Inclusive Education

Classes at the university are going well.  My students are interested and engaged, which is not just helpful, but also refreshing.  I try to ask as many questions as possible and encourage them to express their ideas freely.  I want to avoid droning endlessly on.  I want to stimulate intellectual discussion, not discourage it.  On that note, I have found that all of my students are open to the concept of educational inclusion students with disabilities and most of them actively support it.  Recently, we have been discussing strategies and interventions to help students with disabilities successfully learn in general education classrooms.  As my one of my colleagues in Luhansk has often said, merely placing deaf students in university classrooms is not enough, we must take appropriate measures to make certain they will succeed.  They can succeed, but professors and administrators must take the necessary steps to provide the students with appropriate academic supports and provide complete access to the curriculum.  The same is true of students in elementary and high schools.

Looking at their essays, I am pleased that my students have been thoughtfully articulating strategies for successfully integrating students into general education classrooms and facilitating their learning.  This is just a first step, however.  As inclusive education is rarely practiced in Ukraine, implementing inclusion will be a significant challenge, especially since so many teachers, parents and administrators have not embraced the concept, but if Ukraine is to be a truly open, accepting and democratic society, it must provide equal access to education for all students.  This is critical, as inclusive education is a necessary prerequisite for a fully inclusive society.

Before they were buried in Gorky Park

On a lovely day after work, one of my friends here in Vinnytsia was walking with me from the university, and she was showing me various historical sites in the city.  As we were leaving Gorky Park, where she told me the story of a massacre and graves of Stalin's victims buried there, she whispered, "Now I will show a police station where if you went in, you never came out."  She was referring to the headquarters of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs or NKVD (Народный комиссариат внутренних дел - НКВД).  The NKVD was the Stalin's secret police organization and was responsible for mass murders throughout the Soviet Union.  The Vinnytsia branch of the NKVD was particularly ruthless and killed literally thousands of innocent civilians.  These victims were buried in what is now Gorky Park and numerous other graves.  There were at least 87 NKVD mass graves in and around Vinnytsia.

As we were approaching the building, she ever so discretely gestured toward it, and whispered, There it is."  She was so discrete I needed clarification and pointed towards it asking, "Is that the building?"

She immediately, though gently, reprimanded me with fear in her voice admonishing, "Don't point! The police might be watching."  Having come of age under Stalin and his repressive system, she still harbors many of the same fears that gripped her when she was living under the Soviet system.  Her fears and behaviors are reflexive, but no longer really necessary.  Today, the old NKVD building is still a police station, but it no longer houses the feared secret police organization that murdered millions of people.

Former NKVD Headquarters