This is thinking cluesive I'm Tim Vegas. Are you a gamer? I did not think I was a gamer. Until one day when a Lyft driver and I were having a conversation on the way home from the airport. And we started talking about all the games I played with my family board games, card games, games on our phone, including my slight fortnight obsession that my son got me into. And we were sitting in traffic, and he just looked back me and said, Dude, you're a gamer. I think gamers ultimately like to solve problems. And our guest today is laser focused on the link between gains to stem and how it can help schools embrace neurodiversity. We'll be right back after a short break.
Welcome back to Think inclusive, our podcast that brings you conversations about inclusive education and what inclusion looks like in the real world. And a very special welcome to everyone watching on YouTube for season 11. We are producing a few video episodes as we get close to the end of the season. And our plan is to have full video versions of each episode for season 12. And that's going to start in September 2020. For Dr. Jody as well. Clark is an educational researcher with a master's in math, a Masters of Science and astrophysics, and a PhD in curriculum teaching and learning. She co founded Educational Gaming environments group or edge at Turk in 2009, focusing on game based learning, computational thinking and neuro diversity in K 12. She has led national and international STEM education projects, including curriculum development, teacher professional development and educational research. Jody is a co founder of nd in STEM at Turk to foster inclusive STEM education, and author of the upcoming book, reaching and teaching neurodivergent learners in STEM. Prior to her career in education, Jody worked as an onboard software verification analyst for IBM during the first 25 missions of the space shuttle, and later taught physics and astrophysics at the University of Illinois. In this episode, Jodie discusses the importance of inclusive education in STEM. She shares her journey in STEM, and how a teacher's support and encouragement shaped her career. Jody explains the link between neurodiversity and stem problem solving, highlighting the unique talents that neurodivergent learners bring to the field. She also discusses her research on computational thinking, and executive function, as well as the impact of game based learning in neuro divergent learners. Jodi's book, reaching and teaching neuro divergent learners in STEM provides strategies for embracing and supporting these and uniquely talented problem solvers. Before we get into today's conversation, I want to tell you about this week's sponsor, the Autism Society, with one in 36 children diagnosed with autism. The Autism Society of America is dedicated to creating connections empowering everyone in the autism community, with the resources needed to live fully as the nation's oldest leading grassroots autism organization, the Autism Society and its approximately 70 affiliates serve over half a million people each year by championing initiatives that advance equitable opportunities and health care education, employment, safety and public policy. The organization executes a national reach with meaningful local impact through education, advocacy, support and community programming. The Autism Society works toward a world in which everyone is connected to the support they need when they need it. For more information, go to autism society.org. The connection is you and now my conversation with Dr. Jody as Belle Clark
I'm
Jody asbel Clark, welcome to the thinking clue podcast.
Thank you. Great to be here.
We don't think we've ever had anyone on that specifically had any sort of STEM background. So this is Oh, this is this is great. I'm so excited to have you on. Because this is a huge part of our educational, you know, community is the stem Steam community. And I think, you know, educators are in schools right now. And, you know, maybe they there's a STEM classroom, a STEM program. I mean, my daughter is a senior in high school, and she is in the STEM Academy. So it's like the stem has ever it's great, you know, right. So to get us started, Jody, what specifically got you into STEM or STEM related activities?
That's so funny. It's so funny, you asked that, because it's been a long time. But I went to, and I was thinking about it, it really was a teacher, some math teacher in high school, I went to high school in the 70s, in Connecticut, where things were pretty loosey goosey at the time. And you know, and I came from a creative family, who valued education, but not necessarily mainstream education. And, and so I just I liked things outside of school more than in school, and I had a tendency to not necessarily go to school all the time, or go to my classes, and a math teacher, Mr. tenza, would come find me when I wasn't any class. And he would come bring me back to class because he saw a talent, I had a map, and he wasn't gonna let it go to waste. And he just he said, I don't care what condition you're in, what phase you're, you're gonna come to my class. And he made it fun for me. And he made it challenging. So I stuck at math. And I had to say that that was the impetus. But then when I saw what math opened my doors to and I had a co op at IBM and I ended up at working on the space shuttle program for the first 25 missions of the shuttle. This was both a co op during undergraduate and then right out of undergraduate I was my first job. And I wanted to be an astronaut, but not long Behold, my my eyesight and maybe a little bit of my not so disciplined pasts can check me from the astronaut training program. But what I did was, what it did do for me was realized that through physics and math and computer science, there was a whole exciting world out there that I loved. And I have to say, being a female in those sciences at that time, for many of my compatriots, it was discouraging for me it was a challenge. I have three older brothers, I always wanted to keep up with the guys nobody's to tell me I couldn't do something because I was a girl. So that that was a bit of it added spice to it for me. And, and truth be told, I got fellowships that I might not have gotten worth just based on my grades, they were based on being a woman in science and, and it just the PAP unrolled for me very nicely. And it was always fun. It's always exciting.
