I'm recording from my living room in beautiful Marietta, Georgia, you're listening to the think inclusive podcast episode eight. I'm your host, Tim Vegas. Today I was speaking with Dr. Julianne Causton, an associate professor in the Department of teaching and leadership at Syracuse University, and creator of the website inspire inclusion, which has a 10 part video series about inclusion for parents of children with disabilities. I had the pleasure of visiting with her one evening in November of last year, Julie and I discussed the necessary steps for schools to become more inclusive, which include professional development, reimagining school districts service delivery model, and using the law as leverage for systems change. This is one of the most interesting conversations on the podcast to date. So please, if you can listen to the entire episode. So without further ado, let's get to the thinking cluesive podcast. Thanks for listening. Joining us today on the think inclusive podcast is Dr. Julie and Causton. And she is a associate professor in the Department of teaching and leadership at see her at Syracuse University. She's also the creator of the website inspire inclusion, which includes a 10 part video series about inclusion for parents of children's with with disabilities. She also has been has been involved with research on inclusive practices, including the landmark project schools of promise. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today.
Oh, it's my pleasure. Thank you, Tim.
Well, let's go ahead and dig right in. The reason why I wanted to get you on the podcast was because of the work that you you did with a research project called schools of promise. And I know that was a while ago. But I was hoping that we could talk a little bit about this particular research and tell our audience about your involvement. And if you agree that this was a good example of how inclusive education can be possible for all students.
Yeah, definitely. So schools of promise began a while ago, almost maybe eight years ago, and my colleagues at Syracuse University and I were teaching about how to create inclusive schools with our undergraduates. So we teach teachers how to teach general and special education in inclusive settings. And we were placing our students in city schools nearby Syracuse University. And we were finding that we weren't seeing very good models of inclusive education locally. So what the concern was, we were teaching them something that they couldn't see in practice. So right away, we decided that one of the best things to do would be to begin to look at the schools that were currently placed where we're placing our students, and look to see if we could work with the schools to become more inclusive. And so what we did is we went to the superintendent of Syracuse City schools at the time, and we asked if anybody was interested in being involved in our project, we ended up getting a lot of schools that were interested in, we worked with those schools that had 80% or more of the teachers really on board with becoming more inclusive, and we had done some surveys and things to figure that out. So we ended up starting with two different schools, in Syracuse, and basically when we say school reform, what we mean is that we worked with the entire school staff. And it was a pretty typical school team, it would have been, you know, a school that had pullout classrooms where kids would be pulled out like resource rooms. And then there were segregated classrooms in those schools. And then there were also some, some classrooms that were more inclusive. And in order to be involved in the partnership, we said that they would be willing to get rid of their segregated classrooms, and their resource from pullout programs. And all children with all disability labels would be included in the general education, content and curriculum. And so we we began work with those schools and we spent about three years well, more than that, three to five years with each school. And we worked alongside them as they restructured their school and they got rid of their like your grades or pullout program. And all the kids with disabilities were in the general ed classrooms. And the work that we did mostly was about professional development and teaching teachers how to create inclusive classrooms, how to differentiate content, how to support It's a challenging behaviors, and how to collaborate effectively with their colleagues. And so that was the work that we had done. And it was great work. And we really the the schools look different, in terms of no children were segregated any longer. But what surprised us with the research was the academic results. So we went in, you know, much like you, Tim, kind of at your gut level, you think inclusion might be the best idea for children, you know, on lots of different levels, I knew that to be true. But what we didn't expect in our research was that there was such a great big academic gain for not only children with disabilities, but their peers, without disabilities, you know, did better in these classrooms. And so that was kind of the bigger surprise in our research study, across reading across math, across social studies, across science, across state, state tests, everything we found the kids actually did better academically when they were included. So this research project took us from kind of the social justice reasons of including kids, to really academic performance reason, in terms of including kids. And what's interesting is since the schools of promise schools we've had, I mean, the schools have been recognized as schools of excellence and things like that, which is great. But the thing that has been really interesting is that we've been able to replicate those same results in multiple schools across the country. We're not calling it schools of promise, but we're doing a lot of school reform work like that. And we're finding the same academic achievement results. And so now, what's interesting is a lot of times when I'm talking to administrators about why to include students, actually using the academic achievement gains, as the number one reason to include kids with disabilities,
do you find that that is more effective? As convincing seven minutes? Yes,
definitely. I mean, so everybody right now is interested in, you know, the bottom line, their test scores, their cut scores, the Common Core, making sure that everybody has access to that. And so when we can actually show with real numbers and real children in real schools, and I don't want to say these schools are perfect, they're still not perfect. They're decent schools with great teachers working hard. But the point is, I'm getting a lot of leverage around inclusion, because we've got hard data that shows that children do better when they're in inclusive classrooms than they do when they're sent down the hall. Or whether they is really segregated and separated, where they're in for an hour, and then out for another hour, and then back in and then back out. Because what we find is students missed so much during those transition times in and out of the classroom. And so it only makes sense, right, that students that spend their days in the Common Core Learning along with their peers, and really creative, interesting ways. They're going to do better academically.
