February is Inclusive Education Month in Manitoba?

Yep, that's a question mark right there in the title.  Did you know this?

'Cuz.... Apparently February 2021 is Inclusive Education Month in Manitoba.... 

And what does that mean?

Apparently it means our Minister of Education regurgitates 15-year-old so-called "inclusion" policy that is vague and general, with no specific actions or commitments made to better the experience of actual children with disabilities in our public school system. 

Great. 

Thanks for that, Honourable Minister Cliff Cullen.  

If you can't find the proclamations, don't worry, that's because they're not even posted on the Government of Manitoba's Education website, nor anywhere other than some division websites.  No public awareness campaigns, no P.D. Days around inclusion, no updated policy....

No nothing.  

So, I have taken the liberty of outlining each proclamation (again, taken word-for-word from 15-year-old policy with no action points).  

February 2021 has been "proclaimed" Inclusive Education Month in Manitoba 

Proclamation #1 :  "Manitoba Education is committed to fostering inclusion for all Manitobans."

• How?  What specifically is the Manitoba government doing to foster inclusion in our public schools?  
• What resources will the Manitoba Government provide to schools in order to allow them to follow through on this proclamation?  
• The formal dispute guide has not been updated in 15 long years, since 2006.  When will this be updated to reflect current reality?  
• How will the Manitoba government provide education to parents, caregivers, and school staff about the formal dispute process, so that families are aware of their rights and of how to proceed with a formal complaint?  

Proclamation #2 :  "Inclusion is a way of thinking and acting that allows every individual to feel accepted, valued, and safe.  An inclusive community consciously evolves to meet the changing needs of its members."  

• How?  How do we know if students feel accepted, valued, and safe?  How do we measure this?  We need S.M.A.R.T. Goals: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic/relevant, and time-oriented/time-bound.  

• What resources does the Manitoba Government provide to schools in order to allow them to follow through on this proclamation?  
• When teachers and administrators continue to be allowed to exclude children with disabilities, either due to extra supports they may need, or as a way of behaviour management, this sends the message to everyone in the school (most importantly that particular student) that they are not accepted, valued, or welcome.  
• Making children work in different rooms, suspending children for misbehaviour rather than investigating the antecedents and supporting the student to learn better coping strategies, making children stand in the hall when they are disruptive, etc. are shaming, exclusionary, ineffective, and harmful to the child.  

Proclamation #3 :  "Through recognition and support, an inclusive community provides meaningful involvement and equal access to the benefits of citizenship."  

• Um, what?  What does this even mean?  Who defines what is “meaningful” to a child with a disability?  
• How?  What resources does the Manitoba Government provide to schools in order to allow them to follow through on this proclamation?  
• What are the benefits of citizenship anyway? 
• Proclamations with a lot of vague generalizations are pretty useless.

Proclamation #4 :  "In Manitoba, we embrace inclusion as a means of enhancing the well-being of every member of the community.  By working together, we strengthen our capacity to provide the foundation for a richer future for all of us." 

• What exactly does this mean?  
• How?  What resources does the Manitoba Government provide to schools in order to allow them to follow through on this proclamation?  
• Once again, proclamations with a lot of vague generalizations are useless.

Proclamation #5 :  "The philosophy of inclusion is integral to Appropriate Educational Programming in Manitoba." 

• Yes, and....?  What resources does the Manitoba Government provide to schools in order to allow them to follow through on this proclamation?  
• Once again, proclamations with a lot of vague generalizations are useless.
• This philosophy was last updated 15 years ago, in 2006.  When will our provincial policy-writers update this document with more specific, meaningful, and practical directives?  

Proclamation #6 :  "Manitoba will foster school and classroom communities where all students, including those with diverse needs and abilities, have a sense of personal belonging and achievement."

