Radical Listening: How Jack Pearpoint’s Punk Rock Spirit Shaped Inclusive Education ~ 1304

Jack Pearpoint
The secret has always been, it’s all about relationships and it still is and always will be. If we expect leadership for change to come from the top down, it’s gonna be a long wait. The leadership that’s most important is local, local, local friends and neighborhoods. It’s so obvious that inclusion works. Inclusion is fabulous, and you can explain it to people and some people say, “Of course,” and that’s wonderful. And some people sort of look cross-eyed and they don’t get it.

Tim Villegas
Hello friends. Welcome back to Think Inclusive: Real Conversations about building schools where every learner belongs. I’m your host, Tim Villegas. Today’s episode is about applying a punk rock attitude towards inclusive practices. No, not smashing guitars and screaming, but when you come against barriers and people rejecting your ideas of inclusion and equity, how to not take no for an answer. Who might help us live out this punk rock aesthetic? None other than Jack Pearpoint, one of the original inclusion punks. Jack is a Canadian publisher, inclusion advocate, and co-creator of person-centered planning tools like Path, Maps, and Circle of Friends.

Jack’s work spans decades and continents, and his influence on inclusive education is profound. In this episode, we’ll explore the origins of person-centered planning, how it’s evolved and what the future holds, especially in a world shaped by technology and shifting educational landscapes. I am so glad you’re here.

We are growing this inclusion movement, listener by listener. So as you hear my conversation with Jack, I want you to think of who you can share this episode with. I’ll ask you who later on in the episode. Before we meet our guest, I want to tell you about our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by IXL. IXL is an all-in-one platform for K-12 that helps boost student achievement, empowers teachers, and tracks progress all in one place.

As students practice, IXL adapts to their individual needs so that every learner gets just right support and challenge. And each student gets a personalized learning plan to close gaps. Check it out at ixl.com/inclusive. Again, that’s ixl.com/inclusive. All right, after a quick break, it’s time to think inclusive with Jack Pearpoint.

Catch you on the other side.

Tim Villegas
Jack Pearpoint, thank you so much for being on the Think Inclusive Podcast.

Jack Pearpoint
Well, lovely to be here, Tim, and good to reconnect after a bit of a spell.

Tim Villegas
Yeah, after… Yeah. So we were just, before I hit record, the first time I met Jack was at the Tash Conference in Atlanta, and we were kind of, we were thinking it’s right around 2011. I know Tash has been in Atlanta a couple different times. But yeah, that was a while ago. Jack, we’ve never actually had a lengthy conversation, so I’m really excited about getting to know you a little bit and have our audience and listeners get to know you and your work.

No doubt many already know you and your work, but I know that there are some that this may be the first time that they’re ever hearing your voice or what you’ve done over the last, you know, 30, 40, 50 years. So, can we, I don’t know, start at the beginning? How much time do we have?

Jack Pearpoint
Exactly. Well, you know, that will be the problem.

You should edit me as required to fit within the parameters, but…

Tim Villegas
No problem.

I’ve been…

Jack Pearpoint
…long to…

Tim Villegas
…roll along. That’s okay. Like I said before to my other guests, it’s a podcast, so you can be long-winded and that’s fine. Okay, so Inclusion Press, over 30 years of Inclusion Press. I’d love for you to share the story of what inspired you and Marsha Forest to create this vehicle, right? It’s not just a publishing house, really.

Jack Pearpoint
Correct.

Tim Villegas
It is quite a large resource of books and training material and publications and articles. I’d love for you to take us back to the beginning. Can you share the story of the origins?

Jack Pearpoint
Well, even anything like that is necessarily complex, but if I was trying to pick a point in time, I would say it was Marsha was my wife and partner, then Marsha died in 2000. So that’s, but anyway, there was 24 years in there and in about ’77-’78 we met Judith Snow, who, Marsha was teaching at York University, et cetera.

And Judith was graduated from York and graduated to a nursing home, which was the only facility that the government could imagine that could take care of her and the medical staff there. Not their fault, but in the medical world, it was predetermined that Judith had to be dead by 30, and she was approaching her 30th birthday and she decided this nursing home thing was really grotesque and it was, and so she decided to leave. She wasn’t gonna die in a nursing home. She’d die somewhere else. And she literally just drove with her wheelchair, driven by her thumb. She drove out and went to Peter’s office, and Peter called us and we went and retrieved Judith and got her to our house.

