This is thinking cluesive. I'm Tim Vegas. I don't know about you. But around here it is close to the end of the school year, which is usually when I do a lot of reflecting, especially when I was still in the classroom. And you know what I've been thinking about lately, principals, specifically, principals that lead inclusive schools. As a special education teacher, I was focused on including my students in general education. But I often overlooked that any movement toward inclusive practices was short lived without the support and buy in from the principal. This week. My guest is Willie Parker, a former high school administrator and Executive Director for a state Principals Association. And our topic is very simple, how principals can build a culture of inclusion in their school buildings. After a short break, we're going to learn a little bit more about will and what he has to say about the transformative power of leadership in schools. Stick around we'll be right back.
Welcome back to Think inclusive our podcasts that brings you conversations about inclusive education, and what inclusion looks like in the real world. This week, we're talking to will Parker, the founder of principle matters, LLC and an educator, author, speaker, and executive coach. Will is all about school culture, leadership and communication. He's got tons of practical solutions and strategies to keep students motivated teachers inspired and communities engaged. He's been a huge help to schools worldwide, providing professional development and leadership support. William has spoken at K 12 events, education conferences, and leadership workshops, sharing his wisdom on effective practices, organizational management, and improving school communication. Starting as a teacher in Oklahoma in 1993, he was named the Oklahoma Assistant Principal of the Year in 2012. As a principal of a title one school, he made big gains in student performance through innovative collaboration, remediation and mentoring strategies. He even led the Oklahoma Association of secondary school principals and the Oklahoma Middle Level Education Association for six years. Today is company principal matters LLC offers leadership academies, masterminds executive coaching in Keynote presentations to empower educational leaders, William has written three books, and his principal matters podcast for education leaders, has been downloaded over 1.4 million times with 400 episodes available. Before we get into our conversation with Will I want to tell you about our sponsor for this week, the Described and Captioned Media Program DCMP is the nation's leading source of accessible educational videos. Membership is free for families and school personnel with at least one early learner through grade 12 student with a disability and it includes free access to 1000s of videos and educational television series with captions, audio descriptions, and American Sign Language. DCMP also provides guidelines for captioning and describing educational media as well as professional development and elearning resources. The CMP is fully funded by the US Department of Education and did I mention it services are free? Check them out@dcmp.org And now my conversation with will Parker.
Well Parker, welcome to the think inclusive podcast
Tim Vegas, it's a pleasure and an honor. I've gotten to meet you one time in person, and you've been a guest on my podcast. So thank you for the privilege of being able to spend some time with you and your audience. Absolutely.
And your podcast is principle matters,
right? Yeah, that's the school leaders principle matters to school leaders podcasts been around since 2016. And we're boasting 1.4 million downloads with about 400 episodes now. So it's been a wonderful adventure. That's amazing.
That is amazing. And you said over 400 episodes, is that right?
It'll be soon. By the time this comes out, we'll probably have actually recorded, oh, 419, I think or something like that. But But I have mine scheduled all the way through the fall. And so it's because I get to do this work full time. Now. I bank a lot of conversations that I'm having with people that I want to introduce to my listeners. So some but with I think we've published 398 or something. I'd have to look but yeah, we're at 400. Mark. Wow.
That's a listen. I understand how much work it takes to produce a weekly podcast for so long. So congratulations. That's
yeah, it's a labor of love, man.
Yeah.
I have this funny story to tell you when I was a boy. We lived in Northwest Tennessee, where I grew up. I live in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Now, I was been an educator for 30 years. But when we lived in Northwest Tennessee, we were in a rural area, middle of nowhere, gravel roads, my mom and dad did not even have a phone in the house. That's how far back we lived. And I had this cardboard box that I used to cut out the front of, and I would pretend that was on TV. And we had one of those old cassette players, tape recorders. That's how old I am. And I would record radio shows. And everybody on the radio would be me. I'd be the DJ, I'd be the music. I'd be the weather. I'd be the sports, I'd be the commercials. And then at some point, when I was starting this podcast, that memory came back to me, I was like, Oh my gosh, I as a boy, I played with all this equipment, pretending I could, you know, do a show. And now I've done almost 400 episodes of recording talking to people in real life. So you never know, Tim, all those things, you those little joys you find as a kid may come back to greet you later in life. That
is so relatable. I also would create radio shows using a tape recorder. And I would, I would, I would tape songs off the radio like record songs off the radio. And then I would pretend I was the DJ. Yeah. And like, record, you can hear my my dog just jumped on my bed saw. That's his. Yeah, so I would like tape songs on the radio and and talk in between and pretend I was the DJ. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Amazing. Amazing. Yeah,
we wouldn't we would have enjoyed meeting each other's kids. For
sure, for sure. Well, let's talk about principals. Okay, um, how, how tough? Is it to be a principal right now I know that you've? Well, you've been a principal, I know that you have met with and mentored a lot of principals. So what's it like?