So I love that as well. I'd love teachers, number one, you know, we'll think, right? You had a teacher pursue you and see something in you, but not, but not in the cultivated that love for math. Right in
and I want to I want to add that I'm not like some magic talented math magician. It was not my extraordinary talent. It was just there was some talent, and he didn't want to see it go to waste. Yeah,
yeah. And then second, you know, I think is right now teachers just in general play a huge, huge part in people's lives. Like I think right now I can look back and I can name you know, I can name my kindergarten teacher, you know. And it didn't have anything to do with you know, or stem or anything, but I can definitely remember, but, but she made me feel the community we had in that class. And then looking back and going, this person poured into my life this person poured into my life. So, anyways, just so grateful for teachers. And just when you said that, it just reminded me that well,
and it also I write about this in my book that we'll talk about, there's there's, there's, it's such a tie between emotion and learning, and emotional investment in agency and learning. And, again, I went to school during this seven days in my elementary school, actually, probably some during the 60s was, was just in the time they were experimenting on open education. So most of my education, public school education in Connecticut was was pretty traditional. But some of it, they were trying new things. And we did this thing where for a month, we had a school project to create a toy for the school fair. And we got to choose the toy design it, we went to the lumberyard and picked out the wood that we were going to use, if we if they were letting us use jig saws. And I'm not sure that would happen. Now if we had no training. But we did it from you know, soup to nuts. And we we marketed them, we did double economy, economic analysis of what you know, market analysis for them, what we could charge, all that kind of stuff. And we chose where the money that we earn would go as a community service, like everything we did as a class. And but I can't tell you what I did in the other days of my public school education, but I can tell you minute by minute what we did during that activity.
Oh, my goodness, that was when I
was grade six. So 1971 Probably, oh, it 7271
That would be considered progressive now. Yeah,
it was really cool. And I remember it so much. And it's the smell, it's the smell of the sod. That's it's the feel of the wood. It's, you know, it's, it's that sensory and emotional investment I had in that activity that really brought it home.
Oh, wow. Wow, that's amazing. That's amazing. Um, so one of the things about STEM, and I want to relate it to either your book or talking about edge or however you want to, is it you know, this connection with inclusion, and really talking about all learners, you know, stem and other kinds of, you know, maybe gifted and talented or however you want to say it sometimes. But name exclusive, you know, you know, meaning like students are quote unquote, hand picked or right. That's right, exactly, exactly. So how does, how does this idea of all learners inclusion, relate to stem and the work you're doing?
Well, I want to tell you a little bit of a story of how I got here. So I've been doing STEM education and I work with at Turk, which is nonprofit focusing on equity, and opportunities and innovations in STEM education. And so I've been doing that all along. Got involved in game based learning some colleagues of mine in 2009, founded edge at Turk, the Educational Gaming environments group to reach those kids who weren't necessarily interested in school, kind of like my story, but but had had good learning to do. And, and through that, we were noticing kids that didn't necessarily perform academically, sometimes became rock stars at learning. Yes, sometimes they were the ones that figure things out first, and other kids went to them and went, Hey, how'd you do that? And then their identity started shifting and, and just their stature in the class. And then they tried to take more risks. So it was a snowball effect. As soon as they saw themselves as good learners, they became good learners. So we first saw that in, in games. In around 2015, we started researching a game called Zoombinis, which was created by Turk back in the 90s. I was not on the development team, so I can honestly tell you, it is the best learning game out there. It's an awesome game. It's been out for a long time, you can get it in the app store. And Zoombinis is was designed to think about the organization of databases or some crazy esoteric idea, but mostly about how you solve problems computationally. Now, in 2020s, computational thinking is this huge thing in K through 12. Education people are realizing that thinking algorithmically and thinking about patterns and Breaking Down problems into smaller problems that can be solved in routines and all these kinds of things is the way of problem solving of our future society. So it's becoming a big thing in K through 12. Education. Well, that's what Zoombinis is all about. We started doing research to demonstrate how we could both develop and measure computational thinking through this game play. And lo and behold, again, the teachers were coming up to us going, Oh, my gosh, my kid who's on an IEP, that has really low performance and everything else, say race through these puzzles, and everybody wants to be in their group to know how they're doing, though, and, but not and so we started looking at the overlap between computational thinking and stem problem solving in general, but computational thinking is very logical approach to problem solving. And neurodiversity, what we call neuro diversity, we define that as just the natural variation in human brains. But it often plays out in IEPs, in school with autism, ADHD, dyslexia, combinations of all those anxiety, trauma related things, all kinds of reasons for neurodiversity, that, but often, it comes down to executive function, working memory, attention, but not going to flexibility, and self regulation, metacognition, these kind of core processes that our brains use when we're solving puzzles or goal oriented tasks or doing schoolwork occur work. And we really dug into the research there and started seeing that. Researchers in autism like Simon Baron Cohen, have been saying for decades, there's something systematizing, about a brain with autism. They say these are great generalizations, but they're founded in some of the research. There's connections between creativity and ADHD, and dyslexia, there's the idea generation process and looking at big picture ideas can be really linked to to the differences in brains that cause some of those other things that we call conditions, or I don't use the word disorder, but differences. So these talents that are that come along with some of the struggles that neurodivergent learners have, often align with STEM problem solving, as I said, pattern recognition, systematic thinking, abstracting routines into bigger, but not abstracting ideas into bigger ideas. These are what scientists have to do to innovate and solve problems. So scientists and mathematicians and engineers, last stem problems. So looking at that, we've started researching, how do we actually support executive function in STEM in such a way that not just remediates or adapts, but you're not but how do we seize those assets? How do we highlight those assets that neurodivergent learners may bring to SNAM while supporting their executive function? But not? So that's what we're about? I can tell you the Yeah, objects we've done.
