0:00:02.0 VB: Welcome to the Inclusive Education Project. I'm Vicki Brett.

0:00:11.6 AS: I'm Amanda Selogie. We're two civil rights lawyers on a mission to change the conversation about education, civil rights, and modern activism.

0:00:24.5 VB: Each Week we're gonna explore new topics, which are going to educate and empower others.

0:00:30.2 AS: And give them a platform to enact change in education and level the playing field.

0:00:35.2 AS: Welcome back friends.

0:00:36.3 VB: Hello. Hello.

0:00:40.3 AS: We're in it. It's the beginning of the school year and we're off to the races.

0:00:45.7 VB: Yeah. At this point, a lot of the school districts have already started. The earliest, I think for me, was August 5th. Then I had August 12th, then I had August 20th. Like, everybody started in such completely different times and we're pretty sure everybody's starting. Maybe there's a district out there that still has a few days left this summer, but it feels like we're very much into the school year. For us, from our perspective.

0:01:19.6 AS: Yeah, absolutely. And in that vein, at the beginning of the school year is always a great time to kind of reflect on where we can improve, both from the parent's standpoint and from the school district's standpoint. How can we better be knowledgeable and inform ourselves both on how we can best support students and address their needs. And so one of the things that we've been trying to do is some trainings. We used to mostly do trainings for parents and trainings for organizations outside of the school districts on parents' rights and basic IEP 101. And we've really talked to a lot of people over the years about the trainings that teachers have and the trainings that school staff has. And so we wanted to kind of touch on today what that looks like now, and where should we be going in terms of training school staff and district staff and parents.

0:02:11.8 VB: Right. And so we invited Andrew Goff back, Andrew, thank you so much for coming back.

0:02:21.1 AG: Thanks so much, Vicki and Amanda, it's such a great pleasure to be here with you again.

0:02:26.5 VB: So Andrew had come on at the end of last year, and we were really talking about his perspective as an early childhood teacher and his experiences and what it felt like to be at IEP meetings and advocating. And the main takeaway I felt was, as a teacher of a child with an IEP, you are there to advocate for them and really to advocate for the parent as well. And that really resonated with us and a lot of our listeners. And as Amanda was saying, we kind of wanted to see if you have seen any ongoing trends of either trying to empower teachers or train teachers, all teachers, not just those that are getting the special education certificate, but all teachers about the learning abilities of all children.

0:03:11.7 AG: Yeah. This is a topic that has been front and center since I began working in community colleges nine years ago. And now what I'm hearing, we've been doing this program, I moved over to Colorado Northwestern Community College, now my sixth year here, and when I took on this role, it was to be teaching courses through the virtual format. And this was pre-pandemic. I thought that it was an opportunity to connect with students, a challenge to connect with students in a way that I hadn't, to have this conversation that you're talking about, about opening the conversation toward advocacy more so than saying, "Here's the diagnosis. Here are the protocols: 1, 2, 3, 4." And this much more traditional lens at looking at higher education, at looking at teacher preparation. And the challenge with this, "Here are the steps: 1, 2, 3, 4," is that students come into these classes in completely different places.

0:04:13.9 AG: And I recently had a conversation, and this is one of the pieces that comes with being in the virtual class, and it might be unique to me as a teacher, but I think that anybody who's teaching in the virtual class can do is everything is grounded in technology. And I get to have conversations with students and relationships with students well beyond those days of them being in my classes because we've always been communicating via technology, via email, phone calls, texts. These are all just part of the course when it comes down to teaching virtually. And in this setting, that 1, 2, 3, 4 becomes less of a priority, just because the culture that's being created. And so it's easier to meet students, in my professional opinion, where they're at and even more so they can support one another where they're at.

0:05:04.8 AG: And it's quite ironic that people would have better relationships with one another in a virtual class than in a face-to-face class. But we're starting... What I've seen over my six years here at Colorado Northwestern Community College is that it's more about how they reflect on their days collectively. 'cause my students are in classrooms. And so when they come to class, the best way to engage students from a six to nine o'clock class in the middle of the week after working a full day and coming home to their...

0:05:30.8 VB: Families.

0:05:31.6 AG: Is really, "Let's talk about you, let's give some time for you to unpack." And what I hear in these conversations, I put them in breakout rooms so there's some privacy and they can talk on a more intimate level. And especially as they get further through the program, they have these relationships and I hear these themes about advocacy.

