I ve worked in a variety of different situations with students with special needs, and I really believe that inclusion is the way to go. The kids learn much more, and they re much happier. I ve also got students who have severe health issues, and over the summer breaks their health goes down. I believe it s because the students are not as involved in the summer, and that doing things and being around people really adds to their life span. Well, we started out doing that a long time ago, but we found that it's not always necessary.
Kids are really good at figuring things out for themselves, and they're very accepting.
So what we do is we give it about a week, and we see if there are a lot of questions. If there are questions coming up about a behaviour issue or something then we'll go in and talk to the kids. Otherwise, if there are only one or two questions, we would just deal with those in a routine way through a simple conversation or by having the kids work with the child with special needs. There are two different ones. There's a staffing team, which is made up of a psychologist, a social worker, a principal, myself, a speech person, a motor therapist, a para-professional who's working with the student, the parents, the student, and a peer if we feel that's appropriate.