Inclusion of English learners and students with special needs is a relatively new phenomenon in education. It requires knowledge and experience with specific teaching strategies, resources, and assistive technologies. This book is designed to equip general education teachers with the necessary knowledge to handle inclusion successfully.

Underlying Surviving Inclusion is a foundation built on the frustrations felt by many general education teachers, who lacked the strategies and techniques to work successfully with special needs learners in the past. The focus, however, is on the positive. Lehmann, herself a general education teacher, offers informational background necessary for understanding special needs students, as well as detailed strategies for use in the classroom.

For easy reference, teaching strategies are described separate from the text as highlighted Teacher Notes. Surviving Inclusion is not meant as a substitute for the training that should be provided by each school/district to teachers in inclusive classrooms. Rather, it should be seen as a survival guide to use until proper training takes place and as a continual resource for teaching strategies. One thing that will become clear is that these strategies are "just good teaching" and all students in the classroom will benefit from their use.