Building an Inclusive Organization

What would it look like if every student in your school—regardless of ability, background, or language—truly belonged? Leading an Inclusive School: Access and Success for ALL Students by Richard A. Villa and Jacqueline S. Thousand answers this question with a roadmap for transforming schools into places where inclusion isn’t an add-on, but the foundation of learning itself. Drawing from decades of research, field experience, and vivid real-world stories, the authors show that inclusion isn’t merely a special education reform—it’s a moral, cultural, and instructional revolution.

At its heart, Villa and Thousand’s message is simple but radical: all students have the right to learn and thrive together. The authors contend that inclusive education fulfills the deepest aims of democracy, where students experience community, respect, challenge, and belonging. They frame inclusion not as a special program for a few, but as a reimagining of how schools define excellence, equity, and leadership itself. This approach merges administrative leadership, co-teaching, collaborative problem solving, and differentiated instruction into one coherent framework for educators determined to make ‘all means all’ a daily reality.

The Schoolhouse of Inclusion

To bring inclusion to life, the authors present their Schoolhouse Model, a brilliant metaphor for how inclusive schools are built. At the foundation sits strong leadership and a shared vision. The next floors rise on collaboration, co-teaching, and a multitiered system of supports (MTSS), culminating in differentiated, universally designed instruction that reaches every learner. This model positions inclusion as an interconnected system, not a single reform. It reminds you that inclusion succeeds when administrators, teachers, students, and families all work in concert around a shared purpose: learning together as interdependent citizens.

Why Inclusion Matters Now

Villa and Thousand argue that the struggle for inclusion today mirrors the larger civil rights fights of past generations. Schools, they emphasize, should not prepare students for life—they should be life. When students with disabilities, English learners, and typical peers learn together, all benefit: empathy increases, academic gaps narrow, and future community barriers dissolve. The book’s many ‘Voices of Inclusion’ chapters—firsthand accounts from parents, teachers, and administrators—make this point vividly. Rosalind and Joe Vargo’s story about their daughter Ro, for example, shows how inclusive schooling cultivated friendships, resilience, and joy not only for her but for her classmates, who grew into compassionate adults because of her presence.

From Policy to Practice

Legally, inclusion is grounded in landmark legislation such as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which reinforce every child’s right to a free and appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment. But Villa and Thousand bring these policies to life by showing how they should function day to day: administrators redefining roles, teachers co-planning lessons, paraeducators facilitating peer partnership rather than isolation, and principals championing a culture of equity. Their blueprint bridges the gap between compliance and commitment.

The Circle of Courage

Drawing from the Lakota concept of the Circle of Courage—belonging, mastery, independence, and generosity—the authors ground inclusion in a human framework. Schools, they suggest, must foster communities where every person feels they belong, is encouraged to master meaningful skills, enjoys autonomy in learning, and contributes generously to others. Education, then, becomes a symphony of shared responsibility rather than a race for individual achievement.

Reimagining Leadership

Ultimately, Leading an Inclusive School invites you to rethink what leadership means. A leader isn’t just an administrator or policymaker—it’s anyone who takes action to foster inclusion, from a veteran teacher co-designing accessible lessons to a student mentoring a peer. Inclusion is both a philosophy and a daily practice, built one conversation, one plan, and one relationship at a time. By interweaving heartfelt stories with practical frameworks like co-teaching, Universal Design for Learning, and collaborative problem-solving, Villa and Thousand show that building inclusive schools isn’t merely possible—it’s imperative. And it starts, always, with the courage to say, “All really means all.”

The authors argue that lasting inclusion begins with leadership grounded in vision, skills, incentives, resources, and action planning. These five variables function as the ‘complex change’ equation—a framework administrators must master to transform schools. Without clear vision, schools drift; without skills or resources, even the most passionate reforms collapse.

Crafting and Sharing a Vision

Inclusive change begins with a shared moral purpose. Principals and teachers must articulate a belief that all children can and will learn. Villa and Thousand emphasize that “visionizing” is not a desk exercise but a social process. Principals like those in Yazmin Pineda Zapata’s study embody this—they communicate inclusion as a civil rights imperative, repeating “all means all” until it becomes cultural DNA. Every cafeteria worker, bus driver, and paraprofessional must understand their role in making students feel valued.

(Compare this to Peter Senge’s idea of a “shared vision” in The Fifth Discipline—change sticks only when the whole organization co-owns its purpose.)

Building Skills and Confidence

Training is the next step. Effective leaders provide sustained, hands-on professional development—not one-off workshops. Teachers need to learn co-teaching methods, differentiation through Universal Design for Learning, and positive behavioral supports. Principals lead by example when they attend sessions alongside their staff, signaling that inclusion is everyone’s priority.

Creating Incentives and Emotional Support

Change takes courage, and courage requires emotional reinforcement. The principals Zapata interviewed made time daily to celebrate small wins and address teachers’ frustrations. The message: inclusion is hard—but worth it. They honored teachers with notes, time to collaborate, and recognition in newsletters. As Thomas Sergiovanni noted, intrinsic motivation—commitment born of moral purpose—is the most enduring incentive.

