FIT Conference 2025: What Does Inclusion Really Look Like?

What does inclusion really look like?

And this is where we get to the nuts and bolts of what we're

about to do, not just at this session, but our first session

back from lunch as well. Because all well and good to

talk about the philosophy, isn't it?

I think we have to lay down a biblical groundwork for what

we're doing. We want to know why we're doing

what we're doing. We want to know why the Bible

commands us to do what we're doing.

But I will say, you can know all the philosophy of special needs

ministry that you want, but when a kid is screaming in your face

at 11:45 on Sunday, you better know more than philosophy.

You better. You better know some of the nuts

and bolts, right, of what you need to do to be able to handle

and to help that young person, not just to handle them, but

also to help them as well. And when I say that Diane is

really the heart of what we do here with the FIT Conference and

all of our books, this is really what I'm talking about.

Because while I'm knee deep during the week, making sure

that I'm serving healthy, nutritious meals as far as

biblical sermons to preach, she's spending a lot of time as

well in the special needs world making sure that not only does

she have her lesson prepared, but how is the lesson going to

be able to be adapted for all the different special needs in

the class as well. Now, I'll be honest with you,

it's a lot of work. And like I said before, it

doesn't just happen on Saturday night.

It doesn't just happen on Sunday morning.

I would encourage you, and I'll just say this for free.

This is mostly hers, her session, but I'm holding the

microphone right now. So I will say this.

Your pastor spends time on his messages before Saturday night

on a typical basis. That's the way it works because

the old sayings, true Sunday's always coming.

You know what happens on Monday? Another Sunday's coming, and so

by the next Monday, I'm already trying to know where's the next

place I'm going to be, what's going on.

I'm already trying to plan ahead about that.

If you're just thinking about your lesson, and this goes for

special needs ministry, this goes for any children's

ministry. If you're just thinking on

Saturday night what that book say I was going to be doing on

Sunday, you're doing it wrong. And I'm that, that, that's not

me saying I think you're doing it wrong.

I'm just going to say this emphatically.

You are doing it wrong. You don't want your pastor to

treat the pulpit like that on Sunday, and the parents of your

church should expect that you don't treat the classroom like

that on Sunday. And especially with what we're

talking about right now, with the fact that there's

adaptations that need to be made, inclusion that has to be

considered. You can't do that at the last

minute. That's not fair to yourself nor

to that child. And so how do we make that

happen? Well, I'm as interested as you

are, so I'm going to sit off to the side.

I told you I'm out here at 11:00.

I'm not back there. All right?

And so I'm going to let Diane go ahead and take over here for

this lesson as we look at what does inclusion really look like?

OK, I'm nervous about this. I have to remember I can't walk

over too far. It'll make a loud noise.

So this really ties in with where we left off.

For those of you that were in here at the last session, this

is the heart, right? This is where we need to have

the heart for the work that's going to be required of us

because if you don't have the heart, it can be overwhelming.

I will add to what my husband said about being prepared before

Saturday. In the last session, I talked

about seeing the need and not just visually like I see that

kid, but visual, but seeing the need like this is the problem or

this is the area that I'm lacking.

You can't figure all of that out on Saturday and you can't even

figure all of that out on your own.

You have to pray on it. You have to pray and ask the

Lord to help you. We prayed over something that we

did for one of our little girls who my husband mentioned was is

non verbal and it burdened me that there were aspects of our

class that she couldn't be involved in.

I don't have wisdom for that. I don't even have experience for

that because I don't have a non verbal child.

So I have to pray on that and I have to take time to pray on

that. I can't just Saturday be like,

OK, this is what I'm doing. It's not going to work.

So you have to put in the time. And I understand that I'm

married to a pastor, so this is my life.

And that you're maybe a volunteer and you have a regular

full time job. And I'm not trying to diminish

that or the other callings that you have on your life, but this

is so important that we have to carve out time for it.

And the beautiful thing about it is once you get systems in

place, it does go fairly quickly.

So in the first session when we were talking about what does

inclusion mean, there was an outline given and what was that

phrase? I don't have the notes in front

of me. It was not doing.

Not only do I have access to the classroom, but am I also

included in what's going on in the classroom?

OK, So in order for our special needs kids to be included in

what we're doing, we have to adapt the environment, We have

to adapt the method of instruction.

We'll go back through these, so don't panic.

We have to adapt the environment, we have to adapt

the method of instruction, and we have to adapt the conditions.

OK, that's great. What does that mean?

Right. If you're like me, you don't

have a special education degree. Anyone have a special Ed degree

in here? No.

Every once in a while there'll be somebody.

Maybe there's someone online, but I don't have a special Ed

degree. So special Ed teachers are

taught these things in college, right?

We're not taught these things. I was not taught any of this in

Bible college. So we're going to go through

each one of these and I'm going to have specific things to show

you, to give you just an idea, right?

This is not exhaustive. We don't have time for that, but

I'm going to run through some of these things fairly quickly and

then give you some ideas of what that would actually look like in

a classroom. OK, so the first one is adapting

the environment. Adapting the environment.

So what are we talking about? We're talking about the physical

space of your classroom. OK, Now you may need to make

some big adaptations in there if you were to have a child come

all of a sudden in a wheelchair, right?

