Let´s talk about inclusion - Personal Reflection on Special Needs Students

Picture from http://www.jssa.org/services/specneeds

"For me, inclusion is about a community where everyone is recognized for their differences and everyone is recognized as belonging – not only in our schools, but in our communities."
Dr. Joseph Petner, Educator

Special needs students are those people that "may need support in the physical, cognitive, emotional or social areas of development or in the development of skills for varying periods of time. It is important to identify and define the child’s individual opportunities to act in different environments and in different educational situations and to also define related need for support and guidance. The aim is to prevent the child’s need for support from accumulating and becoming prolonged."

Finnish system works cause the cooperation between municipalities, schools and health care is in harmony. The children are followed since early stage: earlier the problem is identify bigger is the possibility to act on time.
At education level, special needs students have same rights that not special needs ones. This includes the possibility for them to get an education and a degree exactly as same as others. The students must provide an IEP (Individiual Education Plan) a pedagogical written document based on national curriculum where is written the provision of education and other support in accordance with the decision on special support issued for the pupil.

At Vocational level this plan must set out details of the qualification to be completed, the national core curriculum or the requirements of the competence-based qualification observed in education and training, the scope of the qualification, the individual curriculum drawn up for the student, grounds for providing special education and training, special educational and student welfare services required for studying as well atr

One issue that came out after reading some of the reflection paper from my fellows teachers students collegues it was: what is the support that special needs students got after the ended schools?
I truly believe that people in general should work on the word of "inclusion".
Inclusion is the key word of Finnish system: with this strategy they give possibility to special needs students to partecipate and learn in same classes with others. Therefore special needs students develop skills they canuse in and out of classroom.
Inclusion education system has inside 2 different kind of approaches:
1) Full time inclusion: is not world wide accepted: The students with special needs are always educated alongside students without special needs, as the first and desired option while maintaining appropriate supports and services. In wider point of view the "inclusion"is a concept that the whole class learn.
2) Part time or regular inclusion: the special needs students participate for several hours to the activity of the class: nearly all of the day, or at least for more than half of the day. For this kind of approach maybe more suitable is the word "integration" than "inclusion".
Both approaches requires some basics and practical elements in a classroom. It´s also extremely important to have a strong community behind that support the work of teachers that need to create an enviroment  "diversity" is not a minus but a "plus". In this issue Finland wins again. The cooperation between the municipalities, schools and health care centres helps to build a community around everybody not only around special needs people.
According to Wikipedia, teachers use a number of techniques to help build classroom communities:

• Using games designed to build community
• Involving students in solving problems
• Sharing songs and books that teach community
• Openly dealing with individual differences by discussion
• Assigning classroom jobs that build community
• Teaching students to look for ways to help each other
• Utilizing physical therapy equipment such as standing frames, so students who typically use wheelchairs can stand when the other students are standing and more actively participate in activities
• Encouraging students to take the role of teacher and deliver instruction (e.g. read a portion of a book to a student with severe disabilities)
• Focusing on the strength of a student with special needs

The inclusion positive aspects are quite many and easy to find: benefits for everybody, easier riching IEP goals,post schools adjustmens.
Challenging for the inclusions of special needs students in normal classes are quite many and include educators, administrators and parents. As a parent, if my son would be special needs students I might be worried that he will be ridiculed by other students, or be unable to develop regular life skills in an academic classroom.

According to UNESCO, inclusion “is increasingly understood more broadly as a reform that supports and welcomes diversity amongst all learners.” Under this broader definition of inclusion, steps should also be taken to eliminate discrimination and provide accommodations for all students who are at a disadvantage because of some reason other than disability.


References:

UNESCO (2009) Policy Guidelines on Inclusion in Education. UNESCO: Paris. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0017/001778/177849e.pdf

All publications about special needs students and their inclusion in Finland are retreived on:
http://www.european-agency.org/country-information/finland/publications-fi  

Global and Cultural Competencies - Task 2 - 1st part

The Global and Culture Competencies asked to give a short answers (Around 250-500 words) on these questions:
How I will prepare myself for a group of students from different cultures? (Finnish language teacher)
What I will do to help the student that speaks only arabic to learn Finnish?

