Show #92 Inclusion, Belonging, & Rightful Presence

Show #92 Inclusion, Belonging, & Rightful Presence

On today’s podcast, host Lori Boll speaks with Kevin Schaefer who is currently the Director of Inclusive Practices/Supporting Inclusive Practices (SIP) project through the El Dorado County Office of Education Sacramento, California. In this role, Kevin works to improve educational outcomes for students with disabilities through the provision of high-quality leadership and support to the County and throughout the state. Lori and Kevin discuss barriers to inclusion for students with disabilities, and how his organization works with schools to shift culture and mindsets to support meaningful inclusion. 

Bio

Kevin Schaefer is currently the Director of Inclusive Practices/Supporting Inclusive Practices (SIP) project through the El Dorado County Office of Education Sacramento, California.  In this role, Kevin works to improve educational outcomes for students with disabilities through the provision of high-quality leadership and support to the County and throughout the state. Additionally, he provides organizational support by promoting continuous improvement processes and alignment of initiatives that focus on creating environments of belonging that honor the diversity of learners. His varied background as a special education teacher, administrator, and national/state technical assistance provider has led to expertise in the area of systems change

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Resources from Today’s Show

Transcript

Transcribed by Kanako Suwa

[ Introduction music plays ]

Welcome to the SENIA Happy Hour podcast with your host, Lori Boll. We know you’re busy, so we bring you one hour’s worth of content in under 30 minutes, leaving you time for a true happy hour.

Lori: Hey, everyone. Today I had the great opportunity to speak with Kevin Schaefer, who’s the Director of Inclusive Practices for the El Dorado County School Office of Education in Sacramento, California. In this role, Kevin works to improve educational outcomes to students with disabilities through the provision of high quality leadership and support to the county and throughout the state. Today, Kevin and I spoke about exactly what his office does and barriers that he sees to students with disabilities being included in general education settings. More importantly we discuss how cultural and mindset change plays such an important role in creating those inclusive environments and what are some common threads that he sees between schools that are able to make these sweeping cultural changes. Kevin is a fun, exciting speaker, I am also pleased to tell you that he’ll be joining us for our virtual conference coming up in November so be sure to join us where he’ll be discussing how to create those cultural changes in schools and supporting policies as well. So now on to the show.

Well, hello Kevin and welcome to happy hour.

Kevin: Well, hello Lori. Thank you very much for having me 

Lori: Yeah, well, it’s early here. So for happy happy hour. I am sipping on a coffee How about you?

Kevin: Well, um, I have an energy drink to keep me going I’m an early riser. So I gotta keep going 

Lori: Nice nice. Yes. I’m an early riser as well and I Will not share how many cups of coffee I’ve had except that my husband came in this morning and cut me off. He said no more no more for you. That’s where we’re at…

Kevin: I’m in that between coffee and energy drinks and then Eventually moving into a glass of cabernet this evening. 

Lori: There you go Yeah, I think people in our field that tends to be the kind of trajectory of our day, right?Yeah. Coffee, energy drink, water, wine.

Kevin: There you go.

Lori: The works. So as I described in your intro, you are a very busy man.

Kevin: I am.

Lori: Yeah. So tell us about your personal journey that brought you to this point in your career. And then we’ll talk about SIP and all the interesting things that you’re doing.

Kevin: Well, interestingly, Lori, my journey to this role actually started when I was about five years old. In kindergarten through third grade, I was actually in a pullout program for students with expressive language and speech articulation. And I remember very vividly the, The path that would take me from my classroom at five years old, all the way through the hallways of my elementary school, up the stairs and then through the secondary classrooms, up to the really tiny speech room. And the interesting thing is that this is the aspect of my education that I remember most vividly, because I remember the color of the tiles on the wall and the wire in the glass of the offices I passed. And I even remember the names of the two students that were in the session for me.

And I reference this because I’m so connected to that feeling of being pulled out of a classroom and not knowing why, but knowing that there was something that had to be fixed or was wrong. And no one ever talked to me about it. And I think what we don’t talk about in our culture, in our society, tends to turn to shame. And you’re questioning, like, what is it? And even at five years old, that was 53 years ago this year. And I still so vividly have those memories of what it’s like to feel segregated and separate. And it wasn’t until probably 10 or 15 years ago that I looked at all of my report cards, including my speech report card, where all of those memories really started flooding back. But I think that’s the catalyst for me to be so passionate and involved with this work for so long.

Lori: Yeah. Oh, what a story. It just made me think of all the students that I’ve pulled out in my past to bring to my classroom. And I’m wondering if they remember the tile color and all of that. But you’re right. I think your point about shame, that’s so important. And one reason why in the past I’ve always really encouraged parents to share a diagnosis or a challenge with their kiddos. So they know why they’re receiving the supports they’re receiving.

Kevin: Well, and the flip side of that, too, is if we don’t talk about disability to our youth, they’ll never be self -advocates. They’ll never understand themselves and know what they need, and then to be able to ask for it. So this idea of let’s not talk about disability, it’s actually so harmful because it promotes that deficit -based thinking, and it’s really one of the main barriers for students being successful beyond the pre -school age 22 system.

Lori: So true. Yeah. Well, you talked about segregation and seclusion. So how do you define inclusion?

Kevin: Ooh, such a great, such a big question.

Lori: It is a big question.

Kevin: I think the distinction has to be made that inclusion isn’t about a place. I mean, it’s part of it, of course, but students could be in a place with their typically developing peers in general education and not experience meaningful inclusion. So when we talk about inclusion, it’s this integration of a student being in a place, but also experiencing a sense of belonging, relationship, and community. And the way the adults frame that environment is critical, but it’s that connection that students have, students with disabilities have with their peers that allow them to be educated and take risk and make mistakes in authentic environments. And when we segregate, the environment becomes artificial and then somehow we expect students then to integrate back into society when they graduate or leave the system, which is nonsensical to me.

Lori: Yeah. So true. 

Kevin: Yeah. 

Lori: Yeah. That’s a great definition. And I think the belonging piece is the key word in that, not just being in the classroom with their peers, but truly belonging. And I love what you said about that ability to take risks and to fail and everything in being part of a classroom situation.

Kevin: And there’s really interesting research on how by segregating students into artificial environments or segregated environments that we’re denying them the dignity of risk. And this whole idea of we experience risk in authentic environments. And when we over-accommodate for students with disabilities, we over-protect students with disabilities. We don’t allow them to fail and make mistakes. And in some cases, like gently hurt themselves to learn a lesson to, you know, recalibrate or self -correct. And that’s where all the learning happens.

Lori: Yeah, yeah. OK, so the denying dignity of risk. Is that what you said? That’s powerful right there. So thank you. Have a new term. So you are part of an organization called SIP. I’m going to say that again, SIP. So what is it? What exactly is that?

Kevin: It is an incredible project that’s been in existence for about 10 years now. We are funded by the California Department of Education to work with county offices, SELPAs, districts in California to increase inclusive opportunities for students with disabilities. So our indicators, the data that we collect to show our impact, is really around indicators for least restrictive environment, as well as statewide student achievement on assessments. And we have a three -tiered model. The first tier is universal supports, where we have events, we have resources, our website. We thought partner with anyone who contacts us. We’re on social media, so it’s no cost access to all of our resources and we record and we archive all of our webinars and we add all of the resources through a padlet that anyone can access anyone in the world, not just California. 

And then tier two is actually working with districts within their own context, which allows us to understand the priorities and the initiatives at the leadership level to actually make that change organization wide to change the mindset around disability, inclusive policies, and inclusive practices through shared leadership. So, we’re working with about 100 organizations very specifically on their individualized needs to create and implement an inclusion plan.And then we also work with the State Department on their monitoring process to work with districts that are considered intensive level of support in those particular areas of inclusion, least restrictive environment and achievement.

Lori: Wow, so you just do a few things.

Kevin: We just do a few things. And I have to mention that the team that makes up SIPP is incredible. We’re funded through, like I said, the California Department of Ed through El Dorado County Office of Education and Riverside County Office of Education. And my co -director in Riverside, Dr. Kristin Brooks, we work together as one team with our coordinators, our program specialists and our program assistants to make the magic work.

Lori: Yeah, well, it does sound like magic. And the fact that you’re able to provide those resources at no cost is…is incredible. So we’ll put the links to those in our show notes for our listeners. I’m sure they’ll love it. So thank you. Thank you for all the work you’re doing. Well, you work with a lot of organizations on inclusion. So what do you see as the primary barriers to students with disabilities being included in general ed settings?

Kevin: Woo. Lori, where to start with that question? I think number one, we work within a framework around inclusive culture, inclusive policy, and inclusive practice. I think they all impact in a very deep way to perpetuate a system of segregation. And I think at the base of that, the foundation is mindset around disability.

And we have made it okay to segregate students on the basis of that singular identity of disability. And in doing so, we negate all other identities that make up that whole child and youth. We see it in special education as disproportionate representation of other marginalized populations. So we would never explicitly segregate a student based on race, but qualify them for special education. And…we’re okay, off they go, right?

So I think this idea around how adults in the system perceive disability is critical through that fixed mindset model where students are broken, they can’t perform, and therefore not my responsibility. I think it’s important also to note that we confuse special education with disability. And if we don’t understand the needs and the experience and honor the disability experience, then we are doing a disservice when we design special education supports and we have to separate the two because we could be an expert in special education and still not understand the needs and the experiences of the disability community and and and be able to identify the ableism in the system which in my mind is that that that cultural belief that that students with disabilities don’t deserve the same, can’t do the same, and therefore not my responsibility let’s move them across and it’s that mindset that that allows the system to continue.

Lori: right yeah agree wholeheartedly working in systems in the past where I’d be working with a student as my role as learning support teacher or whatever I was called at the time. And it would be, oh, your student is doing this, Lori. And it’s like, no, it’s not my student. This is our student. Every student in this classroom is our student. And by pinpointing that student as mine, you have just segregated them. Yeah. Great points.

Kevin: It works on the flip side too, where we work with special educators who also just want to love and hug their students on their caseload until they graduate and hope for the best. This bifurcation of the system, where in general ed, sometimes there’s a fear for making a mistake or not knowing what to do, therefore that’s your student.

And on the special ed end, you’re creating that barrier by segregate them because you’re the only one that can really do the job that savior complex.

Lori: Yeah So and they don’t learn to advocate for themselves or learn how they’re How yeah, uh -huh how to learn In their way their best way possible, creating that independence for them So How do we change those mindsets? How do we change the culture?

Kevin: Well, we our approach is to work with leadership teams because if the leadership team doesn’t have a really clear understanding and vision of how they define inclusion and to communicate that out to the organization and include? accountability Factors then it the system is going to do what the system is going to do so working with the leadership teams to understand the difficulty and the, I would say requirement, for them and their organization to change the mindset around disability and hold everyone accountable for that change.

One of the frameworks that we use is called the Results Pyramid. We expect new results on an old culture and that cycle will continue if we don’t address the experiences that we provide that change the belief system around disability that then influence the actions.

The IEP process is a great example. The ableist language that’s used, and not on purpose, but from, lack of understanding, if we have an IEP team that has had experiences that weren’t successful around inclusion, they will continue to segregate and feel as though students with disabilities have to be educated with other students with like disabilities and hope for the best. Changing the experiences that change the belief of that IEP team so that we’re now making decisions in more of an inclusive mindset, that’s where the actions take place. The experiences influence the beliefs that then impact the actions that will improve or get us to the desired results.

And I think that framework is really important to understand because districts will focus on the activity. We’re gonna do co -teaching, we’re gonna do UDL, we’re gonna do PBIS. If you don’t get to the root of the belief system, then that initiative isn’t going to be as successful as we need it to be.

Lori: Yeah. 

Kevin: That was a lot.

Lori: Well said. That was a lot of time. No, it was fantastic. I’m a slow processor, so I’m trying to take it all in. And I think that’s something I’m gonna have to refer back to later. But one thing that I really honed in on there is that Results Pyramid.Yeah. So yeah, that’s something I need to check out. I haven’t seen it before.

Kevin: It’s been super powerful.

Lori: Great. Yeah, thanks. And that’s in your resources as well?

Kevin: It is. And then actually, we’re working with an organization called Culture Partners and working with our entire team so that we’re able to effectively work with our districts to look at their current plans and then go deeper into that culture component that they may not have addressed previously.

Lori: Awesome. Well, thanks. 

Kevin: You’re welcome. 

Lori: So thinking about threads that you see between schools, what are some common threads that for those schools that are able to make those sweeping cultural changes that you’ve seen?  

Kevin: Hmm.I think it’s a coming together of the culture piece that I talked about previously, but also looking super deep at your policies. And we find that many of our districts have collective bargaining agreements that are just rooted in ableism and continue the message that students with disabilities require more and they require different. And when we other this idea of special needs, then we are in our language, segregating students because we’re singling out students with disabilities needs as special. I think calibrating across all students that all students have needs across different contexts. I think it’s the districts that really focus on the disability and changing the mindsets around disabilities, and then connecting that to the policies that they’ve created and allow, and thirdly, the practices.

Lori:Yeah.

Kevin: I think the last part of that is that the districts that are making the most movement have collective responsibility for making changes around inclusion, and by collective responsibility at the leadership level, it’s not just curriculum and special ed and general ed, it’s also facilities, it’s also business and budget, it’s human resources, like how are we all working together to change that mindset around disability so that our teachers are coming into a culture that they’re very clear on and the accountability measures and the expectations for them in the classroom, where we have that powerful relationship that makes change between teachers and students.

Lori: Yeah, well, what you were saying, it made me think about the term special education in general, which I’m sure we could hold an entire podcast on and we’ve met with individuals and disability advocates such as Emily Ladau and Derek LaHorn and others who, oh, yeah, you’ve got her book, Demystifying Disability, right, and their ideas on special education. And so what is your group using as a term for special education? Are you still calling it special education in your districts and what are your thoughts on that?

Kevin: It’s still special education. What, and mostly because that’s what people are familiar with. 

Lori: Right. 

Kevin: But what we’re actually moving toward is this idea of rightful presence. The federal government just funded a new National TA Center called the National Center on Inclusion Toward Rightful Presence. So we’ve been infusing rightful presence into all of our professional learning opportunities and going deeper into rightful presence as a frame for ensuring environments are designed and representative of the students they are designed for, right? Often students with disabilities come into classrooms, they’re invited or they’re welcomed into classrooms but the classroom isn’t designed in such a way that they’re not allowed for equity and access.

Right, the research on rightful presence just kind of mind flipped us a little bit the whole team You’ve actually been working with that center over the last year really to bring them into California and they’ve kind of infiltrated in the best best of ways Many of our really upper level state work to start laying the foundation that inclusion isn’t just about students being present or Known or just invited but they’re involved and that they’re needed and that they influence diversity in the classrooms in such a positive way.

Lori: Yeah Wow, I could just listen to you all day because this is really great I’m just a little passionate about it and I love that I love that passion and and I’m now a super fan of the term rightful presence, so thank you for introducing that to me. My last question for you is, can you share a success story from a school or organization that you’ve worked with where you’ve really watched that shift or that they were able to make those sweeping changes, we were talking about?

Kevin: I’m going to share an example that it’s one of our large urban districts that we work with. And they have been in significant disproportionality, they have been not meeting special education indicators in a big way for a long time. Over the past couple months, since we’ve been able to actually work within their curriculum and instruction department, their curriculum instruction department, their focus is literacy, high quality first instruction, and climate and culture.

And we’ve been able to bring all of the external technical assistance providers, as well as ourselves, to then start talking about how their work is integrating and how it all comes up through curriculum and instruction. And from the top down, creating that vision and then how we are able to integrate disability with all of the work that they do, simply by asking the question, who at the table, at all of these different meetings that they’re having, who at the table understands the disability voice? Even when we’re talking about diversity, equity, and inclusion teams, disability wasn’t a part of it.

It’s in special ed. It’s the special ed department’s responsibility. So bringing that voice into these open forums where all of the planning takes place has completely changed the focus of the directors around literacy, high quality instruction, and culture and climate. And it’s just moved the district in a very short time has moved the district in a way that they haven’t been moved in 15, 20 years. So it’s not that they’re…

Lori: fantastic. 

Kevin: It’s not that they’re a success at this point. 

Lori: Right. Yeah. 

Kevin: In that process of creating the structures that are going to make a difference.

Lori: Yeah. Yeah. Again, it’s not about what is success and success is that progress, that forward progress. So that’s really exciting. 

Kevin: Yeah, we’re excited about it. It’s great. 

Lori: Yeah. Yeah, it is great work. And I’m just so pleased to have had the opportunity to speak with you today. So thanks for your time.

Kevin: Thank you so much for having me and my team and my project.

Lori: Absolutely. Of course.

[ Outro music plays ]

Thank you for joining us for today’s show. For more information including how to subscribe and shownotes, please head to our website. That’s SENIAinternational.org/podcasts. Until next time… cheers!

Show #91 Burn Bright, Not Out

Show #91 Burn Bright, Not Out

On today’s podcast, host Lori Boll speaks with Sybil Hall about the important topic of Teacher Burnout. Sybil recently published Burn Bright, Not Out: 35 Lessons that Cultivate Teacher Well Being. Lori and Sybil discuss why this is such an important topic, especially in 2024 and some ways to support our own well-being. As we are all starting the new school year, you won’t want to miss this podcast!

Bio

Sybil is a seasoned entrepreneur, author, and coach with over two decades of experience as an educator and coach. After teaching in five countries, she is now based in Colorado. She empowers teachers with her book, Burn Bright, Not Out 35 Lessons that Cultivate Teacher Well-being, and drives educational innovation with the FREE Teachers Need Teachers Digital Magazine and Community

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Resources from Today’s Show

Transcript

Transcribed by Kanako Suwa

[ Introduction music plays ]

Welcome to the SENIA Happy Hour podcast with your host, Lori Boll. We know you’re busy, so we bring you one hour’s worth of content in under 30 minutes, leaving you time for a true happy hour. 

