Hi!
One of the processes that has worked really well for a school I'm involved with in California was examining the assumptions behind the mutli-disciplinary team at the school. For a long while, it was just a dreaded hoop teachers had to jump through when they were struggling with a student. This was a problem for building community at the school. So, we had to find a way to make the team work for teachers instead of against them.
One of the things that worked well was recruiting new teachers to join and help transform the team. With the new teachers excited about what a team could do, the focus began to change from checking off a list, to genuine creative problem solving activity.
Another change that helped was to integrate gifted and talented programming into the work of the multidisciplinary team. This helped the team look at strengths and it really moved toward looking at the strengths of all students, not just the students identified as gifted and/or talented.
The team also included more than just members of the teaching staff, but began to ask community members and families to join in the team meetings once a month. These were involved in only one meeting a month instead of every meeting to protect the confidentiality of the students.
It was amazing how little changes to the multi-disciplinary team made a big difference to the way the school community viewed students, often outside of their label.
Jennifer J. Huber (Jeni), Ph.D.
Curriculum & Instruction:
Special Education
Specialty areas: Educational equity, inclusive education, collaboration,
and teacher preparation and education
Post-doctoral fellow
The Equity Alliance at ASU
E-Mail:
Hi!
One of the processes that has worked really well for a school I'm involved with in California was examining the assumptions behind the mutli-disciplinary team at the school. For a long while, it was just a dreaded hoop teachers had to jump through when they were struggling with a student. This was a problem for building community at the school. So, we had to find a way to make the team work for teachers instead of against them.
One of the things that worked well was recruiting new teachers to join and help transform the team. With the new teachers excited about what a team could do, the focus began to change from checking off a list, to genuine creative problem solving activity.
Another change that helped was to integrate gifted and talented programming into the work of the multidisciplinary team. This helped the team look at strengths and it really moved toward looking at the strengths of all students, not just the students identified as gifted and/or talented.
The team also included more than just members of the teaching staff, but began to ask community members and families to join in the team meetings once a month. These were involved in only one meeting a month instead of every meeting to protect the confidentiality of the students.
It was amazing how little changes to the multi-disciplinary team made a big difference to the way the school community viewed students, often outside of their label.
Jennifer J. Huber (Jeni), Ph.D.
Curriculum & Instruction:
Special Education
Specialty areas: Educational equity, inclusive education, collaboration,
and teacher preparation and education
Post-doctoral fellow
The Equity Alliance at ASU
E-Mail: