Christian Educators Journal February 2024 Vol. 63 No. 3
Inclusive Education
Changing Our Practices to Practice Our Faith One Christian School’s Journey Equipping, Empowering, and Encouraging Paraeducators A Biblical Case for Inclusive Christian Schools To Know You’re Not Alone Collaborative Self-Care for Teachers and Students
Future Issues April 2024—Resource Review Each year we highlight the best books, films, websites, teaching tools, and other resources for Christian school teachers. We publish reviews of student-facing material (like which books to stock in your classroom library) as well as materials relevant to school staff (like curricula or books about teaching). Articles may focus on one text or may be written in a list style featuring multiple texts around a particular theme. This issue is no longer accepting submissions. Stay tuned to this space in our April issue where we’ll announce the issue themes for 2024–2025!
Contents
3 Editorial 5 Changing Our Practices to Practice Our Faith: The Journey of Inclusive Education ELIZABETH LUCAS DOMBROWSKI
9 Inclusive Education: One Christian School’s Journey CAROLYN BEALL
13 Equipping, Empowering, and Encouraging Paraeducators TYLER HARMS
17 A Biblical Case for Inclusive Christian Schools: Ten Pillars to Build On THOMAS L. BOEHM
28 To Know You’re Not Alone:
Promoting Mental Wellness through Shared Experience and Empathetic Storytelling HAYDEN MacKINNON
34 Collaborative Self-Care for Teachers and Students CHRISTINE SCHOLMA
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Christian Educators Journal Vol. 63 No. 3, February 2024 cejonline.com Editor Abby Zwart cejeditor@gmail.com The Christian Educators Journal (CEJ) encourages letters to the editor in response to articles presented in the CEJ. Letters must be accompanied by the author’s name and email address. The CEJ reserves the right to edit letters for length and clarity. Where a letter addresses issues raised by the author of an article, the CEJ reserves the right to invite the article author to respond to the letter. Subscriptions Klaas Wolterstorff 2474 Westboro Dr NE Grand Rapids, MI 49506 business@cejonline.com Subscription Price (US dollars) US: $25.00 (one year, print) Canada: $30.00 (one year, print) Digital: $25.00 (one year) Beginning September 2021, all subscriptions outside the US and Canada are digital only. Please visit www.cejonline for subscription information. US Postal Information Nonprofit Organization Postage paid in Grand Rapids, MI Permit No. 657 Return postage guaranteed to: Christian Educators Journal 2474 Westboro Dr NE Grand Rapids, MI 49506 Address Correction Requested Canadian Postal Information Registered under Publications Mail Agreement: No. 40022165 at Norwich, ON Return postage guaranteed to: Christian Educators Journal PO Box 39 Norwich, ON N0J 1P0 Indexed in Christian Periodicals Index Copyrighted 2000 CEJ. All rights reserved. Christian Educators Journal (130630) is published quarterly by Christian Educators Journal Association. Scripture All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com
Statement of Purpose The Christian Educators Journal Association publishes the Journal as a channel of communication for all educators committed to the idea of Christian day school at the elementary, secondary, and college levels. The views expressed are those of the writers and not necessarily those of the association. Reprint Policy We allow free reprinting or photocopying of individual articles that have appeared in our journal, as long as the copied articles are used within the context of schooling and the source is acknowledged. Editor Abby Zwart Copyeditor Bethany Murphy Design Editor Klaas Wolterstorff Business Manager Klaas Wolterstorff Web Shepherd Heather Altena Board of Trustees Dr. Henry Algera Heather Birch Justin Cook Sara Leo Albert Kok (Chair) Gayle Monsma Ed Noot Jim Rooks Sean Schat Christine Scholma (Secretary) Tricia Stobbe Edith van der Boom Heather VanDyke Christine Webb Supporting Institutions Calvin University Edvance Christian Schools Association The King’s University Redeemer University Trinity Christian College Tyndale University Subscribing Organizations Christian Educators Association Christian Educators of British Columbia Prairie Centre for Christian Education Printed back issues (if available) can be purchased for $7.50 per copy (cost of shipping to be added to total). Some back issues may be available in digital format.