Yeah. So like, yeah, so how does that play out? What does that look like for for learners? Yeah, so
um, most recently, for the last four years, we've been funded by the US Department of Education program called EIR, educative innovative research, something like that. And we're had generous support from them, too, for a project called including neuro diversity in foundational and applied computational thinking. But not for sure. Twisting Oh, no,
it's gotta be an acronym. That's right. So
this is for grades three through eight. And we developed computational thinking activities, robotics, and coding and puzzles and games and get up and move around acting out activities all around computational thinking. And we specifically embed supports for executive function. So we have graphic organizers for working memory we have highlighting tools to highlight salient information and guide attention. We have metacognitive tools so that we have lots of time for reflection and explicit articulation of what you just did and what you just learned and where you are in the process and what you can do now that you couldn't do before. And these are both teaching strategies and and embedded digital supports and the activities we've we do pulled out, oh, I think there was something like 189 different activities, different combinations. Other things we do is we have multiple entry points to an activity, so that teachers can differentiate. And multiple representations are multiple modes of input and output. So we make it very flexible that teachers can, can have the same learning goal. But kids can enter it and and proceed with it in different ways. And lo and behold, they found out that not only does everyone learn computational thinking better this mode than in the comparison mode, but that the kids who scored in the lowest third have executive function on executive function tasks, had huge improvements in computational thinking, this curriculum, so much so that you can't really tell the difference between them and the other kids at the end. So that was our early phase research, the last four years, we've now applied for the NIT phase to bring this up to scale and find districts that want to implement we want to develop teacher professional development programs, because teachers while while completely overburdened with everything else that is going on erecovery are seeing this great influx of executive function needs or and are recognizing for the first time the great influx of but not exactly the function needs in their classrooms, and are being told, Oh, yeah, and there's this thing called Computational thinking that you all have to infuse into all your curriculum. So those are two very big challenges, but they're complementary. If they work with the CEO, computational thinking in the right way, they'll help address the executive function challenges. And if they help address the executive functions, they're going to make some really great, awesome computational thinkers.
Yeah, yeah. So for an educator who's like, saying, oh, I need this right now, God, I can't wait. You know, another few years, like, what can they do to bring this Oh to
I'll give you all our URLs and everything at the end. But nd and standard diversity and STEM is launching right now at Turk. T, ERC is Turk and turk.edu. And within the next while, by the time this podcast is out, I'm sure, no doubt, and half about it there. And all these materials, the teaching learning materials are open access. One thing the US Department of Ed does met one of the many things the US Department of Treasury careful to really insist on equitable access of the materials that are paid, developed with taxpayer dollars. So we're getting them out there, we will have to probably have some kind of feature service for the professional development just because we need to run it and we'll have some. So that's what we're going to do in the next stage. But the materials are out there. And we're always, you know, especially if there's a school or district that wants to implement as a group, we'd love to talk to you because you'd like to do research on what happens.
Happens. That's amazing. So something came to mind when you're talking about all this, or are you a gamer? God?
No, by strict definitions, no, I Okay. Okay, I love board games. I played board games all the time card games. I became a video gamer when we were designing video games, so they knew a little bit about what I was doing. And I will tell you, there's a game called portal that came out years ago on
Tao Wordle. Yes.
And that game really changed my world. As an educator, it made it made me see what it is like to go into a situation not knowing anything about how to solve that situation. And how those designers scaffold that experience. So that when I came out, not only had I solved it, I could turn around and say, that is exactly what I just learned to solve it. And that's what I'm going to take to meet with me to the next level.
Hopefully interesting.
Oh, clearly crafted education. It was Wow. Okay. And if you I'll tell you if you go into portal and play it was the developer commentary on canes designers tell you how they did that all the way through, I wrote a paper about the learning science of the developer, commentary and poor at all it never got published. But it is odd to turn it into a blog post you just reminded me because unity to.
