Partnering with Families
Submitted by Kitty Lowery
The UNLV Preschool, located in the College of Education on the campus of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, is a fully inclusive preschool program for children ages 12 months to 5 years.
Our program’s inclusion of children with disabilities began in 1994 through an interlocal agreement with the Clark County, Nevada, School District. We were established as the “model” for the inclusion of preschool children. Families were now able to experience the concept of “continuum of service” as our preschool program epitomized the least restrictive environment.
Staff training included opportunities for general and special education teachers to meet formally, get to know each other, and share each other’s perceived strengths and weaknesses regarding the experience before us. School district administrators also provided a week of training to prepare us for the inclusive process.
As a general education preschool teacher, I felt that my 11 years of prior experience hardly prepared me for the care of children with disabilities. After all-what was an IEP? What did accommodations and adaptations mean to me? Assistive technology? I was still using a manual typewriter. And lastly, but paramount in my mind-what if I hurt a child by virtue of this mountain of ignorance I had just become aware of during this educational evolution?
I soon discovered I was not alone in my trepidation. Not only did fellow staff experience similar awakenings, but also families of children with disabilities joining our program were equally concerned. Some of their concerns focused on our ability to get to know everything necessary to provide a safe, happy, and nurturing program for their child with lissencephaly, or autism, or fragile X, etc.
We learned that, while books and training, and Internet sites are excellent resources, they are not THE resource. We quickly went back to our “roots” as pre-primary educators and used our best resource: partnership with our new families. After all, who better to teach us about their child? We weren’t learning just about disabilities; we were learning about a child with a disability. We learned about Thomas and Maria and Samantha and, along the way we learned about disabilities like cerebral palsy and Prader-Willi syndrome as well. We experienced the joy of sharing with families. I didn’t become an expert on autism, but I became an expert at caring for Thomas, a child with autism.
Consequently, our inclusive program thrived. Now, families of children with disabilities who are younger than age 3 have joined our inclusive preschool family. They come with individual family service plans (IFSPs) and diagnoses and the usual paperwork trail. But more importantly they come with their families, and they are welcomed with the knowledge that we will all grow and learn from our partnership and be richer for the experience.
