Thoughtful Inclusion

This was taken from the Social Thinking Blog by Michelle Garcia Winner. If you haven't checked out the concept of social thinking, you'll want to check it out...there is really some great information available on this website.

As I am trying to figure out the best Kindergarten option for Carson, I felt this article was very timely for me...hope you can use it as well! I'd love to hear ideas that this stirs within you...leave me a comment (Kendra...that means YOU) !

Thoughtful Inclusion
Monday, 22 February 2010 17:00

I was recently asked to write about the social skills kids need to have acquired to benefit more fully from an integrated setting. While this is a huge question I will write some basic thoughts on this concept.

Many of you who are familiar with my work know that I talk about the social complexities of the classroom learning environment. While we often only teach social skills for the context of playing or conversing the reality is that students use social thinking and related social skills every moment they are around people including more structured environments like classrooms. While I know our political education plan is quick to advocate the inclusion of all kids into “integrated” settings as much as possible, I encourage “thoughtful inclusion” rather than making blanket statements that “all kids should be included”. I think kids with social learning challenges have extraordinary problems with processing social information “in mass”. These challenges are far beyond the challenges of students with more typical learning disabilities. I think that much of the research on inclusion of special needs kids fails to really look specifically at the inclusion of kids with social learning challenges and how much they are learning of a functional nature of how to participate with others given the amount of cueing and support (Paraprofessionals helping to complete their work for them, etc.) in this environment. Now take what I am saying here with the understanding that I have gone to great lengths to explore different levels of the social mind in other articles on my website, so I am not making blanket statement here. It is all about really thinking about the student and what we are REALLY teaching them so they can learn to function as more independent, self-regulated students and then adults who can also have command of academic information (as much as their brains allow them to learn).

I do think “inclusion” is much more realistic for many in elementary school and becomes increasingly unrealistic for many of our more socially challenged learners in middle school and high school not only due to the social complexities of this age group but also because of the social abstractions taught through the curriculum.

As we discuss “inclusion” or “integrated” settings it is important to make sure we define these terms as part of an IEP team to make sure we are all on the same page. I have seen many kids “integrated” or “included” who do their own curriculum and don’t spend much time with the larger group as they are mostly off by themselves with paraprofessionals having individual instruction in the back of the class. While I actually have no problem with this, it is not what I think a parent thinks “inclusion” means for his or her child. Let’s be honest about what we can really do to help children learn. We can’t make all kids good group learners just because public law says we should unless they have some magical potion or cure for deep neurological learning problems that they have not shared with us? Even “highly qualified teachers” cannot teach some of our more challenged high-functioning kids with autism or Asperger Syndrome to learn effectively in a group of 30. Some of our kids cannot attend to people talking even in a group of 3 (and these can be some “high functioning” kids!).

On the other hand, there is real value in having students in a school become “mentors” to our students with social learning challenges to help guide them through social interactions and learning the “hidden rules”. I am careful to distinguish between a “mentor” and a “peer model” -- as Pamela Wolfberg would describe these kids as being “expert players” or having been given explicit instruction on how to help guide our more socially challenged peers. This is a lovely combination and through this relationship many of the “mentors” also learn the remarkable skills of many of our socially challenged learners.

I do not agree that for the most part our students benefit from the simplicity of being around “neurotypical peer models”. If they were to benefit from peer modeling we would not need all this specialized teaching. But our students social learning challenges are deeper than just modeling appropriate social skills; they are also about learning (when possible) the related Social Thinking concepts to help them figure out more intuitively how to use their social skills.

The below list details a few of the many aspects that need to be considered when integrating a child into the “mainstream environment”.

1.Basic joint attention: the ability to understand that you have to follow what someone is looking at to follow what they are thinking about. Group education is about understanding that even in kindergarten 20 kids can follow the intentions and thoughts of one teacher. While I realize paraprofessionals are assigned when a child cannot do this, the question is how much is that child learning as part of a group.
2.At the very least, a basic functional communication system for expression of basic wants and needs. Putting non-verbal or minimally verbal students who lack the ability to effectively process and respond to language in a classroom is not to their benefit. While it may look good on the data a school reports about integrating students, kids in groups need to have a way to communicate with each other.
3.Recognition that when you communicate in a class you need to track if someone is listening to you. Those who talk without tracking how people are responding to them (reading some basic non-verbal cues are actually not communicating, they are just simply talking.) Group education is dependent on having students track not only the teacher but others students in the class.
4.It is helpful to try and teach all our students that everyone in a classroom is to “share the same thought”. Some of our students (even some of our high IQ students) do not realize the teacher is teaching everyone the same lesson.
5.Learn how to ask for help; your paraprofessional or teacher should not anticipate a child’s every more. If adults do this with students they actually enable them to become more disabled, rather than teach them strategies to learn to cope on their own.
6.Assess the students basic functional attention span for learning tasks he is motivated by and tasks that he or she finds unmotivating. Make decisions about including a child based on how long they can attend to a topic being addressed in our classes. Some of our kids can attend to basic math for 30 minutes but can’t attend in language arts at all. Realize that there are differences in the amount of social thinking required in these different subjects. One subject may be much harder, so move away from assuming you should include a child for every aspect of learning especially if they are showing signs of stress or lack of ability to attend!
7.If a child is having consistent negative reactions in a classroom and a good attempt has been made to help the student acquire a classroom routine and strategies are used to help the child learn the lessons in a more abstract way, the team may have to realize that the function of the behavior is to try and escape a complex environment (that seems intuitively simple to his peers) that he simply can’t learn in. Some of our “brighter” kids are very fragile as they don’t have coping strategies for moving at the pace of a larger group..and a paraprofessional makes them feel really “stupid”.
8.For more advanced kids we also want to assess and then possibly teach skills related to:

◦What is blurting and how to you avoid it by tracking and thinking about who the teacher is directing their attention to.
◦What does it mean to raise your hand in class? Should you expect the teacher to call on your every time you raise your hand? Why not? Does a teacher notice that you are participating when you raise your hand even if she doesn’t call on you (yes!)?
◦How do you work with peers in a group (center based activities or peer work groups). Can you take over the group; should you tell people their ideas are “stupid”; should you allow everyone else to do the talking and you just sit there quietly?
This is a difficult topic that could go on and on. There are NO EASY answers. Every kid is not easily summarized by his eligibility category, they also have phases of development, levels of cognition that allow some learning to be very easy or incredibly difficult, they may have mental health problems, such as extreme anxiety, that add to the complexity.

Please understand I am not making a blanket statement about inclusion being “good” or “bad”; I am just saying that it is not as easy as it sounds and many (not all) of our kids are not benefiting as much as we might think they are from learning in an environment that their brains cannot easily process: working as part of a larger group of students when they struggle to understand perspective taking, while having to demonstrate they are learning a curriculum that may not be user friendly to their brains, in a set period of time because the academic curriculum is a curriculum on a clock. Teachers know all the lessons they have to teach to prepare for the state’s spring high-stakes testing; they cannot slow down the learning clock because students have IEP goals (welcome to No Child Left Behind!).

The bottom line is, does the inclusion of this child in the curriculum help him to learn social information about how to work well with others (e.g. problem solving, group participation, etc.) while also learning the academic information of the classroom to help the student develop functional skills for transitioning into the adult world? Because at the end of the day or the end of a child’s life as a student in public education what really counts is whether he has developed skills to help him be more successful as an adult.

If we coached a child through his school years with such intensity that he never figured anything out for himself it can be argued that he did not really “learn” but instead was just “managed”.

I have some ideas on how to assess some of these skills under my “informal assessment” section of my book, Thinking About You Thinking About Me, 2nd edition. I also raise many more questions and have a deeper discussion around the exploration of the topic “what are social skills?” and “how do we teach them?” in my book, A Politically Incorrect Look at Evidence Based Practices and Teaching Social Skills.

Battling the School District

I guess I am easily deceived! When our neuropsychologist said she would call the school district and speak with the director of special education regarding Logan's special education preschool eligibility....I believed her! I trusted that she would follow through with her word and do just that...make the phone call! Well, to my dismay, after bugging her office at least once a week for a month, I finally came to the realization that she wasn't going to make the phone call. Maybe she made the call and the administrator wasn't available, but she wasn't handling this situation like I would...so I took over the reins!

That next week, I sat down at my computer and proceeded to write an e-mail to the assistant director of special education. In this e-mail, I proceeded to outline my frustrations with the district's ability to appropriately evaluate my son for their developmental preschool program. Believe me, I was very politically correct in my e-mail....I stated the facts and I tried my best to not put too much 'feelings' into the e-mail. I then attached all the supporting documents outlining why Logan should be admitted to the developmental preschool program. I then outlined my intended goals of sending such an e-mail.

By the end of that day, I had a reply back stating that she would investigate the situation and I could expect to hear back from her by the end of that week. Well, the end of that week came and went with no further word from her. So, as expected, I was on the phone the following day. By the next day, I had a phone call asking me to meet with her and the director. "Sure!" I said. Well, that meeting was today...

I had my nerves all in a tizzy for fear that the meeting wasn't gonna go well, but I was well prepared for the meeting. You would have been so proud of me...no tears were seen in that meeting! I was direct and very passionate about my concerns. They listened. We didn't get to the bottom of it today, but we are almost there! Most of all, I wanted them to know what a botched mess their staff has made of Logan's qualification process into the developmental preschool program...THAT they heard loud and clear from me!! The paperwork now will have to go through the evaluating team and the administrators will see that that process takes place. Once that happens, then they have to either amend their previous decision or uphold it. Then they meet with me to discuss their decision...I requested that one of the administrators be present at this meeting (so they don't botch things AGAIN!) and plan on hearing more by the end of this week....with a meeting to discuss final decisions within the next 7-10 days.