0:05:53.7 AG: I hear these themes about, "I need to know... " it starts out with, "I need to know 1, 2, 3, 4," I just need to sit down at that IEP meeting and do what I can. Seems to me, really, but I really wanna be there to try to understand what are the supports that I can put into my class? And they get these in certain classes, but as we get further along and start talking about leadership, and this has become a core component to our program, is let's talk about leadership all the way, introduction to early childhood. And that is, okay, we can know all these strategies, but before we can implement these strategies, we have to have the skills and knowledge to work with the people who are going to be able to support us with those strategies. Because in most cases, the credentials of these teachers are not... Even teachers who have their master's degrees don't necessarily have the credentials to take this, and, "I'm given the IEP, I can do this now." No, that's not how it works. It's not...

0:06:56.4 AG: "I can read this IEP," I hear this on social media, is, "I really wanna read the IEP, that's all I want. And then I can read the supports and I can read the minutes." And when I hear that, yes, that's important, but it's even more important that you are working with that occupational therapist and you're working with that physical therapist, and you're working with that nurse. So that, one, I mean, what I learned earlier in my career or what my experience was, and this comes into our conversations in class, because this is where most students are at, and that is the interventionist or the therapist comes into the classroom. This may sound familiar to the two of you.

0:07:34.8 VB: Yep. Yep.

0:07:38.3 AG: They come into the classroom, in most cases, they take the child out of the classroom, they do the 30 minutes, well, they do what's on the IEP, 30 minutes of speech therapy, and then the kid returns. And it's not generalized at all. And everybody says, "All right, we've met the minutes. This works."

0:07:50.8 VB: "We did it."

0:07:53.0 AG: Yep. "We did it." And I think from your vantage point and my vantage point as both a teacher my last couple years, and then in my experience listening to the stories of all my students, it's, yeah, you met the minutes, but it didn't help me in the classroom at all.

0:08:08.1 VB: Right. And then that child missed on A, B, and C. And Amanda and I actually just did a podcast episode a couple weeks ago talking about accommodations for central auditory processing disorders. And part of the conversation is exactly this, is that we felt that the accommodations oftentimes are not implemented. Or if they were implemented, they were done, just like you said, like the boxes checked, but it really wasn't implemented in the way either the child needed or that it was even something that was useful. And this plays in exactly to what you're saying, if that teacher has no idea what was worked on, they're not able to generalize anything. And they're just left in this box and the OT is in their box. And then PT may be in their box and then they all come to the IEP meeting, and sure, yeah, maybe they're kind of sharing some things, but they're not really collaborating in the way that IEP team or teams should be collaborating.

0:09:14.0 AS: Well. And even just on the surface of the way that accommodations are often written and goals too. Where if you are just reading it and you weren't part of that conversation and in developing it, you don't know the how, the why, the where, you don't know all those details. And so it's like on one hand, does the teacher even truly understand the purpose behind this accommodation or what was envisioned? Maybe how was it implemented before? Or what the purpose was, but also then do they know how to implement it? Because there's so many generalities that we use in IEPs and just the terminology we use that, like the word behavior means millions of different things. Depending on what we're talking about, who we're talking about. And same with preferential seating. Like how many different ways can preferential seating be interpreted? That interpretation comes down to the training knowledge and experience that that person has. And are we fully making sure that everyone implementing these accommodations is trained and understands and is on the same page?

0:10:17.9 AG: And what you bring in there, there's a point in there that I think is valuable to emphasize. And that is, it's gonna depend on that experience of that teacher. You know, how much have teachers not necessarily even been in the classroom, but it goes to that teacher preparation of how are students understanding the way we implement curricula in a classroom? And you talk about the definitions and the nebulous nature. It is what is curriculum? You know, that's at the foundation of this. Because curricula have so many different meanings. Most teachers will go through their teacher preparation not understanding curricula with the lens of, "We need to have this curriculum or our instructional strategies designed so that every child can succeed." And that's a completely different lens. And so when we're talking about how are teachers using these accommodations, how are they building it?