Yeah, well, I do have a very unique perspective, because I was a high school administrator for 13 plus years. And then I became an executive director for our state principals, associations, I served principals in that capacity for six years. And then I've been doing consulting with principals across the US through my work with principal manners, LLC, which is a full time consulting work that I do now. And I get to connect with leaders across the US in some overseas too, because I have listeners in Australia and the UK and other places, but to answer that question directly, it's very hard to be principal. And, in fact, in 2022, and this is a couple of years old now, but the National Association of secondary school principals did a survey of 1000 principals and I can share a link to this research with you, Tim. But in that research, and of course, this was imagined 2022 were post look, well kind of post COVID At that point, but people are full throttle back into schools, and they ask some really interesting questions to principals that I think still ring true. We're one out of two school leaders during At times survey claimed that their stress levels were so high, they were considering a career change, or retirement. And so you can imagine, just like we've seen the shortage in teachers in every other spectrum across the educational landscape, leaders aren't absent from that. Now, the vast majority of those leaders still reported being generally satisfied in their work, they still loved what they did. They were just overwhelmed. In fact, 74 73% of the principals and 74% of the students because they also did a companion survey of students reported that they needed either mental or emotional health supports, in some form, because of just the the amount of stress that they've been under. And interestingly, when they were asked the question about, have they been personally threatened, attacked or verbally attacked? During this past year 51% of students said they weren't Guess how many guess the percentage of principals or school leaders who said that they had received threats, or had been somehow threatened or attacked, I'll go and tell you 70%. So there's a higher number of school leaders than students who reported amazing being threatened or attacked, or physically or verbally attacked areas the best here, and you can remember, kind of the apex of the post COVID days when in this still happens, but boy, it was really happening a lot, then, when you could not hardly go to a board meeting without someone showing up angry, or people posting things on social media. And so school leaders are not insulated from, it's really an interesting dynamic term, because school leaders are often the persons who are first criticized for any kind of negative behavior happening in their school, if students are being bullied or students are being harassed or students don't feel included, which I know is that is the focus of this podcast, which is so beautiful. But what most people don't recognize is that school leaders, although they're the first ones to be criticized, are often also the first ones to receive that treatment themselves. And so because they represent the school, whether or not they're responsible for that behavior directly or indirectly, at the end of the day, they're the face of every school, the face of that school is that leader. And so the same kinds of pressures that students and teachers feel in those places, the principal gets to wear that as a part of the identity of that school community. So with that in mind, I don't want to paint a picture that all school leaders live in constant duress. I think most school leaders I work with recognize this is the reality of leadership, that leadership is hard. Otherwise, we would not lead lead need leaders. But with that calling comes the need for a capacity to withstand that kind of pressure continuously. But also, I do think it's important for people to recognize that that pressure exists.
Most definitely. You you brought up, he brought up the idea of inclusion. So not only students and learners, right, feeling included in a, in a school, or a school culture. But we're, when we're talking about inclusion, we're also really talking about the educators and the leaders that are within that school building or in that district as well. Right. So, I'd love to know, and I'm sure everyone else would love to know, why is inclusion, important to you? As someone who had a role as a principal, and now as one that is consulting and mentoring other principals,
I love that question. And just to give some context, all of the work I did from my first year as a teacher in 1993, till I finished my last principalship in 2017, through the work I did, with principals associations through middle of last year, and now this this work. Up until this year, that work had been almost exclusively done in the public sector. So I'm a public school guy. Now that I've stepped into this work consulting, what I've discovered is that all school leaders have similar challenges. So I have people that reach out to me in private, Catholic, charter, public, and so I serve all I serve leaders at every one of the spectrums. Now, which is such a privilege, because it gives me the opportunity to see how much we have in common. And the reason that inclusion is so important to me, and I'm good, but I'm going to speak from the heart of a guy whose background was public ed. There are very few places in society where by law you are mandated to welcome every person from your community into a place that is supposed to give them an equitable opportunity for access to education, and care, and development. And so for me, it's just that I'm speaking from my heart, there's something so beautiful about a public schools mandate to create a space where all of this variety can come and live under one roof. And so what I've discovered the hearts of educators, this is why I believe so many people consider education a calling, is even with all the difficulties and even with all the challenges, and even with all the, you know, political chaos that we seem to live in, right now, in, in the US. Schools can often be that place for some children, for some of them, and maybe the only place where they get to receive nutrition, and education, and love and care. And that's not as a criticism of the places where they come from, some of them just come from places where they have fewer resources than others do. And so for me, inclusion is so important, because at the end of the day, every child has, has a human right to be educated. And they have the right to be treated in a way that that identifies the dignity and the respect, and the value that they bring into every setting. And so, so to me, that's the that's the heart of inclusion, whether you're talking about someone with special needs, or whether you're talking about how students identify in terms of demographics, or fluence or lack of resources or gender, it doesn't, it doesn't matter, every one of those students deserves that kind of dignity and respect. And so that's, that should be the heart of I think, what drives us towards trying to create that kind of environment for kids.
