Inclusion gives special ed to all // Irving School experiment integrates classrooms; [FINAL Edition] JENNIFER S. JOHNSON. Pantagraph.

Bloomington, Ill.: Jan 23, 1995. pg. A.3 Abstract (Summary) So in the morning, she reports to Pam Lubeck's fourth-grade classroom at Irving School in Bloomington. Each day after lunch, she reports to Maureen Svob's special education class, where she gets the extra help she needs in some subjects to overcome her learning disability. It's an arrangement that serves everyone well, Mrs. Svob said, and one that is viable because of Irving's approach to inclusion, the practice of integrating special education students into the regular classroom. Megan [Renfrow] agrees inclusion gives special education students all the benefits of extra help without singling them out as "different." Last week, inclusion was implemented on a grand scale for an experiment. Nine of Megan's special education classmates spent the week in Mrs. Lubeck's regular fourthgrade classroom for an integrated unit on the human body. Because inclusion means special education teachers as well as students, the unit was planned and taught by Mrs. Svob.
Jump to indexing (document details) Full Text (778 words) Copyright Chronicle Publishing Company Jan 23, 1995

Eleven-year-old Megan Renfrow has two classrooms she can claim as her own, and she can't imagine giving up one of them. "Then I wouldn't have as many friends," she explained. So in the morning, she reports to Pam Lubeck's fourth-grade classroom at Irving School in Bloomington. Each day after lunch, she reports to Maureen Svob's special education class, where she gets the extra help she needs in some subjects to overcome her learning disability. It's an arrangement that serves everyone well, Mrs. Svob said, and one that is viable because of Irving's approach to inclusion, the practice of integrating special education students into the regular classroom. Megan agrees inclusion gives special education students all the benefits of extra help without singling them out as "different." "They think I'm part of the class. They ask me why I go to Mrs. Svob, though. I tell them I have a learning disability, and she helps me," Megan said. District 87, like Unit 5, has no districtwide inclusion program. It experiments with small programs on a school-by-school basis. Irving began its inclusion program just this year,

although some special education students have always been mainstreamed into regular classrooms for some subjects. Mrs. Svob's class - which includes learning and behaviorally disordered children - is paired with a fourth- and a fifth-grade class. She works with both classes to schedule their subjects at the same time. That way, children who need her help only for a few subjects won't miss other lessons while they're with her. The team approach also allows Mrs. Svob to get inside the regular classrooms more and do less "pulling out" of special-needs students. Several times a week, she teaches lessons to combined special education and regular classes. "If I look at the total picture, when we weren't doing inclusion, we had students coming in and out all day long," Mrs. Lubeck said. "Now, there's a lot more continuity." Last week, inclusion was implemented on a grand scale for an experiment. Nine of Megan's special education classmates spent the week in Mrs. Lubeck's regular fourthgrade classroom for an integrated unit on the human body. Because inclusion means special education teachers as well as students, the unit was planned and taught by Mrs. Svob. "Oh yes, it's a lot of extra work for me. The benefit is to the students. They can have the experience of positive role models and on-grade level students," Mrs. Svob said. Inclusion has gained a lot of attention in the past five years. Since it became a trend, there has been an ongoing dispute among educators as to whether it actually helps specialneeds students to spend time in regular classrooms and whether their inclusion disrupts the regular classroom to the point where it benefits no one. Mrs. Svob sees the benefits in her students as well as the regular classroom students. "If we get them mixed in more, they'll see special education students are not so different. They just have different learning styles," she said. Mrs. Lubeck, the regular classroom teacher, believes her students enjoyed the week as well. "They get to know those students have strengths and weaknesses the same as everybody else," she said. Of course, if you ask her students, they liked the experiment for an entirely different reason. "It's more fun; more people and plus there's more noise," said 9-year-old Jay Groves. Both teachers have more group lessons planned for the upcoming months.

There's no question that inclusion of special-needs students means more work for classroom teachers, and that means it's also debated at the bargaining table. Unions want to make sure regular classroom teachers whose classes include specialeducation students get all the support they need from special education teachers, nurses, counselors and social workers, said Mike Gibler, field representative with the Illinois Education Association. They also look for extra "release time" away from students for teachers in that position and teacher input into who is moved into a regular classroom and how it is done. Gibler said in Normal-based Unit 5, Bloomington District 87 and Stanford-based Olympia schools, there are regular meetings among special education staff members and administrators to stay on top of inclusion activities and issues. "I think inclusion will continue to be a bigger and bigger part of collective bargaining, and I think the key is to create committees of employees and administrators and parents," he said. [Illustration] Caption: Irving School fourth-grader Megan Renfrow, who turns 11 today, cut out paper parts of the human body that she then pasted to a traced picture of herself. The human body unit incorporated special education and regular students for a weeklong experiment in classroom inclusion.; Credit: JENNIFER S. JOHNSON

Indexing (document details) Author(s): JENNIFER S. JOHNSON Section: Publication title: Source type: ProQuest document ID: Text Word Count Document URL: NEWS Pantagraph. Bloomington, Ill.: Jan 23, 1995. pg. A.3 Newspaper 19756309 778 http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb? did=19756309&sid=6&Fmt=3&clientId=65085&RQT=309&VName= PQD