Where I had built a ramp so she could get in, took her upstairs and realized that she had, although she required 24-hour support, she had no money, no attendant care, no place to live, no budget, no nothing. So we phoned everybody we could think of and sat up all night, and by morning we had loosely formed committees to figure out how do we keep Judith alive and we took on our various assignments. And the short version is Judith lived till she was 65 and beat all the records for someone with her complex disability. She did not die at 30, shall we say.

That story caused a lot of consternation for a lot of people. And so we began to tell the story and write about it and discovered that families were really interested. Because they thought, if Judith could do it, well, why couldn’t other people do it? Well, what about my children? That kind of thing. So, John O’Brien, Judith Snow, Marsha, myself, our network, we began to talk about it and write about it and we thought since stories are really important, these stories should be shared.

So we thought, well, we’ll get them published. So we phoned publishers and if we were knocking on doors, we would’ve had bloodied knuckles. We were rejected a hundred percent.

Tim Villegas
Oh wow.

Jack Pearpoint
Inclusion? You gotta be kidding—no, nobody will buy that. It doesn’t matter. Not a priority. You’re thinking about those, you know, all the terrible excuses. So we said, well, this is much too important to pay any attention to that. So we said, we’ll just do it anyway. And that became Inclusion Press. We set it up as a charity because we assumed we would have to fund it and it took off.

Judith is the story underneath Inclusion Press and it has been telling stories and gathering information ever since. And we’re working on, finally, a major upgrade to the website because there are seven terabytes of data on it.

Tim Villegas
Oh my gosh.

Jack Pearpoint
It is an archive of a lot of the inclusion stories, but it’s virtually inaccessible, so we’re working on making it more accessible, including Judith and John O’Brien and in particular, John O’Brien’s work because John just very, very recently passed.

And, you know, we were buddies for 50 years on this and inclusion.com is the repository for the largest collection of his work, and we’re adding to it as we rebuild the site. So we want to honor John’s work, but also his wisdom and design capacity continues to be available to people. So if people don’t know much about inclusion, poke inclusion.com, go to John O’Brien and there’s a library of his wisdom over decades and there’s almost nothing that he didn’t touch with a sensitivity that is quite remarkable. And it’s got a lot of stories. A lot of stories. So that’s important for us.

Tim Villegas
Thank you for the history and also for bringing up John and his life and legacy. I really appreciate that.

I’m interested in the decision to go forward with creating Inclusion Press, with your determination that these stories would be heard. It sounds like you had a sense of urgency, right? It wasn’t like, well, maybe we could wait a year or two years and maybe a publisher will be interested. It sounds to me like you’re like, no, this needs to happen now. And if no one is going to listen, then we’ll just do it ourselves, right? That’s… so, yeah, go ahead.

Jack Pearpoint
Oh, that’s it. They closed every door conceivable, and so we said, well, we’ll just make another one. And pretty much that’s my history, Marsha’s history, Linda’s history, John’s history. We’ve all worked outside the box because the box constantly had limitations, you know, and there were colleagues who had shared this vision. We were a very tiny minority. And it was a difficult struggle and it was a… we had battles with ministries of education and bureaucrats and school directors and principals and teachers and families, because everybody had drunk the juice. Our culture has… well, I’m putting it simply. For 500 years there has been a culture of oppression of the disabled and people on the margins.

And it’s in our DNA, that there are others who are subhuman, unacknowledged, unacknowledgeable. And the best answer is at one end, genocide and another end just to put them away. Forget about their existence. And so we have 500 years of history in our culture of putting people away. And, you know, more recently, of course, we incarcerated people in large institutions, massive institutions, which were just, quite frankly, snake pits. Not the fault of people who were trying to support people who were put there, but there was no budget, no support, no staff. They were awful. And so many of us were driven to say, that’s unacceptable, we gotta change. We have to close those places and invent a different way. And so the battle for deinstitutionalization was a huge battle that motivated a lot of people.

Oh, that was Wolf Wolfensberger, leadership on that was helpful. And O’Brien was sort of the next leader in that, in his own wonderful way, ever so gentle, but a listener and John listened. That was his mastery. He could listen to stories and summarize them and then translate them into action plans and… that’s our 50 years, translating those, yeah. Over and over and over again. What do you do in the morning?

Tim Villegas
Yeah.

Jack Pearpoint
Yeah.

Tim Villegas
Yeah, yeah. I, um, this idea of… Oh no, go ahead. Sorry. I think our connections are a little bit off, but go ahead.