I appreciate that. And I appreciate your your heart, especially coming from the public sector. So I don't know if you know, this about me, but I'm a product of private school. So I went to a private Christian school from I like to say, from pre K to college graduate, because every aspect, every part of my journey in education, was part of a religious private school experience. And went
to a private Christian University, Tim. So it's interesting, having grown up in the public area, and then stepping into that university area, and then going back into the public area. And I just have friends in all those settings. So yeah, you have a really unique experience. Yeah, yeah.
And when I was going to school, there was no special ed. There was no, there was nothing separate. There was, there were certain, like looking back, there were certainly people who had some disabilities, but nothing super, nothing super obvious. We just kind of felt like oh, they they're probably getting something different. Just didn't know exactly what that was. But they weren't in a different class or anything. It wasn't it wasn't anything like that. I did not even realize that there were separate classes for specifically for students with disabilities. Until my last year of college, I took a class called the psychology of the exceptional child. And one of my assignments was to visit a, like a special education resource classroom. And I was like, this is this is weird. You know, it's like a teacher. He had a Hawaiian shirt on. It was a Math Resource class, there was like eight or 10 kids in there. And it just looked like they were doing math. It wasn't anything. It was just like, Oh, they're just doing math in a small group. And it wasn't until later, after I sort of was exposed to this whole system of special education that I realized, probably what was going on in there. And, and so my context for special education was, it just was it was so limited. And I wonder if when I became a teacher and I started learning about, you know, public schools, I I think one of the one of the things when I first got my job was I realized how different learners with disabilities were treated. And so that it was like, I had no idea how different the experience was. Until you until you see it yourself, you're like, oh, yeah, you know, special ed and you know, the special ed teachers and but you just don't understand the stigma of it all. Until Until you see it. Yeah. And I think that was one of the things that really pushed me into just figuring out and learning as much as I could about inclusive education and why that's important.
It's hard for me to remember when my aha moment was because, like you even though I did grow up in public education. So much of my life as a student, any students that were categorized with special needs are often just separated from the rest of the population. In fact, I have an older brother, who in elementary was separated for learning disabilities and reading, probably dyslexia, although it wasn't diagnosed at the time. And, to his credit, in the credit of his teachers, he was able to gain enough academic gains, that he was moved back out of that setting into regular education settings, and ended up becoming a really high achiever, academically, he was an a&b student, and went on and got a college degree and, but his stories of what that was, like, you know, to be separated from the rest of his peers, was really painful for him. And, and then when I think back to my own high school years, just remembering, you know, knowing there was always a class or two that were kids were separated. So when I became a teacher, I think I just kind of inherited this expectation that we separate kids. And, and so and, thankfully, over the years of my career has, I got to be closer to those teachers in our building, who did have expertise, in more differentiated instruction, or working with special services students, or who that was their passion, it wasn't like, I get the leftovers, these were, these are the kids I want, they began to introduce me to what was actually being explained in the IEP s, a lot of times, I would step into an IEP meeting, kind of blindly as a young teacher going, okay, they want me to try to this differently and do this differently. And I, but I didn't really understand the why. And then over time, when I began to recognize, like, Oh, these are components that we're identifying as a team, because they actually matter, it's not just to fill out papers, which is kind of what was in my mind, it felt like it first. In sometimes I'll be honest, those I've set the many IEPs that ended up feeling very perfunctory. And I have to remind myself, this is a child in their parents are way more important than the paperwork that we're doing here. And it's hard to hold on to that when you're trying to, you know, match compliance. But over time, when as I began to recognize the, just the value and the beauty of every one of those kids, in that their capacities or their areas of needed development, did not do anything to change their value and their worth within that system. That was what was helpful for me. And then as an AP, I think what really the lightbulb began to come off for me began to come on for me was recognizing to that the deeper and I'll say, I'll speak this to any leaders that are in the room, especially principals. But this is for teachers too, though. The more the more time you can actually take to study the the testing and the backgrounds and the capacities of your students, the better position you're going to have on the way you communicate with them to in the way that you coach them or the way that you support them. Because I I remember, as a young leader, when I started as an AP, I kind of thought everything was one size fits all, you know, if this is the rule, this is the consequence. This is what I tell the parent, this is what they get. And when reality meets practice is when you start realizing, Oh, this doesn't always turn out like I thought it was going to this, this student didn't respond to that, to this conversation, like I thought he or she would, or this consequence didn't have the same immediate effect on the student as it did on this one. And it didn't change necessarily the practices that we had for consistency. But what it began to do is help me to shape better options. So that when I'm working with students, and I'm trying to figure out things that are going to work with them, I had to get more differentiated in my leadership to not so not just did I have to learn as a teacher how to differentiate instruction for kids based on their needs, but I also had to learn how to differentiate approaches for things like discipline and follow ups and communication and parents support as a principal to it And, and I just think that comes with experience. But in part of it also just comes when you take the time to build relationships with students, and really get to know them for who they are. I'll tell a quick story. I won't use his name because of confidentiality. But I had a boy in one of my schools, who used to who was diagnosed autistic and had some really had some huge struggles with social anxiety. But he used to meet me at the front door every morning. For all