Did you have a strategy to deal with? And I guess I'm not just talking about the the early schools of promise, but with with the schools that you've been working on working with, recently? What strategies were you using, with with the teachers to deal with challenging behavior? Because that is probably the number one reason that supervisors and teachers will give me about why a student cannot be included in general education.
Yeah, so you're right. challenging behavior is one of the reasons that students are segregated. Probably the number one reason that students are not included in general education. What we do is we spend a lot of time talking about why students behave the way they do. And when you create a community where students feel like they belong, as real members of a general education classroom, and you provide differentiated instruction, students usually behave much better than in schools where they're separated and segregated out. So that's a piece of it right? Creating that community feel like it's long. And then the other thing is, we talk a lot about why students behave the way they might the way they do. And one of the things that we find is that I often asked features, what are the you know, most challenging behaviors you see what are the most dangerous concerning challenging behaviors you see in your schools? And they make this long list like wearing kicking, hitting, biting, running threatening, threatening staff threatening other, you know, screaming all this kind of stuff. And the funny thing is, is I write this list on the board or on the computer wherever I'm doing the presentation. And then I say to them, okay, look at this list. Has anybody in this room participated in any of these same behaviors yourself as an adult? Right? And so sheepishly, hands go up, right? Because things like swearing and fighting and running and shutting down and crying and screaming are all on the list, right? And so everyone raises their hand in the room. And so I always make a joke, like, look around, and your colleagues, your esteemed colleagues have the most dangerous concerning challenging behaviors we see in our schools, right? And then I say to them, now, honestly, when you have these challenging behaviors that you're admitting to me right now, what do you need. And then they say things like, I need someone to listen to me, I need a hug, I need love, I need connection. I need empathy, I need space. Anytime I need food, I need water. They often jokingly say I need a glass of wine, you know, stuff like that. And so I tell them, you know, you've just done you've written the best behavior plan that's out there. Right? What you've explained, oh, and then the other funny thing is, I say to them, after take all the things that they need, when they have this challenging behavior, I take them all and I write them down. And then I say something like, well, how come nobody said they just needed a sticker check. I said, I've done the same activity in hundreds of school districts around the country. And nobody said, I just need a sticker checked. And yet our number one response to behavior in school is a sticker chart. And so that's an interesting question. And people have a lot of great answers to that, obviously, one of the biggest answers is because you're not addressing the actual student needs, right, you're just sort of masking it and dealing with it, an external fashion as opposed to kind of intrinsically responding to the students need. And so instead, you know, they list all those things that they need, time and space, and care and love and comfort, and all that kind of stuff. And I say you're just done it, you've just written the very best behavior plan I've ever seen, right? Because essentially, human behavior is no different for children. And one of the things we have to really think about is, what kids need in the moment and how we can give them what they need in terms of support and kindness and love and connection, compared to exclusion. So our typical responses are the Qatar. Exclusion, meaning, you know, you've misbehaved out you go, and we know that creates a cycle. And so one of the things to do is kind of get them to understand the behavior to human behavior is the actual human response. And it means something. And if we don't deal with that, we're not going to get to kids who behave well. And that in conjunction with tons and tons of strategies and ideas about how to make learning, fun, engaging, and how to differentiate, so students aren't working at their frustration level all the time. Kind of in concert with really effective community building creates the recipe for classrooms where students don't have a lot of challenging behavior.
Right, right. Now, no, I know, you know, I know where you're coming from. And when I hear you talk, you know, about behavior and, you know, I guess unmet needs, right. Right, as as kind of the core of what avoid challenging behavior comes from I get that, but how do you how do you have professionals, education, educators, who don't have that prior knowledge of how behavior works? How do you how do you get people to understand because it's a different way of thinking about behavior, it's a it's a different way of looking at it because so many educators want to or I guess, would hear that and say, well, you're coddling those children, you know, you are creating little monsters.
