Strategies
1. Resource parents well.
With better and easier access to resources and support, parents can be more effective advocates for their children.
2. Differentiating ourselves as an advocacy group.
There are many fine parent support groups listed in our resource directory under “Support Groups (Parents)”. We will connect parents to people, systems, and guides, to help them set up their own local support group at their school or in their region. Support groups for parents should be safe spaces to share information, vent frustrations, celebrate successes, ask questions, and have a sense of community support. Parents Alliance for Inclusion is built to provide tools to move from support to advocacy as individual families first, as local communities second, and as a global community third. Support groups are ring-fenced safe spaces. Our advocacy is public facing.
3. Develop advocacy capacity.
Over time we want to construct methods and systems to build individual parent capacities to be better advocates. We want to support parents first on navigating parent-teacher conferences, ILPs, educational psychologist reports, and parent-school leadership meetings. When resources to support individual parent advocacy are in place, then we will build resource capacity for speaking out to school communities, to school boards, to education conferences, to accreditation agencies, et cetera.
4. Be visible.
We aim to be visible at the school level, the international educator conference level, and the school accreditation level.
5. We are collecting “peer reviewed research” in our resource directory to back up our advocacy.
We want to aggregate research that parents can present to school senior leadership teams (SLT), directors, and school boards. As we start the website we have articles such as:
“Academic and Social Effects of Inclusion on Students without Disabilities: A Review of the Literature” (Kart & Kart, 2021) that finds there is no measurable negative academic impact on the broader student body when neurodiverse and disabled students are included and supported well at schools.
“How Inclusive Interactive Learning Environments Benefit Students Without Special Needs” (Roldán et al, 2021) that finds there are positive social and emotional learning outcomes for all students when neurodivergent and disabled students are included and supported well at schools.
“The social and economic rationale of inclusive education: An overview of the outcomes in education for diverse groups of students” (Mezzanotte, 2022) that finds there are positive social and emotional learning outcomes for all students when neurodivergent and disabled students are included and supported well at schools.
6. Connect issues.
We believe there are connections and that we need to make the connections to make either our advocacy case stronger, or fulfill our first mission to resource parents well so they can become advocates, or both. Some examples.
Student wellbeing and social-emotional learning is important for school outcomes. It’s part of many school mission and vision statements. It’s a topic school accreditation agencies review. Showing that supporting and including neurodivergent and disabled students at schools well also adds value to wellbeing and social-emotional learning supports our advocacy. Research shows when neurodivergent and disabled students are included and supported well, the social-emotional learning of all students improves.
International schools typically focus on a form of Global Citizenship Education or International Mindedness as part of their school mission statement. International school accreditation agencies check on how schools adhere to these values. Our group asks if the 15 to 20% of the global population that is neurodivergent and disabled students are part of this world of Global Citizenship and/or International Mindedness? We ask if neurodivergent and disabled students are excluded from that promise of Global/International education perspective that international school diploma recipients receive, what is the brand of the exclusionary Global Citizenship Education or exclusionary International Mindedness, actually being marketed?
7. Collaborate with allies; including educators that are allies.
Be allies to our allies.
8. Our advocacy is that when all neurodivergent and disabled students are served well at international schools, all students are served better.
Our strategy is to show the research that backs this up and inquire why international schools would not want to deliver better education outcomes.
9. International schools exist because they were founded to serve the children of globally mobile parents.
Neurodivergent and disabled children are globally mobile as any other children, and merit being served well by these institutions. We want to inquire why there are service gaps for neurodivergent and disabled students at international schools when our kids are part of the international school mandate.
10. Schools are made up of boards, administrators, educators, support staff, students, and parents.
Parents are the largest group of these six groups of people that make up schools. Parents are the economic consumers of school who support schools financially with tuition, donations, taxes, or other community means. Schools do not exist without parents. Our voice matters. To be heard by the international school community, we have to combine our voices as parents of neurodivergent and disabled children. We want to shift the conversation from individual families being grateful they can find services for their child at an international school, to an advocacy community pressing international schools to raise their quality so we can expect to find services for our children at an international school in any location we relocate to.
Do you have a strategy that we should add or modify? Send us a message at faciltators@parentsallianceforinclusion.com with the subject STRATEGY.