Everyday Life in an Inclusion Class

Alexandra Schöller

My name is Alexandra Schöller. I am 14 years old and I attend the third level of a wheelchair-accessible New Middle School in Graz. Having been born with a physical disability, I need a wheelchair and I am in an inclusion class at school.

I get along well with my classmates and I also have several very good friends, just like all other young people my age. I need personal assistance for most hand movements, and although, for this reason, I need more time for certain tasks, I can follow the class instruction very well. But some of the teachers don’t understand this. I suppose they are poorly trained for dealing with this kind of situation and apparently they are even afraid of doing something wrong, and so they ignore me altogether. That is often very hurtful! It’s not my fault if a few of the teachers don’t want to teach in an inclusion class at all but have to do it anyway, is it? I really wish all the teachers would make an effort to give us inclusion kids a chance to have fun and success in their classes, too. A possible suggestion for the future might be for us students to grade the teachers. For instance, if we could give the teachers sympathy marks and back them up with reasons, surely some of the teachers would improve. Of course, there are also terrific teachers who work well with all the kids. Last year, for example, we all went on a skiing week and stayed at a wheelchair-accessible youth hostel. There was also a slope there where I could drive a ski vehicle, which was a lot of fun! And of course I took part in the disco evening as well.

This autumn I can even go with my class to England for a language week, which I’m already looking forward to very much. Unfortunately, we have also gone on several excursions where all I could do was watch my classmates. We also have the disadvantage that some of the inclusion kids, because of their disabilities, can’t sit still very long and then they disturb the class. When we need to pay close attention, it is often very troublesome when some of the class members disrupt the lesson by shouting and acting fidgety. We are proud of the fact that we were able to discuss this problem in a class council and since then things have been much better. In the class council, we call attention to problems within the class, discuss them, and solve most of them. We students have gotten these problems under control all by ourselves. We had to learn to deal with the other children, and in doing so we came to understand them much better. In this respect we are ahead of many kids our age – and adults as well! I’d like to graduate from school with good grades so that later I can get a really great job.

In 2009, Alexandra Schöller and two of her classmates from class 3A at the NMS Klusemannstraße in Graz presented their experiences with respect to inclusion before invited guests at the parliament building in Vienna.