The following article comes to us by way of the Inclusion Daily Express. The full article is in the NY Times.
A School District That Takes The Isolation Out Of Autism
(New York Times)
August 2, 2010
MADISON, WISCONSIN– [Excerpt] Garner Moss has autism and when he was finishing fifth grade, his classmates made a video about him, so the new students he would meet in the bigger middle school would know what to expect. His friend Sef Vankan summed up Garner this way: “He puts a little twist in our lives we don’t usually have without him.”
People with autism are often socially isolated, but the Madison public schools are nationally known for including children with disabilities in regular classes. Now, as a high school junior, Garner, 17, has added his little twist to many lives.
He likes to memorize plane, train and bus routes, and in middle school during a citywide scavenger hunt, he was so good that classmates nicknamed him “GPS-man.”
He is not one of the fastest on the high school cross-country team, but he runs like no other. “Garner enjoys running with other kids, as opposed to past them,” said Casey Hopp, his coach.
Entire article:
A School District That Takes the Isolation Out of Autism
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/education/02winerip.html
Planet of the Blind 
One of the biggest challenges of group learning environments is balancing the needs and rights of each student with the needs and rights of other students, the educational system and the community as a whole. It can be a daunting enough challenge that segregated groupings are created rather than inclusive groups. Segregated groups have great advantages in being able to address the specific needs of similar individuals. Students, for example, are divided into grade levels to promote grade-specific learning. However, one of the potential benefits of hetero-, rather than homogeneous groups, such as the type that is being fostered in Madison, is that everyone has a better chance to learn critical adaptation and co-existence strategies from and with people who are different from another. Students who meet Garner Moss in the context of a learning environment have a much better chance of understanding him than if they met him on a public bus on their way home from school. In the field of vision impairment, we still debate the relative merits of specialized vs. mainstream learning environments. When one rationally compares the two options, one must conclude that one method of education should never prevail over another in all instances. Overall, flexible education options stand the best chance of creating systems that nurture and sustain both students and their educational systems.
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