Shattered and Becoming: Andrew Goff and the Weight of Being Enough ~ 1402

Andrew Goff: As long as we have that mindset or that recognition that love is underneath it all, then we can’t really hold space for villains. We are opened up for possibility. Whatever emerges from this, just keep doing what makes you you. Keep going without the chains and shackles and cages of saying, “I’m the best teacher ever,” because that’s what holds me back.

And sometimes, even though I’m not ready for it, someone reaches out and says, “I think you are ready for it.” And they grab me by the hand and they pull me along and things work out. Sometimes there just aren’t people there to pull me up and say, “Let’s go do this,” but I really want to. And finding that patience in myself, following those breadcrumbs and saying, “Hey, here’s where I’m at right now, and this is how I can continue to do the work that I believe strongly in,” despite the grant being canceled, despite some policies that say, “Here’s what’s right, here’s what’s wrong.”

Do I know what the future brings? Absolutely not. But I think that as long as I keep doing what I’m doing, it allows me to continue to keep becoming.

Tim Villegas: Hey, 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 a mug that says, “Best teacher ever,” and the wall it met. My guest is Dr. Andrew Goff. Andrew is the early childhood education program coordinator and lead faculty member at Colorado Northwestern Community College, and the founder of Heartset + Mindset.

He has been in early childhood education for more than 25 years. He was on the show a while back for his first memoir, Love Is a Classroom, which is also the name of his podcast. He is back to talk about his second book, Shattered and Becoming: A Teacher’s Journey Between Policy and Purpose. So what broke?

A new principal, a policy no one read closely in a classroom where three-quarters of the learners spoke Spanish, and Andrew was told not to speak it with them. We talk about what that year cost him, and we talk about the two little boys, both named David, who were thriving in Andrew’s inclusive classroom, and what the school decided about them anyway.

And there’s something else Andrew does all the way through that I want you to listen for in this conversation. He won’t let us turn anyone into a villain, including the people whose decisions caused real harm. He also has a whole thing about breadcrumbs, and I’m going to let him explain that one. And stick around until the end, because after the interview we are playing Awake Among the Stars, our micro role-playing game adapted from Alone Among the Stars by Takuma Okada. Link to the original game in the show notes.

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 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 Andrew Goff. Catch you on the other side.

Andrew Goff, welcome to the Think Inclusive podcast.

Andrew Goff: Thanks so much, Tim. It is such a pleasure to be here.

Tim Villegas: Actually, welcome back. Welcome back, right?

Andrew Goff: Yeah, yeah. It was about two and a half years ago, I think, maybe even a little longer than that, that I was on here and we spoke about my first memoir, Love Is a Classroom. Such a great way to…

The questions that you ask are so thoughtful that after that first conversation, it really got me thinking deeply about the book even more. I look forward to this conversation. Thank you.

Tim Villegas: Thanks. Thanks. And the memoir that we’re gonna be talking about, Shattered and Becoming, which is out now wherever books are sold, or…

Andrew Goff: Yes. Amazon. Wherever books are sold or listened to or wherever you Google.

Tim Villegas: Exactly. So this chronicles, like, it’s like a five-year period, right? Between you first entering into this idea of getting your doctorate, and then it ends with you getting your doctorate.

Andrew Goff: Yeah. The story primarily… So it picks up a year after Love Is a Classroom. So we had Love Is a Classroom, learned so much, grew so much as a professional, as an individual. And then what happens in Shattered and Becoming, a majority of the story is that following year.

But yes, it then continues on to… The book concludes with me finishing my doctorate, which would’ve been about five years later from the start.

Tim Villegas: Okay. And let’s briefly, let’s just dive right into the title. So Shattered and Becoming. The title comes from you shattering your best teacher ever mug that you were given.

Andrew Goff: I didn’t shatter it. I threw it.

Tim Villegas: It just shattered.

Andrew Goff: Subject, object. Subject, object. I threw it. The wall happened to get in the way. It was a very shameful moment for me as a teacher. I had never, I think, there were so many emotions in that moment that it’s like the shattering of the mug was just the tip of the iceberg.

Inside I was, it became such a great metaphor.

