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0:00:00.3 Vickie Brett: Welcome to the Inclusive Education Project. I'm Vickie Brett.

0:00:09.2 Amanda Selogie: I'm Amanda Selogie. We're two civil rights lawyers on a mission to change the conversation about education civil rights and modern activism.

0:00:20.1 VB: Each week we're going to explore new topics which are going to educate and empower others and give them a platform to enact change in education and level the playing field.

0:00:38.6 AS: Welcome back friends.

0:00:38.7 VB: Hi. Hi. Hi. You sound exhausted. The school year is weighing on you.

0:00:42.5 AS: Me?

0:00:42.9 VB: Yeah.

0:00:43.4 AS: Oh. I feel like this week I've had so many IEPs. I think I said this last week but it's just... Yeah, it's longer IEPs. We get there somewhere. I mean it's not as exhausting as what we used to do. So if I had two two-hour IEPs and I was driving from LA to Riverside that was more exhausting. But sometimes just the mental energy of being on for these IEP meetings 'cause there's so many details that we try to keep in mind. And it's unfortunate that not every IEP team member feels that way about an IEP. Sometimes it's going through the motions. Sometimes it's... You've got your computer and you're going through other stuff, writing emails or you think, okay well, it's not my part so I don't really have to listen. I think that's to some extent what we're going to get into today about talking about IEP teams and...

0:01:33.6 VB: It was so funny as you were saying going through the motions I was like I'll tell you someone who doesn't go through the motions. And I was just going to lead right into Andrew. Hi Andrew. Thanks for coming onto our podcast.

0:01:43.0 Andrew Goff: Thank you so much Vickie and Amanda, it's such a privilege to be here.

0:01:47.0 VB: So we just wanted to throw it to you to introduce yourself really briefly to our listeners. And then we're going to kind of get into a topic that you had wanted to hear our perspective and we're dying to hear your perspective. So can you please introduce yourself to our listeners?

0:02:01.6 AG: Yes. My name is Andrew Goff and to give the skinny I've taught Early Childhood Special Education in five different least restrictive environments over the course of 11 years and... 12 years I apologize. You know how they kind of just come together just to break you know after a little while. The five different least restrictive environments have really given me a level of insight that I brought into the doctoral program that I went into in 2014-2015. Graduated in 2017 and then brought my knowledge both in the field and from my education over to the community college system in Colorado. And I've worked at two different community colleges and I'm now the coordinator and lead instructor at Colorado Northwestern Community College about 45 minutes west of Steamboat Springs. If that means anything to anybody.

0:02:53.4 VB: It might. We might be your first...

0:02:56.3 AS: Maybe. I appreciate your perspective of you've gone through the ages that you've gone through like you haven't just taught one age-group which not that there's anything wrong with that but oftentimes we talk about in IEP meetings or we and when I say we I mean Vicky and I and our team, we try to look ahead at the skills that are necessary for a child's future not just elementary school, middle school, high school, but beyond and consider what are some tools what, are skills that we need to be developing and considering other than reading, writing, and arithmetic. And so I think your perspective is great because you've seen both sides of it. Of what are these kids lacking when they get to community college or college and when they get to that age or what skills did they really need?

0:03:49.8 AG: Yeah. And it's fascinating working with students at the community college because they're nontraditional learners in most cases and a large percentage have gone through the public education system with IEPs. And one of my favorite courses is The Exceptional Child ECE2601 where there's just as much self searching as there is understanding our own experiences as we navigate the world. And as we navigate the education system 'cause most of them are currently teachers and hearing their perspectives on thinking retrospectively about that experience.

0:04:25.1 AG: And a lot of them develop this motivation to advocate for ages across the spectrum because they look back on their experiences and they say... I think it's really hard to have those conversations and not say what if. But I mean they're in college. So it's like you all are doing so well and you're working hard and you're passionate but it's looking back and saying what if? Who's making these decisions back... In this case 1995-2000? Who's making those decisions? And it really wasn't them. And there's a lot of dissonance in that for them because as a system it's families at the center. And I always promote that. We want to focus on families and at what point in time do we start to think about the child's future like you're talking about. Are we doing that already? We usually don't think transitions until 14, 13 and so what are we doing when they're three, four, five? Well, they're still at the center of their family but do we need to start considering that?

0:05:37.1 AS: Yeah, and...

