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.