We're a rural state known for our homogeneity. But at Woodside School in Topsham, Maine, the diversity we're proud of – and learn from – comes to us through our 15 students with severe or profound disabilities.
We're a public, K-5 elementary school serving 380 students. Our special needs students are assigned to both a special education and regular education classroom. Inclusion is a commitment and a challenge our staff grapples with each year.
This year, I had the privilege of helping teachers more purposefully integrate the special needs students into the regular education classrooms, in my role as the school counselor.
Our team goal was to create a group of typically developing friends for each special needs student, from their regular education classrooms. What follows are my insights about the challenges and successes of our effort.
Establishing friends for students with severe and profound disabilities is best done intentionally. Like most schools, our school has always grappled with how to integrate students with very special needs into the regular classroom and the entire school with dignity, respect and an awareness of their particular educational needs.
Purposefully creating a group of friends for each student has given our inclusion efforts more structure and focus. It has required special education teachers and regular education teachers to more carefully coordinate when, how and why the special needs students are in the classroom, examining times and activities when the friends can help with the integration process.
The typically developing friends are often so eager, that it has encouraged us to create more and more opportunities for the special needs students to feel part of their classroom community.
The natural curiosity, fear and possible shyness of typically developing peers concerning the special needs population should be respected. With permission from all the parents of the special needs children, we openly discussed the special challenges and strengths of each special needs student with their peers in the regular classrooms.
Starting with the premise that everyone has things they can do or finds hard to do, special education teachers talked with students about what their special needs peer can do, what they find hard to do and how to be helpful.
By validating the children's questions and curiosity, we removed a potential barrier to all the children connecting as people.
Typically developing peers interested in being a friend to a special needs student need guidance and training. After speaking with all of the children about their special needs peer, it became clear that the typically developing students would benefit from more information about the special needs of their new friends, who sometimes require equipment, educational aids and techniques for communication.
We held brief "trainings" in which the groups of friends visited special education classrooms and were "taught" ways to interact, communicate and help their friends. The older children grasped the information and needed very little further support; the younger children have needed continual encouragement and coaching.
In general, we found three groups of peers that most benefit from being a friend to a special needs student. The first group includes students who are naturally interested in forming friendships with all kinds of people. These are the children who are talented socially and get great pleasure from the helping role.
The second group includes students who, because of particular needs of their own, need a boost to their self esteem gleaned from helping, being made more aware of all the abilities they have, and being chosen for a special job.
The third group is students who are in need of empathy training, which we hope will be learned through the patience and caring modeled by the special education teachers and the helping skills needed in this special friendship.
When friends are chosen from the first two groups, it was always a success. Children chosen from the third group sometimes were successful and sometimes lost interest or were unable to show the level of respect we had hoped. Additional supports help these students become more successful.
The excitement and happiness generated by such an effort affects the climate of the entire school. Seeing special needs children together with typically developing children lining up, sitting together in the cafeteria, helping one another, greeting one another and playing day after day is inclusion at its best. It engenders a feeling throughout the school of tenderness and joy for the special needs children and all the ways they contribute to our school community.
In sum, this story: when one of our fifth grade special needs students read a poem unassisted at our school-wide assembly, it was at once the most natural and exceptional events, mentioned by adults and children for many days.
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