[Troy Gardiner, Assistant Principal, Multi-Tiered Support and Curriculum Leader, Ballarat Specialist School]
So Ballarat Specialist School is a K to 12 specialist school, so that means it caters to students from Kinder all the way to Year 12.
The school’s vision and values is around students achieving personal success together and I think that really underpins the idea of inclusion is that we meet students at their point of need and then we support them through adjustments and individualised supports to allow them to grow and develop their own skills and knowledge at their own pace.
The disability inclusion process has been amazing for our school. What it was is to actually develop documentation to reflect the amazing work they do for all of our students at an individual, small group and also the whole school or whole class level.
[Cameron Pentland, Leading Teacher – Primary School, Ballarat Specialist School]
Completing the Disability Inclusion Profiles provided insights for myself as a teacher on the varying levels of adjustments that we need to provide for students within the classroom and all areas of their learning.
It allows the documentation that we already have completed to be more in-depth and thorough so that we can best support the students.
[Troy Gardiner, Assistant Principal, Multi-Tiered Support and Curriculum Leader, Ballarat Specialist School]
A key component of the Disability Inclusion process and really getting ready for the meeting for us was looking at how we ran SSGs (Student Support Groups) historically and also how we wrote our IEPs (Individual Education Plans) historically and reviewing that documentation and seeing what adjustments we needed to make.
What this allowed us to do is really break down all of the adjustments, all of the supports that are put in place, for each individual student and actually go through those with a family or a carer that's had some really amazing and positive feedback because oftentimes what our staff were doing, our parents and families are actually unaware of.
What this led to is then that shared creation of the IEP with the family, is by them being able to put all of those adjustments in and showing them in the key areas, meant that that document was really valuable not only for the carers and families to have a better understanding of how we support their student, but also allowed them to then look at when they were looking at supporting a student outside of school is they would have a much better idea how to support them at home as well.
Having that disability inclusion meeting where they go through all the adjustments that they put in place for the for the student in a really positive and supportive manner and a non-judgmental manner has meant that the parents really get a better understanding of what happens day to day in the classroom and also give the parents some really good ideas about strategies that they could implement.
It's also allowed the parent and the teacher to have a much deeper conversation about what can be done consistently here at home and also with other agencies or other supports are involved, so that everyone uses the same language and uses the same approach so that there's a really holistic, wraparound approach for every student involved.
[Cameron Pentland, Leading Teacher – Primary School, Ballarat Specialist School]
It's been a really rewarding experience to create this document and go through this process with families. It might seem daunting at first, however, it provides a really comprehensive picture for the students and how we as teachers can best support them within the classroom.
[Troy Gardiner, Assistant Principal, Multi-Tiered Support and Curriculum Leader, Ballarat Specialist School]
What the staff have actually found is that they now have a better understanding of all the amazing things they do. And what they’re finding is that for the first time is a lot of the work they felt might have gone unnoticed or wasn't being seen is actually being seen and being valued not only by families, but also seen by the wider school community as well.
Looking forward from a student voice perspective in how students have been involved, it's really made us reflect on how at a specialist setting for some of our students, we actually get student voice out and we've looked at integrating AAC (Augmentative and Alternative Communication) much more into our IEP processes and also other processes.
So all of our students can really identify the things that they really love about school, any supports that they need in place and really made us think about how do we actually get that level of understanding of what the student wants and what the student needs.
The level of information in some of the documentation that we've developed over the journey means that now I feel that if a staff member leaves are when the students transition from year to year is that key information and key messaging is transferred with them.
Historically there may have been gaps and things might have been missed, but now I think post this Disability Inclusion processes is staff and students will be able from day one to have the best level of information so that we can support every student to achieve their personal success together.
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