Becoming a Great Inclusive Educator – Second edition

Becoming a Great
Inclusive Educator

Second Edition

Edited by Scot Danforth

PETER LANG

New York • Bern • Frankfurt • Berlin
Brussels • Vienna • Oxford • Warsaw

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Danforth, Scot, editor.

Title: Becoming a great inclusive educator / [edited by] Scot Danforth.

Description: Second edition. | New York: Peter Lang, 2017.

Series: Disability studies in education; vol. 21 | ISSN 1548-7210

Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017010709 | ISBN 978-1-4331-3485-2 (paperback: alk. paper)

ISBN 978-1-4331-4344-1 (ebook pdf) | ISBN 978-1-4331-4345-8 (epub)

ISBN 978-1-4331-4346-5 (mobi)

Subjects: LCSH: Inclusive education—United States.

Children with disabilities—Education—United States. | Special education—

United States. | Mainstreaming in education—United States.

Classification: LCC LC1201 .B44 2017 | DDC 371.9/0460973—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017010709

DOI 10.3726/b11150

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the “Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie”; detailed bibliographic data are available
on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de/.

© 2017 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York

29 Broadway, 18th floor, New York, NY 10006

www.peterlang.com

All rights reserved.
Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm,
xerography, microfiche, microcard, and offset strictly prohibited.

About the editor

Scot Danforth is Professor and Assistant Dean of Research in the College of Educational Studies, Chapman University. He is a leading scholar in the fields of disability studies in education and inclusive education. His previous books include The Incomplete Child: An Intellectual History of Learning Disabilities, Vital Questions Facing Disability Studies in Education (co-edited with Susan Gabel), and Foundations of Inclusive Education Research (co-edited with Phyllis Jones).

About the book

This second edtion of Becoming a Great Inclusive Educator offers educators the guidance and resources to become great inclusive educators by engaging in a powerful process of personal and professional transformation. Inclusive education continues to grow in popularity and acceptance in the United States. But most teachers—general and special educators—are poorly prepared to be successful in inclusive classrooms and schools. Undoubtedly, the challenge to professionals involves the acquisition of new knowledge and skills. But inclusion requires far more. It calls upon educators to trouble everything they think they know about disability, to question their deepest ethical commitments, to take up the work of the Disability Rights Movement in the public schools, and to leap headlong into the deepest waters of the rich craft tradition of inclusive teaching.

PRAISE FOR THE FIRST EDITION OF Becoming a Great Inclusive Educator

“The best educators (and policy leaders, administrators, teachers, parents, students) know that in order to transform the lives of students everyone associated with schooling also requires transformation. In thoroughly captivating prose, Becoming a Great Inclusive Educator shows the way. Recognizing disability as a natural form of diversity, this book embraces struggle and exudes hopefulness. It is a richly drawn handbook that lays bare the history, theory, ethical underpinnings, caring practice, and everyday narratives of optimism in deeply imagined inclusive schooling that can make schools whole.”

—DOUGLAS P. BIKLEN, DEAN EMERITUS, SCHOOL OF EDUCATION, SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY

This eBook can be cited

This edition of the eBook can be cited. To enable this we have marked the start and end of a page. In cases where a word straddles a page break, the marker is placed inside the word at exactly the same position as in the physical book. This means that occasionally a word might be bifurcated by this marker.

Contents

Chapter One: Transformation

Section One: Foundations of Successful Inclusion

Chapter Two: Knowing Disability

Chapter Three: Teaching for the Disability Rights Movement

Chapter Four: What Is Best in the American Dream

Section Two: The Living Tradition of Inclusive Education Practice

Chapter Five: Collaboration and Co-­teaching

Chapter Six: Friendships in the Classroom

Chapter Seven: Partnerships with Parents and Families

Chapter Eight: Encouraging Positive Behavior

Chapter Nine: Differentiated Instruction

Chapter Ten: School Reform

Section Three: Narratives of Inclusive Education Struggle and Success

Chapter Eleven: A Journey into Inclusive Education

Carrie D. Wysocki

Chapter Twelve: It Takes a Whole School

Kimberly Millstead ←vii | viii→

Chapter Thirteen: Using “Numbers and Narrative” to Support Inclusive Schooling

Meghan Cosier

Chapter Fourteen: “It’s always about the kids, not us”:
Successful Elementary Co-­teaching

Zachary Rossetti

Chapter Fifteen: Spilt Milk Counts: Belonging and Moving on Down the Hall…

Stacey Hodgins and S. Anthony Thompson

Chapter Sixteen: Inclusive Education: A Messy and Liberating Venture

Emily Nusbaum

Chapter Seventeen: “I don’t have a special world for her to live in: She has to adapt to this one”: On Becoming a Renaissance Middle Schooler

Alicia A. Broderick

Chapter Eighteen: Including Talia: A Mother’s Tale

Kathy Kotel

Chapter Nineteen: Respecting and Reaching All Learners in English Language Arts Classes: A Glimpse into a New York City High School

Fran Bittman, Sarah Bickens, & David J. Connor

Chapter Twenty: What 20+ Years of Secondary Inclusion Has Taught Us

Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey

Chapter Twenty-One: “Now, I’m part of the family […] well, almost!”:

Family Matters for Schooling Success

John Colin and Srikala Naraian

Chapter Twenty-Two: On the Ethical Meaning of Human Differences:

A Non-­Disabled Child in Inclusive Schools

Scot Danforth

Chapter Twenty-Three: A Sense of Belonging:

Student Perspectives on Inclusive Education

Rebecca Brooks

Chapter Twenty-Four: Including Students with Developmental Disabilities:
Simple, Not Easy

Michael F. Giangreco

Chapter Twenty-Five: Conclusion—­Old Habits, New Thinking 353←viii | 1→

Transformation

Neither society nor the public schools stand still. Social norms of attitude and action shift like enormous tectonic plates, often barely noticed in silent motion, sometimes smashing dramatically together to shake the ground beneath our feet. We are moved, as individuals and communities, and we begin to think, feel, and behave in new ways.

Inclusive education is a profound transformation of public schooling that has gained acceptance and widespread practice in the United States over the past two decades. Increasing numbers of students with disabilities are educated in general classrooms. The ground beneath concepts of disability and diversity in the schools has undoubtedly shifted in a positive direction, moving toward the acceptance of many forms of humanity into the common community.

But the public schools and general and special educators are often poorly prepared to be successful in the new configuration. Many teachers, veterans and rookies alike, are simply not ready to do inclusion well. In response to inclusion as the current challenge and opportunity for public school teachers, the most obvious question is also the most ambitious and hopeful: How can you be part of a positive transformation, both within yourself and within your school? How can you develop yourself into a great inclusive teacher?←1 | 2→

Increasingly, American teachers find themselves in Ida-­like shoes, overwhelmed by the educational changes brought about by what Ben Mattlin (2012) has called the “disability rights revolution.” Since the 1960s, the United States has gone through a dramatic social transformation, bringing disabled persons out of the shadows, offering them increasing measures of equality and dignity. Society is undergoing comprehensive redefinition. Our communities are inching toward←2 | 3→ a new normal whereby persons of many abilities and appearances share common spaces, activities, and interactions. The 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, a broad anti-­discrimination law guaranteeing disabled persons equality and access to all strands of community life, is just one indication of the profound social change that has occurred and is still occurring.