And if you're crammed in there with chairs butting up next to

each other, you may have to make some actual changes to the

environment. But if you don't have an

actually physically disabled person, these adaptations might

look a little bit different. So if you've been to fit

conference at all, you're not going to be surprised at this

first one. Letter A on my paper.

Letter A says visual schedules. I think I'll say that in my

sleep until the day I die. Visual schedules.

Why? Why are visual schedules so

important? Because if you have a child that

has is neurotypical, there are times I'm going to just speak

from my my experience with my son, OK, I don't want to assume

that I understand other people's children.

But for my son, if he is having a day where he is particularly

overwhelmed, logical thought doesn't always work.

It doesn't. It breaks down.

OK, So for him to have a visual schedule, I'm going to make sure

they can see this online too. If we have a visual schedule, it

just helps him stay regulated, right?

Miss Cassandra and I laugh about this all the time because we'll

like, get to like here, and then we'll forget.

We take them off as we do them, and then we'll forget.

And the kids will be like, you forgot to do the visual

schedule. Yeah, I did.

And we'll tease each other about it.

But I make a bunch of different ones of these.

Will you hand me those other ones, too?

So they're little squares. Yeah.

So the key about a visual schedule is that you try to make

it as specific as possible, not generic.

OK, so for example, some days we act out the story.

So I have act out the story. Some days we have a puppet

friend come in. Now I will say before you are

like, what in the world? I'm going to show you how to

make some of these later. OK, We're going to actually do a

video. So sometimes we play a game,

sometimes we have an object lesson, sometimes we have to

clean up the room. So we make this as specific as

possible. OK, now The funny thing is, AJ

doesn't really need this so much anymore on a day-to-day, like

week to week basis. But if he's having a rough day,

it really does help if he can see the visual schedule and know

what's coming. Also, sometimes you have kids

like AJ with autism where they don't want to move from a

preferred activity. OK, so maybe they really like

the music and they are mad that you're going from music to a

Bible verse, right? Oh, but look, Nope, we're all

done. We take it off and we have a

little box that's stuck up on our whiteboard that we drop them

into. Nope, it's all done.

We're finished. Now, is that going to work the

first time? Probably not, but over time with

consistency and some of these other tools that we're going to

talk about, it will work. It will help.

This is schools do this. Special Ed classrooms live on

this stuff. We're not making this up.

We are copying the model that a that a special Ed classroom will

use. I have been in my son's special

Ed classroom. I've seen almost all of these

types of visuals in his classroom.

OK, so we know they, they work. The science behind it works.

The other thing that is important is to have visual

rules. Visual rules.

And I will say when we talk about rules, a couple of things.

Number one, keep them simple, OK?

If you look at these, they're just simple.

One word, OK? They're not like a huge like

founding fathers document, you know, OK, They're just simple.

The other thing I want to talk about with our rules is if we're

going to adapt the environment, our rules have to be something

that our kiddos can actually attain.

OK, You're setting yourself up for failure.

If your rule is sit in the chair and don't move.

Your special needs kiddo is going to be on yellow or red

every every week because they're never going to obey that rule.

And it's not because they're disobedient, it's because they

cannot do what you're asking them to do.

And we've talked about this in conferences before.

We would never expect a blind child to read what we wrote on

the board. That would be cruel.

We would never expect a deaf child to listen to our lesson

without an interpreter. We would never expect a child in

a wheelchair to stand up in front of the class.

That is cruel. But when we ask our special

needed kids with autism, with ADHD, with the host of other

fill in the blanks when we ask them to do things that their

body is not physically able to do, it is as cruel as asking a

blind child to read the Bible verse.

And and we have to that that's like that's like the basic

foundation. Like we have to understand that.

And when we understand that, then we see the need, then we

have the compassion and then we do the work.

OK, Now, does that mean that my child AJ runs amok in class?

No, because he can do these rules.

This rule #1 is eyes are looking.

Now I say eyes are looking, not look at me because kids with

autism sometimes have a hard time making direct eye contact.

So I want you looking in my general vicinity, right?

I want you. Basically what I'm saying really

is pay attention, right? Look up here, OK?

Ears are listening. self-explanatory.

Now this one, we don't say be quiet, we say mouth is quiet

because my son is a verbal stimmer.

The we have another little girl in our class who's a verbal

stimmer. OK.

If you don't know what stimming is, it's a repetitive behavior

that a child on the autism spectrum, and I don't know, it

may affect other disabilities too.

I just speak about autism because it's what I know that

stimming is a repetitive behavior that helps a child self

regulate. You want them to self regulate.

If they don't self regulate, you're going to have a problem.

So if my son needs to make some kind of verbal stem or some kind

of physical stem in order to self regulate, I want to allow

him the space to do that. So I'm not going to say no

noise. That's not fair.

I do tell him quiet mouth so he might stem to himself like this.

Whatever he's doing, right? We don't let him do the one I

did earlier because why? That's not a quiet mouse, right?

Am I blowing your ears out there?

Sorry, our sound man just took his headphones off.

Trust me, that's how our ears feel.

So do you see what I'm saying though?

Like you want the rule to be attainable, but that doesn't

mean it's a free for all. He can make whatever noise he

wants, OK. And also if he is becoming

particularly stemming verbally, I'll try and redirect the stem

to a more tactile stem that's not verbal.

So I might give him something to do with his hands, right?

