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Developing Inclusive Projects for Students with Disabilities
by Cynthia Wetmiller

It is common to see students with physical disabilities confined to a wheelchair watching fellow students and peers engaged in physical activities that cannot be done in a wheelchair. This doesn't have to happen, however, when you implement service-learning in your classroom and community. With just a little effort, you can make sure that all students in your class benefit from the service-learning experience and participate fully in all project activities.

The first steps in promoting inclusive service-learning projects is to ascertain what physical activities the disabled students can and cannot do and to find out what the students' IEPs dictate in terms of physical limitations. This task involves privately discussing the students' limitations with parents or school counselors who are assigned to work with the students as a part of their respective IEPs. Once you determine the level of activity that is feasible for students with physical disabilities in your class, designing a service-learning project will be much simpler since you will be fully aware of what physical activities can and cannot be introduced.

As the teacher, it is imperative that you monitor the students' discussions during the project design phase, making sure that activities that are impossible for physically disabled students are not included. For example, if the students determine that visits to certain agencies are essential to implementing the project, all of these destinations must be wheelchair accessible. If an agency is not wheelchair accessible, students with physical disabilities would not be able to enter the building or participate with their peers.

Developing a community needs assessment is one way to ascertain what community agencies are wheelchair accessible. If your students find an agency that is not wheelchair accessible, your classroom cannot partner with them on a service-learning project because doing so would exclude part of the class population. You might consider pointing out these non-accessible community places discovered during the community needs assessment to the Tech class or Vo-Tech program in your school. Perhaps they would consider helping these agencies become wheelchair accessible by helping to build a wheelchair ramp as a service-learning project!

It is important that the physical limitations of students with disabilities not be an afterthought of the service-learning process. If a project is designed only to be dramatically changed later because an isolated group of students with disabilities are unable to participate, the students with disabilities will no doubt feel as if they have disappointed the rest of the class. Not making such changes and leaving the disabled students behind is not an option either. Inclusion means that all students, regardless of ability, can fully participate. If you exclude one or two students, you are no longer promoting inclusion with your service-learning project.