Lori: Hello, hello, everyone. This is a new season of our podcast starting the year of 2024 -2025 school year. And I just want to say good luck to you all. Hope you have a fantastic year ahead. Today, I had the pleasure of speaking with Sybil Hall, and she spoke about this important topic of teacher burnout. Sybil recently published “Burn Bright, Not Out”, which is 35 lessons that cultivate teacher wellbeing. Today, we discussed why this is such an important topic now, especially in 2024 and some ways to support our own well -being. So as we’re starting this new school year, you really won’t want to miss this podcast. with some great ideas for you and just want you to be happy and so do I. So now on to the show. 

Well, hello, Sybil, welcome to the podcast. 

Sybil: Hello. Thank you. 

Lori: I’m so excited to chat today. 

Sybil: Me too. 

Lori: First off, congratulations on the publication of your book, which is called Burn Bright, Not Out, 35 lessons that cultivate teacher wellbeing as well. 

Sybil: Thank you so much. It’s so exciting. 

Lori: It is exciting. When did you publish your book? 

Sybil: I published it in, oh my gosh, September of 2023. 

Lori: Great. Yeah. So it’s been out in the world for a while and it’s making waves. It’s such an important topic and I’m really glad we’re speaking about it now because many of our listeners are just heading back to school. And, you know, we have social emotional learning for kids, but you say this book is social emotional learning for adults. So tell us more about that. 

Sybil: Yeah, absolutely. I know so many of us are so focused on our students’ wellbeing, right? And making sure that we’re integrating in that social emotional learning for them. But if you’re like me, 23 years of teaching, I did not do the same myself. I just did not ever learn to focus on myself. I never learned to take care of myself. And frankly, I have to own that, right? I just never like slow down or, or realize the benefits of getting to know myself. And so I really framed this book around that idea of we’re teaching kids how to be self -aware. We’re teaching kids how to manage themselves. We need to teach ourselves the exact same things. And when we do that, we show up as a better person and more able to serve our clients, our students, our teachers, whoever we’re working with in our school, that much better in the end. And it took me a long time to learn that and figure that out. And now I’m just so passionate about sharing that message because it’s so, so important and life -changing, honestly. 

Lori: Yeah, it is. You know, I remember reading some of your blog posts and things in the past and you mentioned a Japanese word that kind of you use to support your life. So can you share what that is? 

Sybil: Yeah, it’s the concept of Ikigai. I -K -I -G -A -I. And it’s why we wake up in the morning. It’s our purpose in life. And there’s really four areas of Ikigai. What you’re good at, what you love, what the world needs, which is often, as teachers, we’re in it because the world needs it. But sometimes we kind of forget that that’s why we’re in it. And then what we can be paid for. And kind of the intersection of those four big concepts and ideas is where we find happiness. And in Japan and all the research around Ikegai is where we live a longer, happier, healthier life.  Right? And so as teachers, we really can use this concept to our benefit because we have to do so many things within every single day.  And some of them we love, some of them we’re good at, some of them, you know, is changing the world in our opinion, but some of them aren’t. And sometimes we get caught focused on those ones that aren’t, right? And then there’s the whole thing, well, it’s out of your control, just let it go. But what I would argue is the Ikegai concept helps us see that we can actually be more well and more happy when we focus on those things that we do love, that we do are good at. Right? And when we do that and we pour our passions into those areas. Those other parts are just kind of part of our day and I can do it for 20 minutes. I can do my recess duty. I can do my things in a much healthier way because my brain and focus is on this positive aspect that I do love and that I am good at. And so that’s like within the classroom, but also our own personal lives, right? And so a lot of what I talk about in the book and around this concept of Ikigai is scheduling in and making time to get your know yourself and those passions outside of school and within school, what you’re good at outside of school and within your school day and focusing on those and building those up. 

And it’s just unbelievable how your mind is almost free to be in more of a state of happiness and well -being by just really focusing on those two areas in particular, both in your personal and professional life. So my big aha when I was writing this book was just that we need to do this as educators simultaneously. So we are very good at learning the next, you know, professional development. We’re very good at exploring what our students need and how are we going to meet every student’s needs even though in their different places. We love to learn like methodologies and pedagogies. and such. 

But what I argue in this book is we need to do the exact same thing for ourselves as well. What systems at home work well for you too? So I started a morning routine when I was writing this book because I was like teaching full time. How am I going to write a book? I had a dream. I decided to move forward on it. 

I wanted it to transform me and I didn’t know how I was going to do it. And so basically what I did is I did a 30 day challenge and I woke up an hour earlier every single morning before work and I just wrote and I wrote and wrote and wrote. So I said a number of words. I wanted to write 35 ,000 words in one month. And I didn’t edit. I didn’t, you know, I just wrote, I just got ideas down. And oh my gosh, just that routine, every morning of spending time on me and being creative, totally transformed my day then when I went to spend it with my students. I had this like beautiful, it’s going to be an amazing day and I started doing yoga in the morning because I started adding coffee in with my husband and I realized, wow, I was really missing a lot just by rushing through the morning before work and showing up at work in like more of a stressed out state. And now I realize, oh my gosh, I could actually be creative and have some fun and spend some time with my husband and go to work in a very relaxed, different state, ready to conquer what was on that day. And so that concept is just so, so powerful in that way. 

Lori: Yeah, I love that. And one thing that came up as you were speaking is, I know, you know, we’re not out there just as teachers. We’re also parents or caregivers of our own parents or things like that. And so so often we think we can’t make that time for ourselves to do those passions and things that you’re excited about. But as you said, that hour getting up one hour earlier can really make such a big difference. You know, I bought some. Well, I started exercising and that was really helpful for me, like you said, to just change your whole brain chemistry as you’re off heading to work. So you know, I was doing running and things like that, which I loved. Once I had some injuries and things, I couldn’t do that.  So instead I bought one of those kind of like journals that helps you like guide you through it. And that was so helpful for me to reframe my, oh gosh, I lost this passion of exercising, but now I’m focusing on myself and journaling and things like that. And yeah, it was so helpful. And it’s just not something we think about, I guess, where I was going with that. 

Sybil: Yeah, for sure. And there’s a lot of research. And these are evidence -based practices, journaling, spending time, creating, exercising, right? And as educators, we know that, but we have a hard time justifying it, right? Or we have a hard time finding the time to do it. And shifting your paradigm on time, I also talk about that in the book quite in depth because we are actually in control of our time if we think about it that way. It’s our perspective on time, right? So how was I going to do this? How was I going to write a book and teach? And I have, high expectations of myself as a teacher too, right? This is my 23rd year. That was my 23rd year of teaching.  I had been an instructional coach for eight years and was going back into the classroom full -time. I had really high expectations on myself of like, okay, I’ve been talking the talk to teachers for a long time. I better pull it off, right? And I was gonna write a book. And you know what? Having that openness and that big audacious goal actually led me to finding that time. And now what I say is I created that time. And I think with self -care and with self -awareness, any of the aspects of social -emotional learning, time management is a big one that perspective that we control time, we can think a half an hour super long, or we can think half an hour super short, or we can think half an hour is just right. 

And so I’m going to plan it to be just right. I’m going to plan, I want to do X, Y, Z. And if it’s not enough time, I’m not going to have enough time. If I plan it that it’s too short, you know, or too long, I’m going to be like looking for stuff to do. But if I plan it for a half an hour, then I’m going to, I’m going to feel good about what I do in a half an hour.  

Lori: Right.

Sybil: And we teach these things to kids. We teach them how to use their Google calendar, but do we stop and like, how do we do that in our personal lives? Like that’s truly transformational when you do that. So finding that, that morning routine that works for you. And like you said too, Lori, like you couldn’t exercise anymore. Well, I’m kind of finding the summer is hard to keep up my routine. Right. I usually do 20 minutes of yoga each morning and I’ve kind of been scooting that off. And then my body doesn’t feel very good. And I’m like, come on, so you know how to do this. Like get back to that, that routine. So it really is about building routines and rituals, which I also talk about the difference between routines and rituals and, and which routines do you want to turn into rituals where they have this more warm traditions, um, real authentic happiness kind of aspects to them. Um, and you know, which routines do you intentionally want to make sure that they become rituals. So you don’t let them go when you’re on vacation. I also talk about that too, like as teachers, we like let all out when we get off work, right. 

And we go on this vacation and we forget everything we know about taking care ourselves and like routines. And then it’s like, it almost backfires. I talk about like severe back pain I would have like after a vacation. because I didn’t let myself keep up some of those routines that I had built that I my body and mine so needed. 

Lori: Yeah. There’s another one that you brought up. 

Yeah. Yeah. 

Lori: Well, thank you. This is great information and so important. And you know, teacher burnout is a real thing. And why do you believe it’s such an important topic to focus on now? 2024. Why are we focusing on teacher burnout? 

Sybil: Yeah, well, sadly, it’s because we hadn’t focused on it yet, right? And there’s a real problem right now. Not as many kids are going into education to be teachers. Right. The teachers that are are in the schools are feeling burnt out and either leaving the profession or sticking with it, but not in a healthy state for them or their students oftentimes just needing to get through it. I, you know, just have to keep going. There’s nothing else I can do. And just, I have had the privilege of working at five countries in the world. And so I’ve seen and encountered and met and interact with so many different educators of all walks of life, and it’s everywhere. 

It doesn’t matter if you’re in a US public school, or in the most prestigious you know international school out there or anything, any other kinds of varieties. We all burn out if we don’t know how to take care of ourselves and we don’t focus on our own well being. And, you know what quite honestly our own well -being is something that changes. It’s it’s I say in the book. It’s it’s Dynamic not static, right? What season of life are we in right now, right? So it’s gonna change your entire entire life But what I now try to help people see is that the sooner you can look inward The sooner you can start learning to give yourself self -compassion to give yourself grace Some of these things to fail forward right to learn to reframe Mistakes the sooner we can do those things the healthier and happier We’re going to feel as we go through those seasons of life and and be able to adjust Ourselves, and so I’m so passionate that educators we matter 

And a lot of times we don’t feel the self worth that we deserve. Society doesn’t look at us very fondly a lot of times. Pay is often not very good for educators. And so we have to come together. We have to come together in 2024 and we have to lift each other up together. And that’s a big part of my message is like, let’s just do this together. I’m not perfect at it either. I have to work at it all the time. It’s something that we are constantly gonna need to do. And we serve our students so much better when we come from a healthy wellbeing place. 

Lori: Yeah, I agree. And you mentioned failing forward and as teachers, we forget about that so much. We’re constantly telling our students, it’s okay to fail. It’s okay to make these mistakes. This is how we learn. But for ourselves, we’re so hard on ourselves. I think a lot of teachers or people who go into this field are kind of perfectionists. And it’s not okay to fail in our minds. 

Sybil: Yeah, I see the absolute same thing. You know, it was one of the most transformational things I did was when I was in Dubai as a tech and innovation coach, I had two colleagues in my office with me, and we made a failure chart, a fail forward chart. It was just a T chart, and we put the failure, and then we put the learning. And it was big chart paper up on our office wall, but we were modeling that adults and teachers need to fail forward. And…  I can’t believe how transformational doing that was for us because we began to reframe our mistakes quite quickly and learn from them if they, you know, had that kind of meaning to them. But also everyone who walked through our, our office saw that modeling these coaches are are naming their mistakes. They’re naming their failures and they’re learning from them and that, and that’s led them now to XYZ. So it’s kind of fun to like also be able to like track some of those. Like I wouldn’t probably have been able to do this or realize this if I had never made that mistake. You’re absolutely right. Again, it’s something we teach our students. But do we pay attention to it ourselves? Are we brave enough to be public with it? I’m really, really into saying things out loud because once I make them public, I hold myself more accountable. Right? I’m gonna do a morning routine. 

I’m gonna write my failures up there. 

I’m going to celebrate my small wins, right? That’s another one. I think we do as a generally with our students and colleagues, if we’re an instructional coach position or an admin position, we celebrate their wins. We get them to celebrate. But do we celebrate our own wins? Do we set goals for the week and celebrate that we met them or focused on why we didn’t? And did we change the target? So again, that’s another one too. 

Lori: Yeah. Okay, so. What do you think some teachers can do as they’re just coming into a new school year? What can they do to avoid that burnout or set themselves up for success? 

Sybil: Yeah, I love that question. So I think the beginning of the school year is the perfect time to really focus on this. And this is actually the time of the year when I started using a whiteboard in the mornings to write out some of the big things I wanted to do, accomplish that day. And again, both in my personal life and in my professional life. So trying to set up some systems for yourself that will make sure you can kind of maintain that balance and focus on our well -being, right? We know that it’s really predictable that the beginning of the year is really busy. We have back -to -school night. We have setting up the classroom. We have all of the things we do. Meetings, meetings, meetings. Yes, meetings, meetings, meetings. 

And we know then like we have conferences in October or November, right? We have some of these predictable super busy times and we say no time is ever a good time, okay? So if we tell ourselves that, then there’s not going to ever be a good time. Instead, what I would say is at the beginning of the school year, you know it’s going to be busy with nightly things and with meetings and less plan time, whatever extra duties, right? There’s just a lot of things. Um, and so I would try to set yourself up with that. Maybe you write down two or three things you want to just be sure to accomplish that day or feel good about accomplishing that day and at the end of the day checking in, how did it go? So for me, I go on a walk every single day after school and, um, I would write that down because otherwise I might easily pass it off because I’m not quite ready for back to school night, right? We build the time we have. I could put another hour into back to school night, or I could put an hour into myself and walk and you know what? I’m going to rock that back to school night. If I actually make that choice, because I got to recover from my day, right? You get into flow hopefully, and then we need to recover and then we go into flow again and then we need to recover. So, um, I would just say like, what, what kind of systems do you want to, what do you want to do for yourself? Do you want to journal 30 minutes a day? Do you want to walk every day? What are you going to do for yourself each day and write that down along with what you want to accomplish, you know, in that professional block? 

Lori: Well, writing it down is kind of like saying your plans out loud to the world, because once it’s written, you fulfill it, right? 

Sybil: Exactly. Your brain and your subconscious brain, like we’re trying to get into our subconscious brain to make these things just what we do, right? And by physically handwriting it down on a whiteboard, I, you know, as a teacher, I always had the schedule on a whiteboard every single day, and that’s the first thing I do in my classroom when I put it out, you know, and when I was a instructional coach, the first thing I do is look at my Google calendar and, right? So I did the exact same thing at home, but it’s my personal life and my professional life. Yeah. 

Lori: Perfect. Well… Besides writing this incredible book with all these great, like 35 lessons, you have another project that you’ve been working on. And can you share about that? 

Sybil: Yeah, I would love to. It’s called Teachers Need Teachers. And it was born from that very idea of us just really needing each other. Like I said earlier, we just really need to do this together. We really need to support each other. As you all know, like with our collaborations for our students, it really works, right? When we really sit together and figure out what’s best way to teach math and what we need to teach and all of those things, we find more success. And so.  teachers need teachers was born out of that idea and that mission of bringing teachers together to work towards our guy in both professional and personal lives. And so what I like to innovate. I like to do things differently. I like to kind of break the rules when it makes sense to break the rules. And I really like to be creative. And so I really just want to do something different. And so what we put out there and I was so honored to have your book, Laurie, in the first issue as well. But the prototype magazine of teachers need teachers and it was a flip magazine. And you can still get that magazine and look at it free of charge. But what the premise of the flip book magazine is, number one, I want it to be beautiful. I wanted teachers to be drawn into it. It’s for educators by educators. It’s a beautiful sharing of pedagogical approaches like using vocabulary in a PBL classroom. 

Oh gosh, I’m trying to think what else was in there. Collaboration, gardening, for example. Gardening is in there. But just transforming the way professional development happens online in particular. And what happened with this prototype magazine is it just brought together this amazing community of educators who wanted to get to know each other, who wanted to collaborate, who wanted to put their materials out there together and learn together and kind of connect. with people in education globally that have the same values and beliefs and you know working on the same things in this season of life together. And so what I’ve done now is I’ve created a school SKOOL around this teachers need teachers idea and the first issue because that was the prototype issue so we got some feedback and went through the design cycle with that issue. The so the official first issue will be coming out at back to school time right around the time of this podcast as well and the idea is just to make those connections between teachers share free resources and then also elevate teacher authors like yourself and I and really helping each other get our books and our messages out there and developed and into the hands of those who can use them with their students globally. But you know the online world really is beautiful when it brings us all together with people who are, you know, like minded and such and so that’s really the vision behind the teachers need teachers magazine and then just like elevating together. We’re all in this together let’s all live the happiest lives serve our students the best we can together, and just really enjoy life right like Jen said you’re always all about the happy life and I was like yeah I love it. 

Lori: Yeah, right. Well being is about happiness and enjoying life and feeling good. 

Sybil: Right. And so there’s also financial things in there also in the book. Financial well being, especially for educators is so so important because we’re just told. You know, I thought for a long, long time, my job was just to serve. I didn’t deserve money. I didn’t deserve wealth. That was for business people. I didn’t go into business. I, and I realized that’s not true at all, but I had to shift my mindset and I had to continue to work on my mindset and realize I can learn to be financially literate, I can build wealth and wealth is not a bad word. Well, it helps you live that happier life and, and we meet those dreams and, and, you know, live the way you want to live. We all need money, whether we’d like it or not. 

Lori: Right. Yeah. Yeah. And, but speaking of finance and, and wealth, this is free for teachers. 

Sybil: Yes. Thank you for mentioning that. So it’s a free digital magazine. I want to transform professional development in that way as well. I want to make it totally accessible and available for all teachers. So it’s a free community within school and the magazine itself is free to consume and pass on and that kind of thing too. Yeah, thanks for mentioning that. 

Lori: Of course, of course. Well, Sybil, I think that’s all we have time for today. Unfortunately, I’ve learned so much from you and I know our listeners have too. So do you have any big last message you wanna share with the group? 

Sybil: Yeah, I would just say, love yourself, find some time to do what you enjoy and remember that we’re all in this together and there’s so many amazing things that many things and people around you and just like trying to embrace that and pick up the book, read it, let me know what you think. Drawing teachers need teachers, school and magazine. And thank you so much, Lori. This was such a fun conversation. 

Lori: Well, yeah, you’re welcome. 

Sybil: And everyone just be happy. Yeah, good luck with the beginning of the year. 

Lori: Yes, you got this. 

[Outro music plays] 

Thank you for joining us for today’s show. For more information, including how to subscribe and show notes, please head to our website. That’s seniainternational.org/podcasts . Until next time, cheers.

