Inclusion: Creating the Mindset, Building the Framework

Inclusion: Creating The Mindset, Building The Framework is an engaging resource designed to help future educators to create a deep personal connection with the concept of inclusion. There are plenty of fine textbooks available on the market today that give definitions, acronyms and comprehensive descriptions of specific disabilities along with suggestions for inclusive practices within the classroom. This title is not a duplicate or substitute for those. Instead, Inclusion: Creating The Mindset, Building The Framework is a companion text designed to help students on their emotional journey towards being an inclusive teacher. In that light, this book is written in a deliberate and conscious way to provoke feelings in the reader and to help the reader to proses and move through those feelings on their journey towards greater understanding. Facts don't change behavior, emotions do. It is the author's intention to connect with emotion in order to facilitate the creation of a truly inclusive learning experience for all. On this emotional journey the future teacher will be supported in building strength and resilience which she will need in order to be the very best teacher she can be. Growth is not a comfortable process. We need only look at the Chesapeake Bay blue crab for an example of this. The crab is a vulnerable creature with a soft mushy body living in a hard shell of its own creation. As the crab grows, its shell becomes tight and uncomfortable. It will die if it does not risk ultimate vulnerability by backing out of its safe and protective shell in order to create a new and bigger one to protect its bigger body. This is not a comfortable process, but it is a necessary one just like personal growth is. Fortunately, this book's author uses humor, personal narrative, and two decades of teaching experience to help readers connect with and face their fears, prejudices and inaccurate belief systems surrounding inclusion to grow, learn and develop as individuals and teachers. There is no other book on the market today that so beautifully captures and teaches the "Why" of inclusion. Without fully understanding and embracing the "Why", the "How" is unachievable.