What happens in a pull-out classroom?

This is my coworker's first year teaching in DCPS. Before working in DCPS, she worked in an inclusion setting at a suburban school. She asked me this week, "What happens in a pull-out classroom?"

I could only tell her my past observations. In the pull-out setting, kids are not given intense, goal-directed instruction. They are given worksheets on whatever level they are functioning on without a plan for seeing definite progress as soon as possible. They also use manipulatives and games in those classrooms. Unfortunately, manipulatives and games without a systematic, goal-directed plan are not research-based and validated interventions. In other words, the activities become busy work.

Special education in DCPS may keep kids from getting further behind (to a degree), but doesn' t push them to the next level or attempt to narrow the gap between them and their peers, which is particularly sad in the case of learning disabled kids who have average intelligence and so much more potential than what many of their teachers are willing to grow out of them.

The other thing I see happening in special ed classrooms is that kids get way too much down time. These kids need rigor just like all of the other kids in the school! I've seen too many SPED kids engaged in large amounts of undirected time, especially on the computer. Last summer, I assisted in a class of students with mental retardation for four weeks. The lead teacher allowed them to spend 2 of the 3 hours they had for summer school each day at recess or doing "free choice." One student told me at least three times that she really wanted to learn how to read, and she had moderate mental retardation so she probably could have learned how to read. However, reading instruction was not planned unless I initiated it.

I gave one student direct, intensive instruction on how to write the letter A (a letter in her name). In five years of schooling she had not learned this, but last summer she learned this skill in one week with direct, intensive instruction. I also taught another student how to track lines of print from left to right. I'm not a miracle-worker, but I was amazed at what direct, intensive instruction can do - even for students with mental retardation.

Our DCPS pull-out programs, however, don't have this rigor - in my experience.

Speech Therapists and Inclusion - ASHA's position

Here is a powerpoint presentation about inclusion for Speech Language Pathologists. It includes ASHA's official position regarding inclusion, and you can view it here to find out what that position is. If you're an SLP, please way in on how or why inclusion/pull-out is better for your students.

Multiple service providers in the classroom

Someone asked a few weeks ago, what can be done if there are 3 different service providers in the room trying to work on the same student at one time?

First, the inclusion model is meant to benefit all children, not just SPED kids. Service providers may try broadening their views on how they can assist in the class. For example, I saw one occupational therapist go into a first grade classroom and pull aside a group of children to work on fine motor skills during choice time. Only one of the children in the group was a SPED kid.

If there are multiple service providers in the room at one time, that signifies a scheduling conflict. The service providers and teacher(s) should meet to determine when each service provider will be most beneficial in the classroom. Maybe the occupational therapist can be most helpful during writing time, and maybe the social worker needs to come in during transitions or group discussions. The child may have problems that manifest themselves throughout the day (as in the case of many ED children), but the service provider should look for a good starting point.

Some people don't believe children should ever be taken from class for any reason. I don't subscribe to that view. I believe children CAN still be taken out for individual or small group therapy AT TIMES. However, many times or most of the time children can be served in the regular classroom, and that's what inclusion aims to make happen.

Inclusion Horror Stories

I got the idea for this post from another blog, The Washington Teacher. This area is for people to share specific times when inclusion did not work for the child, the teachers, or the parents. Maybe eventually the administration will get a hold of these stories and use them to shape DCPS' policy on inclusion - which appears to still be evolving.

Pull-out is not the only answer.

Some teachers in DC schools complain that inclusion is not working because there are not enough SPED teachers in a school, and you can't be in two places at once.

I know there's a dearth of training and information in DCPS about how inclusion should theoretically work. Also, I don't doubt that many schools don't have enough teachers. Nonetheless, inclusion requires more than just having more SPED teachers. I was in a school that tried to do inclusion, and appeared to me to have plenty of SPED teachers - who all had no clue about what the inclusion model looked like.

They tried, though. They went into classrooms and pulled SPED kids to a back table and tried to teach them there. They seemed to think inclusion meant "just do what you normally do, only do it around the GEN ED kids." Their intentions were sincere.

At several schools and in many IEP meetings I heard general ed and special ed teachers say, "What he needs is more one-on-one and small group instruction." That suggestion seemed to be the main intervention used in East of the Park schools that I worked in. Yet, many kids didn't progress even when placed in smaller settings.

I'm learning that there's more to educating a child with disabilities than separation from the rest of the class. Educators should focus on what STRATEGIES teachers will use. At one school that I worked in, a 4th grade boy could not read the word "the" and his SPED teacher had no success teaching him. When he reached 5th grade and got a new SPED teacher, he read around the 2nd grade level by the end of the year. Same pull-out setting, only the 5th grade teacher had STRATEGIES for teaching reading.