It has been established in this special issue of the Standard Bearer that we, as Protestant Reformed churches, have been given the opportunity and responsibility to come alongside those parents to whom the Lord has given special needs children, those with cognitive and/or physical disabilities. When a special needs child is born, the child becomes not just a member of one of our families (the “different boat”) but that child also becomes a member of our larger, covenantal community (the “same lake”). Therefore, it is also that covenant community that seeks to help the parents meet the child’s educational needs by making a place for them in our Christian day schools. Our calling to help each child reach their God-given potential applies to these children with disabilities as well.

CHALLENGES

In preparing for this article, I spoke with both current and past Special Ed teachers and we agreed there are certainly challenges that come to the community in establishing these programs. The first can be the financial challenge to the specific school community due to the particular needs of such a program: making appropriate classroom space in the school, hiring qualified staff, and purchasing the necessary supplies, equipment, and educational materials. In some of our schools, these may be necessary to meet the needs of just one student, while in other schools it may be for a larger group of students. We, as a community, are especially thankful for the work of the Society for PR Special Education that has come alongside many of our day schools and parents to help provide some of the financial means to meet this challenge.

A second challenge is finding appropriately trained personnel, both teachers and paraprofessionals. The knowledge necessary to meet the individual needs of each child goes beyond a Gen Ed teaching degree, requiring not only an understanding of the specific disability of each child but must also include knowledge and training on how to best meet the necessary academic, physical, social, and emotional needs of perhaps several different children who are in the program at the same time, each with a unique set of needs. Those needs can change from year to year as the student progresses or, in some cases, regresses and must be carefully monitored and adjusted. These variables obligate the Special Ed teacher to take the time and energy to: stay current with “best practices” so that adjustments can be made to curriculum and behaviors; understand the results of testing and how to adapt curriculum to those results; learn how to incorporate therapy practices into daily routine, and more. There is a shortage of such qualified special education personnel for our schools and I encourage our young people to visit our schools, see the wonderful opportunities, and consider if the Lord is calling them to this specialized teaching.

Another challenge is actually determining what the best way to meet each student’s unique needs may be, academically, behaviorally, socially, or perhaps with life-skills training for older students. This will involve working closely with the Gen Ed teachers to determine and develop accommodations and modifications to the teachers’ material and classroom procedures, as well as developing IEPs (individualized educational plans) to lay out the specific goals, instruction methods, and materials required. It may involve the need to work closely with the local public school or local Spec Ed co-op in order to receive testing and needed physical, occupational, social/behavioral, and speech therapies. This relationship with “outside” resources can be a difficult challenge for staff and parents to navigate as it often reflects a different educational philosophy than we hold in our covenant schools. Also, the time spent in these therapies, although necessary, usually requires a sacrifice of instruction and social time.

Finally, it can be challenging to incorporate these students into the general education classroom as much as we would like because of the curriculum’s level of difficulty as the grades advance, and/or the cognitive, physical, and health restrictions of the individual student. To determine how, when, and during what instruction and social time placement in the Gen Ed classroom can take place necessitates much time, trial and error, flexibility, and collaboration between the Spec Ed and the Gen Ed teams in an already busy schedule. Sadly, there are, have been, and will be situations when, even with the best intentions and practices, a school cannot meet the needs of a particular special needs student. It is then a challenge for everyone involved to accept this outcome. We pray that we may continue to support that child and family as a covenant community and look for other ways to include them in our church life and activities.

BENEFITS

In spite of these challenges, there are a multitude of benefits for both the special needs child and for the greater community of students and staff. It is a benefit that the Spec Ed and Gen Ed teams in our Christian day schools share the same Christian values and biblical views of our covenant children as the parents. For these teachers, this is not “just a job” but a calling from God to provide, to the best of their ability, what this individual child requires in order to help prepare him for his specific place in community and to help him grow in his ability to glorify God in whatever ways he is able. There is the benefit and reward of seeing these children develop and flourish and take up their place in the covenant community. It is a benefit for the child to be able to attend the same school as his siblings and the children they go to church with, hearing the same Bible stories, learning and singing along (or just smiling and clapping) with familiar Psalter numbers and songs, being a part of recess activities and lunch time, all the while developing bonds and building social skills with their peers. For the peers and school staff, inclusion in our day schools affords the benefit of breaking down the “stigma” and discomfort of relating to a person with special needs and helps put them more at ease to interact inside and outside of the school day.

Another wonderful benefit is that we in the school community learn to be more empathetic, compassionate, and to give honor to those with different learning abilities. We see firsthand the challenges that God has given to some and learn to be humbled that our own abilities are not of our own making but gifts from God, meant to be used in the service of others. Gen Ed students can benefit by becoming a part of the planning process for their special needs peers, discovering and building activities that include their special needs classmates both in class and out. “There is an interdependent unity that comes from diversity in the body of Christ. Everyone benefits when we choose intentional relationships with people of differing abilities.”1 Intentionally seeking to include our community’s special needs children helps the school, church, and covenant community become more than the “same lake, each in our own boat” analogy. Our covenant communities become a brighter reflection for generations to come of Romans 12:5, “So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.”

In closing, I would like to encourage members to read the book Same Lake, Different Boat: Coming Alongside People Touched by Disability by Stephanie O. Hubach. The author herself was “surprised by disability” when her youngest son was born with Down Syndrome. In this book, the author develops a scriptural framework and gives practical guidelines by describing her own family’s “wrestling with God and his Word, the realities of family life, and the all-too-frequent inadequacies of the broader Christian community’s response.” She then brings us to an “…understanding that is positively portrayed…as a vision for a better way.”2 This book was the catalyst that brought me to advocate actively for the need, at that time, of our own Christian day school to expand its Resource Room/ Discovery Center program to include children from our area churches with cognitive and physical disabilities. After several years and much labor by the school board, our school’s “Achieve” program was opened and the needs of these children are now met on a daily basis, incorporating them in the day-to-day instruction and activities of our PR day school; truly, “one body, many members.”

* Stephanie O. Hubach, Same Lake, Different Boat: Coming Alongside People Touched by Disability (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2006).
1 Hubach, Same Lake, Different Boat, 41.
2 Hubach, Same Lake, Different Boat, 16.