Reward Successes and Promote Public Awareness
All people involved in the workshops stressed the importance of school administrators rewarding effective teachers and sharing successes with school board members, district office administrators, other educators, parents and the community. For example, some schools made short videos showing how exceptional students were integrated in their classes. Other schools, which had volunteered to initiate integration projects, allowed outside educators to visit and meet the teachers who were experienced in the process.
Many principals requested that their teachers experienced in integration be allowed to attend and make presentations at conferences and workshops. One teacher said. “I realised my year was successful when my principal asked me to share my experiences with other teachers in the school. His request was a real compliment.”
CONCLUSION
In the past few years, more and more educators have gained experience in integrating exceptional students in regular classes. Many strategies have been developed and have helped educators initiate integration and make the process successful (Biklen, 1985; Sailor, Anderson, Halvorsen, Doering, Filler and Goetz, 1989; Stainbeck and Stainback, 1989).
In New Brunswick, workshops have been held with educators experienced in integration to identify and discuss what has helped them. Over the course of these workshops, it was found that what was effective for one educator may not have worked for another. Therefore, many strategies have been presented here and more than one may be implemented to assist staff in a particular school or school district.