Jack Pearpoint
Well, when we sat with Judith that night, we didn’t know we were inventing something, but apparently we invented something that has come to be called the Circle of Friends or a circle of support. Judith called it the Joshua Committee because we banged down walls, but we realized that if you mobilize people, you could do a lot. Clearly, it’d be much easier if you had access to money and all those kinds of resources, but the key resource is people and relationships. So we went to work on that and that resulted in these conversations that kept going and families beginning to say, “This isn’t good enough. I don’t want my children to go to a segregated institution or a segregated classroom. I want them to go to school and I want them to be with other kids.” And that was fighting words. The opposition was severe and nasty at times, but we were listening to families and started to say, “Well, what would it take to help make that happen?”

And that’s sort of the origin of Maps and Path and Summer Institutes, because we listened to families and they said, “We need to learn more about how the system works and all that.” So we decided to have an institute. We went to the universities and they sounded an awful lot like the publishers, because we said, “We’ve got this fabulous idea. We could run a course, cost you nothing. Just give us a space in the summer and we’ll take care of it all.” And they said, “Not on your life.” Not a single Canadian university would allow us time and space. So we said, “We’re gonna do it anyway.”

The National Institute on Mental Retardation, which actually was on the York University campus, had a little bit of space. So we started there first summer and, well, accidents happened. One of the people, one of the family people who came, was a professor from McGill in Montreal, and she had a daughter and she was worried not about McGill’s program, but she was worried about her daughter. As we were talking about trying to figure out how to do more of this, she said, “Well, maybe I could leverage my connection at… I’m a professor at McGill,” and Marsha had taught at McGill. So the two of them went off to McGill and lobbied like crazy. And McGill agreed to give us a space which lasted a decade.

So we had about 200 people a year go to McGill and hang out together, and the framework was there that we had to, of course, play McGill’s rules and that was really aggravating. In fact, that’s why we left. But it was a place where everyone was included, period. And that was such an amazing atmosphere for people and teachers in particular who came there.

Well, people had heard about this inclusion stuff because we hadn’t yet invented the word, but they didn’t believe it was possible. So they would come to McGill and then later to Toronto and experience it. And you gotta do it. You gotta feel it, you gotta taste it, and then you know what this is about.

So, McGill went on for a decade and then, for a variety of reasons, we moved back to Toronto and the summer institutes lasted for 34 years, without any support from all the normal circumstances.

Tim Villegas
Yeah, I think you guys may be… I think y’all may be punk rockers is really what it is.

Jack Pearpoint
Well, yeah. In the inclusion punk, I guess that’d be great. But it was constantly do it anyway. And so Summer Institutes came out of it and the Maps and the Path evolved in the middle of that because as we listened to people’s stories, we began to say, “Okay, so this is a really good idea. What do we do to make it universal?” That’s a big question. So we said, “Well, it would be a lot easier if we started at the beginning. So let’s start with little kids. If we can get all the little kids together in regular classes, playing together, doing stuff together, most of the issues of exclusion will evaporate because people will know each other as friends and colleagues and allies and whatever.” And so we started, and again, against all kinds of ridiculous, very frustrating opposition, but we were trying to figure out how do you do that?

Now the Circle of Friends became absolutely for us, a foundation. So step one is you gather people, people who know and love a person, and you gather them. And with little kids, pretty easy. You gather a bunch of little kids, and since we began with the assumption that every human being has a story and stories are what life is built on, but what we had to do is listen to stories. Then you know you can get picky about, well, some people don’t speak and all that. Everybody’s got a story and it can be told. So we figured out, we experimented with ways to have a person tell their story and then other kids tell their stories to each other, families helping to tell stories, and that became Maps.

So Maps was listening to people’s stories and listening for their dreams, listening for the future that they aspire to, and having the courage to acknowledge the underside, the shadow side of dreams, which is a nightmare.

Tim Villegas
Hmm.

Jack Pearpoint
And if you can identify those two things, “I want to go towards my dream and away from my nightmare,” you’ve got direction for your life, and then you just figure out what do we need to do to get there.

So that was… then we started doing that with little kids, and we’ve done it with people from five to 105. But, so it’s not just a little kid issue. It’s an issue of listening to people’s stories and Path evolved next and Path evolved because some of the stories that people had to tell, particularly people who had survived institutions and stuff like that, they were so painful that to ask them to tell the story one more time seemed unfair and unreasonable. It was too traumatic.

Tim Villegas
Hmm.