four years, he was in high school, he was the very first student that would meet me every morning, he would be waiting out front before anybody else. When I got out of my car, his mother would drive away and he would walk in with me. So we unlock the doors together, we opened my office together, he watched me sort my mail, he would start his day there until he was ready to go out in meet peers or teachers because I was a part of his routine. And I was at a party one night, have a friend of mine who is moving out of country. And he was just giving away stuff. He's like, take my stuff. I can't take it with me. And he had this old model in a box of a DeLorean car. Do you remember back to the DeLorean? Yeah. And I remembered this boy at school, love DeLoreans because he loved back to the future. So I asked him, Can I have your car in? He was like, Yeah, take it, nobody else's wanted it. So the next morning, I went to school, and there is my student waiting up front. And I took them in, we open the doors and open the mail. And when I got things set up, I said, Hey, I have something I brought that I would like to give to you. And I had it in a bag. And I pulled out this DeLorean. And I said, I got this from a friend of mine who's moving and he said, I could take it and I don't really need it. So I thought I'd give it to you. And here's the this is, I just love this story. Because an all the years I had known him, he was also a student had a really difficult time expressing emotion, or, and so he stood up, and he held the DeLorean. And then he walked over. And he's got as close as he could to me, like shoulder to shoulder. And he said, and I think these are the words, he said, I don't want to misquote him, but he said, I feel like I'm going to have a tear coming down my face, because this is the most special gift I've ever received. And that's all he said, he didn't cry, he didn't get a motion to hug me in it. But he walked away with that treasure. And it was just one of those moments, Tim, where you're just like, huh, it took me three, almost four years to get to this moment with the student. But this is who he is, and what a value he brings to our school into our lives. And what a gift to be able to find the thing, you know, that connected him with something that he loves. So sometimes it takes experience with different kids to kind of get that sense of like, okay, what's the value that the students bringing here? And what can we do to make sure the student feels valued?
Oh, thank you for sharing that. I think what I what I'm taking away from the story, and then the setup of developing relationships, not only with students, but with educators in your in your buildings, is that part of part of leadership is really knowing who you're leading. Right? And it's not, it's not even like, Okay, follow me. Right? It's more like, you're kind of their shepherd, if, for lack of a better term, I don't know. Maybe that's, maybe that's a good term. But you see, everyone, and you get to know everyone and you get to know what everyone. However, Eleanor responds, their needs. And like you said, how you differentiate the relationships and the how you are, how you are building that culture. And you are really serving them in a way. Right? I had a
friend the other day who asked is it was an assistant principal buddy. For mine, I was working in another state doing some PD. And I had dinner with a friend who had connected with me through my podcast, and he was going to be in the training. And he just asked me he's like, Well, what's the narrative? You tell yourself everyday when you're getting out of your car stepping in the school? Because sometimes it's hard for me to hold on to that why? And I said, Well, it's been a while since I've had to get out of my car and walk into the school, but because now I'm serving leaders, but I can tell you that I would actually ers before getting out of my car, I would stop. And you know, before I met that student at the door, I would just stop and sit there and think, and sometimes my girls commuted with me. So you know, every every day is a little different. But on most mornings, I would stop and just quietly ask myself, why am I why am I here today? If if I'm here, because I'm putting out fires, or I'm just trying to keep everybody safe, or I don't want any conflicts, you know, that's a part of my job. But why am I really here? And I would just have to remind myself, I'm here today, because there's, there's, there's broken systems that sometimes need to be repaired. And if I can be a part of that, that's great. There's sometimes relationships that need healing, because people don't always treat each other the way they should, they should. So how can we make those better? There are situations that maybe people can't control, but maybe we can find a way to redeem that situation in a way that wouldn't be otherwise. Maybe there's, maybe there are ways we can do things better here that so we could, you know, renew our focus on on what we're doing. So it just kind of rehearsed in my own mind, what's the ideal that I want from this work. And I think in school leadership, when you go back to those numbers I shared with you at the beginning, it's really easy to focus on the duress, the things that that are weigh on you when you're stepping into work. And those probably aren't going to go away. But the question I always had to ask myself is, in addition to carrying that weight of responsibility, of managing the stress, the anxiety, the the misbehaviors, because that's the job of a school leader and a principal especially, what's the flip side of that? What's the positives that I get to do today, because if most of the time it's, I'm just gonna say four or 5% of your population, where you're putting out the fires, it's the other 95 to 96%, that are actually doing things that should be celebrated and enhanced and increased, and, but we tend to spend most of our time on the small percent. And I'm not sure how you would apply that to inclusion. But I think sometimes I think we focus so much, for instance, on the differentiated learning that needs to happen, the accommodations that need to take place in the modifications, and all that's really important. But if that's the focus of your inclusion, then you're actually missing out on the flip side, which is what do I want the outcomes to be? How curious do I want the students to be how much wonder and how much inspiration did they deserve? What, what kind of school experience did they I want them to have? What story do I want them telling when they go home? At the end of the day? I don't want it to be Oh, yeah, I got my test modified today. I mean, that might be exciting for them. And I doubt it. I think the thing that they really want to talk about is something that that was exciting about learning, or maybe the DeLorean that the principal gave me as a gift that day. It's something that made them feel loved. And so I just think as leaders as educators, it's important for us to remember yes, we've got to do the job of compliance and all of those areas that that meet students needs, but not at the expense of forgetting why we're actually there, which is to help them have experiences of wonder and imagination and discovery.
