Hey y'all, it's Tim Vegas back with more bonus content for the trailer park podcast. TPP brings you podcast trailers for the discerning podcast listener, and helps podcast creators think differently about how to get their pods in the ears of the perfect audience. erielle and I are real close to getting Season Two up and rolling. But before we do, I wanted to share another bonus trailer. For this one, it's personal. Inclusion stories is a five part narrative podcast series that I'm producing for the Maryland Coalition for inclusive education. It centers around the stories of families and school districts who are pursuing full inclusion for children with disabilities. One of the things that I really love about narrative podcasts is getting to know the why behind the narrator telling the story, for instance, in this series, My why is that I spent 16 years in public schools as a teacher and saw firsthand how inequitable education was for learners with disabilities. Yet, despite all of this, I'm hopeful, because there are families and educational systems right now trying to change things to be more inclusive. And they are succeeding. Here is the trailer to inclusion stories. And afterward, I'll be around to wrap up. Let's get into it. It's the last few days of the school year, and I'm waiting for my daughter to come home on the bus for my daughter, and for nearly everyone in our neighborhood. Since the very first day of kindergarten, there has been no question where they will go to school. It's the one closest to our house, practically across the street. But for the vast majority of families who have children with complex support needs, the question of where they will go to school is not so straightforward. Many times the location of the school and what kind of classroom a child is educated in, is based on the characteristics of their disability, or how much their curriculum needs to be modified, not where their neighborhood school is.
My name is Christina Berry. My daughter is Harper Berry,
Justin and Christina berry have gone to extraordinary lengths to have their daughter Harper, who uses an augmentative and alternative communication device included in general education,
the special education classroom, they're like duct tape on things, you know, these giant fifth graders in the room. It's a different academic levels, different ages. Now, after a while you just start looking at it, you're like this, this isn't working. And this is not right. Like it's just not so yeah, we work to pull her out of it. And that was many, many meetings and many 1000s of dollars and advocacy fees,
and they aren't alone. countless families advocate for their children with complex support needs to be fully and authentically included. But what if there were school districts that already included students with disabilities, even those with complex support needs in general education classrooms with the kinds of support they needed?
So back in 2003, we were a center school district and all of our students with significant disabilities went to those center schools.
This is Carolyn teaghlach, Assistant Superintendent of Cecil County Schools in Maryland.
What happened was, as soon as we started the work of transitioning students back, we saw the power of the impact, and it became my life's work.
Westland. Wilsonville in Oregon, has also been on the journey to inclusion here is Assistant Superintendent Jennifer Spencer IMEs students do
better in inclusive classrooms, they do better academically, they do better socially. There's really not any research that supports segregated classrooms. So really, our question moved from Why would we be inclusive to you know, why not?
And what I can't get out of my mind is that if Harper berry lived in one of these two school districts, she would already be included. But why does it have to be this way? From MCI II, the producer of the think inclusive podcast, a podcast series that will follow the story of Harper and others throughout their school year, and chronicle the joys and heartache of pursuing inclusion and tell the stories of school districts that have made a commitment to include each and every learner coming late 2023 What do you think? I had a couple goals for this trailer. I wanted to try to explain a pretty complicated topic, educating students with disabilities and public school and let you know why it was important to me. Also, I wanted the trailer to be compelling enough and sound good enough If that you wanted to listen, so did I accomplish this? drop me an email and let me know. You can reach us at Hello at trailer park pod.com Are you a creator? You can submit your trailer by going to trailer park podcast.crd.co erielle and I are combing through hundreds of trailers for season two and we just might pick yours to feature feeling social. Find us on Instagram and tag us in your favorite trailers. We're at trailer park underscore pod. Thanks for listening everybody, and Happy Trails