Jack Pearpoint
So we said, is there another way to accomplish exactly the same thing and that’s Path. So instead of beginning with, “Tell me all your stories,” Path is fundamentally, “Can you tell me some stories about the unlimited, limitless future that you aspire to, no limits? Where do you want to go with your life? What’s your north star?” It can be as far out as you want, and remarkably without exception, with a little teasing, people can begin to tease out things that were too terrifying to say so many other times, especially when people weren’t listening. But if you listen carefully, they’ll tell their stories.

And then with Path, then both these processes, we discovered that using imagery was key. Anyway, we used imagery through it, but the easiest example would be in a Path, in the North Star, we have people describe in as many ways as they want this limitless future, this north star. And then we say, “Close your eyes and invent an image, a memory hook that will help you to remember your North Star.” And of course many people say, “Oh, I can’t,” and then they pause and then it emerges once again. And about 95% of the cases people can invent it on the spot. A few people need some coaching from their buddies, but mostly people invent something and it’s not something I… if I was doing the doodling, typically it’s not anything I have been drawing. It’s their creation. And that’s the magic because the minute you move into imagery, you use the other half of your brain and it’s likely the most powerful half. Most of the information we take in is through our eyes, just in terms of straight volume. And so we figured out that if you can move people from words where often they’re scared and uncomfortable and so on and switch to the other part of their brain, whether I draw it or they draw, whatever will work, it unleashes capacities, clarity they didn’t know was there. And people are constantly stunned about the clarity of the images they create of where they want to go. And then the rest of the Path is how do you get there? I mean, there’s steps that have a nice sequence and have underlying things like you never do it alone, right? But steps are relatively simple. The key in both the Maps and Path is to identify the dream, the north star, that vision portion. Without that you’ve got nothing. And with that, you’ve got everything.

Tim Villegas
I’d like to… I wanted to ask you a question about the visualization and the imagery. Because I am, I’m taking us a little bit off the rails from our questions, but I think it’s worth it.

Tim Villegas
Because I am, I’m taking us a little bit off the rails from our questions, but I think it’s worth it.

Jack Pearpoint
Wait—

Tim Villegas
We’re off the rail for my whole life.

Jack Pearpoint
That’s right.

Tim Villegas
Here we go. That’s right. Punk rock or punk rock podcast right here. I think so. I’ve been learning, in my own personal self-reflection and personal growth, I’ve been learning a lot about visualization, particularly in connection with meditation.

Jack Pearpoint
Meditation. Yep.

Tim Villegas
And allowing yourself to envision a future or a space, a safe space. Anything that would, I don’t know, calm yourself and alleviate anxiety. And part of that practice is this visioning exercise.

Jack Pearpoint
Yep.

Tim Villegas
And I’m wondering, did that inform this process at all? Either personally or pedagogically? I’m just curious.

Jack Pearpoint
No. Likely yes, but not exactly. Okay, here’s a lateral way for me to answer it. O’Brien has 10,000 books in his personal library, and he’s read them.

Tim Villegas
That’s a lot.

Jack Pearpoint
And he can tell you where that volume is and often a page number for something you might be thinking about.

Tim Villegas
Oh my goodness.

Jack Pearpoint
So, John and the rest of us have learned a lot about meditation and other practices like that in many forms. Was there a specific moment when we said, “Oh, we need to use a meditation visualization?” Not exactly, but in gathering people, you use the term “a safe space.” That’s exactly the term. You need to create a safe space where there’s trust and people feel free to be heard and listened to without judgment. And those are all meditation spaces for me. So it’s sort of a yes and, I guess.

Tim Villegas
Yeah.

Jack Pearpoint
Does that make sense?

Tim Villegas
Yeah, absolutely. And thank you for making that connection and for sharing that little tidbit about John, because I would never have known that, so I appreciate that.

Tim Villegas
Coming up, how person-centered planning tools like Path and Maps are being used today to transform lives. This show is produced by the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education, MCIE.

Partners with educators and school systems to promote authentic inclusion, foster change, and support the implementation of inclusive practices, whether it’s district-wide transformation, customized learner planning, or professional learning and coaching. MCIE walks alongside educators every step of the way.

And here’s the best part. Our work begins with a conversation. So if you’re ready to create schools where every learner belongs, visit mcie.org to get in touch and start that conversation today.

Tim Villegas
Let’s talk about the—well, let me, I’ll preface this next question. Path, Map, Circle of Friends—they’ve been utilized all over the world. In Canada, United States, all over the world. I have a distinct memory of an inclusion consultant that I worked with when I was an educator in a public school in California. She used Circle of Friends—the practice or the steps of Circle of Friends—to help include a learner with extensive support needs in general education.