So full disclosure, I have never played Portal or portal to the reason I got to Portal was through the music of Jonathan Coulson which is so strange. And I don't know why, like, I don't know how I got to it from there. But I'm a former, well, I'm a recovering musician. How do you want to say
don't recover to my appeal, we'll keep that challenge.
And so, and I listened to a lot of music. And I came across Jonathan Coulton album, artificial heart, I believe it's the name of it. And there's a song on there. It's the it's it's that the lead the ending song of poor of the Okay, right. And, and I was like, This is amazing. And then I just started going down this rabbit hole, and finding the game and then, you know, Portal two, and I've always meant to play it. But I just don't have the, you know, I need to get it on my PC weekend.
Or, you know, God forbid you get it laid out. didn't stick but you can still enjoy it. It's great. Because you can just binge on it for you know, yeah. Well, anyway, so that really taught me a lot of the value of gaming as an educator, and turned my head around. And what I had seen that we were really getting going in this in 2009 1011 when virtual worlds and Second Life was was big and and we were able to reach people was at engage people in STEM, who never thought of themselves as them people. We had we created a an MMO game massively multiplayer online game in a world called Blue Mars. And we had 600 players engage some about 100 of them for four months. And a couple of them put hundreds of hours into solving the scientific mystery we had set up it was called motion Martian boneyards. And we discovered a science center on on Mars and there were lots of bones and something had happened in the community had to come help us figure out what had happened. It played out over four months, we were in there as avatars playing with them. We engaged we we recorded all the analysis of the bones and the measurements and the analysis they did and we had undergraduate anatomy professors grade their work rate their work, and they said it was basically a very good on an undergraduate introductory course scale. And these people were one was our top two players. One was a wreck this, who was had did not leave her home, and was not employed. And this was her Keynsham that she did. And one was a 52 year old bus driver who had never gone past university I in high school. But just and both of them said, Oh, I'm a gamer, I never give up. If I have to learn science to solve this mystery. I'll learn science, I don't want to solve mystery. And it was great. And then we developed High School tablet games with physics based on Newton's laws and optics and some of the high school science and we found kids were learning implicitly through the game. And then when their teacher came over and said, Hey, you're using putting more force on the heavy ones and the light balls, let me tell you what Newton said about that. And those kids did better on Newton's on exams of Newton's first and second law, then if they hadn't played the game, or hadn't had the project. So So we saw games as a real vehicle to get from what happens implicitly, to explicit STEM learning. And and that's where I got into games. But
it sounds like you're, I think I have a loose definition of gamer. So I, when I hear you talk, I think I think you're a gamer.
Most of my team would laugh heartily it because they really are GameWorks
there is all this energy and focus being put into VR. So virtual reality a lot, especially games like and I'm thinking, you know, we I still feel like we're at the beginning of all of this. You know, sure, you know, we've had the internet for decades, but as far as how we can utilize, like using virtual reality, and not just for like everyday things like, I think I know about some technology and applications being like you can put on your VR headset and go shop at Target or something like that, you know, like, why? I don't know. But to solve problems, like what you were talking about, right? Like, being able to create these worlds, where you could, you know, solve these problems and learn and be engaged that way. cancion thing that your team is working on or anything that you're thinking about, yeah,
so we, my colleagues with whom I created Martian boneyards, TN Edwards and Jaime Larson have a grant right now to develop a virtual, or they have developed a virtual space station outside Europa, Jupiter's moon Europa. And it's it's a bit of a science adventure game. Again, it's not a mystery in the in the way ours was before. But there's, it's it's sort of like, I think, a little bit escape room, puzzlingly along with, you're in a science center, and you have a mission to accomplish. And canes, they have this grant to develop this, particularly for learners with autism, and particularly for any learners who have sensory attention and social differences. So on one thing we haven't talked about our team is, does everything with a nothing about us without us philosophy. And so we strongly believe in CO design, and with education materials, we co design with teachers, often with these materials, we're co designing with neurodivergent learners and their divergent designers. And so we work with Landmark College, which is a post secondary institution for neurodivergent learners and our other network. And we can bring the people who want to work with us in on our on our design process and do all the IDM brainstorming with them. And then the user interface design. So it's not just like, oh, we develop this thing here. Do you like it? No, they're they're from the ground floor. And it's fascinating because when universal access, which is this project that has the face station, they brought the idea right from the start, the narrative of this game should be about communication differences, and about let's have our creatures not communicate in the way the player necessarily will come immediately. Forthwith let's, let's have some negotiation around that. And, and they also, we did some research on that about noise and brightness. And we expected there to be some less tolerance of brightnesses. For some neurodivergent learners and things. What we didn't expect was that the noise played out in two different ways. Some learners didn't want noise at