Professor Janice Myck-Wayne’s teaching career began not long after President Gerald Ford signed the Education for All Handicapped Act in 1975, which put her at the forefront of the movement to integrate disabled students with the rest of students in public schools throughout the U.S.
Before this act, disabled students were placed in special schools or segregated classrooms that kept them apart from other students, which hurt them educationally and socially.
“I started as a teacher of the deaf and hard of hearing,” said Myck-Wayne of her work in South Los Angeles in the early 1980s, just as students with mild disabilities were being moved out of segregated schools and into the general education campus. It was not an easy process.
“We weren’t trained to navigate this transition,” she said.
Today, Myck-Wayne is an early childhood special education credential coordinator in the Department of Special Education in the College of Education at Cal State Fullerton. Preparing teacher credential candidates to teach all children in California is at the center of Myck-Wayne’s work. She’s conducted research into teacher training, inclusive practices and early education and received almost $4 million in grants to prepare students to teach children in inclusive classroom settings.
She was named Cal State Fullerton’s 2023 Outstanding Professor.
“We’ve made some great changes,” she said of the effort to include disabled students in schools. “We’re not institutionalizing people anymore, but we still have a way to go.” For instance, she says the federal education code does not use the word inclusion when referring to disabled students.
Everyone benefits when children with disabilities are integrated with the general student population, according to research. “The outcomes for the children with IEPs (individual education planning programs) are greater,” said Myck-Wayne. “The outcomes for the general ed students are also greater. It builds a…
Read the full article here
