Episode 10: Inclusive Education: The Academic and Social Benefits

On this episode I welcome my guest Vera Piasecki. Vera and I discuss the academic and social benefits of inclusive education. 

Episode Transcript

Arthur: Welcome to the Inclusion Think Tank Podcast presented by New Jersey Coalition for Inclusive Education, NJCIE. As the name suggests, this podcast will discuss inclusive education and most importantly, why it works.

On this episode I welcome my guest Vera Piasecki. Vera and I discuss the academic and social benefits of inclusive education.

Arthur: I would like to welcome everyone back to another episode of the Inclusion Think Tank Podcast presented by New Jersey Coalition for Inclusive Education. I'm your host, Arthur Aston, and on today's episode I welcome my guest, Vera Piasecki.

Vera, I am happy to have you join me today and I appreciate you taking the time to talk with me.

Vera: Thanks for having me Art.

Arthur: We’ve been communicating by email for the last few weeks about setting this up, and it's been really great talking with you behind the scenes, and I'm excited to share this, this conversation and this episode with everyone today.

So to start off, can you explain to me and our listeners for you as a parent, how would you define inclusive education?

Vera: I guess, Art, it's always been kind of simple for me. When I think of inclusion, I just think of the real world, and there is no place in the world, or in my community, that my daughter with a disability is excluded.

We sit at the same tables, at restaurants, we sit in the same pew in church, and the only place that I found that was segregated seemed to be our schools, and just logically, that didn't make sense to me.

So for me, I view inclusion, which I think every parent of a typical child takes for granted, I view inclusion as my daughter being able to go to school and experience the same things, be in the same classrooms as my older children did, who are neuro-typical.

So I had a very simplistic view of what inclusion was, to begin with. But, as she got into school, it became more distinct. Where, you start looking at inclusion in a classroom, inclusion is not putting a child with a disability in a classroom and then pulling them to a back table and working with them on their own.

So there’s much more, as you get into the academics of it. Inclusion means so much, but on a broad scale, for me, inclusion was having my daughter have the opportunity to go to school with her neighbors and community members, getting in a car pool, simple things that parents of neuro-typical kids take for granted.

Vera: I remember once when she was in elementary school and we were struggling with the district and to keep her included, they wanted to remove her from the school.

And I talked to a friend of mine whose children are the same age as mine. I was talking about the worry, hoping, oh, that she didn't get written up for something or that they were documenting some of her, any concerns or issues.

And she said to me, she goes, ‘Oh my God, I have no idea how much you worry day in, day out things that I just take for granted.” And I think that's where I wanted to ultimately get to. So that was my thoughts on what inclusion it was for me.

Arthur: Yeah. Can you tell us a little bit more about your daughter? I read up and saw some things you sent me some of the things, and I'm really excited, but can you share with us about your daughter, Hannah and what her disabilities are and some of the things that she has to live with?

Vera: Hannah is a 14-year-old teenager and I say teenager because everybody knows what that means, with Down's syndrome.

She has an intellectual disability. She has physical, muscle tone and physical delays. And she also has speech, communication challenges. She speaks very little in public because she knows she sounds different, so she's very conscious of those sorts of things.

But Hannah has been included when she started preschool, I sent her to the same preschool that my older kids went to, and from there, she entered the district inclusive preschool program at three years old, much to their chagrin because a child with Down Syndrome should be in a self-contained classroom. She has been included with her classmates since kindergarten.

So although she's different, a lot of them don't think anything of it, because she's just Hannah. They've known her for so long. So it's been kind of wonderful. I know I can kind of get off on a tangent, but I think when you include somebody and they're with the same group of kids and neighbors, there's a social aspect to it. With schools linked to inclusion, we all think academics, academics, academics. But the social side, I think, is almost or even more important. And to see some of the cards and gifts, she had a little party for her 14th birthday, and those kids just get her.

From knowing her favorite color to knowing what she likes to do. To just some of the cards. I mean that they wrote to her. I was just in tears reading how how kind these kids were and how how well they got her.

That is basically Hannah.

Arthur: Yeah. And it's great because I love what you said how her group of friends have been with her since kindergarten. Now she's 14 and like you said, they get her, and that is so important.

I can remember, growing up and as something very similar, being in along with the same group of kids in the neighborhood from kindergarten through sixth grade and then through middle school and high school, there were more students added to the school population of the schools were bigger, but we still had those that same group of people, who were still connected to each other.

I always say, I don't have children myself, but my friends who have kids. And the way that my friends let me into their lives and I go and stay at their houses so their children see me, and I have a disability. I walk with crutches and use a wheelchair. and so I love to think that, because they know me when they go to school and they see someone who is different, someone who has a wheelchair or crutches, they can say, Oh, my mom's friend has that. It's no big deal.

