Every time I walked into a classroom to teach, third grade, eighth grade, even university, I felt a familiar knot in my stomach.

Part of it was ordinary teacher anxiety: Would the lesson land? Would the kids cooperate? Would I manage the room well? But that wasn’t the real source of my discomfort.

What sat in the pit of my stomach was the question of whether I would reach every student in the room, whether what I had planned would actually enable all of them to learn. And if I’m honest, I was rarely 100 percent successful. There was the student struggling to keep up, the one who was bored because it was too simple, and the many in between who just weren’t engaged that day.

As a principal, that concern was magnified. I knew, based on data, assessments, and teacher observations, that approximately 15 percent of our students were not being effectively served in the general education classroom. Some had formal diagnoses of ADHD and other learning special needs. Others were not yet formally diagnosed, but clearly needed something they were not getting.

In my last ten years as a leadership coach and consultant, I have seen that number climb to 25–30 percent in many Jewish day schools without selective admissions.

Many school leaders have already dug deep to figure out how to better serve all students. Schools I work with have launched learning hubs to provide flexible support and have hired learning specialists, occupational therapists, reading specialists, and more. In many ways, hiring those specialists is the easier side of the equation. These professionals are trained, prepared, and focused on the students who need their help.

The question that still plagues most schools, even with these resources, is how to enable all teachers to serve students with learning disabilities, students who learn differently, and in fact all of the children that have limitations that don’t fit in our tidy mainstream box, in the regular classroom. The pedagogy exists. Tomlinson’s approach to differentiated instruction has been around for decades, and Universal Design for Learning builds on that foundation in an even more promising way. In other words, we largely know what to do.

But whatever the approach, one thing is certain: it requires significantly more effort, preparation, creativity, and time to design lessons that truly enable every student in the room to learn. From personal experience, I’d put it this way: designing a lesson that reaches every student doesn’t just add a little extra work; it often effectively doubles it. The final 20 percent outside the “standard” box frequently demands as much time, creativity, and attention as planning for the first 80 percent.

As we come to the end of Jewish Disability Awareness and Inclusion Month (JDAIM), it’s worth asking whether our commitment to inclusion is something we simply celebrate, or something we are actually willing to fund and staff for the other eleven months as well.

Most teachers I meet are mission-driven and deeply dedicated to their students. But between lesson preparation, teaching, grading, and parent communication, they are also completely out of time. As principals, we can (and should) offer professional development, build windows into the schedule for reflection, and provide ongoing support and inspiration.

But time is a finite resource, and every head of school I know is deeply aware of the budget crunch. In an effort to improve financial efficiency, most schools currently assign teachers the fullest teaching loads possible.  The only way most schools can give teachers more time is by hiring more teachers. More teachers means smaller student loads for each educator, and enough time to prepare, teach, and actually meet the needs of a full range of learners.

That is a significant expense, much more significant than adding a few more specialists. And this is where inclusion collides with affordability. Adding teachers means asking families to pay more so that classroom teachers can reach the students who have historically been left out or underserved. Right now, with schools already struggling to meet the affordability challenge, it is a very difficult ask.

I would argue that it is not an ask that any head of school can make on their own. It demands communal change. I don’t pretend it’s easy; it requires new funding at a time when funding is already strained. But that is precisely why it matters. This is the kind of ask that goes to the heart of who we are as a community. Are we willing to align our resources with our values? 

Our teachers do not want to walk into the classroom knowing that they are not reaching all of their students. Our principals do not want to review rosters and see double-digit percentages of students who are struggling or disengaged. But none of our school leaders can solve this alone.

It’s on us, as a community, to make the commitment that enables all of our children to learn.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)