Saturday, October 9, 2010

31 for 21, Day 9: Living the Dream - Inclusive Post-Secondary Education

Thanks to Terry and Lianna at My life with Gabriel for posting this awesome video about inclusion. I am so impressed by the work this university is doing. It gives me great hope for Maya.

I really believe that inclusion is the way to go although so many times I hear how it falls short for our young ones.  Because people with Down syndrome learn a little differently than others they can often ignored instead of embraced.  If we could just change the way we thought about people who might look, speak or behave a little differently than us,  I'm sure we could learn so much more from each other.   Great things are happening though and I'm so excited to see this progression.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

J, I am so happy that you've decided to post a link to this clip because I think it could lead the way for other educational facilities.

In our experience with full inclusion, Terry and I found that the acceptance of the idea starts with the teacher. Once the teacher buys into the idea, students will follow.

Although Gabriel definitely has some challenges because of the extra chromosome, he is quite identical to his typical peers as far as learning new concepts. Terry and I support the teacher by helping at home by providing identical "homework" as he does in class. We're lucky that Gabe likes it! LOL! I don't know what we'd do if he didn't buy into the idea of homework!