As someone I think it was I think it was a previous guest, Mirko Chardon, he is a UDL expert, you worked with Katie Novak, I don't know if you are familiar with any of those names, but um, the the term equity he, he defined it in a way that I really, really liked and something that hopefully I'm saying this right, but he talks about equity being giving everyone or giving every learner what they need. Right. And which kept coming up in my mind as you were talking about what a school leader is, like, basically, assessing what everyone needs and then attempting to give them what they need. And so these terms, right, diversity, equity inclusion, they're just they can be so politically charged. And I'm wondering, do they have to be do they have to be like, how can we be committed to these ideals? Yeah. In in us, depending on where we work or live that it can be it can be politically charged.
Yeah. Okay, I'm gonna step into something that might create A little controversy just because of the different perspectives on this, but I live in a wasu, Oklahoma, which is a suburb of Tulsa. And the public schools that my son and my daughter attended. My son is currently a student at just went through a horrible crisis, the school year with the loss of a have a student who identified as non binary named next Benedict, and this has been a national news. Oh, yeah. And in the in the response to that you had lots of voices many of outside of our community that were really upset when the story came out that next had been involved in an altercation with other students, and then afterwards was had visited the hospital and was sent home. And then the next day there was a call to 911 from Nexus home and next ended up dying. And it was two weeks before the reports from the coroner's examination, officers could come out to confirm what was the cause of death. So in those two weeks, you had lots of assumptions. You had a lot of people assuming that it was the injuries involved in the fight. Then you had other people that didn't just didn't know. So people began to, like, take sides of like our input politically of like, it's the school's fault, or is the nurses falter was the students fault, or it was the parents fault, or it was, you know, assigning all this blame. And in index, by the way, uses the pronoun, they them, the pronouns, they them. So if I, if I miss use that anywhere in this conversation, my apologies, because I'm not always perfect at remembering. But the the reason I'm bringing that up is this, it was interesting as being a dad in the community, and also being a former educator. And of course, I know, everybody in this community, from the students, to the parents, to the board members, to this principals, to the superintendent, everybody involved in some way in this, including having a child there. It was interesting how much was being said about that, by people who actually weren't a part of the community. If you were in the community, what you actually saw, is incredibly compassionate teachers, principals and students rallying around each other, with support and love and care. Messages continuously coming from the school, acknowledging the grief and the concerns, but also saying there are certain things we can't say because of confidentiality. I went to the board meeting afterwards, where the superintendent gave a really hard felt plea to the community of we love all of our students. And we want to make any kinds of steps that we can to correct any kind of behaviors that would have caused students this kind of anguish. The coroner's report later identified that it was an it was an act of suicide related to drug overdose. And so I was actually have a conversation with my son through all of this. And he said to me, Dad, this situation has changed me. And I was like, how and he said, Because I live in this community, and it's the first time that instead of like, he's like, in social media, you hear something and you immediately make it have an opinion. He said, and I've done that a lot. Since I've had social media uses. This is the first time where I saw people having really strong opinions, but they actually didn't know what was going on. It's changed me said I've kind of decided maybe I don't always know what's going on. And I was like, oh lightbulb moment. Because you know what happens at the end of the day, when all the press goes away, and all the social media, people go away and all the pundits go away, and you know, who's left the people in that community. And in that community, what I saw, and what I still see from my own children, and from those educators in those buildings, is a commitment to love kids. And so I think at the end of the day, when when people start politicizing things like diversity, equity inclusion, when they want to turn it into, you know, you can't say this in my state, or you can see this in my state. It's, it's sad, because it's sad that we've taken something as good as those qualities and tried to turn them into a political position, or to weaponize them or to punish them or to intimidate you not to talk about certain things. And I don't think I've got the magic answer to that, Tim, but I will say this, I've never seen anybody who can respond negatively to love. And so when I see school leaders that are trying to, to express what they I believe is important for equitable access in education and taking care of all students and treating every kid with dignity and respect. You can put whatever labels you want to on it. But those kids and those parents, they know it when you love them. They know it. You can't fake that. And you can't even I mean, you can try to policy it, but it's nothing changes the way you actually treat people in person. And so that would be my, you know, my encouragement to educators out there is even if you are in a place where suddenly the labels and the words and all those things are being questioned, sometimes you have to voice strong opinions. And sometimes you need to be the person that that is the voice, you know that that stands? That speaks to power. But I think most of the time, you just need to continue to demonstrate the kind of behavior and love that every student deserves? Because you can't. You can't. And I know at the end of the day, I don't think you can ever, you can't force someone not to love.