0:05:39.0 VB: Absolutely. And for Amanda and I in California we are moving towards getting our three and four-year-olds. We just started kind of transitional kindergarten so four and five year olds. I think it's the second year. Some districts had already been offering that. But really as a state as a whole we're offering public school classrooms for these kiddos. And I personally am experiencing the TK public school system and it's wild. We already kind of... As we're introducing kiddos earlier and earlier into the public school where before really two and a half to three if the child was a regional center... We have regional centers in California that provide services to kiddos with autism and various other plethora of unique needs. They could be the first ones to turn over to the district and say, Hey you have to evaluate this kid see if they need an IEP. We're going to see a whole realm of kiddos that may not have been assessed until maybe second, third grade potentially be assessed earlier which is wonderful. But I can imagine with your time in early education and just a quick plug for your memoir Love Is a Classroom which we're gonna get into one chapter specifically because it hits the nail on the head of this idea of inclusion.

0:07:01.1 VB: But as you had put it the line between compliant and these relationships which... Who do I serve? I think that's what you had said something along those lines. And it's like well the child but it's like no child and families. And I think that that gets missed a lot with some of the professionals that we deal with.

0:07:21.0 AS: And even you mentioned the transition planning doesn't start till 14. That is the minimum requirement under the IDEA that by 14 we need to start transition planning including a transition plan in the IEP in terms of what the law says but there's nothing in the law that says we can't start transition planning sooner. And that's the distinction that I'm sure you see and I know we've talked about that we have school districts that are so focused on compliance of these are the things that we need to do that we forget. These are the things that we could do earlier on. And we could be looking at all of these things earlier on and maybe we're not going to be as have to have huge transition plans when they turn 14 because we've already started to develop these skills but we're not doing it.

0:08:08.1 AG: Yeah, and while I was writing the book. The book was written with a lot of self-reflection and just therapy. I need to process this situation. And the initial drafts. There was a lot of... I mean there's a lot of animosity and a lot of built up anger and this conglomeration of emotions where I wanted to put blame on the district. This was all their fault. Then my editor was like Andrew you might want to back off a little bit. Just step back and think about this and so I did. I stepped back and I thought about it from a variety of different angles and just reflected. And I was like I don't blame the district for a lot of this. It was a huge school district. I'll leave it at that. And they don't want to get lawsuits. Rightfully so. And so when you're trying to balance that out where's this priority? Are we... At what point in time? And a lot of this comes down to how are we distributing I think our leadership and how are we really leveraging the resources and strengths and prioritizing where people should be spending their time which I'm sure that's a conversation that you're talking about right now. And as we're finishing up the years how are we delegating our time to finish all this up?

0:09:24.1 AG: Teachers are saying I've got to teach this class and I need to focus on this and I need to get this all done. My kids just finished their state tests. And so it's like how do we accommodate all that? But thinking about who is going to be making those decisions early on and who should be responsible for that? And I think there's no straight line and we're governed by politics by policy and that tries to... It tries to keep everything literally in black and white and there's nothing black and white about serving children with disabilities. So I think there's a lot of conflict in there that I had to reconcile and then say, Okay it's not the district's fault. This is a broader issue of how are we investing our time? And you talked about this expansion of TK and here just in Colorado we've started Universal pre-K this year. And so there's this huge expansion but that brings in all this broader conversation of we don't have the resources in our program but legally we can't turn children away. That's discrimination. Colorado has some pretty strong anti-discrimination laws. So yeah, where are we putting that time and energy and who's responsible and how are we actually...

0:10:43.3 AG: And we can give responsibility I think rightfully so to certain people but then also Tricia. There's no reason to be Tricia, who's a character in the chapter that you're referring to. There's no reason for that type of disposition. And I would say it doesn't really do us any good to put it on one person because we can't really advance the conversation.

[overlapping conversation]

0:11:07.5 VB: Yeah, and it touched a lot about just the lack of training and the need for more training for teachers but not just teachers. I mean anyone that's working with these kiddos... Not just on disabilities and how to teach kids with disabilities but sometimes I feel even just I don't want to say common sense but thinking outside the box being creative having compassion for others and how we're teaching that to children because it's not just that we're teaching kids their ABCs reading, writing and arithmetic. We are teaching them to be productive and go-to members of society. And we sometimes forget that part of it of teaching compassion comes from being compassionate in the first place.