• Exactly how are we fostering inclusive schools?  What resources does the Manitoba Government provide to schools in order to allow them to follow through on this proclamation?  
• Aren’t students with diverse needs and abilities still students?  Why do they need a separate caveat in this sentence?  They should not be “othered”, or put into a separate category, this is the opposite of inclusion.  
• How do we know all students feel a sense of personal belonging?  How do we measure this?  When will official actually ask children and their families about their experiences, and asking them what can be better?  How and when will our provincial government bridge the divide between the policies and the actual human beings who are directly impacted by those policies?  
• We just had a new budget released with specific funding earmarked for students with disabilities.  Who will decide how that is spent, school administrators?  Are those administrators going to meet with students and families to determine how that money will best be spent?  There needs to be meaningful community consultation.  Meaningful means that administrators actually listen to students and families and truly use their input to direct their decision-making.  
• We need S.M.A.R.T. Goals: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic/relevant, and time-oriented/time-bound.  

Proclamation #7 :  "Schools, families, and communities make a positive difference in the lives of children and youth in Manitoba through their commitment towards inclusion."  

• Okay, right, yes…  and…  How so?  That’s a nice sentiment, but what exactly does it mean for children and youth, particularly students with disabilities here in Manitoba?  
• How are schools, families’ and communities making a difference?  How are they committing “towards” inclusion?  Why aren’t they committing to inclusion, full stop?

So...  now what?  

Now we band together and tell Minister Cullen about our experiences in Manitoba's public education system and about what our children need to truly experience inclusion and to have their needs met.    

If you could wave a magic wand and make anything happen at your child's school (talking our under-funded Manitoba public school system) - what would it be?  

You can email Minister Cullen's office yourself at minedu@leg.gov.mb.ca, or email Jillian@ADHDPro.ca* to share your thoughts, needs, wants, and wishes.

Rather than accepting an empty proclamation, let's tell our provincial government exactly how our children with disabilities would actually feel included, welcome, cared for, and have their needs met in Manitoba's public schools.

**Please share far and wide, especially in groups of Manitoba parents/caregivers of children with disabilities.**

*If you email us, please indicate whether you wish to remain anonymous and your name will not be included with any comments or concerns shared.  

*Emails and any communications shared privately will remain confidential unless we have your permission to share.  

Since our provincial government doesn't bother to ask parents of children with disabilities for their input, we decided to do it for them.  

The following is a compilation of comments from Manitoban parents whose children live with disabilities and are currently in public school.  

What "Inclusive Education" REALLY means to Parents of Children with Disabilities

• School staff need to do a better job of risk assessment (and acceptance), teaching children how to do their own risk assessments, and allowing elements of risky play with reasonable boundaries.  Schools are overly concerned with forbidding and banning certain activities because of the (usually low) risk of injury, thus robbing children of opportunities to self-monitor, learn to assess situations for themselves, and to develop skills to manage and mitigate their own risks.  

• Each school division and each school needs to identify the barriers and hurdles that they have put in their system that are causing special needs students to struggle and not succeed.

• Parents are tired of constantly trying to change a system that isn’t interested in change and instead puts up barriers that the parents always need to identify.  It's about time that they do their own inventory.

• Schools can be incredibly rigid in needing to apply rules consistently to everyone, "no matter what".  Instead, school staff could set an example of flexible thinking and being accommodating.  We can teach our students that everyone has different needs, and equity isn't always the same as equality.  This way, children won’t always expect everything to be equal because they will understand that what helps or hinders one person is not the same as what helps or hinders another.  

• Adults are often preaching to children about having a flexible mindset and about adapting to change, yet school staff tend to be incredibly resistant to change and administrators and policy-writers tend to have very fixed mindsets.  

• The learning environment should adapt to the needs of its diverse students, rather than always expecting children to adapt based on the rigid, out-dated expectations of the school (both physical environment and pedagogy).

• Teachers, resource teachers, principals all well trained in Executive Functioning skill development, including emotional dysregulation, impulsivity, time management, and organizational structures.  This would not only benefit kids with ADHD or other Executive Functioning disabilities, but all kids!