0:11:27.2 AG: And how are they interpreting the word behavior? When I talk about curricula in my courses, I talk about three different components to it. I say that we've got the indirect, which is that environment that's the rules and the routines. And those are the things that are on the periphery. And those are the things we actually have control of. And so we can do that. And that's where really we talk about behavior. Like, what are we doing in our schedule? And what are we doing in the amount of time that we're expecting children to sit down? And younger children, and even older children, transitions are just so difficult. And so, and then there's the direct, which is our interactions, and then we talk about the temporal. And these are all pieces that really come together. And if we don't understand this type of dynamic, just like if we don't understand the dynamic of accommodation or the dynamic of behavior if we don't understand the same language, let alone the term inclusion, like...

0:12:19.7 VB: Right. Right. Really. Yeah.

0:12:20.8 AG: How are we supposed to really do what we're doing? And I think that it comes back to experience. And one thing that we talked about in the previous episode was my memoir "love is a classroom". And I can talk about that in the courses that I teach, but part of the intention of it, for me, was just processing my understanding of what is curriculum? How do we create curricula that include every child? And as the two of you know the... Part of that conversation, our last one was, we've got a bunch of policies in place that say the type of curriculum that should be used is not going to meet the need. So I think there's this tension also of special ed, and then what we consider general education, which really doesn't educate that many children. So you got all these complicated aspects of higher education. And so looking at it from the two of you and your perspectives, it is, I think, how do we equip, like with your skills and knowledge, where do you fall into this conversation of creating these classrooms? Or I guess is it... Are you being asked to just say, "Here are the laws, 1, 2, 3, 4. Just follow the laws."?

0:13:38.6 VB: Yeah. I mean, a lot of times when we do the trainings, it kind of just evolves into, as in your classroom, them bringing questions about stuff that's happening to them. And I think that it's easier for people to understand when there is that component of it personally happening to them [chuckle] It just seems that when they're able to share a story and then [0:14:00.5] ____ "What happens when you do this?" Or, "What happens when you do that?" They're able to kind of wrap their head around it. But one of the things that you had touched on that I wanted to get back to was the type of support that the teacher, if they didn't get that, if they didn't take your class. And a trend that we've seen, and I kind of wanted to get your thoughts.

0:14:24.5 VB: I'm all for having more teachers in the classroom because my daughter just experienced TK and there was 24 children. There was a teacher and she had a teacher's aide. And due to the types of unique learning challenges that a lot of the kiddos had in that classroom, I think two more teachers, or two more aides should have been in that classroom. And that's just a general education "TK classroom". What are your thoughts about co-teaching? So having a collaboration class, a collab class, we often see this more in middle school, and potentially high school where the special education teacher is in the same classroom as the general education teacher.

0:15:05.8 AG: I think there are some very salient components to this. And I think what's more important are the hidden components of, especially when we're talking co-teaching, one piece of teaching in that classroom that your daughter was in, and I don't wanna jump to it, but, conclusions at this moment. If you told me more I'd probably have a little more data. But the thing is, is that it's very isolating. And it's one of the things that talking to teachers in my classes, it comes down to, "We want to grow. We've just had our own experiences going through school where we didn't have the privilege of being able to trust our teachers." And trust is something that is missing. And so when we talk about co-teaching, like the biggest, one of the biggest hurdles to co-teaching is just trusting one another. And once you trust one another, then teachers have a partner. They have someone to work with, someone to learn from. And so when you've got the [0:16:06.3] ____ teaching, especially with that special educator alongside a general educator, or in my case, I didn't have... I was a special educator and a general educator and I had two... I always have really good teaching assistants. Always. Always. And I think that teaching assistants, we can all agree, I believe, that they are so under...

0:16:28.4 VB: Valued.

0:16:28.5 AG: Compensated. Just not recognized. And they almost played that same sort of role of, "I wanna learn from you." And especially that cultural component, because my teaching assistants had the cultural connections to that community in a way that I didn't. And so, talking about... Thinking about your daughter's classroom, and one thing on a slight tangent, I'm, you know, recently did this second series for my podcast, and it was a classroom or a district and a family in Alabama. And the interesting thing there, she's a kindergarten teacher. She has many children and she's by herself. And I thought, "Whoa, kindergarten classroom... " But she didn't see it any other way because she knew that the primary mover of that classroom was the relationships between the children and her role as a leader. And so I think that it's not necessarily, I don't wanna rub anybody the wrong way.