To have a multiculture classes is a challenge but it´s not impossible to deal with students from different cultures. I would at the beginning find out their personal information (for instance where are they from, what schools they attended and so on) and then organize a previous meeting with them and/or with their families.
If it is absolutely necessary I would ask the help of a translator, but at the beginning I would probabily find out their knowledge in Finnish language.
In order to do that I think would be enough have an informal conversation. After that I could divide them in 3 different levels:
- beginners
- intermidiate
- advanced.
With the beginners I would start working on pronunciation: using a lot my body language and try to do as much as I can to involve them. One good activity might be in group to write (and it doesn´t matter if it´s not written correctly) a list of Finnish words (including names of famous Finns, food, cities and so on..) I would then with them start to work on the pronunciation of those words. If necessary I could use as a language  support English/French and Italian ;)
Probabily in this group will be also that student that knows only arabic: she will be treated as the rest and if necessary I could ask help for a translator. Putting her with beginners won´t let her/his motivation going down if she/he will be if would be with advanced or intermidiate.
With the intermidiate: I would start with a simple conversation on daily routines in order to check what are their speaking skills. I would ask them also to write down a small presentation on themselves (in order to see their written skill). Based on this I could carry on a tailor made course for them too.
With the advanced: Conversations, discussions on newspapers articles, about cultures. Movies. Comments on national happenings. Same strategy than intermidiate course: build a tailored course for them.


In all of three I would teach them the Finnish culture: showing them videos (according to their level), receipts (according to their level) and everything what included the Finnish daily culture routines.
I would also recommend to have a book, an exercise book and cd that they could listening at the different dialogue and pronunciation during their spare time.
For teaching culture I would also spend some time during my lessons to let the students express themselves and talk about their own culture. I would work (beside the language itself) on the concepts of:
- communication between different culture
-  expectations on the other culture actions
 - building a group and a community
- the advantages of no violence approach but see the idea of conflict as a constructive opportunity to have a dialogue
- culture shock

I would use for cover this part the material used by the National Agencies from different training programmes. One of it you can find in here: salto-youth.net  

Interaction with working community _ task 3

How do you interact with your working community? What could you do differently to enhance the spirits of your working place? Is there someone in your working community who brings positive energy to you; why is that? Reflect on the quality of the interaction in the light of where and why is the interaction fruitful to you to lift up your working spirit.

The interaction with my working community is with  my students, my boses and my collegue Marina (who is also an Italian teacher). The interaction with them is by phone, emails and social networks such facebook, linkedin and skype. I work in Community Colleges (in Finnish Kansalaisopisto) so the spirit is to give our customers a learning and relaxing enviroment while following their passions. I am an Italian teacher and I lead courses for those who are going to Italy (mostly for vacation) but also for those who wants to learn the language for other reasons (family member, passion for Italian culture or because they can speak already Spanish).
My boses are quite open minded we are basically free to express our ideas and - in my case - propose new courses. There is not s specific person who does bring positive energy: I would say that I got that from the group in general. Students are there cause they want to learn Italian so they actively partecipate to the lessons: this give me positive energy that I give back to them as a mirror. Sometimes I face difficult groups: with them it is harder than usually is but I try my best to give them anyway a good service. In those cases I share my feelings with my only collegue, Marina, by phone. I travel quite a lot and so is she, so when we want to give each other support, we call during this long trips. We could talk over an hour! We share the difficulties with a specific group and try to give each other support and solutions.
I would say that my interaction has been good until now but lately I have felt that I would need to partecipate more to the activities of the schools: it seems to me that I am quite separate to the general philosophy of a specific organization, instead would be nice to help to organize and bring new ideas. I would like to have possibility to build some projects that involves students but most of the time the schools they do not have enought financial possibilities. I would say that going to work is refreshing for me: the interaction with the students is extremely positive even sometimes (for my personal reasons) I am going to work that I am already tired.
It would be nice to have stronger interaction with my boses or from those who have longer experience in teaching than me: it would be nice to organize not only language courses but also courses related to cultures and communication in foreigner country. Maybe one day...who knows?