In spite of my many years working within special education, I remain nervous about the designations and the official identification process. There are times when a designation can really put a child in a box that’s hard to get out of. Sometimes a designation seems odd to me. It doesn’t really fit the child I know and work with. But, in the end, I’m not the one who decides to accept it or not. That’s up to the family.

There are times when the parents are not happy with the proposed designation and they say no to it. They prefer that their child remain in a class that is not a special education class. That can be the right decision, it depends on the child’s particular learning needs. But sometimes that decision isn’t the best one for the child. Today, trying to problem solve a social difficulty with a ten year old I’ll call Juan, I was really wishing his family had accepted the designation.

Juan is an enthusiastic Grade 5 boy who has been through the lengthy special education identification process. The assessments used in that process clearly showed what all of his teachers suspected – that he is has a mild intellectual delay (MID).

This means that Juan learns best using hands on materials and in situations that call on his own concrete and immediate experiences. Making inferences or predictions or figuring out the consequences of his actions – abstract thinking – are very difficult for him. Although he reads at a Grade 3 level, he needs help to understand what he has read or talk about it in any detail. Staying focused on intellectual tasks is hard for him.

After the assessments, which included detailed conversations with his parents, his case was taken to IPRC -Identification, Placement and Review Committee – to seek a formal designation. An MID designation would mean a special education class, a teacher trained to work with MID students and a class of other similarly designated children. Because Juan does read and can take a clearly defined role in some group activities, there would also be opportunities for him to be integrated into regular classes for some subjects.

At the IPRC meeting, the family turned down the designation, saying they wanted their son in a regular class so that he would have to learn to read and write like the others. Those of us who worked with Juan were shocked. We had spent a lot of time talking with the parents, having them come in to observe Juan in the class and trying to help them understand a very difficult reality: Juan was not going to catch up in the way his family hoped. His strengths and development lay along a different path.

That was two years ago. Juan is in a regular class. In the early grades, his classmates played with him. Now they find his responses childish and even annoying. He is given work at his level but that isolates him further from his classmates. Increasingly, on the playground and in class, he is left out. Of course, this hurts and upsets him, and he responds by swearing and hitting. When Juan talks with me about these experiences, I learn that his older brother finds him frustrating to deal with at home and has started swearing and hitting him.

Juan came to school the other day with band aids up one arm. His older sister got angry with him and, according to Juan, dragged him from one part of the house to another. Because of that conversation, I am legally obliged to call the Children’s Aid Society and, if they decide to intervene, it is all going to escalate – and not necessarily in a way that will benefit Juan. In the meantime, we continue to talk with the family, trying to help them understand Juan’s reality.

So much of this anguish could have been avoided had the family accepted the initial designation. Juan would be in a smaller class with the guidance and help he needs. Because of his functional literacy and numeracy and his outgoing nature, he might have been a leader in that class. Instead, he is not feeling good about himself or his place in the school. He withdraws more and more, never wants to go out at recess time and, literally, throws himself sobbing into my arms when he sees me outside on recess duty. It breaks my heart…..

A few years ago I was chatting with my dad about his long life and relationships. I asked him to name things he’d done over his life that he is proud of. I was taken aback to be met with silence – and it wasn’t a-thinking-it over kind of silence, either.

Eventually my dad shrugged and said, “Really, there isn’t much I can think of.” When I pushed him, he became uncomfortable. I let it drop. I understood that, for him, naming accomplishments is synonymous with blowing his own horn or being arrogant. He couldn’t do it.

My dad is a man who has been actively involved in his community for years. People tell me about courageous and thoughtful things they have seen him do or heard him say. The speak of the leadership he has provided in his community. Some mention his efforts to get the local council to take a more active role in regulating building along the town’s waterfront. Others talk about his environmental work for the local Marsh Society. He’s inspired many, so his discomfort with naming his strengths bothered me. It prodded me into doing two things. One on the home front, the other at school.

For my birthday that year, I told my partner, “No gifts, no fuss.” I wanted each of my children – three boys – to write me a letter about what they were proud of having done in the past year.

Each of them struggled with my request, but, eventually, I got my letters – that year, and for a few more after that. I even scored a what-I’m-proud-of email one year from one of the boys, traveling in southeast Asia. Working hard on the slap shot during hockey season, getting a good grade from a demanding high school English teacher, developing his voice as a writer – these are some of the things the boys wrote about.

