Bridging Diversity in Learning: Lived Experiences of Teachers Handling Students with Special Needs in Mainstream Classrooms

This study examined the lived experiences of teachers handling students with special needs in mainstream classrooms at Holy Cross Colleges, Inc. Pampanga during the 2026–2027 school year. Anchored in Husserlian descriptive phenomenology and informed by Social Cognitive Theory and Social Constructivist Theory, the study described how nine purposively selected teachers experienced, responded to, and made meaning of teaching learners with special needs without specialized preparation. Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews and field notes and analyzed using Colaizzi's method, involving the extraction of significant statements, formulation of meanings, and clustering of themes into a synthesized essential structure. Four themes emerged: Thrown Into Inclusion: Teaching Without a Map, describing participants' unplanned, unsupported entry into inclusive teaching; Reading the Signs: Identifying and Managing Crisis in the Classroom, capturing their reliance on sustained observation and the hidden emotional labor of crisis response; Crafting a Classroom That Fits: Individualized and Relational Pedagogy, describing instructional strategies built through trial and adjustment; and It Takes a School: Collaboration, Gaps, and Shared Responsibility, documenting the collaborative networks and institutional gaps participants navigated. Together, these themes revealed that teaching a student with special needs in a mainstream classroom was experienced as a largely unassisted process of improvisation, sustainable only when a supportive relational and institutional network was present or actively built by the teacher. These findings informed the Teacher Inclusive Practice and Support Framework, proposed as the study's practical output, with implications for classroom practice, institutional policy, and future research on inclusive education.