They were becoming a fun and important part of other students’ lives as conversations ranged from school-work to families and vacations to jobs.
Faculty’s Creative Solutions
If the students were an important group to bring on side, so too were the
faculty members, and they posed an entirely different set of challenges.
Many were willing to have a student in their class; for example, the Chair
of the Hospitality Program felt it would be valuable for his students’
interpersonal skills, improving their ability to work with people with
different backgrounds. Consequently, he advised all students that they
would be evaluated, in part, on their capacity to support each other.
Other faculty members, however, claimed that, with no background in special education, they lacked the necassary expertise. Some were pleased to have a support person in class so that they could carry on with business as usual without fear of disruption; others were uncomfortable with what they saw, at first, as an intrusion.
Teachers at the college and university level who become involved with integration for the first time often look for direction from their institution in adapting and modifying curriculum. However, as is always the case, they are creative and inventive when left to their own devices. As in public and high schools, solutions to curriculum at the post-secondary level are found more through a shift in attitude — how one sees a person — than through technical approaches.
A certain teacher of advanced communications welcomed into his class a new student who had pleaded her own case before the Dean that very morning. She requested she be allowed in his class because “that’s where all my friends are”. In truth, given her eyesight and her difficulty reading, entry tests to the most basic communication courses would have served little practical purpose.
The teacher agreed to work with her and, as the term progressed, they developed the habit of spending a few minutes chatting after each class.
