Inclusion
"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage."
ANAIS NIN
A Few Words on Inclusion
When people heard that I was taking the class, "Introduction to Special Education," they asked if that was something I might like to go into. I said, "no, I hated school." --In elementary and junior high school, I had a "C" average, but my teachers always said I could do much better, if only I would "apply myself." I would not do my homework, and then I would get "A"s on tests. Teachers were kind of puzzled by this.
School was boring to me. I did not like having to conform to a group of students who were all being taught the same things, and were all expected to meet the same standard. I wondered, why can't I choose what I want to learn? I suppose that is why I became intrigued by Special Education. I really like the idea of individualizing education based on the strengths and needs of the student. Maybe I should have been in Special Education.
I look back and try to apply labels to myself in an attempt to explain my reaction to school, but nothing seems to fit. Whatever the problem was, it led to the label I was given at age 13 – clinical depression. In the fall of 1988, I stopped attending eighth grade, due to severe insomnia and illness brought on by anxiety and depression. At the time, I was attending a small, parochial school that didn't have a whole lot of understanding of what I was going through. I was told that I had missed so many days, I would be held back. My mother then decided to pull me out to do home schooling, and this was a relief for me. For the next four years, I had the freedom to learn what I wanted to learn. I individualized my own education, reading hundreds of books. In 1993, I took a few weeks to study the subjects I had neglected (math and science), and got my GED. Although I don't regret taking the option that I did, I wonder how the isolation from my peers affected me – and I certainly wouldn't recommend it to just anyone.
Why Inclusion?
I learned later a person can have the opposite reaction to having a bad experience with education. Through having a bad experience with education, my friend Helen decided early on that she wanted to be a teacher. She had substantial learning disabilities as a child, which made learning how to read very difficult. Because of this experience, she says, "I became a teacher because I wanted to teach children how to read without [them] crying." Helen went to college to become a teacher at a time when there were no support services for students with disabilities. She would have friends proofread her papers and pay five cents for each misspelled word. (This was before spell-check, too!)
When I asked her what philosophy she brought to teaching, she told me it was "everyone deserves the chance to succeed." She taught regular and special education, as a substitute teacher, at an elementary school for 20 years.
She took this same philosophy with her when she took the job of Adult Disability Coordinator for Winona Community Education. She started this program shortly after passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act spurred more funding for programs like this. She named the program Project COMPASS . The name was inspired by the Latin, com passus , meaning "step together" and it also is an acronym for Community Program for All Seeking Success. Through Helen's work, COMPASS became a leader in programs like it across the state.
