Integrated Classrooms

Collaboration in the Classroom Schools today face a significant challenge. The school environment is no longer one in which a teacher can expect a relatively homogeneous population in the classroom. In addition to the challenges already posed by cultural and lingual diversity, school reform initiatives that focus on inclusive education have also resulted in intellectual diversity.

This poses many challenges for the teacher of the inclusive classroom, since it is no longer acceptable to exclude children with disabilities or lack of linguistic proficiency in English from general education and assessment, teachers must find new ways to accommodate these children and help them to develop to the best of their ability (Haynes, 2006, p. 1). In order to handle this responsibility, co-teaching has been implemented in many schools, involving a partnership among teachers and special educators.

Special educators would then work with the children who need specific attention, while teachers would handle general classroom responsibilities. Of course, such a collaboration is filled with many and complicated challenges.

However, with sufficient focus on planning, the co-teaching process can be made very effective; in addition, collaborative efforts can and should also be made with parents, the community, and innovators to ensure that all possible efforts are made to help all students in the inclusive classroom to become as effective as they can within their communities and ultimately in the adult world. One of the main challenges of inclusive classrooms is that students are included in a single accountability system that is applied to most general education classrooms.

The challenge here is that students with intellectual challenges, particularly, cannot necessarily handle the rigors of these testing systems and invariably fail them. Wilson and Blednick (2011, p. 84) note that, in order to ensure effective education and evaluation for all students, a thorough knowledge of the curriculum and standards is necessary. Students are then inclusively graded on product, which includes formal testing such as exams and reports, on process, which includes the effort and homework submitted by students, and progress, which refers to the individual growth of students.

The authors also suggest implementing a system of progress monitoring by means of curriculum base measurement (CBM) (Wilson and Blednick, 2011, p. 88) to effectively judge the results of the co-teaching effort. Through this system, test items can be administered quickly and efficiently to address specific components of the learning. Examples are biweekly 1-minute reading tests and the like.

With these ideas in mind, co-teaching systems are set up in such a way to help all students with disabilities in the general education classroom to improve their abilities to learn the material and testing methods used in that particular classroom. In order to accomplish this, however, co-teaching needs to be implemented effectively. Haynes (2006, p. 2) suggests several strategies that schools can take into account when implementing a co-teaching system. The first strategy Hayes suggests is building a strong relationship between the general and special education teacher.

These two persons will share a classroom throughout the day and they need a strong basis for their collaboration. Any strain in such a relationship will be communicated through the teaching process and remove effectiveness from the classroom. If the teachers do not know each other, one possibility is to create a situation in which they can become used to each other before being expected to collaborate. They could, for example, attend each other's classrooms or even meet in less formal settings such as a restaurant for tea.

Hayes also suggests that effective planning should occur on a regular basis, both before implementing the co-teaching program and during the co-teaching process. Items such as the type of students that will be included in the classroom, materials presented, and the responsibilities of each teacher, for example, should be carefully discussed and planned before the actual implementation. During the process, the teachers should collaborate regularly to plan their lessons effectively and thoroughly to ensure that all students benefit from the teaching process.

During this process, planning efforts should also be allocated towards focusing on non-academic behaviors, including social skills and integration into regular society. Co-teaching programs should also be evaluated on a regular basis by monitoring the satisfaction levels of all stakeholders, including students, parents, the principal, and the like. This evaluation process can also then form the basis of further collaboration between the school and the community to help all students reach their full potential. Fattig and Taylor (2008, p. 7) suggest that there are several advantages to collaboration.

Effective collaborating both inside and beyond the classroom ensures that students have a solid basis for their educational efforts. It is vital that the community and schools work together to help children reach as much of their potential as they can. This includes, but is not limited to, the use of medication to control certain conditions and behaviors.

According to a Dailymotion.com feature "The Medicated Child" (2008), for example, many children are heavily over-medicated with drugs that are far from harmless to control behaviors that have not been diagnosed effectively or accurately and without seeking alternative interventions first. As such, the community and school need to work with the medical community to ensure that such diagnoses are not simply the result of frustrated teaching. This is another way in which co-teaching can help.

By removing some of the burden from the general education teacher, the special education teacher can make recommendations for the effective and alternative treatment of children with behavioral difficulties. Hence, paraprofessionals such as psychiatrists can be included in the educational effort when psychotherapy would be an effective intervention technique. Of course, parents play a vital role in education. The home is the place where children spend most of their time besides schools. Hence, parents have a significant influence on how their children perceive and experience education.

Parents of special needs children are particularly important and should collaborate regularly with their children's educators to provide input and insight into their children's learning process and possible problems teachers may encounter with them in the classroom. To do this effectively, parents should meet with teachers before the learning program starts and also regularly throughout the year to discuss progress and further strategies. Another potentially useful collaboration would be with technology leaders within the community. Innovators can, for example, create computer programs and games that.