Looking back on the story, when I finished Love Is a Classroom, this was the story I really wanted to tell. This was the one where I’m like, “Okay, this is all about who I am.” Love Is a Classroom, I hadn’t planned on that being a book.

I wrote that. I just was, this was my processing. It was therapeutic. And then Shattered and Becoming, what was the story of my final year in the classroom, it started to emerge and make sense. And so when I started to put the pieces together, ’cause as an author, as a writer, at least in my approach to it, I use the idea of you have to collect the dots before you can connect the dots.

And so it was, I spent really 10 years after leaving the classroom trying to make sense, because the story that I share in Shattered and Becoming is so complex, so complicated that me as a teacher, and I think most teachers can relate to this, that it’s hard to make sense. It’s so hard to make sense of our experiences, why we’re feeling the way we’re feeling, how we got to where we got to.

And ultimately, as I’m putting all these pieces together, it’s like, I’m thinking, “Okay, where is really the climax of the story?” And it was like, oh, that mug, it shattered, and all the pieces come together. Although I don’t think that’s necessarily the climax. That is definitely the moment of really breaking apart.

And so yeah, I really came to this moment where who I am as a teacher, who I had become from 12 years, that was my 12th year in the classroom. What I believe, child-centered instruction, family involvement, relationships, all those were core to who I was, and who I am still. But that’s more or less, in education, you can probably relate to this, I learned personally to teach to the checklist mentally. I never really taught to the checklist, but I always saw myself as trying to achieve certain goals and trying to be a specific person, and that might be because of teacher education. My teacher education was, “Here’s what it means to be a good teacher.”

And so I was always trying to live up to that standard of what a good teacher is. And as a man in early childhood, I think I felt like there’s a different level of accountability. I have to, to a certain extent, prove myself, and I have to be strong. And at that moment, when I received that email, I was already feeling incredibly insecure about who I am as a teacher.

I felt like I was failing children. I felt I was failing families. I felt I was failing myself. And then I got an email from someone who I thought was a very close ally of mine, who was really helping me along, more or less confirming all of my insecurities.

And that benchmark of best teacher ever, which is like the concrete measure. That’s what I tell myself. That’s a story I tell myself. And I could no longer tell that story to myself. And looking, as I was connecting these dots, telling the story, writing the story, it’s like that’s exactly what happened. In this story, it’s ultimately about how I needed to stop measuring myself and my self-worth on these standards that were established along the way, that I learned throughout teaching, that I really needed to be myself.

And so that was more or less, Shattered and Becoming: A Teacher’s Journey Between Purpose and Policy. People will ask, “What is it about?” It’s about my journey between purpose, and then that moment where the mug broke was really this policy. That’s not who I am. I’m not a set of policies.

Tim Villegas: Yeah. Yeah. It’s so relatable. And if you’re a teacher out there listening or watching, I’ve definitely been there. I don’t know, I’ve certainly wanted to throw a mug against the wall.

Andrew Goff: It’s not advised.

Tim Villegas: It is not advised. Yeah, we’re not telling you to do it, I’m just saying I’ve definitely been there. And I think the frustration comes from, with what you’re describing, is a misalignment of values. You want to be the best teacher ever. We want to be the best teacher ever. We want to serve the students in our classrooms to the best of our ability.

We want to serve the families, and we want to do a good job. And then we’re also juggling all of the expectations that the system has put on us. And there are moments where you completely feel like you’ve failed, for whatever reason. For you, you’re getting that email that is somewhat different than what you’re expecting. Or maybe a supervisor comes and shares feedback, or you have an IEP meeting that went south, or there’s certain things that go like, “What am I doing? What is happening? What are we doing here?” And so I find that those seminal moments are really so relatable.

Andrew Goff: I think that one of the things that I’ve learned along the way, ’cause like I said, this is 10 years, and that’s one of the things is I don’t want teachers, I don’t want readers… This could be, as one of the readers told me, like, this is not a book for just teachers or just administrators.

This is like a universal story. There is not someone who works in an organization who hasn’t had an experience like this. And as I’ve been going through, and as I was writing it, it’s so much about this standard that I create for myself and what now I’ve come to understand is really the ego.

And I held myself, and I hold myself, to such high standards, and it’s a character flaw, I think. But at the same time, I think it’s what allowed me to really continue to hone my craft and be relentless about creating an inclusive classroom and learning here’s how it works with this group of kids.

