Wow:
I was watching some more of Shelly’s videos and this one got my gears turning. I love the point that kids today easily list their strengths because we have started implementing, a more inclusive way to look at things. Albeit, I do not think we are at the best version of inclusion yet like Shelly talks about in her work. I tried to do what she said and list what I am a genius at and it was hard for me like it was for her. I find it cool to see the change in how we educate and the environments we create in schools.
Wonder:
The wonder I have this week is actually from the reading. When Shelley asked a class to identify Inclusion, Exclusion, Segregation, and Integration, I did not fully understand the explanation of the theory that the one student had. I understand the method of inclusion, but this particular section I physically just did not understand,
“After some discussion, however, a student commented, “Shelley, I don’t think this diagram is inclusion, either.” This caught me off guard. “Of course this is inclusion!” I thought. I had shown this slide to hundreds if not thousands of people! What could she possibly mean?“… (Page 6)
She explained, “Look what you have shown us. I see a bubble with a whole bunch of wavy dots. And then, there are a scattered handful of other patterned dots.” “Yeah,” I said, “and….” “Well, in my definition of inclusion, there is no other.”…(Page 7)
I stood there speechless because she was absolutely right. The diagram I was presenting was not one of inclusion; it was an example of the traditional model of education. The model where our goal is to produce more of the same – lingering evidence of the factory model of education where we needed to produce and replicate people to meet the demand of the workforce during the industrial revolution (Robinson 2009; Zhao 2009). A model where our job as educators (and especially special educators) is to identify students who aren’t wavy and fix them. Send the checkered kids to the checkered teacher, the diamond kids to the diamond teacher, and the striped kids to the striped teacher. This model of education is a deficit, medical model, and I was showing the class a perfect example of how it was still plaguing us today.” (Page 8)