• Increased occupational therapy and behaviour specialist support staff for educators.

• Accountability for all school staff to be required to follow student IEP/SSPs and clinical recommendations.  For example, any instructions from a school psychologist, guidance counsellor, social worker, behaviour specialist, occupational therapist, other expert, etc. must be followed and strategies implemented.  

• If there are not enough resources to follow the recommendations, then the division must provide them, or make an application to the provincial government so that expert recommendations can be followed.  

• More classroom teachers and resource teachers to allow children to grow and thrive in a school setting for more than a few hours a day.

• Greater focus on emotional and social skills in the classroom: more than just an hour per week with the guidance counsellor learning the Zones of Regulation, or Fixed vs. Flexible Mindset.  This needs to be integrated into the daily routine of classrooms and students need to be supported emotionally and socially first, before they will be effective learners.  

• More training for all school staff in best practices for supporting students with special needs, as well as what proper accommodations look like in public schools on a day-to-day basis.  

• Training on compassionate and effective communication for school administrators.  

• Training for school staff on how to prevent and deal with bullying in schools.  

• Child-centred and evidence-based training for supporting students with challenging behaviours, such as the Collaborative and Proactive Solutions model (Greene, 2008).  

• Believing children when they are sharing their perspective and concerns.  Taking their point of view seriously and truly working to understand their experience.  Teaching children to advocate for themselves, and then listening to them when they do.  

• Truly understanding that unwanted behaviours are not malicious or intentional, they are a form of communication.  School staff need to be trained in seeing beyond the surface behaviour and looking for underlying reasons, triggers, and causes.  It should never be acceptable for any adult to blame and shame a child for behaviour that they cannot control.  It is the adults' responsibility to teach children strategies for managing emotions, and coping with adversity.  

• Inclusion must be an all-encompassing attitude and culture where all persons are valued and their needs met.

• Truly educating all about what inclusive education means and what it is. Parents and caregivers of both disabled and non-disabled children need to be educated about neurodiversity and disabilities so that they can raise well-informed children who are inclusive and welcoming to all. 

• Inclusive schools, classrooms, and curriculum planning should be required courses for ALL teachers and all school staff, these should not only be mandatory for those specializing in special education.  Education programs and professional development should normalize and demand inclusion practices for all, not just specialists.  

• School divisions should only hire trained professionals, including Educational Assistants (EAs), which means divisions need better funding in order to better pay school support staff.  

• Some divisions hire parents and caregivers, or people wanting to go into education, but have zero training in supporting children with disabilities.  

• This is particularly true during recess and lunch times, when EAs or lunch room volunteers are the primary supervisors.  These times are unstructured and can be loud and stressful for many children, especially students with disabilities, yet they are the time when the least number of trained staff are available.  

“Many parents feel frustrated when support personnel handle the most stressful parts of their child’s day, leading to uninformed discipline decisions.  Whether the EAs are staff employees or parent volunteers, they should be educated to support all students.”  (Hirt, 2018).  

• Students need better consistency with their EAs.  Schools and divisions should make best efforts to keep the same EAs with the same students, and a student should work with the same EA for most of their school day.  If an EA and a student have developed a good working relationship, they should be able to continue working together.  

• However, if the relationship is struggling, then the EA and student need full support to improve the relationship, the EA needs better training to better support that student, or the student needs an EA who can more effectively support them.  

• Schools need to be transparent and communicate openly and regularly with families.  Caregivers need to be kept up to date on any issues at the school and whether an EA that works with their child is either being provided with additional supports and training, or whether they are considering having a different adult support their child.  

• School administrators should be responsible for spotting issues or concerns, notifying staff and students (if appropriate) involved, notifying families, and then initiating a plan for problem-solving. 

• If something isn’t working, they need to acknowledge this and sit down with their team of experts to find a better way, not wait until a parent complains, or hope that the problem goes away on its own.  

