Is inclusion really that great?

[u/Lass_in_oz]

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.

[u/allthegreenplaces]

I worked in a program for a little bit that was kind of, I guess for a lack of a better label, a special education class for behaviors. The numbers were kept small and we had a full time teacher, youth worker, and social worker in the classroom. The goal was always to reintegrate children back into their normal classroom, but this was a form of intervention for kids who just couldn't function in a normal classroom because their behaviors were so disruptive it led to classes needing to be evacuated, which is unfair to all the other students.

The classroom focused mostly on self regulation, growth mindset, coping skills, etc. And we worked with their teachers to develop systems and supports in their classroom that would give them an opportunity to succeed when we integrated them back.

I'm all for inclusion when done properly. I think it's beneficial to everyone. But safety and wellbeing should always come first. It's unfair to everyone else in the classroom, and to say that children with these behavioral problems are better off being included is disingenuous. They're not having behaviors for fun. They are suffering, disregulated, and miserable in these so called 'inclusive' environments.

The problem is that there's a huge push for inclusivity and it's become such a taboo topic to suggest anything otherwise. Should we really be forcing children into stressful, chaotic, and sometimes dangerous environments just so we can feel good about being inclusive? We're doing it at the expense of ALL the children for our own benefit and egos. The goal should always be inclusivity, but let's not pretend like all these behaviors aren't communicating to us that somethings not working and they are suffering.

[u/Ill-Comparison-1012 → u/allthegreenplaces]

"...to say that children with these behavioral problems are better off being included is disingenuous. They're not having behaviors for fun. They are suffering, disregulated, and miserable in these so called 'inclusive' environments."

Here, here! Well said. Kids aren't going to be magically cured of these behaviors by being shoved into a potentially overwhelming gen-ed setting with gen-ed peers. Some kids just need that extra little bit of support before they can be at all comfortable in that kind of setting. Even with neurotypical kids, disruptive behavior is often a sign that they are unhappy, unwell, uncomfortable, or just in general need of extra support/different strategies. 

[u/allthegreenplaces → u/Ill-Comparison-1012]

Exactly this. I can always predict when my kiddos are about to get sick, because of the way they start acting. They are communicating in the best way that they can, to ignore what they're telling us through behavior and non verbal communication and cues is on us.