Write it is interesting because it actually flies in the face of what we think to be true about behavior, right? So what we think to be true is antecedent behavior consequence, right? Apply a consequence, because of the behavior, you know. And we will reduce that negative behavior. And it absolutely kind of flies in the face of that way of looking at behavior. And it's very much I mean, you could look at it through the antecedent. But instead, you really just look at it as what might this student need? And actually, the number one strategy that I suggest from teachers, is to ask the student, what do you need right now? And to name and then the behavior? You know, when I'm looking at this, when I'm looking at you right now, it looks like you might be really frustrated, because you're banging your head or because you're yelling? And I'm not sure. Are you frustrated? We start there, you just figure out what's happening? Are you angry? Or are you just trying to get a sense of it? And then you ask the students themselves what they need? So your question to him is, how do I get teachers to sort of see just in a different way, I have the very good fortune of getting to spend tons of time educating teachers, and so a lot of it happened in my professional development with them. And so I mean, very often in professional development sessions, in fact, this week, I did a big professional development class, for a whole school district about behavior. And what I did is I started out with a behavior chart that had the red, yellow, green, have you ever seen one of those kinds of charts before? Yes. Okay. So these teachers walk into their PD session, and their names are big in the front of the room. With their, they all start on green. So green, picture, kind of a stoplight system. If our listeners don't know what it is, it's really, you know, a green light means you're doing fine. And a yellow is a warning, and a red means you know, you're in trouble. So as these teachers file into the professional development session, they see their name, publicly, upfront. And they see that they're all on green. And so I explained to them that, throughout this presentation, I'm going to be, you know, needing to monitor their behavior, because to be honest, teachers are some of the worst audience members. So I jokingly say that, but there's some truth to that, right. And so as I start right away, as soon as people are talking side conversations, or whatever, I'll go tell them to pull a car, that means move from green to yellow, and then again, and what I tell them, it depends where I am at the university, where I'm teaching, they get to read, they have to write a five page paper that includes all the readings for the semester, and if I'm in a school district, I tell them that if they get to read, they're going to need to have a meeting with me and their administrators to discuss their behavior, right? And so Okay, so we do this, and what's super fascinating is I can get human beings to behave. And by behave, I mean, sit tall and be quiet, and not fool around, essentially. But after about 20 minutes of me doing this behavior system, and I'll usually call many people out on their behavior, and there's a lot of laughter and nervous laughter and stuff. But afterwards, after about 20 minutes, I say to them, okay, we're gonna stop with the behavior charts. I want to first ask you, I asked the group a question, did it work? Did that behavior system work? And they'll say, you know, well, I mean, I was quiet. Okay, good. Were you able to learn better? No, I was totally distracted by who was getting their names, calls and who was getting in trouble, or I was so nervous, I just kept my eyes down, or those kinds of things. Or what often happens is really fascinating to me, people start to call each other out. So they'll start to say things like she's talking to, you know, or whatever. Because I start to create this sort of community of, of competition. And that's one of the most powerful tools I use is to actually simulate what happens in K 12 schools across the country, which is behavior management, through a public display of humiliation. And I am very, very serious when I talk to teachers afterwards, because it's a very funny conversation, because everybody admits how they felt. And I said, Well, did it work? Did it work? I just want to know, does it work? And they said, well, it works to create silence and compliance. But it does not work to create community does not work to create an environment for learning to occur. And it's a really big aha moment for most educators because that we're kind of going about this in the wrong way. And so a lot of the different things that I do in professional develop And then I would say are very, very instrumental in getting people to rethink what's typically done for kids with disabilities and kids without disabilities in public schools related to behavior.
Now, do you think that professional development is really the only thing that needs to happen? You know, for, for us to move forward with Inclusive Schools? And let me just add one more thing? Because there are a lot of barriers to there, there's a lot of barriers to inclusive schools. And, you know, not even at the top of the list is, is, you know, attitudes. But the, one of the biggest things is, is money or funds or, you know, how we restructure the delivery model of, of how we serve all of our kids, you know, so, for instance, you know, we have a school district who wants to become more inclusive? How, how do they go about doing that when there isn't any more money than what they have? Because the economy, and because the housing market and property taxes and all that stuff? How does one How does the school district go about moving in that direction? And can can a school district really do that? You know, if they don't want to do it, you know, because it sounds like the schools that you've been working with, have wanted this?