Something that he can make a repetitive motion with his

hands. We've let him spin in the back

of the classroom before. That's what he's needed to do

Whatever, OK. We have all kinds of stuff back

there. They have like little cushions

that are bouncy. And so if he needs to move or

stem somehow, and the stem is disruptive to the classroom,

we're going to try to replace it with one that is not disruptive

to the classroom. But we're not going to tell him

he can't stem, OK? Because we're not going to tell

a blind child to read the Bible, OK, Calm body.

That one kind of goes with stemming too.

It also because some stems can be destructive and we're not

going to get into all of that today.

But calm body is better than be still, right?

Because wiggling is OK in my classroom.

You need a wiggle. You wiggle, but you're not

getting off the chair and on the chair and around the chair and

hanging upside down on the chair.

We're going to keep a calm body, but in your bubble.

If you need to move a little bit, I'm OK with that.

This one self-explanatory. Raise your hand before you

speak. And then my favorite, be kind.

OK, so these are visual rules and it's for the same reason

that we want a visual schedule. We also number these.

So my kids, our kids know them by number.

So if I'm, if I walk over to AJ and I just do this, he knows I'm

telling him to obey rule too. And I don't have to interrupt

teaching, but he's obeying the rules.

So that's why visual rules are important.

It's it's for your benefit, right?

It helps you maintain continuity in the classroom and to keep

going while maintaining order because you need to maintain

order. OK, I'm going too slow.

The next one is to keep clutter to a minimum.

Keep clutter to a minimum. If you are overly visually

stimulating your classroom, it's hard for kiddos.

I would also say the front of your classroom.

Like if you go into our room and you look, our bulletin board is

at the back and it's very cute. I like our bulletin board, but

we want to keep it not over stimulating, OK.

For some kids that have SPD, sensory processing disorder, a

lot of visual stimulation is hurtful to them.

It physically pains them. So we want to be considerate of

that. Whatever we keep in front is

usually like imperative. So our rules, our visual

schedule, what we're using for the lesson, OK, we don't want to

have all the artwork that the kids have colored for you on the

walls behind you when you're teaching.

OK, that's beautiful, but not where the kids attention is

going to be, OK? Because you don't want to

distract them. Then have sensory items

available. Have sensory items available.

I didn't bring out our sensory stuff this time.

I've brought it out before, but it kind of goes along with the

verbal stimming something. If you go on Amazon and you

search sensory items, you could scroll for hours.

There's so many. Sometimes, though, a good one to

have, It's like little egg timers.

Because again, that could be another signal that when the egg

timer runs out, we're going to put this away and we're going to

come back and join class, right? So it's sensory.

Then we're going to talk about visual memory verses.

I have that one right here. Let me go back to rules really,

really, really quick. So we've talked about these

before. If you've been here before, you

already know that we use red, yellow, green lights.

Each kid has a traffic light and they get a verbal warning if

they're breaking a rule. Next time they break the rule,

they go on yellow. If they change their behavior,

they go back onto green. OK.

Our goal as teachers is to always have them leave on green.

OK, But it's just a classroom management tool.

But again, it's visual, right? And then this is AJ's.

This is not. You can ask your parents to make

this. You don't necessarily have to

make it. AJ's my son.

So I made this one today I am working for and he'll make a

choice when he gets to church on Sunday morning what reward he's

working for. And if he leaves the class on

green, he earns his reward. OK, but again, you don't have to

do this for every kid in your class, but if you had a child

that was having a particularly rough time with behavior, it

might be something worth looking into.

But then visual, my visual memory versus this is the one

that my husband was briefly talking about when we have our

little girl who is non verbal. We were talking about how she

can't say her memory verse and we want her to not just have

access to the room, but we want her to be what included in

everything we're doing. So I made we do the same memory

verse in Sunday school and junior church and we do it for

three weeks. So every three weeks I make a

new Bible memory verse visual and these are velcroed.

So and I'm going to make one of these on a video for you later

so you can see it. OK.

They're not hard to make. Once you like, once you do 1 and

you know what you're doing and then it's just basically you

change out the pictures. OK, so she has one, we have one

in the classroom and then she has one that she takes home and

that her mom can practice the Bible verse with her at home

just like I would with my verbal kids.

Hey, what's your Bible verse? Let's learn it, let's practice

it. Would go over it at dinner.

Let's memorize it so you can say it in church.

So then when she comes to church, if we pull all these

off, we give her the board, she puts them in order.

AJ does this too. If he puts them in order, he

said his memory verse, he gets the same reward as the other

kids get and it just means that he can be included now.

AJ could actually memorize it now, but it helps him to have

the visuals to put it in order. So that's a visual that it's do

you understand the difference between this and just a flash

card with a memory verse on it? Right?

That's a visual. But this is making it more

inclusive for your kids that have speech delays or issues.

OK, and then the last one there, No, there's two more, sorry, but

the next one is visual prayer Boards.

This one I'm particularly proud of.

I like this one a lot. Our son AJ has 2 cats and he

loves, that's not even a strong enough word.

He loves his cats. I think he loves my cat Callie

more than he loves his dad and I He really loves his cat.

And so in Sunday school and in junior church, every time we

would take prayer requests every week.

AJ, who are you praying for? I want to pray for Kelly and

Toby every week. And it's adorable, right?

Isn't that cute? Yeah, it's very cute.

But I started thinking, why do we do prayer requests in Sunday

school or junior church? To teach the kids how to pray,

right? Is that why we do it?

It should be because we want to model praying in front of them

so that they learn how to pray. We want to teach them that it's

important to bring their prayer requests to the Lord, and that's

why we do these things that we do.

So I started thinking, and I'm like, OK, it's really cute that

he prays for his cats every week, but as a teacher, am I

actually teaching him how to pray?

Because I don't just pray for the same thing all the time,

right? I bring all my needs to the

Lord. And so I told my husband I was

like, I'm going to make him a prayer choice board.

And so I asked him, I said apart from Callie and Toby, I want you

to give me 5 other things that you could pray for.

And so he gave me these. Now if your child, if your

student can't do that with our other little girl, we asked her

mom, what do you think are some things she would like to pray

for? And her mom told us and we did

that. So I did pictures because he

said mom and dad, my daughter and son-in-law, my other

daughter and her fiance, his sister Peyton, and then for

school. So now this is this is the

interesting part that he doesn't like very much.

So the board looks like this. So he comes in on Sunday

tomorrow. What are you going to pray for

in Sunday school, Callie Toby? OK, we're going to pray for

Callie Toby. And we put it up there.

Now at the end, it goes to the back.

So now in junior church, Callie and Toby are not a choice.

And he knows that, even though it makes him mad.

So now he'll pick someone else, right?

And then they go off on the back.

And he has to pray for all of these before we can put the back

back onto the front. OK, So what is that?

Couple of things about that. It's setting an expectation,

right, which helps reduce behaviors.

I have a whole lesson on managing expectations on our

website. You can from a previous year,

you can go back and watch that one.

But it manages his expectations and it tells him what my

expectations are of him. That reduces behaviors, OK, but

it's also teaching him you can pray about a whole bunch of

different things, right? And then what's really neat is

if like for our other little girl, they were taking a really

big trip and so that was one of her little prayers on there.

Well, the trips happened, they're back.

So now we can say, look, God answered your prayer and we can

take it off the board and then we put a new one on.

Do you see how that is inclusive?

It's including these kids that otherwise just may be left to

sit there and neither of them 'cause a problem during prayer

time. So it really doesn't matter.

No, it matters because I have to teach them how to pray.

It's my job and so it's important.

OK, I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this one, but the

next one is be aware of food preferences.

Be aware of food preferences. A lot of kids with special needs

have food allergies, food intolerances, things that

parents are trying to avoid. Can I just, can I just kind of,

this is from my heart right here.

Just don't do food. It's not necessary.

Just don't do food. There are so many kids with so

many allergies nowadays. We don't have to do food.

And it's almost become a culture in our class.

We had a situation once a little while ago where every single

week there was some reason for a sheet cake in Sunday school.

And I'm like, no, there's not. You don't need to feed cake kids

a sheet cake at 10:00 in the morning.

Especially not when you're dealing with kids that have like

behavioral issues and you're feeding them up on sugar.

OK, I'm not necessarily telling you what to do in your church,

but just think about it. Think about the end result.

If you're hyping kids up on sugar, just be careful, OK?

Point #2 we need to adapt the method of instruction.

The method of instruction. We want to keep our verbal

teaching time short, Short, maybe 15 minutes maybe.

Now I said earlier I was explaining this a little bit

more. Miss Cassandra and I teach the

same lesson in Sunday school and junior church.

And that allows us to keep our teaching time short because

we're hitting it both times, right?

But if you're dealing with kids that have ADHD or autism, their

attention spans about this big you tweet, you try to teach for

20 minutes of just you talking, you're losing control.

Every minute you go past like 10, 1012 minutes, you're losing

control, especially if you're teaching with just a flash card,

right? And I love Rebecca flash cards.

I love flash cards in general. I love visuals.

But if you're just standing there with a visual and you're

telling your story, you got 10 minutes.

And then those kids are they're not even paying attention

anymore. So why are we still talking,

right? They're not paying attention.

What I'm not saying is I'm not saying don't make it important

to teach, but there are lots of different ways we can teach.

We don't have to just teach by standing up there telling a

Bible story. OK, so here's some of the ideas

that we have. Can you just hand me one of

those spinning wheels? OK, I use felt almost every

week. This is the Betty Lukens felt

kit. I feel like I should earn

Commission from them because I talk about it all the time.

This is the small version, which if you have a small church, you

don't have a lot of storage. It's a great option.

They do make big huge ones that would go on like a regular sized

like easel board, but I love this one.

Tomorrow our lesson is on the prodigal son.

So I have two different scenes that I'll do with the kids.

Even my neurotypical kids get excited about this and we'll say

things like I'll have I won't have any of these people up

tomorrow. I may not even have the house

up. And I'll say, OK, what time of

day do you think it is in our story today?

Oh, it's daytime. Yes.

How do you know it's daytime? Because the sun is out, right?

The sun is out. And I get them involved into the

story. OK.

And then this is not the prodigal son, but I make some

sort of manipulative for AJ every single week because if he

has something in his hand to follow along with the story, he

pays more attention. And I'm telling you, you ask, I

probably could, I could probably could ask him, but I don't want

to put him on the spot. If I brought if I brought him

out here and showed him this, he could probably tell you the

story because of the visual, but it keeps his hands.

