We called it mainstreaming at the time, and it was the first attempt at school inclusion in our rural county. Because I had been rather outspoken about my concerns that we were behind the times in our "special" county-wide school, I was given the assignment of moving a small group of elementary students to a "regular" school about 20 miles away and doing my best to make it work. I was young and full of both confidence and passion, but there were many, many lessons to be learned.
Several different small towns had been sending their students with special educational needs to the centrally located "segregated" school for many, many years. The school we landed in was a small one, in a very close-knit, very conservative village of about 2000 people. Only two of my eight students were residents of the town. We were outsiders, and different, in just about every way. To my mind, these were the easy ones - all could walk and talk; all could dress themselves and were independent in the bathroom; and all could easily and appropriately feed themselves in the lunchroom. It didn't take long for me to realize that no one in this school saw us as anything resembling typical.
But the blessings were many. Our classroom was located right in the middle of the school - not in some isolated corridor, as often happened in these early days. The principal and regular education teachers were all supportive and made us feel welcome. We had desks, materials, and our very own computer. Because we were still a part of the county-wide special education cooperative, we also had access to a school van, which soon became a central part of our curriculum.
I was tasked with teaching these eager young students the "functional life skills" that had been carefully spelled out in the special school curriculum, while also working toward mainstreaming each of them into as many regular classes as possible. I stumbled into a routine that included one day a week where we borrowed the van and went out into the community for some sort of real-life adventure. Before the trip, we made lists of what was needed, studied maps to see where we might go, and packed our lunches for the day ahead. After the trip, we wrote up stories about our trips in the "tan van." On a large easel outside our classroom, I posted the story each time we went - and because of our location, virtually everyone in the building walked past and often stopped in to comment on what we had written.
In November, we put on a play telling the story of the First Thanksgiving, and invited visitors in to see the play and enjoy some fall treats we had prepared. As we became more and more comfortable in our new setting, the students became braver all the time about spending more of each day in the regular class to which they were assigned, and all of them took part in the holiday program in the gym at the end of December --- with their regular classes, and with me sitting proudly in the audience.
We did have one classroom aide assigned to us, but that wasn't really enough to support all eight of the students, who ranged from kindergarten through fourth grade, and were all assigned to different regular education classrooms. Scheduling this support throughout the day/week was a new challenge for me that I hadn't figured on. Nor had I given any thought at all to the critical importance of the unsung heroes who keep schools running -- not just the teachers, but the bus drivers, the secretary, nurse, janitor and even those who clean the building after the kids have left. In this particular setting, they were incredibly helpful and supportive - to the students, and especially to me. Without them, our experience would have very different indeed.
Unfortunately, logistics required us to move after just a very short stay to a different school, in a different small town, and start all over again. Kids who really need stability often end up getting moved around like this when the projected numbers in one district allow a classroom to open up, or require one like ours to be reassigned for part of the regular school programming. We took one last trip in our tan van to visit our new school, wrote up our story, and sadly left this one behind.
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