And that was my first exposure to Circle of Friends or any sort of person-centered planning or anything. And then once I moved to Georgia, we did a lot of the same. I learned about Maps more specifically, and we used these tools and stuff like that. And then even now, even our organization, the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education, uses person-centered planning tools that are either aligned or inspired by the tools that you’ve created.

And so I’m wondering if you’ve thought—I’m sure you have—about how these tools can be used now and in the future, especially with regard to technology. And I’m wondering if you have any thoughts about that? And I guess I’ll just leave it there.

Jack Pearpoint
Yes, yes, I have thoughts.

Jack Pearpoint
Okay. We talk—we’ve talked about it a lot for a long time, because we’ve had a wide array of inquiries and a lot of pressure from people who were pretty excited about these approaches to turn them into apps. Let’s just—you, you know, that kind of thing.

Tim Villegas
Uh-huh.

Jack Pearpoint
And we have resisted that as much as we can. Now, this is not because I’m against technology—because I love it—but rather that conversational processes like Maps and Path and its many derivatives are intensely personal. And the minute you turn it into a techy tool, where it’s just another cog in the machine, it’s no longer personal. And so you can knock them off in minutes and they are meaningless, in fact, dangerous, in many cases.

Alternatively, I think it’s worth the investment if we’re smart to take time with each person, put them at the center of a plan when they need it, if they need it, and spend the time, invest it early, and we avoid the thousands of hours and often a lifetime of inappropriate destructive behaviors that result when people aren’t listened to.

And we listened to one of your podcasts and one of your interviewers talked about a young man who sounds like he was pretty far on the labeled spectrum with lots of behavior labels and a lot of pretty intensive support, and they surrounded him with supports where he was listened to and within a year he was doing tutoring. He didn’t need all the management support and take downs and all that lunacy stuff that hurts people. It’s not that the people doing it are trying to hurt people. It’s, that’s what they’ve been taught.

Tim Villegas
Mm-hmm.

Jack Pearpoint
Works and it doesn’t, so. I think investing in intentionally personal processes, and that includes creating a graphic which doesn’t just use clip art. You make it personal, you make it creative, you make it theirs, you engage them in the process and lives change, then you don’t need all this other stuff.

Now and then when we were just starting to experiment with AI ourselves and we don’t know much about it yet, but obviously you can personalize things in ways that were unthinkable, you know, two, three years ago. So, the technology can be enormously useful, but we would hope that these personal conversational planning processes remain personal and live. We do it all the time virtually. And I would’ve sworn until COVID, that should not happen. Could not happen. Would not happen. And of course, we’re doing it.

So, can the technology work? Absolutely. But for us, investing in the intentionally personal, conversational and imaging processes is fundamental, real. Listen. Because then people can see a listen and they can say, “That’s not quite what I had in mind. It’s more like…” Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. You’re taking over, giving over control. When that happens, it’s pretty exciting. Lives change.

Tim Villegas
I’d like to know more about the pros that you see with doing some of these processes virtually, because I know that I don’t administer or facilitate any of this for our organization, though I have personally as an educator been part of these, sure, these events in real time in person. So I’m curious, what were some of the lessons you learned about facilitating, like Maps or Path, virtually?

Jack Pearpoint
Well, some of them were the same as when you’re physically together. You need to have a safe space and you need to have the right people. The right people is the core. So if we’re planning around a person, they are at the center and they get to select who’s coming. And we also learned trying to do versions where there’s groups all over the place and little groups. Everybody is better on a single screen and because you can get about 25 on the computer screen, that’s our max so that we can actually see everybody. And then for our planning, well, we do some stuff with the whole, a little bit of stuff with the whole group and then we have the core planning team, the circle of support, the immediate circle. And they become visible on the screen and only those people. So they see each other and we go through essentially the same steps. And because it’s face to face, it turns out to be very intimate. We’re not doing a group thing, we’re doing a one-to-one.

And I am trying to learn to do this on an iPad, so I’ve been doing it on a board where people can see what I’m doing, but trying to learn it on an iPad so that people can instruct or even better do their own doodles and show us what they’re doing. They’ll hold it up. “Okay, more like that.” “Okay, fine. We’re on it.” But it’s amazing how much you can do like that.

Okay, so quick story. Young man in a school not far from Winnipeg in Manitoba, and a wonderful school system and school realized that he’s been—now he has got some issues, but good kid. And he’s about to graduate into middle school, I think it is. But he is changing schools. So this transition terror and the school was, because they loved this kid, wanted to be sure that the new school was gonna listen to him, understand him and see his gifts rather than all the labels that could be associated.

