Questions to Consider:- What are your concerns about student discipline as you prepare to become a teacher?
Why? - Do you agree or disagree with the philosophy that underlies this approach to class-
room discipline? - Do you think an approach to discipline intended for “mature students” in the military is
appropriate in a middle school or high school classroom? Explain.
4.What formal rules would you want in your classroom? Why?
SECTION E: HOW DO YOU ORGANIZE
AN INCLUSIVE CLASSROOM?
Increasingly, teachers are grappling with ways to adapt teaching strategies to inclusive
classrooms containing students from different social and economic backgrounds and with
different levels of preparation and interest, and including students who had previously been
programmed for separate remedial or special education classes. Inclusive classes can be
models for heterogeneous grouping and multicultural education.
Some of the students previously assigned to separate classes have physical difficulties
whereas others are labeled learning disabled, ADHD (with an attention deficit and hyperac-
tive), or emotionally disturbed. Many youths were classified as special needs students and
placed in separate restricted classrooms because teachers and evaluators considered them
unable to adjust to the discipline demanded of students in regular classroom settings. This
is the group of children classroom teachers have the greatest reservations about reassign-
ing to inclusive classrooms. Significantly, in many school districts, this group of students is
disproportionately African American, male, and from lower income families.
Under law, every student assigned to special education programs has a specific defined
“disability” or special need and an IEP intended to help him or her succeed in school. Many
special education programs have unnecessarily isolated special needs students, contribut-
ing to stereotyping and high rates of academic failure. The issue should be how the educa-
tional and social needs of these students are best addressed.
An additional problem is what schools and teachers mean by disability and ability. We
tend to think of these categories as universal, distinct, and unbiased. However, this model
may be arbitrarily squeezing a wide spectrum of normal human activity into a narrow band
deemed acceptable.
As a teacher, instead of discussing ability and disability, I prefer to talk about perform-
ance level. Performance level is temporary, not permanent, and more easily measurable.
More important, teachers can develop strategies to help a range of students improve their
performance levels. As you will discover as you read the following suggestions, I believe the
same approaches for organizing inclusive classrooms are applicable in every classroom.
Some teachers are uncomfortable with the idea of inclusive classrooms because they of-
ten mean that more than one teacher will be in the room and planning instruction. It re-
quires a level of teamwork that can be enticing in theory but difficult to implement in prac-
tice.
General Classroom Suggestions for Inclusive Classrooms
·Structure—Organize lessons and set up the classroom to minimize conflicts and distrac-
tions and to encourage student participation. All students need structure. In an inclusive136 CHAPTER 5