Thread: Science Inclusion

From what I understand most inclusion classes are co-taught, correct? Atleast that's how it is at my school. Do you know who you will be teaching with? Is it a special education teacher?

I am a middle school math teacher. For the past two years I've had a couple inclusions each year. They end up being my favorite classes.

*Get to know the person you will be teaching with. Discuss discipline and how you run your classroom.

*Sometimes that other teacher can feel out of place in your classroom. Offer lessons for them to help teach or things to review.

*Make sure your students view that other teacher as a teacher as well. Sometimes my kids would ask me for help or permission to do something and totally bypass the other teacher. Make sure they know his or her place from the get-go.

Hope I answered your question!

Good luck this year!

...I didn't have a co-teacher in the class with me. ?he inclusion specialist only helped out in the language arts class. This happened because our schoolo split the inclusion teacher between two grade levels. We only had her with us during the mornings. Someone finally figured out that each grade level needed a specialist. The fact that we hav e missed AYP for two years because of our exceptional children also played a factor, I am sure.

Until this arrangement, I was pretty well on my own with a boatload of exceptional children in my class. Too often things didn't go real well. The regular children missed out because I had to water everything down and slow the pace of the class to meet the needs of the exceptional students. Often the special needs children still couldn't function well and too often, would act out and disrupt class out of frustration. I have never been particularly fond of the inclusion concept and always suspected it was done just to allow the "suits" an excuse to hire fewer special ed teachers.

The newer arrangement might adjust m y outlook. We'll see...