Well, I'm sure you remember, I said 80%? or more. Right, right. voted yes. To a very lovely presentation about inclusion. And so I'm starting with schools that are saying for the most part, yeah, we're in, right. Okay, we're in. That's all they're saying. It's honestly the hardest work that I do. And I'm often working with schools that are somewhat on board. Because we know in every school district and every school, there's a very vocal minority. And they alone, that group can really take any, any major school reform efforts. So it's a ton of work with the administrators, to both expect people to disagree with the concept of inclusion, and to prepare for the fact that they're going to disagree and want to slow it down and want to wait and want to, you know, try it next year, but not this year. Right. And so there are all these different ways that people respond to change in general that I think especially change around inclusion. So your question was was, is PD the answer? Well, it's a great start in our current school system, but PD doesn't come the most successful school reform efforts, we don't start with the PD, we actually start with the school reform work, where we take all the existing educators on a map, we create these maps. And I map I mean, we show where all the teachers are and where all the students are, who's being pulled for what, who's been segregated, etc. And usually, I bring it right to the teachers themselves and say, Okay, so this is your current Special Ed model. And it's on one, you know, PowerPoint slide. What problems do you see inherent in the model right now? And so people come up with those, and we talk about what what's working in the model and stuff like that. And then I give them the challenge? Well, if inclusive education was our goal, if it were to be our goal, what would need to happen in terms of moving children and teachers? So Tim, you bring up the financial piece, which is really fascinating, because we've proven and by we, I mean, many, many people have studied the fact that inclusive education is no more expensive than segregation. If we educate everybody in segregated settings, and in resource room setting, we still have lots of special ed teachers, we still have lots of paraprofessionals. And in some many cases, segregated education is more expensive. So what we do in the school systems is we draw the maps of their schools, their service delivery model, we talk about the pros and cons of what's happening. And then we actually kind of in a pretty democratic system, we have people redesign the model with their given teachers. It's not like we add five more teachers or, you know, 10,000 more dollars or there's no more money, there's no more staff. But we say what if how would you rearrange things if all kids went back to their general education classrooms? So what's that doesn't end up freeing up all these teachers that used to working in segregated classrooms and resource rooms down the hall and closets. You know, people are teachers working in all sorts of funny little ways to support kids with disabilities. But when we say kind of all hands on deck, everybody's in general ed. And they're usually. Now you can pair general and special education teachers together. And people can teach inclusively, which is a very, very different way of doing it. So professional development is, is step two. Step one is redesigning service delivery models. I'm sorry. Oh, no. So but I guess, kind of, the larger, the larger question is, how do we influence inclusive education, that's one piece of it. Now, those are, that's their existing schools. The other piece happens at the pre service level, which is a lot of the work that I do, in preparing students to be general and special educators not think about services as a place, but instead that services are portable, and should be brought to children. And so, you know, right now, every semester, we graduate, at Syracuse University, we graduate about maybe 60 teachers who enter the workforce and really don't see the general in it and special education or different entities, but really sees special education as a portable service brought to children in the context of Gen Ed. And so that's the other piece that I think is really helpful to think about is the more we educate our pre service teachers, not in those traditional old fashioned ways of thinking where you walk down the hall to receive your special ed service, or if you have a certain kind of disability, you're educated is substantially separate location. We just have generations of teachers who don't think that way.
Actually, I'm glad that you said that, because my my experience, actually, in my teacher training was much more in that, in that vein of thinking, where general and special ed education was, what we were expected to collaborate. But when I entered into the public schools, the schools were so far different from that line of thinking that it was there was a big adjustment adjustment period. For me, because, you know, I got hired on as a self contained teacher. And so I had to take the things that I learned and tried to apply them in a context that wasn't friendly to it. You see what I mean? So I, I mean, I and, and I'm happy that I'm happy that I had that training, I went to Cal State University Fullerton, and had some wonderful professors. And that got me rethinking how, you know, how that service still delivery should look. The other the other thing, I wanted to talk about what you said about changing and restructuring service delivery is I think I remember from reading the schools of promise research that about 15% of the students in the schools that you were serving, you had IEPs or identified disabilities. Is there in that restructuring, do you have students go to their home schools? And is that is that a way of also restructuring the service delivery model? For instance, my my school, we have about 20%, actually, of our students with identified needs, with IEPs. Now, our school is not there, you know, not all of our students. We are not there homeschool. So how exactly did that work? Is that something you address?
