Inclusion

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Home : 2002 : February : 24

Inclusion
By Pam

Inclusion is beneficial to the students in learning proper social skills. I feel it does give them the opportunity to see appropriate behaviors and in some instances self esteem that is much needed. However there is a turned
side to inclusion I spent two years in a H.S. situation and it was very frustrating. I thought it would be a great opportunity for myself to team teach and help to integrate Mildly disabled teens (LD) into a regular ed setting. First off it was a situation set up for failure - most of my regular ed collegues teach 1 - 2 subjects a day, I was responsible for keeping up with curriculum

of a World Cultures Class, Government, U.S. History and also had to teach a self contained English class and Math class Oh! and I had to go into a Freshman Career English class. It was a nightmare. Every period I was doing something different, not to mention I had to run all over the building to get to these classes. I ended up being a disciplinarian in the class and not a "team teacher" many times I would just sit take notes and type them up for the kids in a format that was understandable for them. Then I would also make study guides for the resource room teacher to go over with these students. I cannot tell you how many times I cried that year. It was my second and third year of teaching and I wanted to do well but didn't reolize at the time that the demands were unrealistic. The year prior to that I was a resource room teacher for grades 5 - 8 and did study halls (resource room) all day to help the students keep up with the work in their regular classes, again it was a night mare keeping up with assignments with all those grades and the teachers never gave me the support by letting me know what the students needed to do. I was also yelled at for going to these teachers to get assignments. No win situations. I am now teaching self-contained classes and like this the best. I do not have the headaches of trying to be responsible for what others are doing or not doing, however there are drawbacks in this. I have a multi-age class k-3, I get a 15 minute lunch and very little time during the day when the kids are not there. I do have from 2:30-3:15 for a prep and get no prep when I have duties. All paperwork and planning is done outside of school needless to say, I go in at 7:00 every day and leave at 4:00. I do like my job however burnout will happen eventually. Hope this helps.