Special Education

We may not all agree on exactly what “inclusion” should look like, but having had two children in Nova Scotia’s public education system for a total of seventeen years, I am only too familiar with the types of issues our families face.

I can assist you, whether the issues involve:

• financial access to Nova Scotia’s private schools for students with learning disabilities;
• ensuring that your child’s medical or other physical needs are being properly met while at school;
• ensuring that an Individual Program Plan (IPP) is in place and being properly followed;
• the provision of appropriate life skills programming; or
• other issues involved in ensuring your child receives an appropriate education.

Let me share my definition of inclusive education.

           Inclusive education is the best of both worlds. It is both inclusive and individualized                 at the same time.

Inclusive education recognizes that the “I” in the IPP often means more just different academic outcomes or the tacking on of additional outcomes from the “hidden curriculum”.

Inclusive education includes and educates students with special needs in a regular classroom as much as possible, while recognizing and even embracing the fact that

• some students have needs (and hence goals) that simply won’t be met well in a regular classroom; and

• for some (many) students, there are skills that are best (or sometimes only) taught outside the regular classroom.

Inclusive education often means walking the very fine line needed to best balance, for each individual child, the amount of time that child spends in a regular classroom and the time that he or she is pulled out of that classroom to work on specific goals.

Let Me Help.

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