Educators at Teachers College, Columbia University celebrated the launch of the Inclusive Classrooms Project website designed to help K-12 educators in New York City make their curriculum more accessible for all students.

Celia Oyler and Britt Hamre, professors at Teachers College, recruited New York City school teachers to discuss their experiences making classrooms more inclusive and to develop content for the site. The website features their first-person stories and information for other teachers on topics such as culturally relevant curriculum and using technology to assist children with disabilities. The Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning partnered with the professors to develop the project.

The website includes downloadable lesson plans, videos of materials in use, recommended reading, and interactive multimedia “posters” created with the web-based tool Glogster.

Teachers College hosted a reception in honor of the website going public on December 2, 2011. Educators, Teachers College students, and staff who worked on the project attended the event, as did Laura Rodriguez, Chief Achievement Officer for Special Education and English Language Learners at the NYC Department of Education and a member of the Citywide Council on Special Education.

The project is part of a Phase One 2010-2011 Special Education Reform strategic partnership between the Teachers College Inclusive Classroom Project (TCICP) and the NYC Department of Education.