What strategies can teachers effectively use to increase understanding and promote acceptance of children with delays or disabilities? Give an example of how a teacher might promote acceptance of a child who is wheelchair bound?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Student answers will vary but should include basic ways that teachers promote acceptance. For example, teachers can talk openly with other children about a child and his or her delay or disability before a child transitions to the classroom. In the case of a new student in a wheelchair, the teacher can let the children know how they can help the new student move around the classroom and access particular learning areas. Teachers can also answer questions current students have about why the child might need a wheelchair, and so on. Another strategy is to have guided discussions that highlight children's similarities rather than their differences. While it’s important that the teacher talk about how the student will need to move around the classroom differently than mobile students, the teacher should also stress the ways all of the children are similar (e.g., learning goals, hobbies, interests). Yet another strategy might be to plan and implement cooperative activities and social opportunities that allow children with and without delays or disabilities to interact together. For example, a teacher might show students how to include the child in a wheelchair into a reading activity that requires students to sit on the carpet and/or to play a game like “heads-up, seven-up.”