Right, right? Isn't it amazing that it really comes down to that loving other people? Right? Like the golden rule? Yeah, right. Yeah, oh, my goodness. Well, I want I want our listeners, whether they're educators, or principals or district leaders. I want to throw a scenario by you. So let's say there are a you have you have a principal, and there they are trying to support some teachers who have a wide variety of needs in their particular classroom. And maybe, you know, maybe their first year teacher or maybe it's this is a new situation for them. where the needs are, are vast. How would How should a principal go about in supporting a teacher in that particular situation?
Now, did you say in a classroom where students have disabilities? What was the context?
I was, I would say, for let's say, it's a general education teacher. And they have they have learners with disabilities, sometimes you call it a co taught class, you know, even or an inclusion class. But the idea is, maybe they have learners that have some, you know, significant support needs, okay. And they're just not, they're just not used to that. And so I'm wondering if you were consulting with the principal on how to support a teacher? What were what are some things that you would say, or some strategies?
Okay, thank you for that. That's a great question. First of all, I want to be really transparent that it wasn't until the last couple of years in my principal leadership that we've introduced coteaching. And it wasn't something that was an initiative that I led, it was something I supported, but it was something that others on our team said we need to start doing this. And it was novel to me, because even as a leader, even though I love kids, and I love supporting them, I still, in my own mind, kept a lot of categories in terms of, you know, what inclusion looks like in, in so in, depending on the needs of students, which settings in which they would be better supported, and which ones would be better for pullouts and all those things. So I know there's, there's a lot of schools that have never done co teaching. And then there's some that that's been a part of their culture for a while now. So I'm not sure to whom I'm speaking, but I just will say this. I think the first place to begin those conversations is with the teachers themselves in terms of let's imagine together what's possible. If we have these students that we know have these needs. And we recognize that you have a regular ed, quote unquote, gen ed teacher who has a specific certification skill area, and then you have a teacher with a special education skill area. Let's imagine what that would look like if you could work together because, for me, co teaching became one of the best solutions I ever saw to that, to that dilemma, which is being able to have teach are partnered together to maintain the high expectations with standards and instruction that you normally would in that content area. But to do it with those supports immediately available, where you're already recognizing in advance, who may need a little more enrichment, who may need some modification and accommodation. So if someone's never seen that model, I would just encourage you to identify a school where it's happening and go visit and just watch what co teaching looks like. Because being able to just see it will stimulate your imagination. And I'm going to just take a co teaching pair that I worked with, back in my old school that I thought worked together really beautifully. Because both of them. One was a general ed teacher, and one was special ed, this was secondary, and they taught at that time, ninth and 10th grade language arts, and I'll just use this as an example. And in that classroom, you know, of those 30 kids, you know, 15, sometimes half of them could be on IEPs. And the other half could not, but they actually took turns in delivering direct instruction. Um, depending on what the unit was what they were working through, while the other could support that work or follow up, or, or make sure that they were touching base with individual students as the instruction was happening. Or if they put them into small groups, then they could both float between tables in groups and share and give feedback to the students. But it was really a beautiful partnership, because it wasn't just the special education teachers present to support the general ed teacher, it was, it was quality education, quality instruction happening from both of those teachers, in the places where they could provide the most input to those students. And it was really neat, because they were giving the opportunity for both those gen ed students who deserved high standards in content instruction, but also their special education students who also deserved high standards and that content to be receiving those that content. But already in an intimate setting where anyone who needed additional support was getting it right, then they didn't have to be pulled. And so. So it was helpful for me as a leader, to be able to watch those teachers sit down together and imagine what that would look like. And so we started small, just a couple of classes, I think we actually began with just one co teaching group, and then the next year, we expanded it. And each year, we began to pair more teachers up for that kind of work together. And when they could see someone else model it, then they could get a vision for it. And so, so I think that's where I would begin in terms of, of, of just inviting people to, to imagine what those possibilities would look like. And I'll speak to this to Tim, I know this isn't an answer directly to this question you just asked. But I want to come back to something else we talked about earlier, is your public versus private. But I had the opportunity several months ago to walk a beautiful campus with a private school principal. And, and this is a campus that has expanded a lot in terms of classroom space and facilities. And I asked that principle, tell me what you're doing for your special needs populations. And he admitted to me, well, actually, when we bring kids into this setting, we are really upfront with parents. So we don't have teachers that can provide that kind of support. So we encourage them to enroll at the public school or elsewhere. And you know, what my heart did that moment, which is like, wow, this beautiful setting, that's, you know, where people are actually applying and paying private dollars to come here. Of course, some of those private dollars are now being also provided through public dollars because of voucher programs. And so I just said, well, let's imagine for a minute what it would look like, if you took this beautiful space that you had, just imagine what it would look like if you had a teacher or teachers or people who had the resources and supports and ability to reach some of the kids in your in this community whose siblings might go here, but they couldn't because of a disability. Imagine what that will look like if they could if you could have access to those kids in wheelchairs, if you could have access to those kids with with reading or you know, or whatever literacies challenges. Just imagine what that would look like, what a beautiful part of your community that could be. And so, so I'm kind of saying that as a challenge to anyone out there who may work in a setting that that this like, well, we're just not equipped for it. And the first question I would have for you is well imagine what would it be like if you did, because that's where it begins. You have to imagine it first before you can actually implement it. Oh, I
love I love that. There's this Hi, I'm gonna I'm gonna pause and look it up because I want to get it right. There's this quote by Carl Sandburg. Okay, I don't know if you're familiar to Greek poet Yeah. Carl Sandburg? I think it's everything is impossible. Until
or something about a dream Hold on. Nothing happens unless first a dream. Yeah, that's it right there. Nothing happens unless first a dream by Carl Sandburg. It doesn't sound like a real strategy, you know, to say, to say, like, well, first you got a dream it and then you can build it. Like it just it. It sounds flippant and cliche. But it there's so much truth in that, you know, visualizing what could be in order for it to become that thing that you're visualizing.
