Photo by Taylor Wilcox on Unsplash

Given that our jurisdiction lies in British Columbia, all matters education lead back to BC’s Ministry of Education. If we are to talk about inclusion, and we are dealing with the K-12 system, then government guidelines should be considered first. While the statement, “Every student deserves equitable access to learning, opportunities for achievement and the pursuit of excellence in their education,” (Education, n.d.) is used for the Inclusive Education Department, it can also apply to all students.

Establishing the use of the word, “inclusion” in the context of the Ministry of Education allows us to examine resources that address students’ needs as well as teachers’ goals The ministry mandate is to aid students with Individual Education Plans to overcome barriers to their success. In the classroom setting that may look like the use of a scribe to take notes, or Google Read and Write to listen to text read aloud. In the remote learning context, students would need the appropriate technology at home to accomplish the same tasks. As many school districts, including School District #61, have licencing agreements to use the Google Suite of applications, students with a school district account have access from home, if they have the hardware to use.  School District #61’s agreement with Google gives many students tools to make their access to education more inclusive.

The article, “Synchronous Online Classes: 10 Tips for Engaging Students” is specifically aimed at the type of educational environment that we experienced during the height of the coronavirus pandemic in the Spring of 2020. While the article was written in 2017, it has maintained a topical application to current times. Most of the tips can be applied in the K-12 setting, even though they are geared towards the post-secondary educational classroom.

In the same way, Catlin Tucker’s article, “7 Strategies Designed to Increase Student Engagement in Synchronous Online Discussions Using Video Conferencing” addresses the remote teaching environment that teachers faced in the Spring. The article was posted on May 4, 2020, in the middle of the transition most schools were making to remote teaching. Of course, any list of tips and strategies must include a corollary that address the different approaches an elementary, versus middle, versus high school teacher would take based on the level of the given group of students’ attention span.

The OECD articles, “Learning remotely when schools close: Insights from PISA” and, “How can teachers and school systems respond to the COVID-19 pandemic? Some lessons from TALIS” while not espousing advice, address the difficulties around the world for educational bodies to make remote teaching inclusive and accessible. Insight can be drawn from the data, especially as comparisons can be made across countries around the world. As is indicated in the latter article, by examining China’s response to give education a high priority, “it was not just the government which mobilised resources: a wide range of contributors were stepping forward to provide everything from free Wi-Fi and devices for students through innovative instructional systems to social support for teachers and schools.” (Network, 2020) These are lessons that we can learn in order to make inclusion and accessibility better for our students.