The students in Julie Giannini-Previde’s eighth-grade class are studying the Civil War, and they’re ready for battle. Assigned to teams representing the North or the South—complete with generals in blue and gray caps—they’re playing “Battle Jeopardy,” a game of answers and questions based on the popular television show. As they take turns answering questions, it’s apparent that the students are having fun while reviewing the tumultuous events of 1863. What isn’t apparent is that a number of them are students with disabilities who also receive special education services.
From segregation to leadership
Where once these students at McKinleyville Middle School would have been segregated—and stigmatized—in special education classes with a remedial curriculum, they now sit alongside their peers and receive the same grade-level, standards-based education. And the numbers show what a difference that makes: Academic achievement is up; disciplinary problems are down. Students who receive special education services—resource students—have been seamlessly integrated into general education classes. This accomplishment has earned McKinleyville a designation as both a California State Superintendent’s Model Middle School and a CalSTAT Leadership Site.
The integration may be seamless now, but it took a culture change at the rural northern California school to bring this model to fruition. The key ingredients included the leadership of one very determined special education teacher, a supportive administration, and a staff willing to give collaboration a try.
How they got there
Mindy Fattig arrived in McKinleyville in 1999 to teach a traditional special education core class (language arts, reading, and social studies) to students in grades six through eight—students who bragged about getting their last teacher fired. “I couldn’t teach,” she recalls. “I spent 100 percent of my time on behavior issues. I had almost no contact with the rest of the school—which I’m sure is also how my students felt—and I felt I wasn’t serving the kids.” Exhausted by November, Fattig told then-principal Dale McGrew that she would finish out the year but wouldn’t be back. Teacher turnover in the position had been so high that McGrew knew something had to be done. Instead of accepting Fattig’s resignation, she recalls, he asked, “What do you want to do?”
After conducting research online and attending a special education conference, Fattig had her answer: “I knew my kids had to be with their peers.” She found a willing collaborator in Julie Giannini-Previde, and the two started a pilot program in 2000, team teaching an eighth-grade general education core class with 15 of Fattig’s resource students in the mix. The resource students got extra support from Fattig while the high-achieving students benefited from having two credentialed teachers in the classroom. And soon those behavior problems that had plagued Fattig the previous year began to abate. “Just by being in general education with support, detention for these kids went down by 60 percent,” she says.
Getting others on-board
Knowing that teacher buy-in was critical to expanding the model, Fattig and Giannini-Previde talked up their successes in staff meetings. As those successes increased, more teachers—initially reluctant to accept students from special education programs in their classrooms—were willing to try integration and collaboration. With backing from McGrew and current principal Doug Oliveira, implementation of the program was gradual. The effort was voluntary for the first two years—a teacher-drive program that turned into a classic example of “leading from the middle.” In the second year, sixth- and seventh-grade core classes were added; in the third year, math and science. If some of the teachers were still skeptical of her presence in their classrooms, Fattig says, “I told them that I’m not here to evaluate you; I’m here to help.”
Getting buy-in from the students was much easier. The teachers planned activities to emphasize that all students have both strengths and weaknesses, that students learn differently, and that every student would get whatever he or she needed in class. Students quickly accepted the program and welcomed the extra support and attention that came with having two teachers in the classroom. When asked at the end of the first year to compare the segregated and integrated classes, one resource student responded, “I think this was a good class because you really did not know who was not the smartest person and who was a computer genius” [spelling corrected].
Today, integration and collaboration are ingrained in the culture at McKinleyville, where 12 percent of the school’s 390 students receive special education services. “It’s a program that makes sense,” says Oliveira. “Everyone has bought into it.” The results are impressive: In just two years (2003–5) McKinleyville’s Academic Performance Index (API) score rose from 7 to 10, the highest ranking, when compared to similar schools; and resource students’ scores on standard English and math tests have risen steadily since the program began.
Student behavior
As for student behavior, Oliveira says, “What we don’t get now are the routine behavior problems we had under the old system. Kids in special education don’t stand out at all in terms of disciplinary actions.” And turnover among the 24 certified teachers is so low that the person with the least seniority has been at the school for five years.