It definitely is. So what we do is just like you're describing very often as we begin to bust kids around based on the fact that they have disabilities, which that alone is fairly illegal. But we that's a really common practice, right? And so in any school district that we're working with absolutely returning kids to their home school district is or their home school is really the goal. The problem for me, comes in the actual so these families have been told that their children have to go on a bus and go somewhere else because of their disability. And so what I like to do with those families is to give them I'm choice right to say either returned your homeschool or stay because we've already made this mess for you. And so if you're more comfortable here, let's just finish your schooling out here. But what we don't do is continue that process. So the new kindergarteners coming in, they don't they no longer get shipped, they instead stay in their home district or their home school. So that's kind of how because like on a very sort of student by students case, you can understand that it's just not fair to for kids who finally gotten gotten settled in a district, even if it's not their home district. So then make parents change again, because of natural proportion. Absolutely. And so, right. And so that's kind of how we've done it. And 20%. So the national average, I think we're at about 14%, which is what you'd expect in any one school. So you're a little higher in your district. But what you do is you also so that's the first thing is you think about who's who's here that shouldn't be in there being bused. And then you start to think about, well, do they want to return to their home school, and if so, we'll help that will help them do that. But the other thing is, in any one classroom, if 20% of your kids have labels than in any one classroom, you would never expect to have more than 20% of children with labeled disabilities. And so that's the concept of natural proportions, which is really important in the redesign and the restructuring. Because so often, and you've might, you might have seen this before, but people will say to me, Julie, you've got to see our inclusive schools, amazing, you know, whatever. And so I'll go and I'll see it. And they'll say like, see those kids over there? Those are inclusion. Right? Exactly. You know, if you have inclusion students who don't have inclusion, and the truth is, we, we often see classrooms that are really really densely populated with children with disabilities. So it might be 50%, or 80%, or, you know, whatever. And they'll call it, you know, an inclusion classroom. And so it's really important to not only pay attention to homeschool rules, like children should attend the schools in which they would attend if they did not have a disability. So that's a really important rule. And the other is when you're doing this restructuring, look at your percentage, your your actual percentage of kids who have disabilities, and then follow that throughout your entire school. So no classroom would have anybody to 20% of kids with disabilities.
I mean, that, that sounds great. And, and I'm, I'm trying to ask questions, because I know that, like I said, I'm tracking with you, and I agree with you. But I want to make sure that people who listen to this podcast or you know, or, you know, when I have conversations with people, and they bring up questions, you know, how do we address the real challenges of of getting there? You know, because, you know, like, what, if a school doesn't have that 80% buy in, you know, what I mean? So, and I guarantee you, there's plenty of schools out there that that don't have that. 80%. So I wanted to talk about legislation, and about the law. And if, if what we have now under Ida, is sufficient. And, you know, we talked about in, in special ed, we always talk about least restrictive environment. And do we need something different? Or more to clarify, and push forward inclusive schools? Or is what we have sufficient? As long as we fulfill it? Does that make sense? Yeah,
it makes perfect sense. Okay. I want to just back up really quick, what you said, related to the fact that most schools wouldn't be 80% interested in becoming inclusive. You're 100%. Right. Most schools are not that interested in becoming inclusive, inclusive. And those schools or private schools were two examples of where we had a vote, and all the other schools that we worked with, and I mean, you know, hundreds of other schools now. Have not, they're just typical schools at people are not interested in becoming inclusive. And so one of the things is to just ask yourself, from my position, whether you're an educator and administrator, whatever your position is, what do I have power and control over? And how can I create a more inclusive school? And in some schools we've been invited in just because a group of educators have said, Hey, we want to do this, and we need your help. And so we'll come and really work with them. So sometimes it's the ground level. It's educators themselves saying, Come help us do this. And there Often it's administrators. And sometimes it's because there's litigation, right? So often I'm invited in because of a district who has lost the due process hearing or federal court case or a class action lawsuit. And the remedy is training for inclusion. So there are lots of reasons that schools become inclusive. And the law is one very important to reason. So it's a great question. So the spirit of the law is very much on our side, our side meetings, its side of inclusion. So the spirit of the law is, you know, to the maximum extent appropriate children with disabilities, including kids in public or private schools, are educated with kids without disabilities. Right? Right. And then the piece that really useful to us is that, you know, removal happens only when the nature or severity of the disability of a child is such that education, in regular classes with the use of supplemental aid supports and services cannot be achieved satisfactorily. So the whole part, right, so I'm just gonna, I know, that's kind of wordy, but essentially, it's this, you can only remove kids, when you've exhausted all the supplemental aid supports and services. And the beauty is, I have I happen to have a document that I think is like 20 pages long, it's kind of every supplemental a support and service is out there. So whether it's extended time to pacing of instruction, to using multiple intelligence theory to ascribe to you know, every adaptation, modification accommodation that you can think of is on this list. And the beauty is, when you when you look at the law, it suggests that you can remove only when you've tried all those things first. And so one of my most important I do is I'm very often called to be an expert in due process hearings, always related to inclusion, right? So LRE. And on the stand, when I'm, you know, kind of working against educators who are saying we can't include this child, I have that list of supplementary aid supports and services. And I'm going through one after another after another in front of a judge and saying, Have you tried this? Or have you tried to about this? Have you tried it? Have you tried it? And inevitably, the district can't prove their burden, which is that they've attempted all of these supplemental aid supports and services. Therefore, segregation is not really okay. And I think I'm not saying this to toot my own horn, but I'm saying it to show you what where we are in terms of the spirit of the law. I've done nine cases. Since I've been here in Syracuse, and court cases, I mean, in federal court cases, and we've won. And so the beauty is we're at this place in time, where if you go to litigation, it is likely you'll win based on the spirit of the law. Right. And so your question was what needs to change? Well, sure what I love the language to change to be less wishy washy, because, you know, to the maximum extent appropriate, well, you see all that language is very difficult to prove. But when you really lay your case out, in a due process hearing and show that districts haven't met their burden of proof, it's not hard. It's not hard to prove that children should be included. Yeah, so that's been a lot of the work that I really enjoyed doing. Okay.