I don’t fool myself that the guys sit down and write these missives out of anything but a sense of duty to their mom. It’s easier, maybe, than finding me a present! But the fact that they articulated what they feel good about, is what matters to me.

Self-esteem is not built on praise – although meaningful praise counts. It’s built on understanding our competencies and skills.

The conversation with my dad affected what I did at school, too. When I asked my students the same question I’d asked him, I got the same response. I understood why. I work with children who are behind in literacy and numeracy. They know they are behind and they don’t feel good about themselves.

I began teaching the actual words we can use to name our positive qualities and strengths. I also started taking the time to point out those qualities and strengths during class time. When someone kept at a task even when it was difficult, I would comment on it. If a child helped a classmate, we acknowledged it out loud. We had chats about what are we good at.

I also initiated frank discussions about work habits. I wanted them to understand what good ones are, and how by choosing to have them, we are making positive choices in life. I wanted these young people to see that getting through in school was not something serendipitous. It was something they could exert some control over and that good work habits cold help. Watching them in class had shown me that they wanted to do well. They were willing to work – they just didn’t know what steps to take and got discouraged quickly.

Over the past few years I’ve been fine tuning how to teach good work habits and how to gets my students talking about their strengths without feeling self-conscious or sounding boastful. But that conversation with my father came back to me again the other day.

I was trying to help Amir with two digit multiplication. When I asked the group I was working with if anyone was finding it tough, he spoke up. Big congratulations for admitting his confusion! We sat down together and walked through a couple of questions with him telling me what to do at each step. Suddenly, he said, “I think I’ve got it!” I then gave him a couple of questions to do on his own. He whipped through the first one with no problems. Lots of explicit praise for remembering the steps. Second question, he started to stumble and sat there frozen.

“I can’t do it,” he said.

“Yes, you can, you just did it here,” I said. “Let’s review what we did.” Half-hearted participation until he realized he was doing it right this time.

“Want to try another one on your own?”

“Yes.” He went on to complete eight more questions – all of them following the correct steps.

That, though, was not the end of the lesson. After we marked his answers together, I sat him down and asked him to go over what had just happened. Together, we named what he’d done. He admitted he was confused. He accepted the help that was offered.He tried to work independently and kept going when it was rough. He accepted more help until eh figured it out.

The next morning during Snack and Chat time, I asked Amir to name what he had done in math class the previous day. He did. He said all the things he said before. A week later, in one of his journal entries, he wrote that he felt he was a good candidate for Student of the Month because he kept on trying when the going got rough.

I got a little weepy reading it.

The Scene

They were all working quietly together – including Jamie, one of the eight special needs students who’d been integrated into my Grade 3/4 class.

Suddenly KABOOM!!!!! “Miiiiissssssss. He did it again! He just called me a ….”

I went over to the group. Four faces looking at me. Three resigned. One with sparks flying from his eyes. That was Jamie and he was “mad.” I started the conflict resolution process, but when Jamie’s hand darted out to give a mighty push to the boy next to him, something inside of me snapped. I called the vice principal. “I’m sending Jamie down. He needs to cool out and I need time alone with everyone else.”

Jamie did not go peacefully, but he did go and I turned to face the rest of the class. Those looks of resignation had spread. We all knew what was coming. A talk from the teacher about being kind and understanding. A chance to express some of their frustration in polite and controlled ways, no names mentioned, and then we’d all go back to normal – until the next time. Little did they know that their teacher was having a moment of professional crisis.

Throughout the process of getting Jamie to leave the room, my mind was racing. I had a really good group of students. Thoughtful, committed to their learning, kind. Of the eight special needs students in the class, five were able to work in the integrated setting. Two were getting along as long as there was extra support for them. One was upsetting everyone. Now I was upset too: how was it equitable that the work of the whole group was being so seriously affected by the difficulties of the one?

But, I also knew Jamie’s story and it was not a nice one. Mother AWOL. Jamie living with a grandmother with four others to raise. Poverty. Plus – and this was the big piece – his mom had been “using” during her pregnancy. Whatever it was, it had resulted in a learning difficulty so severe that Jamie could not retain anything more than a few sounds of the alphabet, some numbers and his name. He could not hold a pencil firmly, much less use it effectively. His kindergarten teacher had tears in her eyes as she told me she’d concluded that Jamie actually couldn’t learn. I ‘d been coming to the same conclusion.

The Conversation

So, what to do? I decided it was time for some honest talk. For A Difficult Conversation, but I was really flying by the seat of my pants…..

