Talk to any parent of a kid with disabilities, and they'll invariably mention the word inclusion. Inclusion is crucial for us. It's all about to what extent Tess is included, whether she is incorporated into her mainstream classroom with her typical peers. Why does inclusion matter? If Tess has a special ed room, which she does, and it's quiet and it's got low lighting and a huge beanbag and a weighted blanket, and it pretty much paradise for anyone with autism or sensory issues, well then, who cares how much she's in her regular ed classroom? She's probably gonna be really happy doing most of her learning in that special ed room, right? Ennh wrong. Inclusion matters. Inclusion matters because Tess loves people. She loves being around her classmates. And they love being around her. And if you don't watch the inclusion factor. If you let a school do whatever they want, sometimes a kid like Tess will be stuck in a quiet room somewhere and forgotten.
It's a billion times easier for her teachers and specialists to have Tess in a special ed room, I'm sure. You don't have to walk all over the school with her, don't have to deal with any other kids, except others who are also in the special ed room. No noise, no issues of getting Tess to focus, because hey--no interruptions.
But we need Tess to be with her classmates as much as possible. And that's actually what the law says. It doesn't use the word "inclusion" anywhere. You may have also heard the term "mainstreaming," and that's not in the law either. The phrase the law uses is "least restrictive environment." And the law says essentially what I've been saying here. That - as much as possible-- kids with disabilities need to be educated with kids who don't have disabilities. And that you only do special classes or pull them out of the regular education environment when the nature or severity of their disability requires that you do so. Makes sense, right? That's how, with Tess from kindergarten all the way through the end of high school, she ends up with her classmates a ton of the time.
Let me talk for a second about inclusion and her IEP. Which in case you don't know, IEP stands for individualized education program. It's this multi-page plan, basically, setting forth all the info about her and her disability, including latest test results and spelling out where she's at, the goals that we and her special ed team have set for her, and the services she's getting that'll help her reach those goals. An IEP is a legal document. If you're a school and you've got Tess qualified as a student with a disability, well, you've got to follow her IEP.
Side note, but really not a side note, I work as a disability rights attorney, and my specialty is exactly this - special education law, dealing with families and school districts and IEPs, to make sure kids like Tess get the education they're entitled to. Do I take cases against our school district? I don't personally, but my firm does. I've purposely drawn a boundary at work so that I don't work on cases against my own school district, and my boss knows this and keeps me out of them entirely.
Tess has been in public school since kindergarten. And the way our school is set up, there's downstairs special ed and upstairs special ed. Two different rooms, two different special ed teachers. And two systems, really, that operate independently.
We were thrilled with the downstairs system. In fact, Tess was supposed to move upstairs last year, in 3rd grade, but her special ed teacher Naomi kept her downstairs for an extra year. We loved Naomi. She was amazing. Inclusion was never even a question for our T-Bird. She was known and welcomed and loved by her classmates.
This year, things are...not bad. It's different, certainly. Tess has always loved school. Can't wait to get there. Goes absolutely wild when the bus pulls up each morning. Fired up about learning, to put it mildly. But she's kinda...off this year. Some sad times lately, with real tears, seemingly outta nowhere. We get reports from her teachers of this happening at school. And in recent days we're seeing it at home. Sad Tess.
So around a month ago or so, we felt like it might be time to look at Tess's communication. She's got speech and language services at school, we take her to outside speech on the side, and we've been working on it a ton at home. But she's kinda stalled. Been in the same place for like two years. And we'd like to see her do more. So we start asking about this, seeing if maybe we can all get together for an informal meeting, including her outside speech pathologist.
What happened at the meeting? Click here to read on, in part 2 of this series about inclusion.