Powerful Strategies for Including Students with Intellectual Disabilities in General Education ~ 706

Tim Villegas: I spend a lot of time thinking about inclusion. Most of this energy is spent coming up with ways to explain inclusive education clearly and succinctly so that everyone understands what it is and why it’s essential. Because to me, it’s one of the most crucial things that we can do for our students, disabled or non-disabled.

And here’s the challenge. You probably already have thoughts and opinions about inclusion. Maybe you have already decided that the challenges that your child or students have would not be appropriate in a general education classroom. Perhaps you have a notion that inclusion is good, but you don’t know what it looks like or how to even advocate for it.

Or maybe you’re all in for inclusive education and want your child or student in general education 100 percent of the time all day, every day. In all these scenarios, we need to take a step back and see the larger picture of how inclusive education fits in our educational system. When I started as a special education teacher in 2003, I worked in what was called a special day class.

In Pasadena, California, with the majestic San Gabriel Mountains outside my window, I taught my heart out for 6th grade students with labels of moderate to severe autism. I was still going to school at the time because in California, you could be hired as a special education teacher with a provisional teaching certificate.

My teaching program promoted inclusive practices, and this meant that it covered models like co-teaching where special and general education teachers would work in the same classroom or special ed teachers would collaborate with general ed teachers and strategies for including students with autism or other low incidence disabilities in general education classrooms.

I distinctly remember having a discussion with a professor of mine in a program about how they just didn’t understand that students with autism needed to be educated with other autistic students. And I told her, “But my students need to be taught routine. How will they learn that in a general education classroom? How can they do the same things that everyone else can? They can’t be held to the same standard or expectations.”

Instead of debating our philosophies, my professor just gave us an assignment: pick one student who is educated in a self-contained or segregated classroom and create an inclusion plan. And don’t pick an easy one—pick a student that you would never think could ever tolerate time in a general education classroom, she said.

So I thought about it and I had the perfect one. It was Nathan—not his real name, by the way. He was a fifth grade student who had limited verbal abilities and engaged in self-injurious behavior. He also engaged in verbal stimming, which was extremely disruptive. And when he got angry, he would kick and hit and grab anything next to him.

Never in my wildest dreams did I think that he would be successful in a setting with typically developing peers. I was wrong.

The plan included examining the student’s interests, communication skills, and adaptive strengths. The idea was to discover who Nathan really was, what he liked, and what he was good at.

Next, the plan included planning with the general education teacher a lesson that would take into consideration Nathan’s strengths. Despite all of Nathan’s communication and sensory issues, he was a wizard with scissors. In fact, this was one of his favorite things to do. If he wasn’t cutting strips of paper or cardboard, he was shredding paper with his hands or picking up leaves outside and crumpling them in front of his eyes so he could see all the minute pieces fall to the ground.

The plan began to form. Whatever we were going to have him do, it would involve cutting. After a few more planning sessions, the day finally came and it was time for Nathan and me to walk down the long hallway to the science classroom.

The activity was to create a topography map out of cardboard. And luckily for Nathan, there was a whole bunch of cardboard to be cut out for this activity. As he sat at the desk in the classroom with 35 of his peers, I was astounded at how calm and focused he was, cutting to his heart’s content. His task was meaningful, age-appropriate, and for 45 minutes in that science class, he belonged.

Did that one activity set Nathan on a path to full inclusion? No, it didn’t. But what it did do was set me on a way of believing that any student could be successful when certain conditions were present. Nathan was a turning point for me and I looked for more ways to include my students. At my school, the other teachers and my paraprofessional saw the success and bought into my vision.

It was like a religious conversion and I had been baptized in the church of inclusion. That is how I feel when I’m talking to people about why inclusion matters. Over the years, I have become an evangelist of sorts, but this experience wasn’t enough for the educators at my school or for me. My students were still segregated.

Despite my efforts to increase their time with peers—joining their peers in recess and lunch, going to assemblies or the occasional visit to a general education classroom—just didn’t seem like enough. And I wanted to know why I couldn’t include all of my students all the time. I came to work with a cognitive dissonance that I was doing what I loved, but just in the wrong location—a segregated classroom.

But then I realized that I wasn’t thinking big enough. Through talking to other teachers who are passionate about inclusion, another vision of inclusive education began to form. Inclusion is not about physical proximity. It is about planning for the success of all students.