‘Cause what changes, that’s one of the things about teaching, is every single group of children, or you just get a new student, because we get students placed in there in April right before the school year ends, it becomes a new community. And so me always trying to hold myself to that standard, yeah, like you say, you get out of that IEP meeting and there’s just so much letdown.

How did I do this to the family? That’s in Love Is a Classroom, the IEP meeting with Chanel. It’s how did I let this happen? Like, how could I let the district run over Chanel like that? And that’s just one of the many examples.

Tim Villegas: Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about one of the parts of the book that is about a new administrator coming in and setting some rules about using the Spanish language in a particular class?

And so, however much you wanna share about the story, but just to set that up as this idea that there’s a policy that is directly affecting the students in your classroom.

Andrew Goff: One of the fascinating things about writing a book is I write it from my perspective and my standpoint, and I think people are going to understand it this way, but everybody understands it differently.

So we had a new administrator, a new principal who came in, and he wanted to have, I think it’s the same sort of thing as he said, “Here’s the standard,” and this is retrospect. I couldn’t see this at the time, but speaking just to the story, is he said, “This is how we need to have our classrooms, and I want to have the best school we can possibly have.

And to do that, we need to follow this legal guideline.” And the legal guideline made sense but didn’t make sense for my classroom. He didn’t see that, and I was in a position, it was my third year in that school district. I felt, as teachers, and for me, there’s a lot at risk. It’s my job, it’s my family, it’s my healthcare, it’s so many other…

My integrity. What I felt was who made me who I am. And him telling me that here’s how we’re interpreting this policy, or here’s what this policy means for your classroom, I said, “Oh, okay. That doesn’t seem to align with anything that I’ve learned over the last 11 years of working with children who are dual language learners.

I’ll try, but I can only do what I can do.” He also had us use a new curriculum, and when it all comes down to it, he was misinterpreting that. But like all of us, I think he had blind spots. I don’t think he saw what the policy actually said, because it wasn’t probably a major priority for him, as it was for me.

There are so many things that are super personal to me, and it doesn’t mean anything to anybody else, but that doesn’t make it less meaningful. And yeah, he said, “Here’s the policy,” and as a teacher, I said, “Okay.” And then when I did find out what the policy actually did say, it didn’t say that I shouldn’t speak Spanish, ’cause that’s what he was saying was, “You can’t speak Spanish with three quarters of the kids in my classroom.”

That’s how many spoke Spanish. And he said, “You can’t speak it.” When I looked at the policy, after a very contentious conversation, which I’d walked out of thinking like, “Ooh, wow, I feel good. I was able to speak up.” And I also questioned like, “Is this also part of my privilege? Am I getting a little aggressive here?”

But yeah, I found out that’s not what the policy actually said. However, I couldn’t go to him with that because I thought it would undermine his larger objective and his identity and what he wanted to achieve, and put me in jeopardy of losing my job.

And yeah, I didn’t wanna subvert authority. I tried to stick to it, me as a teacher, and of course the best teacher ever, I’m still going to do, or I still did, what I felt was the most appropriate for every child and every family in that classroom, even though it wasn’t aligning exactly with what he said.

And I tried, but just to step back and reflect on it, like, if you’ve got a classroom of three-quarters dual language learners and you do speak their language, but you have two paraprofessionals, teaching assistants who are fluent speakers, and no one is allowed to speak Spanish to three-quarters of the classroom, so three-quarters of the kids can’t communicate in their native language, that doesn’t make sense.

But it made sense to him. And in a school, what makes sense to the principal often is what’s going to happen.

Tim Villegas: Wow. Wow. When you look back, would you have handled that situation differently?

Andrew Goff: I could say that about my choices for breakfast this morning. There’s, we can, I can always look back and say how I’d like to do things differently. Everything about that, everything. And I’d like to think that I’m not the only one who’s reflecting on their experiences. But because that was so meaningful, yeah, I would’ve been more deliberate, intentional about how I approached this new guideline, or interpretation of a guideline. I was in such a… My priority was always, my focus was always on the children and the families, my teaching assistants.

