WEEK EIGHT

This week we talked about Inclusion in BC K-12 Schools. Chantelle Morvay-Adams, our guest speaker, from BCEdAccess was able to join our class via zoom. Together we discussed what inclusion can look like in school as well as the role technology plays in supporting inclusion.

The first thing we talked about was BCEdAccess! According to their website, “BCEdAccess Society is an entirely volunteer-run organization serving families of students with disabilities and complex learners all over the province of British Columbia.” The biggest discussion that stuck out to me was about views on technology. Specifically, for parents, there’s a denial of tech, personal tech may be outdated, access to tech can be difficult, and lastly, there’s no support for parents to learn how to use the tech. For students, lack of tech can lead to exclusion in class. It’s interesting to think about covid and remote learning in the past few years and how this can majorly affect a student’s learning.

We champion and support children and youth who have disabilities and who are complex learners to reach their full potential in BC education, and in all aspects of their lives. This is achieved through supporting families, sharing information, providing education to families, allies, professionals and students, providing community engagement and awareness, and other activities to promote equitable access to education and inclusion for all.

BCEdAccess

I thought the discussion “using technology that honours their strengths and challenges” was really interesting. Coming from a school where technology wasn’t really an opportunity for learning, it was interesting to see on my Wednesday visits how technology can open up worlds for certain students. The topic of “withholding tech because it might make other kids jealous” was definitely something I didn’t think about before. I really liked Chantelle’s quote that technology is not a toy it’s a tool.

Thinking about normalizing technology in the classroom is something we as new teachers will have to really work with and continue to work with in our future classrooms. An interesting topic that keeps coming up in our class is how we are preparing the future generation for jobs that don’t even exist yet! I believe that technology plays a major role in this because, as we said in class, technology can honour students’ strengths. As teachers, we want to foster life-long learners and set our students up for success and technology can help do that.

Sources:
https://bcedaccess.com/