Show #90 A Tree For All: Conversation with a UDL expert

Show #90 A Tree For All: Conversation with a UDL expert

Today host Lori Boll is joined by renowned Universal Design for Learning expert, Dr. Loui Lord Nelson. Loui is an internationally recognized leader in UDL implementation. She wrote her bestselling book “Design and Deliver: Planning and Teaching Using Universal Design for Learning” while completing her UDL post-doctoral fellowship at CAST, the creators of the UDL framework. She has two other books on UDL, a card game, and hosts the popular “UDL in 15 Minutes” podcast listened to globally. In this episode, she’ll provide an overview of UDL’s core principles, share examples of culturally responsive practices that benefit English learners, discuss the inspiration behind her books, and offer advice for schools beginning their UDL journey,  We’re excited to tap into Dr. Nelson’s invaluable expertise around this transformative teaching approach.

Bio

Loui Lord Nelson, Ph.D., is an internationally recognized leader in Universal Design for Learning (UDL) implementation. She wrote her best selling book Design and Deliver: Planning and Teaching Using Universal Design for Learning (now in its 2nd Ed) while completing her UDL post-doctoral fellowship at CAST (the creators of UDL). She has two other books on UDL, a card game, and hosts the popular podcast, UDL in 15 Minutes, listened to by individuals all over the world. More information about Loui can be found at www.theudlapproach.com

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Show #89 The Proud Stutter

Show #89 The Proud Stutter

On today’s podcast, host Lori Boll speaks with Maya Chupkov, host of The Proud Stutter podcast. Maya is a stuttering advocate and community organizer. As a woman who stutters, she is working to shift societal norms around stuttering and the disability community. Lori and Maya discuss Maya’s schooling experience, how teachers can make a better environment for their students who stutter, and all about an exciting documentary Maya is currently working on. It’s going to be a movie none of us will want to miss. 

Bio

Maya Chupkov is a stuttering advocate and community organizer. As a woman who stutters, she is working to shift societal norms around stuttering and the disability community. Maya lives in San Francisco with her fiancé and dog.

Can you tell us about the film you are working on, how did Proud Stutter evolve from just doing the podcast to doing advocacy and filmmaking?

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Show #88 Help! My Kid Won’t Go to School

Show #88 Help! My Kid Won’t Go to School

On today’s podcast, host Lori Boll speaks with Katie Fowle and Sharoya Ham, authors of the #1 Bestselling book, Help! My Kid Won’t Go to School: Finding Hope on a Bad Day. Katie shares her experiences with her daughter who experienced school refusal and both Katie and Sharoys explain why school refusal happens, and some steps parents and teachers can take in understanding and supporting their children or students.

Bio

Katie Fowle M.Ed, is the mother to the hero of this book. She is also a dyslexia specialist and co-founder of Global Village Tutors. Katie empowers her students through academic and social-emotional skill building so students succeed academically and feel confident in school no matter where they live in the world.

Sharoya Ham, M.Ed is an International Parent Coach and founder of Embrace Behavior Change. She has a Master’s in Special Education with an emphasis in Applied Behavior Analysis. She’s lived in seven countries and helped families overcome school refusal across five continents.

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Transcribed by Kanako Suwa

[Transcribed by Kanako Suwa]

[Intro music plays]

Welcome to the SENIA Happy Hour podcast with your host, Lori Boll. We know you’re busy, so we bring you one hour’s worth of content in under 30 minutes, leaving you time for a true happy hour. 

Lori: Hey, hey listeners. Well, today I had a great conversation with Katie Fowle and Sharoya Ham, who are the authors of the number one best -selling book, “Help! My Kid Won’t Go to School, Finding Hope on a Bad Day”. In our conversation today, Katie shares her experiences with her daughter, who experienced school refusal, and both Katie and Sharoya help explain why school refusal happens and some steps that both parents and teachers can take in understanding and supporting our kiddos or young adults who may be struggling with this school refusal. I learned so much from them today and I learned even more from their book and I just can’t wait for you to hear the conversation. So now on to the show Katie and Sharoya. Welcome to the podcast.

Katie & Sharoya: Thank you. So happy to be here. Yeah. 

Lori: Yeah Well, you just published an excellent book called help my kid won’t go to school Finding hope on a bad day. So first of all, congratulations. 

Katie & Sharoya: Thank you.

Lori: After going through this process myself, I know how difficult it is challenging time -consuming and also just full of love and passion and so Congratulations on that journey. 

Katie & Sharoya: Thanks. Thank you 

Lori: So, before we dig in to your book, can you just tell us a little bit about yourselves? Katie, why don’t you go first? 

Katie: Sure. My name is Katie Fowle and I am co -founder of Global Village Tutors, which provides academic and social emotional services to expat kids who are attending international schools. And one of the reasons why I created that is from my experience being in an international school teacher in five different countries and having a daughter with additional learning needs. So, this conversation today, though, I’m not taking that lens. I’m taking the lens of a mother who, when we repatriated back to the United States, my daughter wouldn’t get out of bed and go to school. And it was really, really, really stressful and hard. And I didn’t know what to do. And so today, when we talk about our book, my perspective will be as a mother who’s experienced this and gone through it and worked with the school and with counselors to get our daughter back in school. 

Lori: Great, thanks. Sharoya, how about you? 

Sharoya: Yeah, so I’m Sharoya Ham. I’m a behavior specialist, and I work as an international parent and family coach through my private parent coaching business, which is called Embrace Behavior Change. And I work with, I have the delight of working with families across five continents, helping them to really respond to their children’s educational, behavioral, emotional challenges. And one of the niches that we have seen really kind of unravel post -COVID is chronic absenteeism. So it was just a pleasure to know Katie professionally but also personally, and recognize that she’s going through this challenge. And we kind of talked and walked through it together and realized it was really, as the research has proven, it’s become a crisis. And so we decided to take this venture on. And as you said, Lori, when you write a book, it taps into a level of passion and love that you never even knew you had for a topic. And so Katie and I share our desire to wanna help parents and families get through this process without hurting each other in their relationships. 

Lori: So important, thank you. And Sharoya, you’ve been a guest on our podcast before, so I’ll make sure I link that other podcast in our show notes, as well as your book title. And we’ll get to that later. But… You mentioned why you wrote the book It’s a it’s a crisis Can you explain a little bit more about that crisis? Like how why is it so much more prevalent now than before? 

Katie: I’ll just I’ll talk first talk about it as a parent’s point of view because I think if you’re listening and You’re going through this or I know a friend that is going through it. I think just having that perspective is really You can have more compassion Um, so I you know had been a international school teacher five different countries kind of specified in social emotional learning And we got back to the united states and all of a sudden like my daughter wasn’t going to school and um It was really embarrassing it was really frustrating and um 

I think that a lot of times you don’t know why it’s happening and you don’t know how to fix it. And it also caused extreme riff in my marriage because my husband wanted to approach it one way and I wanted to approach it another way. And so getting on that same page about how we were going to support our daughter, there was also an undiagnosed learning difference too, because we had moved every two to three years and so she had gotten back to the States and she was just, you know, we can get into that more. So from my perspective as a mother, I think, you know, it’s just really a confusing time. It’s a really frustrating time and I love my daughter and I didn’t know what to do. 

Lori: Thank you for sharing that vulnerability piece with us. That’s hard to do and we appreciate it. So helps us understand more. Sharoya? 

Sharoya: Lori, it’s our whole society. The whole world went through a traumatic event all at the same time. We’re all still trying to find our grounding. How do we get the life that we want back in a level of control? We just felt like we did not have control for the past two to three years. So with that, how is a child to express? Like, I just need time. I need space to make my own decisions. I need time to escape and run away from all the demands that are on me. This is one of the ways. And it’s not defiance. It’s simply like, I’m trying to figure this thing out. And actually the bed feels like a safe place. Gaming all night long feels like a safe place. Trying to escape from all my thoughts and worries. If I go to school, there’s more. 

So, we’re all trying to find our way. And this is just one of the ways that a child has control that you cannot make them walk out that door, but are they intentionally doing it to make you feel less than as a parent to make them you think for you to put you in your place and dominate over you? No, that is not the reason. But why it’s happening over the globe, because it’s not that I’m just working with families in the US, but this is around the globe issue. 

And as we have seen anxiety, depression has increased. So with that increase, what does it do? It lowers our stress tolerance and the things that we were once able to handle, we are no longer. Or remember those kids who are younger and going through, they lost two years of life skills of what it is to handle outside of the home stressor. 

So these things all come to compound and cause this issue. And I was reading New York Times article and they were just saying that the schools are at a loss. They don’t know why this is happening. And that’s why this book is so timely because there’s no resource, real resource that is helping parents in schools navigate this understanding of why it’s happening. It’s very nuanced. So there’s no immediate answer. Really we have to find it through a lot of examination of the children that we serve, not overall, but just the ones that are in our classrooms, are in our homes. We have to really look at them, what is their need and not try to package it up and go, here’s one solution and it will get your child back in school. 

Lori: Oh, yeah. Wow. It really was a traumatic event. And, you know, my kids are grown, so I haven’t experienced that, but I’ve heard it from multiple friends that they’ve experienced similar issues as you’re stating. So, Katie, can I just circle back a little bit to what you said earlier? I’m curious about your thought of that it’s embarrassing. Can you just dive into that a little bit more to help our listeners understand? 

Katie: Yeah, I think I would judge myself. So I’m not a good parent. Like if I were a good parent, my kid would be going to school. I’m doing something wrong, and I distinctly remember looking outside my window, and there’s this woman across the street. I love her. She’s so kind. She has three daughters. And I’d be like, see, Miss Elizabeth. And then I’d compare. I’d be like, Miss Elizabeth can get her daughters to the school, and you can’t get your daughter to school. So I was embarrassed because I was judging myself. If I was a good parent, then my kid would be going to school. Why can’t your kid go to school? So that’s where the embarrassment came from. 

Lori: Got it. Thank you. Can you explain what exactly school refusal might look like? And well, we talked about a few of the reasons for it. But if you could dig into that more, I really appreciate it. 

Katie: I can start with what it looked like in my home, and then Sharoya can add on from her perspective as a parent coach. For my daughter, it came out more in what I perceived as defiant behavior. So at first, not getting out of bed, but then it would also be more anxious behavior. I don’t know what I want to wear. My hair is not looking right. Those were the three main behaviors I would see. She didn’t have the right outfit, she didn’t have the right hairstyle, or she wasn’t getting out of bed. Those were three behaviors I would see. And her reasons for it, it took a while, and we detail that in the book. There was a moment where I was able to connect the dots to understand what was going on with her. 

Um, in the inside and, um, initially I just saw that behavior as, um, you know, kind of defiant, uh, lazy, um, disrespectful, you know, those kind of real negative. I mean, I don’t use that in the book at all. Shoria always helped me, um, make sure that when my daughter reads this book that she feels honored because she is the hero of this book because who she is today and what she went through, uh, kind of brings, it’s just incredible. And she inspires me every day. So, yeah. 

Sharoya: Do you just love, uh, Katie’s vulnerability? 

Lori: Yeah. 

Sharoya: What it takes for parents to, I think. move to overcome in this situation. Because if you’re just doing it step by step, trying to find a solution, you’re gonna get worn out. But when you hear that someone else had this struggle, they actually had these thoughts of just wringing their child’s neck, you go, oh God, she gets it. And so I’m so happy that Katie decided to really share this story. Well, what I’ve noticed is that, and I mentioned this in the book, that I too had a level of school refusal. And it particularly showed on the days where I had a project, I had some report due. and the amount of anxiety I felt actually made me feel sick. So I really wasn’t even pretending some days, I actually felt sick. So it will look like that. It will look like, oh, clingy, I wanna stay with you, mom. I don’t wanna go anywhere. It can also look like that they’re staying home because they wanna watch TV. They wanna, shall I say, not watch TV anymore. Be on their iPad. Be on their computer or whatever. I said, YouTubing or gaming. 

Oh my gosh. It may look like that. But there’s always an underlying issue. It’s not that. And that’s what is so hard about trying to solve it is because what parents, we have the tendency to do is go after what we see and fix that. Yes. Rather than asking what is happening to my child, what are the things I’m not seeing? And that’s really hard because you have to slow down. Lori, one of my favorite lines in the book, if you don’t mind, I wanna read it. Please. Because I think it’s so important for parents to understand that it says, school refusal isn’t your child’s fault. It isn’t your fault either. 

Instead, school refusal is life’s way of saying, slow down, your child needs you. They need you to show up in different ways than they’ve needed you before. And I think no one will understand this until they go through it. That’s the challenge with life is after you go through something that’s difficult, you have this, oh, oh, I see. And so what we’re trying to give parents here is a cheat sheet. Listen, slow down. There’s something precious in this moment that your child is ushering you into if you, and you’ll miss it if you keep trying to solve it or recognizing or thinking that you can solve it quickly. So you have to surrender, like this is not gonna be solved quick. I’m going to take a breath and back up for a minute. Yeah. 

Lori: It kind of reminds me a bit of Dr. Green’s work on having those conversations with your child to try to dig deep into what is really happening and understanding that they’re not being defiant as you said, Katie. And there’s a reason, and what are those reasons? And some of the reasons you mentioned Sharoya were anxiety and in the book I read they might be not interested in what’s going on at school, possibly. Can you name a few others? 

Sharoya: Yeah, I’m glad you brought up the boredom. That’s one issue. We didn’t talk about learning disabilities. That’s also one, right? Just the fact of being in the international community, you feel different for various reasons. You look different. You sound different. And it is uncomfortable to go to school when you feel so different. And so these are one of the things. In terms of boredom, I find that that’s one that parents almost kind of brag about. Like, my kid is so… you know, advanced at their board. My kid is so creative that they’re bored. But that is the moment where you say, you are the one who has the destiny for your boredom and place it in their lap. Like this is where life really happens. In that moment of boredom where you’re going, I got to figure myself out. Why am I feeling detached? What do I need to feel attached? And creativity and self -exploration and self -confidence all comes from that. I remember just as, you know, I’ll just share this a little bit, but this is how simple taking the time. for to analyze your boredom will set you free. Like I, when we moved to Cameroon, I was like out of my mind. I thought I am feeling so disconnected. I’m bored. I don’t know what to do. It took me a few minutes to recognize I wanna talk to people, but I don’t wanna be standing at a social saying how many countries I lived in. And everybody’s telling the city, the capital city of the country they lived in, knowing good and well, other people don’t know what country that is. I was like, I’m sick of it. I’m over it. 

So I took the moment to just pause and I wanted intimate conversations. What did I do? I started inviting people to my home that I did not know, but I found interesting at these socials. And we all come to my house and answer one question. That’s the gift we also can give our kids. Like, okay, just sit in it for a minute. And if there were no limitations, what would you do for yourself at school, at home, in your friendships, and just begin to help them develop that skill of cultivating the opportunities that lie within boredom? 

Lori: Goodness, Sharoya, I could listen to you all day. 

Katie: I know. 

Lori: We need like a four hour podcast where you just give us advice. So one of your chapters for families is called Are You Fanning the Flames and Don’t Know It. I really found this chapter super interesting. What I want to note for our listeners who haven’t yet read the book is there’s no blame being placed on parents in this chapter, none at all. Maybe they’re doing things that are indirectly affecting their child’s refusal to go to school. So what are some things that parents might fail to do or to realize when responding to a child who resists going to school? What are those things that might be fanning the flames? 

Katie: I can share from my perspective. So one of the things that we hadn’t addressed was our daughter’s learning difference because it was affecting… We weren’t sure, and that’s also embarrassing because I was a second grade teacher. I was like, oh, I should know this. But she was really struggling. And I remember this red folder that would come home and the work was just piling up and she was just feeling so overwhelmed by it. So, and I think I was kind of a little bit of a know -it -all. I was like, oh, she’s fine, blah, blah, blah. She just needs a different environment. And so it took me and my husband a while to recognize, no, we need to get an educational evaluation. We need to understand what’s going on with our daughter. And I think in this globally mobile life sometimes where a spouse’s job may be dependent on their child’s educational needs, there’s maybe not a prioritization of supporting the, the child and what they need to get. So that was one way we were fanning the flames. Another way we were fanning the flames was that I would just, I think I didn’t want the blowback for my daughter when she would stay home, so I wouldn’t take the iPad away or I wouldn’t put some expectations in place when she did stay home. So of course she wanted to stay home. She got her iPad all day, she got to have lunch with mommy, like all this kind of stuff. So I think I wasn’t making the home environment the least desirable environment could be. So those were two ways I was definitely fanning the flames. 

Lori: How about another, Sharoya? What other ways can we fan the flames? 

Sharoya: Well, I want to just back up what you said in terms of the educational evaluation and to that point, any parent who reads our book and realizes they need to get an educational evaluation, I want to send them over to a great book called Navigating Special Education Relationships. 

Lori: There we go. 

Sharoya: Because in chapter two, there’s awesome, I love discovering a disability, sniffing socks and an autism diagnosis. There’s one quote in the book that really, I want parents to really listen to this. This is Lori’s book, by the way. It says, assessment diagnosis is only meaningful if we use that information to inform treatment. Labeling for the sake of labeling needs to go by the wayside. Here’s what happens. Parents hear that, like, oh, we want your child to get evaluated. Sometimes schools are not even as direct as they need to be. They’re kind of like, well, we’re noticing something and we think something. There’s value in being direct sometimes with compassion, because what we know is when we delay this, we don’t have a plan for intervention. And so that’s what I love about your book, Laurie. If I could meld the two together, like if if the reason why your child is not wanting to go to school because they’re they’re they’re having difficulties in their education, then I think these books, you should read them in tandem. Because once you recognize the need and I want to propose it this way to to see it differently, it’s as if you spend all this money for this educational evaluation or the school does, either way, whoever pays for it, you get this handbook. I want parents to see it as a handbook, a handbook that tells you how to play the game to get your child to develop, not just the teacher, but you as the parent. And so then you can go to the school and go, wow, this expensive handbook, it’s gonna help both of us support my child. And that’s what it’s about. It’s a baseline and it helps, it’s a roadmap. 

