Samples and summary of faculty scholarly activities - St. John Fisher ...

It is essential that the building administrator listen to, reflect upon, and plan to
implement appropriate recommendations and suggested adaptations in next year’s model. Yet
it is important to always remember that schools exist for the benefit and well-being of our
students, not for the comfort and convenience of those who serve. Pugach and Johnson (2008)
defined teaching as “working well together with students and interacting well with adults”
(p.5). They emphasized that schools must be communities of learning – for children and adults
– engaged in complex and challenging work necessary “to be a source of vibrant, intellectual
stimulation for every student who attends” (p.5). The efforts of the Canandaigua School District
in general and the Canandaigua Primary School in particular to implement co-teaching practices
are meaningful and enriching steps to strengthening our community of learning.
Final Thoughts
At the first annual meeting of the Council for Exceptional Children in 1922 Elizabeth
Farrell charged all teachers and school leaders – not just special educators, to create schools
and classrooms that would be:
…less machine-made and more individual; that the schools of this country will use the
ability of each pupil group to its maximum; that the school will fit its burden to the back
which bears it; that it will bring the opportunity of successful achievement to every
child. (as cited in Kode, 2002, p. 90).
This vision of learning environments where each student’s potential was fully
acknowledged and nurtured was echoed decades later by another President of the CEC, Dr.
Lloyd Dunn. Dunn (1968) asserted that the segregation and removal of students with disabilities
from regular classrooms fostered a social and learning environment of isolation, inferiority, and
non-acceptance by both peers and teachers. He forecast four changes that he saw as shaping
“An American Revolution in education” that would “help special education … begin moving to
fit into a changing general education program and to assist in achieving the program’s goals” (p.
10). These four “powerful forces” as he called them were: changes in school organization;
curricular changes; changes in professional public school personnel; and hardware (or
technology) changes. Extending Farrell’s initial visions, he prophesied much of what the
Canandaigua Primary has implemented in the 2009-2010 school year – team teaching, flexible
grouping, curricular innovations that are respectful of the varying needs of learners, increased
professionalization and staff development, and a climate that is cautious yet receptive to
change and considers the needs of both children and adults.
One must always view educational change within the broader context of societal
evolution. The advocacy and pursuit of inclusive education encompasses attitudes, beliefs, and
practices beyond the classroom door. Barton (1999) asserted that inclusion represents “the
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