Vera: Right

Arthur: It’s so great how kids get it.

Vera: Yeah, it really is, and kids are never the problem, and it's a quick story. In March, she got Student of the Month at her middle school, and she doesn't like a lot of attention, she sometimes if there's clapping all of a sudden, sensory, loud noises may upset her.

So, they were concerned with making announcements and wanted to make sure everybody was comfortable, so she got in her car pool in the morning and one of the little girls in the car pool said, “Hannah, I heard you’re student of the month,” and you know, that sort of thing. I said, “Yeah, it's great. I said, we're a little worried, though, that everybody's going to clap, when they make the announcement and you know how much, Hannah…” and this girl, and she's not a little girl anymore, but this girl was in her first period class and she said, I got it.

She went in that morning and before the guidance counselors could even get in, she had taught everybody to do the sign language clap so that when they made the announcement, everybody <Demonstrates the sign language clap> and the guidance counselor comes in to do the same thing, but it had already been taken care of.

Vera: So those are the sorts of things. In elementary school, one day I went to pick her up. She wasn't at the front door. I must have gotten five phone calls from parents saying my kids are back with Hannah.

And they said she went out the back door. I'm like, Oh! So they kind of look out for her. Or the little boy who told his mother that he thought a little girl might not be treating her nicely and to call me, in elementary school.

So there’s this kindness. There's this kind of looking out for her that I appreciate in those friendships.

Arthur: That’s such a great story about the other student teaching the sign language.

Vera: Yes, very, very early on, I have I have an older sister that began her career teaching special education down in New Orleans and moved up the ranks. And she was a big supporter of mine when it came to including. She told me early on that Hannah would have a pit crew. She called it a pit crew like with a car.

So there would be one child that would keep her straight and there would be the nurturer. Then there would be…and it is so true. Everybody has different personalities that kind of support what she needs. So she has her own little pit crew.

Arthur: We touched on all of this already, which I think is so great. Why would you say inclusion is important?

Vera: I mean, I think in a nutshell, it's the research is clear. I think if you talk to the experts at NJCIE like Fred, you would say 50-60 years of research is very, very clear that there are better outcomes when children are included.

That means when it comes to jobs, once they get out of school, I mean, there is just nothing out there that counteracts the research that says inclusion makes a difference, and that is what I held firm with.

Every time somebody wanted her removed or pulled out, I just kept saying, show me the researcher, show me the data that says she'll do better in a self-contained or smaller environment. And there was nothing there. It was like, “We hope.”

So I think it's important. My job, our job as parents, is to make sure your kids live a happy full life. I want her to have opportunities and inclusion based on all the research and data said to me, this was going to give her the best chance to have a full life.

Following the data, even when I might have had situations where they weren't supportive of inclusion. I can remember other days just saying, “Oh my God, What am I doing?”

When they didn't want to modify the curriculum and she was struggling, and suddenly…because I don't want to downplay how hard this can be. Hannah is not behavioral, but her way of extricating herself from the situation where she's nervous or whatever is suddenly she has a stomachache or her throat hurts.

So when you have a lot of those situations, something's going on and maybe the district wasn't being supportive and modifying and helping her in that situation and you'd sit there and say, “Oh my God, what am I doing?”

I just had to hold firm to the belief that she was better off in that inclusive setting. I think based on what we have gone through, that has proved proved to be right. So right now, we're in a very good place.

Arthur: What positive impact have you seen the inclusive education setting have on Hannah?

Vera: I think clearly academically, she, like most kids, they mimic kids around them. They learn from the kids around them. And I remember in kindergarten, they sent a note home saying Hannah would not leave for the fire drill because she apparently all the kids had left a reading books open and Hannah had closed hers, but she wanted to open it to the page where everybody else was. She noticed so she wouldn't leave. So they took that as a negative and I was like, “Oh, good for her.”

She’s modeling what all the other kids are doing. Then, as she got older, she pretty much held on academically. She had a lot of accommodations. She had a paraprofessional and she, maybe for homework, they would do only odd numbers versus odds and evens those sorts of things, you know, less numbers.

When she got to second grade, we started. I knew the gap would widen academically, but when we were in second grade, there were no goals or objectives in her IEP that said, that talked about regrouping numbers.

And there was Hannah, because she was exposed to it in the classroom, singing a song her teacher taught her about how to regroup. We got to third grade. There were no goals or objectives about multiplication. Because she was exposed to it in the classroom, she was multiplying.

Vera: So those were the points in time where academically I was like, This is working. This is working. Now, was she at grade level? Absolutely not. And I think for teachers, that was very hard to see. Teachers in a gen-ed setting, particularly in New Jersey. I think. Because inclusion is not widely embraced.