And to think that I had to put so much thought into a district policy, that didn’t seem like something that made sense. Now, in retrospect, I’d say, ooh, I should have probably been paying much more attention to that policy from the very beginning. I should have been paying much more attention to the intentions of the people who I really trusted.

I just went in thinking I trust families, I trust my teaching assistants, I trust administrators, even though I had been wronged many times by administrators in the past. If I could go back and change something, it would’ve been be more aware of what these policies truly say, not from hearing it from other people, but…

Tim Villegas: Sure.

Andrew Goff: What does it mean to me? And if that means I have to sit down and read a 70-page piece of a legal order, that’s not, I think, on the to-do list of many teachers out there, or at least early childhood educators. But that’s one of those things that if I could go back, I would be more familiar with the policies that are governing my classroom and not just take a person’s word for it.

Tim Villegas: Yeah, I think that’s a good lesson for anyone, especially any educator in a school system that has written policies that we should probably know about, regarding how it affects learners. But I’d like to switch gears and talk about the Davids.

Probably the best thing for you to do is to set up the story about the Davids ending up in self-contained autism classrooms. Could you tell that story?

Andrew Goff: Yeah. Yeah. So we had David A and David R, and both children came into the classroom with diagnoses, labels of autism.

And in my class, as just really over the years, we always continue to grow as teachers, as individuals, and I had come to see labels as, they are going to determine what kinds of supports are going to be available, especially when it comes down to what the district is willing to offer.

But as a child in the classroom, they mean absolutely nothing. It is getting to know those children, getting to know those families. And so when I met David A., his family, you’ll learn more about his family in the book. But he had autism. He was labeled with autism. And his mom came in, and we had her just stay with us, and this was the year before.

He had already been with us for a year. Actually, both of them had been with us for a year before. So they knew our classroom with the old curriculum, knew the classroom with the new curriculum. Long story short, it’s a label. They were not the same. They have the same name coincidentally. But they really strengthened our classroom, because what they did was they provided an opportunity for me to look beyond my own biases and say, “Okay, who is David?

And David is going to be a child who needs more supports. How can I set up my classroom where those supports are already built in? They’re embedded.” And so as I got to know both children, one was in the afternoon, one was in the morning class, and again, the classes are all very different, but as I got to know them, it was, here’s how they tick.

Now, both of them spoke Spanish, and I wasn’t able to speak Spanish, which created a whole different challenge, but it also pushed me to see these children with even more humanity. Like, just down to the minutiae of what makes them who they are. And so I got to know them very well. We supported them. We created that environment that had all the embedded interventions, so much so that David A. was doing so well that we decided to transition him to the general education pre-K classroom.

So mine was inclusive. It was six children who had IEPs, 10 children who were from the neighborhood. But we had other classrooms for the kids going into kindergarten, the year before kindergarten, that were considered general ed.

There were other codes behind it, but it was a less restrictive environment. And I said, “David A is doing so well in here, we need to transition him over to the general education pre-K classroom for him to finish this year out, for him to be in a classroom of all typically developing peers,” because he was going into kindergarten.

The other kids in the classroom, they still had a year before that. They were three and four-year-olds. So it was a relatively restrictive environment for him, because he wasn’t with the same age peers, or the same age peers also had significant support needs. And so he was doing so well.

We sat down, had that IEP meeting. It was right around October, the end of October, and we made the decision with the teacher that, yes, let’s transition him over. For the next half of his school year, he’ll be over in Esmeralda’s class. And that class, she was a Spanish-speaking teacher. The kids were Spanish speakers, so they could speak Spanish to him. A number of reasons why to transition him.

Now, in his case, he didn’t have the supports in the classroom. I can’t say that necessarily for a fact because I wasn’t in the classroom. I was never really invited or asked to come in there and support David.

And come March, when they’re making the transition determinations, they decided he can’t thrive. His least restrictive environment is not a general kindergarten classroom, because he really struggles in this general pre-K classroom. He’s just not going to succeed. And so I didn’t find out about him struggling in that class until, I think it was accidentally, I got looped into that email and found out he’s going to go to, they’re recommending a self-contained classroom.

I pushed back against that. I said, “Here’s the data.” They said, “It worked in your classroom, but it’s not gonna work in anybody else’s classroom.” They ended up putting him in a self-contained classroom for kindergarten.

