Co-enrollment As an Inclusion Model

and hard of hearing students, to name just two, assistive listening devices and video captioning facilities. Some administrators may choose to use unqualified people because they cost less. It is cynical to hire uncertified people when the underlying motive is to deny employees professional compensation. Uncertified people should be required to become qualified through some route or another. As a school board official, I must caution that the "cheapest route" in acquiring human resources has become an open invitation to labor organizations to step in and resolve issues of this kind. The American Federation of Teachers has already begun to state reservations over policies of full inclusion. Any educational program should include qualified teachers, availability of staff, and adequate resources for services for students. Policies of "full inclusion" in many cases mitigate against these basic requirements . Only a full continuum of placement opportunities, inclusion being one option, and educational policies based on the needs of each child, will suffice for students who are deaf or hard of hearing. Co-enrollment As an Inclusion Model Carl J. Kirchner, Executive Director, and teachers and parents at TRIPOD and Burbank Unified School District Burbank, California Changing the learning environment . The themes and practices of what we have variously called integration , mainstreaming, and most recently inclusion, have not resolved the difficulty of placing deaf and hard of hearing students within the regular classroom using the support services of interpreters, speech/language specialists, and other "deaf ed" support personnel. Fragmentation not only of services (no one knowing who is in charge!), but also of the pipeline for direct communication access to the learning milieu , is in stark contrast to time-proven pedagogical parameters of (a) direct communication access to the information source, (b) peer group involvement (social and intellectual), and (c) curriculum consistency. Each of these parameters is compromised when deaf and hard of hearing students are placed in the regular environment without addressing the underlying educational issue - the need to effectively change the learning environment without changing the methodology. TRIPOD was established ten years ago as a challenge to the status quo in the education of deaf and hard of hearing children, introducing what today we might call a co-enrollment infusion strategy. The intent was not to modify curricula or introduce new methods of instruction. Instead, the intent was to change the environment in which learning takes place. This strategy places deaf and hard of hearing students on an equal footing with their hearing peers instead of becoming merely "foreign visitors" in the regular class. This strategy involves: (a) establishment of "co-enrollment" classes at a local elementary school site; (b) reduction in the number of regularly enrolled hearing students in the "coenrollment " classes (c) employment of a teacher of the deaf (deaf, hard of hearing, or hearing) as a team teacher (teaming with a "regular" credentialed teacher in teaching the entire class), and (d) use of SIGN by teachers and students within a Total Communication environment. At the present time, 108 deaf, hard of hearing, and hearing students are enrolled in the TRIPOD/BUSD program . The program extends from Parent Infant/Toddler through the eighth grade, and is located on a local elementary and middle school site. The basic skills and academic achievement test scores of these students are considerably above what is normally expected for deaf and hard of hearing children at their ages. Team teachers' observations. The teachers involved in TRIPOD were invited to contribute their observations to this article. In keeping with their roles as team teachers, each team collaborated in making many observations, including those that follow:. Deaf students meet age-appropriate expectations academically and socially, and still have a deaf peer group. A (co-enrollment) program benefits hearing kids greatly if curriculum isn't altered for the hearingimpaired students. The best lessons are taught not by the team teachers, but by children. Sometimes the deaf students take the lead; other times the lead is taken by their signing hearing counterparts. Team teaching benefits both the teachers and the students. The teachers have someone to plan with, share ideas and support. Students have two people to talk with, share ideas, confide in, receive attention. Both hearing and deaf...