So I think it was very hard for them to see. And I and I remember a teacher saying, but she's she's not at grade level, and if you remove her into the self-contained setting, they can focus more.

And I remember saying to her, moving her to a small room, would not make her get to grade level. She will probably never be at grade level, in some cases. They’d say, she would go out one on one and they say, “Oh, she needs so much, prompting in the general ed setting.” And I'd say, “How much prompting did she need one on one?” It was the same numbers. So It didn't matter where she was. And I kept saying to them, she will never be at grade level.

I don't expect her to be at grade level. I think the teachers thought I was some lunatic who thought my daughter was incredibly bright. She's a hard worker and I think she's amazing.

But I'm realistic and in what she can do so that was, I think, on academics. And then last year, we had a session with the seventh grade math teachers and they announced she was doing seventh grade math.

It’s just amazing. And part of it is that now that inclusion is being embraced in our districts, these teachers are so talented at taking her splinter skills. You know, the things that she's strong about.

My daughter is a rule follower, almost to a detriment. She can drive you crazy. You follow the rules. So her older brother tortures her quite a bit. You can imagine. But you give her steps to follow. And she's a rock star.

So math, you have the steps listed and she can do the work that's given her. So it's so finding those splinter skills and really taking advantage of it. So academically, I can tell you Art, when she was in preschool, I can remember saying to my sister, “Well, what do we do that, you know, she gets to kindergarten. They start talking about telling time and she can't tell time.” And my sister said, “So she uses a digital clock, who cares?” Guess what? She learned to tell time.

I'd be like, “Oh, what do I do? Third, fourth grade, they're multiplying and she still, worrying four years down the road. What was going to happen?” And she got there and she was doing it. Again, some things, she may not be good with fractions, so maybe they don't have her do fractions with different denominators and things like that, but there are just these splinter skills and these these things that she can do that the teachers have been able to identify. I mean, middle school has been has been a phenomenal experience for her. So that's on the academic side.

Socially, because I never want to forget social. I found that the community and the kids have been spectacular. I mean, when the community heard that the panel that the district wanted to remove Hannah from her home school in fourth grade. After she'd been with them since kindergarten, they really came out and they rallied.

These parents without any formal training on inclusion, they just got it. When the teacher announcements would come out in elementary school, I would have parents call me, hoping that their child was in the same class as Hannah, because not only was Hannah, not behavioral or, that she wasn't an issue in the classroom, but she came with extra support.

Right? Whether it was in class resource and a paraprofessional. So those parents understood that there was a benefit to getting in class with Hannah. Or the parents that will walk up to me who had the high energy boys, who would say to me, “Oh, the teacher puts my son next to your daughter all the time because she's a calming influence on him.” Those sorts of things. Or the new students that came in part way during the school that the teacher always put them next to Hannah.

To this day, she still has very close friendships to kids that came in in like second grade because the teachers sat them right next and all the time. So I think I think on the social side and for the neuro-typical kids, I think the neuro-typical kids have been taught a lot of messages as well. I mean, kindness, learning how to communicate differently.

In sixth-grade math. They asked if, the teachers asked if who wanted to work with Hannah on some math problems. And they said that it was just overwhelming, like the kids rushed the table to work with her to the point that Hannah actually started to cry a little bit because it was too much. So they actually had to kind of put up like a little waiting list, to control who wouldn't work with her. So I think there's a lot of benefit to kids being exposed like your your own story you are talking about.

Arthur: Yeah.

Vera: I've gotten into situations where I've, walked with her into a private school that, would not accept a child like her and watch some of the kids kind of stare. I call it the “alien stare,” where they're like, they don't understand, and that's bothersome. Because, in this world, everybody's different. Everybody has their own unique challenges, and I think we're a better place if we’re all together.

Vera: So I just want to make academic and social. I think there’s just so many benefits that we've garnered from inclusion.

Arthur: Yes. And I think those are both important to mention like the academic and the social, because that is, when we first started our conversation, you know, like you said at the same tables and restaurants and you're sitting in the same pews at church. It is our world outside of school. And as we grow older and become adults, we're expected to all just be together in the same places.

And then as you just mentioned with the stares that people give sometimes. So I think as it's important that we start the inclusion process in schools, like you said, from kindergarten and elementary school, just so it's nothing, so that it becomes common and, become something regular that the kids see. So it's not a something to stare at later on, as they get older in life because they've never seen someone with Down's syndrome or someone that uses a wheelchair or, whether it's a guide dog or something or anything, whatever their disability might be.