0:17:28.9 AG: I wanna say that even if the numbers are not... If there aren't two other teaching assistants in there, it's also gonna matter the culture that's created. And so it comes back to teachers... I like the co-teaching 'cause then you have this, especially special educator/general educator, you have expertise that can come together and they can teach one another. I also think that it is that passion of the teacher that teacher's ability to create that climate and that culture where, and I see this in my daughter's school, when they're younger especially, 'cause they're in a Montessori school where you've got preschool, pre-K, kindergarten, first grade, second grade, third grade, there are classrooms together. And that role of leadership and trust that a teacher gives to other children can be really impactful. And so I think that when we're talking about this co-teaching model or how many adults should be in that classroom, it's going to be the confidence, the competence, and the trust between those individuals who are in there.

0:18:36.0 AG: And that can also be said, you know, families play that role, and children play that role, and service providers play that role. And so there are a lot more dynamics. And I think this is important to recognize by administrators, because administrators want to, in my experiences, administrators really jump on this one option. And I'm kind of curious what you have to say for the IEP meetings that you sit in on, and that is who's really thinking about the role that the service providers are playing? And I had a speech therapist who would... He was absolutely incredible. And I had him my last two years in the classroom, and he would come in for one full day and he worked with our kiddos in the AM and our learners in the PM and he would be there for the entire day. And he wasn't there to serve as another teacher, he was there to support the goals and teach and work on those goals in the context of the classroom. And so when we think... I had occupational therapists who probably could have done something similar or physical therapist, but how are we thinking? And this goes more of a transdisciplinary-type model, which rarely gets talked about, but how are we getting creative with families [0:19:51.3] ____ trusting relationships, and bringing them in and... It's an issue.

0:20:00.6 AS: I think some of that really comes down to backing up when we're thinking about special education versus general education. There's so much separation. And my aunt is a special educator and has been for over 25 years, and I talk to her all the time kind of, and I've talked to other special education teachers too, about, it is very isolating in that there's not the sense of community the same way. And in many schools where there's not as many of these collaborative models, it's... Like, I don't wanna say it's an us versus them, but it almost feels that way in the sense that like, we're so separate and apart from each other. And in reality, it goes straight back to initial education and training. It goes back to when these teachers are in undergrad and they're getting their degrees and they're getting their teaching credentials.

0:20:48.9 AS: There's not much overlap. You know, my bachelor's degree was in child and adolescent development, and I was in a program with many, many future teachers. And I took a lot of the same classes that a lot of these general educators took. And I can say from my experience that there wasn't enough about differentiating learners and different students and special education and disabilities and inclusion. It is so separate. And I think that that is a big root of the problem is that we're not educating all teachers on all varieties of ways kids learn. And we're not just doing a disservice to the children who have diagnosed disabilities, but oftentimes we're doing a disservice to the kids who may not have a disability, may not have an IEP, but often struggle because they learn a little bit differently than their peers.

0:21:40.0 AS: And we're trying to fit a square peg in a round hole and it all comes back from it. And so then you have these administrators who may have gone through general education credentialing and then getting their administrative credentialing, who've never necessarily seen the special education side. So we're not really putting everyone in the same box and saying from the get go we need to have this culture and this perspective that all children deserve to learn equally, all children deserve to have their needs met. And so, like in our minds that's a big factor that we need to be looking at, is like, sure, we can be doing trainings and like saying, "Yeah, there's all these things that you're experiencing in your classroom. Let me see how we can kind of fix it now." Well, why don't we back up and from the minute teachers even enter the arena, help shift this perspective about that separation of general education, special education.

0:22:43.0 AS: Because then we're trying to put the pieces back together when from the very beginning we could be really just building it from the instance. And we had a... I had someone on our podcast, and Dickie shared this example several times on our podcast I think, with others, is that when people are building a house, many times the house is built. And then afterwards there's consideration of, "Oh, there's this person that wants to move in that has a wheelchair," and now we need to figure out how we can build the ramp. So rather than doing that, why don't we build the house from the perspective of let's make it accessible for everybody just from the beginning, because then we're not having to tear down walls and tear out concrete to build that ramp. It's already in the plans to begin with. So it's kind of that same analogy of like, "Can we start from the beginning? Can we be helping create a better perspective and understanding of inclusive education from the get go?"

