Hi Sam,

You ask such an important and relevant question! Without knowing all the details, one way to generally approach resistance is to clarify where it is coming from. If teachers are nervous about being responsible for students with unfamiliar needs, you can address that. If teachers are concerned about how their general education students will respond, you can address that. The resistance you're experiencing has something at the root, and getting to that may help you shift the conversation. Consider making time for some 1:1 conversations with your colleagues where you can ask open ended questions that might provide the insight you need. I applaud your advocacy for your students and wish you good luck!

Inclusion for inclusion sake is often a poor idea. Teachers are worried if they have the skills, ability, and context to support all students. Collaborative planning with all involved teachers could be a way to improve the push back. All too often students with complex needs--the very reason for special education--get dumped on general education teachers that not only have no idea how to support some students, but they also have been traumatized by past practices.

Dear Sam Sparrow

One possible approach to arguing for inclusive education would be that teachers should be interested in providing the best possible individual support for each student. If the genuine interest in inclusive education is taken seriously, the focus is on the effort to conceptualize learning materials and formats that are accessible and meaningful for all students so that they can learn and work together according to their respective levels of performance and development. Digital media and tools offer good prerequisites for realizing the specific possibilities of adaptivity and personalizability of learning processes. In the area of supporting teaching/ learning situations, it is important to do justice to the heterogeneous starting situation in a teaching group in order to be able to teach in a differentiated manner. This also largely applies to inclusive digital pedagogy. Digital media can support teachers in their efforts to provide their students - with and without special needs - with adequate educational opportunities. In the sense of pronounced inclusive teaching, the aim is not to provide additional offerings for people with special needs, but rather to create materials that are adaptable and relevant for everyone in the sense of a broad understanding of inclusion

Dear Sam Sparrow,

I agree wholeheartedly with David Coker, Christian Filk, and Cheryl Blankman. Inclusion has become the equivalent of placing students in an educational placement that will meet their needs with peers who have similar abilities. The unfortunate fallout for many teachers has been to handle situations they have not been trained for. Students with special needs may be identified in a process that may take longer than is needed. That is when parents agree to the testing and the Multi-tiered System of Support (MTSS). This begins at the elementary level and can also be used at the Middle school level. This step assists in making sure students who may need additional support are not put into special education support without needing to be there.

The number of students who have special education services who are also in inclusive services do wonderful with a pedagogy of Universal design. This design takes into account the needs of everyone in the learning environment. This assists with planning in most inclusive settings and if there is some pushback, would there be an opportunity to do a group lesson where you could introduce a Universal design lesson?

I apologize for making this sound simplistic. I absolutely know life with students with special needs is anything but. I have also found that people fear what they do not know, have not experienced, and don't think they want responsibility for. Ultimately "fear" stands for False Evidence Appearing Real. Helping others to see that fear is not real could help students with disabilities experience a better education.

Organise a sensitation meeting for the teachers and other members of staff. Highlight some issues to do with Inclusion and come up with a plan of action

Inclusion will be possible if general education teachers have knowledge and foundation of what inclusion all about. Placing children/students with disabilities in the general education setting would be of great risks if general education teachers do not have even a little background on how to handle this kind of students. Thus, administrators/supervisors/principal and general education teachers would be given priority to attend seminar on inclusive education in preparation of accepting these students in the regular classroom setting. Foundation on inclusive education would be essential before pushing through inclusivity of these students with special needs. By then, teachers will be equipped with the necessary skills in handling and teaching these students, address their needs and with the support of all the persons involved including the parents.

I can't say anything for sure about your specific situation, of course. However, I can suggest that you try to determine what factors could be at play by first putting yourself in the teachers' shoes to imagine it from their perspective. Often, in my experience, it comes down to work/responsibility/accountability issues. It often isn't that they can't get on board philosophically with the ideas of inclusion, but rather, the inclusion of one or more new students with significant needs means more work, more responsibility and more accountability with no support, additional compensation or recognition. Imagine if an employer said to any other salaried employee 'We've always expected you to do 'x' amount of work in about 8 hours a day. now we are going to add an hour's extra work, that you really aren't trained for but will need to do excellently, but your salary will remain the same.'

In other words, I'm asking if the 'pushback' is about the philosophy or about whether they are equipped and able to incorporate the student without adding significant extra pressure/stress. Many teachers are already feeling like they are stretched rather thin and these requests don't fit with how they have seen their work responsibilities in the past.

I once interviewed for a position and was asked about the philosophy of 'full inclusion' and I remember saying that I felt it made sense IF administrators all understood that for a system/philosophy of full inclusion to work it would cost *more*, not less than a more traditional organizational structure.

Having students with very high levels of needs included in regular classrooms for academic and non-academic courses will require significant additional resources in the classroom.

You might want to ask colleagues somewhat directly. What are the positives/negatives for you of inclusive education organizational models? I think they can tell you more about what you can do to make it manageable than any one else. Maybe ask what you can do to better understand your co-workers so that *then* you can ask what you can do to better help them understand inclusion. It's quite possible that better understanding of inclusion isn't going to be the 'fix'. Perhaps what's needed is a system of support in place for teachers that will make inclusion, as a philosophy, possible in practice?