Cover image by rawpixel.com on Freepik
Editorial
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ne of my best friends in elementary and middle school was a girl named Rachel. We spent hours on the playground with our imaginary dogs, enjoyed several weekly rounds of Oregon Trail on the desktop computer in the back of the classroom, and swam happily all spring and summer in her backyard pool. I was thrilled to be pulled from our regular classroom every month or so during the school year to meet with the school’s inclusive education coordinator, Rachel, and a handful of other students who were close to her. Rachel had Down Syndrome, and we spent those meetings talking about what she was good at, what she could work on, and how we as her peers could support her in the classroom and on the playground. These meetings, while normal to me, turned out to be a revolutionary act for the early 1990s. Though I didn’t know it, my local Christian school was in the epicenter of a movement in West Michigan whose aim was to make students with disabilities feel included and supported in Christian schools. Those educators were actually turning me, a fairly shy and retiring wallflower, into an agent for inclusion and, eventually, a far more empathetic and competent teacher in my own right. I continued on to high school in the same district, and I now actually teach there as well. For my entire educational and professional career, I have seen students with disabilities participate fully and richly in classrooms. When I chose this theme for our February issue, I expected stories from teachers with similar experiences. I found it surprising that CEJ hadn’t covered the topic in more than ten years, so I wrote the call for submissions and started with “Christian schools have long been known as welcoming and supportive communities for students with a variety of learning needs.” It turns out that my experience wasn’t as universal as I expected. I met several months ago with Elizabeth Lucas Dombrowski, the CEO of All Belong Center for Inclusive Education (the organization that pioneered the program I participated in with Rachel as a kid) to talk about some of the existing scholarship on inclusion and gather ideas for this issue. She commented right off the bat that my opening line in the call for submissions (“Christian schools have long been known . . .”) gave her pause. “Unfortunately, that hasn’t always been true,” she said. I just happened to attend school at the exact time and place where inclusion was becoming a focus. I’m incredibly grateful for that experience, and I’m indebted to All Belong for their help with this issue and their leadership in inclusive education. In this issue, you’ll find stories from schools and teachers at many different points in their inclusion journey. Elizabeth starts us off with an orientation to inclusion, and then Carolyn Beall tells about her Maryland Christian Educators Journal
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school’s experience with All Belong. To round out All Belong’s content, Tyler Harms discusses the ways the organization helps train paraeducators. At the center of this issue, you’ll find a treatise by Wheaton professor of education Thomas Boehm about the biblical foundation for inclusive education. If you or your school are looking for a place to start, this examination of our call as Christians toward inclusivity is a fantastic launchpad. The issue concludes with two pieces focused on what teachers can do each day in their classrooms to create inclusive education spaces. Hayden MacKinnon writes about the ways his own disability has impacted his teaching, and Christine Scholma considers ways that teachers can incorporate self-care (for themselves and students) into their school days in a way that’s approachable for all students. I hope something in this issue speaks to you or your school’s current state of affairs regarding inclusive education—whatever that may be. Whether you’re just starting to think about what a diverse learning environment might look like or you’ve had years of experience and a robust group of students receiving inclusion services, your work matters to God and to the families you serve. And if you’d like a partner as you do this work, All Belong is there for you—they work with over a hundred schools in the United States and internationally. Find out more at allbelong.org. — Abby Zwart
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Changing Our Practices to Practice Our Faith: The Journey of Inclusive Education ELIZABETH LUCAS DOMBROWSKI
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hen I hear the dreams of parents who have a child with a disability, they often share a hope for belonging for their son or daughter. They have a desire for their child to belong to a community, marked by genuine friendships, after-school activities, valuable classroom learning, and ultimately, an encounter with God’s love. Their dreams are not any different than any parent’s dreams for their child. In Christian schools especially, we have the opportunity—the joy—of celebrating with these parents that their children belong to God! And because we all belong to God, we belong to each other, regardless of perceived ability. As we are reminded in 1 Corinthians 12:4–6, “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone” (ESV). However, we know that fear can get in the way of belonging. When I talk with administrators, they often have questions about how a student will be supported academically or behaviorally, how to fund additional staffing, how other parents or peers will respond, or how the student will impact their school’s high achievement rankings. These are valid questions, and it can be tempting to completely avoid these potential issues by not enrolling the student. However, we cannot let the challenges of inclusive education keep us from pursuing the gifts of inclusive education. The new questions that inclusive education will raise in our programs, systems, and fundings create challenges that never entirely disappear. Rather than pursuing a perfect solution that provides all the answers, we must commit together to work in the space between our practices and our faith.
Fear can get in the way of belonging.
