Supporting Inclusion: School Administrators’ Perspectives and Practices

Provides significant insights that arm the reader with a variety of ideas and easy-to-implement applicable strategies gleaned from knowledgeable contemporaries. This book details various approaches taken by administrators as they transitioned their schools from a segregated resource environment to an inclusive framework. From elementary to high school, administrators in both large and small school districts describe approaches that best suited their populations’ needs.

While transitioning to inclusion, administrators created structures that maximized staff talent and encouraged faculty buy-in. Challenges included calendaring collaboration time, providing inclusion and co-teaching training, properly mentoring first year teachers, securing expert ancillary staff, retraining paraprofessionals from resource to inclusive supporting roles, procuring appropriate technology and supplemental resources, and presenting strategies to accommodate behaviorally challenged students. Programing often required shifting populations and leveling classes. Ultimately, administrators established and sustained inclusive classrooms with a good deal of success.