Vera: Yeah. And I think people also need to be very clear that the research just doesn't say that only children like my daughter benefit. The research is also clear that the neuro-typical kids benefit. So any adjustment to maybe some of the way things are being explained or the work is being accommodated can also benefit the neurot-ypical kids in the class. Forgetting all the other, soft benefits of empathy and, just kindness. But in the classroom. So the research is clear also that neuro-typical kids benefit from inclusion as well.

So because in the old days, you kind of see here takes the attention away, and I'm not saying, you take a child with severe, intellectual disabilities and just throw them in a classroom. They have to be supported appropriately like any child.

But then again, I just keep going back to it, the research is clear. And for all the tough or nervous times I had when I was saying, “What the heck am I doing here?” Because she's my baby, she's my third, she's my baby. I sent her off to school before she needed somebody to help her lift her leg up to get on the sidewalk at three years old.

I’m putting her on a bus to go to a district preschool. So you know it does get very difficult. But just from maybe a helicopter mom, maybe. I try not to be, but, hard to kind of let them go. There were very difficult times, but in the long run, I'm glad we kind of saw it through, and I'm blessed to be in a wonderful and supportive community that is embracing it all.

Including our school districts. They have made it one of their top strategic initiatives. So I'm happy we’ve all gotten to that point.

Arthur: Yes, and not, definitely not a helicopter mom. I think you're just a mom who wants the best for their child and as you said, it just doesn't benefit her, it benefits every child. And I think that is one of the most important things that you can ever stress that it's not just, it doesn't just benefit the one child or the child with the challenges, the disabilities, it benefits the whole class.

And like you said, it goes beyond the two being kind and the empathy and all of those things that are up that are wonderful to teach children at young ages. But I can remember being in school and having trouble with math and just the way the teacher explained It, might not have been getting to me and helping me understand it better, but just having someone else explain it to me in a different way, you know that was beneficial to me.

Vera: Peer models.

Arthur: Yes!

Vera: You just can't do any better than that.

Arthur: Absolutely.

Vera: Spectacular.

Arthur: So it's really, I laughed because I thought about my own mom and you saying, helicopter mom. And I'm like, “No, you're just a mom.” Because like my mom and I know so many other moms that do the same thing and they just like I said, you all just want the best for your children. And, I think that's every parent, mom or dad or, any relative you just want the best for your kids. And as you said, every person is different in some way.

We all have some type of differences. We're different than the person next to us. And when we understand those differences, I think, is when we do become better, you know, as a whole society and a community.

Vera: And it's what makes life interesting, right?

It’s interesting. I think it's like our community, when when people start becoming aware of that, I was fighting to keep her in district when she was in elementary school, it was just amazing.

I had parents that would come up to me of classmates and they would say, “How can they do this? She makes my son a better person.” I get choked up. Or the parent whose child was self-contained in high school that didn't have the opportunities my daughter had to be included, who knew I was struggling and sent a picture of a drawing, a beautiful drawing of a snowman and just said, “Don't stop fighting, this is what my daughter did all day in high school, just drawing a snowman.”

So those times when people don't even realize how they're helping you kind of, keep the course.

Arthur: Right.

Vera: So that was very important par of my journey. Once people became aware because again, Hannah was kind of, she wasn’t kind of, she was unique.

She was probably the only child with her significant disabilities being fully included back, you know, in elementary school in our district. And now I have to say, I mean, with the board members that have come on and a new head of special education and NJCIE has been in training teachers. It’s like the clouds have parted and things are coming together, much better. I can't complain. She is my only child that likes school.

My others always grumbled every day. She gets up. I drop her off and she walks in with her ponytail swinging because she's happy as a clam. So, what more can you ask?

She's happy to go to school every day. It's wonderful thing. So.

Arthur: Well Vera, this has been a great conversation. I really enjoyed it.

Vera: I hope so. I was a little nervous.

Arthur: Oh no, this is really great.

Arthur: And hearing your story and learning about Hannah, I think is going to be very special for our listeners to hear. And again, just to add love stressing the the academic benefits, but then also the social benefits of inclusion, because that is such a key piece to living life and, being in the community and just embracing everyone's differences. And, like you said, it makes it more interesting and it makes life fun. You know, we can acknowledge and embrace the differences of everybody.

Arthur: So I appreciate you taking the time to speak with me today, and I hope you have a great day.

Vera: Thank you, Art. You too.

Arthur: Thank you for listening to this episode of the Inclusion Think Tank Podcast. This podcast is brought to you by New Jersey Coalition for Inclusive Education. This concludes part one of my conversation with Vera Piasecki. Join us next time for part two where Vera and I are joined by Fred, who is the CEO of New Jersey Coalition for Inclusive Education. Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on YouTube or Spotify, and to follow us on social media @NJCIE. Until next time.