That's brilliant. By the way, the I love the list of accommodations and modifications. I'll have to pass that on. One thing is, it's
truncated, I'm just gonna tell you, I think there's a truncated version of it on insert inclusion. I think it's like the second video, that one comes with that. It's a shorter version, but it's maybe seven pages in length is really, really good. Okay,
okay, well, we'll look that up and put it in the show notes. One thing that I've heard over and over is about students not being able to be included in general ed, because it's not academically appropriate, or that they are so far behind in either math or reading or in globally, you know, you know, across across grade level. Khan intent. And, in fact, what I, you know, I don't want to name anybody specifically. But it's, you know, when parents want to have their students have one on one aids, you know, in general education. Districts typically balk at that, because they don't want to spend the money, you know, on on that particular student to have, you know, the, the assistant to modify those activities, or however, they want to support that student, because they feel that student is served, you know, appropriately, like Ida says, in a another environment. So what would you tell parents, if they came to you and said, you know, the district, you know, I have a, I have a third grade student. And he is, you know, not reading at a third grade level he's reading at a kindergarten level. In fact, you know, he's just working on number sense. But I want him to be in cluded, with his peers. And the district is telling me, it's not academically appropriate for him to be in third grade, because the curriculum needs to be modified so much that he has to be working on on other stuff. So what how would you address that?
Yeah, so no one on the line? Has it say that students need to be at grade level, right, or close to grade level or no more than two grade levels below or, you know, there's no way that says that part. And I think it's really fascinating, because it's very often used right, as a, as a rationale to exclude because your child can't keep up or your child is below grade level or academically. And the whole point of special education is to provide portable services for children in the context of general education, so that they can access general education content, age level, appropriate age level, not chronological age, you know, appropriate content. And the whole goal of special education is accommodations, modifications, and adaptations, so that they can be successful at their level. Right. Right. It is, it is absolutely appropriate and okay, to make modifications, I mean, so when I taught special education, I taught elementary, middle and high school special education. And what's really important to hear is that I had 12th graders who are reading at a kindergarten level just decoding or barely decoding, and I was still including them in high school English courses. And so the question is, like, how do you Why would how would that happen? Well, we pretty much at some point decide that decoding might not be in the students near future, you know, in the in the future for them. And so we can't, we can no longer just limit learning to what they can decode. And instead, we have to modify around the coding problem. And we have to be able to give them the information. And so it's as simple as students would listen to the story, right? And still be expected to respond to some comprehension questions, be participating in the dialogue, create a PowerPoint presentation about about the book, you know, there's still a million things that they can do to participate. But when we limit learning to decoding skills, we basically hold 1000 1000s and 1000s of children back from learning what they're capable of learning. And so you just simply have to modify around those things. And there's nowhere in the law that says that kids have to be at a certain level in order to participate. ratifications and adaptations are the law. That's part of what you have to do.
