I am conflicted about inclusion. I have been in the thick of it. In some ways, it’s just managing chaos. After a year of inclusion, my typical 6th graders never once invited the disabled in – the disabled kids were not their friends, they were just obstacles in the classroom the typical kids had learned to avoid. I made a film called “Inclusion Is.” I filmed these kids for the whole year. The divide between the typical 6th grader and the disabled 6th grader is like North Korea. The social media was called girls. They decided where your place was in the pecking order. I would use the word “influencers” but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Inclusion didn’t work because the educators didn’t know how to make it work. How can you get away with not being a friend to any of “them,” and make it all the way to butterfly status as most popular girl in school. You try to please somone like me. You crown some kid in a wheelchair king of the institution. A girl in a long dress stands beside the kid in the wheelchair, both smiling. It’s all rhetoric. Do you think any of the 6th graders ever invited any of their disabled “friends” to events like birthday parties. I had kids who did not know what a birthday party was. One school had special ed in the boiler room. My kids could not attend recess until everyone else had left the playground. I am unsure about inclusion although I’ve done it. It felt like being excited to go out and play basketball. So you race outside. And no one is there.