So we did a plan that was pretty amazing because I think there were likely 30 people on this because there were… But in this case, not perfect, but they had teams from both schools and his parents and his grandparents and a whole mess of kids. And we juggled all that. But what it meant was that his—led by his mom—she gathered, I think about 90 photos of her son and his… He was a Winnipeg Jets and serious fan. So, you know, him in shirts and him with the team and on and on and on. You get the idea. So by the time they talked that through and introduced this young man and some of the teachers talked about what they saw in him, new school couldn’t say no, couldn’t say anything but great. And he is thriving there.

So who knew? Who knew. But if we focus on gifts and if we create a space where those who know and love a person can be part of the planning, it’s magic. And when we think about disasters that occur way too readily, you know, people have support in schools and it can be pretty good sometimes, and that’s great. And then they reach whatever age, they age out and there’s nothing and they transition into oblivion. Well, that’s not good enough, you know, so we’ve done stuff in the Arctic where we’ve coached students grades 11 and 12 to become coaches for students just coming into high school and they can help each other. Like, we don’t have to do it all.

This is gonna sound really bizarre because clearly I’m not an enthusiast for demolishing the education system and funding and all that stuff, but a potential silver lining is that because of the cuts and the things we can’t do, we are going to be liberated to liberate kids to help each other. We’ll have to do it and that will really work. So I’m—clearly I’m not in favor of cuts.

Tim Villegas
No, no. But I hear a determination to be hopeful.

Jack Pearpoint
Yeah. Absolutely. And part of the be hopeful is, you know, this is a phase. It too will pass. And our job is to stay strong and to stay true to fundamental principles and to a vision of the future and to hang in, in spite of this. And we can liberate each other. We don’t have to beg for budgets and approvals and legislative guidelines, how we can help each other and we can start today on our street in our homes.

The secret has always been, it’s all about relationships and it still is and always will be. And if we do that and recognize supporting each other, you can call it circle of friends, circle of…, I don’t care what you call it, but if we begin to build those kinds of networks around each other, we’re all safer and better.

And safer is unfortunately right now a real issue because as things are happening, if there are serious problems, you know, dialing the FEMA number or dialing 911 or whatever you dial is a good idea, but they may not come or they may not come in time, but your neighbors are next door. Their neighbors and friends are the most powerful network we’ve got. But you gotta go and talk to them. Have coffee, sit on the porch, or, you know, simple stuff.

Tim Villegas
It feels like it’s too simple, right? It feels like it’s too simple, but it really—the, I’m with you. It is that simple. It is that simple.

Jack Pearpoint
And we have been taught that it needs to be professionalized and all kinds of stuff, and that’s a good thing, but the base of it all is just common sense relationships. And that’s where we need to invest our time and effort.

Tim Villegas
Well, we’ve talked about a lot of things. We’re coming up on the top of the hour, and I do have one, I think one more question to close this out here. And it’s a quote, and I hope this is correct, that the change is going to come from the margins.

Yeah. People who have been labeled and discriminated against. I’m wondering if you could elaborate on that and what that means to you and for our work. I’ll just leave it there.

Jack Pearpoint
Yeah. Well, yes. I think if we expect leadership for change to come from the top down, it’s gonna be a long wait. And although leadership is really key, the leadership that’s most important is local, local, local friends and neighborhoods. And so there’s that. And then where do you look? Where do you look?

You know, we’re in pretty complicated times right now, and so where do I look for hope? And it may sound strange, but I have worked all over the world and my greatest learnings have always been with Indigenous peoples everywhere without exception. And there are many—I attribute many reasons. One is that almost all these cultures have been oppressed in the extreme. So they understand the nature of oppression and they have survived. And now, right now, I think many of them are thriving, not without complexity, but they are thriving.

You know, in Canada we had the Truth and Reconciliation Commission finally, which acknowledged that for 150 years we had a government policy of cultural genocide, and it was left out of—totally eliminated from—the Canadian consciousness. I never knew about what was going on, and that was the intent. And this remarkable commission listened to 7,000 stories from survivors of residential schools, which included tragically the—and certainly the abuse, sexual and physical abuse, but even murder of thousands of children who were dumped in unmarked graves, which are only now being revealed.

