SHARING THE IDEA OF ADAPTATIONS WITH PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS: REFLECTIONS ON A PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT WORKSHOP RELATED TO INCLUSIVE EDUCATION

I attended a workshop early in the summer of 2017 for faculty at my home institution focused on the idea of inclusive classrooms. My primary teaching duties are Earth science courses for pre-service K-8 teachers. I enrolled in the workshop with the intent to consider how I might promote my students’ confidence as well as their ability to create a sense of inclusion in their future classrooms. I was especially interested in thinking about how to support my students’ skills in making adaptations to assignments or activities for when they find themselves teaching students with disabilities.

Prior to the first session of the workshop, we were tasked with reading the book “Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do” by Claude Steele. The text provided a powerful foundation for three days of activities and discussions on topics such as motivation, identity, and bias. Workshop leaders were careful to ground recommendations for inclusive classroom practices in relevant research. I was particularly struck by the importance of holding high expectations for students regardless of any minority status. In addition, I left the workshop with numerous practical ideas for specific strategies; for example, this fall I will provide each student with two different versions of the syllabus: one will be in standard prose, the other in the form of a concept map. The purpose is to let students see variations that represent equivalent ideas. My efforts to build on lessons from the workshop are ongoing.