It keeps him engaged. I'll say, AJ, what picture are

you on? What's happening next?

And he'll be like, oh, you know, and he'll try to describe the

pictures. Some of them have words on it.

So he'll read the sentence, but it gets him involved and keeps

his attention. They're also great tools for

what's the word like reinforcement afterwards to be

like, can you tell me about the story?

And he'll go through each thing and he'll tell me the other ones

I do are can I have the one on the D ring, the flip, the

Flipboard, or just that one? I'll take that one, but yeah,

that one. So this is another one.

I don't do a wheel every week because he gets bored, right?

So alternate these. I found all of these on teacher,

pay teacher, all of them. And they're not expensive.

We're talking 4-5 dollars a week is what I spend on it.

So here's the Good Samaritan, which we which we just did.

So this one actually has the story on the bottom so he can

follow along. AJ cannot concentrate on just

verbal. He has to have visual.

Also, he's not just auditory. And so even at home, we have to

have visuals. We have to have things in front

of him to help him retain the information.

If I just speak to him, he's not going to retain as much as if I

show him and speak to him. OK, So this one, he'll follow

along. He'll flip his book and it just,

it helps keep him engaged in the story.

This one is a little bit more in depth in the sense that as he

goes through, he's supposed to put the correct image on the

bottom. So this is more of a review.

It can get kind of noisy if you do it during the lesson, but

like afterwards as a review, you can be like, wait, find a

picture of Nicodemus watching Jesus heal a man's hand and

he'll do he'll put that on as a review.

Usually when the other kids are doing like the craft time

because he doesn't really like that.

But it's just another visual tool.

And it's a great way to make sure that what is what is he

actually got from the lesson right is did he learn anything?

I want to know. The teaching time shouldn't be

more than 15 minutes. Reteach the lesson by doing

multiple different activities. So we might do the felt board

and then I might have the kids act the story out, or we might

watch a little video about the story, or we might play a game

related to the story. Or we might I might let the kids

retell the story with the felt. So I may be only teaching for 10

minutes or so, but we're taking up 20 minutes going over the

story and over the story and over the story.

But it's allowing the kids to move and be involved.

So we're reducing behaviors because that's really the goal

here is to reduce any behaviors and also make sure the kids are

learning and retaining the information.

OK, letter B teach from the senses, teach from all the

senses. The more senses we can

incorporate in our classroom, the better chance we have of our

kids being involved and engaged and staying engaged.

So here's just three examples of something that I have done in my

classroom. We taught Nicodemus comes to

Jesus by night. Well, it's night time, so I made

my classroom dark. I put a blue tablecloth on the

door because we have glass and I put can not real candles.

I don't do real candles. I did.

I did battery operated candles all around my classroom.

And then I played night sounds on my phone and the kids were

like, I was like, what time of day do you think it is?

It's night time. Yeah, it's night time.

We're going to talk about a man who came to Jesus at night.

Why would we come to Jesus at night time?

And then my kids that are a little bit older.

Oh, but he didn't want anyone to see him.

Oh, that's right. Do you see how immediately

you've got your kids attention? Right.

And this works with non special Ed kids.

Wise man built on a rock versus the foolish man on the sand.

I had a sheet, a cookie sheet, and we had flour and I made like

a, a dam with blocks in the middle.

And they made a house on one side with blocks and the other

they made on the hill of flour and we poured water and the

house fell over. OK.

Oh, this was fun. I taught the lesson on the blind

man who Jesus touched his eyes with clay and gave him his

sight. So we made slime because why

not? And so I had a, I had a table

and we made slime because I said I wasn't about to let us play in

the mud because I didn't think mom mommies and daddies like

that very much. So we made slime and we talked

about how it felt and we talked about and I made it, I added

food coloring to it and I added like food safe scents to it.

And they got to smell it and touch it.

And you tell me the kids won't remember that.

Of course they're going to remember that.

And AJ, it was all about it. And it just, it's just another

layer of teaching the story by getting them up out of their

seats, getting them involved, getting them to be a part of the

story of what's going on. OK, Teach with movement.

Teach with movement. My kiddos love these little

stick puppets. Are these cute?

This one is 0. Jerry's his daughter.

So after I told the story with my felt, the kids each got to

take a little character and we acted out the story.

OK, so I may be only taught for 10 minutes, but then them

retelling the story afterwards, I'm just teaching it again,

right? And reiterating all those

different truths that I want them to learn.

I taught the story of Peter walking on the water and I

brought a tablecloth in and my daughter, who's my helper, We

had the kids walk and we made it like the ocean and then they

fell down because they weren't looking at Jesus.

And then let them act out the story, right.

The more we can get the body involved, the better it is.

Especially if you have kids with ADHD.

Get them moving. Get them using their movement

for your purpose because if you don't, they're going to use it

for their purpose. So be deliberate in getting

movement into your classroom and then teach using lots of

different visuals. Teach using lots of different

visuals. We use the felt board.

We use flash cards. Can I have those ones, baby?

What I love about this too is I don't know, I would like to get

in on the ground floor of this because whoever the artist is

that drew these characters, every single creator on Teacher

Pay Teacher uses exactly the same artwork.

That person must be a millionaire by now, man.

But, and what I like about it is it doesn't seem to matter which

store I go to, they do all have the same visuals.