And schools will not allow your child to have access to certain things unless you have this handbook to prove that basically research has proven that if we use this technique, then this problem should be mitigated. And so I think that’s what parents have to understand. And what I think in terms of helping them to make sure this is how it’s used is they can simply say, okay, I have yet to get my son or daughter evaluated or have the assessment done. But when I do or if I do, tell me how it would look different from right now. Okay. And then the question is when you go to the assessor, to the evaluator, you’re just gonna say, how is it that I should parent differently? What are you thinking? 

Lori: Based on all of the information you have and you’ve seen many other families, what do you see that happens? 

Sharoya: after the fact, after the evaluation is given that is helpful to the kid. So that’ll give you some understanding of how this handbook can be useful and should be useful if you don’t see those things happening, that’s when you wave the red flag. But I think there has to be a mind shift for parents to understand, this is not labeling. This is like, access. Access. Google, GPS. How we get your child to develop more effectively with less trauma, less effort on all of our parts. Yeah. So that, I think that is key because most of it will come down to some level of psychological or educational or emotional trigger or set of triggers. 

Lori: Great. Thank you. That’s really helpful and useful. And I promise that I did not bend Sharoya’s arm to mention our book. 

Sharoya: You did not. Not at all. You don’t have to bend. When I find something good, I’m going to share it. 

Lori: So kind. So you recommend that families contact the school and work in partnership I know that’s probably a very difficult thing to do. Again, it entails that level of vulnerability where you’re reaching out to them. But why do you believe this is such an important thing? 

Katie: Yeah, I think that’s the environment that your school or your child goes into. So we have to get that environment right. So that parent voice, not teacher voice. 

Lori: Okay. 

Katie: My child was going into a school environment that was intolerable for her. She felt so much anxiety. She felt so much distrust. And so I needed to work in partnership with the school to get the environment that could be tolerable for her. And so I reached out to, I first reached out to the counselor because I had a relationship with the counselor. I think it’s important. It doesn’t have to be the counselor. I think for me it was just the counselor I had the best relationship with because I had worked with this counselor with my other daughter. And so when. You know, first reaching out to her and then working with the classroom teacher. 

It just ensured that whatever we were doing at home could be supported in school and whatever they were doing in school could be supported at home. And I kind of was a mother bear too, because I made sure that we would have regular zoom calls to just check in like how are things going. And just sharing really honestly about how my day was at home too with the school. So like if Marnie had a hard morning, I might text the teacher that Marnie had a hard morning, but she’s coming or she’s coming late and she’s coming. And then that would support Mania when she entered the building, like the teacher, oh, so glad to see you. And so Mania had a great relationship with her classroom teacher too. So that was wonderful because we had two adults in the building that Mania felt really comfortable with. And I think that’s helpful as a parent to know who in the school does your child feel most connected to and reaching out to that individual I found to be the most helpful. Yeah. 

Katie: Yeah. And you know, Lori, honestly, about your book, it is so much about relationship, the journey, really parents have to understand it is not easy to navigate because you’re feeling that tension, like I need to get my child help immediately. And you in your book are also trying to help teachers understand from a parent’s perspective, all the work that a parent has done and what they may be feeling. So my job as a parent coach is often to help parents understand what teachers are feeling and what they have been through. And it’s so important for parents to understand and value, appreciate what their child’s teacher has already done. Even if they couldn’t successfully make great strides with your child, the fact that they’re keeping you updated on what’s happening, that’s a gift. And so I really try to help parents understand, I’ve been a teacher, I’ve been a mom. Teaching is the hardest job, I say in the world. You’ve got however many kids in your classroom, let’s double it with the parents that you gotta bring into your circle and all the administration is so much. And so I often try to get parents to just sit in that space of realization. Yes, you have your child, your child is very important but you must understand how important it is to go in and say, hey, you have my child for six and a half hours. What are you seeing? What do you think I could possibly do differently than what you have seen works? Because that’s the other thing. Sometimes we as parents feel like we have all the answers and we haven’t yet understood that our children behave differently around other people and their techniques often work better than ours. So we can learn both ways, but relations. 

From each other. I love that, yeah. And that the presuming competence piece I think is essential. You know, it’s so easy to think that our teachers aren’t doing anything. And then to just think about, okay, let’s, like you said, Sharoya, understand what they’ve already done or already tried and just work in that partnership rather than separate. 

Lori: Thanks for that. So many of our listeners are educators, international educators, 

Katie: or yeah, international educators. 

Sharoya: Everyone’s international, right? 

Lori: How can this book help our educators? 

Katie: Well, I think what’s hard as a teacher, I can put my teacher hat on now, is you have a bunch of kids in your classroom, and then if a child is really struggling emotionally, it’s hard to know, hard to have the time to figure out how to support that child. And so, you know, all the relationship work that teachers do to build classroom community, to build relationships with individual kids. I think that that’s the foundation that supporting a child who’s refusing to go to school needs, because it may… It may not be that you haven’t created a classroom community. It may just be that that child needs a little something different or a little extra support during a certain time. And so as teachers, a lot of the principles that we talk to parents about in the book can also be true in the classroom. What do you think, Sharoya? 

Sharoya: For sure. I’m hoping ultimately, and I think this has been our joint desire, is that this book teachers can give as a gift to parents and just say, acknowledge, this hasn’t happened. I don’t know how to solve this, but I know that this book really details some steps. you could possibly consider. So how about you read this, let’s talk about this. Let’s talk about what applies to you, what we should do together with your child based on the steps in this book. So that’s what I would say is this book would serve as a resource and a relief for teachers because parents put that pressure on educators sometimes help me figure it out. Well, you know, it’s hard. And so we’re hoping that this book would help counselors and teachers just say, okay, I got something for you that I think will help you start moving in the right direction. And as you move, let’s keep talking. 

Lori: Keep talking. Yes. Well, I am a former teacher and I read the book and I find it incredibly valuable and useful and I highly recommend it to anyone listening. So thank you for your time today. I’ve learned so much from you just in our conversation, but also through your book and I wish you the best of luck. 

Katie & Sharoya: Thank you. Thank you so much. 

[Outro music plays]

Thank you for joining us for today’s show. For more information including how to subscribe and show notes, please head to our website. That’s seniainternational.org/podcasts. Until next time, cheers. 

Show #86 Leaders Do the Right Thing: Changing School Systems

Show #86 Leaders Do the Right Thing: Changing School Systems

On today’s podcast, host Lori Boll speaks with Kevin Bartlett. Kevin is the founding director of the Common Ground Collaborative (CGC), one of SENIA’s partner organizations. CGC is a learning ecosystem used by schools in 20 countries. Kevin  has led schools in Tanzania, Austria, Namibia and Belgium. He was a trainer for the PTC, co-author of the ACE accreditation protocol for NEASC, initiator of the IB PYP and co-founder of The Next Frontier Inclusion. He was AAIE International Superintendent of the Year (2014) and was inducted into the AAIE Hall of Fame. Kevin and  Lori speak about his passion for inclusion, barriers to it, and how schools can embed it in a practical manner and create systems that include.

Bio

Kevin Bartlett led schools in Tanzania, Austria, Namibia and Belgium. He was a trainer for the PTC, co-author of the ACE accreditation protocol for NEASC, initiator of the IB PYP and co-founder of The Next Frontier Inclusion. Kevin is the Founding Director of the Common Ground Collaborative, a learning ecosystem used by schools in 20 countries. He was AAIE International Superintendent of the Year (2014) and was inducted into the AAIE Hall of Fame. Kevin remains a practitioner, regularly teaching students, teachers and leaders. He believes in keeping his feet on the (common) ground!

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Transcript

Transcribed by Kanako Suwa

[ Introduction music plays ]

Welcome to the SENIA Happy Hour with your host, Lori Boll. We know you’re busy so we bring you 1 hour of content in under thirty minutes, leaving you with time for a true happy hour. 

Lori: Hey everyone. Well, it’s been a while SENIA has been offline and at our conference that we just had in Vietnam, which was really awesome and fun and brought everyone together for a common goal. So it was pretty powerful. And if you haven’t been able to join us for a conference, I really hope you can soon. Please join us. 

So today on the podcast, I get to speak with Kevin Bartlett. Kevin’s the founding director of the Common Ground Collaborative, and it’s one of SENIA’s partner organizations. CGC is a learning ecosystem used by schools in 20 countries. Kevin has led schools in Tanzania, Austria, Namibia, and Belgium. He was a trainer for the PTC, co -author of the ACE Accreditation Protocol for NIASC, initiator of the IB PYP and co -founder of the Next Frontier Inclusion. He was AAIE International Superintendent of the Year in 2014 and was inducted into the AAIE Hall of Fame. Was that enough acronyms for you? So today Kevin and I speak about his passion for inclusion, barriers to it, and how schools can embed it in a practical manner. We also learn about the work of CGC and I’m sure you’ll learn a great deal from Kevin as I do each and every time I speak with him. So now, on to the show. Well, hello Kevin and welcome to the podcast. 

Kevin: Hi Lori. Good to be here. Nice to see you.

Lori: Nice to see you too. So you are a former school head and have had experience all over the world as I shared in our intro. Why have you spent so much of your career supporting inclusive practice? 

Kevin: It’s funny because for no particularly complicated reason, Lori, just almost a gut level belief that if we work in international education, in any education, but maybe explicitly international because that’s why I spent most of my career, although now I’m working in other fields.I think international schools were set up to serve an internationally mobile group of families to make it possible to work in different regions of the world. And when I say families, I mean the whole family. So when I teach leadership, I teach a lot of leadership courses and we teach Drucker’s definitions of leadership and management. Leadership is doing the right thing. Leaders do the right thing. Managers do things right. 

So it always felt to me at a non -cognitive, intuitive gut level that the right thing to do was to serve all members of a family and that everybody learns differently. And if we were an international body of educators, why would we expect the national system to educate certain children in that family?  Why would we think another school down the road was smarter than we were and therefore more able to support those kids? Why would we tear a family apart? Why would we make it impossible for a family with neurodiverse learners? And any parent will tell you every one of my kids is entirely different. Why should they not be able to have an international career? So to me, it was just a fundamental, or it wasn’t any big deal. It was a fundamental right of every family to have their kids educated by us. 

And it was our job to get good at that stuff and just make it happen. It’s more, to me, somewhat odd that everybody doesn’t think that way. Not that I’m that opinionated to think everyone should agree with me, but… as a matter of principle, I just think we educate every kid. And some kids do challenges more than others. Let’s not be naive about it. But along with Bill and Ocean Powell, with whom I co -founded Next For Interior Inclusion, along with Christian Pelletier, we always just felt that every child was there to be educated and it was our job to do it. 

And in fact, being in inclusive school makes us a more intelligent school. They wrote a lot about organizational intelligence. It makes us a better school. And I think in two ways, professionally better, smarter at what we do, but also morally better. I mean, along with Kristin, we built a fully inclusive school at the International of Brussels with the mission driving it, everyone included, everyone challenged, everyone successful. And we had a very demanding and very, very bright and accomplished board of 20 people from various walks of life, but selected. It was, it wasn’t a democratic elected, but we selected people for the board. So they were demanding and they honestly, they loved the fact that we were an inclusive school. They felt that it brought tremendous value to the whole community. And we convinced them we’re using data that it wasn’t having any negative impact on achievement or anything else. 

So, but honestly, honestly, Lori, it’s, it’s, it’s, to me, it’s a kind of no big deal answer. I just felt intuitively, emotionally. That’s just our job, isn’t it? So why don’t we just do our job? And if it’s hard, it’ll make us think harder. And that’s good for us, isn’t it? So, so it was very much the idea that, to me, making International of Brussels inclusive was about five minutes of leadership, we have to do the right thing. And 13 years, 364 days, 23 hours, whatever of management, which is doing things right, which is, okay, if the natural thing to do is to embrace these children, welcome them into our community and be deliberately diverse, not kind of accidentally, whoa, those slipped through the net, but no, deliberately diverse. Let’s build a diverse community because that represents the diverse community outside these school walls. But not much leadership other than just to make the decision to do the right thing. And loads of management trying to do it right. But to me, it was just a very personal intuitive feeling that surely this is what we’re here for. So not very sophisticated, just very simple. 

Lori: I know, but it’s from the heart. And it makes me wonder, you know, this is the way that we’ve always thought as well. And I wonder why other school heads or other

schools in general don’t have this same feeling, or do they, and they’re just struggling with the management piece of it? How do we do it? So why do you think schools seem to have difficulty embedding inclusive practices in this in this world in this systematic, sustainable way? 

Kevin: You know, I think it’s the key question in a way, Lori, but I think it’s a bigger question than just inclusion, although inclusion is huge. Because I’m working to transform school systems in general. And it’s interesting. It’s not that the schools for me school systems are broken. I’m very taken with I read recently at someone’s point of view that said we say schools are broken, but they’re not. They’re in fact, very, very efficient at doing the wrong thing. Drucker said, there is nothing worse than doing efficiently that which should not be done at all. So I think for schools in general, whatever we say, and one of the big challenges, and it relates to your question, is the knowing -doing gap. Whatever we say and whatever we know, that doesn’t mean we’re doing it. 

I think schools often mistake talking about something from having done something.  You know, the post -meeting conversation. Oh, what did we do about? Oh, I don’t remember. Yeah, we talked about it. Yeah, we talked about it, didn’t we? But didn’t know we didn’t actually do anything. So I think as educators, we have a duty to intentionally take what we talk about and actually do it. And I don’t think we do that very often, Lori. I don’t want to sound critical of my… 

my fellow school heads, I’m not leading a school now embedded in schools, but a friend of mine said, you know, it’s hard to work on school in school. I think schools are so complex and it’s hard to work on them when you’re in them. 

So I just think people get overwhelmed with running the system as it is now too overwhelmed to step back and say, instead of tweaking the current system, I think we need a new one. So, so what does a new one look like? I mean, that’s the work I do with the common ground collaborative is creating a different and alternative view of school systems while still recognizing the culture and context of the schools we work with. So I think for me, common ground was going back to the drawing board and starting again with we worked with five questions, what is learning? What’s worth learning? How does everyone access learning? How do we build a learning culture in every classroom? And how do kids provide evidence of learning? So we call that define, design, diversify, deliver, demonstrate. And I think if you step outside of in school and look at it from the outside and say, what if we started again? Then you begin to see the kinds of changes that would happen to make an entirely new system. But I think with all empathy for school leaders, I think they’re so overwhelmed with managing the current system, that it’s hard to step outside and begin the transformation to a new system. 

I’m a big admirer of Meg Wheatley’s work, Margaret Wheatley’s work. She talks about walk out, walk on. She talks about first and second loop, the two loops theory. You have a dominant system that perpetuates for a long time until it’s way beyond being fit for purpose. And I think it applies to education and other forms of industry, if you like. But so many people have a vested interest in it. And it’s so embedded that even though many people have this nagging feeling that it’s no longer fit for purpose, it perpetuates. And as it grows and in age, it becomes more control and compliance related. And more locked into compliance type methodologies. So right now we have a compliance system where kids are rated according to the lowest common denominator, that which we can test and get easy numbers from, because that way we can shove them into college in the right colleges. 

If that’s the predominant model, then kids who think and learn differently just screw it up. They just make it more difficult, damn it, and my life was difficult enough already. If you rethink the whole model and say, as Jay and I are doing with our balanced assessment system collaboration, but no, the purpose of assessment is not to sort learners, it’s to improve learning. And once you come up with a new, this may sound very abstract, but in fact, for us, it’s very practical. Once you rethink the purpose of what we’re doing, the purpose of assessment, because not to get into too many rabbit holes, but one of the hardest things, I think, for schools that become inclusive is wrestling with things like grading. But, you know, I can’t give this kid a B because this kid’s achievement level is way below the rest of the kids. But look at the progress she made. Well, if it was on progress, she’d get an A plus, but it’s not on progress. So for me, in order to make the shifts, it really means stepping outside the system and rethinking it from the beginning. Look kind of like we did. Define, design, diversify, deliver, demonstrate. We also work, and this is gonna sound like too many models, in a kind of Venn diagram of culture, curriculum, and community. 

So I think when we make the changes, we have to recognize what changes school culture first, and we’re building community around that. And then within that, we have curricular designs like ours. And if you have a curricular design that’s framed around open -ended questioning, for example, and kids finding their place in that journey. And if you see like Malagoutse, every child has a story of possibilities. If that’s your mindset, honestly, most of the issues to do with inclusion go away. But when you’re trying to make these kids fit into a system that is really designed to slap numbers on kids and shuffle them off into the social factory, yeah, they’re just a nuisance. So it’s hard. It’s hard to have jarring systems. That’s why I think we have to rebuild the culture from the get -go. 

And honestly, I can share examples of schools. I’ve just been online with one of them last night. One school I worked very closely in Ecuador called MINE, and the call was interrupted by a phone call to Carolina, one of the two leaders I was talking to. And it was, she had a kind of shocked response to whatever this phone call was. And I said, what happened? 

And she said, well, there’s just been a survey of the private schools in Quito, and MINE has been voted number one by parents. I said, well, that’s a good thing, isn’t it? And then Valet, the other half of the team said, well, we’ve got about 200 families on the waiting list and I’m turning away five families a day. Oh no. This is a school that’s fully inclusive and they’re turning people away. 

So I know this is a very long rambling response, Lori, but what I’m saying is those schools that have transformed their whole system around inclusion and clarity and defining learning and teaching kids how to learn, maybe counter -intuitively we’re finding that they are inundated with families who want to go there. So if anybody thinks, but a non -traditional school, we’ll lose kids, we’ll lose, no, it’s the opposite. I think we misunderstand what parents want. But I guess that the quick summary from that long answer is, I think people don’t change because honestly, we’re so locked into the bubble that we’re in and we keep trying to tweak it and improve it and we keep trying to fit these kids into that system. Whereas I actually think we need to be bolder than that and say, why don’t we rethink the system? Brilliant thinker, Edward Deming, who created Total Quality Management, he said, a bad system will beat good people every time. And I think our schools are packed with good people, absolutely packed with good people. I don’t know, I can hardly think of an educator in my whole career who wasn’t doing it for the right reasons and didn’t love kids and didn’t want the best for them. But we just believe there’s one system and we live within it there isn’t as Margaret Wheatley would say there’s a second loop of the people who’ve walked out and walked on and they find each other. It’s like CGC and SENIA beginning to collaborate, the more we build connected alternative systems of people who believe in a different way of doing things, the more we’ll actually create a second loop. And I do believe this because I’m an optimist. I hope to be a pragmatic optimist a few years from now if you and extra material inclusion and CGC and Jay McTighe and Julie Stern and others Build closer networks together. We’ll have a system that is substantive enough for other people to say oh, you know There’s another way of doing it and some really good people are doing that. Why don’t we take a look at that? So I just think you have to have front -runners who then find each other and we begin to describe new systems and show that they work like mine school until enough people say, you know, I’d rather be in that system. 

