Warm-up Activity

Many educators have had experiences with children/students whom they found to be challenging. Sometimes the challenges are attributed to the characteristics of the students alone. However, we know that many aspects of the environment contribute to the success of students in the classroom or early years’ program. In this activity, students can reflect on their experiences and the challenges that they have had in creating or participating in inclusive environments. Through sharing their experiences, ask your students to identify key aspects of the inclusive environments that they feel contribute to the success of children/students.

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Discussion Questions

Create small groups of 3-4 people and begin by asking students to describe an experience as an educator, student, or parent where they believe “inclusion did not work”. Ask students to discuss the following questions:

1. Why did you choose this as an example of inclusion?
   • Note for instructor: Often it is because of the characteristics of one or two people in the group who we see as different, that we describe the whole group situation as “inclusive”. However, in every group there is diversity of many kinds, and inclusion means that everyone is understood to be a part of the group, and the group adapts for everyone. This is a “trick” question because if you have an example of “inclusion” that didn’t work, then it wasn’t inclusion.
2. Thinking of the examples that your group has generated, do you think that Universal Design for Learning, or differentiated approaches could have helped in this situation?
   • Note for instructor: Universal Design for Learning is a strategy that can support overall design of the environment to maximize inclusion. However, UDL should not be exclusive of differentiating for individuals when it is appropriate and in collaboration with the student and their family. Conversely, differentiation should not be done without universal design being considered. It is important to recognize that disabled peoples movements have resisted inclusion discourse when it works to “erase” disability” as part of human variance and a positive part of identity. For example, ‘erasure’ would result if the goal is to ensure disability is not evident in a classroom.
3. Thinking of your example, what characteristics of the environment, the children/students, and the educators do you think may be barriers to full participation?
   • Note for instructor: Often-individual traits of children/students are defined as barriers. However, in inclusive environments we should expect diversity and individual traits are only barriers when the environment is not designed to support all children/students.