And different story, but for David R, he was in our classroom the whole year. Again, we felt that he had made significant progress. There was knowledge though that, I knew what was happening with David A, and there was just the question of will he have the supports? And he went into the general kindergarten classroom, and then he was more or less transitioned out of that general ed kindergarten classroom later that year, and then the following year, he was put into a self-contained autism classroom.

So one was in there from the very beginning, one was in there after a year, both under the belief that they could not thrive. That was not their least restrictive environment, though in our classroom it was.

Tim Villegas: And it makes me think that the environment has to be set up to support a learner. You just can’t put a learner in a classroom not expecting to change anything based on the learners that you have in your classroom.

Andrew Goff: Yeah. It’s not about the children. It’s about the environment, and it’s about the teachers themselves. And everybody’s trying to do their best. It’s a matter of what kind of support do we have around us? What kind of support do we need around us? And I think that we don’t even know what we don’t know, especially when it comes down to children like David.

It’s just, it’s not gonna work with what we’re doing right now. We can’t change up the curriculum. That’s what we have to do. We can’t change the… The first thought is, “We need to get another adult in here.” No, you don’t. “But Andrew had two adults in his classroom.” No, their success wasn’t about the two adults in there.

Their success was about the classroom environment. It was about how the other children supported them, and I think that’s the missing piece so often in inclusion. How are we creating the curriculum that is going to really support the margins? Which, as I more or less come to conclude in Love Is a Classroom, is that’s what made that classroom in that story so inclusive to Javon. We ended up identifying how to set up this classroom to support Javon, the child who had the most support needs, and it ended up benefiting so many other kids that I didn’t even realize were not really benefiting from the classroom.

It uncovered blind spots. And that’s where we have to be open. That’s part of how teachers have to be thinking about it. I just came across this term of a not knowing mindset, and I love it. I love the idea of a not knowing mindset, because it puts it into a better framework of go in there just presuming you know nothing, and then as you gradually build that understanding, it doesn’t matter what happened the year before or what’s expected the year after.

It is, we need to know this child. Other children need to know this child. Parents need to know this child. And I’m not talking about just that child who has autism or that child who has extra support needs. It’s about how do we truly know, see, hear, value every individual in that classroom.

And the one thing also from the many years was, sure, it seems like it can be a lot of work to do that. This is one of the podcast seasons that I did. So I’ve got a podcast, Love Is a Classroom: Stories of Inclusion, and I just kind of share stories.

And one of them was a girl named Navi who’s deaf, and for the podcast season, I had her kindergarten teacher and her first-grade teacher in there just to show that this is not just a preschool thing. And what they were able to talk about was how important those peer connections were. And it wasn’t even about them doing so much different for their instruction.

It was how do we prepare the classroom and the kids? So creating that environment includes how do we create that loving community where the kids do a lot of those supports that often we say, “We need another adult to do this.” Now, there are situations where you need another adult for some adaptive skills or self-help skills.

I get that part. But generally, for 90% of the day, it’s going to be how do you design the curriculum for the margins? And the curriculum also means the children in that classroom.

Tim Villegas: After the break, what it takes to keep going when the work you built your career on gets canceled by email.

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You ask readers not to villainize, specifically Jorge, the administrator, or anyone else that has a mindset that’s not the not knowing mindset, right? And why is that framing important to you?

Andrew Goff: If I villainize them, it feels good, I think, for me.

I can say, “It’s their fault. That’s what I need to rally against,” and that’s actually how I would enter writing the story, was this is their fault. I need to prove a point. And like everything else, it’s step back and think about things deeply, especially if it’s going to be a story that you’re going to share with the whole world.

And as I reflected on Diana, she was the early childhood special education coordinator, and her actions, and as I thought about Jorge, and then I had some colleagues also, to villainize them like that is to minimize them as people. And I assume incompetence, I think. And it puts the story around them and saying it’s their fault.

And ultimately, as a reader goes through the story, I hope that they are able to see that what Diana and what Jorge did caused a lot of harm. That hurt. It didn’t just hurt me as a teacher. It hurt the children. It hurt the families. It hurt my teaching assistants. And they were doing what they felt was the best thing to do.

