Elusive Inclusiveness

Elusive Inclusiveness

The keynote speaker at the Celebrating the Challenge Conference, Minister of Education Dave Hancock, spoke to the theme of inclusion within the Albertan education system. He defined inclusive education as, “...a values based approach to education accepting responsibility for all students.” This is an admirable goal for any education system and one I endorse and try to achieve within my own school. Sadly, the reality is that we may approach the achievement of this goal, but we will never quite get there and in some cases I do not think that inclusion is the best policy for some complex needs students.

In his address to Special Education teachers he painted a “word picture” describing a typical school of 500 in Alberta. To educators the statistics used by the Minister regarding those below the poverty level, the prevalence of ADHD, other emotional issues or the existence of physical disabilities within the student population are the current realities in which we all work and these stats no longer have the shock value they once had. The norms have changed significantly, a simple truth of modern society.

I teach in a northern community in this province and certainly the current funding model does not work for us. Our geography, accessibility to specialists and even the availability of paraprofessionals, retention of teachers and maintenance of existing infrastructure are all factors which make it challenging to offer consistent programming and an inclusive model of instruction. The minister is quite correct in that the present funding model does not work well for many schools and I would add that it hardly works at all for remote and isolated communities.

Because of the near failure of the funding model in the North those of us who teach there do not feel the inclusive model applies to us as teachers and therefore with such a glaring gap in resource availability we are stretched to provide inclusive programs for our students. I would like to be inclusionary when in comes to guidance, sports, art, and computer programs within our own school. The sad fact is we don’t have such programs as we lack the funding and the resources for even the basics. We do not have a speech pathologist or a teacher for the deaf even though we urgently need access to both. Video conferencing is a valuable tool which we use, as alluded to by Mr Hancock, but it does not come close to the personal one on one approach to instruction, nor can we do utilize it often enough to achieve effective results.

The minister also spoke of the inadequacies of funding in regards to coding students as a method which focusses primarily on deficits in student ability. I would have to agree and would hasten to add that so many dollars are spent in the actually process of testing leading to coding and few dollars are available to follow up on the needs that are identified by these same tests.

Learning coaches is another initiative mentioned by the Minister which certainly has merit, but again in the North it is difficult and sometimes impossible to find volunteers or suitable staff to work as TA’s or SA’s. Trying to achieve a reasonable level of student centred collaboration “where all students feel welcome and supported” is also an additional challenge in many communities not just in the North. The Minister asks teachers to be patient as we strive to manage additional diversity in our classrooms, and to be patient for the advent of a new funding formula, as well as other initiatives from his department, for certainly change and reform is coming.

I am a patient person, but any new innovation or funding formula may work best in mainstream urban schools and not be quite as effective in rural and isolated communities. Some schools, such as mine are truly unique and have never been adequately covered in any past funding formula and I have little faith that it will happen soon given the present woeful financial situation the government of Alberta finds itself.