences in their academic abilities”. She has also spent time training her staff in classroom management. When asked why, she responded, “What separates a general education teacher from a special education teacher? Classroom management.”
As I walk away from this panel event, I can’t help but question if inclusion programs are really all that inclusive? Both Elizabeth Coverson and Charles Tutt claim to work in buildings who provide full inclusion. Perhaps my personal view of inclusion is skewed, but I do not view Elizabeth Coverson’s Kindergarten class as a fully inclusive program because she mentioned that once hearing impaired students are fluent in ASL the student and his/her interpreter come into her classroom. Is this full inclusion, or inclusion with accommodations?
Charles Tutt mentioned the push-out, push-in program that his building offers, after discussing how well known his school is for their full inclusion program. Any student can go see a push-out, push-in teacher for assistance with the work they were assigned in the general education classroom.
Virginia Acheson, principle at Sheridan Road Elementary (also in Lansing) went on to say that students in her building (K-5) don’t know they are receiving special education services. She claims that they are not viewed differently for going to see another teacher for reading and that “special education just isn’t an issue for younger students”. Whether going to another classroom for an academic area is or isn’t an issue for the students in her building, I wonder about the students in Charles Tutt’s middle school and high school classrooms?
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
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2 comments:
Wow, I cannot agree with Principal Acheson's comment concerning pull-out instruction. I have spent more than 15 years in the K-8 classrooms in Lansing and know (all too well) how it is viewed by the students themselves and by their fellow classmates. There are definite stigmas to instruction done outside the regular classroom. Without discussing these issues, we asked our children if they wished to go to special subjects that were part of their Lansing schools' gifted and talented programs. When each child was offered the opportunity by the school, they each declined. Even though their ages placed them in grades that are six years apart, they both felt strongly against being pulled out of their classroom communities to attend special education that they had qualified for via their MEAP and later their SAT scores. Each child felt very strongly against being singled out. Our son went so far as to say that the other kids already tease him about being so much smarter than they are and that attending this pull-out program would only exacerbate his stigma as "the smart kid". I agree with your wondering if "full inclusion" can be defined in the ways that some of these educators and administrators are doing so, Kelly. Thanks for sharing this event!
I hate to seem so skeptical of inclusion, but after taking CEP 480 with Dr. Pagliaro I've adopted this thinking that full inclusion is almost impossible for special education students. Perhaps even too for those students who just need a little help.
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