About 35 years ago, educators began to focus on inclusion more. I was apart of a number of teacher teams that worked to create positive structures to support inclusion. What motivated my work in this area was the fact that when we include all children in teaching/learning efforts in optimal ways we build positive community at school now and in the community now and later. Inclusion built capacity for children, schools, and the community.
One part of our original inclusion advocacy was the addition of student service meetings--meetings that brought educators from many areas of school life together to plan for optimal teaching and learning of all children with a specific focus on children who needed more specialized attention and services. These meetings have been in place at my school for about 30 years. Overtime the meetings have changed a bit, but the essential focus of teaching each child with care and attention well has not changed.
Next week begins the new year for student service meetings. The challenge of the meetings is that there are many professionals involved with relatively little time. Hence to be effective, the meetings have to be well organized. Personally, my challenge at the meetings is to listen more than talk. As you may notice from my blog, I love to think by writing and I also love to think by talking aloud, playing with ideas, and quickly adding to conversations. Yet with a big group of professionals with diverse roles that doesn't always work. So this year, I'll really work to listen to the many viewpoints, questions, and needs that professionals express as we work to best support the children in our charge. As I listen, I'll be thinking about how we might revise and tweak the teaching/learning program to better serve every child. I'll jot down notes as I listen and reflect on those notes during time after the meeting.
Our systemwide student service meetings hold great potential for building more collaborative, positive, and successful learning communities. I look forward to the start of another year of this powerful process.