So I think there’s a slow process of providing the alternative. People don’t leave a bad relationship generally until they find another relationship. I think we have to be another relationship. That’s why I like being in relationship our two organizations, because once people see it can be done, because we need to know what good looks like to do it. I think the more we work together and show models and keep showing people that we do work together, we will gradually see people thinking, well, I’ve always believed that and these kids do deserve it. And look, these people show how we can do it. So I just think to make a shift, it just takes a lot of front runners to work together until we are substantive enough for people to say, there’s another way of doing this and these people can help us. So, that was a very long answer to a short one. 

Lori: No, it’s perfect. And I just appreciate the look at the system in general and just how we need to change. I am going to go back a little to more of the micro level where recently I’ve had multiple families contact me because their child didn’t fit in the international school where they were attending and they have now been asked to leave. And so they’re left floundering, you know, they’re just stuck. We’re in this country, we have no school for our child. And as a head who had an inclusive school,  You know, I’m guessing once you got to that point, you didn’t have that issue so much where you had to exit a student. My question to you is, what do you tell other heads of schools if they ask you about this, about not being able to support a student that’s in their school doors already? 

Kevin: Hmm, I’m going to have to watch my tongue. First of all, the kids are in all our schools already. 

Lori: Exactly.

Kevin: Because if you take a young kid, unless you have some miracle way of scanning every kid’s future, you don’t know if you take a three -year -old, how they’re going to evolve. You don’t know. So you have the kids in your school. Again, well, I’ll try and give some practical answers, but an emotional gut level answer is, as far as I was concerned, when we took a kid, they were our kid. We never exited a kid. I exited two kids in 14 years. One was a nonverbal, unpredictably violent young boy. It was a very, very sad case. He had extreme issues and we couldn’t control him physically. We couldn’t control him physically and he would hurt other children. And in the end, the good of all the children, of course, that’s important. And there was one young lady who was just clinically so sick that she was convulsing frequently and we just felt her life might be at risk if she wasn’t in a more specialized medical situation. But other kids, we didn’t exit. We didn’t. I mean, the idea that, oh, well, we can take him up to middle school. That to me was just not on because we were one school. That’s another thing that schools are often not is really one culture, one curriculum, one. It’s ironic because everyone will say we’re a great school and we’re all one. And then they’ll say, and in our elementary division, I’m always interested in the language we use. So we’re one school with divisions. Okay. I’m trying to call them progressions, but I don’t think it’ll catch on. So for me, it was you take a child and they’re yours. I guess what I’m saying, Lori, is a lot of this is about mission and philosophy and culture and belief systems. 

Because there’s no practical reason to exclude a kid unless they’re a danger to another child or a danger to themselves, then sometimes we might say, well, we’re not a medical facility, that’s for sure. However, one thing we did was we did manage numbers. Our definition of a successful inclusive school was a school that successfully educates the full range of neurodiversity or a managed number of students with a wide range of learning profiles. So we always try to keep the numbers right. So it wasn’t that we took every child, so we had like 15 kids out of 20 in an elementary classroom who really needed a lot of individual support. And then we simply built systems around it. We built them in the elementary school, and then we progressed them through until we had a high school class. 

We used a tiered system. I’m not sure what the current thinking is about tiered systems. I’m sure it’s flawed. George Box, the physicist said, all models are wrong, but some are useful. And it was a useful model for us. So we had mild support, we had moderate support, we had intensive support. And there’s always language debates around what we label things, because you don’t want to label the kids. We used to say labels are for jam jars. So we had a managed number. We had a mission. The mission was everyone included, everyone challenged, everyone successful. That was written in my first month in the school and I broke all the rules and it was not written with the whole community with a wonderful, inclusive process. It was myself and one of the board members who I remember worked for Procter & Gamble and we just said, we needed a simple way to capture our belief system and it became everyone included, everyone challenged, everyone successful. 

And from that moment on, it was, well, how do we do that? What does it mean to have everyone successful? Success won’t be the same for everybody. 

And then with great leadership from Kristen, we built the systems. We did it slowly. It took us about 10 years to go from kind of full inclusion in early childhood to full inclusion in the high school. We came up with practical solutions for things like occupational therapy, speech language therapy. We didn’t have the staff for that. We got smart. We offered a room in our school to the best English speaking language therapist in Brussels.  So she had her practice on campus. So she was, and the deal was, it’s not so good for kids who didn’t go to our school, but they, our kids would get, would be first on her list. And parents paid separately for those very specialized individual therapies. We developed financial systems. We wouldn’t take a child from a family where the rest of the kids were going to another high fee paying school, five kilometers down the road. And there were two very, very good schools close to us. Very good. 

So if a parent said, well, I’ve got my kids in, I won’t name the school, but they won’t take Mary, but can you so can she come to you? 

And we would say no, because there’s a financial implication for the work. And your other children will pay for will bring in the income. I was very straightforward with them. You either as a family buy into our inclusive community or you don’t. Well, we’re not going to be the bandaid for one of your kids because another school won’t take responsibility for your whole family. So we have some very practical policies, Lori, like no, we take the whole family. Now, if it was a financial aid issue, we dealt with that differently because we were very interested in socioeconomic diversity, not just neurodiversity. 

We’re also, as an aside, very interested in gender diversity and all of those issues around identity and the school was pioneering in that respect as well. So we had a belief system captured by a mission that everybody bought into, including these very business -minded board members. And then year by year, we moved the program through the school. We had a tiered system because we made it work, even though, like I say, all models are wrong. We had clear financial policies that, nope, we won’t take one of your children. And then we used a lot of data to show the success of the program, because sometimes you’d get people saying, well, I bet you’re dragging the standards down.  So we said, here are the data.  We have this many children with an IEP taking IB diploma or IB certificates.  If you take the numbers out of these particular individuals, if you take their grades away, if you take their results away, you’ll notice it makes no difference to the average performance at ISB. Here’s another set of data. 97 % of the kids taking a certificate with a diagnosis are passing. So we had to prove that our system worked not just for those kids, but for everybody, that they weren’t dragging the reputation down, they weren’t dragging the scores down. and a lot of hard work and good systems in place and a full belief system. People, when you have that mission splashed over your letterhead, a pretty obvious statement depends as to what kind of school you’re coming to. 

We brought in the Special Olympics, we celebrated it enormously. When the kids went to Special Olympics, every student came out and they paraded through the school to loud applause. We had the band playing and we just took our mission and made it real just through hard work, practical systems, financial smartness, use of data. I honestly believe that people felt that however their kid learned, everybody benefited from being in an inclusive school. I guess the final point would be, that’s what life’s like and if schools are to prepare kids for life, why would you create an artificial environment where every kid is scoring 38 points or something on the IB. One final point about that is there was a debate we had a whole retreat years in with board members who were questioning I guess questioning whether or not their kid would be getting three more points on the IB diploma if it wasn’t an inclusive school and I would just tackle it head on and say well you tell me the average exam score you want you tell me and I promise you I’ll deliver it I can give you whatever average score you want on one condition you will write to the parents to say your child would get a full IB diploma, but would reduce our average. So she can’t take the full IB diploma. And as soon as you say things like that, board members go, okay. And I say, what’s more important? Our school’s averages or that every child gets the best opportunity. And they were honestly, they were very good people. They were highly intelligent. As soon as you put up a few in your face statistics and say, what’s most important to you? ISB’s published IB averages or that every single child is as successful as possible. It’s a no brainer. But I think that one of the jobs of leaders is to keep putting those cold hard questions in people’s faces. What would you rather have? I believe in people, most people are decent. We want to do the best for these kids. We get stuck in the idea that we can’t. 

So you get this, our school can take children who are going to benefit from it, there’s a kind of stop response and you say, no, I want to have more kids in the net. So let’s change the answer. I can only say that there’s not just rhetoric, we did it. You’re doing it in schools all over the world. It’s perfectly possible. It’s a matter of the will. Giving good examples and then helping people. Your organization helps people on the path to inclusion. We always try to do the same. So, again, I must work on, I’m making a note to myself, be more concise. But I think it’s a matter of the will and then it’s being smart and strategic, taking your time, building the systems and then keep celebrating it, they are better schools to me they are better they are for sure and i i think the important thing as well is school leaders come and go and so it’s once you adopt this system this new system is that the next school leader believes wholeheartedly in it as well to keep it a sustainable system it’s the same with any culture you build yeah you recruit to it interestingly and i this i i hadn’t planned this conversation to be an international of brussels but my wife and i have both worked there we’re just reading a major celebration of that school i think at a un event for for promoting inclusion we haven’t been there for 20 years i guess no less than that she’s looking at me we haven’t been there for a long time but it’s still known as a very inclusive school with there being two or three leaders since i left… the board has stuck with it. That’s important. The governing body needs to be consistent. The mission hasn’t changed. For any accreditation reviewers of the mission, it’s never changed. It’s still everyone included, everyone challenged, everyone successful. And in fact, it’s a good point, you may, because turnover of leadership can damage cultures. But if it’s strong enough, and you recruit to it, it just keeps going. And I’m sure that if it was ever perceived to be a failure, well, questions would have been asked. So you put systems in place, you hire to those systems, they keep going. 

Lori: Well, let’s keep it going. Well, Kevin, I think that’s all we have time for today. Thank you so much for giving us your time and for sharing about CGC and your ideas on inclusion.

Kevin: Thank you for the opportunity. I just think it’s important work that we do. And the philosophy is a simple one. We’re all, we all come to life with a certain set of human capacities and our job is to nurture those in every kid. And we have to be smart enough to do it because we’re in the learning profession. So if we can’t learn how to do things well, there’s not much hope for our profession. So, so it’s not, it’s complicated to do sometimes, but it’s not complicated to believe in.

Lori: Not at all.

Kevin: Okay, thanks for the opportunity to chat, Lori. Good seeing you.

[outro music plays]

Thank you for joining us for today’s show. For more information, including how to subscribe and show notes, please head to our website. That’s seniainternational.org/podcasts. Until next time, cheers. 

[ Outro music plays ]

Thank you for joining us for today’s show. For more information including how to subscribe and shownotes, please head to our website. That’s SENIAinternational.org/podcasts. Until next time… cheers!

Show #85 Introducing LUDIA- a free app to support Universal Design for Learning

Show #85 Introducing LUDIA- a free app to support Universal Design for Learning

On today’s podcast, host Lori Boll speaks with two passionate professionals, Beth Stark, a Universal Design for Learning and Inclusionary Practices Strategist  and Jeremie Rostan, a High School Curriculum and Instruction Coordinator at the International School of Panama who worked together to create LUDIA which was created as a new kind of entry point and scaffold for developing a Universal Design for Learning mindset, intentionally designing to reduce learning barriers, and discovering the power of Artificial Intelligence. 

We learn about their motivation & goal behind creating LUDIA, get introduced to the Four T’s Process, and learn what exactly educators can expect when they connect to LUDIA. 

Bio

Beth lives in Germany and partners with international schools as a consultant specialising in UDL implementation, building learner-centered systems of support, accessible technology integration, shifting mindsets, and igniting inclusive inquiry for all
learners. Her passion for reducing barriers through Universal Design for Learning began in her early years as a teacher of students who are Blind and Visually Impaired. Beth has sixteen years of IB international school experience and holds a Master’s Degree in Special Education. Beth serves as the Co-Chairperson of the UDL-IRN Implementation Special Interest
Group, is an ISTE certified educator, and a CPACC certified member of the International Association of Accessibility Professionals.

For the past 15 years, Jérémie has helped international schools combine academic rigor and student experience through the development of transformative programs. A prolific author, his holistic and innovative approach is regularly featured in leading publications, as well as on his website, where he creates resources for school leaders and educators. Jérémie recently wrote “AI-Powered UDL Strategies”, and is the High School Curriculum and Instruction Coordinator at International School of
Panama.

Connect

Resources from Today’s Show

Transcript

Transcribed by Kanako Suwa (she/her)

[Intro music]

Welcome to the SENIA Happy Hour podcast with your host, Lori Boll. We know you’re busy, so we bring you one hour’s worth of content in under 30 minutes, leaving you time for a true happy hour. 

Lori: Hello, everyone. So today I was lucky enough to speak with two passionate professionals, Beth Stark, a Universal Design for Learning and inclusionary practices strategist, and Jérémie Rosten, a high school curriculum and instruction coordinator at the International School of Panama, who worked together to create LUDIA, which was created as a new kind of entry point and scaffold for developing a universal design for learning mindset, intentionally designing to reduce learning barriers and discovering the power of artificial intelligence. 

Today, we learn about their motivation and goal behind creating LUDIA. We get introduced to the 4Ts process and learn what exactly educators can expect when they connect to LUDIA. It’s exciting stuff and I can’t wait for you to hear it. So now, on to the show. Hello Beth and Jérémie and welcome to the podcast. 

Beth: Thank you so much for having us, Lori. It’s great to be here. 

Lori: Well, today we’re here to talk about Universal Design for Learning and a very special project you created, LUDIA. So tell me what motivated the creation of LUDIA and what is its goal? 

Beth: Well, I’m going to go ahead and start off by saying that UDL is one of the oldest acronyms in the world of inclusive education, but it might be new to some of your listeners. And so Universal Design for Learning is based on the belief that all learners can learn and that all educators have the very best of intentions and we all want every learner to grow and develop as someone who is resourceful and purposeful and motivated and knowledgeable and strategic and goal directed. So all of those descriptors sound great, but when it comes to creating the conditions for supporting learners to become expert learners, a systemized approach and scaffolding is needed for us to design well and intentionally. And that’s where the UDL framework comes into play. 

And so I’m really passionate about Universal Design for Learning. And so Jérémie and I paired up in the beginning to try to leverage the power of AI to create bridges for educators so that they could really connect more on the daily with universal design for learning as they were planning their lessons and engagements. So that’s the short story. 

Jérémie: And LUDIA was very much at the intersection between UDL and AI, hence the name LUDIA, which is a sort of concatenation of the two. The basic idea was to reduce barriers to implementing UDL and to accessing and leveraging the potential of AI, making it more easily accessible to the widest possible audience. 

Lori: Great. It sounds really exciting. So is it a website? Is it an app? What is it? How do we access it? 

Beth: The simple answer is that LUDIA is a chatbot. It’s free. It’s accessible to everyone. And you can use either voice typing or your keyboard to access it on your personal device or through a browser on your laptop or computer. And beyond just being a simple chatbot, we have really gone in and engineered LUDIA to be much more of a thought partner for teachers so that they don’t need to worry too much about perfect prompting when they’re like they do with ChatGPT and instead we just encourage them to start by engaging with LUDIA and telling LUDIA about their learners the goals and the challenges that they’re facing.

Jérémie: it is very much conversational so you really it’s you are chatting with the bot you don’t use any kind of technical language and it also provides options for follow -up so as you ask a question it gives you answers and it says okay here might be some follow -up questions you might have for me so it’s scaffolding structures that conversation. 

Lori: Wow, that sounds really interesting. So before we dive in more to how teachers can really use your LUDIA, tell me about this four Ts. What is the four Ts process? 

Beth:Well, I started off by talking about the simple first T, which is tell. And Jérémie, I’ll let you take it from there. 

Jérémie: Well, you simply start by telling LUDIA what’s on your mind, what concern you have, or what students need, what needs your students have. And then you tinker, meaning you play around and just chat with Ludea as you would have a conversation with a knowledgeable colleague or UDL expert. Then you tweak. Tweak meaning you are not simply going to take whatever LUDIA gives you and go ahead and implement in your classroom. You’re going to adapt to your context, but do make it your own thing. So you tell, you tinker, you tweak, and finally you transfer. Transfer meaning that you scale either in your own practice or by sharing with colleagues or by developing sort of routine and strategies for yourself that you can use over and over again in your classroom. 

Lori: And all of this is free. 

Beth: Oh yeah. 

Jérémie: And it will always be free. 

Lori: That’s wonderful. Yeah, that’s great teachers always appreciate free. 

Beth: Thanks for bringing that up and this is very much a passion project, and we as international educators really wanted to reduce barriers to universal design for learning for all educators and instructional designers everywhere. And that’s our goal, and it will remain our goal. And we hope that in using LUDIA, people will also start to think a little bit more differently, perhaps about the idea and the mindset that barriers to learning are not within the learner. They’re within the design of the learning. And so that’s the mindset that we’re really trying to foster through engaging with LUDIA. 

Lori: Mm -hmm. I love that. Yeah. Please. 

Jérémie: It is a very safe conversation for teachers. So it helps to have this mindset of, as Beth said, the need or the deficit is not in the learner, but it’s not in the teacher either. It’s just a misalignment. Something is not aligned between the way we have designed instruction and the needs of the students. We’re simply going to diagnose where is the gap, where’s the misalignment, and realign. Nobody’s at fault here. We’re just looking for harmony. 

Lori: And so who is in charge of the tech part of this? 

Beth: As collaborators, we really see this as, yeah, a shared effort. So even within the engineering aspects of LUDIA, we were working together through consultation because LUDIA is only as good as the guidance LUDIA offers. So you know, when it comes to making sure that the information that is generated is going to support teachers on their UDL journey, that had to be an ongoing conversation between us. 

Lori: You mentioned earlier about ChatGPT and probably Bard or ClaudeAI, all of them. What makes LUDIA different than engaging with one of these? 

Jérémie: Essentially, what makes it different is what you would call a mega prompt. So what that does is, as Beth said, instead of having every teacher need to learn prompt engineering and go through a very complex process of finding just the right way to ask all those questions to ChatGPT, you have a tool that has been shaped to harness the potential of ChatGPT for instance, although it does not actually run on ChatGPT, but something like ChatGPT, but shaped in a way where it is meant for educators and not just educators, but educators that are looking for UDL for your thought partner and for your deal solutions. So it is a much more specific and expert use than and therefore output than you would get from a very general chat about your chatGPT. 