all, some performed better and preferred and perform better when there was a lot of noise. So and there's some neural, I'm speaking a little bit past my field of expertise here. But from what I understand the neuroscience, there's some Keynesian reasons for that, that could be because of undoing other kind of internal noise that's happening on the brain. And so by creating a distracted noise, they actually can focus more. And so that's just fascinating. And so much of the design of those immersive systems need to take that into account. I personally can't wear a VR headset for more than about three seconds without getting nauseous. And that's also why I didn't become an avid gamer is you know, one of those big you know, first person shooters running around on big screen and I'm like, out of there no time for more than one reason, but even if it's not violent I, I just systematically can't handle it. But I'm not sensory aspect, I think is really fascinating. The ability to guide attention when you're in VR. All there is to focus on is what's there in your VR. So to be able to control that is an X Fighting opportunity for education. You know, we've been talking about it for a decade or more, and I haven't seen the, you know, rise, especially in VR that everybody's predicted. So whether it's going to really take off before something else comes along. Who knows, there were some interesting things that happened during COVID, where there was a platform called verb Bella that we worked with that was a virtual world. So an avatar based virtual worlds where many universities ended up opening campuses during shutdowns. And it became this live academic and business environment for a while and I was in there. And it was amazing, I went to a conference, having been on these flat TuneIn zoom conferences, and in verb Bella, when everybody turns their head, because the speakers even if it's your avatar had to have the whole room, turn to the speaker, and have people get up and come to my table, be able to talk and then get up and go to another table. And if there was something really neat, you know, and it had a lot of potential so. And then there's AR augmented reality, which I think has a lot of potential. And I'd call it Zach are all said in our group who is using AR to detect when somebody's distracted from their eye gaze and their head position, and then figure out what kinds of prompts we can give them. This has to be this would be somebody who wants to stay on task, but has trouble. And so what is what are their prompts we can give them to stay on task when we notice that they're being distracted. So there's a lot of those kinds of potentials that are there. That
sounds really familiar, but I don't know where I heard that from in, in I do when I, I kind of heard you imply that that sort of intervention is really, you know, the person wanting that intervention, as opposed to, you know, you need this.
Right. So one thing we haven't talked too much about is my book. And the thing that Keynes really motivated me to write the book as I went, I realized when we saw this link between computational thinking or diversity, I went to look at it and I realized that since Keynes present three, really, but certainly in the last decade, Keynes knees, Keynesian stem companies, SAP, Microsoft, ey, these companies have realized this, and they've had these neuro diversion hiring programs. So I went to talk to them and said, like, no, okay, so what's this about, and I really expected to hear the CEO has a knack, you are like this, this kind of falam philanthropic, great rate, reason, philanthropic reason, they're like, We are so past that we want the talent. When we hire large divergent teams, we have a competitive advantage. That's the phrase they use, as well, oh, they talk about it completely differently. They put together teams where somebody is the, you know, ultimate debugger, because they won't quit until every last details check, along with the idea generator, who is, you know, coming up with 10 things a minute, along with a really social communicator. And and that's a team that they'll put out to go consult on people's problems. And it's, and and they trained and have had hiring sites, revamp hiring programs and management programs to understand executive function. And when I asked them what they did, they say, Well, you know, we put out like, clear, written agendas, and we stick to the agenda, and we make sure everybody has a chance to speak in the meetings. And then after the meeting, we put out a list of action items and decisions that came out from that meeting. Like, that's just really good. What's What, like I would strive to do as a manager.
I know, that's how you said that, yeah. Because that the the parallel to the classroom is so it's so clear, exactly as it's like, you know, teachers for you know, for better or for worse, have been teaching a particular way for, you know, let's say many years, and then if you have a neurodivergent learner, for it to be successful, you do have to change things. You have to like, do things a certain way, be very clear, you know, have have, you know, establish routines, and, you know, be very clear about communication. And that is good for everyone. It seems like Exactly,
exactly. So, so what, what I wanted the title of the book to be is, don't fix them if they're not broken. And that really is the message, they're not broken. They're different. We're all different, you know, I need glasses. And you know, and I interrupt people all the time, you know, the students, you know, it's the price of admission. But with that, you can get other talents. And you know, and I just, and that's what differentiation is all about, if you go into a classroom saying, I have a cane street classroom of 30 individuals, and I have the school that behind me and the resources to at the time to really treat them like individuals. That's magic, right? Yeah, that's when it works.
So that's what you wanted the book to call, so be called. So it's not called that
it's not called that it is called Reaching and Teaching neurodivergent learners in STEM strategies for embracing uniquely talented problem solvers.
Okay, well, we can have a secret subtitle.
Apparently, it's all about algorithms, which marketing algorithms which I guess?