0:11:55.6 AG: Yeah and being part of a compassionate community. You made me think about this as we're thinking about transitions and do we start that conversation early on? And one of the challenges that I experienced especially, and so I continued teaching after that year for two more school years. And there were a lot of lessons that I learned throughout that that I walk through in the book and process through that story. And I started to recognize how much we do in early childhood whether that be early intervention the path to three Part C Component or plus three to five. We can create these compassionate communities and these loving communities that are focused on social skills and there's really no disability. The kid is thriving and they're not disabled and how much of this is contextual. And then they get over to kindergarten or they transition into a general pre-K classroom and all of a sudden it is this kiddo needs an IEP. This kiddo needs to be evaluated. And I think probably there's a level of that for you all and teachers struggle and then there's... I hear it from my own students because of ratios we can't support this kiddo. They're sticking another kiddo with an IEP in here because it's deemed the least restrictive environment and we can't do this.

0:13:19.5 AG: And it's like well I mean you kind of can and you don't have the training really to be able to do that. And I think another thing in that story that I want people to see is how important my teaching assistants were that it can't just be the teacher with the training, that it has to be the teacher who has the training. It has to be the teaching assistants or the paraprofessionals who have the training. It has to be a wider understanding. One of the things that really privileged me coming into that year that I describe or that I share in the book is that I had worked in a self-contained classroom a center program for two years prior to that which is... It equipped me with a lot of skills and trying to just create a welcoming compassionate community in there, where every single child has an IEP and we're like we still need peer models in here. How can we create peer models in a self-contained classroom? And so I think that was an asset that you can't teach in a college class. You can't prepare in a professional development. You have to develop those skills in the trenches which that also brings in these conversations that I'm part of is how do we move away from so much focus on self-contained classrooms as the least restrictive environment.

0:14:53.4 AG: And I think part of that conversation is how do we allow teachers in self-contained classrooms or classrooms where there are intensive needs to feel empowered to bridge those skills that they've developed in there to support inclusive classrooms. I mean those are priceless lessons that I learned in that classroom.

0:15:12.8 VB: Yeah. Absolutely. And I think something that you pointed out as well is there is this kind of mantra of you're the teacher, you know what's best for the classroom. You're the parent you're the expert of your child. And the helplessness that you felt in that moment when this administrator was just going the complete opposite. You're just trying to move him to the afternoon class. We might need another para. We need the bus. And she's like sounds like he needs home services. He can't move... And it was just so... And we've felt that, we've seen that time and time again. And I think to touch on what Amanda had said the creativity kind of goes out the window. I mean you guys were able to make it work because two other kiddos had moved out of your class. Certain things had fallen into place but even your principal was trying to be creative. And I think that oftentimes and it's top down. If you have somebody that's so focused on compliance you have almost somebody that is putting special education into this box and then refuses like Amanda said to think outside of that box, where that's not what special education is about. We can have a child with down syndrome be in a general education classroom.

0:16:25.1 VB: We're not saying throw academics out the door, but it could be done and it has been done but we oftentimes just hit this wall with districts and it's because the teachers are not confident in their abilities or they need more help and resources. And even though they're asking for it they're just met with a no, no, no, no. And that's what's really hard. And yes, sometimes we come in and we sue and then we get it but we don't represent every child in that classroom. We don't represent... And that's what almost makes it heartbreaking in that the system is so broken and so many people know that and they're trying to fix it and it's tough. On an individual basis, what we can do is incredible for that family but the purpose of our podcast and having people like you on is so that we can start these conversations and make these issues known on a broader level not just like, Oh you had a kid and then you experienced it. Having a little bit of information beforehand and really being able to know how to change it is helpful. For our listeners what's something that you would encourage them to take with them being on the other side of that table of the little kid table when they're at an IEP meeting? 'Cause I know you had mentioned the mother of the particular child.

0:17:48.0 VB: She kind of wasn't there. She was physically there but at times you're just like, Hey is everything okay? What's something that you wish parents knew before going into a big IEP... She didn't even know it was a big IEP meeting but just from your experience something that they can take with them into these meetings?

0:18:06.8 AG: Yeah, I think the biggest piece retrospectively playing... And I try to talk about this a lot in my class. This is the main point of the classes that I teach is you are an advocate. You may not have the Special Ed credentials but now you've been through this class and you understand what an IFSP is and you understand what an IEP is or at least the general principles of it. And so if you can get a draft of that IEP which if you're part of this team you should be able to see a draft of that. You should be participating in that team to get everything set up, but take a look at that share that with the family prepare them because once everybody gets to the table I mean we know this. It's like everybody's got an hour on their schedule. It's got to start at 1:00 PM 'cause that's when we can get all 12 people there and it's going to end at 2:00 PM because then someone's got to go off somewhere else. We have no choice. And in the meantime I can't even imagine. I've got two kids of my own and just going into a parent-teacher conference with just my wife, me and my kids. One of my daughters. That's overwhelming. And so to be in this situation that Chanel was in with Jovan is a whole different ballgame but what I'd really encourage teachers to do is first understand what the IEP is and how it fits into the broader context of this family.