Securing Resources and Action Planning

Inclusion fails when resources don’t match expectations. Effective leaders align funds to hire co-teaching staff, provide collaboration time, and purchase assistive technology. They plan concrete steps—educating stakeholders on inclusion’s “why,” showing “how” through modeling and coaching, and revisiting progress through data and reflection. As one principal put it, “Vision without action is a dream; action without vision just passes time.” True leadership combines both to change the world—one inclusive classroom at a time.

Villa and Thousand center their argument around the Circle of Courage—a Native American model of holistic human development based on belonging, mastery, independence, and generosity. They suggest that these four elements perfectly describe what inclusive education should nurture in every child. Schools that neglect any of them risk producing students who are academically skilled but spiritually impoverished.

Belonging: The Foundation of Motivation

People learn best when they feel they belong. The book reminds you that segregated programs rob students of this essential human need. Norman Kunc’s famous line—“They can’t learn until they belong”—echoes here. The tragedy, the authors note, is that removing a student from their peers to help them ‘catch up’ can break the very bond that makes learning possible. Inclusion restores belonging as the precondition for every kind of growth.

Mastery and Independence

When students pursue learning in shared, supportive spaces, they achieve mastery through collaboration. True independence, the authors argue, doesn’t mean isolation—it means agency built on trust and skill. Inclusive schools therefore replace the “fix the child” mentality with “change the environment.” You see this vividly in Mr. Rice’s class, where students with disabilities thrive alongside peers by mastering literature through different formats and technologies.

Generosity: The Culmination of Community

Generosity completes the circle. Students in inclusive schools learn to give back—to mentor, collaborate, empathize, and serve. When Ro Vargo volunteers at nursing homes and her peers protect her dignity during difficult times, both express generosity in action. Inclusion, the book reminds you, is not charity—it’s a reciprocal act of shared humanity. Schools cultivating these four values create citizens who not only excel but also uplift others.

Inclusive schooling thrives on teamwork. Chapter 4 presents the art of collaborative planning and problem solving—a skillset that enables teachers, parents, and students to jointly overcome barriers. Villa and Thousand compare effective teams to living organisms: adaptive, communicative, and interdependent. Without collaboration, even the best strategies collapse under isolation.

Building Effective Teams

The authors identify five essentials drawn from cooperative learning research—positive interdependence, interpersonal skills, group processing, individual accountability, and consistent face-to-face interaction. Responsibility is shared, not divided. Roles like ‘encourager,’ ‘recorder,’ and ‘timekeeper’ create structure and parity among general and special educators. The result is not just better meetings—but a culture of joint ownership for student success.

Overcoming Barriers with Creative Thinking

To help teams think innovatively, the authors integrate the Osborn-Parnes Creative Problem-Solving Process—six steps of challenge finding, fact finding, problem finding, idea finding, solution finding, and acceptance finding. This structured creativity helps schools prevent “blame games” and instead focus on action. For example, when a middle schooler named Shamonique struggled with reading in social studies, her team used this method to generate 22 adaptive solutions—including songs, visual tools, and peer supports—most invented by students themselves.

Empowering Students as Co-Solvers

The authors advocate teaching these strategies to kids, too. When a 4th grade class used the ‘SODAS IF’ framework (Situation–Options–Disadvantages–Advantages–Solution–Implementation/Future), they learned peaceful conflict resolution through guided dialogue. This democratizes inclusion—making every learner a problem solver rather than a passive recipient of support. Collaboration, Villa and Thousand conclude, is both the engine and ethos of inclusive schooling.

In an inclusive school, teaching becomes a team sport. Villa and Thousand’s co-teaching model—developed through national research—shows how two or more educators share responsibility for one group of students. Their mantra: the best teachers teach all kids, not just those who behave or test well.

Four Models, One Goal

The four main co-teaching approaches—supportive, parallel, complementary, and team—form a continuum of collaboration. In supportive co-teaching, one leads while another circulates to assist. In parallel co-teaching, both teach different groups simultaneously; complementary co-teachers enhance each other’s instruction through modeling or scaffolding; and team co-teachers share the stage equally, finishing one another’s sentences as seamless partners.

Role Release and Mutual Learning

The most powerful partnerships happen through role release—trusting your partner enough to exchange roles and expertise. A special educator might lead a content lesson while a general educator models adaptive strategies. Both grow professionally as a result. Students, too, benefit: when they witness adults collaborating, they learn that learning itself is a shared act.

Teaching With Students

Perhaps the book’s boldest proposal is viewing students as co-teachers. When youth tutor, mentor, or co-plan lessons, they build empathy and ownership. The example of Winooski middle schoolers supporting their classmate Bob—who had multiple disabilities—shows co-teaching as a community act: peers designing labs, adapting materials, and including Bob in gym, science, and even dance. Co-teaching isn’t just a method—it’s a culture of shared humanity.