• Good policies are only effective if they are practiced, and this can only happen when divisions and schools are provided the resources to see them through.   

This list is by no means exhaustive, and we will continue to add to it as we receive additional comments and feedback from community members.  

References

Greene, R. W. (2008). Lost at school: Why our kids with behavioral challenges are falling through the cracks and how we can help them. New York: Scribner.

Hirt, Kelly. (2018). Boost: 12 Effective Ways to Lift Up Our Twice-Exceptional Children. GFH Press.

Your Input Is Needed!

If you could wave a magic wand and make anything happen at your child's school (talking our under-funded Manitoba public school system) - what would it be?  

Please comment on our Facebook post, or email Jillian@ADHDPro.ca* to share your thoughts, needs, wants, and wishes.

Given that February 2021 is supposed to be Inclusive Education month in Manitoba, and we have a new Minister of Education, Mr. Cliff Cullen needs to hear our wish-list.

Rather than accepting an empty proclamation, let's tell our provincial government exactly how our children with disabilities would actually feel included, welcome, cared for, and have their needs met in Manitoba's public schools.

**Please share far and wide, especially in groups of Manitoba parents/caregivers of children with disabilities.**

*If you email us, please indicate whether you wish to remain anonymous and your name will not be included with any comments or concerns shared.  

*Emails and any communications shared privately will remain confidential unless we have your permission to share.  

February is Manitoba Inclusive Education Month

 

Apparently February 2021 is supposed to be Manitoba Inclusive Education Month

Though I'm not sure how we are supposed to know or what this is supposed to achieve.  Aside from school divisions posting this proclamation on their websites, I've seen absolutely nothing to indicate that this is anything other than yet another empty proclamation that achieves nothing.

Sorry if I sound cynical...  

No wait, I'm not sorry.  I'm cynical for very good reason and many other parents, caregivers, and professionals are too.  We are tired.  Tired of fighting, tired of advocating, and tired of shouting into the void.  We're tired of years of empty promises from both politicians and from schools.  

We're tired of seeing children punished for behaviour that stems from their disability; behaviour that, in that moment, was out of the child's control.  We're tired of seeing behaviour of children who are clearly struggling labelled as "defiant", "belligerent", "disobedient", "uncooperative", or whatever sugar-coated terminology some school staff are using to blame children rather than look beyond behaviours to see what is really going on.  

Children are hurting.  They're misunderstood.  Many children are being harmed by Manitoba's public education system: by ill-informed school staff, by long out-dated policy, and most of all by political inaction.  If we don't continue speaking up, louder and stronger and ever more persistent, to show politicians that there is a political appetite for change in our public school system, then things will not get better.  Unfortunately politicians need to see that their constituents care enough about this that it will impact how they vote in in the next provincial election. 

Let me be abundantly clear.  There are many absolutely amazing, outstanding teachers and school staff in our province.  They're also burning out faster than schools can find and hire "good" people and they need so much more support than they're getting: from their leadership, and especially from our province.  Our schools are pathetically under-funded, over-crowded, and under-resourced.  That is why teachers and school staff are overworked, under-trained, and under-paid.  That is why teachers are also exhausted and tired of fighting for their students.  That is why school staff feel helpless when they, too, are advocating for the needs of children and their concerns are falling on deaf ears.  Schools can only do so much with so little.  They need help too.  

So please, contact your Minister of Education.  In Manitoba, our newly appointed Minister of Education is the Honourable Cliff Cullen, MLA.  Constituents can email the office of the Ministry of Education at minedu@leg.gov.mb.ca.  

About the Author

Jillian is an ADHD 2e Coach and Child Advocate in Manitoba, Canada.

Jillian has a diploma in Child & Youth Work and a Degree in Psychology, as well as being the parent of an amazing 2e/ADHD child.

Visit ADHDPro.ca and Facebook.com/ADHD2ePro to learn more.

If you need help educating your child's school, your family, or with general ADHD coaching or advocacy, please feel free to contact us.