The Real Emerald City: Inclusion in an American City

Chapter 1

From Textbooks to Hallways

“So if I asked you about art, you'd probably give me the skinny on every art book ever written . . . But I'll bet you can't tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel” (Good Will Hunting). A strange thing happens when we bury our noses in books. We wade through page after page of theory and philosophy, convincing ourselves that we are some sort of expert on the subject. We can cite relevant statistics, defend an argument, speak passionately and knowledgeably—but there will always be a missing layer. We cannot begin to understand the rawness and veracity that comes only from experience. We must be in it, doing it, seeing it. We must go from theory to reality.

When we make that transition, we realize the many ways in which our prior understanding fell short. I have been studying inclusive education for years. I can rattle off all the buzzwords, ace all the tests, and write a pretty powerful philosophy. I can tell you exactly what inclusive education should look like with confidence and authority. But when I walked through the doors on my first day of school—once I was in it, doing it, seeing it—I realized that having a vision of what inclusion should look like is only half the battle. The other half is knowing how to achieve that vision. And even after years of putting my nose in a book, I still don’t have an answer for that piece. It’s something I’m learning on the job every single day.

But I have to remind myself I’m not alone. Many veteran teachers who have years and years of experience are still learning— still trying to bridge the gap between theory and practice. They are chipping away at it just like I am: one day, one year, one class, one student at a time. It’s something that will take a lifetime to figure out, with heavy doses of patience and persistence. The key for new teachers is to hang onto that vision without letting yourself get overly frustrated by how far away it seems. We have to consider what we have control over in our current time and space and what we do not, focusing on the former and letting go of the latter. As I have found over and over again, this is much easier said than done. It has been extremely challenging to feel the dissonance between my vision for inclusion and the reality of my current teaching endeavors. When I see situations that contradict my ideals, it is both incredibly discouraging and incredibly motivating. It’s the kind of tension that drives me onward, closer and closer to my vision.

What Can I Control?

It didn’t take long for me to realize the profound limits of my control. On one of the first days of school, I happened to be walking in at the same time a specially equipped school bus was lowering students in wheelchairs down a lift. I watched as a group of adults waited on the sidewalk to escort these students with more severe disabilities through the front doors. I smiled and went on my way, not thinking much about it. About a week later, I thought to myself: why do I never see those students during the school day? With how much I move around the building, you’d think I would see them at least in passing, if not in some of my classes. It wasn’t until I was working on a project for my Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) class that the mystery was solved. I asked the speech pathologist if I could observe her working with a student who uses AAC. She eagerly obliged and told me to walk with her as she went to pick up the student. I followed her through this strange, narrow hallway behind the cafeteria, through a set of double doors, and into an abandoned corner of the school that I never even knew existed. She opened the door to a crammed, windowless storage room where all the students with severe and multiple disabilities were grouped together. The room was awkwardly narrow, clearly not intended for classroom purposes, and cluttered with filing cabinets, storage bins, and odds-and-ends furniture. The students were clustered together in their wheelchairs with a group of adults sitting on tables and no apparent instruction or organization.