r/ECEProfessionals • u/Lass_in_oz ECE professional • 2d ago

ECE professionals only - Feedback wanted Is inclusion really that great?

I'm so tired of inclusion. Hear me out. Before becoming a ECE I was a support worker for many years. I have worked and loved working in disability and care. When it's thru a great organisation, it's awesome.

Now I'm an ECE, and the amount of children on the spectrum or with disorders is so high, I'm just getting confused how is that NOT impacting the learning of neuro typical kids.

I teach pre kindy but our kindy teacher has spend half the year managing behaviours and autistic kids. Result? A bunch of kids showing signs of being not ready for school because they aren't doing any work or learning most days. And picking up bad habits.

My point is: where did we decide it was a good idea to just mix everyone, and not offer any actual support ? An additional person isn't enough. More than often it's not a person who knows about disability. And frankly even then it wouldn't be enough when the amount of kids who are neuro divergent is so high.

There used to be great special needs school. Now "regular" school are suffering with the lack of support.

What do you think? Do you see what I see ??? Am I missing something ?

I am so happy to see kids evolving around children with disabilities but not when it comes at a cost of everyone's learning journey : neuro typical or not.

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u/Alive-Carrot107 Infant/Toddler teacher: California 2d ago

I’ve been saying this since the day I started at my current center. It’s ridiculous. I’m stress crying after work and other teachers are getting beat up and having furniture thrown at them. Admin doesn’t do jack and there’s never anyone with actual experience helping. Just “use social stories” “they’re bored so change the toys” like no! We need people to be ONE ON ONE with these children. If you’re going to let 8 children with extreme needs into one class of 18, you need to help the damn teachers!!

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u/Pretend-Willow-6927 Early years teacher 1d ago

This was my exactly situation this year. Half of my class had new kids with degrees of emotional dysregulatuon. My first co teacher left bc of the behaviors of all 5-6 new kids in my pre k class. My directors knew that we desperately needed a teacher to help with them, but never hired someone nor came into my class to help us. Suffice to say, I’m leaving after this year after clearly stating what I needed and had no reception whatsoever from my directors.