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| Before the early 1990s, Special Ed students (as they were labeled then) were segregated by separate rooms and buildings and taught by special education teachers. Since then, inclusion is the accepted form of educating children with special needs. Inclusion acknowledges people with special needs as being people and helps staff and students focus on accepting these children as students in our everyday lives at school. Inclusion assumes that every person, despite their abilities or inabilities, deserves respect and dignity, equal rights according to the law, and is given the same opportunities to succeed. Effective strategies are to identify the needs based on assessment results and implementing programs and/or services that meet the students' needs. When inclusion is implemented appropriately in our classrooms throughout the district, all students benefit. The outcome for all students is a better understanding of individuals with special needs as well as acceptance and support for the diversity within our community. One such innovative program is Deaf and Hard of Hearing Co-teaching at Lindbergh-Schweitzer Elementary School. The program mirrors the district's mission statement, "to improve student achievement by supporting teaching and learning in the classroom," through full instructional collaboration between special education and general education in an integrated environment. Lindbergh-Schweitzer is known for its diverse student population, so much that the school's philosophy is "Although we are alike in many ways, our differences are to be valued." Mary Maussang works as an itinerant teacher in San Diego's Deaf and Hard of Hearing Program under the supervision of Barbara Mac Neil. Rather than pull students out of their classroom setting, Mary works side-by-side with the general ed teacher in both a kindergarten class and a third-grade class. Together they create small instructional groups to better meet the needs of each student so that every student in the class benefits. Now in its fourth year, many of the original hearing third graders know sign language and can communicate more easily with the deaf students. The third graders have buddies in the kindergarten class and help twice a week in sign language classes. "I love watching the hearing and deaf students interact," stated Mary Maussang. "When you can witness the actual progress these students are making, you can't help but be convinced that the students are advancing." As the students progress, Mary too has had to make changes in her teaching style. She is constantly comparing what the deaf kids do to the hearing kids and often sees she needs to further challenge the deaf students. Mary believes that she must look at the needs of each child and develop individual strategies to meet those needs. As a result, she has introduced a relatively new teaching strategy to the kindergarten arena by combining Touch and Visual Phonics. Within one month, Mary's deaf and hearing students have already learned there is sign for each letter of the alphabet and a different sign for the sounds it makes. Her applicable, multi-sensory approach also helps students develop reading and writing skills. Concurrently, the general ed teacher has learning the system, which makes for a successful working team in the classroom. Several of the students at Lindbergh Schweitzer have cochlear implants, a new type of hearing device, which help students with severe hearing losses hear sounds that they would not hear with a hearing aide. However, students must learn to hear, and individual results may not be the same way that we hear. Babies do not wake up and know that is a car honking, but instead they learn to identify the sound through taught association. In the same way, babies don't know what a word is when they are born, but learn the words that equal the sounds. This is also true with students who get cochlear implants. They use "total communication," a system of signing and using their voices to ensure that they are not missing any information. Although the team-approach in a general ed class may not be the right fit for every child, it has been extremely successful for these students. |