Lori: Right, and I know that chat GPT, if it doesn’t know the answer, it’ll make one up. Whereas it sounds like yours is, it’s all work that you’ve put into it to create the conversation. 

Beth: Well, I do want to add two points here, and that is that the UDL framework is based on over 1100 research studies, which provide the core foundation of those actions that we can take as educators to reduce barriers. And that’s just the first layer of research. So, what you’re receiving is well -informed guidance and instruction that isn’t coming from Jérémie or myself, we’re just directing that connection through the megaprompt. 

Jérémie: I was going to say, we also see, as you said, LUDIA is very much of a passion project and it’s an ongoing project. So, we’re also already looking at what will the next iteration look like and how can we go deeper into technical aspects and the fine -tuning of a large -language model specifically for this purpose. So, that would be the next step. 

Lori: When somebody goes into LUDIA, what can they first expect? What would they see when they first hop in? 

Beth: Well, depending on if they’re using their Pro account via their browser or they’re handy, which they can access through a free app. They’re going to see a homepage that isn’t very neat and tidy. So we do want to say that we’re using a platform that is free. And as Jérémie mentioned, this is really very much LUDIA 1.0. So you’re going to see over to the right a description and some resources and links to resources that you can access to, for example, look further into the four T’s and learn a little bit more about LUDIA and the origins and also read some resources and some articles that have been very generously put out into the world since LUDIA came on the scene in August. 

And then over to the left, you will see kind of a doc of all of your history. So every chat that you have, of course, then is, I would say, saved. So in your profile. And one of the things that LUDIA does is really encourages educators and instructional designers to try something out. And then if it doesn’t work to come back, or even if it does work to come back and perhaps progress onto the next step, when it comes to identifying and reducing barriers or to try another strategy or checkpoint that may be much more effective for learners. 

So that’s the basic layout. And at the very bottom is where you can choose to either type or use voice typing to respond to the very simple prompt that you’ll see. And that is a hello from LUDIA and then asking the users to share a little bit about their context, about their learners, about the challenges that they’re facing. 

Lori: Okay, thanks for that background. Now, can you walk me through what it might be like for a teacher to engage with LUDIA? 

Beth: Yeah, I always encourage teachers to think about you know, those questions or wonderings that they have where they might turn to a mentor teacher or someone that they know, you know, amongst the staff that knows a lot about UDL or, you know, if they just imagine if they had someone with, you know, a lot of expertise in their midst, what kind of questions would they want to start the conversation with? So an example might be, you know, I have a class with several multilingual learners, many of whom are just at the first stage, first phase of learning English. I very much want to reduce barriers to representation. So you might say, I want to make sure they understand the key concepts and the terms in our upcoming unit. So how can I make that happen? Just a very conversational question. And what teachers can also do is attach the unit planner to the conversation. So that gives LUDIA the ability to give very specific, relevant, contextual feedback and guidance for the teacher. And some examples of what you can expect to receive back would be a scaffolded list of guidance about how to support the learners with understanding each key concepts or term. 

LUDIA will also give guidance about flexible grouping, how to do some authentic learning tasks perhaps that are going to give all of the learners equal access and opportunities to also be social and collaborative in their learning. So the number one response that we receive from teachers is, wow, I started a conversation with LUDIA and LUDIA helped me to identify barriers I hadn’t even thought about and gave me guidance and support about how to reduce them. 

So I would say, keep your expectations high and keep the conversation going. And don’t forget that you can always take advantage of that little paper clip over to the right and attach anything, a rubric, a unit planner, you know, a written assessment and just also ask LUDIA, how can I reduce barriers for all learners? 

Jérémie: There is a recent one that was a good one where a teacher asked about the Israel -Palestine conflict or situation and the teacher did not share the background of the student, which wasn’t on his mind at the time. So LUDIA asked, I probably need to know, is there something sensitive there? And once the teacher shared that, LUDIA insisted on the importance of choosing appropriate vocabulary and choosing different terms for the same situation and looking at different perspectives and different options for vocabulary to make the presentation of the content appropriate. So that comes from the prompt, that comes from the way we have designed LUDIA, that it’s going to sort of proactively ask those questions, for instance, about cultural background and appropriateness, and always be mindful of that. 

Lori: That’s incredible. You know, I always when in my role or my past role as educator, learning support teacher, I’m always thinking in the context or from the lens of supporting learners with disabilities or such, but I hadn’t thought of it in other contexts like you just mentioned with different sensitivities to religions or culture or any of that. So it’s really impressive that that’s all built right in. 

Beth: Well, we want to add that it’s about creating connections. So it’s not necessarily that we have kind of behind the curtain, we have all of the perfect answers. And we’ve engineered LUDIA to connect with our big brains. Instead, we’ve created that mega prompt to ensure that those responses are culturally responsive. We’re prioritizing the checkpoints of minimizing threats, for example, and optimizing choice and autonomy. Certainly, the the user, the educator or instructional designer, will be pleasantly surprised about how LUDIA prioritizes. So just as the UDL framework is scaffolded as a professional tool for us, so the first row being access, the second being build and the third being internalize, you’re going to also receive responses that are always going to prioritize the importance of access. And so, for example, if a learner in a classroom is feeling intimidated and threatened, it’s very difficult for them to move forward and dig deeper into the content that’s being delivered. So that’s one of the ways that LUDIA implicitly guides people to develop that UDL mindset. And we know that, you know, if we think about mentors or wise educators that we’ve worked side by side with in the past, you know, that’s the kind of guidance that we’re looking for. 

We’re not looking for solutions. We’re looking to learn. And that’s what that’s the experience that LUDIA will offer. And there really is no catch. There is no paywall. There is no cost. We really want it to be as accessible as possible to as many people as possible. And one of the other things that Jérémie and I did was we created a set of guidebooks for people. So you might have people who don’t know what UDL is, and they just want to start asking questions. LUDIA is also a source of professional learning about universal design for learning. So you might want to start there, or you might want to dig into a little bit more about expert learning and how to really reduce barriers in your particular units. Or you might actually really just want to learn more as far as, OK, tell me a little bit more about these checkpoints in relation to this goal that I have in my upcoming lesson tomorrow. It’s 10 o ‘clock at night, so what do I need to prioritize? And LUDIA, I can help you. 

Jérémie: And two quick things that I wanted to add, one is in terms of the user, so the user is an educator, a learner themselves, there might be a teacher, there might be someone who provides PD to adults, someone who design workshops and wants to implement UDL. It’s also very relevant to adult learning, but it’s not necessarily only for children. The second thing is, you asked about the difference with a very general tool like ChaiGPT, in the prompt, the sort of meta prompt that runs LUDIA, we also baked in what we call negative demands, so things that we do not want to talk about. 

So, because ChatGPT has essentially ingested all over the internet, and it’s more complex than that, but essentially, it also repeats what it has read the most. So, if there are myths out there, it’s going to spew out those myths. So, when you ask ChatGPT to design a lesson, oftentimes, you will use things like learning styles, because it’s everywhere. We made it very clear to LUDIA that she should not mention or provide any kind of recommendations that revolve around learning styles. 

Lori: Brilliant. I’m really excited about this. I can’t wait to shout it out to the world and for everyone to learn more about it. I know you two are exceptional educators, and we are so lucky to have you designing a course about UDL for us, for our Level 2 certification program. So thank you for that. 

Beth: I was so excited and honored when I got that request. So it’s another passion project. You know, UDL can really feel intimidating and confusing to people like all of us who have the best of intentions. We want to support all learners. And so figuring out ways to connect with more people and to demystify it and reduce the barriers to their professional learning is a lot of fun. 

Lori: Awesome. Well, thank you for your time today and I can’t, I’m just going to dive right into LUDIA right now, as soon as we get off this podcast.

Jérémie: Let us know what you think. 

Beth: Yeah, let us know what you think. Yeah, we’re excited to hear that. Thank you again for having us. Thank you. 

[Outro music plays]

Thank you for joining us for today’s show. For more information, including how to subscribe please head to our website. That’s seniainternational.org/podcasts. Until next time, cheers. 

Show #84 Inclusion is the Language of Inclusion

Show #84 Inclusion is the Language of Inclusion

Today host Lori Boll speaks with Ceci Gomez-Galvez who was one of our SENIA virtual conference speakers this year. Ceci (she.her.ella) is a collaborator, coach and advocate who empowers educators to create equitable learning opportunities for all language learners. Born and raised in Guatemala City, Ceci grew up in a unique bilingual household nurtured by her family who valued languages equally. Inspired by her own upbringing and her extensive experience in international schools, Ceci now leads a support program for multilingual learners based on practices which ensure culturally responsive teaching and equitable access.

Ceci and Lori speak about promoting language equity and translanguaging in our international schools as well as focusing on strong home-school partnerships in supporting a student’s language development. It’s always great learning from Ceci. 

Bio

Ceci (she.her.ella) is a collaborator, coach and advocate who empowers educators to create equitable learning opportunities for all language learners. Born and raised in Guatemala City, Ceci grew up in a unique bilingual household nurtured by her family who valued languages equally. Inspired by her own upbringing and her extensive experience in international schools, Ceci now leads a support program for multilingual learners based on practices which ensure culturally responsive teaching and equitable access.

Connect

Resources from Today’s Show

Transcript

Transcribed by Kanako Suwa

[ Introduction music plays ]

Welcome to the SENIA Happy Hour with your host, Lori Boll. We know you’re busy so we bring you 1 hour of content in under thirty minutes, leaving you with time for a true happy hour. 

Lori: Hello, everyone. Today I speak with Ceci Gomez -Galvez, who SENIA was lucky enough to have as a speaker at our most recent virtual conference this year. And if you haven’t had a chance to watch that presentation, we highly recommend it. It is full of good information. So Ceci (she, her, ella), is a collaborator, coach, and advocate who empowers educators to create equitable learning opportunities for all language learners. Born and raised in Guatemala City, Ceci grew up in a unique, bilingual household, nurtured by her family, who valued languages equally. Inspired by her own upbringing and her extensive experience in international schools, Ceci now leads a support program for multilingual learners based on practices which ensure culturally responsive teaching and equitable access. Today Ceci and I have the opportunity to speak about promoting language equity and translanguaging in our international schools, as well as focus on strong home school partnerships in supporting a student’s language development. It’s always great learning from Ceci. So now, onto the show. Hi Ceci and welcome to the podcast. 

Ceci: Hi, Lori. Thank you so much for having me today. I am so excited to be just talking to you and to just have a conversation, like a very good conversation about what linguistic equity means and within the context of international schools. And I’ve always loved and respected SENIA so much. So this is such an honor and I am humbled that you’re having me on your podcast today. So thank you. 

Lori: Well, mutual. We’re just so excited to have you. We are a super fan of Ceci. 

Ceci: Thank you.

Lori:  So Ceci, we are going to speak today about language equity and translanguaging. First off, can you explain to our audience what exactly does translanguaging mean? 

Ceci: So translanguaging really is a cognitive process, and when we approach it as a pedagogy at our schools, what we mean is educators and the system within the school encouraging multilingual students to use their full linguistic repertoire to enhance their learning and access content, access understanding, connect with others. And a huge piece of translanguaging is that belonging piece, that’s what really provides that equitable access of that avenue, those entry points of using language repertoire to be able to access the world around them. Really at the center of it is a belonging and somewhat of an equitable approach to education for multilingual learners. 

Lori: Gotcha. Thank you for clarifying that. When we talked about in your bio, we talked about how you were born and raised in Guatemala City and you came from a unique bilingual household. Can you just jump into that a little bit and explain what you mean by your unique bilingual household? 

Ceci: Sure. Absolutely. So I grew up in Guatemala City and the primary language in Guatemala is Spanish. And I went to a bilingual school growing up, which is a private bilingual school, which is quite a privilege for somebody coming from Guatemala. My parents were both bilingual. Actually, they were just here visiting me over the holidays here in Vietnam. And it was so great to chat with them actually about the trajectory that has led me here as a Guatemalan in international school education in Southeast Asia. And we were talking about those opportunities that they provided for us at such a young age and they were telling me about like how important it was for them to provide me and my siblings the opportunity to learn English so that we could have a more more access to the world and more success. And I guess growing up in a household where my parents always made sure that I was also nurturing Spanish, going to a bilingual school that was teaching both languages simultaneously, both in the social context and in the academic context. 

But most importantly, as well, embracing bilingualism as an asset, I think was something very important that I had growing up, surrounded by me, by the people in my community, my school community and at home, who never gave one language more of a priority. I was never told by my parents, oh, speak only English or speak only Spanish. It was always a true balance, which has now benefited me in being an ambilingual, having a bilingual brain, being able to have access to the world because I speak to, I guess, of the most dominant languages in the world, which is quite a privilege for me. And I guess when we talk about it with my parents and I ask them now as an adult, like, what led you to make those decisions. And really it was their own linguistic background. My dad grew up going to an international school in Guatemala way back when international schools were not really international, but they were built specifically to cater to certain employees of certain international companies. And my mom went to the American school in Guatemala on a scholarship because of her math abilities. My mom is kind of like a math whiz. And so because they both spoke English when they went to university together and they met, actually both of them knowing English is what got them together. It was like one of the commonalities that they had that made them connect. and then fall in love, and then have a family. And I guess that they always centered that importance of bilingualism and that access for us and all my siblings as well. And so we are all ambilinguals, which is to say that we can balance both languages at the same time, like most of our students in international schools can as well. 

Lori: Right, yeah. So is that how you were interested in becoming an international school teacher, just based off your parents’ experience? 

Ceci: You know, when I look back on how I got into this trajectory of teaching, I started teaching very early on in my life, because in Guatemala, there’s such a need for English teachers that I actually started teaching while I was still attending high school. So I was teaching in the afternoons. and I was doing a lot of tutoring. And when I really got into the international school realm, I was actually hired as a local hire in Guatemala, an international school. And I think one of the reasons why I wanted to work in an international school environment was because I wanted also to, I wanted to get to know the world. Like I think in my heart, I’ve always been a nomad and the best access that I could have was working at an international school where I was surrounded by people who were from all over the world teaching at an international school. Sadly though, as a local hire, I could definitely see a difference in the inequity that exists between local hires and I guess oversee what we call overseas hires in international schools. So, 

That’s when me and my husband, at the time my boyfriend, who was also an English teacher and who is now a PE teacher, we decided to take our careers abroad where we could be valued as those overseas teachers as opposed to local teachers, which we were paid so much less and we’re given very little opportunity for professional development. And so we had heard that international school teaching could provide us with that as well. And so we ventured out of Guatemala to seek that together, which has eventually brought us here to Vietnam and both of us working as international school teachers. 

Lori: That’s yes, that that is a whole nother podcast speaking about the inequity 

Ceci: Yeah 

Lori: But thank you for sharing your your history and your trajectory to this point. So that’s I’m I’m glad you’re out in the world. You give a lot to teachers and we can all learn so much from you. So let’s dive in how can international schools promote language equity and translanguaging to ensure that our students, regardless of their language backgrounds have equitable access to quality education and feel valued in our school communities? 

Ceci: Yeah, you know, it was kind of ironic, actually, because my experience as a bilingual student when I was younger, I understood the privilege that I had within the context of my schooling and my upbringing. Like I said, it’s very unique. Not everybody gets that experience, and I’m very, very fortunate and very privileged. But what I found when I started working in international schools is that there was this push for English, especially English -target schools that have English as the target language or the academic language, for this big push for it to be like an English -only space. 

And it didn’t make sense to me as a learner, as a bilingual learner, because for me, I was able to make sense of the world, both socially and academically and culturally, because I was invited and I was given the opportunity to be my whole self with my whole cultural and linguistic identity. So one thing that international schools can do is first recognize that multilingual ecology is real. Like that the population and demographics in our schools really encompass students that are managing, that are languaging so many different languages at different proficiencies. And they all mean something to them, both culturally and also part of their identity. 

And of course, always prioritizing academics, right? Of course, we are all that we want our students to be successful. We want our students to be able to become, you know, articulate and be able to express themselves and share their opinions and have a voice, have a strong voice. But that can only happen when we invite our students to come into our learning spaces as their whole selves. And one of the things that I kept on noticing in international schools is that we were kind of shutting the door on the students being able to, or being given almost a permission to use other their language repertoire and prioritizing just one dominant language. And because that hadn’t been my experience growing up, I always thought there was kind of like a, I think our students were kind of going through this cognitive dissonance, like, they weren’t, you know, like our students were going through this like, so who am I when I speak English? Who am I when I speak my other languages? I’m two different people. I’m one type of person at school, because I have to be, I have to use this language, or I have to, and I’m different at home because I use a different language, where in fact our students should be able to be their whole selves. So international schools, recognizing that the demographics of multiculturalism and multilingualism and linguistic representation is a real thing. Whereas before international schools that were built originally were built to cater to English speaking students who were, who had to have schooling in a country where the host country didn’t speak English. And so for reasons of keeping that language, that was the original idea of schools existing in other countries, international schools in other countries, but that we have evolved now into becoming a very diverse melting pot of languages and cultures. And so of course creating, not only recognizing that diversity, but also creating successful and inclusive support programs, language support programs for students is very important for schools to do intentionally as well, so that they can, our students can thrive academically, but they can also thrive as their whole selves with their whole cultural and linguistic background as being part of who they are. 

Lori: It reminds me of a school that I had been a part of a long time ago, and I don’t know if this practice is still in, well, still in practice. And so I’m just curious as to schools that require students to speak English and in fact ban them from speaking their home language. Have you heard of this practice and is it still going on today in international schools? 

