HOW INCLUSIVE WAS MY CLASSROOM?

Would you consider the environment to be diverse and inclusive?

Describe the classroom setting and explain why or why not.

HOW INCLUSIVE WAS MY CLASSROOM?

“An inclusive education refers to schools, centers of learning and educational systems that are open to all children, and that ensure that all children learn and participate”. (K12 Academics, n.d.)

I am not currently teaching. My post is from my past experience of teaching Maths. The set up that I had was an IGCSE classroom in an international school in India. There was a lot of diversity of nationality, languages, financial background and learning styles. So I would say it was very diverse, however the level of inclusivity practiced was varied. The school gave space for it but the teachers were different in their approaches.

I am focusing my post on 3 areas: (1) Curriculum, (2) School setup (3) My focus

Our curriculum did not support inclusivity: “It’s rare for school curriculums to address concepts like privilege, oppression, global power structures and racism.” (Anderson, 2018). It was standard IGCSE curriculum and every student used the same textbook. The content did not refer to or took examples from diversity.

Our school set up supported inclusivity in 3 ways:
Keeping respect as the core value for the school:

We had, “on an institutional level, a respect for people of all races and economic backgrounds and with all different strengths”. (Anderson, 2018) The school was respect in all directions. Staff to support staff to students to parents. This meant that we would not discriminate on basis of differing learning styles of students. it also meant that the school would nurture student’s strengths, whether they were academic or non-academic.

For example, a student who was not able to grow in any area of study was observed by everyone to discover what his core strengths are. As soon as some adults discovered his aptitude in photography and swimming, all stops were removed to help him progress in those areas by having experts train him and also by helping him to participate in tournaments. His confidence as a child grew tremendously and then his focus other areas too.
Training teachers to learn about diverse ways of teaching:

We were trained…all the time. By the time we learnt 1 area of teaching, we were exposed to another. Multiple Intelligences, school ERP, Inclusive education and all the new ideas that appear in education were discussed and brought into the lessons. We had regular department, middle school, whole school and full staff meetings to discuss and share implementation ideas.

Only now, that I quit teaching, that I realize the power of those discussions. They have given me a sound base into the heart of inclusivity.

 
Giving teachers the freedom to explore multiple strategies of teaching:
This was by far the best part! There was a freedom to explore ways and means to teach Maths. This helped me to be very creative in teaching Maths. I realised that to be able to create a classroom that makes Maths accessible to everyone, I had to integrate the right brain into teaching. Hence I brought in integration of Maths with Art, Rhythm and Writing.

“If we want diverse learners to benefit from reform-mathematics instruction, we must find ways to structure classroom experiences such that all students actively engage in problem-solving tasks and discussion of mathematical ideas”. (Bray, 2005)

However, to bring students to this point, as a ‘make Maths feel good’ strategies, I used change of settings, art, language, projects, real life integration and most of all, an acceptance of the best that each student was capable of doing.

A lot of my ideas are up on my blog “HumaneMaths” (Kochar, 2009)

My focus was very clear:

I believe, at end of the day, we need to respect the individuality of each student. That is when we can say truly that our approach is inclusive. I learnt to come to the point of acceptance. To stop seeing students from the blinkered view of ‘my subject’ but to accept them as a full personality. That is when I found that each student blossomed in my classrooms, but to the best that he or she could.

References

• Anderson, A. (2018). 7 ways to create an inclusive classroom environment. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD). Retrieved from http://inservice.ascd.org/7-ways-to-create-an-inclusive-classroom-environment/
• Bray, W.S. (2005). Supporting diverse learners: Teacher collaboration in an inclusive classroom. Teaching Children Mathematics, 11(6), 324-329. Retrieved from JSTOR.
• K12 Academics. (n.d.) Inclusion Classroom. Retrieved from https://www.k12academics.com/educational-philosophy/inclusion-classroom
• Kochar, M. (2009). reviewing area and % using the newspaper. Retrieved from https://humanemaths.blogspot.com/2009/01/reviewing-area-and-using-newspaper.html