This past week, I had the privilege of being a chaperone for my daughter’s week-long Nature’s Classroom experience.  This involved me staying in a cabin the boys at night and helping to monitor all the kids during the day.  The experience was wonderful, and I was so impressed with all the kids.  One of my most distinct takeaways was the ways that children with developmental disabilities were included in the experience.  I was not informed of anyone’s specific disability diagnosis, but some clearly carry diagnoses on the autism spectrum.  Thinking back to my elementary school experiences, I am pretty sure that many students with disabilities would have been discouraged from staying overnight, or from participating at all, but my daughter’s school is emblematic of the present state of disability inclusion in K-12 education. The children were provided with overnight 1:1 aides, and Nature’s Classroom instructors were proactively informed of necessary modifications and/or accommodations required for full participation.  In this manner, the children took part in a variety of activities including primitive fire building skills, night hikes, sing-alongs, science experiments, natural arts, and the identification of animals in the wild.  While there were some challenges, the overall experience was very impressive.

From my perspective, I was also impressed with the ways the children interacted with each other.  Children with disabilities were involved in all aspects of unstructured play, from tether ball, to soccer, to four-square, to typical horseplay.  Each morning and evening, kids were sent for their medications, and nobody blinked an eye.  There was no apparent stigma for requiring medication or needing accommodations.  Perhaps it shouldn’t be remarkable, since this is how we want human interaction to occur, but as a higher education professional, I was very impressed with the behaviors of these children, and it makes me feel hopeful about the future.  Anyway, this is just a quick note based upon my observations.  It makes me think about the work we do at Disability Services, and how we sometimes need to educate instructors or program coordinators to promote the full inclusion of students with disabilities.  I look forward to a future when disability inclusion is an unquestioned norm, heralded by the remarkable generation of children I witnessed last week.