So there's a little bit of continuity from week to week,

which is really cool no matter who I buy from.

But this is an example of of, of flash cards.

And then it might be that this flash card story matches the one

AJ's holding. So it's easy for him to keep up

and see what's going on. Use visual storyboards, which I

already showed you visual story wheels and then the clip art

puppets, which I already showed you all of those.

So just the more the merrier, right?

Keep them, keep it interesting. And then we want to talk about

adapting the conditions, Adapting the conditions.

So what do I mean by conditions? This is a secular example, OK?

If you're a teacher in the public school and you have a

student with dyslexia, they would be given a special

condition for exam time. It might be that everyone in the

class, everyone else in the class gets an hour and a child

with dyslexia maybe gets an hour and a half.

OK, That's a condition that has been given to that child because

of their special need. So it may be that in our

classrooms, we need to provide similar conditions for our

special needs kids. And so the one, one way that we

can do that we already talked about is with how we word our

rules, OK, I, we have to be careful.

We don't want to look like we're playing favorites with our kids,

right? But my kids in my classroom know

that sometimes AJ needs something that they don't.

And that's OK. And you know what?

That teaches them to see the need and have compassion, right?

Especially if I if I relay it that way, right?

So it may be that AJ is having a particularly hard day.

Well, I'm maybe not going to be as strict with him on the rule

as I would be otherwise. And you want to be careful,

right? I know my son, if he wasn't my

son, it might be a little bit different.

But we just want to be thinking about am I just being a stickler

or am I actually trying to help the child in where they're at,

what they need right now. Maybe they need a break and you

don't normally let kids leave your classroom.

Well, that would be a condition. AJ leaves our classroom after

Sunday school and before junior church.

None of our other kids do unless their parents come and take them

to the bathroom or something. But we don't have a basement

where the kids can, like, go, so we have to keep them in there.

But AJ, one of his conditions is that if he needs the break, he

goes to his daddy's office and he gets a break.

OK. It's an example of a condition.

It may be that you have a kid that needs to go for a walk with

her helper, and all the other kids are like, well, I want to

go. You don't need to go.

He needs to go. So we're going to make a

condition for him to go. Memory verse would be another

example of a condition, right? All the other kids have to

verbally say their memory verse. But AJ and our other little

girl, they get to use the board. OK.

Prayer time is another example of how we made a condition for a

special needs kid. Activity time is probably what

the one we would use the most. I would say AJ hates coloring of

any kind. He hates it.

I am not going to give him a coloring sheet to do because I'm

going to be shooting myself in the foot.

He's going to get bored. So I give him an activity that's

usually slightly different than the rest of the kids.

I will. Sometimes I'll make sheets for

him with the memory verse and he writes it.

Sometimes I'll have a paper with like the names of the people

from the story and he'll write it.

Sometimes I'll give him that. Can you hold that one up?

Yeah. Sometimes I'll give him

something like this where he is retelling the story, right?

He's putting them in order. He's really retelling the story.

He might do that at the table while the other kids are doing

the whatever the activity is we're doing, right?

That would be that would be called a condition, right?

I'm allowance isn't really the right word, but because.

Allowances aren't necessarily needed, but a condition is

needed, right? So I, I give him that to do, but

he's still included with all the other kids at the table, right?

Teacherspayteachers have amazing adaptive resources for lesson

activities. I probably should buy stock in

teacher pay teacher. And then here's some

alternatives to craft time. I feel like sometimes we just

like, oh, here's a coloring sheet, right?

Here's a coloring sheet. Because my brain's tired now.

I just want you to do something for the last 10 minutes of

class. So here's some examples of some

different things you can do. I didn't grab any of these.

I'll grab some for later. I have done word searches

before. And again, it's another great

way to reinforce the story right as we're looking for the So we

just did Jerry's daughter, who was Jarius, What was wrong?

What did he need? As they're looking for the word.

I'm still teaching the story lesson.

Bingo is a fun one, and so I'll bring that out later.

I don't have that visual. Storyboards are fun.

You can also print a lot of these ones that I make for AJ.

You can just print them and have your kids as the activity, put

the story in order and then color their own, you know,

storybook. A visual scavenger hunt is fun.

We've done that. We did that at Easter.

The kids loved that. That was fun.

If you have a bigger room than ours, it would be a lot more

fun. But you give a clue and then the

kids have to go find the visual that matches the clue.

So for example, at Easter time, we did Jesus.

So Judas, too many J names, Judas got this for betraying

Jesus. And the kids would be like, oh,

silver coins. And they were running all around

the room trying to find the picture that had the silver

coins in it. So it's an absolutely great

review, right? Because they have to know the

lesson to be able to answer the question to then find the image.

And it's a great review game because it allows for movement.

And again, movement is is so necessary.

The letter F says provide a break space if possible.

I know that's not always possible and it's not possible

also if you're the only teacher, right?

If you're the only person in the room, you can't leave the other

kids to take a kid out, right? So maybe if you have a child

that gets overstimulated in the room, you may have to for a

little while, have a second helper that's just for that

little one that can give them the breaks that they need to

then bring them back in and may even have to be mom and dad for

a little while. And that's OK.

But it just means that church doesn't become something they

dread, right? Because this is what will

happen. Then the kid will have, the

child will have more and more excessive behaviors every

Sunday, and then mom and dad say we can't come.

