By Elizabeth Hofreuter
Many students are quietly suffering in West Virginia’s classrooms. One in 68 children now lives with autism. One in five has dyslexia. Of the 273,000 students in the Mountain State, more than 58,000 may be struggling to learn because their brains are wired differently, as confirmed by either of these diagnoses.
For these children, the typical school experience can be a frightening and confusing place not only academically but also in social and emotional landmines that are seemingly impossible to navigate. Currently, their needs have been addressed from the vantage point of wraparound services. This means a practitioner visits the school occasionally and counsels the child or provides therapy. In this model, nothing is changed in the daily environment. When the therapist or counselor leaves, the child is again left among the landmines.
While the model does offer important support, if you walk a mile in the shoes of a child in need, you’ll find the support isn’t nearly as prevalent as the shame and frustration. Learning does not happen in a vacuum absent of the relationships a child has at school or the beliefs that a child holds about him or herself. Educators must reckon with that fact.
To support all learners in West Virginia, the total environment needs to be modified—the attitudes and reactions, the curricula, the physical surroundings and the staff expectations.
For one independent school, this change is already happening. Wheeling Country Day School, through the support of the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation, is developing an inclusive model for all individual students to have the best chance at success in school and life.
The inspiration comes from universal design, which was first developed within the design world of architecture. The premise is simple: when we design to the edges, not to the average, everyone benefits. Just as tactile paving makes the street accessible from the sidewalk for the person using a wheelchair, so too these curb cuts are used by children on skateboards, parents with baby strollers, people on bicycles and others. By designing for extraordinary needs, everyone benefits.
Wheeling Country Day School is asking this question: Given what needs to be done for children with a learning difference, what more should be done for all students? The independent elementary school began implementing a social/emotional curriculum to support a few of its students with sensory issues and one young man with an autism diagnosis. It became quickly apparent that it equally served the child experiencing the death of a family member, divorce, grief tied to being left out at recess or frustration caused by being overwhelmed in math class. It created the safety net to catch many students’ social and emotional needs, serving many more than first intended. This led the school to ask what more it could do.
Wheeling Country Day School has embarked on this project with the goal of creating a total environment where the physical space, the people, the curriculum and the atmosphere are best suited for children with learning differences but proving to proactively support and serve all learners.
“Engagement in universally designed environments with highly individualized curricula and well-prepared educators prevents the onslaught of significant problems later,” says Dr. Keely Baronak, chair of the education department at Carlow University. “Regarding the different dimensions of a student’s life as integral to learning curtails the following indicators that continue to pervade the educational landscape: high drop-out rates, mental health issues, drug and alcohol addiction and a lack of academic and emotion support in a child’s home.”
The first stage of this work investigates the prevalent attitudes of teachers, parents and peers when confronted with a diagnosis. Capturing those responses will inform the design of graduate-level education courses to better inform teachers across the state of the ways such diagnoses enrich the classroom experience rather than subvert it. In addition, a support network will be developed online so teachers, parents and advocates throughout West Virginia can access resources and find like-minded peers to implement compassionate modifications into their own classrooms and practices.
About the Author
Elizabeth Hofreuter has a master’s degree in education from Harvard University and a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University. A 2015 fellow in the Klingenstein Heads of Schools Program at Teachers College, Columbia University, she has a fire to learn something new every day.
