Best Practices of Inclusive Education

Best Practices of Inclusive Education

[ N a b a ’ a | I n c l u s i v e E d u c a t i o n ]

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Table of Contents

Introduction 2

Aim of documentation 3

Orientation 3

Nabaa concept of inclusive education 3

Principles to have quality of inclusive education 3

How to make schools inclusive 4

Benefits of community engagement 5

Making links between schools and community 6

Engaging parents and local community 7

Engaging children in the decision making 8

Activation of children opinion 10

Spreading the culture of child rights 11

Breaking the postglacial generation 11

Children as planners and definers of their needs 15



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Introduction

The project designed and implemented a holistic sectoral program

in UNRWA & governmental schools; the program balanced between

working with children with and without disability, their parents,

teachers and local community. The program aimed to support

children (with and without disability), with an inclusive schools and

active participative methods through providing them a kit of rights

and non formal activities. The activities

helped in including both categories (children

with and without disability) in creating

friendly atmosphere that gather the children

regarding the differences.

Aim of Documentation

- To present the experiences of working with

children with & without disability.

- To benefit from the best practices with the

target groups.

- To measure the change on the level of behaviour of the target

groups, their communication and social life.

The documentation

reports the best

practices held with the

parents and children of

both categories (with

and without disability)

during the life cycle of

the project.



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The project begin with orientation to the target group, the target

group was invited to a meeting, they were introduced to the

project’s objectives, aims and activities. In the meeting the parents

& the teachers discussed the problems faced them with the children,

most of the parents specified problems related to inclusion and

difficulties in accepting and dealing with children with disabilities.

The ideas and opinions discussed were as a base for the project that

leads us to discover more problems facing the children parents, &

thus plan the activities as well as the impact on the children.

Naba’a concept for inclusive education

Education aims at improving personality, mental and physical skills

of the children, through preparing them to take an active role in the

community.

Inclusive education means that all students in a school, regardless

of their strengths or weaknesses in any area, become part of the

school community. They are included in the feeling of belonging

among other students, teachers, and support staff.

The philosophy of inclusive education is built on the idea of

cooperation and communication between all parts and members of

the local society, from children, parents, teachers, municipalities,

and local organizations and involving these aspects in children's

lives and in school plans, and in equipment within schools. That is

done through working on policies and activities to make the school

active, safe and child friendly where they can express themselves

and freely practice their hobbies without pressure from authority.



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For that, the aim of inclusive education is to make schools open to

the outside environment to accomplish its mission.

In making the school inclusive and friendly to all children we

induced some basic principles to have quality of inclusive

education, some of these principles are

All children learn in different ways.

each child have abilities to learn whatever the way was, but

each can learn in spite of the quantity he/ she can learn. For

this using simple ways and active friendly tools can help the

children to learn.

It is every child's right to be included.

Every child has the right to participate & give opinions freely

what ever was his/her mentality, background, physical status,

religion, gender....

Making children engagement requires working with them

inclusively in a close way, so this requires the schools plans

and programs to be based on their rights & the children be

active members in planning, implementing and evaluating the

activities.

How to make schools inclusive?

To make the schools inclusive there is a need to create a

friendly-inclusion atmosphere, that attracts the children,

parents, teachers and members in the local community.

So there are some concepts we should take into

consideration:

1- The first one is how do the children like the school to be?



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So including the children in creating the required atmosphere

is beneficial to make the school for all, in other words to make

all children participate in the decision making.

2- Attracting parents to be effective participants and positive

providers for the children.

Including parents in the process of making the school

inclusive aims to give the children better chance to develop

educationally, psychologically and socially and to insure their

well being.

3- Community engagement: r m s

The community engagement means that all community

members can take an active part in the scholastic life for

supporting the children. This means that the school will no

longer a closed place on the children and teacher, but it

become an open place for all to participate in various activities

for the development of the child. The community members

should be actively participative, Enthusiastic to take an active

part, and ready to make a change in the lives of the children.

What benefits we could gain through having well community

engagement at many levels:

At the level of Communities:

• Greater strength through collaboration with schools and parents

• Greater impact of services through comprehensive, integrated

approach

• Increased access and cooperation with the school.

• Greater sense of community towards children issues.

At the level of children:



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• More positive attitudes toward school

• better cooperation of children with other members of community,

which in return allow the monitoring of children and becoming an

active part in the learning and teaching process. In addition to

increase the children participation and self confidence.

• better education achievements.

At the level of Parents:

• Greater knowledge of important of inclusion and their participation

for their children development.

• Knowledge of how to be more supportive to their children

• Greater confidence about ways to help children learn

• More positive views of teachers

improvement of communication skills with their children.

Teachers and Administrators:

• Greater teaching effectiveness

• better communication with children.

• Increased ability to identify children’s needs.

Making links between the community and school:

Linking the community to the schools helps in making the school an

open place for all, thus the learning and teaching process will no

longer based only on the children and teachers, but also on all

members of the community.

The links in our experience were the committees formed in the

schools, so that creating committees can attract and gather the

children, teachers, parents and active members of the community,

since the committees are formed of them.