Yeah, it is interesting. Because I've never actually heard anyone say that, you know, use Ida as as saying, Yeah, we're excluding a student, because, you know, and that, and that is backed up by the law itself. It's mostly because well, this is just what we do as a district. This is how we've decided to handle this. And so So, you know, thank you for addressing that because I think that's important for parents and for educators to know because As you know, when you are advocating for a student, and you come up with those, when you get those questions, you can say with full certainty, there is nothing in the law that says that this student cannot be included. What becomes difficult, I think, is how the district or the school, the local school, decides to do that, how they practically do that. And whether that is through the classroom teacher, the general classroom teacher modifying those things, or whether it's a paraprofessional model, modifying those things, or in my case, I usually work with the general ed teacher, and my paraprofessional. And we work together to modify those things for my students who go into general ed. So it really, I think, comes back to the the collaboration piece that, you know, kind of changing how people think about inclusion, how to deal with behavior, and so on so forth. Because most of the time, it seems that administrators, they just can't wrap their head around how that's going to look. They want to protect their teachers, you know, so, so when you when you come to them, or when parents or advocates come to the meetings, and they say we want this, they just don't know what that looks like so that they shut them down. Is Is there any? I guess in your, in your opinion, is there any research that you kind of think is the silver bullet? As far as moving inclusive, inclusive education forward? Like, I know, it's, it seems to me that the research that you've done, you know, with schools of promise, and, and going forward, really sets the bar, because like you said, you go to Administration, you go to the the superintendents, and you say, Look, this actually increases student learning across the board, you know, and then then You've piqued their interest, is there. Is there something else? Or is there another kind of research that you've found to be effective?
I'm sure, yeah, I mean, I have this really long list of research studies that I make my graduate students and undergrad students read. And I find to be really, really useful. But I think in the practical, and I have a list that I can I don't know how to get into, but I have a list of kind of the, the best of the best in my opinion. But I think nobody does know, minds. And hearts aren't changed because of research. Because if people are not interested in creating inclusive schools, I could give them a stack of 300 peer reviewed research articles about why inclusion is better. And it's not going to change that much. Right. It's just not. I mean, I am a researcher, and I do that work. And I find it to be really important and useful in making part of my claims and to kind of move inclusion forward. But I think ultimately, it's the work of hearts and minds. It's. So I run a Summer Leadership Institute at Syracuse, with my colleague, Giorgio Harris, and we run this Leadership Institute. And it's for 200 or so superintendents and principals and special directors and they come from all over the country, we spend five days with them. And all our work is how to create and maintain inclusive schools. And the research part is just a tiny piece that we kind of go over and talk about, and they can learn more about it if they're interested. But I can tell you this, there's never been a school administrator that said, I just need like five more studies, you know, to show me that it really works. You know, or just give you know, it's actually I make this joke a lot. So I Okay, so I have all these slides and on the slides and it's small print. It's a study after study after study after study that shows that inclusion is better for kids with disabilities. socialites, it's better for kids with disabilities academically, it's better for kids. without disabilities socially, it's better for kids without disabilities academically, it's better for the school community. It's better for the school, you know, it doesn't matter. Just tons and tons of studies, right. And then I asked the question in the audience, does anybody has anyone ever seen the Biggest Loser? And people will raise their hand like that show on TV? Yeah, people have seen it and say, Well, so here's the deal. I've seen every episode The Biggest Loser and I think we're in so far into the season and I'm not really an exercise physiologist or I don't study exercise science. But I think there's some research out there that suggests that something like the the fewer calories you eat, and the more calories you burned, the more likely you are to lose weight. And I don't I jokingly say, has anyone ever heard of that research? Has anyone heard about before? Right? And of course, everyone laughing their hands go up, right? And I say, Okay, well. In education, there's nothing more clear when it comes to research. Like, there are lots of strands of research and education. But one of the most clear pieces lines of research is that when kids are in general education, they do better, right? It's just crystal clear in the research. And I mean, I know how to lose weight. I know how, because I've watched the show The Biggest Loser. I've read lots of articles. I've read lots of research, like magazines and things like that. And I think the research is really clear there, too. But the question is like, When am I going to get on the treadmill? You know? And I think district it's the same in education, when are we going to get off the couch? We know this is better for kids. And the research isn't going to do that for us. So what does do it for us? I think it's a combination of inspiration, the law. And then lots and lots of practical, useful ideas. So that people know what to do. Right? So I can say, Yeah, include a kid with autism. Right? Okay, great. I can tell you to do that. I can tell you the law says you should do it, right. But when you're the teacher, and you're looking at this kid who has interesting behavior, who isn't verbal, and I'm, you know, reading, you know, we're using the book Where the Red Fern Grows. And I have to figure out how Adam is going to be engaged in this class was this