Foundations While inclusive education is now well supported by research, the research lagged far behind the actual practice. The organization I help lead, All Belong (previously called the Christian Learning Center), launched one of the first inclusive education initiatives in a nonpublic school in 1989, at Zeeland Christian in West Michigan. At the time, this was a little known and barely tried educational approach for students with disabilities. But the leaders’ faithful conviction that students with disabilities deserved more than segregated environments led them to take action and risk. For those Christian school leaders, their faith compelled them to pursue the calling to serve all students. Today we might consider them “early Christian Educators Journal
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The leaders’ faithful conviction that students with disabilities deserved more than segregated environments led them to take action and risk.
adopters” of a new educational movement. Perhaps, instead, they were Christians of action, living out their faith through a tangible opportunity to demonstrate God’s love. My prayer for all Christian educators today is for us to bravely, boldly, and urgently adopt opportunities to show God’s love to all students who come to our doors. In a Christian school environment, too many leaders still consider inclusive education unproven, and they might perceive public schools as better equipped to provide inclusive education. Although that may be the case in some respects, evidence from qualitative stories and national legislation shows that students with disabilities are at best served inconsistently in public schools. Only as recently as 2016 did the Supreme Court mandate that students with individualized education plans (IEPs) must make “meaningful progress” instead of “progress” toward their goals to be considered adequately served (Endrew F. et al. v. Douglas County School District). And for most students, inclusion in the general education classroom and broader community will vary significantly by their zip code, their school district, and the leader of their school. The calling for Christian educators today mirrors the calling of those leaders thirty-five years ago who launched Christian inclusive education. The implications of our faith today must inform our reactions to the needs of students with disabilities.
Knowing Students
Knowing students with disabilities in our Christian schools means seeing them as God sees them—as an essential part of our community.
To belong to each other as we are called, we must move forward with courage and integrity. It can be tempting to get caught up in designing such a complete system that we lose track of the beautiful diversity of every student! At All Belong, we consider a high-quality inclusive education initiative to be founded on knowing students deeply. Knowing students with disabilities in our Christian schools means seeing them as God sees them—as an essential part of our community, as a child of God, as a friend, and as a faithful follower with much to contribute. This goes much deeper than a disability label or a set of accommodations to which a student is entitled. We know that categorization can be a helpful shorthand, but not when it leads to bias or assumptions. For students in our classrooms, a disability label can help alert teachers to potential struggles or challenges. However, too often, disability labels are used to create or dictate a set of supports for any student with such a label. In doing so, educators skip an important step to ensure success: uncovering what the disability label might mean for a particular student and uncovering the gifts that a student can bring to their own learning and community. I like to compare this process to a box of supports that our schools might be able to provide. If we build the box first, we must go find the students that fit the exact contours of that box in order to make the most efficient use of the investment we have made in that box. But if we are willing to find new ways to shape the box, we can adjust it for the students who are in front of us right now. My son recently built himself a cardboard robot costume. He managed to find a box big enough for his torso, but it was so big he couldn’t move his arms up or down. He had to cut the box down and rebuild it to fit his frame. 6
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In the end, he used his own creativity and a little duct tape to create a costume that would fit him snugly, that he could enjoy, and that inspired him to create his own pirate robot! Think of the original cardboard box as your school’s multi-tiered system of support: you have to be able to cut it down, rebuild it, and imagine something new based on the students in front of you right now. As the students who come through our doors continue to grow and change, we have to be willing to let our systems and supports grow and change in order to stay true to our foundational beliefs.
We have to be willing to let our systems and supports grow and change in order to stay true to our foundational beliefs.
Systems Change The flexibility and responsiveness required for inclusive education can be fragile until it becomes deeply embedded in a school’s culture and identity. Cultural change requires deliberate conversation and collaboration with your community. We think of inclusive education as a journey—one that is iterative, corrective, flexible, and has an infinite number of entry points. Our God is big enough to work through any opportunity to move us closer to the body of Christ! All Belong seeks to shine light on that journey, encourage you in it, and invite you to consider your calling as Christian educators in response to students with disabilities in your school. In today’s post-Covid world, that conversation may be more focused on students with social and emotional challenges than intellectual disabilities. As our students’ experiences change, so will their challenges. But we can continue to advance our commitment to inclusive education by reminding ourselves and one another of the journey we are on and its inherent correlation to our Christian faith. Shining a light on the inclusive education journey allows us to discuss what is working for today’s students and what we might be struggling with. In Becoming a Great Inclusive Educator, Scot Danforth shares this perspective on the journey of inclusive education: Successful inclusive educators do not ignore the gap between their ethical beliefs and their daily work in schools. They intentionally toil in the gap. They enter into that uncomfortable space, explore their commitments and behavior, and figure out how to better enact their most cherished ideals. (18)
As Christians, we are taught that relationship and community are the way we live the truth of the gospel. We can continue to build that community within Christ-centered schools who are pursuing the calling of inclusive education. All Belong connects such schools across the country to help move forward through those uncomfortable spaces. Eventually, those ideals of inclusive education—justice, equity, and honoring the image of God in every student—can become embedded in our schools through systems, conversations, and practices. By prioritizing our beliefs and our calling over our existing systems, we can stay true to our values while accommodating the individuals that God brings before us.
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Relationship and community are the way we live the truth of the gospel.