This in return effected positively the children’s participation in

making decisions. So that they can raise their voices to ask,



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implement or plan for activities in addition to helping them discuss,

solve many problems related to them.

How to form these links or committees?

To have effective roles, the members of the committees should

believe and encouraged in the work they are doing in addition to

their abilities & desire to join in.

For informing the participants about the possible roles and tasks

they could achieve through the committees, try to implement

discussion circles, conference or meetings( in which all the

participants are a warred about the importance about their

participation for the benefit of the children educationally,

psychologically and socially in addition to the benefit in supporting

the school to reach its educational objectives). After introducing

them you can simply ask them about joining the committees “who

would like to be a member in the committee?”

Then the committees will be formed of the proposed

participants:(the committees should include children, parents,

teachers and active members in the community).

Engaging parents and local community members in the

scholastic life as participators with the children:

Knowing that most of the parents are busy and couldn’t provide

their children adequate time, and so are the parents of children

with disability. So we tried to engage parents in different activities

to make time for their children.

Through our experience in working in the field, we noticed that

there is a big need before including parents in activities with

children to awaren them to different issues related to child rights



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(protection, participation, communication, inclusion) and to other

issues like: psycho-social problems facing children, how to deal with

children facing difficult circumstances and with disability.

These awareness workshops helped the parents to improve their

communication with children and increase their participation with

them. In addition they become more able to determine their

children’s needs and help them and become more courage to

participate in activities with the children.

The children here played an important role in awarening their

parents and the local community on the previous mentioned issues,

through implementing different activities to ask for their rights like

implementing open days, drawing competitions...

In addition to engaging the parents to be members in the

committees, they were invited to participate in various activities

with the children, and they conveyed messages concerning inclusion

to others through inviting their friends and relatives to join the

activities.

In addition they were invited to plan for activities to be

implemented with the children. The touchable positive change of the

children was a motive for the parents to continue their participation

in the activities.

Engaging children in the decision-making process

Engaging children in the decision making process means that the

children have to participate in taking decisions that affect and

impacts their lives.



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In other words the children should take an active part in the

activities that related strongly to their rights. At this process the

children should be entitled with their rights and able to recognize

what are their needs and how they are going to ask and fulfil them.

Here is a step-by-step guide which will help you when you are

involving children/young people in the decision-making process.

The following methodology was used :

1

To make sure that this activity will involve the children in the

process of decision making you need to determine the important

objectives and information before starting , these information could

be determined by the following questions :

1. what are the results that should we achieve?

2. What information we have ?

3. how the children will benefit from it?

4. Do we have the ability to resource it properly?

6. can we involve the children from the beginning of the process?

7. Are we honest with children?

8. What are our expectations?

9. Are we to deliver the children the roles or some roles?

10. Do we recognise this as a long-term commitment?

11. Are we prepared to build in changes long term and not just have

a one-off event?



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2

After being sure that we can fulfil the above information, then we

have to look in the issues related to Children’s & their parents

desire to participate.

• Making the activities more responsive to the children:

the activities should be based on the children’s rights and are of

their concerns, to make sure of that we achieved many workshops

and express your opinion campaigns about the activities..

3

Give the children a chance to plan for the activities, so that their

opinions should be taken into consideration. Related to this issue we

build a partnership with the children in planning for activities, so

that designed with the children a simple plan for them that is easy

and reachable for all children, then they implemented with other

children training workshops to test the plan and be sure that it

mostly answer their needs.

4

• Children as creators not consumers

Developing the skills of the children is important in making them

creative creators in planning, implementing and evaluating the



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activities. In other words the children can develop ways of

conveying and coping their needs.

In working with children, we noticed that believing in children’s

abilities is a motive for them to be creative and participative.

A number of theorists have looked at ways in which children and

young people can participate, with the most acknowledged being

The Ladder of Participation .

Activation of the children opinion to be active members and

affect the decision :

In activation of the children’s role we think of what can provide the

children and raise their participation. We think of question of what

their definition for the child friendly communities. The questions

related with their thought to the real environment that they imagine

and impact their life as well as the impact on their life, schools,

homes and local community.

The children become thinking of things that make their lives at risk,

or of a need. The children through CTC committees implemented

projects related to their needs. One of the most important projects

implemented by the children and made them participate in the

decision affection their lives.

the most important thing is practicing what they need to develop in

their lives, homes, schools.

The children become able to ask about their rights and in another

way they become entitled with their rights. The children become

able to design projects related to their needs and implement these

projects in partnership with the parents and municipalities.



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Spreading the culture of child rights in the community:

The culture of child rights should be widely spread in the

community, since they should be believe in.

Awareness workshops with parents about child protection,

participation, conflict resolution, communication, inclusion, psycho-

social problems and how to deal with their children, made a shift in

the way of thinking about the children with disability, they become

aware for their children rights. They improved their communication

with their children and increased their participation with them, in

addition they become able to know what are the needs of their

children. They become no longer shame of having disabled child and

try to face their fears and problems.

The children helped us a lot in the awarening the parents and the

local community, they implemented their own campaigns (express

your self campaigns) and other activities that symbolize the

acceptance of others even they are disabled and insure the ability to

work and play with them.

