I asked my amazing mama friend Heather Avis to write me a little story of inclusion for this month…and OH MY MAMA’S HEART, you guys ❤ Please take a few minutes to read:
This is a truth I know to be true: inclusion matters and inclusion is important for everyone.
My daughter is in third grade this year. She has Down syndrome and so our journey to third grade has been much bumper than I had hoped or could plan for. The state in which I live has very few opportunities for an inclusive education for students who have Down syndrome or other different abilities. Most of the schools are set up with a separate SDC (Special Day Class) classroom for students who have different abilities. I’ve found most of these schools think they are inclusive because the student in the separate classes go to recess, lunch, assemblies and on field trips with their general education peers. But that does not create an expectation for someone such as my daughter to be a full citizen of her classroom and school.
The world my daughter with Down syndrome lives in does not have special and separate grocery stores, restaurants, or movie theaters for people with Down syndrome. The expectation is my daughter will be a contributing member and full citizen of her community and of this world.
So why is this not the case for schools?
Last school year, when my daughter with Down syndrome was in second grade, I found myself at the tail end of a string of frustrating IEP meetings, convinced the powers that be were never going to see my daughter’s worth and ability to be a full citizen in a general education classroom. She was spending 65% of her day in a general education classroom and she needed more support than the school was willing/able to offer. After asking for support the district continued to refuse to give her, and after feeling as though I was alone in the matter of making sure my daughter would receive an inclusive education, I was just about ready to pull her out and homeschool (and when I say homeschool I mean travel and read to her and use a few iPad apps…homeschool is simply not my jam!). I was feeling this way towards the end of March, and on 3/21, which is World Down Syndrome Day, my kids stayed home from school because we had family in town for the release of my book. The next day I was talking with my daughter’s general education teacher and she told me that while Macy was out the day before, she and the whole class had worked on a project for World Down Syndrome Day. Honestly? I was shocked. I had no idea she knew anything about World Down Syndrome Day. Our lives had been so crazy full that month I had failed to mention it to her. She continued, “We made a poster for Macy. All the kids in the class cut out their hand prints in either yellow or blue, and we made each handprint into a flower. We called it, ‘Macy’s Meadow’ because she has helped us all grow so much this year.”
I began to weep. For the majority of the school year I felt alone. I felt as though no one saw the worth and beauty my child had to offer her school. I had been so focused on trying to get her the support she needed to be successful, I was missing the beauty growing up all around her…the beauty growing because of her.