Re; Inclusion

[Guest guest]

Hi, everyone.

Had a chance to over our email. Boy if your down and out for awhile, there

is a lot of messages. This list is so valuable.

We moved our computers around (my husband is self employed landscaper so we

have one now seperately for his business). We also took a little trip down

to Virginia to see our Niece who is at Virginia Tech. The kids loved the

trip. One of our early Teachers of the Deaf gave us a neat idea about trip

journals. We did a journal this time again, for , outlining

everything we did, and put a map in it and she was able to follow along.

We dated each page, checked the weather, read the temperature, etc. We

collected special objects whereever we went, restaurants, hotels, and put

them in pouches for each day. We labeled them and put them in the journal.

We took a lot of pictures (at the border, at the bridge, people we met,

places we stopped, things we saw, and we worked on arranging them in the

order of our trip. She made up sentences to go with them and when

completed she took it in to share with her class. It helps to work on past

tense too.

If anyone else has any great ideas on communication strategies, I'd love to

hear them. Always open for new and creative ideas.

Anyways, it's so fascinating to read the issues discussed lately. It's

been wonderful to read the good news with some feeding issues and feeding

orally, I know that was a biggy here. A lot of the letters bring tears to

my eyes as I recall our early years. I read about the frustrations and

feelings and it zooms me back 7 years to that time. Not to say we don't

have those periods now, I won't deny that we don't, but there is a little

bit of a break in between new issues, and now most of them are educational,

and that's been a learning process too!

Re: Inclusion

s first two years in the system were in a supported kindegarten with

two great teachers who used the FM faithfully, put tennis balls on the

bottoms of all the chairs, and tried to create a wonderful learning

environment. Everything went pretty well (except for the issue I discussed

before about the switch we had to make with Teachers of the Deaf and Hard

of Hearing. Our first from the school board, was very strict and not very

flexible and had no sense of humour - would not respond, and was

labeled stubborn and uncooperative.) After we asked for a replacement,

which took awhile to convince everyone it was necessary, responded

to the new teacher and this is her second year with her. She's great and

most importantly has a good sense of humour! She's also a very good

advocate and has helped us out now regarding 's placement. This year

was a little harder, we originally thought everything would settle in OK,

but the school tried to put in the seperate language program more

than we originally agreed. They only integrated her for 2-3 periods a day,

and only for music, gym, etc. We have gone back several times and asked

for more inclusion and now I think we've got a lot more time and we're

working towards full. They've agreed (as I reminded them how they got the

assistant in the first place) to hire an extra assistant now to assist

with the goals we now will create. What I realized is that they

used to get level 3 funding but then placed the assistant given for

that into the language program and plunked with her. Then we had

to watch how they used this assistant and what we've seen is that they've

kept back sometimes because the assistant was out with another

child. A big NO NO. We have a new model of funding up here in Canada and

it's working towards inclusion and depending on the level applied for on

each child the assistant is assigned for that child - before it was applied

for on a group of children and they put the assistant in that class and

they tended to create seperate classes. With - we've had to open

their eyes and minds. has been our schools first hearing impaired

and multiple affected child, where she has demonstrated that she can

function in a regular classroom but needs assistance and some program

modification, and benefits from the stimulation of her peers and enjoys

being with them, and YES Social Skills is a biggy on our IEP - we're just

writing it now. What I've observed, is that when they originally had her

withdrawn from the regular class for a lot of her day, she didn't have any

chances to get to know the kids, and develop a comfort zone, and relate to

them. Now, the more she is in there, the more they accept her, and the

more she is able to feel comfortable and cummunicate with them. The big

plus now too, is her Teacher of the Deaf does group work and takes three of

four of her peers off with to do group work and they love it and

they get to know and her abilities and gets to know them.

Social skills is a biggy.

I'm most interested in any ideas, or you had mentioned about

inclusion and you had a lot of ideas and information how it is to be done

effectively. We're still ironing out all the details.

Also our Teacher of the Deaf is taking her " Special Needs-part II program

(she has a lot of experience working with children with other needs as

well, and she's most interested in CHARGE) and her first paper she has

chosen to do is on Inclusion. She had asked me if she could use and

her situation in her paper and I thought it would be Ok and I wondered if

anyone else would mind if I printed off any of your ideas, stories,

situations and any regarding inclusion, or any new ones she could use.

She's very interested in this area and like I said has been a great

advocate for us for inclusion for . I know it's been very

educational to me to see all sides of a situation and I've learned so much.

Anyways, I've gone on again, it's just been so long.

We wish everyone continued successes!

The Rittgassers, in Ontario, Canada

Pat, , (CHARGE),

[Guest guest]

I wondered if

>anyone else would mind if I printed off any of your ideas, stories,

>situations and any regarding inclusion,

Pat, it's fine with me if you print out and pass on anything I have

written. As for inclusion ideas, is there any specific area you need ideas

on? I could help more if I had specific questions to address. , mom

to (9) ChArGE, Seth, 3 and a half, and , one next tuesday, wife

to Tim the South Pacific Explorer.

S. Hartshorne

918 S. Brown St.

Mt. Pleasant, MI

48858

.Hartshorne@...