When student needs are considered with care, early scheduling, and good planning, there is greater success. When those needs are not given the time they deserve or the people power they need, problems arise.
For example, educators can't expect to meet the special education needs of large groups of children at once--in general, a small group of children can be serviced by an individual teacher, but a large group typically gets little significant support. We have to be careful about the numbers of children we group together with needs and think about what this means for those children's education.
Also, we have to think carefully about scheduling. When scheduling is not done with the time and care needed, students may miss out on important teaching or needed consistency. We have to be particularly thoughtful about this when we are working with students who receive multiple services during the school week.
It's important that service providers have common planning time, and it's similarly important that the common planning time utilizes good process to make significant impact. What are the best processes to use as we plan together to meet students' needs.
It's not simple to teach large groups of children with multiple service providers/educators. It takes a lot of coordination. Good structures, schedules, patterns, and routines can help in situations like this. If we make good time with good process to discuss what's most essential for each child, we can make some good progress.
As I've noted before, I think we are at a new age of inclusion, a time where we have to update our processes, collaboration, and efforts to serve every child well. We can do this, in part, because of technology and better knowledge about how the children learn. Onward.