How do you teach a single class of wildly different learners? Villa, Thousand, and Alice Udvari-Solner answer through differentiated instruction and Universal Design for Learning (UDL). These frameworks transform classrooms from one-size-fits-all into flexible ecosystems that anticipate diversity from the start.

From Retrofit to Universal Design

Teachers often start by ‘retrofitting’—modifying existing lessons after noticing mismatches between teaching and student needs. Mr. Woo’s experience with Anna, a bilingual student struggling in English class, illustrates this. By providing bilingual materials, pre-discussion activities, and voice-recorded responses, he didn’t lower expectations—he opened access. The authors then urge teachers to move from reactive retrofits to proactive UDL, where flexibility is built in from day one.

The Four Design Points

UDL rests on four design points: understanding your learners; diversifying content (multiple representations), processes (multiple engagements), and products (multiple expressions). In Ms. Chavez’s 12th-grade Vietnam War unit, students explored history through their strengths: Alcides used music to analyze social movements; Heydar used photography and art to share his refugee perspective; Christina conducted interviews using assistive technology. Each met rigorous standards by different, authentic means.

(This aligns with CAST’s UDL framework and Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligences theory.) In inclusive classrooms designed this way, diversity stops being a problem—it becomes the source of collective growth.

Inclusion fails without a robust support infrastructure. The book’s section on the Multitiered System of Supports (MTSS) explains how academic interventions and behavioral supports intertwine to serve every child before special education referral.

Academic and Behavioral Integration

MTSS integrates Response to Intervention (RTI)—academic prevention—and Schoolwide Positive Behavior Supports (SWPBS)—social-emotional wellness. In Tier 1, all students receive research-based teaching and positive discipline; in Tier 2, small groups get targeted support; and in Tier 3, intense, individualized interventions are designed collaboratively. The goal isn’t to label students but to respond swiftly and skillfully before struggles escalate.

Collaboration Across Roles

In effective MTSS teams, reading specialists, speech therapists, counselors, and teachers coordinate as equals. Data—not bias—drives decisions. A first-grade team meeting might analyze progress charts together and tweak interventions weekly. Through shared ownership, MTSS replaces the question “Who owns this student?” with “How can we help this student together?”

Behavior as Communication

A hallmark of SWPBS is understanding that all behavior communicates. Instead of punishing, teachers seek the ‘why’—whether a child is overwhelmed, seeking connection, or avoiding embarrassment. With consistent schoolwide guidelines and empathy, discipline becomes education. MTSS transforms reactive discipline into proactive inclusion, ensuring no child slips through the cracks.

Throughout the book, the ‘Voices of Inclusion’ stories translate policy into humanity. They remind you that inclusion is about real people—students like Ro and Bob, educators like Yazmin Pineda Zapata, and families who persevere against systemic barriers.

Ro’s Voice: Transformation Through Inclusion

Ro Vargo’s story spans from kindergarten to college, showing inclusion’s ripple effect. Born with Rett syndrome, Ro used assistive communication and attended regular classes her entire life. Friends learned from her resilience, and even after high school, she volunteered on campus and earned recognition in Gerontology Studies. But her influence extended further—classmates like Ghadeer, who once learned sign language from Ro, later became advocates themselves. Inclusion, the story shows, multiplies compassion across generations.

Bob’s Story: The Courage of Friendship

In “Everything About Bob Was Cool,” Villa recounts integrating Bob, a student with multiple disabilities, into a Vermont middle school. Students helped redesign experiments, sports, and projects so Bob could participate fully—from dissecting frogs to running bases. His peers discovered leadership and empathy, especially after his death when they advocated for another child’s inclusion. Bob’s presence became a living curriculum for love and justice.

Together, these voices prove that inclusion isn’t just effective pedagogy—it’s transformative humanity. Their lives illustrate what policy papers often miss: inclusion changes everyone.

The book closes with a rallying cry: be the change. You don’t need a title to lead inclusion—just conviction. Jacqueline Thousand and Richard Villa insist that grand reforms start with simple acts of leadership in your sphere of influence.

Start Where You Are

Can you co-teach a unit, launch a peer tutoring system, or redesign one lesson through a UDL lens? Small steps compound. The authors encourage joining or forming a study group, presenting inclusive success stories, or campaigning for equitable policies in board meetings. Each act is a ripple of hope.

Model Inclusion Beyond School

True leadership extends into life. Invite diversity into your social circles, advocate for accessibility in your community, volunteer with inclusive programs, or mentor colleagues. The ripple metaphor, borrowed from Robert Kennedy’s South Africa speech, captures the spirit: countless small actions become a current that can “sweep down the mightiest walls of resistance.”

Persevere with Compassion

Inclusion will provoke discomfort. People resist change because it threatens identity. Thousand and Villa remind you to stay compassionate; transformation requires patience equal to passion. By embodying inclusion, you invite others to believe it’s possible. Leadership, they conclude, is any action that advances belonging. And when every person takes even one inclusive step, the dream becomes inevitable.