novel. Unless I've given lots of ideas and strategies to a team of people, they don't know what to do. And because of not because they don't have good intentions, it's because it's don't know what to do. I mean, I worked with the team that I've been working with from one of the schools of promise schools recently, and it was great, because that exact problem came up and atom kid with autism, that is, they're trying to figure out what to do with atoms or in Where the Red Fern Grows. And the first thought was, you know, he's probably going to need a century break. So what if he just did that? And someone said, well, it doesn't really fit with our commitment to inclusion. And so right away, it was like a problem to solve. And his team has really, really full of ideas. You know, now after working with our team for a long time, they said, Okay, he's gonna be the fidget. So let's give everybody a fidget. Let's consider bags on every table. That's how the students relate to the story. You know, he's gonna need to stand. What if we put graffiti paper on the wall? Okay, not just for Adam, though, let's put it up everywhere. And in like three minutes, they solve this problem of what to do with Adam during Where the Red Fern Grows. And I happened to watch this extra lesson. And it was beautiful. The paraprofessional charts the lesson. So there's graffiti paper on the wall. So anybody who wants to write or draw or outline while you're listening to the story, feel free. There's markers out there, you know, night, she explained that. And then as they were reading, the teacher says, after they've finished chapter four, something, she says, Okay, everybody, go grab your fidget bags, pull out, pull out something. How does it relate to the story at the moment, and I listened to two other kids, not Adam, but two other kids without disabilities, who say, Oh, we pull out these little trees, and they go, this reminds me of the giant sequoia trees and the two dogs in the story old animal and we're under evolvability law. And I just realized that like, by changing the lesson a little bit for Adam, the less became so much better for everybody else, right. And so it's a lot the skill, it's just a lot of the ideas and when they have those ideas, it's amazing, because then their stories become their own inspiration, as opposed to kind of listening to it from the outside.
That's, that's awesome. I love that. It's universal design at work, right? Yeah. Well, we're, you know, we're running up to about an hour here and it's, it's been a pleasure to talk with you. I want to make sure that you had an opportunity to talk about your website or if you are in any other social media or you know, how how, what's the best way to people For people to contact you if they would like to, to work with you.
Okay, well. Yep, so my website is inspire inclusion. And that's for parents of kids with disabilities who want their children included. So that's a great place to turn. I have a Facebook page called Inspire inclusion. That's a great place to go. Lots of I just put up lots of inspirational stuff there. And actually, Tim, I find your work to be really useful, because sometimes I share things that you've said in things. So thank you for that. Yeah, and then I've written some books that I think they're probably useful this conversation. The paraprofessionals handbook for effective support and inclusive classrooms is available through Amazon. And that's prepare professionals out there who might be interested in learning how to better support students. I just wrote a book called The principals handbook for effective support and inclusive education. And so this is a great book. Parents often give it to their principal. And it's really, really useful in terms of how do I create maintain inclusive schools? A lot of your questions today, Tim, related to the structure of schooling. And the ins and outs of kind of how to make it work are all in there. I've just written the occupational therapist guide, and the speech and language pathologist guide to inclusive support to inclusive education. So it's really how do we do all those related services inclusively. And this year, I'm writing to Gen Ed teachers and the special ed teachers guide to inclusive education. So those books will be really great reads for teams to read. So every member of the team can have their own copy. It's really about their own role. So I'm really excited about that. So that's something that might be useful. Another free thing that I have is called, it's an app called I advocate. And that's for parents of kids with disabilities who might be wanting to know what to say when their district tells them that their child can't be included. So what I've done is put all the reasons that districts are likely to say that their child can't be included, and then how to respond. And then court cases that relate to that. So I kind of give parents a really, I think it's a really, really nice tool and we've created that at Syracuse University. And then my email is Julie at Inspire inclusion.com and I take lots of requests for speaking engagements and those kinds of things are also worked on due process hearings through that particular email address.
Wonderful, thank you so much for telling us about all those resources, I had no idea about the about the books that you had written so that that's going to be on my list. So really great stuff. Thank you so much for joining us and all the best in your future endeavors.
Thank you so much, Sam and keep in touch. Absolutely.
That concludes this edition of the thinking creative podcast. For more information about Dr. Julianne Causton. You can follow her on Facebook, inspire inclusion, or on our website, www dot inspire inclusion.com You can find a link to download the checklist of samples supplemental supports aids and services on the show notes page of the think inclusive podcast. Remember, you can always find us on Twitter, at think underscore inclusive or on the web at think inclusive.us Today's show was produced by myself talking into USB headphones using a newly refurbished MacBook Pro GarageBand and a Skype account. Bumper music by Jose Galvez with the song press. You can find it on iTunes. You can also subscribe to the inclusive podcast via the iTunes Music Store, or podomatic.com. The largest community of independent podcasters on the planet from Marietta, Georgia. Please join us again on the thinking cluesive podcast. Thanks for your time and attention
