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How the WHOLE CLASS BENEFITS from having SPECIAL NEEDS Children in It
By Lori Samlin Miller

A student I helped told me about a child in his classroom: “He’s blind,” he said. “He listens to everything in our room and he uses different kinds of books and his own computer.”

 He described the other fifth-grader as smart and nice. He liked talking to the boy when they had recess and working with him in class on group projects. For a child, an experience like this leads to lifelong appreciation and respect for individual differences. Furthermore, it is the best kind of positive experience a child can have because it helps everyone involved.

When children with special needs are mainstreamed into the regular classrooms, the results can be very positive for everyone in the class. Special needs students with the ability to successfully complete grade level work and behave appropriately often contribute to the regular classroom as much as they receive from it. Even when students have problems that limit their abilities, they have a lot to offer the class that welcomes them.

Mr. Terrence Malone, the principal of Woodcrest Elementary School in Cherry Hill agrees. “Inclusion helps the children learn to have empathy for each other. It reflects society and provides what is best for all children. And, it helps their character development,” Malone said.

Special needs students benefit in many ways from their inclusion in regular classroom settings. The regular classroom provides a steady supply of peer role models, student mentors and tutors, and limitless opportunities to socialize and interact with other students. The children challenge and reinforce one another. By working side by side and observing their classmates daily, students come to recognize and respect the effort, growth and progress made by their peers who are eager to learn, participate, and succeed in the mainstreamed classroom.

In today’s popular inclusion classroom setting, students don’t always know which of their classmates have special needs. Many children with special needs can blend well into the fabric of the classroom so the placement is deemed comfortable and the special needs youngster is where he or she belongs. Whether the student remains with the regular class for one or two subjects, or for the entire day, the special needs student offers the rest of the class an opportunity to witness the importance of each student’s individual learning style.

 A sense of educational diversity plays out in the classroom.  The focus remains on helping each child feel they are bright, challenged, motivated, and important because of their efforts to learn and contribute what can offer. The same age peers learn to respect the individual needs, learning characteristics, and ability to use adaptations to perform successfully.

In some cases when special students cannot be integrated into academic subjects, they may still be successfully included with their peers during special subjects in the school day. These areas, such as gym, art, or music, are areas in which even a limited amount of involvement has many positive qualities. The ability to participate and be successful in non-academic activities is opportunities for all the children to recognize and respect one another.

This type of experience goes a long way towards raising the way children perceive themselves and teaches them a very important message: everyone has strengths and weaknesses and everyone has something to offer.

I have had the pleasure many times to watch children who have major difficulty succeeding in the classroom but who can stand on a stage and belt out a song in a way that most people never could. The fact that their disability does not define them lies firmly in the fact that all students benefit from opportunities to embrace their differences, respect, and understand that everyone can learn, live, and work together.

So, who benefits from having special needs children in the regular classroom? First, the special needs child directly benefits from the interaction with the regular class students. But, how do the other children come to appreciate and benefit from their special needs members?

Again, through careful observation, the students themselves provide the lessons. Remember the boy who was in class with a blind student? He spent much of the school day watching, observing, and caring about how someone who learns differently functions. It was an amazing experience for him because he was so watchful, concerned, and genuinely interested in that boy’s progress, safety, and success.

 In addition to making him sensitive to people with special needs, it gave him insight into the fact that everyone has different strengths, weaknesses, talents, and capabilities. In short, it helped him with the challenging task of accepting himself too. The important lessons about life and people he gained that year went way beyond things that are learned simply from reading, writing, and arithmetic.

Lori Samlin Miller is a writer, educator, advocate, and consultant.