Today on the podcast, we are going to talk about an aspect of what makes inclusive education successful—and that is modifying curriculum. For my students back in Pasadena, according to their IEP, the team agreed that modifying their curriculum was the best way for them to access it. Essentially, modifying curriculum means to take part of the standard and then modify it down to where they’re able to meaningfully participate in it.

I talk with Juanita Pritchard, an intellectual disability specialist, about how we can do this for our students who require a modified curriculum. Also, I want to share a resource before we get into the interview. There’s a book called Inclusion in Action by Nicole Eredix, which gives specific strategies on how to modify curriculum for students who are in general education.

I know a lot of educators who are put into this position where they receive no training on how to do this. While my interview with Juanita will give you a nice overview of what to look for and how to think about modifying, Nicole’s book really breaks it down for you. I highly suggest that you go and get that as a resource.

So either for you, who may be an educator in that position, or for people you know who are in that position, this resource is excellent and could benefit you. So after a short break, my interview with Juanita Pritchard.

Juanita Pritchard: Hi, I’m Juanita Pritchard and you’re listening to the Think Inclusive Podcast.

Tim Villegas: I’d like to welcome Juanita Pritchard to the Think Inclusive Podcast. Juanita, thanks for taking some time to talk with us.

Well, let’s jump right in. Juanita, you and I have had a professional relationship over the last few years, working together and collaborating. I’d like for you to explain to our listeners the role that you had as an intellectual disability specialist. What is an intellectual disability specialist?

Juanita Pritchard: That’s a good question. In my case, I had a very unique skill set that enabled me to support teachers who had classrooms with students with intellectual disabilities. They gave me the title specialist because I could combine my background as a classroom teacher, community-based instructor, and assistive technology specialist into being able to support those teachers in their classroom.

I did primarily instruction, curriculum, and materials—helping teachers keep up with the research and materials. In the position I last had, I was also responsible for helping with budget and supplying the materials in those classrooms. I’m now retired, but that’s what I did as an intellectual disability specialist.

Tim Villegas: Okay. And in that role, did you ever support students who were not necessarily in a self-contained classroom but were pushed out into general education environments?

Juanita Pritchard: Yes. If that was part of the IEP process where those students were included, then my job as an intellectual disability specialist was to support them. I did not have the opportunity to support many students who were in full inclusion, but there were a number who were included for specific subject areas.

Tim Villegas: In your experience, did you see the trend of students with intellectual disabilities being pushed into inclusive environments grow, or has it stayed the same over the years?

Juanita Pritchard: Initially, it grew. I started teaching in 1977, which was the first year of Public Law 94-142. So I’ve seen a lot of trends come and go. Initially, there was never any inclusion, so I did see it grow. But in the last maybe five to ten years, I’ve seen it stay pretty stable. It hasn’t really grown the way I thought it would.

Tim Villegas: You would think that the number or percentage of students being pushed into general education environments would have increased over the last 10 years. Why do you think it hasn’t?

Juanita Pritchard: I think over the last 10 years, we had a huge economic downfall. That had a big impact—school systems couldn’t provide the physical support or staff to support inclusion. Some of the grants that initially supported inclusion dried up. I also think there’s been a bigger focus on standardized testing for both general ed and special ed students. Those two things combined have really impacted some of the more innovative projects.

Tim Villegas: What do you see as the future of inclusion and special education?

Juanita Pritchard: To me, it’s very uncertain. We seem to be at a stalemate in education right now. There have been so many innovations and high-stakes testing that people aren’t pushing inclusion like they were. I think if parents come together and say this is what we think is best for our children, then it will happen. I don’t think it’s going to come from the educational program itself.

Tim Villegas: That’s interesting. Coming from an educator perspective, I’ve often thought that making change within a system could be effective. In your experience, have you ever seen that as a viable option? Has change ever really come from within?

Juanita Pritchard: Not as much as I would like. I’m a lifelong learner and as a teacher, I liked to respond to what research showed and what was best for students. But the reality is that doesn’t happen very often. Occasionally, you get the right chemistry between administration and a teacher so that it can happen. But today, everyone is paddling as hard as they can, and innovation doesn’t happen much unless it’s pushed from an outside force.