And then that's how parents drop out of church.

And then the divorce rate, I don't remember the statistic,

but the divorce rate of special needs families is through the

roof. And so they are not having

community, they're not hearing the word of God, they're not

being encouraged to be good spiritual parents.

So it may be that if you have a child that's new or they're just

having a really difficult time in the classroom, maybe mom or

dad has to buddy with them for a little while.

We've done it with our older girls before where they've

buddied with their brother and they've taken him out and let

him have a break and then go back into class, and now he

doesn't need any of those things.

And a lot of times, that's what will happen.

You're not necessarily setting up something for a lifetime.

You're making an accommodation for a child in order to make

coming to church possible for them.

And as they do that, more and more they learn the tools that

they need to be able to be in your classroom and to stay in

that environment. I said this already, AJ goes to

his dad's office between Sunday school and junior church.

And again, none of the other kids are like, well, I want to

go to pastor's office because they know.

They know, Oh no, AJ needs that. That's what AJ needs and they're

happy for him to have it because it's it.

That's an environment that we have fostered in our church and

that allows them some time for self regulation, which is so

important because the goal here is that the child learns to

regulate their own emotions, right?

The child learns to regulate their own behaviors.

But we have to be as the adults, the one that gives them the

tools to be able to do that very, very quickly.

I want to talk about a few other adaptations that would fit into

any of these situations. The first one is adapting song

time. I did those of you who were here

the last time we had lesson, I did a whole thing up here where

I talked about rhythm sticks or something like that where you

can have a child involved in the song time.

If you have a child that's non verbal, they're not going to

sing the song, right? So what can you do so that they

feel included in the song time? Maybe they get to hold the

visual, maybe they clap. Maybe they would you learn sign

language if they know sign language for a song, right?

Think of some way to make an adaption so that they feel

included in song time. If your class is doing a

performance in your church. Our kids did.

I think it was 4th of July. They did my country tis of the

AJ got to wave a flag. Our our other child who's non

verbal, she wasn't here. She was on her trip.

But we're singing again for our missions conference and, and she

Can't Sing, she's non verbal. So we will give her something, a

visual or something. We're singing Take me now, Lord

Jesus. So a heart or something, I don't

know. We'll give her something so that

she can hold it up. And I always think of friends of

ours who have a little well, she's not a little girl.

She's an adult now who was bitten by a tick when she was

young and ended up with Rocky Mountain spotted tick fever.

I always put those words in the wrong order and became severely

disabled, could not talk, could not walk without assistance.

Just so many things neurologically that happened to

her because of having this illness and I will never forget

watching. I used to go to her church

watching the kids, all the kids in that church get up to sing

for their patch program. And she got up there with her

augmented speech device and she would press, she would press the

words while the kids were singing.

That's inclusion. That was inclusion before

inclusion was a thing because this was a long time ago.

That's inclusion. That little girl deserves to be

up there with the rest of her class.

She couldn't sing the songs, but she had her little Walker with

her little speech device. And I remember looking at that,

and this was before I was married, before I had a special

needs child. And I just remember that

touching my heart so deeply that that church loved her so much

and they valued her so much that they figured out whatever it was

they needed to do to get her up on that stage with the rest of

the kids. And not just standing there,

right, but actively participating in what the rest

of the kids were doing. That is what we're trying to

talk about today. What can we do so that that

child feels included? We could talk about special

outings that you may do or whatever, whether you're taking

field trips to school. But if you're taking like a kids

activity or something, be thinking about your special

needs kids. You don't want it to be that

you're like, you get there and you're like, oh, I don't know

how they're going to do this, right?

Think about it before we're having this activity.

Can AJ be included? If he can't be included, what

can I do so that he is included? Right.

And that will go a long, long way with your special needs

parents too. They will feel very seen and

heard if they know that you are going to make an effort so that

you're their little 1 can be included in what you're doing

right. All right.

Oh yeah. I.

Think we'll do this because we just have a few minutes before

we break for lunch. We have a longer question and

answer session after lunch that just encompasses everything

we've talked over. But there's a lot here.

It kind of feels like drinking out of a fire hose probably to

see all that we have here. And this is all doable.

This is all things that you can do, but no doubt you have some

questions. And so maybe just for the next 7

or 8 minutes, if you have a question directed to Diane about

what you see here on the table or about manipulatives in

general, why don't you go ahead and just raise your hand And

then we'll have, we'll try to get it so that that we have our

mics up top, we'll get for the people who are watching online.

Does anybody have a question for Diane?

Not everybody wants can't handle that.

All right, there we go. Good.

Would you recommend being prepared and doing at least some

basics before you have special needs children in your church?

I mean, you, you can basic things, OK, So like visual

schedule, sure, because you can use that no matter what.

Visual rules, sure. I think all classrooms should

have those. As an educator, I think all

classrooms should have those anyway.

So those kind of things, absolutely.

Even like the reward system and all of that.

Yes, the other stuff, we have to be careful with some of it

because it is kind of need specific.

So you wouldn't want to go too crazy, right?

And then the child that God brings to you doesn't have, you

don't have what they need. But, but I mean, yeah, I mean,

if and if your church has the budget and your pastor's OK with

it and you want to start making visuals for your next year,

praying that God will bring in special needs kiddo, go for it.