0:19:34.8 AG: Where does this fit into the context of what the priorities are with the family? Because the teachers know the children better than anyone else at that table. You got the speech pathologist with... In a good circumstance or best case scenario they're coming in and they're providing those services in the classroom for maybe an hour or two hours a week and they get to meet the children. 'Cause you had mentioned a little bit earlier that you work with that one child as you're working with the family and you're trying to serve as their legal advisor you're working with that one but we're talking about a classroom of 15 other kids or 18 other kids or who knows how many kids depending on the age. And so the teacher understands how this child fits into the classroom community. And so one requesting to have a voice at the table if possible having the teaching assistants have a voice at the table and saying, here's how this child fits into this community or this is how we could see this child fit into the community. 'Cause I saw it in the book as Let's move him to the afternoon class, because that seemed like a better community and/or a more suitable community. And so teachers to say, Okay let's have everybody who understands the child in the context and let's discuss this in advance.

0:20:58.6 AG: Let's prepare the family for what's possibly to come and decide what role we can serve. Maybe it's... As the teacher they're not the case manager. They really don't... There could be two minutes for them to provide their input but the parents, it's the parents' IEP meeting. So the parent can say I would like that teacher to share a little bit more. There are some parents who have the confidence and have the knowledge to be able to step forward. I think teachers really can help strengthen anybody's confidence though. But that starts out with the teacher having a relationship with the kids.

0:21:31.1 VB: Exactly. Yes.

0:21:33.0 AG: And then compliance when we talk about compliance the line between compliance and compassion, it's not just compliance for IEPs. We as teachers we are expected to comply with so many other things and the district's not going to get sued. Well they could for not serving English language learners or dual language learners but in general, those other policies are not going to be at the front of the burner in the way that the policies for the IEP are. So the teacher just having that knowledge being able to advocate and the more they come in as a team player, I think that that really opens the door and nobody on that team's going to object to a teacher who wants to be part of this. I think that it's just... I don't think a lot of Special Ed teams really consider bringing the teaching assistants or the paras into the IEP meeting and from a para perspective that's not their job responsibility. They're getting paid perhaps minimum wage but they love the children too and so they should also be there.

0:22:35.5 VB: And we would love that. We often ask for the paras to be there. In fact it's probably one of the people that we ask the most. They're the ones that spend the most time with the child if it's a full-time para. More often than not I'd say 99% of the time the answer is no. We get that answer from the school districts because they know that being a low wage worker they're probably going to be the most honest and open and that's not always part of the...

0:23:03.1 AS: I'm sure they have their reasons.

0:23:03.2 VB: Liability.

0:23:05.9 AS: Liability purposes, liability purposes. But... Yeah, no I think you hit the nail on the head and just also lastly to kind of bring it back knowing that for that particular child the afternoon class and then when you did broach the subject with mom her saying you know what? That actually works with his doctor's appointments. I have so many doctor's appointments in the morning and having that bit of information before the IEP in case she forgot to mention that. That that's something that you as the teacher can add to and help make the parent feel seen and heard. 'Cause that's probably the number one thing that... We don't get clients that say that outright. But that's the number one underlying reason that they're pissed off and then they Google attorney, Special Ed or however they found us is they don't feel seen and they definitely don't feel heard. And you most definitely, I know for the students and then even the teachers that you're teaching you make them feel seen and heard and we are just so grateful for your time. And just to wrap things up if somebody wanted to connect with you how could they do that? And then where can they find your book?

0:24:09.5 AG: My book is available on any website book retailer. Love Is A Classroom. Andrew DL Goff. I can be reached at andrewdl... David Lepp goff@gmail.com. I also have a website which is... It's got two different domain names andrewdlgoff.com or loveisaclassroom.com. You put in either one of them you'll get to me. There's contact information. I also have a podcast Love Is a Classroom where I try to elevate the voices of families also and... Teachers don't have the privilege of sitting down and spending two years writing a book like I do. But that doesn't mean they don't have stories and experiences to share. And then social media look up Love is a Classroom or Andrew DL Goff and you'll find me there too.

0:24:52.8 VB: Thank you again, so much for your time Andrew. You are definitely a gem and we appreciate your time.

0:25:00.1 AG: Thank you so much Vickie and Amanda. I really appreciate it.

0:25:06.5 AS: And to our listeners we will talk to you next week.

0:25:06.5 VB: Bye.

0:25:06.5 AS: Bye.