Yeah, well, can I share a favorite quote with you? i Yeah. Someone else here to quote from, and I can't pronounce this name, because it's French, but Antoine de Saint expiry. And he was a philosopher. I think this was written back in the early part of the 20th century. But he said, If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood, and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea. And what I love about that quote is, it's just so true, we always we seem to start on the wrong side of the equation, we know something needs to be done. And so we sit down and immediately start trying to blueprint it, which can be great. But not until you imagine I'll give you another example, one year at the high school setting, we recognized Okay, ninth grade is the Do or Die year, student comes to us at the high school level. And if they don't earn enough credits that freshman year, then when they are supposed to be a sophomore, but they didn't promote. That's when dropouts are happening, because they're suddenly realizing I'm not going to finish school on time I'm behind in my credits, I'm not being successful. And I'm age, I'm at the age in the state where I could legally drop out of school. And so we realize, okay, we're getting them as high school because I was a secondary guy. So we're getting them in from middle school. And we, if we could look at their data before we get them and see what their attendance, what their grades, what their behaviors were that we might have a better chance of targeting something that can help these kids to be more successful, instead of this same percentage of population, we seem to be losing over time. So I pulled together one summer, I was curious. And I was like, I'm I know, there's got to be more we can do. I'm not sure what that is. But instead of sitting down and blueprinting, some plans, I actually just put a call out to my staff and said, I'm going to host the lunch at school summer vacation, but I'm going to host the lunch at school on this date, we're going to bring in catering Mexican, if you want to come and just have a talk about what more could we be doing to reach our highest needs students join me, and I had 12 or 14 teachers just show up. So and they told me ahead of time, so get lunch. So you know, what we did? We imagined? What would it look like? If we could service these kids better? What are some things that we could do. And by the end of that day, they had collectively come up with this idea that we ended up calling mentor 180, where we decided what would happen if we could team every one of those kids up with a volunteer teacher, a volunteer older student, who also understood what it means to overcome difficulty. And that student, that new student, the older student in that teacher can meet once a week on that teacher's plan and just look at grades and just say how can I help. And so because I was in the room and had spearheaded the meeting, and they came up with this idea, I volunteered to do the policy work and come up with parent permissions for other kids to look at other kids grades, I reached out to every parent to get their permission. And then we set up a meeting where we introduced each of those teams together, and then we let them just go on their own. And, you know, Tim, we tracked that data for a couple of years and it wasn't profound. But we actually saw that 50% of the students in that mentor program, were achieving full credit by the end of that first year versus before where we were seeing most of them not make it through their first year. And so even though it wasn't like this roaring success that every one of these kids saw achievement, we saw way more achievement than we had previously. And that I remember this one student in particular who is I'm was coming out of eighth grade, in her eighth grade year had lost both her parents, one to cancer and another to other complications while imprisoned. So she was orphaned. And we worked really hard to place her with a strong teacher and an older student who had overcome some challenges. And in the first few weeks of school, I remember that teacher coming to me and saying, Well, this, she's this girl, I'll call her. Lisa, Lisa is not really responding. She's, she doesn't really want to be helped. I don't think she wants to be in these mentor meetings. And I said to her at the time, I said, I'm going to tell you something that I think won't sound helpful. And then something that I think will. She's alright. And I said, the first thing I want to tell you is that when you work with kids like Lisa, you have to be prepared in advance to be disappointed. She's like, you're right. Well, that's not helpful. I said in the second thing you have to realize is when you work with kids like Lisa, they need somebody on the other side of them that will never give up on them, no matter how disappointed you get. And she said, that's helpful. And so she went back and they kept meeting and meeting and meeting. And then by the end of that first semester, her grades were coming up, she was achieving, she still got she still struggled in, but she made it but she made it through that year and passed every class. By her junior year, she was ready to be on her own. So we actually helped her apply at the Tulsa Job Corps so she could get trained in nursing and go ahead and just get her diploma. Because she wanted she didn't want to be in foster care anymore. But you know, so to me, that's just another story of, of educators, we have to imagine we have to dream. And but we also have to come in, come into those relationships realistically knowing that we are going to be challenged, and we are going to get disappointed. But we also can't give up
right after a short break the mystery question.
