How to Train a Teacher for Inclusion?

Abstract

The Teacher that paves the way for equality in society, how is he trained for such a noble mission? Let us describe the reality of inclusion in education. To understand how it is regularly done, we shall use a metaphor of teaching swimming. Imagine a teacher that never went into the water, that asks young kids to jump into the water and instructs them how to swim… That, more or less describes the situation we are putting teachers and children in when we put them in an inclusive class. In this context, we wish to share our insights and Academic experience. We started our journey in 2005 in transforming teacher training; we found out that the change we introduced is a paradigm shift that we named: “from learning about to learning with and from people with disabilities.” What are the changes that both sides must do in order to create real inclusion? In this article will give us indication for the above question and much more, it is based on experience from over 20 courses and 12 years of bring together two groups: Students studying education and social activists with disabilities. The last part of the course focused on taking initial steps, in groups, towards developing new initiatives. One’s of this initiative was from Einav Mogdassi a Kindergarten assistant with disabilities that had a dream: “To train assistants like her, to become part of the staff of the kindergartens “ … so that the children will not be afraid of a people with disabilities when they grow up”. The dream became a reality, today 5 kindergarten assistants, are employed by the Jerusalem municipality and another 16 will start to work in May, 2019.