Supporting Inclusion
School Administrators' Perspectives and Practices
By (author) Faith Edmonds Andreasen
Publication date:
02 April 2014Length of book:
152 pagesPublisher
Rowman & Littlefield PublishersISBN-13: 9781475807882
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.
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.
Dr. Faith Andreasen has revealed another aspect of the exceptionality equation in her new book, Supporting Inclusion: School Administrators’ Perspectives and Practices, which stands as a worthy corollary to her concurrent offering, Inclusion: Teachers’ Perspectives and Practices. Dialogue is the key to human understanding; as such, this book provides the practitioner with the rest of the multifaceted cultural milieu which surrounds exceptionality. The cumulative literary experience of this dyad sets the stage for reflection and action in the stewardship of exceptional environments.