This ASCD Study Guide is meant to enhance your understanding of Your Students, My Students, Our Students, an ASCD book written by Lee Ann Jung, Nancy Frey, Douglas Fisher, and Julie Kroener. The questions that follow are designed to help you make connections between the text and your personal and professional situations and experiences.
You can use the study guide after you have read the book or as you finish each chapter. The questions provided are not meant to cover all aspects of the book but rather to address specific ideas that might warrant further reflection or inspire action. Many of the questions are ones you can think about on your own, but you might consider pairing with a colleague or forming a study group with others who have read or are reading Your Students, My Students, Our Students.
Introduction
1. Review Kevin’s story. How might his life have been different without inclusive schooling?
2. The authors assert that people with and without disabilities who experience inclusive education are more responsive peers, co-workers, employers, and neighbors. With this in mind, what implications might expanding inclusion have for your community?
3. How closely does your school or district’s approach to inclusion resemble the approach in Italy? On a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being “most like,” to what degree does your school or district offer
• A universally welcoming environment?
• General education ownership of all students?
• Less reliance on paraprofessionals?
Compare your responses with those of others from your school or district. What actions do your findings suggest?
4. The authors frame inclusive education as an equity and social justice issue. What successes can your school or district point to regarding inclusion, and where do you see inclusion falling short of ensuring that all students receive an excellent education?
Chapter 1: Establish a Culture of Equity and Inclusion
1. Which labels does your system use to describe students, and how do you think these labels affect both the supports and the opportunities of the available to those students? How might these labels influence students’ experience of school and attitudes toward their classmates?
2. Shanice’s experience illustrates that “geography matters” in part because different schools and school systems take different approaches to inclusion. What specific steps does your school take to ensure students with disabilities succeed in the general education classroom? What could it do better, and what kinds of resources would be necessary?
3. Do staff members in your school system generally use people-first language, or is it common for a disability label to come first when talking about a student with a disability? How might this affect the expectations for, and experiences of, those students?
4. Review some of the curriculum supports available to students in your school or district. Which are accommodations and which are modifications? What additional curricular supports might be necessary to help these students succeed?
5. Review the challenges and solutions in the graphic on the last page of Chapter 1. Which of the challenges are present in your school or district? Be sure to include these in the notes you have made while reading this chapter.
Chapter 2: Reimagine Special Education Structures
1. What segregated settings does your school or district maintain? How does the availability of these settings affect placement decisions?
2. On page 36, there is a list of factors that may not be used to determine placement. Have any of these been discussed in an IEP meeting you have attended? Which issues do you believe should be the basis for placement decisions? In your experience, how often are these addressed in IEP meetings?
3. Review the examples of infused skills grids on pages 41 and 42 and use them as a model to develop a grid for a student of yours who needs support. Share the grid with the student’s other teacher(s) and use it to start a discussion of the student’s learning needs.
4. Use the three questions on page 43 to review your service delivery model. Where are the successes and challenges?
5. What is the difference between a service and an intervention? Do you need to revise any of the supports you and your team provide for students in light of the distinctions?
6. Within your school or district, what roles do paraprofessionals play? How do they spend their time? How might role reversal help these staff maximize their impact?
7. Review the challenges and solutions in the graphic on the last page of Chapter 2. Which of the challenges are present in your school or district? Be sure to include these in the notes you have made while reading this chapter.
Chapter 3: Leverage the Strengths of All Educators
1. How integrated are special and general education in your school system? Identify opportunities to better connect these systems. How might doing so benefit students?
2. The authors identify aspects of education in which general educators, special educators, and paraprofessionals all play a role: instruction, assessment, communication, leadership, and record keeping. How closely does this breakout of responsibilities match the reality of your school system?
3. Meet as a team and use Figure 3.1 to analyze the various positions’ roles and responsibilities. Are there changes your team needs to make to improve the service delivery system for students?
4. Shadow a special educator for a day and conduct a task analysis using the roles described in the chapter. How might a special educator in that setting more fully implement the job description outlined in the chapter?
5. Shadow a general educator for a day and conduct a task analysis using the roles described in the chapter How might a general educator in that setting more fully implement the job description outlined in the chapter?
