When I was in high school I completed a work experience placement in my school’s resource room. Resource room was a classroom for students throughout our school district who had high needs and spent most (or all) of their school day outside of mainstream classes. In this classroom there was a wide range of students. Some students were on the autism spectrum, there were students with intellectual and developmental disabilities, a blind student and many students who also in addition had chronic health needs or mobility impairments.
The classroom had one teacher and several EA’s. One really neat process I got to observe and participate in was the use of picture exchange communication with one of the students. This method worked really well for him. His binder had lots of pretty standard pictures, but the coolest ones, and the ones he used most often wee the specialized pictures for his school community. There was a picture to represent every student, the teacher and every EA in the class. An interesting thing I noticed right away is even though he was the only student who used this system, many of the other students had learned how to use the picture exchange method with him as well (or at least had some idea of how it worked). This was always one of my favourite things about the resource room, all the students there really had a great sense of community. Even though every student had high needs of their own, each student had learned to be conscious of others and their needs. For example one student really didn’t like loud noises when they were feeling agitated or anxious, the other students were conscientious, some without any prompting, to keep their voices down around her. One student used a motorized wheel chair and another student in the class was utterly committed to always making sure he had enough room to maneuver. Many of the students took care of each other. This classroom was truly a community for it’s members. Each member, however different they were really belonged.
I saw that many students had learned how to use this system to communicate with their classmate and friend.
Another place that many students from that classroom found a sense of community was our school theatre. In my last two years of high school I was given the responsibility of being the manager at my school theatre. A few students from the resource room were able to get really involved with our school productions. One student in particular was able to learn a lot of carpentry from one of the community members who would build our sets. Another student played guitar in the orchestra pit as part of the band. My favourite part was incorporating a few students as part of my Front of House crew and having them be ushers for the shows. This was a great way for them to practice some social skills, especially in a ‘work experience’ and ‘customer service’ setting. Beyond that, getting to be a part of a huge school production is an amazing sense of community for any student, and special students need community too.