I think that's awesome. And then just one additional

thought is that I'm not certified, but I've worked with

special education. I.

Think a lot of the basics you can adapt to most children like

with schedules and I think it helps with regulating those

children as well in a in a basic and it teaches them to kind of

conform to. Yes, I agree.

And I agree with that especially, you know, a lot of

us in here are from smaller churches where we don't have

different classrooms for different ages, right.

All of our kids are in the same classroom.

So yeah, a visual schedule, visual rules.

When you have a four year old in there and a 10 year old, that's

awesome, right, Because you are, it's your, the 10 year old maybe

doesn't need it, but the four year old does.

And it helps them to learn to self regulate too.

Yeah, that's something I've learned as a special needs mom

that I didn't necessarily learn when my older kids were little

was how much they need to learn self regulation too.

It's just not as obvious necessarily as it is with my

son. But I know now with my youngest

daughter, I'm much more aware of it because I've seen how my son

has needed that and and how to help her with that too.

Yeah. Anyone else?

What's the name of that? Teacherspayteachers, is it in

the resource guide? So yes, and then the last page,

the next to last page of your booklet is a resource page and

it's going to name a lot of the things that we've talked about

today so that you can go back. But if you are looking and I, I

said I'd let Diane talk about I'm a normal creature and I'm

taking over again. But if you look at this and say

we're not, we're not making this up, we can't do that.

I just want to remind you, we didn't do this either.

This was bought and purchased on teacher pay.

Teachers that one normally that's close that is.

That one is Royal Kids, which is.

Also funded, right? So and that's also in the back

as well. But you're looking at cutting

these that's and listen, Diane goes the extra mile and

laminates them. You don't have to laminate them

unless you think about reusing them over and over again.

Or if you're using them maybe 3 weeks in a row, you might want

to laminate them. But even that's not necessary.

And there's so much of this that does cover the spectrum, not

just the spectrum of autism, but just spectrum in general.

I'm thinking of Betty Lukens. You know, it's so interesting

that kids are so over stimulated.

Most of these kids have iPads. Most of these kids have phones

way too young. They are inundated with media.

But I will tell you this, they are always so excited about belt

board, you know, because you know, you can have iPad, but you

can't go, you know, and move it around and all of that.

And Betty Lukens and this is where we both are on the same

page with this as far as wanting to get maybe some kind of

Commission, but we're not affiliated with, with them at

all. But I have this is the second

set we bought in our ministry, the 1st in Florida, where the

books just give you the lessons. They tell you what to do.

They give you a wonderful folder to be able to, to store them.

In fact, if you want to look at our Betty Lukens folder, just

please be careful, don't not taking things out.

It's in the back and you can look at those and they're great

for everything. One of our I mentioned someone

earlier, the editor of our books, I've worked with her all

the way from when I was writing for religious columns for our

town newspaper before the newspaper went belly up.

And every time she's read one of our books, she said this.

I don't have special needs children, she says.

But almost everything you talk about is applicable to my

neurotypical children because all of these are just basic

principles. But at the same time, and that's

where you have to be careful, not going too far ahead because

you don't know what specific adaptations you have to make

until you know the diagnosis is in the room.

And so some of these generally you can use Betty Lukens works

for anyone, but this may not be as helpful depending on the

child specifically you have in your room.

So a lot of really good stuff here.

And I would say teacher pay teachers, royal kids.

And again, being careful to understand that, and we say this

on the back of the resource page, some of those are secular

in the sense that teacher pay teachers is just teachers making

things and selling them to other teachers.

So we're not talking about doctrine.

We're not talking about the King James Bible.

You have to take care of those things on your own and use

wisdom going through. And as I mentioned in our class

previously with the gentleman, we continue to use the King

James Bible with our children, despite the fact that it might

be more difficult for them. But we're not going to change

the word of God to try to explain away what the what the

children need to learn. We're just going to teach them

through this. And what you're going to see at

1:00 with the video that Diane shows you, I think it's really

going to hammer home how you can do this yourself by just using

the Bible and teaching children little bits at a time.

I took over. I'm sorry.

So anyway, we have time for one more question.

Want to check is there any on the live?

Stream. We'll say why he's looking.

This is also a great a great way to have like our little girl

that's non verbal. Let's say we were doing a review

Question Time. She's non verbal.

She can't answer a question, so we could say I'm not going to

use her name, but I'll use my own.

Hey, Diane, can you bring me the picture where, Jesus, wait,

which one is this? Oh, Good Samaritan, can you

bring me the picture where the man helped?

Sick man? She brings you the right

question, the right picture. Then you realize she was

listening right and she understood there's some

understanding there. One thing that's really, really

important if you have kids with speech delays or speech, any

kind of communication problem, issue or complete non verbalism,

you must assume competence. Just because a child cannot

speak does not mean they are not intelligent.

Just because it's my son is way more intelligent than his speech

would indicate. You have to assume intelligence

and and not just intelligence, but like that they can

comprehend what you're saying. I tell tell a story about that

in our book that I won't go into now, but how God showed that to

me as a parent. Yes, your son understands what

you're saying to him. Just because he can't talk to

you doesn't mean he doesn't understand you.

So don't assume that your little nonverbal child can't answer a

quick word. They they don't they're not

understanding. You don't know that unless you

try to find out.