The inclusion program at Chelsea Vocational High School concluded its fourth year in June 2002 with eleven students, five paraprofessionals and a District 75 special education teacher. (District 75, services students with moderate to severe disabilities in New York Citys five boroughs.) Having a variety of strengths and areas of concern, three students were fully included in general classes and eight received the support of one study period per day; all received full or part time paraprofessional assistance in their general education classes and the help of the special education teacher during study and/or as needed.

District 75 provided paraprofessionals with individualized support and weekly group meetings for training in observation, strategies and adaptations. The role of the inclusion paraprofessionals was many-faceted: they encouraged all learners in the class, adapted class work to inclusion students needs, and monitored the process-oriented goals of each inclusion students Individual Education Program (IEP) .

Colleagues often state that the IEP is a dead document because it is isolated from the realities of the classroom. Breathing life into the IEP is the responsibility of a committed educator. The IEP should be connected to the teaching and learning process so that students strengths and needs are identified, built upon and addressed.

To fulfill that aim, the inclusion teacher listed abbreviated short-term IEP goals on the students Priority Goal (PG) sheet; these were distributed to the student, paraprofessionals and classroom teachers at the beginning of each semester and after an annual review. General education teachers were encouraged to incorporate these goals into their daily lessons (this is easier to write than to see actualized), thus creating a curriculum within a curriculum. Twice a week, paraprofessionals observed and graded their students progress in reaching their IEP goals; some students learned to self monitor their targets.

The District 75 inclusion teacher maintained students numerical averages to provide an indication of a students comfort with a particular objective. These statistics also allowed a comparison of the mastery of an aim in different settings, thus clueing the educator to question causes of success/ failure in a particular environment. A two- semester average of six insured that the student mastered that goal and no longer needed continual reinforcement.

Process oriented IEP goals and the ongoing assessment of these skills can encourage the teacher to review how (s)he approaches her or his work, give the student a rubric for success, and encourage self-mastery. Incorporating the goals into our lessons provides all classroom participants with the sense that the difficult is indeed manageable.#

Sherryl Berti is a special education teacher at PS721M at Chelsea HS. She recently received a Phi Delta Kappa award for excellence in inclusion teaching.