Improving Inclusion Classroom - Case Study Example

Improving Inclusion room Methodology As this research is about improving and activating an inclusion room, relevant data had to be gathered and analyzed to find out the actual position of the school and that of the inclusion classroom. To gather the required data, I first had to walk through the school to examine some of the physical features that can affect the location of the classroom. After that, I needed to collect some relevant information about the classroom, which in this case, I needed to ask the right people. I then decided to carry out an interview on few people in the school. These people included the principal, Mr. Henderson, and a functional classroom teacher, Ms. Christian. Mr. Henderson was regarded as an appropriate target to become a respondent on this issue as he is the principal and is the head of the school. He, therefore, needs to be aware of most of the school programs more detailed. Ms. Christian is a functional classroom teacher, who knows about the inclusion classroom and also understands the ability of the students to study well. These two classroom types are meant to give the students with disability the opportunity to me with their teachers and be taught with regards to their special needs and requirements. The questions were well selected and structured to care for most of the relevant information under investigation. In this matter, some of the questions were designed in such a way to investigate whether the personnel know their roles and the roles of the inclusion classroom in the district. The questions were also intended to investigate further the issues surrounding the inclusion classroom in relation to the ability of the disabled students. Whether the inclusion classroom was creating the required atmosphere for the students with disability to learn. The progress in learning of these students with disability was also questioned to enable me to know exactly what the experiences of the teachers were and the obstacles and trends in the learning process so that I could actually understand the particular issue that required improvement and activation in this classroom. The data was collected through administering structured interviews. Most of the questions were made to be open ended so that the respondents could feel free to express themselves without any restrictions. I had to ask them the questions one-by-one, and write down their responses as they gave them to me. I then analyzed the data to arrive at the findings as discussed below. Findings After the interview with these two teachers, it was discovered that the school has 4 inclusion programs in total that help in offering services to the students with disabilities. Amongst these programs are two functional classrooms and the other two are inclusion classrooms. The school only began the inclusion classroom program this year. It, therefore means that this classroom is not well established already. Inclusion classroom is basically meant for the category of the students with the Down syndrome disability, or those students struggling with basic life such as color or using scissors. Since students with these kinds of disabilities do not have the same learning capacity as the other students, it was preferred that they could take their entire time in the general classrooms with the normal people and spare only part of their time, maybe half an hour or one hour with their special needs teacher in the inclusion classroom. This gives them a chance to get more assistance with the special education teacher to help them improve in their areas of weaknesses. The functional classroom on the other hand is meant for the students with IQs between 55 and 75, and also have other disabilities. They, therefore, cannot spend in the same class as those in the normal class since their ability to grasp concepts is comparatively lower. This class, therefore, requires special attention and special consideration in staffing. The Issue From the analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the school in terms of their preparedness to handle the students with special needs, there are issues that came up and I realized, need improvement. Since the students in the inclusion classroom have a disability, they require teachers with knowledge and understanding in handling students with disability to take care of them in terms of teaching them. One strength that we found from the interview with the principal is that, the principal herself has adequate knowledge in dealing with students with disability. This is because, she is trained to deal with such issues. However, the principal alone cannot handle both the administrative work as well as the teaching work for these students. In as much as the principal will be able to provide the required facilities that these students require in order to learn, it would be hard that she also does the teaching and handle all these classes. Teaching students with special needs require that teacher to student ratio becomes less so that few students as possible are assigned to one teacher. This way, the students will be able to receive adequate technical support from the teachers. One major weakness from the interview came up that there are no adequate staff trained in dealing with special education in the school. For example, it came out that some of the teachers who are trained in teaching the normal students how to read, are the same teachers teaching the students with disabilities how to read and write. In fact, these teachers even teach other technical subjects such as mathematics even without the required qualification or training to teach the same. One of the reason that the inclusion classroom was created was so that it could provide the special care for the students with special needs. However, providing the classroom with inadequate staffing is just better that the facility doesn’t exist at all. This brings us to the major improvement issue that this facility requires. The main improvement, to enable this inclusion classroom to be able to serve its purpose in the required way, is to increase the number of staff in that handles students in the classroom. Increasing the staff, here, doesn’t mean just increasing the number of teachers in the school. However, the teachers being added in the school to handle the students in this facility should be teachers with adequate understanding and knowledge about dealing with students with special needs, or students with disability. Just like it was established in the interview, the teachers teaching the normal students, are the ones who sometimes take the students with disabilities and teach them literally everything, from writing to reading and to mathematics. This is a situation that should change. Instead, there should be, first of all, teachers specially trained in special education to handle this students. As they are few in this school, more need to be added. Secondly, these teachers who need to be added should be able to handle different subjects when delivering their teaching services. This is to mean, those students who are trained in mathematics should be added to teach only mathematics while those who are trained in teaching the students how to read and write should only specialize in these areas. This way, there will be the right teachers in the right quantity, teaching the right subjects in the school. This will help the students with disabilities to improve in their performance as they will receive adequate guidance from their teachers, who understand and know how to deal with them in a special way. The teachers to be added should also include those with special knowledge in computer skills who can disseminate such knowledge to the student. This is because, form the interview with Ms. Christine, she mentioned that they do use computers in teaching especially technical subjects such as mathematics. Parents should also be ready to help the teachers in developing finding out the weaknesses or special needs in their children to address them. From this point, the next item is to discuss some of the recommendations that need to be considered to address the issues established from the data collected. Read More