This seems this seems like a softball, but let's see what famous person's memoir. would you love to read? Or maybe you're already reading because I have one that I'm reading now that I have not finished?
So can you go first?
Okay. So do you do you I'm sure you're familiar. But do you like the band? You too? Yeah. Okay, so Bano? Yeah, wrote a book called surrender. It came out a couple of years ago now. I bought it like the Christmas it came out. And I still haven't finished. But, but every time I sit down to read it, I'm like, This is so good. I need to like, dedicate some time to read it. I am a I'm a musician of former in, like, in bands, and, you know, rock and roll and all that stuff. And it was actually one of the first one of the first pieces of music that I learned how to play on the bass guitar was like with or without you. Because it's like just four notes basically, on the bass. And YouTube was it was is still one of my favorite bands. And he he's a great writer. I'm sure he had help but great writer, great storyteller. And I really need to finish that book because it's, it's it's really life giving every time I read it. I'm like, why am I why am I stopping but you know, life? Yeah, pretty sure.
I'm pretty sure when he came up with that memoir, I heard him interviewed on NPR. And I was also just so intrigued. I was like, wow, I mean, I knew he was a great musician, but I didn't know his story.
I know, right? Yeah, exactly.
He's a greedy guy. He's, he's, he's a neat guy. You know, it's funny, I was sitting there thinking like, okay, famous person who's maybe there is a memoir of JRR Tolkien but I'm not. I mean, I've read so many of his Lord of the Rings. Oh, interesting. Okay, you know, but in I'm also a big fan of CS Lewis and CS Lewis has a book called surprised by joy, which is kind of his autobiography. It's not really a memoir. And it's not even written like most autobiographies. It's almost like train of thought. But it's was a fascinating read. I'm not sure I've ever read Tolkien talking just about himself. And that would be really, I mean, I've heard a lot of people talk about him. Yeah, but yeah, really interesting to hear him talk about himself because man, what a profound mind to create worlds and languages and geography and but you know, what I loved about his work more than anything is the indomitable human spirit in those stories, and just you read those stories and you're just so Inspired you like I am a small piece of this universe. But maybe what I'm doing really does make a difference in the big scheme of it. And so I think that would be why I would want to read more about him.
Great. Well, yeah, I don't know if JRR Tolkien has a memoir, but it would be nice. It'd be nice. Well, Parker, this was such a fun conversation. Thank you so much for being on the conclusive podcast.
Thank you, Tim. Oh,
that chime means it's free time. This week is really just a plug for our YouTube channel. Back in 2012, I started thinking cluesive as just something I did on the side of being a special education teacher, I was passionate about inclusive education. Even though I taught in a segregated special education classroom. I was not sure how the broader field of inclusive educators and advocates would accept me as part of the voices for change. But slowly, and surely, they did. And you did. Now I have the privilege of producing this podcast for you. It's been over a decade of making changes, upgrading equipment, and learning the craft of audio storytelling. And now we are going through a different kind of transition to video. I didn't specifically call out that we're making a video for this episode, but this episode will be posted on our YouTube channel. And for the last few episodes of season 11. I'll be making them all videos when I get the chance. And this is in preparation to be fully converted to video episodes for season 12, which starts in September of 2024. We will still have audio episodes if you listen on Apple podcasts or Spotify. But we are adding YouTube into the mix. All that to say to make sure that you are subscribed to our channel, we're sitting right around 328 subscribers. Do you think we can get to 500 before the end of season 11 I'd love to try. That's it for this episode of thinking. cluesive think inclusive is written, edited, designed to mix and mastered by me Tim Vegas is a production of the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education. Original Music by miles credit. Additional music from melody as well special thanks to our sponsor this week, the described and caption media program, learn more@dcmp.org Oh, and shout out to Imogen for quite possibly being our biggest fan. One more thing before I let you go. I wanted to say thank you to my brother in law, Adam hazard. He's the owner of amplified AVL. And he hooked me up with some stellar audio plugins to use for the podcast. So if you're ever wondering why this podcast sounds so good, Adam has a lot to do with it. Thanks, brother. And thank you for your time and attention. Remember, inclusion always works.
After a short break, we're going to learn a little bit more about will and what he has to say about the transformative power of Scratch after a short break. We're going to learn a little bit more about will and what he has to say about the transformative power scratch after a short break. We're going to learn a little bit more about will and what he has to say about the transformative power of leadership in schools MCIE e
