Teasing or excluding?

Hi everybody. Today I have been thinking about how I felt when I was young and going to public school and I wanted to write a post about it. I remember being in a line at lunch one time when some of the other kids in line were making jokes about those of us in the special needs class. The teacher who was with us quickly shut it down and we got our lunch and headed back to our classroom to eat instead of with everyone else in the cafeteria. I thought that was the wrong choice, just like I think contained classrooms are the wrong choice in most situations. The reason we were a target of teasing was that we didn’t ever really get to know our peers. I think that if some of those kids knew us better, they would have stuck up for us in line. The thing that was worse than being teased was never being around the regular kids in a social setting. That just reinforced how different I was. I hope that more schools will make more effort to help the kids with special needs feel included and part of the school and not try to be so protective.