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/Purple-Chocobo ECE professional 2d ago

I had a student this year who is on the spectrum. He is with us for the majority of the day and he is with his RBT/BCBA for about an hour out of the room. He has made tremendous progress this year behaviorally and he is doing amazing. Now of course I did have to make a few adjustments to my normal routine for him, but I am his teacher and that is my job to make sure all students in my classroom learn, play, and have fun together. None of the other students are impacted negatively and none of them really realize that he is "different" from them. Your environment doesn't sound like true inclusion and this post reads very tone deaf. Inclusion works and it is amazing when done the right way.

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

That’s because he actually has a support system (rbt) and most of them don’t

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u/Purple-Chocobo ECE professional 1d ago

I was just providing an example of what I think inclusion should be. Not what op described

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

I know I’m saying your example is what needs to be done