0:23:29.9 AG: I think just to back up to one of my thoughts from the very beginning, and that is the way that these virtual classes that I teach work, the students build a relationship. Barriers are... What's really interesting is I didn't realize how many barriers there were in higher education until I started working in the virtual environment. And actually it came down to, with the pandemic people were put in a position where, okay, those barriers are just... That they're something that we cannot overcome. And the virtual class, which I had started before the pandemic started, there weren't those barriers. There weren't those walls. And so everybody else started to go to the virtual classroom and they really couldn't because they were... They clung so much to this in-person approach or this online approach. And so I think it kind of goes into that analogy of building the house is, yeah...

0:24:24.9 AG: Even if you put in that... You build it so that you've got the ramps in it, or at least it can be adapted, then people are so resistant. They don't go in and say, "This could possibly work." I was in a situation where I had no choice. This was the design of my class. I teach students from all across the state of Colorado through these virtual environments. And something that's come from this unintentionally is that we have more students who went through special education growing up, and they feel what they communicate with me is it feels much safer to be in a virtual classroom. It doesn't feel intimidating because it doesn't have that overarching power structure that college environments do, you know? The age stuff. There are so many implicit barriers that aren't even physically structural.

0:25:18.0 AG: And so, yeah, when we're building that foundation, I think it's... I'm not saying that virtual is the best option for everybody, but it is also, let's just step back and say, "What do students really need?" And one of that, I think first and foremost throughout the lifespan is relationships and connection. And if we don't have relationships and connection, then there's a great quote from Rita Pierson in her Ted talk that she did 20 years ago, probably now. And it was, "We can't learn from people we don't like."

0:25:48.4 VB: Right. Exactly right.

0:25:49.6 AG: Right. And we're learning from our own classmates so much. And so when we're talking about that inclusive classroom, whether it be early childhood or elementary or middle or high school, we're learning from our classmates. And it doesn't take long for our classmates not to like the people who they see as not fitting in.

0:26:13.1 AG: And so by the time they get to college, they've already internalized this message. And so being in that physical environment, can be scary for anybody, but especially when you've been given this implicit message and explicit message in many ways. "You don't belong here." And so if we start from higher ed and we could say, "Let's start all the way back in preschool," or like...

0:26:30.0 VB: For real. Yeah.

0:26:31.0 AG: We can keep going back to the roots. But yeah, I think it has to be... It starts out with creating those cultures in a class. So Amanda, just thinking about the classes that you had, there were teachers in there, how was that classroom environment designed so that everybody felt like they belonged? And that's really hard in a traditional college setting because that's not the way college was intended to be taught.

0:26:56.2 VB: Well, I mean, I just, I think even K-12 education is stuck in the 1950s and I think everybody just thought, "This is how you do it and this is how we're gonna do it." And yeah, there's some cool trends that have been out there that some teachers now use. But even in the way that you had said, like, if you as a teacher don't like your kids, and we saw that a lot before and after the pandemic, and I wish it could be that simple, right? We're all human. I don't fault any teacher. But when you kind of have those biases and whether you know that they exist or not, I find that it's very difficult for a teacher to show up and be able to give the child what they need. And this is such a fascinating topic and we're just so grateful for your time because of your experience and then even teaching teachers, Andrew, if people had questions for you, where can they message you? And then can you give us a name of your podcast and where people can take a listen?

0:28:00.8 AG: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. So I think that love is at the center of every classroom and in such, all my contact information on social media, TikTok or YouTube, preferably Instagram. Just look up "Love is a Classroom" and you'll find me, you can look up Love is a Classroom in your podcast feed, whichever podcast you listen to and it will come up. That's the name of my podcast, except for it's "Love is a Classroom: Stories of Inclusion". You can also email me andrewdlgoff@gmail.com. And I would really enjoy a conversation with anyone, especially those who want to share their stories about inclusion and what worked, and I wanna just do a little bit of a plug and it's... When we're talking about what works for teachers, I, in this past series that I did for Love is a Classroom: Stories of Inclusion, I had Miss Anna Frey, and she's in episode two, and I encourage anybody to go and listen to that episode because she is such an inspiration. And Ms. Anderson is a first grade teacher. Such inspirations. And when we wanna just see what a classroom, especially a kindergarten first grade classroom can look like. It's a great example. So anybody can reach me. Love is a Classroom or Andrew DL Goff.

0:29:20.4 VB: Wonderful. Thank you so much, Andrew, for your time.

0:29:22.3 AG: Thank you so much.

0:29:22.8 VB: Bye.