Ceci: Definitely have heard of this practice. I know of schools who give language infractions and who have students write an essay when they’re not speaking English or having signs that say English only here. And I think that sometimes with the intention of being inclusive, sometimes we think that one dominant language is a way to be inclusive. English is the language of inclusion when in fact inclusion is the language of inclusion. When we speak to our students about, when we speak to our communities about what it truly means to be part of a multicultural, multilingualistic environment. It means that inclusivity is at the heart of it as well. And that doesn’t mean that only one language should be utilized to be inclusive. All languages can be inclusive as well. So definitely those practices exist. There’s also, I think a lot of these practices also are a misconception of the language acquisition myth of the past. You know, new research now, you know, the research by Dr. Ophelia Garcia, who is one of the biggest voices in the trans -languaging research in the United States, you know, now seeing multilingual and bilingualism as an asset that provides equitable opportunity for students, but also cognitively, the bilingual and multilingual brain has a lot of capacity to access information because they have so many points of entry to be able to understand content at a higher level because they can put those, they can do that context and those references in different languages. 

And so I think that even though those practices exist, they are what Dr. Gini Rojas would call the medical model, the old, you know, the old way of thinking. But as our demographics become undoubtedly more diverse in linguistic backgrounds, then schools have had to evolve and pivot and think about the belonging piece that is at the center of not just allowing our students to access their languages for learning, but giving them tools, intentional tools that they’re able to use within their learning so that they can use that, so that they can actually do that with intentionality, with practice, rather than a free for all, everybody speak whatever you want, use whatever language you want, but actually as a pedagogical practice that can allow students to like equitable access to our curriculums that are predominantly in a target language and that target language usually is English and international schools. 

Lori: It’s interesting you mentioned Gini Rojas’s work with the medical model in,  language. We hear it, we talk about that quite a bit in, you know, our realm at SENIA, we’re usually working with people who have learning disabilities, or neurodiverse, and how we’ve always in the past have approached it with that medical model versus the social model of inclusion. So thanks for bringing that to light for me. 

Ceci: For sure. And you know, it’s for in Gini’s work as well. I think I’ve known Gini for many, many years now. And the message that I’ve heard from her more than a decade ago, continues to be the message now too. There used to be a time when in international schools, students whose proficiencies in English were at the beginning or emergent level, were the minority. And so we were designing language support programs to cater to a minority, but and and I remember her saying so many years ago, this is no longer true, and it will continue to not be true. We are not going to have schools that are going to be packed of primary English speakers in international like in different in different countries. That’s not even true in the United States, she said, you know, like that’s not even true in the in the States when there’s so much there are so many immigrants and refugees and people who bring other language repertoires as well. And so for us, shifting that monolingual mindset, I think, is that is the toughest part because it does require us to look at our curriculum and our systems of support, and change, shift our mindset as well as to how might we be able to cater to the majority of students now rather than the, you know, when we label that we say this group of five kids are the EAL kids or the ESL kids, when in fact, the multilingual, I mean, more than 90 % of school populations right now are multilingual. And so that model of being able to think about our schools as that kind of linguistic melting pot, I think leads to more success in teacher instruction, because then we can look at the, you know, at our instruction in literacy through a multilingual lens, and we can look at our instruction of you know, competencies or any kind of any kind of from FDL to also supporting students with neurodivergencies or any other type of need. When we look at it through a multilingual lens, it opens up for us as teachers opportunities to be able to give students access to. And so it’s a little bit of letting go of those myths of language acquisition and letting go of course of that monolingual mindset as well that continues to permeate a lot in international schools. 

Lori: Great. Well, besides that monolingual mindset, in your experience working with international schools, what are some other common challenges or obstacles that our educators face when it comes to embracing that linguistic diversity and creating those inclusive environments? 

Ceci: For sure. We are, you know, we are, because there’s so many shifting of mindsets, there’s the comfort or I should say discomfort of change, and that can be caused by many things. There could be limited language support systems in a school. Let’s say where there’s only one person who holds the expertise about how to support multilingual learners and there’s only one person in a fee of 25 people. And being able to share that expertise is difficult if we are not staffing our schools with people who have the background of how to support multilingual students and populations in a curriculum that is somewhat designed for English speakers, for primary English speakers. And then of course there’s always the time constraints of collaboration because I really believe in my heart that it’s strong collaborative practices that allow to build a really good system of support for language development for all students and not only necessarily co -teaching, 

But I would say following the whole collaborative cycle, like Dr. Andrew Hanesdell will talk about the importance of co -teaching, co -planning, co -reflection and co -assessment and having all of those things come together. So that as collaborative partners, as collaborative teams, we can all be part of this like new paradigm of we are all language teachers as well. But this requires time. This requires schools to give time for that collaboration, that building of relationships as well. And another challenge that sometimes we face too is parent engagement, parent education and having parents understand as well about the new research about language acquisition, right? Cause some of our parent communities might still believe in those myths because when they were younger those the myth was the more the more we pressure the more exposure the more fluent you will be in this language and we now we know that that is that erasing one like a primary language and substituting it for another that has very that can have really a huge impact not only in the students learning but also within their identity and having to let go of of of their primary language not being able to communicate with their families or with their relatives or or with their culture because they have let go of that language. 

So, absolutely making space for parents, for our parent community and our caregiving community to be part of that collaborative system so that our students are receiving the same message. Our multilingual learners are welcomed at the multilingual people anywhere, whether it’s at home or at school, at recess, during sports, so it becomes like this collective. But for that, again, time and those systems of support and ensuring that we are reaching out and engaging with parents with this conversation. I think all of those, those can be real challenges that take time and take a lot of intentionality and planning for success in those engagements and communication. 

Lori: Yeah, thank you. Yes, we’ve mentioned building strong home school partnerships and how that’s crucial and how our schools are facing challenges now. Let’s talk strategies. So what strategies or approaches can our schools adopt to overcome our challenges and then? What what are some effective ways that schools can engage and collaborate with families? 

Ceci: So this is actually really I love this question because I mean the the possibilities are endless, especially with I’m a big fan of generative AI I think that right now it’s really breaking those barriers and allowing us for that multilingual engagement with Our peers sometimes our peers are also multilingual there allow, you know that generative AI is helping a lot with the design for equitable instruction for multilingual learners if we want to build something like a rubric or a lesson plan that has differentiation embedded into it. 

So I would say definitely always thinking outside of the box and being innovative, always remembering the why and the purpose, which is giving equitable access. Coming up with multilingual policies as well for schools, like that’s something very important. Take a look at the policies of our schools and what do we say in our policies and how do those policies guide who we decide becomes part of our community in terms of hiring or in terms of admissions or in terms of what professional development we are providing for teachers. So I mean professional development definitely is an avenue, a very successful avenue for for a strategy that we can adopt where, you know, teachers are trained in these specific strategies to support multilingual learners. It shouldn’t always fall on like the one EAL teacher or, you know, it should be everybody, everybody should know because it is like we, like I was saying before, it’s the majority of our populations now in our international schools. But definitely, I think that one of the things that often gets, I think that sometimes us as teachers, and I know that I’ve done this a lot, is that, you know, 15 years ago, I read a really good PD book and I was like, oh my gosh, this is what I, I love this, this is great, but education continues to evolve. So I think being willing as well to be a learner, in when it comes to the evolution and the changes that are coming as our populations become and demographics of communities become more and more linguistically diverse, I think it is important also that we a strategy that we can that we can apply is also being willing to evolve and change with the times and and be open to new research about the language acquisition and linguistic diversity and embracing that maybe that book or that course that we took 15 years ago, maybe now within the context of who our students are today might not be as applicable as it as it was 15 years ago and so and I think that that’s that’s hard that’s hard for for anyone to do to say but no but I always done this this way. 

And I think that letting go of that and embracing that change, embracing, you know, almost kind of like being courageous and vulnerable and saying, I want to learn something new because I want to provide my students with an equitable experience in my classroom. And I want them to make sure that they belong in my classroom as their whole selves, regardless of proficiency in English, I want them to be able to succeed academically and that doesn’t mean that they have to, you know, have perfect proficiency. How can I allow them to be academically successful as they still learn English? What can I do in order to differentiate and scaffold for them? And so I would say definitely professional development is one that immediately comes to mind, but also like that willingness and vulnerability to say, I’m going to challenge my thinking about something as the times change, being innovative, like I said, taking risks with generative AI and partnering with GenAI to kind of see what other ideas there can be so that I can support. So I can give the students that what they need, I can give my multilingual learners what they need in my classroom or in my space. Sometimes we talk about our multilingual learners being our students, but really that we have multilingual learners who are parents, we have multilingual learners who are our own peers and our own colleagues. So how do we create and nurture those equitable multilingual spaces and communities within our context in our country and in our schools? 

Lori: Beautiful. I have one more question. I’m not quite sure how to phrase it. But as we know, our students come to school and they have multiple identities. And we’ve, you know, we have our multilingual learners as well as quite often these students can also be neurodiverse. And so I was wondering if you had strategies or thoughts on how we can all in an international school work together to support all of these identities that our students are coming with into our classrooms. 

Ceci: Well, you know, I love I love really kind of like diving into the diversity, equity, inclusion and justice realm of that all of that is encompassed in belonging, right? I think that, you know, sometimes when we think about the systems of our schools and we think sometimes about somewhat of a rigidity and lack of flexibility to shift, to give students what they need. I think sometimes that can be a challenge for us in not knowing how to navigate that. And so going back to what I was saying about how I am a true believer in collaboration, I definitely think that student support systems should always be in constant communication with each other. Students, we talk about them as humans, not as quantities. I love the book Street Data, which talks about humanizing data and talking about looking at the people beyond just the numbers and the quantities and the performances, but rather have a conversation about what that particular human, that particular child needs. Because I think that when we stop having conversations, then we all kind of silo a little bit and our students are not receiving the supports that they need, whatever that is, whatever support they need, because we’re only seeing little pieces of them in our classes or in our interactions with them. 

And so I always go back to collaboration. How often are we co -reflecting about our practices with students and giving them what they need? How often are we co -assessing as well, looking at data that we’ve gathered about a student that can help us move them forward or determine if there’s any other need or any other type of intervention that they might need. How often do we co -teach to ensure that students have access to more than just one teacher and guide in the classroom? And how often do we co -plan as well with intentionality to ensure that the design of learning is differentiated for everybody who is in our classroom? So I would say, like I said, I mean, collaboration, it’s a tricky sell sometimes because it is, time, or it requires time, it needs to be embedded within the systems of support that we provide. But I also think that that is totally where we’re moving towards, I guess, in education, is that us teachers working in silos, it’s not, it’s not sustainable. And also our students as well, modeling that collaboration for them too, and modeling that inclusivity as well. 

I think it’s important for them to see that they can ask, they can, we can model that advocacy that they can have for themselves so that they can also ask for the supports and help that they need and that they require. And I think that, and I think that, I’ve seen so many beautiful examples of when teachers work together and they have that moment of like that win with that one student you know that made that that took that step or reach that milestone. And as a mom of a neurodivergent kiddo myself, I often think about how, how truly magical that moment is, and how it definitely doesn’t happen on it on, like, it doesn’t happen just because I’m doing something, it happens because there’s a team of people that are supporting my child as well. So that collaboration, that communication to me is definitely at the center of success when we’re looking at a student who might have many different needs, including language proficiency needs, and and making that plan together about how to best support them. 

Lori: Great. Well, wise as usual, Ceci. Thank you. 

Ceci: Thank you. 

Lori: So I think that’s all we have time for today, but I just want to thank you for your time and for joining us. And as always, I’ve learned so much from you and I appreciate you so much. 

Ceci: I appreciate you too, Lori. And thank you so much for this opportunity. I am so just so honored and so humbled. So thank you. 

Lori: Thank you. Thank you so, so much. 

[Outro Music plays]

Thank you for joining us for today’s show. For more information, including how to subscribe and show notes, please head to our website. That’s seniainternational.org/podcasts. Until next time, cheers. 

Show #83 Empowering Futures

Show #83 Empowering Futures

Host Lori Boll speaks with Max Simpson. Max has demonstrated a proven track record in the inclusion space from establishing 3 vocational training centers, modelling 11 inclusive and sustainable social businesses, and delivering essential consultancy services to organizations seeking enhanced inclusivity. Earlier this year, Max inaugurated a research center dedicated to advancing knowledge in this domain. A fervent advocate for the business case for disability and neuro-inclusion, Max extends an invitation to potential partners to collaborate on a shared mission of fostering an inclusive society.

In today’s podcast Max shares about an exciting collaboration between Steps, a vocational training program they founded in Bangkok Thailand, and St. Andrew’s 107, an international school in the area. Once you hear about this program, you’ll immediately want to start one at your school. 

Bio

Max Simpson has demonstrated a proven track record in the inclusion space from establishing 3 vocational training centers, modelling 11 inclusive and sustainable social businesses, and delivering essential consultancy services to organisations seeking enhanced inclusivity. Earlier this year, Max inaugurated a research centre dedicated to advancing knowledge in this domain. A fervent advocate for the business case for disability and neuro-inclusion, Max extends an invitation to potential partners to collaborate on a shared mission of fostering an inclusive society. 

Connect

Transcript

Transcribed by Kanako Suwa

[ Introduction music plays ]

Welcome to the SENIA Happy Hour with your host, Lori Boll. We know you’re busy so we bring you 1 hour of content in under thirty minutes, leaving you with time for a true happy hour. 

Lori: Well, hello, everyone. Today I speak with Max Simpson, and Max has demonstrated a proven track record in the inclusion space from establishing three vocational training centers, modeling 11 inclusive and sustainable social businesses, and delivering essential consultancy services to organizations seeking enhanced inclusivity. Earlier this year, Max inaugurated a research center dedicated to advancing knowledge in this very domain. A fervent advocate for the business case for disability and neuro-inclusion, Max extends an invitation to potential partners to collaborate on a shared mission of fostering an inclusive society. Max is the ultimate inclusion advocate. In fact, Max has so much experience and knowledge, they are one of our SENIA Advisory Board members, and we greatly value their advice.  So today, Max and I will be speaking about an exciting collaboration that STEPS and St. Andrews has been doing and we’ll be sharing about that and learning about that exciting project and I’m not going to talk anymore. So now onto the show. Hello Max and welcome to the podcast. 

Max: Hey Lori. It’s always really, really nice to chat with you and feel suitably uncomfortable to hear someone read all those nice things out here at the same time. Thank you for the very, very nice welcome that I get. 

Lori: Yes. Well, you have been an ultimate advocate and for our listeners who don’t know, my own son benefited from your expertise and organization STEPS. So, you’ve been a guest on our podcast before, and you shared all about this organization, STEPS. And so before we jump into today’s discussion, can you just tell our listeners who may not know about STEPS what it is? 

Max: Yeah, of course. So STEPS is an organization ultimately committed to creating an inclusive society. We do that through three key pillars. So we work to provide access to education for neurodivergent youth and adults. We do that through our vocational training centers, one of which we will talk about today. Our second pillar is around modeling inclusive social businesses. So we have a range of cafes, bakeries and a business service center that provide both access to internships and employment opportunities, but equally a touch point for society to come and see what can be made possible when you are inclusive and the business benefits of doing that and then our third pillar looks at empowerment. So we are working closely with employers and the government. And also our research center to ensure everything we’re doing is research led and that we are working towards changing things at a policy level as well. So it’s many things but for internally for us they all link perfectly together, but I think it’s set up well to make sure we’re always got our eyes on the longer term goal. 

And whilst the individual people that we work with is incredibly important, we hope that the learnings from those individual success stories help create something more structured and framework and policy that can help the many. So, so yes, that’s a little nutshell in a nutshell. 

Lori: Well, I think we’ll have to have you back for a podcast to explain about your research center because that sounds really exciting as well. 

Max: Yeah, I’d love to. I can talk about it all day. So invite me back. 

Lori: Okay. Okay. For sure. And for any of you that want to know where STEPS is, it’s in Bangkok, Thailand. And my own son was a part of that program and benefited from learning how to do some office work, some kitchen work. You set up your restaurant sometimes in the mornings. And I think that was really some of his favorite times of his life so far. So thank you. 

Max: Equally importantly, I remember we had that conversation, right, Braden was one of the first ever trainees we had, who had the level of autism that he presents with and through him being here, we now have a whole program for adults like Braden as well. So we learned from him just as much as he benefited from being here so his sort of legacy lives on. And we actually, we had some visitors recently who asked us why in our bathrooms, do we have wooden on the top of the tanks and we’re like, well, that’s another story. Those little things, right, that help, you know, people understand the small adjustments and accommodations make big, big difference. It’s a big part of what we talk a lot about here to help make those little changes to to everywhere so that people will feel more included in society. So, so yeah, I love it. 

Lori: Braden’s legacy is wooden toilet tank covers. And for those of you listening who have no idea what we’re talking about, my son Braden has a, I guess, a distaste for the porcelain tank covers, and he will let anyone know it. 

Max: It’s all wooden and nicely crafted, but I do minor things in life, let’s say. 

Lori: That’s great. So recently you’ve started a new endeavour within international school in Bangkok. Explain, tell me about it. 

Max: Sure. So we piloted it about two years ago, but the relationship with the previous head of inclusion went back about 10 years. So myself and Lizzy West had been working together in different ways. And she was always very engaged in what STEPS was doing and sending families to us just for support and guidance. And she started to bring her staff here to learn from the way that we work in terms of life skills and employment readiness. And then the opportunity came up to have a bigger level discussion on what this would look like if we put it inside St. Andrews 107. So, I mean, I think. 

There were so many key parts to make this happen, and I think the first one really, really started at the beginning with just this real transparency and honesty from school, which through my own experience of working with lots of schools you don’t often get. Like, lots of schools like to say they’re great at everything, and maybe not tell you what’s really going on behind the scenes. 

But, um, so St.Andrew’s one of several more really clear. We’re not put up life skills and employment readiness, it’s not our skill set. But we have a lot of kids here who need that. How can we work together to make sure they have paths that meet their needs. And we also didn’t want something that was totally segregated. It needed to really be that dream model of totally personalized, and it’s worked. 

Young people who are both doing IB and IGCSE and life skills and employment readiness and their timetables are very, very mixed. And that’s what works for some of them and they have these transcripts that are non -traditional but with the right explanation and evidence that goes with it, they are going on to university, many of them, but equally graduating and going into employment. So the program has two parts. So we have what we call dual learners. So any learner from year eight, so sort of age 13, can start accessing the STEPS program for as many sessions per week as they need. 

Lori: So typically, as you say, age eight?

Max: So it’s very much a secondary slash high school program. 

Lori: Okay, gotcha. 

