Self-Contained Classroom
Monday, January 19th, 2004
Special class for specific types of students with disabilities who spend all or the largest portion of the school day in this setting.
The opposite of an inclusive setting where these students would remain in their regular classrooms with aides to help them where they need it.
What does a school mean when it states that it operates on a total “inclusion” concept in which students having disabilities are in a self contained classroom with students who do not have disabilities? I can understand placing special education students in regular education classes along with a working IEP. However, how can you put regular education students without disabilities in a self contained classroom?
Diane: I think maybe this is as much a matter of sementics as social engineering.
The idea of integrating regular and special ed is a good one but it has both positive and negative aspects and it is dependant on a strong teacher to pull it all together.
Like affirmative action and other social engineering ideas and laws, it’s a stepping stone toward an ideal world where we tolerate and even celebrate differences.
However, when you merge these social structures with a culture obsessed with grades, measurement, acheivement, getting into name colleges, and cut-throat competition, things get ugly.
All of this, combined together has really turned me off to much of the work being done in American classrooms and Ed schools now. There are bright spots but the culture is quite mixed up these days and is obsessed with things like No Child Left Behind and high stakes testing, both of which, in my mind, have nothing to do with real learning.
Diana; We live in Westchester County in NY. My son will start 6th grade in a new school in the same district in September. He has deslexia and is very bright. According to his IEP for Sept. he will be mainstreamed for science and social studies with a special ed. push in teacher and go in a self-contained classroom for the whole ELA portion of the day (1 1/2 hrs.) He hates being in a self-contained class for the ELA. He has had this accomadation for three years now and he still hates it. Mostly he hates that he’s not learning the same stuff as the children in the regular class. He is very aware that he can’t read or write on the same level. Do I have a right to insist that he is taught by a special ed. teacher alongside the regular ed classroom teacher?