What is your educational background?
B.S.E. K- 12 M.S.E. Early Childhood with certification in Early Childhood Special Education

What other experiences, or staff development has prepared you for inclusion?
Numerous inservice programs and workshops, experience in inclusive classrooms for the past 10 years.

What is your job role?
Teacher in home-based program working with special needs children ages 0 - 3 and their parents. Teacher 4 mornings per week in inclusive child care settings.

What is your role regarding the inclusive component of the program?
Special education teacher working in an inclusive child care program with 50% special and 50% typically developing children. Collaborate with 2 child care teachers, 2 paraeducator, a foster grandma, a PT an OT and Speech-language pathologist.

How has your role changed or have you adapted your role as it relates to the inclusive program?
My role has been pretty much the same for the past ten years.

What were your biggest concerns about participating in an inclusive program?
Possibly that working with special needs children would take up so much time that the regular needs children would suffer.

What were your experiences related to these concerns once inclusive services were implemented?
All children benefited, made progress, learned from each other and enjoyed their class experiences.

What do you see as the benefits of moving toward inclusive services?
The special needs children continuously make much better progress in their development than they did when I served them in a home-based program. The regular needs children learn to accept people with special needs at an early age.

Can you offer one or more anecdotes which illustrate the benefits of inclusion?
I Worked in a home-based setting with twin boys who had behavior problems. They hit, kicked, bit, tantrumed and pushed each other and adults around. They were 2 1/2 years old and had about 5 words each. Now after being in an inclusive program, they seldom display any of the behavior problems, they talk in short sentences and they anticipate and stick to their daily routine at school. The change has been almost miraculous!