I gathered the class at the carpet and talked about the term Learning Disability. I demonstrated how letters can look to someone with dyslexia. I took the lead in a few quick role plays about misreading social cues and facial expressions. The conversation turned to how it must feel and we made up a list of adjectives. Scary, confusing, frustrating, mad, left out were a few. Finally the question I was waiting for came as a voice piped up, “Is that what’s wrong with Jamie?” Great Big Silence. How could I respond to that question?

I am bound by professional standards and my own ethics about revealing confidential information. In my early days in special education, I didn’t tell anyone anything, thinking that was what confidentiality was all about. But I began to question my own strategy as I saw that it wasn’t very helpful, especially with the intermediate students I was working with at the time. They needed to understand their own learning habits and styles as they moved into high school. So, I began talking with them about their specific learning needs and how to advocate for themselves with teachers and classmates. Those conversations were either one-on-one or in the context of team meetings with mom or dad present. Eventually, I built them into broader discussions, but only within my special ed class or resource group. They were, essentially, one-sided. The children being integrated were, in a sense, being expected to bear the “burden” of integration. No one was conversing with the class community that was receiving the special needs child, alerting them to different expectations and alternate ways of learning. How could those talks take place when the teachers were working with such confidential information?

Much of this was whizzing around my brain while I contemplated that question, “Is that’s what’s wrong with Jamie?” The query was more complex than it looked. I was uncomfortable with the notion that something was “wrong” with Jamie, although I certainly understood that my expectations for him were very different from my expectations for his classmates. Still, I had to acknowledge my students’ perspective. He couldn’t read, couldn’t write, couldn’t sit still, often used really bad words in class, frequently told them to do rude things – and the teacher kind of let him get away with it. From their point of view, something WAS “wrong”, if not with Jamie then maybe with their teacher!

What I ended up saying was, I admit, a combination of evasion and honesty. It went something like this…..”I cannot talk to you about Jamie because that’s private, but I want to tell you that all of us have different ways of learning. For some of us it’s not so hard but there are kids – and adults – in our school and in our society and maybe in our families who have something called learning disabilities. We all need to pay attention to this and try to think of what it feels like for them. That can be really hard. I know you sometimes feel angry with Jamie. It seems unfair that he doesn’t always have the same consequences as you. But I’m asking you to think about today’s conversation and try and remember it the next time there’s a difficulty.”

The Learning

I would love to say that after that conversation there was a big turnaround. There wasn’t. But that conversation did open the door for others. We talked about famous people with learning disabilities and about our own ways of learning. Over time, I tried more intentional ways of having those conversations and developed a few rules and insights to guide myself. Here they are….

• No matter what pressure you’re under to do your official teaching job, create class time for the social curriculum to learn what is going on in the lives of the children you work with. Make time to share stories of lives and interests. Those conversations help create the mutual trust that’s so important when difficult issues emerge.
• Regardless of who’s in your class, explore different learning styles and multiple intelligences. Talk openly about learning disabilities, the autism spectrum, behaviour difficulties.
• Young people are more comfortable than many adults with the notion that “fair” does not mean “the same.”
• Resistance emerges when children do not feel their concerns are heard. Active listening and restating strategies are great for this.
• Be really clear in your own mind about what you are prepared to share with your class.
• Don’t always rely on the academically able children to work with those who are struggling or the well behaved to have the behavioural student at their table.
• Pay explicit complements when children do things that help the integration process. “Jamie, thanks for listening so well to the discussion we just had at the carpet” or “Thanks, Noor, for stepping back when Jamie was frustrated in math” can be said one-on-one or in front of the whole class, depending on what you think is appropriate at the time.
• Acknowledge frustrations by using active listening and restating strategies.
• Remember, always, that integrating special needs children is a responsibility for the whole class. It’s not just you and it’s not just the individual child. Everyone has a part to play.

Conclusion

In my experience, integration is as valuable for non-identified children as it is for those with designations. The class that included Jamie was a particularly kind group and most of them learned how to live and work with him – or how to step back when he was having difficulty. I believe that the thoughtful integration of special needs students can help all of us learn how to live together in our classes, schools and, by extension, our communities. While I’ve come to accept that integration doesn’t always work, I know that if you are going to integrate, then you need to include everyone – the children being integrated and the children and teachers in the receiving classrooms. To make it work takes time and talk – the kind of difficult conversations that sometimes make life go better in the long run.