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Imagine a world

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in which children of all abilities
learn, play, and grow together,

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a world in which ability
does not stand in a way of making friends

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or dictate where you get to go to school

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or who you get to study with.

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That's what I do every day.

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I try to think about
how we make this become a reality,

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how we try to understand and appreciate

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the power and the promise
of inclusive education.

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So, what is inclusion?

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Inclusion's not a strategy,
an instructional strategy.

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Inclusion isn't a placement option.

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Inclusion is about belonging.

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It's about belonging to a community,

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a group of friends,
a school, or a community.

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But it's also important to remember

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that inclusion is not
just about being there.

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We've all probably had the experience

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where you walk into a room full of people

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and you don't belong, you're not a member.

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That doesn't feel very good.

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So how do we fix that

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to make sure that the children
that we are working with

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don't experience this idea 
of not belonging?

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Well, we do that through instruction.

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We do that through teaching.

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What we want to learn
and what we've learned

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is that teaching works,

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instruction is important.

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But it is also important to realize
that instruction doesn't just happen.

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Instruction is intentional.

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Instruction is planned.

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Instruction helps all of us
be more successful.

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Whether you're a child learning
how to negotiate their environment

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or a little boy with disabilities
who's learning how to use language

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or a child in elementary school
trying to tackle two-digit addition

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or trying to learn how to ride a bike

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or you're a 50 plus something
non-digital native

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who's trying to figure out
how to use her new iPad,

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instruction works.

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And we all benefit from good instruction.

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Now, we sometimes as adults
forget how important good instruction is

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because we don't venture very far
out of our comfort zone

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and try and learn new things.

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So, one of the things I do every year

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is encourage my graduate students
to try to learn a new thing.

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And they all look at me
with a perplexed look and say,

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"We're in graduate school.

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We're learning new things every day."

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And I say, "Yeah, but by the time
you get into graduate school,

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you know how to do school.

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So, try to learn something else.

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Try to learn something
in a domain that you aren't very good at."

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And I follow my own advice.

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So, once every so often,
I try to learn a skill

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or achieve something
in an area that I am not very good at -

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and that's how I ended up
doing a triathlon for my 50th birthday -

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and understand -

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(Applause)

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Thank you.

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(Laughs)

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And understand the importance
of instruction.

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Now, when we think about instruction,
it's important that we think about

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what instruction does
to both the learner and the teacher.

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One of the things that instruction
does for the learner is

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it helps them be more confident
and more competent, okay?

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When we have good instruction,

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the learner, the children, become better
at what you're teaching them how to do.

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The teacher becomes 
more confident as well.

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Because there's nothing more reinforcing

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than a teacher then seeing
their students achieve.

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And really, there's nothing -

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there's no way to make
a child feel better about him or herself

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than to help them
be successful in their learning.

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If you want to teach someone,

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if you want to increase
someone's self-esteem,

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teach them how to read.

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That's how you do it.

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Now, the thing
about instruction, though, is

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that it's important to think
about what you're teaching.

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Often when people come to see

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the inclusive preschools that we run
at the University of Washington,

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they'll say to me, "Isn't that great?

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I can't tell who has a disability
and who doesn't have a disability."

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That always makes me happy.

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But isn't it great the way children
just naturally interact together?

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And you know, we have
about 50 years of data that tell us

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that if you have children
with and without disabilities

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and you don't do anything special,

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what you'll have is

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you'll have children
with and without disabilities

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in a room together not interacting.

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So, if we want them to interact together,
we need to teach it.

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If we want children to be helpful
towards each other,

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to interact and be friendly
towards each other,

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we need to teach it.

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If we want children to care
about other people in their classroom,

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we need to teach it.

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And that teaching is intentional.

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The other thing about that teaching
is that it's data-based.

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What I mean by that is that good
instruction yields good outcomes.

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In fact, we like to think about it

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as saying that student failure
is instructional failure.