Two integral elements of the program have contributed to its success: academic support (in special classes and in free, after-school tutoring) and differentiated instruction.
When it became evident that some students needed extra time and assistance to keep up in general education, academic support classes were added in 2002. Taught by Fattig and another resource specialist, the classes offer guidance on how to study, assistance with homework assignments, preparation for upcoming classwork (“pre-teaching”), and review of material already covered in class (“re-teaching”). The classes are open to general education students as an elective and are so popular that there is a waiting list.
The program in action
The students in Teri Waterhouse’s seventh-grade core class, one-quarter of them resource students, are quietly poring over a test on feudalism. Fattig and Waterhouse, team teachers, walk among the desks, offering help when a hand shoots up. After class the two teachers confer about what’s coming up that week. Waterhouse says the students will be asked to write an essay on why feudalism developed in medieval Europe. She gives Fattig a diagrammed “essay organizer” that Fattig will use in the academic support class to prepare her students for the assignment.
This part is central to the program’s success: Having a sense of what’s going to happen in the general education classes gives the resource students added confidence about their ability to do the required work. This kind of collaborative academic planning between resource and general education teachers takes place regularly in all subject areas. In addition, grade-level teams consisting of science, math, core, and resource teachers meet weekly to discuss curriculum and concerns about individual students.
Adapting to students’ needs
All McKinleyville students are taught the same curriculum in integrated classrooms, but not all learn at the same speed. Teachers soon recognized the need for a “tiered” curriculum and were trained in differentiated instruction, a plan that allows a teacher to modify the curriculum to meet the needs of both struggling and high-achieving students. The students in Giannini-Previde’s class will be tested on their knowledge of the Civil War, but not everyone will receive the same exam. While many questions are identical, the resource students’ test, for example, will have fewer options in a multiple-choice question. Weekly homework assignments covering the same subject matter may be modified for resource, general education, and gifted students.
Cultural shift
The staff has embraced the change in culture at McKinleyville. Teachers who used to work in semi-isolation now spend much more time together—in and out of the classroom; and they learn a lot from each other. When the sixth-grade teachers gathered for lunch on a warm spring day, they spoke about the changes they had experienced: “It opened my eyes to other methods of teaching.” “Before, there was no time to coordinate with the resource teacher.” “It was initially overwhelming, but you do it bit by bit.” “You work on problem kids and situations as a team.”
The speaker of the last quote had a problem kid in class. The boy was tested and shown to have a learning disability, and the team that gathered in the classroom was working on the problem. Present were Oliveira; school psychologist Lisa Miller, the woman who had administered the diagnostic tests; the teacher; Fattig; the boy’s mother; and, at the end of the table, the sixth grader himself. The goal of the meeting was to develop for the boy an Individual Education Plan (IEP) that would put him in academic support. Miller had discussed the program with the boy’s mother (“I can get 100 percent behind this model and speak sincerely to parents about it,” Miller had said earlier.) The test results were discussed; the teacher talked about what had been observed in class. Then Fattig spoke to the boy, asking questions to draw him out, telling him how she would work with him and help him in the fall. It was the same easy, direct manner she used in dealing with another student to do some homework before making a phone call, in exchanging high fives with a boy crossing the airy campus between classes, and in kneeling beside the desk of a struggling seventh grader.
A conclusion, but no ending
It’s been seven years since Mindy Fattig walked into the principal’s office to resign. Former principal McGrew remembers “Mindy’s desire to change something that didn’t work into something that did.” Three years later, McKinleyville Middle School had integrated students with special needs into all aspects of the general education program—from core curriculum to extracurricular activities. The integration is so complete that Oliveira says, “Not many kids know who the resource students are.” The school’s collaborative model has been presented at educational conferences throughout the United States. McKinleyville was one of four middle schools designated as “California’s 2006 Schools to Watch” by the state superintendent of education. And this spring Mindy Fattig was named Humboldt County teacher of the year.