Jowonio is inclusion. The variety of abilities, needs, learning styles, cultures, and backgrounds in our classrooms enrich our students’ experience. We celebrate, support, and empower our differences. Through modeling, we encourage both nurturing and active play for all children to support the growth of caring, empathy, and social problem-solving skills.
The Jowonio Way
We start with a strong, developmentally appropriate preschool program for all children, grounded in play and focused on social-emotional development, as well as language, cognitive, and motor skills. Then, we build individualized classroom accommodations that allow each child to fully access and participate in all the program offers. Using a strengths-based approach, we consciously build classroom communities that celebrate the unique gifts each child has to offer. This means children get exposed to a variety of ways to communicate, move through the world, and interact.
Jowonio Inclusion in Action
Time and again, we’ve heard from parents, and from the elementary school teachers who receive our graduates, about the life-changing impact of Jowonio’s inclusive model on their children. Their comments reflect the empathy, kindness, and social problem-solving skills developed in their Jowonio graduates, as well as their ability to see each of their peers as an individual first, with shared interests and strengths, rather than defining them by their differences.
Differences between each other are not what stand out to our kids. What Jowonio kids care about is who their friend is, and who they can be as a friend.
Jowonio’s History of Inclusion
Jowonio first opened as an alternative school for school-aged children. By the mid-1970s, the school received grant funding to hire staff to support students with special needs, who at the time weren’t guaranteed any support in public schools.
At first, students at Jowonio were separated based on needs and abilities. However, the students organically began visiting other classrooms to play with their peers and the teachers. The teachers let it happen and observed how these interactions improved communication and creativity among all students. Eventually, they followed the lead of the students and put everyone in the same classroom no matter of ability or need—a testament to our school culture to let the students pave the way.
It was not until the New York State Education Department began to recognize the need for special education programming that local public school districts began to address those students’ needs and offer necessary support. As elementary schools followed suit, Jowonio became a preschool. Today, Jowonio serves children ages 2-5, and works to support the development of inclusion models for students across the age span, in schools and in society.