Well, before we move on, is there anything else you want to change note? With the book? Because, yeah, just wanted to make sure you had the chance to Yeah,
well, um, thanks for that. So I'm really hoping that the book is the book is written for educators. And I think it will be candy canes useful in professional learning communities, and schools and systems where people are trying to really understand inclusive education for what that can mean, and not just remediation, but, but it's helping everybody thrive. That's the point of it. It's also a very story driven book. I've interviewed Keynes many, I think I can't remember the names, but it's close to 100 neuro divergent STEM professionals, and, and learners and families and employers. Dr. Sara Seager, who is a rock star, in my mind, she's an astrophysicist who has an equation named after her the end, a really issues a MacArthur Fellow, and she was learned she was autistic as an adult, and explains to me in these great ways, why she would never change her brain, it is her superpower, she just was just people wouldn't stigmatize it. And, and just a lot of and district. I interviewed district superintendents about what it takes when the rubber meets the road to implement things. So I hope I provide a balanced perspective towards all that. It's, you know, after 30 years of research, there are no simple solutions there. You only have more questions, but but I think through the game based learning, using things like computational thinking, and one thing we haven't talked about is project based learning, which is a big part of my pedagogical philosophy. I was lucky enough to spend the eight years co teaching voluntarily co teaching it with a very close friend of mine now but a STEM teacher in junior high school in a high needs school here in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and I can just like Portal, hello, my whole world of AR and in a great way, and just made me really understand change needs to do what we're just talking about to think about, in this case, 2324 kids in your classroom as individuals, and they all had very different and profound needs. And came to see the Bradbury, the teacher I worked with Keynesian Keynesian was just awesome at knowing how to make a personal connection with each and every one of them. And she and I came together to to engage them in STEM projects and engage them in discovering the learner within them in the doer and I hope maybe effected couple of them along the way to to go pursue those passions and just to see themselves as competence for STEM problem solvers, and competent citizens of the world. Because a lot of school doesn't always do that, especially for some of the less marginalized kids Kanesha it
sounds like you and your co teacher, your teaching partner, Kane's really embraced all of your students and learners. So what can STEM classrooms slash programs? You know, even educators in general, what can they do to embrace all learners.
Um, so I think it goes back to those kind of multiple entry points into project. So let me just give you an example. When we do coding activities in something like Scratch, which is an introductory block coding, we might present three different ways to get into it, we might present an entire piece of code that somebody can then take and copy and change make their own, or it's a blank screen with an inventory. And they can start from scratch. Or here's a piece of code that my work but there's a little bug in it. So go figure out where the bug is. Or you might need to just sit and watch, not just, you might need to sit and watch somebody else model, how they're coding for a little bit, and then go, all those are valid ways into the task. They're not changing the tasks, they're not changing the goal. They're just getting everybody the entry point that they need to be able to do that. And the teacher can't have 24 different texts, they need to have one technical one task, but by giving them lots of different ways of, you know, not everybody has to write all their stuff down in a notebook, somebody can record something on their phone and present it, somebody can act it out, you know, there's all kinds of ways. One thing we did learn from the teachers in grades three through five, in particularly, in particular, the get up and move around activities where we reenacted digital games live like kids would be the characters in games, and they had to do all the logic puzzles in, in physical instantiation. teachers loved it, they got them away from the screens, they were still doing something fun that kids that needed to move around, had a reason to move around. Those were by far our most popular activities. And I just think thinking creatively of not about what the learning goal is, because that's pretty, you know, but how to approach that and giving teachers lots of options, lots of support. Lots of time came and tell you my last pet peeve Don't interrupt the class every 10 minutes with an announcement or somebody coming in, give the the room a chance to get into flow. Kanal that is my biggest complaint about public schools right now is there's no opportunity for flow. Keynes in Canada, we have a show called this hour has 22 minutes. And it's it's it's a comedy show. But it means that when you take out all the ads and everything your dad and I named a chapter, the book that every period has 22 If you're lucky minutes to teach when you go all in and they're not contiguous.
I bet you I would love that show. came.
Yeah. So I just think there's, there's think about the learner when you're structuring the environment, and a lot of those things will become obvious.
Stay tuned after the break for the mystery question.
What is the best thing to happen to you this year? was the best day
crappy year to ask.
Then we're gonna focus on the positive I guess. Okay,
okay. Okay. I can I can.
The best thing. Let me think about it came from this year, trying to mentally get back in my calendar here.
Let me think Keynes changed to that.
Of course.
Are you ready? Yeah, I
think so. Okay, good.
I mean, clearly, professionally, finding out that the book was actually going to be published this year was a big one because I really want to get that message out and get that out there. But I also write around On the same time, well, I turned in my final manuscript and left the next day for France. And where my husband and I go quite frequently, and change and COVID having not traveled for several years, we scored the best air b&b ever. And it had a rooftop terrace overlooking this province out of the village diversity aisle. And we spent every night up there out that rooftop terrace and I just thought, Keynes, this was a, this was, you know, I hit it out of the park witness.
That is amazing. Amazing. Well, not to not to diminish everything that has happened this year for me. Because I've had, I've had a very good year, you know, no complaints. professionally, personally. My wife and I are celebrating our 20th anniversary at the end of September, and we are going to Spain. Right. And it's so I kind of feel like that is going to be the best thing that has happened. Yeah. Because yeah, but it just hasn't happened yet.
