Frederick County Public Schools, Maryland

When Frederick County first began to work with EMSTAC, it identified greater and more meaningful inclusion of students with moderate to severe disabilities as the most significant priority. EMSTAC has been working primarily with one elementary school since 1998 around this need. Last year, the middle school identified an additional need-writing-and the Linking Agent and EMSTAC have begun work to address this need during the 2000-2001 school year.

Around the issue of inclusion, a cadre of teachers at one elementary school have been trained and receive support in collaboration. The collaborative teaching and planning model for inclusion has involved supporting teams of teachers who work with individual students with disabilities in the school. These teams can include special education teachers, general education teachers, music, art, and physical education teachers, teacher assistants, and other related services personnel. The members of the team vary according to the needs of the student. The teams set aside time to meet regularly to discuss and plan instruction for the child. Among the topics discussed include the child's IEP, the child's educational goals, the child's curriculum, and how to tailor instruction and curriculum, if appropriate, to allow for meaningful inclusion of the child in a regular education environment.

The Linking Agent meets weekly with the collaboration teams as well as with the principal to keep him informed of progress and any problems that may require his assistance in resolving. The Linking Agent works with the collaboration teams on staff development activities on a variety of topics, and also plans the meeting agendas. This year, due to some teacher turnover, a new group of teachers have had to be trained in the collaborative teaching and planning model. While the Linking Agent indicated that she has been visiting other schools in the district to talk about collaboration, her main focus this year has been sustaining the intervention in the original elementary school, because several of the teachers who had previously been trained left. The principal for this school is also new, as of last year, and while his support of the initiative has been strong, a lot of work has been done this year to ensure that he makes inclusion a priority and allocates appropriate planning time for the teachers involved. The Linking Agent has also developed a 15-hour training course for teacher assistants on topics such as communication, confidentiality, and adapting materials. With this training, the teacher assistants have been able to participate as active members of the collaborative inclusion teams.

With respect to the new need identified this year-writing-the Linking Agent contacted the Maryland Writing Project to assist the district in identifying strategies to meet this need. Several teachers at the middle school had identified writing as a priority in response to a needs assessment that the Linking Agent and Principal administered in the school. Consultants from the Maryland Writing Project came into the school and conducted several trainings in which many different strategies for teaching reading and writing were introduced. During these meetings, journaling was identified as the most appealing strategy, and teachers began to implement it in their classrooms. The Linking Agent provided support at the training sessions and also worked closely with the instructional assistants to ensure that they were involved meaningfully in the efforts to incorporate journaling into classroom activities. The teachers at the school now hope to implement daily journal writing activities throughout the entire school next year.

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