Breaking the postglacial generation:

Aiming to re-continue the life after the war especially because of the

tension, stress and depression that the children had experienced,

we try to re-include the children in the schools with safe place

rather than the ordinary school, so we thought to include the child

friendly environment into the teachers concept to have a well

balance activities, as well as the teachers are in direct contact with

the children.

In other words a series of training workshops for the teachers to

support the concept of child friendly environment. After these

training we aimed to create a balance between the theoretical part

of training and practicing with the children, through involving the

teachers as animators in the activities. On one hand developing the



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skills of the teachers and using friendly tools helped the children to

feel and touch the friendly environment inside their schools.

We distribute our works among 3 levels :

At the level of teachers:

How we integrate the CFE concept to the teachers?

The child friendly environment concept is being infused into the

following points:

Child Development: the teachers were trained and a warned about

child’s rights, so that they can recognize the elements that are

important for balance development of the children especially the

psychological one. Moreover the teachers should support the

children with equity regarding any difference.

Including the children in the process of learning & teaching as

partners & not receivers: let the children propose games or ways to

present a lesson, motivate the children , encourage them to ask and

talk freely. Provide the children with simple and creative tools that

help them in getting the information simply and wisely as well as

giving them a chance to get, develop & deliver the information,

some of these tools are drawing & painting, songs ....

Practicing what we trained: after each training let the teachers

practice and benefit from the training. So that they must implement

activities related to the training. Monitor the effect of the training on

the children.

At the level of parents:

It is vital to implement activities in partnership with the children,

liking inducing the children and parents to be as a team in the

activities. So that creating and implementing group games can

develop the knowledge they gain after training and give them a

chance to use it practically. In engaging the parents in planning the

activities creates motivated atmosphere based on practicing child



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rights and wider the dealing and working within it, which in return

constitutes sustainable awareness within the community.

At the level of the children:

In working with the children, we thought of things that stimulate

the children and attract them to make a difference in their lives

especially after the war. We aim to let the children feel that they

can play and educate at the same time, even if they are spending

most of their times in the school. So providing the children with

such friendly place to implement activities and favourable things, it

is good to create a room in the schools to implement the activities,

so that . This room create un-ordinary things in the children’s lives,

so this provides them a chance to do favourable things under a

climate of safety, protection and satisfaction.

Another thing we thought about in working with the children is how

to reduce their stress especially they experienced the war:

- so the first step was discovering the problem and it’s effects.

- Then problematic analysis: Tree of problems, is a technique of going

deeply in analyzing the causes and results of such problems, this

techniques helped us a lot in analyzing problems faced the project

implementation.

- After the analysis, the appropriate treatment and activities will be

provided in adequate manner.

One of the most highlighted ways of reducing the children’s stress is

providing them with a space to talk:

Children can exchange thoughts among each other, Most of the

children who experienced the ware have difficulties in expressing

their thoughts and feeling. To let them talk, we implemented many

activities that increase their self confidence and motivate them to

talk and express freely, and some of these activities were: open

podium, drama and self expression, group discussion and role play.



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The children in group discussion and open podium were sit in a

group facing each other to let them feel comfort and without

differences.

The main aim of the discussions among the children is to exchange

and share ideas, feelings, experiences and to let all the children

express their selves freely.

On one hand they learned to listen to others (even if they are

different), accept others and many concepts that help them in

communication. On the other hand they reflected what they learned

on others, in addition they repeated the activities with their

classmates, sister and brothers which forms an indicator to the

sustainability of the project.

Presenting a story to the children which treat problems facing the

disabled and non disabled children was a good tool to encourage the

children to express their opinions, so that they express their opinion

about the idea of the story, members and concepts of the story. At

the end of the story they discussed solutions which in return they

used in planning and implementing other activities.

Moreover providing the children with different friendly activities in

which they are participants in planning, implementation and

evaluation and not passive ones . so that they can talk, play and

work freely.

In creating the safe place we thought that it must be reachable for

all children, then it must be favourable for them. To determine the

location of the safe place in partnership with the children as they

have the right to express and participate, we achieved a workshop

with the children to take their opinion about the location of the safe

place..

The safe place let the children forget the differences; they become

concerned with the rights and entitled with it.



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Not only the children can express in the project, but also the

parents, they expressed their selves freely through group

discussions and meetings .

Children as planners and definers of their needs:

The children are the best persons that can define their own needs,

but they need a simple way to convey their messages to adults, so

at this point begins our role in facilitating them ways to express

themselves and needs freely.

Some children have difficulties in conveying their needs. To help the

children express their selves, its useful to

- Let the children write what they want to say on piece of

paper.

- Draw their opinions, needs and desires.

- Let the children implement focus groups, discussion circles to

gather their ideas and opinions in partnership with other

children.

- Implement with them open podiums so you can discover their

needs through their speech and quotes.

- Implement with them “express your self” campaigns, to

induce the children talk freely and convey their needs.

Developmental Action Without Borders

Naba’a

Documents

Best Practices of Inclusive Education