Okay, well, that's great. You still have ordering Duerson. And this weekend, you may be going to celebrate the women's FIFA World Champions. Because Spain. That's
right. Yeah, Spain and England, in England.
And I would say that is also one thing I had to leave soccer playing soccer when I was 5051. Because I tore my ACL. And this year in the last few weeks, I went back out on the field 10 years later. So how crazy Am I go louder? Also a great thing to end in, like walking soccer in a geriatric league. But it's
No, I totally get that because so I'm a I'm a runner. I I actually used to run quite frequently. And then this last cancion this past year, like from, you know, December till now just had a lot of issues, a lot of issues with, you know, back and knees and both legs and all that stuff. But I made some changes and trying some new things. And I was able to go for a three mile run a couple weeks ago or a little over a week ago with no pain and a sore muscles. But I can live with that. And that means you're working. Yes, exactly. Exactly. So I'm really looking forward to get back to you know, running and because it's just it's a huge part of my life. And so I get it. Yeah, with the soccer. It's like, yeah, love it. Right. But it's actually it's Part C and granted. Yeah, God as Bill Clark, thank you so much for being on the thick inclusive podcast. It was so much fun. Well, thank
you.
That chime means it's free time. And this week, some good news. It's not often where I look at the stories in Education Week. And I see great examples of inclusive education. In fact, it's so good that I'm just going to read the entire piece for you. Here we go. Inside a school that doesn't single out students with special needs by Caitlin Pete's When students walk into Ruby Bridges Elementary School at the start their day, nobody is pulled aside or separated from their peers to receive special instruction. There's no need. Everything at the school from the seating to staffing was designed to ensure students with disabilities can learn alongside their peers. Transforming what has traditionally been a model of exclusion in US public schools to one of inclusion and belonging. Really bridges opened in 2020 and the staff at the Woodinville Washington School has spent the last four years creating an environment that conveys to every child who walks in we thought of you when we made this place. And today could not happen if you weren't part of it. Said principal Kathy Davis. So obviously we don't want you to leave the classroom to do something else. Because then how could science class be the same? She said it's this idea for kids that they are so important that something would be missing in a unique way if they weren't there. The K through five elementary school, about 20 miles northeast of Seattle serves just under 500 students. It's one of 16 schools in Washington state that partner with the herring Center for Inclusive Education at University of Washington, with the goal of demonstrating that all students benefit when schools are deliberately crafted with the needs of students. Is with disabilities in mind. At really bridges. Staff have structured everything around the idea of keeping students with special needs in mainstream classrooms as much as possible. Instead of pulling students with complex needs into separate classrooms for lessons specially tailored to their needs, they head to class with their peers. There everyone has access to supports traditionally outlined in students IEP S, or 504. Plans, like the ability to take breaks when feeling overwhelmed. Students may choose to wear lanyards around their necks with cards that display words and pictures, so they can communicate with classmates who are not verbal. Some students may choose to learn in a group with the teacher, while others might work independently on a tablet with headphones on many students at Ruby Bridges, where about 16% of students are identified as having disabilities can't communicate verbally. So every student has access to assistive communication devices, like speech boards, or computers that synthesized speech from text. Our responsibility is to have a school with classrooms that are ready for kids, not a school where kids are forced to be ready for classrooms, Davis said. In practice this means that students with disabilities spend 80 to 100% of their academic time with grade level peers. There are resource rooms students can use when they need a break for a specific one on one activity with a paraprofessional, but they are flexspaces. With no set schedule, they are open to everyone David said. Instead of pulling students out of class for extra help with phonics or other skills paraprofessionals come to them. The same goes for English learners. And rather than having a designated paraprofessional assigned to each student who needs that level of support paraprofessionals work with different students all the time. In the morning, they could be supporting an advanced math group and working with a different group on phonics in the afternoon. What's more small group and intervention time is built into the calendar for everyone so that when paraprofessionals come in to work with specific students, nobody is singled out. Everybody is working on something. And nobody is missing a whole class less. The setup reduces stigma that students may feel when they're singled out for extra help. David said, You see lots of adults everywhere. And it's because no one's working separately behind closed doors. And all of the adults in the school are communicating and collaborating to support all students. Davis said, kids pick up on if one parent only helps kids who are really struggling with one thing. So there's a very specific effort to make a heterogeneous mix. There is increasing evidence that work to create a full sense of belonging for students with disabilities, like what's happening at Ruby Bridges benefits all students achievement and social skills. Students with special needs perform better when they spend significantly more time in mainstream classrooms than in special education classrooms. According to researchers who writing in the Journal of special education in 2022 found that the students who spend more time in mainstream classrooms were exposed to more rigorous coursework. Researchers have also found that the inclusion of students with disabilities in general education classrooms has resulted in students without disabilities learning how to respect others, and gaining awareness and skills to help others. Several studies over the years