CITE Tests Program To Serve Disabled Students From: University of Cincinnati Currents Date: February 11, 2000 By: Dawn Fuller The Cincinnati Initiative for Teacher Education (CITE) is exploring how general and special educators can work together to better assist the learning of children with disabilities who are included in general classrooms. The effort, funded by an Ohio State Superintendent's Task Force grant, has been piloted at Roberts Paideia Academy this academic year. The program is studying how a group of UC middle childhood and special education faculty, general and special education teachers in Cincinnati Public Schools and UC teaching interns at Roberts Paideia Academy can work together to educate children with disabilities in general classrooms. In other words, for the first time, the children, UC interns, teachers and university faculty are all collaborating on the issues and the challenges of inclusion. Roberts Paideia already had been one of the professional practice schools where UC students work as teaching interns as part of the CITE partnership with UC, Cincinnati Public Schools and the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers. The pilot with disabled students has been running since August 1999. UC special education teaching intern Rebecca Watt, along with general education teaching interns Shane Spicer, Todd Overbeck, Julie Brauntz and Hollie Funk, are researching how inclusion is working in two fifth-grade classrooms. "I...make modifications for them (the students with disabilities), as does their general education teacher," Watt explains. "From the first minute of the first day, all of the students with IEPs for full-inclusion (Individual Educational Plans that specify 100 percent general education placement) are in our general education classrooms. Including the special education students with the general education students models a real life situation - models life outside the classroom better." The UC teaching interns at Roberts Paideia are supported by Sandy Warner, a Cincinnati Public Schools (CPS) teacher who is a professional practice school coordinator for CITE, as well as Margaret Bryan, Tammy Jackson and Janet Jones, three CPS teacher-mentors. This support team is investigating how they collaborate as general and special educators to insure effective inclusive practices. Roberta Truax, UC professor of special education, says many thought-provoking questions have been generated about inclusion and collaboration in dialogues between and among the interns, CPS teachers and UC faculty, who include Linda Amspaugh-Corson, Keith Barton, Mary Franklin, Regina Sapona, Ronald Sterling and Truax. At UC, Truax says the grant has provided opportunities for the three special education and three middle childhood faculty to work in teams to collaboratively explore how to better prepare UC teaching graduates to support learning for all students in inclusive classrooms. Truax adds, "Whether we're going to make major changes in teacher education remains to be seen. We're looking for other grants to continue this research and possibly expand the pilot program. We've been discussing how we can use what we've learned thus far, and we've already begun to make some modifications in our courses." "Inclusion can work," says Watt. "You just need a lot of communication and collaboration and open minds."