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When a child doesn't learn
what we want him or her to learn,

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it's because we haven't taught it
to them in the right way.

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It's not because
we're necessarily bad teachers.

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It's because maybe we haven't figured out
the right way to teach it yet.

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Maybe we don't have control
of all the elements

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that we need to be able
to have control of.

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But when a student
isn't making progress in an area,

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what that teaches us is

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that we need to change
our instructional strategy.

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Well, instruction is important.

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It's only important

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if you're teaching values, skills,
activities, and outcomes

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when we are very interested

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in thinking about what children learn
from being in inclusive environments.

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Now, when we started studying inclusion,

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I was working with some colleagues,

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and we studied about 35
children for five years.

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And these were children
ranging from preschool to high school.

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And they had severe disabilities,

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and we observed them many, many times
over the course of five years.

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And we talked to their teachers
and their parents and their peers

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and to them, if they
were able to talk with us,

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because we were interested in finding out
what the benefit was of inclusion.

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We all knew there was benefit.

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We saw the benefits.

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We heard the stories.

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And in fact, one of the stories
we heard every year was

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what I like to call
the birthday party story.

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So, imagine that you have a third-grader
with severe disabilities

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who's always been
in a segregated classroom.

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And this year, because their school
has decided to embrace inclusion,

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the child is in a general
education classroom

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with support.

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And about three months
into the school year,

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Bryan, our third-grader, comes home,

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and in his backpack
is a birthday party invitation.

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And his parents say this is the first time

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he's ever been invited
to a birthday party.

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That's a big outcome, okay?

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But it's not the outcome of inclusion.

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The number of party invitations you get,
it's not the outcome.

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But it's an indicator of an outcome.

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And what are the outcomes
we're looking for?

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The outcomes we're looking for 
are membership, relationship, and skills.

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And membership is how we interact,

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how a child interacts with the group,
with the school, with the classroom,

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with the community,

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what kind of accommodation are made

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to help that child participate 
in a meaningful way.

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Relationships are how the child
interacts on a one-to-one basis

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with other children, students 
in their classroom,

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and we think about
the range of relationships

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that student demonstrates.

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So we think about the relationships
where sometimes you're a peer

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with someone in your classroom.

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Sometimes you're helping
someone in your classroom.

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Sometimes you're receiving help
from someone in your classroom.

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And sometimes you have conflicts
with someone in your classroom,

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and you have to learn how to settle
those conflicts in an appropriate way.

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Now, you notice one of the kinds
of relationships we don't label

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is friendship.

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Because friendship
is a complex range of relationships

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where you sometimes are helping
and sometimes receiving help,

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sometimes hanging out,

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and sometimes having conflicts
and settling those conflicts.

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And of course, another outcome
of inclusive education are skills.

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We don't want to ever
not give enough credit

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to how important it is to learn skills,

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but skills by themselves
don't help us accomplish great things.

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We all know people
who are very good at math

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or very good at writing
or very good at science

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who can't use those skills,

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because they can't work with other people,

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because they don't have
good relationships,

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because they aren't interested in

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or don't have the skills
to be a member of a group.

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So these things together
are what we call inclusive education.

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So we've talked about what inclusion is.

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We've talked about
how to promote inclusion.

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But now the question is,
Why do we care,

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why do we care about inclusion?

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And I like to sum it up this way.

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Inclusion is the celebration
of diversity put into action.

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If we care about diversity,

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then we have to do something
to make this diversity come true.

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Just like we have 50 years of data

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about children
with and without disabilities

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playing together,

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that if you put them in a room
and you don't do anything special,

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you'll children with disabilities
and without disabilities in a room

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not playing together.

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But we know that if we use
our smart instructional practices

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to facilitate interaction,

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everyone benefits.

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And that's the power
and the promise of inclusion:

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making sure everyone is supported,
everyone is challenged,

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and everyone benefits

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in this great inclusive
world that we have.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)