In this online working group, experienced colleagues bring together examples of good practice and make them accessible to their colleagues who support children with special educational needs in a school context.

The focus is on supporting teachers in their collaboration within the school as well as with therapists and doctors. Cooperation with parents is also an important topic. And last but not least, it is about developing the exercises for the children that are adapted to their abilities and stage of life.

In cooperation with the Pedagogical Section, the results of this working group can be offered in conferences and workshops for teachers and curative educators.

If you would like to join the working group, please register on the Sutra platform.

We warmly invite all who are engaged in the realization of inclusion in schools (*) to participate in our new online working group.

The working group is a platform for collaboration, rather than a further training or a place of observation.

Our goal is to come to an understanding of practical ways to realize inclusion and the necessary skills and attitudes to make this possible. Since we have a big diversity of regional systems and conditions in our worldwide movement, we will focus on the support needs of the children and on the work of teachers, educators, therapists and school doctors who work out of anthroposophy, rather than on the legal and political aspects.

We have planned 4 online sessions:

Session 1: on the 25th of November 2025 at 15:00 CET and on the 27th of November 2025 at 20:00 CET.
The topic will be: our seminar day at the Autumn Conference 2025: experiences and new impulses for the working group.

Session 2: on the 2nd of February 2026 at 14:00 CET and on the 4th of February 2026 at 20:00 CET.
The topic will be: changes in puberty and consequences for supportive education.

Session 3: on the 23rd of March 2026 at 14:00 CET and on the 25th of March 2026 at 20:00 CET

Session 4: on the 26th of May 2026 at 14:00 CET and (on the same day) at 20:00 CET

With our small core team we will prepare the agenda, the moderation and the reporting of the sessions.

Magdi Abdel-Rahman, Ulrike Barth, Bart Vanmechelen

(*)
As Tony Booth and Mel Ainscow write in their book "Index of inclusion" – it is not possible to write down in one sentence, what inclusion means. But inclusion in education involves

• Putting inclusive values into action.
• Viewing every life and every death as of equal worth.
• Supporting everyone to feel that they belong.
• Increasing participation in learning and teaching activities, relationships and communities of local schools.
• Improving schools for staff and parents/carers as well as children.
• Reducing exclusion, discrimination, barriers to learning and participation.
• Learning from the reduction of barriers for some children to benefit children more widely.
• Restructuring cultures, policies and practices to respond to diversity in ways that value everyone equally.
• Linking education to local and global realities.
• Viewing differences between children and between adults as resources for learning.
• Acknowledging the right of children to an education of high quality in their locality.
• Emphasising the development of schoolcommunities and values, as well as achievements.
• Fostering mutually sustaining relationships between schools and surrounding communities.
• Recognising that inclusion in education is one aspect of inclusion in society.
  (Booth & Ainscow, 2016, p 22)

So if we talk about inclusive (Waldorf) schools, we talk about schools for EVERY child.

Anyone interested in contributing their experience to this working group and expanding it in collaboration with colleagues should please contact Bart Vanmechelen.