examining these more inclusive practices have found either neutral or positive effects on all students performance in core subjects like math and reading. Belonging Matters for kids with disabilities in the same ways it matters for any other student in our schools. The difference is that belonging can be much more elusive for students with disabilities, said Eric Carter, the executive director of the Baylor Center for Developmental Disabilities at Baylor University, who has conducted extensive research on the topic. Only including students with disabilities and activities outside of class such as recess and lunch, or including them in classes that aren't set up to accommodate their needs. isn't enough to foster a real sense of belonging and camaraderie, Davis said, the work has to be intentional, and it's often uncomfortable because it requires challenging the setup that has been the status quo for decades in many places. The payoff is incalculable, though, said Davis, the parents and families of students identified as having a disability are constantly going to meetings being told how different their children are from an arbitrary set of norms, and all of the services they need that often mean having less community, Davis said, but we have a responsibility to create spaces where we don't make deep, impactful, lifelong decisions about the lives of our students will have Before they even have an opportunity to make decisions for themselves. partnership between the University of Washington and schools, including review Bridges was made possible by a federal grant to support more inclusionary practices in the state, particularly to reach that threshold where students with disabilities spend at least 80% of their time. In general education classrooms a goal driven by federal policy that requires students be taught in the least restrictive environment appropriate for them. About two thirds of students disabilities met the goal in the fall of 2020. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, markedly higher than the 32%, who did in 1989. But Washington state has struggled to keep pace with about 60% of students with disabilities spending 80% or more of their time with their peers in 2020. As of 2018, a report cited by the state officials ranked Washington 44th out of 50 in inclusionary practices, which prompted state lawmakers to earmark $25 million spur improvements through professional development statewide, and more targeted support in pilot schools. Ruby Bridges is considered a demonstration site for the partnership with the University opening its doors over the past two years to more than 350 visitors and observers who want to learn about best practices and teaching students in the least restrictive learning environment. The school models its work around the 10 dimensions of belonging, developed by Carter at Baylor, which began with allowing students with disabilities to be present than invited and ultimately accepted, supported, befriended, needed and love. Belonging is more than just being included or present in a space Carter said, people want to experience belonging. And that's more than merely a location of classrooms or participation in clubs. It's about what students experience and the relationships that develop in those places. Monroe High School located about 30 miles northeast of Seattle is also part of the partnership with the University of Washington, working to foster belonging in school for older students with disabilities. Oftentimes, that means they arrive at the high school having spent their entire academic careers receiving much of their instruction, apart from their peers in General Education said principal Brett Willie, so when students with disabilities spend most of their time in a mainstream classroom, they get their dignity back, he said, When you have a kid in an exclusionary classroom in the corner of a school building, doing first grade math problems, that doesn't give them a lot of hope or dignity, when he said, but when you put these students with their peers, you're telling them you value them and you believe in them. Kids pick up on that. The model requires a shift in adult mindsets. Educators aren't responsible only for their classroom or a specific group of assigned students. Instead, everybody is responsible for every student. It can be come a daunting prospective, Davis said. But once it becomes ingrained in the school culture, it can prove a rewarding environment for staff with an added benefit of less staff turnover, particularly among paraprofessionals who can be difficult to retain. In fact, paraprofessionals who have completed teaching licensure programs have stayed on staff every week bridges waiting for a teacher position to open up rather than leaving for open teaching jobs elsewhere. When you shift in those ways, you create deeper connections for students and staff to and when your setup around real belonging, then adults feel like something would be missing. They were gone to Davis said you create systems that are less isolated in every way. Congrats to you and the team at Ruby Bridges. If you're interested to learn more about review bridges, I spent a good bit of time in chapter four of our narrative podcast series inclusion stories, talking about the school and what is happening in Washington around inclusive practices. That's it for this episode of thinking cluesive Let us know what you thought of this or any episode by emailing me at t vegas@mcie.org. That's TVILLEG a s at MCIE dot o RG or find us on Instagram or threads. At think underscore inclusive. Think inclusive is written edited in sound design and mixed and mastered by me, Tim Vegas, and is a production of the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education. Original Music by miles credit additional music from melody that's N e L o d.ie. Special thanks to our sponsor this week, and for the month of April the Autism Society. Learn more at Autism Society dot org. Thanks for your time and attention. And remember, inclusion always works
I have had guests on that will they have their microphone like on their desk, and then they'll like, hit their desk as they're talking, because they're like making a point. And I'm like, Oh, stop.
I've been a telecommuter for about 30 years. And I have I spent 26 of those years as a box in the middle of the table when everybody else was sitting around the table. So like, I'm very used to moderating my own be. Well, I've listened to so many people's sandwich papers out all right when the person speaking and can't hear anything.
