Is Inclusion Right for One or All?

                When choosing my essay for the Rhetorical Analysis & Response essay I wanted to pick something that caught my attention. So I chose a topic called Clearing the Hurdles of Inclusion written by Sandy Merritt a First grade teacher who has taught for 29 years. Merritt discusses how terrifying and exciting it is to teach a general education class that includes students with disabilities. Merritt said “Many general education teachers are frightened by the prospect of including students with disabilities in the general education classroom because they have no formal training in dealing with the challenges that these students face.” Merritt discusses three different students with varying disabilities and explains how inclusion helped each one of these students. This essay was written with an educated audience in mind with the goal of educating the audience about inclusion and how it benefits students.

                As I began analyzing this essay I found myself trying to find the ethos, pathos, and logos. I also began looking for key transition words and checking to see how organized her paper was from beginning to end.  When reading through the essay I found some interesting comments that Merritt had made that I wanted to quote in my paper as well. I will leave you with this quote that I felt summed up her entire essay “ When inclusion comes your way, you have two options: You can complain and convince yourself that you will have a bad year, or you can embrace inclusion and learn something new.”

Work Cited

Merritt, Sandy. "Clearing The Hurdles Of Inclusion." Educational Leadership 59.3 (2001):67-70.               OmniFile Full Text Mega (H.W. Wilson). Web. 4 Oct. 2013.