If things do not go as planned, then I am prepared to take legal action! YIKES!!! They are messing with the wrong person!!!

Please keep us in your thoughts....

Hope for Autism

I ran across this video while checking out Gretchen's blog (thanks Gretchen for posting this). This is a video about Taylor, a 17 year old girl who at age 2 was diagnosed as being on the Autism spectrum and given little hope of recovery. Now she is a top student, an athlete, and a creative artist. Check it out...

Also, before you start listening to this video, go down to the bottom of the page and pause the music (or you will have lovely music on top of the video sound).

Some Mothers Get Babies With Something More

I thought many of you would enjoy reading this. My friend posted this on her blog and I ran into again on Facebook...guess that means that I need to share it with my readers as well. I think it is self-explanatory....see for yourself.

Some Mothers Get Babies With Something More

By Lori Borgman
May 12, 2002

My friend is expecting her first child. People keep asking what she wants. She smiles demurely, shakes her head and gives the answer mothers have given throughout the ages of time. She says it doesn't matter whether it's a boy or a girl. She just wants it to have ten fingers and ten toes. Of course, that's what she says. That's what mothers have always said. Mothers lie.

Truth be told, every mother wants a whole lot more. Every mother wants a perfectly healthy baby with a round head, rosebud lips, button nose, beautiful eyes and satin skin.

Every mother wants a baby so gorgeous that people will pity the Gerber baby for being flat-out ugly.

Every mother wants a baby that will roll over, sit up and take those first steps right on schedule (according to the baby development chart on page 57, column two).

Every mother wants a baby that can see, hear, run, jump and fire neurons by the billions. She wants a kid that can smack the ball out of the park and do toe points that are the envy of the entire ballet class.

Call it greed if you want, but we mothers want what we want. Some mothers get babies with something more.

Some mothers get babies with conditions they can't pronounce, a spine that didn't fuse, a missing chromosome or a palette that didn't close.

Most of those mothers can remember the time, the place, the shoes they were wearing and the color of the walls in the small, suffocating room where the doctor uttered the words that took their breath away. It felt like recess in the fourth grade when you didn't see the kick ball coming and it knocked the wind clean out of you.

Some mothers leave the hospital with a healthy bundle, then, months, even years later, take him in for a routine visit, or schedule her for a well check, and crash head first into a brick wall as they bear the brunt of devastating news. It can't be possible! That doesn't run in our family. Can this really be happening in our lifetime? I am a woman who watches the Olympics for the sheer thrill of seeing finely sculpted bodies. It's not a lust thing; it's a wondrous thing. The athletes appear as specimens without flaw - rippling muscles with nary an ounce of flab or fat, virtual powerhouses of strength with lungs and limbs working in perfect harmony. Then the athlete walks over to a tote bag, rustles through the contents and pulls out an inhaler.

As I've told my own kids, be it on the way to physical therapy after a third knee surgery, or on a trip home from an echo cardiogram, there's no such thing as a perfect body.

Everybody will bear something at some time or another. Maybe the affliction will be apparent to curious eyes, or maybe it will be unseen, quietly treated with trips to the doctor, medication or surgery. The health problems our children have experienced have been minimal and manageable, so I watch with keen interest and great admiration the mothers of children with serious disabilities, and wonder how they do it. Frankly, sometimes you mothers scare me. How you lift that child in and out of a wheelchair 20 times a day.

How you monitor tests, track medications, regulate diet and serve as the gatekeeper to a hundred specialists hammering in your ear.

I wonder how you endure the clichés and the platitudes, well-intentioned souls explaining how God is at work when you've occasionally questioned if God is on strike.

I even wonder how you endure schmaltzy pieces like this one -- saluting you, painting you as hero and saint, when you know you're ordinary. You snap, you bark, you bite. You didn't volunteer for this. You didn't jump up and down in the motherhood line yelling, "Choose me, God! Choose me! I've got what it takes." You're a woman who doesn't have time to step back and put things in perspective, so, please, let me do it for you.

From where I sit, you're way ahead of the pack. You've developed the strength of a draft horse while holding onto the delicacy of a daffodil. You have a heart that melts like chocolate in a glove box in July, carefully counter-balanced against the stubbornness of an Ozark mule.

You can be warm and tender one minute, and when circumstances require intense and aggressive the next. You are the mother, advocate and protector of a child with a disability.
You're a neighbor, a friend, a stranger I pass at the mall. You're the woman I sit next to at church, my cousin and my sister-in-law.

You're a woman who wanted ten fingers and ten toes, and got something more. You're a wonder.