Max: Yeah, sorry. British versus American. 

Lori: Right, right. 

Max: So and traditionally, as we know, kids would go through to 18 and leave with no qualifications or something that’s not so meaningful for the future. And more than that, that we used to find is that their self -esteem and confidence is pretty low when they came out of education because they’ve just been sat in classes that they can’t access or worse, they’ve been sat in classes where no one’s pushed or encouraged them to grow. So we started with dual learners. 

So we have young people who, you know, all different academic levels or different goals for the future. And the training center sits inside the school in one of its classrooms and has been purposefully selected to be in a space where it’s not near the primary school or any of the younger kids. The school is connected to a transport system. So young people can come off and come straight to the center without feeling like they’re still in a school school, which is nice. And we have trained teachers and admin staff in different departments so that they can be job coaches. So they go for internships and work experience in school. 

We also have a Steps Cafe there, so that also helps you any time of the day that you go in, there will be some of the trainees working there, either doing customer service, making drinks, running the checkout. 

And this, I mean, this is so incredibly important because it’s giving the visibility, both to the teachers in the school, the parents, and, you know, the other students they’re seeing these learners that they perhaps haven’t interacted with much before doing something valuable, and it creates a point of interaction and engagement that traditionally wasn’t there. So we now have lots and lots of mainstream kids who also want to work in the cafe, because we’ve been cool, not something that’s only there for learning support. This has been really cool to see. So it’s this really totally holistic approach where we are integrated at the school at so many different levels. 

It’s not just providing access to education, it’s working with, you know, the eco committee to make sure we are plastic free in the cafe. 

It’s working with the business study students to teach them about social enterprise as a model. It’s working with, you know, the admissions team to do training and tie about how you can talk to families about these different pathways. It’s everywhere and it’s all the time. And I think this is really one of the critical things about it being successful as it wasn’t just this point of referral for any kid that doesn’t fit.  It’s part of school life and everybody who our team that is based there feel like part of the school. We do joint reports, joint parent meetings, joint everything. And I think, yeah, there was a one year pilot. And then from the second academic year, we’ve just gone into the third, the program is pretty much full. So and the pathway now from primary is super clear. So actually, even from elementary, it’s really clear. Parents are then informed from that age. There is something here for your child until 21. 

Lori: Wow. 

Max: We have an additional program called Next Steps. So 18 to 21 can stay on school campus, but doing a very much employment readiness focus program. 

where they will go out to do external internships at our partner companies, but still within the relatively safe supportive community of school. And parents we found really appreciate that because they might not be quite ready to either go off to university or living independently just yet. And yeah, it’s that relief we see from parents, my own child is in this program for full transparency. So we were very motivated to make sure that that works for him just as much as everybody else. But we see the relief from parents of, oh, I’m not going to have to change schools this year or this age like I expected to. I can stay here all the way through. And so can my other children. We’re not having to separate them. 

to go to different schools. And I think, you know, it’s equal. I mean, we get it, right? Schools are businesses and that’s fine. And I think the school is also seeing the return on investment from really, really being inclusive and proactively doing it because they are retaining students for longer and having all members of the family come to one school, which is huge, right? We see so often, oh, those kids go there and all the kids go here. And the nightmare that that creates for parents. 

So, yeah, for me as a parent, similar to you, Lori, that was also really important for us that we created that safety and trust for those families too because we know how the support decreases as our kids get older and the expectation is for them to be more and more independent and communication from school reduces and reduces. And this ensures that that doesn’t happen unless the young person is ready. 

Lori: That’s fantastic. So I have a few questions based on that. One is, so to clarify, to be part of the program students must be a student of St. Andrew’s 107. 

Max: Yes. That’s right. 

Lori: So they need to enroll with the school and go through the traditional like enrollment process. 

Max: Yeah. 

Lori: Fair. And then who runs STEPS? 

Max: So we have two of our coaches running the program there full -time. So they’re our team, but they’re sort of fully integrated into the school. But we are, you know, we are doing the professional development and support for them. And we have our head of education who splits her time between our two campuses to make sure that the support and the guidance is there for the team there too. 

Lori: And do you find that the teachers at St. Andrews are participating quite often in the you said their job training or job coaching? 

Lori: So at the start of every school year we join their like return to school, like in-service day, and we always do a presentation about steps so that any new teachers know what we do. And we always are inundated with requests from different departments that they want to be giving internships and work experience opportunities, please let them know how to help. So we have currently work placement set up in the library, of course in the cafe in the science labs, we have someone working in there as a data entry technician. Also in the office in the drama department in the PE department we have two of our young people working as teaching assistants. 

So there’s six or seven environments already set up where the teaching staff or our admin staff feel supported and trained. And it’s so, I mean, it’s so meaningful. Like it’s safe and supported, but it’s equally, you know, it’s real work. There’s expectations, there’s responsibilities and we’re practicing all those, you know, transferable skills that are needed for the future. And a big part of what we do too, is about creating awareness around accommodations. What might you need to be your best self when you’re working? How does that look? And making sure that all the staff that are working with the dual learners are aware of that too. So they’re… We’ve set up these accommodation stations and different environments that have everything from noise cancelling headsets to sensory tools to timers to communication aids or tech tools as well. So we do a lot on teaching those skills directly to the students, just as much as to the job coaches and then teachers to. 

Lori: Wow. It just sounds all sounds so ideal. I would love to see it in action. 

Max: And so, yeah, so you can pop over. 

Lori: That’s true. Good point. So that’s how your internships work. Are they all within the school setting or do any of your trainees go out into the community? 

Max: Yeah, so we have about 20 or so employment partners that we work with closely across all different sectors and industries. So those who are in the next steps program so 18 to 21, they can do external, we call external internships outside of the school, so we have two about to start that. But our other center that we have has been doing that for four years, so they’re well long running partnerships with those companies. And the goal is that before they finish at 21 they’ll be mostly in full time, you know, predominantly in employment and only coming into the school setting one day a week. So that as soon as they graduate they move into full time paid employment. So I think we should see that happen for the first time. Yeah, with this they’ll happen this academic year for the two of the two of the learners in that program. 

Lori: That’s really exciting. So do you find that people are coming to st. Andrews because they’ve heard about this program and It’s got a reputation of its own. You said you’re full? 

Max: Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s two ways. I think the school was already really strong for primary learning support and Secondary as well. Actually they were doing Pretty good up until sort of year eight year nine. So they did have a high number of students already learning support But yeah, also word of mouth and we’ve had lots of kids transfer in from other schools We just had two families moved to Bangkok for this program. So we’re really seeing the word of mouth is there We did a little bit of PR around it, but not so muc.  But I mean you and I know right in parent groups when something opens that is different and there’s only one you go. 

Lori: Exactly. 

Max: Every year we will do open house, one in the morning for parents but one in the afternoon for other professionals. And that’s been really great actually I mean for the parents for obvious reasons but other professionals come and, you know, take some inspiration from what is possible when you have a good admin at your school. And they go back and they probe at their own schools like look this is possible, and you’ve got the financial numbers to demonstrate the school doesn’t lose money when doing this it’s actually creating a benefit. So, they get to go back and say well why, why are we not doing this at our school too, which we know how important that is. I mean, you have to do this yourself setting up a program not totally dissimilar to this yourself it’s. it has to make money. It’s, you know, no brainer, but it’s, yeah, the families are feeding back positively and the numbers are good. And we’re looking at ways to extend it in the future. So, so far, so good. 

Lori: That’s great. Have you had any of those teachers or admin from other schools that have gone back to their schools and said, we need this. Have you had anyone reach out yet? Any? 

Max: Had two. So we’re in early stage conversations to see if that’s gonna be realistic. There’s still lots of criteria that needs to be in place. Our biggest fear is that we’re asked to do it to solve an immediate problem, not that it’s a long -term change for the school to be truly inclusive all the way through. You know, as well as I do, you do find these pockets of learners in high school that there’s like two or three that don’t fit. and school struggle to find something for them. And whilst we’d love to be able to help that, it’s not sustainable to do it just for that group. So as long as we can have that sort of conversation with the school, that also doesn’t happen overnight, and have an on -site business of some description, because I think that’s important too, then these sort of two elements are where if we can agree on those things, then we’re really happy to discuss setting up more of them. We see it as a really win -win partnership. 

The learners get what they need at the age that they need it, the teachers get the support that they need, and everyone focuses on their area of expertise, just like our team are not specialists in literacy, numeracy, and any of those academic subjects. 

The team from the learning hub at the school do a really great job of that, but then they spend half of their time perhaps with us doing the other skills that they need too. So it’s very much a win -win, I think. 

Lori: That’s great. We talked a little bit about sustainability. So how do you ensure there’s enough learners in your program to keep it all sustainable? 

Max: Good question. So we do do open house twice a year. This helps. Steps also outside of the school runs a monthly community meetup for parents and caregivers. So whilst we’re not directly plugging this in everywhere, it’s just spaces that we’re in that we are sort of trusted members of where we can talk about our experiences. I think there is nothing else in Thailand at the moment that does this. So word of mouth spreads quickly. But as I mentioned, the school has been really strong inclusion wise in primary always. So that is, we know that in year three, four, five, six. there’s this many kids already, so we know that they will be coming through, so we’re able to plan resources quite well for each coming academic year. Yeah, it’s really the first time I ever saw also a school willing to create timetables like this that would traditionally be caught too difficult or you know it’s too complicated to organize that. And we genuinely have young people really doing a mix of, you know, both exams and qualifications and work experience and everything in between. And you see how fulfilling that is for them, but it’s not just one path or, you know, you can only do this thing and only feel good about yourself some of the time they get to have a balance of all. and we were talking about this just before we started the podcast, right, the importance identity -wise for neurodivergent and or kids who identify as disabled to have connections with their own people as well as the masking and the work they have to do so often to fit in is exhausting and we have all the data now to show that that’s really, really damaging, especially for girls and we see that them having this safe space so they can come to the training centre any time of the day and they often opt to spend breaks and lunch times there and it’s their choice, you know, inclusion also should be that, right, it’s not forced on you, like we’ve said you can be in the canteen at lunch and you should be in the canteen at lunch because look, we did a good job as adults. You should go where is best for you during that period. So, yeah, we see this really nice social element of the program where the learners have friends for the first time and are making connections and doing things together outside of school too, which as we know is just as meaningful as everything that’s happening in the school as well. 

Lori: Yeah, you have any examples of that? 

Max: You’re going to make me share my emotions. Yeah, so my son just turned 16, and for the first time ever he had a birthday party with actual friends there, not our adult friends that we invite. And it was, yeah, it was really, really special, like they all really wanted to be there. And my wife and I just stood there like, 

wow, there’s 12 neurodivergent kids here. And we didn’t think we’d ever be stood there doing that, to be honest. He’s always, always found friendships hard. And this was very genuine. So it was, yeah, it was very, very, yeah, it was the emotional day for us about two weeks ago. So yeah, it’s great. 

Lori: Yes, it is great. I wanna circle back to just how the program started. I mean, you must, besides your friendship with the former head of support services or whatever the name of that was, how were you able to get the ear of the administration? And what kind of, what qualities of an administrator? Like, what did the, I guess, what did the administrator see that maybe others might not see a vision or? 

Max: Yeah, that’s a good question. So we, in the time we’ve been working together, there’s been two heads of school. The first person who was the one who had to sign off in principle before it went up to regional office because they’re part of Cognita. So, So we have we had many steps of approval to go through. I think from the first conversations with the head of school. I mean he just treated this very black and white like we have kids, they need access to the right program, you’re going to provide it, and we’re not going to lose money. It’s simple like that. And then we got into all the details of how and where and when and you know criteria and training and then agree. The only way to really know is to pilot it. So there was already a group of 

for young people there who needed this. So we did it with them first and it just, you know, it was so obvious within the first half term that this was just going to be something that would grow much more beyond that school. started to then have those conversations and us too with Cognito from Singapore. And yeah, they were totally behind it too. It now sort of sits as a model for them. So there’s been conversations of other schools in their network to see if we can replicate that. But like, you know, with anything in the early stages, it took key people to really get behind it. It is a lot of work, like it wasn’t, you know, the typical systems and processes. Having 18 to 21 year olds on campus creates new safeguarding protocols that we’d never had to think about before. We know lots of schools occasionally have kids who age out a little bit, but not to the age of 21. 

So we’ve been working with those those young people to write the new protocols for safeguarding together because they’re in a funny area of being sort of, they’re not students anymore. They’re adults, but they are in school campus so they are in a mentorship role, which creates some some new things but yeah, it was, you know, the original head of inclusion just advocated for it all the time everywhere she went and that sort of lead back to what we were talking about earlier this whole holistic ecosystem that had to be in place for it to be successful. And I, you know, that’s really not from from step side that’s from from them pushing that all the time. And this academic year we have a new head of inclusion and a new head of school, the head of school used to be a Senco. Uh, so that’s, you know, the conversations start at a totally different level of, okay, what’s the five year plan? Where do we see, where do we want this to be? The full commitment is there. So it will only, it will only grow now. Um, and the new head of inclusion said something, uh, very nice to me. She said, um, I feel so fortunate to get to work somewhere where inclusion is really a priority and is done well. And yet we still focus on improving it all the time. It was that honest, like commitment of we’re great, but we can still be better. So let’s keep going. Um, so yeah, now it becomes a, an recruitment thing too. People will seek out to work there because there is this really unique opportunity to be part of something. 

Um, so yeah, it’s seeing these, these other benefits come forward now. And it, and for me, it’s interesting because, you know, most of our work is with employers actually. 

And the benefits the school is starting to see are very similar to what employers start to see when they do inclusion properly. And the final stage for St Andrews which they’re committed to is they will also work with us to become an inclusive employer. So the school will start to hire. 

And of course within the teaching team there will be a percentage already of people who have disclosed any of their differences, but this will be more of a focus recruitment approach that we will now actively have policies and systems in place to be seeking out a truly diverse and inclusive staff and administration body as well. So we go full circle, which is awesome. Wow. 

If you can imagine, I’ve got like fireworks shooting off over my head right now. I’m like, ah, why are all ours go like this? But, you know, small steps. 

Lori: Exactly, small steps. 

Max: STEPS is what it is. Our research center is capturing a lot of this as we go, so we will be publishing the whys, like what has made this successful, what was critical, what didn’t work as well. So that other people can learn from it too. And I think that’s important. We’ve had the opportunity to trial a range of tools that we’ve been adapting so that they’re more accessible. So we are measuring things like work readiness, life skills and self -esteem from existing 

psychometric tools that are already out there but are really, really not accessible for the people that they are designed to be. So this is also cool because this is really helping for the first time for there to be data from non high functioning people having the opportunity to self assess and feedback and have their voice leading the development of the program as it goes forward. And that’s really, really important to us too. So lots more exciting things to come from this program. 

Lori: Yes. Well, one more exciting thing is that you’ll be presenting this very information. 

at a future SENIA Thailand event. Now you used to be the chairperson of SENIA Thailand. 

You stepped down from that recently, but. 

Max: More, much better hands than me. So Haley has taken over and is doing a really great job giving the attention and all the networking that she’s doing to get SENIA Thailand back to sort of pre -COVID times. We always used to be one of the more active, bigger chapters, right? So one of those things is on the 26th of January, St. Andrew’s 107 will host the Bangkok Councillors Group, which is around 150 councillors that come together twice a year. So we’re teaming up with them, or SENIA Thailand is teaming up with them to run a collaborative event. And I will be speaking in the morning about this partnership and about our research. 

And then there’ll be other presentations throughout the day as well. So it’s looks to be a really exciting event and it just started to be advertised. So we will that’s out on SENIA Thailand’s Facebook page already and we will be sharing it with Laurie so it can go in other senior media too. 

Lori: Perfect. Yes. Look, look for that in our upcoming events in our newsletter and then also on our web page. So one more exciting event for you is you’ll be speaking at our live in -person conference in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam from March 1st through the 3rd. What will your topic of your presentation be? 

Max: So I will be co -presenting with our head of education about ways to build awareness around accommodations into the classroom. This is really through our experience of working with employers and seeing how often not only employers have no idea what to do, but the employee themselves doesn’t know what they need or doesn’t know how to advocate for it. So we’re really trying to build that into the classroom so that it helps. It really is one of the biggest barriers to employment. So we’re trying to overcome that by sharing our learnings with teachers to help bridge the gap a little bit as they move into employment. So yeah, super excited to talk about it. It’s one of my passion topics. and we share about a partnership we had with Ikea to set some of this up too. So it should be really cool. Please join the conference. 

Lori: Yes, well, already we’ve had tons of people sign up. So if you’re planning on going, make sure you sign up soon before tickets run out. So Max, I think that’s all we have time for today. But as always, thank you for all you do. On behalf of a mom of a kiddo, I appreciate your work, but just also as an educator and as an inclusion advocate myself. Thank you. 

Max: Right back at you. Love everything SENIA’s doing. Love that I get to be a part of it in a small way. And yeah, getting this opportunity to collaborate and share is awesome. So thank you for having me. 

Lori: Well, we’ll see you in Vietnam. 

Max: You will. Thank you. 

Lori: Take care. 

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Thank you for joining us for today’s show. For more information, including how to subscribe and show notes, please head to our website. That’s seniainternational.org/podcasts. Until next time, cheers. 

Show #87 Distinguishing the Difference

Show #87 Distinguishing the Difference

On today’s podcast, host Lori Boll speaks with Heidi Mermis-Cava, the Director of Student Support Services at the Shanghai American School. Heidi recently presented at the in-person SENIA conference in Vietnam, where she received overwhelmingly positive feedback for her work.

Heidi shares some of her expertise on distinguishing between English as an Additional Language (EAL), Specific Learning Disabilities, and Language Impairments. This provides a valuable preview of the more comprehensive information she will be sharing at the upcoming SENIA virtual conference. Be sure to join us at the conference to learn even more from Heidi.

Bio

Heidi Mermis-Cava is the Director of Student Support Services at Shanghai American School. Heidi was a school psychologist in California public schools and coordinator of various special education programs within her districts for 15 years before moving overseas.

Heidi worked in Brazil as a school psychologist and Director of Student Support Services while also consulting numerous international schools and with the U.S. State Department Office of Overseas Schools.

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