Accommodating special needs is a team effort

The Boston Herald

BEVERLY BECKHAM

The conference at Brandeis University was for teachers and it was sold out.

I too went to learn, but I likely wouldn't have gone before Lucy came into our lives.

Sponsored by the Massachusetts Down Syndrome Congress, ``What's Up with Down Syndrome: Supporting Students in General Education,'' wouldn't have been on my radar screen. Down syndrome was something I knew about, but not something I NEEDEDto know more about.

Then, 16 months ago, my granddaughter was born.

That's how it works. Someone you love gets a disease and you want to help _ walk miles for a charity or do a triathlon, though you are no athlete. A friend is killed by a drunken driver and you don't drink, not even a little, and then drive. Your grandbaby is born with an extra chromosome and all of sudden you not only see but care about all the other kids who have special needs and challenges.

There were no cameras at this forum, no spotlights on these amazing people who really are making the world a better place one lesson plan and one person at a time. But isn't this typical? Good happens so far away from the cameras that sometimes it's as if it doesn't exist anymore. And if you don't see it, you stop believing in it.

And then, suddenly, there it is.

Addressing the teachers were John Anton, 39, and Ashely Wolfe, 26. They are good looking and smart. Anton is an activist. Wolfe an actress. Both agree that disabilities should never define a person but that they do and it isn't easy being different. Both say Down syndrome is what they HAVEand what people see.

But it is not who they ARE

The teachers gave standing ovations to Anton and Wolfe not just because they were inspirational, but because they are who these teachers push each of their students to be. They are the result of hard work and love and collaboration and parents and family and educators and community working together for the good of a child.

The bar used to be set low for kids who are different. Now it's the same height for all.

``It's no longer enough to be nice to children with disabilities, we have to challenge them,'' said William Henderson, principal of Boston's O'Hearn Elementary School, where one of every four pupils is disabled and where parents line up for their children to attend because the school ranks among the city's best.

For eons, seclusion was the philosophy of educators. Confronted with children who were different, schools segregated them in special classes where they didn't learn because they weren't expected to.

Now inclusion is the creed. And these teachers' passion.

We seek out our own. We're comfortable with what we know. We didn't used to know people in wheelchairs, people who are unable to speak, people with challenges different from our own. And not knowing, and not knowing what to say or do, we turned away.

Being included is vital to a child. It's vital to everyone. Everyone wants to fit in.

We leave school and we don't go back and the tendency is to think of the classroom as it used to be. As it was for us.

It's different now. Different better. ``We learn to adapt in life,'' Henderson said. ``It's a collaboration. Everyone, including students, has to work together.''

It's a team effort. And under the radar and away from the cameras, teachers are leading the way.