Four Mistakes Schools Make with Inclusive Initiatives (and How to Avoid Them)
These four mistakes waste your valuable resources and make life more stressful!
Over the past 15 years, I’ve worked closely with school and district leaders who came to me committed to improving their special education outcomes. They all want to create change with minimal disruption. They also want to make the best use of their resources - time, budget, effort - but every time I agree with them on these mistakes, we all end up regretting it.
Having been part of every one of these mistakes, I’d like to spare you because… Well, you know the proverb:
“Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.”
Mistake # 1: Fix Our Special Educators
“Our special educators are ineffective. Can you fix them?”
During our strategic planning sessions, leaders often ask me to work with just their special educators. Here are the complaints:
They stand in the back of the room just waiting during instruction
They whisper to “their kids” when the “real” teacher explains a process, distracting everybody.
They show up to classes unaware of that day’s lesson.
These complaints reveal problems with the system and thinking, not problems with the special educators. Systemic problems won’t be fixed if we only focus on the special educators.
Typically, these problems occur because special educators are not included in protected common planning times. Lack of collaboration persists because the success of students with disabilities is not viewed as a shared responsibility. Once the mindsets shift, teachers are ready to learn collaborative strategies that support ALL learners.
But it won’t happen if we just fix the special educators. They’re not broken.
Mistake #2: Spare the Principal
“Our principals are so busy, let’s take this initiative off their plate.”
Sometimes district special education leaders explain that principals are really busy. So the leadership team decides that central office staff will coordinate our professional development for teachers, and the local instructional coaches will support implementation. They think they are being thoughtful, respecting the principal’s time.
Then it backfires.
During the workshop, an overwhelmed teacher asks if they’ll be held accountable for using the strategies in this workshop. There’s nobody with the authority to answer.
When principals conduct formal observations, they can’t reinforce or look for the new inclusive strategies because they don’t know what they are (even if they got a handout).
A few teachers (the early adopters) start experimenting without feedback, but change is hard (especially in isolation). They soon return to their customary methods.
A recent RAND study of 3500 principals revealed that only 12% of them felt prepared to lead special education in their buildings. How will they develop the understandings and competencies they need if we exclude them from the initiative?
The truth is: every initiative must be part of the school’s improvement plan and led by the principal. Otherwise, teachers just won’t buy-in.
Mistake #3: Give Them a Handout
“Be sure to give our educators a workshop handout so they will use the new strategies.”
This one makes me want to roll my eyes. How many PD sessions did I attend over the years with lovely handouts that were added to the stack on the corner of my desk and never used? The handout isn’t the most important part!
They’re missing the point, especially if they ask me about a handout before we talk about what will change in teachers practice and what support they’ll need to implement the new strategies..
We know better. We know how humans learn. We wouldn’t give our students a handout and a slide lecture and expect them to master a concept. Why do we think it will work with teachers?
Don’t get me wrong. I love making practical handouts, and I think they’re useful.
But they only work when combined with four conditions:
The principal has clearly stated their expectations that teachers will implement the new strategies (see Mistake #2)
The school has a growth mindset culture where it’s safe to experiment with new approaches. Shared lessons learned are more valued than getting it right the first time.
During the workshop, teachers have a chance to brainstorm and practice the new strategies.
The teachers have ongoing feedback and support from trained coaches and empowering peers.
Without those conditions, a handout won’t improve teacher practice; with them, a strategic handout will be a helpful guide for teacher growth.
The value in the workshop boils down to the actions teachers take, rather than a nifty handout.
Mistake #4: Let’s Focus on Our Core Teachers
“We’ll focus on teachers who teach the core subjects. That’s where inclusion happens.”
On the surface, this may sound reasonable. Leaders feel pressure to provide professional development that will improve overall test scores. With limited staffing, special educators are primarily scheduled to co-teach or push into ELA, math, science and social studies -sometimes only the first two. The need to develop collaborative skills for data-based flexible grouping may be most apparent there.
But is it true? Does inclusion only happen in those classes?
When our materials have been accessible to the total faculty, I hear amazing feedback from art, music, and tech teachers who’ve been asking for solo strategies for teaching widely diverse classes. My favorite testimony came from a health teacher who might have missed the opportunity if we made Mistake #4.
And what about self-contained special educators?
The intent of IDEA’s Individualized Education Plan (IEP) is to provide interventions and support that will enable the child to achieve ambitious goals. To do that, each self-contained special educator needs to prepare those students to navigate learning challenges and opportunities they will experience in the regular classroom setting.
When I ask which students are in those self-contained classes, they list students with intellectual disabilities, emotional-behavioral disabilities, and autism.
The invisible message?
Students with those labels need the special educator’s magic; they can’t make it in the regular classroom. They forget that an IEP is to be individualized, not based simply on a label. Too often students with certain disabilities are assigned to segregated classrooms for the rest of their schooling.
The federal guidelines allow states to have alternate curriculum for 3% of the special education population. (Incidentally, that doesn’t mean they have to be in separate settings.) But do the math: 97% of students with IEPs should be pursuing the standard curriculum.
Yes. There are times when students need pull-out interventions - that is why we have the continuum of services. But research confirms that students educated in the general education classroom are more likely to achieve grade level standards, graduate on time, and pursue higher education or employment.
When we include the self-contained special educators in our inclusive initiative, they rethink their purpose, set higher expectations for their students, and implement strategies that foster student efficacy.
Then teachers initiate discussions of moving students to a less restrictive environment.
Bottom line: it’s a mistake to limit professional learning for inclusive approaches to only the core teachers. It’s so much more powerful to promote cross-disciplinary collaborative problem solving. And it’s more fun for the teachers!
Finding My Courage
Over the years, partnering with ambitious leaders, I’ve developed the courage to tell leaders when they’re about to make one of these mistakes.
Frankly, if we are going to improve student outcomes - especially for students with disabilities - we’ll need to disrupt the way we’ve always done things. You can avoid these mistakes when moving forward with inclusive initiatives.
If we are going to rekindle the joy of teaching, we’ll need to give teachers the skills and power to be agents of change in their classroom. Most of us can remember at least one teacher who profoundly impacted our life. That wasn’t a teacher who followed a prescribed teaching methodology.
Growing up, my favorite teachers had their own unique quirkiness, and they all loved bringing their personalities into teaching. They saw me as an individual child with special talents, and they knew how to bring out the best in me.
Isn’t that why most of us became teachers?
Isn’t that the point of inclusive initiatives?
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