And it’s taken all this time for us to begin to acknowledge our own truth. People with those stories understand oppression and survival. And so when I was younger, it was rare to find a pow wow, one of the many cultural celebrations that Indigenous people in Canada have—very rare, and they would be small. Today, downtown Toronto, it’ll be 20,000 people at the pow wow. And it is spectacular. The regalia of the men dancers and their dancing is stunning. And the jingle dancers, the women’s. And oh my God, it’s stunning. And little kids are doing it, and they’re not only learning to bead and to dance and to do all this, they’re relearning their languages and recovering their culture.

And you say, well, that’s just a few people. That’s true. And there are lots of difficulties, but that’s happening all over the world. So for me, when I looked, who could teach me how to deal with difficult stuff? It’s people who’ve been there and done that. And by the same token, I spend half my life working with people who survive in jails. You’ll learn a lot from their experiences. Not all good, but been there, done that. They have depth of understanding that we can use to rebuild the cultures we need. And we need to rebuild our culture to recognize each other, where everybody belongs. No exceptions. Everybody belongs.

Tim Villegas
Well, Jack, this has been an amazing conversation. Before we get to our last segment of the mystery question, I want to—

Jack Pearpoint
I want to railroad again.

Tim Villegas
Yep, yep. I want to give you the opportunity to share where people can find information about you and Inclusion Press, and anything else you’d like to share with our audience.

Jack Pearpoint
Well, one of the things we are is we’re a small Canadian publisher, so we have some great books that we really recommend. And you can get all that stuff and tons more at inclusion.com, really simple, inclusion.com. But there are hundreds of articles by John and Beth Mount and so on and on and on that are free downloads, like hundreds and hundreds of them. So there’s a range of material there. And there are some great books. Books by John. There’s books and videos on Maps and Path and Circles. And I want to promote one little book—yeah, Opening Doors, which was by Micah Fialka Feldman.

Absolutely. And Micah is a great story for this podcast because Micah was labeled severely mentally re—mumble, mumble, mumbo, all that stuff, and his family refused to accept it. And they insisted against almost all odds that he’d go to a regular school. And he did, and he thrived. And much later he wanted to go to college and he took some classes locally in Detroit, and then he wanted to join all the other students and go to residence. So he paid his money, paid his fee to go to residence, and he showed up. They said, “Oh, no, you can’t come. You’d have to have an attendant. You’re disabled.” And so he sued them. Two years and court hearings and he beat the university to a pulp because over a thousand students rallied to that. Micah should belong and he did. So anyway, he opened that door and he has opened many others and he was on all Obama’s advisory committee and all that.

But one of the many things he did, because Marsha and I and then Linda have done Maps and Paths with Micah along the way. So he’s one of our stunning success stories. And on one of those adventures, he took a trip over to Syracuse and looked around and said, “I want to live here.” And not only that, “I want to work faculty of education,” and of course that’s ridiculous. You know, it’s a person who technically doesn’t read and write, et cetera, et cetera, and he wants to teach at the faculty of education. But Doug Biklen, one of our stalwarts from the early days, Doug was about to retire, but he was still the dean. And so he worked, and Micah has been hired as a teaching assistant, and I think he’s in his 12th or 13th year as a teaching assistant and not a pretend teaching assistant, a teaching assistant at Syracuse. And so that story is wonderful. And Micah is a wizard creating friends and circles of friends. And he survives by his circle of friends. And so, not that long ago, he said, “I think I need to tell my story.” And that’s great. And, “I want a book.” Okay. So I wasn’t sure how you do that with someone who doesn’t, you know, can’t, doesn’t read and write traditionally. But Micah is a master with his phone, you know, with dictating. So he collaborated with a friend. But he dictated his story his way. So I think it’s the first book by a person with disability telling their own story. And it’s a wonderful book called Opening Doors, because that’s what he does and he’s still doing it. So that’s a good thing to do. And, yeah.

Tim Villegas
Amazing. Thank you. Thank you for that recommendation, Jack. And we’ll make sure to put all of those links in our show notes when this gets published.

Tim Villegas
Before we get into our mystery question, let’s take a moment to reflect. Jack shared how Inclusion Press was born from a story of survival and urgency, reminding that person-centered planning starts with listening. We talked about the power of relationships and how tools like Path and Maps help people move toward their dreams. And we explored the future, how technology can support inclusion, but only if we keep the process personal.

Okay. It’s time for the mystery question, which closely resembles a song from one of my favorite musicals, Hamilton.