6. Shadow a paraprofessional for a day and conduct a task analysis using the roles described in the chapter. How might a paraprofessional in that setting more fully implement the job description outlined in the chapter?
7. How much staff collaboration time is available in your school? Are there ways to increase the quality and quantity of that time?
8. Reflect on a recent professional learning event you attended. How does it stack up with there commendations presented in the bulleted list on page 77?
9. Review the challenges and solutions in the graphic on the last page of Chapter 3. Which of the challenges are present in your school or district? Be sure to include these in the notes you have made while reading this chapter.
Chapter 4: Collaborate on the Delivery of Instruction and Intervention
1. Is your team of special educators, general educators, and paraprofessionals more focused on skill development or task completion? How is that working for students with and without disabilities? What changes would you consider, based on the information in this chapter?
2. Compare and contrast RTI and MTSS. Where is your school system in terms of implementation? What changes could be implemented to increase student success?
3. The authors point out that co-teaching includes co-planning, co-instruction, co-assessment, and co-reflection. Does your team engage in all of these practices ? How might attending to missing components increase the team members’ collective impact?
4. Review the seven models of co-teaching presented in this chapter. Which are used in your school system? Are any useful models missing?
5. Review the gradual release of responsibility framework, then analyze a lesson, either live or found on a video service. What aspects were present, and which were missing? How might you revise the lesson you observed to incorporate all four phases?
6. As a team, go through the list of questions on page 100 and discuss your responses.7. Review the challenges and solutions in the graphic on the last page of Chapter 4. Which of the challenges are present in your school or district? Be sure to include these in the notes you have made while reading this chapter.
Chapter 5: Honor Student Aspirations and Plan Accordingly
1. Review an IEP from your school. Are the goals and objectives generic (held in common with several other students) or are they specific to the individual student?
2. Plan an IEP meeting in which the student serves as the leader. (Make sure that the student has time for advance preparation and the parents are on board.) Compare this student-run IEP with those that have traditionally be held at your school. What was familiar? What was new or different?
3. Conduct a MAPS meeting with a student and his or her “fan base.” Discuss the student’s history, family, dreams, gifts, talents, and current needs. Consider how this information might be used to develop a more personalized and supportive IEP.
4. Create a goal attainment scale for some IEP goals/objectives and use it to monitor one or more students’ progress and regularly communicate the progress to team members. How does using a goal attainment scale affect outcomes?
5. Develop a student profile (see Figure 5.3) and share it with the student’s teachers. Ask teachers to identify what they need to more successfully support the student’s aspirations and achievement.
6. Develop a transition plan for a student (even if it’s not mandated). As part of the process, encourage the student and his or her family to dream, and consider the actions the team can take to help the student realize those dreams.
7. Review the challenges and solutions in the graphic on the last page of Chapter 5. Which of the challenges are present in your school or district? Be sure to include these in the notes you have made while reading this chapter.
Chapter 6: Relentlessly Pursue Change to Realize True Inclusion
1. Review the section on social capital, beginning on page 126. How much social capital do you believe your school has? How can you increase the social capital?
2. Review the six questions listed on page 128, then take the necessary steps to conduct an equity audit in your school. Use the results from your audit to identify areas of strength and need.
3. Review the expert versus team-based models of student support in Figure 6.3. Where does your team fall? Are there areas that need to be addressed?
4. Referring to the notes you’ve made while reading this book and completing this study guide, use Figure 6.4’s action planning tool to develop a plan for changing in your school or district’s inclusion practices. Recruit stakeholders to be involved in the plan and get started.
5. Review your vision for inclusive education. What are your beliefs about the rights of all students to receive a quality education in an inclusive environment? How can you share your passion with others? How can you mobilize your efforts to deliver on the promise of equity for all students, including students with disabilities
Lee Ann Jung, "An ASCD Study Guide for Your Students, My Students, Our Students: Rethinking Equitable and Inclusive Classrooms", as originally posted on Lead Inclusion, 09-01-2019, https://www.leadinclusion.org/_files/ugd/5c0950_9fbb7e59ffb14d7082e82649a5445c66.pdf
Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash
