| November 1, 2001
Hundreds of schools, from rural Maine to urban southern California, will participate in the first nation-wide celebration of National Inclusive Schools Week next month, December 3-7, 2002.
“We’ll be celebrating the progress schools have made and the hard work teachers, families, and administrators have put into making their schools more inclusive, and also taking time to reflect on how to improve,” says David Riley, co-director of the National Institute for Urban School Improvement, based at EDC.
To date, the Institute staff has sent out more than 900 packets of materials in both Spanish and English for the Inclusive Schools Week celebration. The materials, which are also available online in reproducible form, include posters and other promotional materials, resources for principals and classroom teachers, activities for families, and case studies and white papers on the benefits of inclusive schooling.
Those benefits extend across the community, says Riley: “We want to shift the inclusion conversation from one seen as a special education issue to one that is about making our schools and classrooms welcoming of the naturally diverse population of kids that show up at our schools every day.”
A series of online conversations on inclusive schooling, facilitated by experts, has begun and will continue through the celebration week.