Tim Villegas: Let’s talk about advice for teachers. Right now, students with intellectual disabilities are included in co-teaching environments or environments with additional support. Many teachers don’t know how to support those students. What advice would you give teachers who find themselves in a situation where they have to modify curriculum or serve students with intellectual disabilities?

Juanita Pritchard: The first thing a teacher has to do is know what the expectations are. What does the educational team want the student to accomplish? Sometimes students are included strictly for social reasons, and other times there are specific IEP goals. People forget that inclusion is just a place, not a reason.

So, what do you want from the student, and how will you know they got there? The IEP is the first place to start. In terms of adapting materials, what are the student’s strengths? What do they need to succeed?

Teachers often don’t understand how it can look different for that student. They want to make it the same as everyone else. The first step is to ask: what’s going to be different for this student? Do they need visual support? If we’re going to learn ten states, maybe they learn one. It has to be okay for it to look different.

Tim Villegas: After that, what else should teachers consider?

Juanita Pritchard: Students with intellectual disabilities often have communication issues. Even if they’re verbal, their communication skills are below their peers. That has to be factored into instruction. They’re not just going to miraculously start answering questions in full sentences. There has to be support. Gen ed teachers often need help in this area, and hopefully the speech therapist can help.

Tim Villegas: Anything else as far as next steps?

Juanita Pritchard: I recommend teachers come up with templates—ways to present material and have the student respond. If you can come up with three to five templates, you don’t have to keep reinventing the wheel. For example, I might show a student a picture and have them pick out sentence strips that describe it. If that works, I use it for every new concept. It gives the student repetition and cuts down on the teacher’s workload.

Tim Villegas: So it’s like a response template. You give structure to how the student responds to content, and they learn the structure so they don’t have to come up with new ways of accessing content.

Juanita Pritchard: Absolutely. Research shows that benefits the student and greatly helps the teacher.

Tim Villegas: Have you come across families or IEPs where a student with an intellectual disability was included but the team wasn’t allowed to modify curriculum?

Juanita Pritchard: I haven’t had that experience. I’ve had teams that didn’t understand why it had to be adapted—sort of the concept of “if they can’t do the work, they shouldn’t be here.” But if the IEP says it has to be adapted, then it has to be adapted.

Tim Villegas: That’s just something I wanted to ask from your personal experience.

Juanita Pritchard: I can see it happening, but I haven’t experienced it. Hopefully, the IEP team will say, “If we’re going to do this, it’s going to require adapting.”

Tim Villegas: There were some hypothetical situations brought up, especially on the parent advocacy side, about how to set up inclusion for a student with an intellectual disability or one with SDD eligibility. The team might not want to say they need a modified curriculum.

Juanita Pritchard: In that situation, I think data would be important. Even if you look at the RTI process—more accommodations versus modifications—I can see that. Where I’ve seen a problem is at high school, in courses where teachers won’t modify because the course number certifies a specific skill level. More vocational or technology courses, and even some academic ones.

In Georgia, we used to have different course numbers for modified classes. You could be in the same classroom, but your transcript showed the difference. That’s no longer an option, and I’ve seen high school teachers unwilling to modify. In those cases, it was usually resolved by moving the student to another course.

Tim Villegas: Why don’t you tell us where people can find any materials you’ve made?

Juanita Pritchard: I have a Teachers Pay Teachers store called Wise Dragon Education Support. I also have a Facebook page with the same name. My materials are geared toward middle and high school students because there just aren’t enough age-respectful materials. Everything is very babyish and elementary-looking.

I focus on age-respectful materials and topics, especially for students at emerging reading levels. I have adapted texts, writing activities, and a lot of social skills in the workplace activities. I include a lot of freebies so teachers can try materials out first. I invite anyone to visit the store.

Tim Villegas: Thank you for sharing that with us. If you’d like to hear the entire unedited recording of my interview with Juanita Pritchard, consider becoming a Patreon subscriber at patreon.com/ThinkInclusivePodcast. Follow the Think Inclusive Podcast on the web at thinkinclusive.us. Tell us what you thought of the podcast via Twitter @inclusive_pod, or find us on Facebook or Instagram.

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Next time on the Think Inclusive Podcast:

Carol Quirk: I feel like it’s our obligation as educators to build our capacity to be inclusive. We don’t need to build our capacity to be segregated. We know how to do that very, very well.

Tim Villegas: Thanks for your time and attention. See you next time.

Kids: This has been a production of Think Inclusive, LLC.