To Know You’re Not Alone: Promoting Mental Wellness through Shared Experience and Empathetic Storytelling HAYDEN MacKINNON
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I have come to realize that simply being open to sharing my own personal experiences around mental health has been beneficial to helping my students cope with issues they themselves may be trying to work through.
eing a student is hard work—exhausting work, really. Being an adolescent means waking up each morning to the interminable, often unspoken, questions of “Who am I? Who do I want to be? Where do I fit in?” And on top of simply showing up to class each morning, students are asked to navigate the uncharted waters of their own social-emotional makeup, learning what it means to be a properly functioning, competent, and—hopefully— empathetic human being in today’s world. In the midst of these ubiquitous challenges is the fact that the overall levels of stress and anxiety in our populations as a whole have seen an upward trend over the last number of years (Almeida et al. 511). What’s more is that when we look at school-aged children, studies have shown that just over 20 percent—that’s 1 in 5—adolescents in Canada either have experienced or currently do experience a mental health issue of some sort (Northcott). That means that in a class of thirty, six students will face some form of anxiety, depression, or another type of mental illness. As educators (who sometimes see our students for more hours on a weekly basis than members of their own family), we have an important role to play in helping our learners gain the resilience, competency, and emotional literacy necessary to thrive in the midst of the challenging, oftentimes scary, psychological landscapes that have become so typical for youth today. I have come to realize that simply being open to sharing my own personal experiences around mental health has been beneficial to helping my students cope with issues they themselves may be trying to work through. Engaging in these sorts of meaningful conversations in the classroom can specifically help our learners see the truth that they are not alone, that things do indeed get better, and that there are people around them who are willing to listen, empathize, and walk with them in their journey to mental wellness.
My Own Story I first realized there was something different about me as I sat quietly on the rainbow-colored carpet of my kindergarten class during storytime some thirty years ago. I was listening intently to the teacher as she read from a picture book and found myself jerking my head back and forth until it felt “just right.” This was a habit I had started not too long before but never really gave much thought to until I looked around and saw that no one else was moving in the same way. What’s more was that I found it very difficult, if 28
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not impossible, to stop the motion. I was worried about what others would think but felt powerless to do anything but continue periodically jerking my head back and forth. And indeed, there were comments and questions from my classmates, to which I never really had an answer other than “I just need to do it.” Over the years these compulsive movements morphed from one expression to another and included throat clearing, vocal grunts, repetitive eye blinking, and sniffing. I also found myself filled with repetitive anxious thoughts, specifically about whether or not my mother would come home safe whenever she went out. I felt that if I failed to repeat a certain phrase in my head or didn’t touch a doorknob enough times, something terrible would happen to her, and I’d never see her again. These tendencies waxed and waned throughout my time in school, but I was never properly diagnosed or given an explanation. I was simply told to “try harder” and to “stop worrying,” among many other unhelpful pieces of advice. It wasn’t until I was in my late twenties, when my anxiety had become clinical and I was nearly unable to function in my daily life, that I finally received an explanation for why my mind worked the way it did: I had Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) as well as Tourette’s Disorder. It became clear to me that I had been dealing with these mental illnesses since my time on that rainbow carpet in kindergarten. My journey to finding this out was circuitous, to say the least, and even as I sought help and support in my twenties, it was still a process of meeting with multiple counselors, doctors, and other professionals before I was able to truly start making progress. Mental health issues were also never talked about in any of the classrooms I was a part of growing up, so I accepted as normal the ways my brain functioned and never sought the help I needed. I assumed that everyone lived with a similar amount of stress and anxiety in their life, but they were somehow able to keep it together, so I adopted the mentality of just bearing down and struggling my way through to wellness. After years of hard work, research, counseling, and medication, I’ve arrived at a healthier outlook on my own personal state of mind and am now functioning more fully than I ever have before. I’ll never be “cured” of OCD, but I am learning to coexist with the disorder and live a full life in spite of my struggles.
Shared Experience and Empathetic Storytelling Over the last fourteen years, I’ve worked as an educator in both the public and private school systems, teaching K–12 in a variety of educational settings. I have come to learn that by sharing my own story and engaging in authentic conversations about mental wellness, I have a chance to play an important role in my students’ journey to understanding the basic truths that they are not alone in their struggles, that there are people around them who care and are equipped to help, and that things can and will eventually get better. I believe that every educator has an opportunity and responsibility to open the door to these sorts of conversations in their practice. Everyone has a story to share; everyone has experienced anxiety, stress, feelings of Christian Educators Journal
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Over the years these compulsive movements morphed from one expression to another and included throat clearing, vocal grunts, repetitive eye blinking, and sniffing.
It became clear to me that I had been dealing with these mental illnesses since my time on that rainbow carpet in kindergarten.