Okay, so, Jack, how I like to end our little session is a mystery question, and I have a stack of cards here and I’m really down to only three left. I had a stack about this big when I first started, and I only have three left. My daughter—she’s been writing questions for me lately, but she ran out, so I have to go back to these. So, I’m gonna pick one of these cards and we’ll both answer it. I don’t remember what these are, so… Actually I did that one already. So we’re down to two. And, so, do you have an area of your life that you are never satisfied with? That is the question. Do you have an area of your life that you were never satisfied with?

Jack Pearpoint
Of course.

Tim Villegas
We’re inclusion punk rockers. Of course we’re never satisfied. You can take it however you’d like.

Jack Pearpoint
I find it, it’s very frustrating for me. The beauty of finding gifts and capacities in people, whether it be MAPS and PATH and so on. But those gifts—it’s so obvious that inclusion works. Inclusion is fabulous. And you can explain it to people and some people say, “Of course,” and that’s wonderful. And some people sort of look cross-eyed, they don’t get it.

I would love, I would love it if more people got it and it’s not me telling it. That’s not the point at all. It’s that in their heart and soul, they see that everyone belongs. And doing things together, inclusively, has a magic. That’s win, win, win. I’d love to see more of that. So yes, not getting it yet.

Tim Villegas
Yes, yes.

Jack Pearpoint
And yet, yet is important.

Tim Villegas
Yeah, I love that. The “yet.” That’s another thing that I feel like I’m constantly learning is—and I guess that could be my answer, you know—I’m never satisfied with the level of knowledge I have about a particular topic, even ones that I feel, or that I would be considered an expert in by maybe other people.

And so, for instance, the history, the practices of inclusion, it’s something that I have been passionate about for many years, but I still feel like I’m just grasping it, if that makes sense. I think that you would appreciate that.

Jack Pearpoint
Yep.

Tim Villegas
And so there’s miles to go.

Jack Pearpoint
And get your running shoes on, ’cause—and maybe we can make them punk rock colors, I dunno—but miles, miles to go.

Tim Villegas
Miles to go. We ain’t done yet. That’s right. That is right. Jack Pearpoint, thank you so much for spending some time with me on the Think Inclusive Podcast. We really appreciate your time.

Jack Pearpoint
Thank you, Tim, for doing this podcast for so long, because it’s so instructive to people. Huge resource.

Tim Villegas
That was Jack Pearpoint. I am reminded that a lot of our job as educators is to be a good listener. So here’s one practical step you can take today: create a safe, intentional space where students can share their stories and dreams and make sure they’re surrounded by people who know and care about them. And above all, listen.

Share this episode with a colleague who’s building inclusive schools. Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and follow Think Inclusive wherever you get your podcasts. Shout out to Chrystine who left a comment on one of our episodes on Spotify. Truly, I am grateful for this podcast and all the guests you bring on. I consider myself and my students to be equity warriors, and listening to your podcast is so affirming that we are doing the right thing for people with disabilities as well as those without disabilities because people with disabilities and those without disabilities have the right to meet one another and connect and learn from each other.

Thank you. Your podcast is one that’s nearly always on in my car. Christine, thank you so much. Thank you for listening or watching on YouTube, and if you have something to share, you can always email me at tvillegas@mcie.org. I read every single message. Now let’s roll the credits.

I think Inclusive is brought to you by me, Tim Villegas. I write, edit, mix, master. I basically wear all the podcast hats and baseball caps. This show is a proud production of the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education, scheduling and extra production help from Jill Wagoner. Our original music is by Miles Kredich, with extra vibes from Melod.ie. Big thanks to our sponsor, IXL. Visit ixl.com/inclusive.

Fun fact, I was in a punk rock and ska band back in the nineties. We were called The Daily Special. I don’t think there are any recordings of us anywhere on the internet. I think I’ve got a cassette tape somewhere. Anyways, we had one song called “Yard Sale Patrol.” It was always a crowd pleaser.

Okay? Remember when I asked you who you were going to share this episode with? Before you forget, email me who that person is at tvillegas@mcie.org, and then do it. Now is the best time to move inclusive education forward.

You never know how a conversation like the one we had with Jack could change someone’s life. If you’ve made it this far, you’re officially part of the Think Inclusive Inclusion Crew. That’s a little hard for me to say. Want to help us keep moving the needle for inclusion? Head to mcie.org and click the donate button. Give $5, $10, $20. It helps us keep partnering with schools and districts to move inclusive practices forward and support educators doing the work. Find us on the socials almost everywhere at Think Inclusive.

Thanks for hanging out and remember, inclusion always works.