The term 'inclusive education' just got blown wide open for me in the last couple of days. I'm trying to think back, just to last week, so that I can remember what I might have defined IE as. To be blunt, I believed that IE was just a general term which meant that I may or may not end up with a wheelchair bound student in my class.
But it's so much BIGGER than that. It is such an enormous concept. Gargantuan. Mammoth. Be-freaking-hemoth.
After a couple of classes, including one of Brent's, I see that IE is an underlying concept in nearly all things education. Need I state that one cannot spell 'inclusive education' without education?
In our first class with Brent we fantasized about what our classroom would be like (the one we learn in or the one we teach in) if the sky were the limit, so to speak. After a class wide brainstorm, Brent squashed most of our ideas because they were all either unsafe or not inclusive (in some cases they were interchangeable).
- No hockey posters - not very inclusive of the kid(s) who dislikes hockey
- No Plants - some students eat plants and this plant might be poisonous
- No stereo - how would you ever find a way to play something that everyone agreed upon?
It was stifling and depressing to say the least. But there's hope yet! This was just a quick example that drove home the point for me that inclusive education is not just about teachers being burdened (er, challenged) with vastly disabled students, but it is about everyone, and I might say that the latter is far more daunting than the former.
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