30 Years of Inclusion
30 YEARS OF INCLUSION AT ZCS Barb Newman, Support Service Consultant Inclusion Pioneer Henry J. Nouwen Award Winner
I moved into my assigned classroom during the summer of 1989. Someone told me that my room had once been part of the school gym. School supplies and the ditto machine were in the old school kitchen, also connected to my classroom, and my office was to be the former ball closet. Mr. Teune would tell stories of threading the film reels into the projector as the whole school would gather for a movie in my new classroom space. Compared to the ZCS of 2017, the building was quite different. I could enter the east door of the parking lot by Mrs. Zoetewey’s Kindergarten classroom and make it down to Mr. Heeres’ middle school classroom in about two minutes. Teachers would leave school with chalk marks on clothing and fingers as well as purple ink from the dittos students would use during the day. If there was a computer in the building, I’m not sure where it was kept. When they started to show up, we were all fascinated by that technology and would practice typing and saving our material on a floppy disk. Times have changed! It now takes nearly four minutes to make it from Mrs. Parrot’s preschool class to Mrs. Zastrow’s middle school class. Laptops and iPads abound. When someone mentions a “notebook”, they are typically not talking about the spiral bound pieces of paper
that were once so popular. While the Zeeland Christian School of 1989 sounds quite “rustic”, something happened during that year that was cutting edge. In fact, we struggle to find any other school in the United States that was on this same path with us. Diane Pennings and I were invited in as teachers at ZCS to help begin the very first inclusive education program supported by CLC Network. ZCS was now ready to welcome students with varied abilities and disabilities. While I was not part of the discussions prior to showing up with my carload of classroom supplies, the board, administration, and staff had been considering this option together. The Christian Learning Center (now CLC Network) was offering them an opportunity to paint a living, breathing portrait of community as God pictured it for us in I Corinthians 12. Too many times in the past, the administrator would meet with a family and have to say, “We can educate 3 of your 4 children, but your 4th is unable to attend here.” Parents who were hungry for Christian education for each one of their precious children would walk away dashed by the conversation. Now, however, this conversation would change. All 4 children would be welcome at ZCS. At least we would try. Spring 2019 | 9