I trust that. I think we all are. And I step back and I say, “How many times did I do something like that?” So I like to look at it more as, let’s recognize the system around the individual. Let’s not remove accountability. It’s 10 years past, but there should’ve been some kind of accountability for the outcomes that came with Jorge.

There should’ve been some accountability for the outcomes with Diana. But these are like biblical teachings. It doesn’t do us good to hold on to anger. That doesn’t help us find peace and move on. And so I think that as I talk with my own students who are childcare providers, they’re teachers in public schools, they’re administrators, really I like them to think about it as it is about this moment, this day.

And yes, things can be really hard, and that’s why we need our people, our support people around us, our allies, that can help us keep perspective and not get wrapped up into that teacher identity of I’ve gotta be the best teacher ever. And I think that’s what Jorge wanted. Jorge wanted to be the best principal ever.

It was his first year as a school principal. And he was aiming to become the best principal ever, and this is what he saw as his pathway. And Diana was in her first year of being the early childhood special education coordinator, and she wants to be the best early childhood coordinator. This is what I want to presume. It caused harm. There should’ve been some kind of accountability. I don’t know how that would’ve looked. That’s not my place. I think accountability could’ve been upfront, though. If I would’ve just been forward with the piece of the document that said I can be speaking Spanish, and I would’ve gone straight to Jorge with that, we could’ve avoided a lot of these issues.

Tim Villegas: Sure.

Andrew Goff: But yeah, I don’t want to villainize anybody. I truly do trust that I’m always trying my best, and I do have, I can cause harm. And I want my college students to say, “Andrew, that really hurt, what you said,” or, “I don’t feel like that grade really represents my work.” And then I step back and I say, “Okay, tell me more.”

I think that’s where Jorge and Diana were too. We just needed a moment for them to say, “Okay, Andrew, tell me more about where you’re coming from.”

And that just didn’t happen. But like me, my primary focus was on the children, was on all the paperwork, was on the new curriculum, was on my classroom staff. It was not on how can I get Jorge to say, “Andrew, tell me more.”

That’s not where I was at. But I think that’s where I’m saying try not to villainize them, though when you read the story, there’s a lot of things in there that probably upset you about what the administrators were doing. But it’s my telling of the story, so it’s my view of it.

If they told the story, it would be completely different. And I respect that. I respect that completely.

Tim Villegas: Yeah. Yes, exactly. There’s always another perspective, right, with these kinds of stories. But I appreciate you sharing that. I think that is a good way to frame things, especially when things touch us so personally, and other people’s actions affect us.

I wanted to bring up something else that you have in the book about your research grant. And I had a question about it. I think this is in 2025, is that right? Or 2024? Yeah, I can’t remember. Early, when there were a lot of decisions that were being made about research grants, and a lot of grants got canceled because of words like inclusion, equity, and diversity.

So I wonder if you could just share a little bit about that. And then the question is, for people doing this work, whether it’s in higher ed or whether it’s in K-12 or whether it’s in early childhood, what does becoming look like when there’s so much of this stuff happening?

Andrew Goff: Yeah. To back up or provide a little context, I’m the coordinator of a community college early childhood program, and it’s in Northwest Colorado, which is an amazing, beautiful area, and there are a lot of students who have very different views on the word inclusion. When we sit down and we talk values, it’s all the same.

It is about love. It is about connection. And they would have no problem with what happened to that research grant, which creates a level of dissonance of, wait, how is that possible? They believe strongly in diversity, equity, and inclusion, but then there’s an acceptance of this research grant being canceled that is directly helping the classes that they’re taking so they can learn how to better support the kids in their classroom.

They would still be okay with that. And it’s again, stepping back. So now to provide a little bit of context, I was working on a grant for several years with two universities here. It was a partnership, community college and universities, and it was about embedding more inclusive practices in, or teaching students how to teach more inclusively, and putting those in the college course competencies.

And that work was being done. It was a grant that had been going on, I believe, for 15 years. It had been renewed every five years by the Department of Education, and then we got the renewal. It had just been renewed. And they had added something to it. They had to add something to it. So in order to get it, they had to say they had to include new students, and it had to address diversity, equity, and inclusion.

That was part of the grant requirement. And they added a part that aligned with all of my past work, my dissertation, of what had come of the experiences in the classroom, including what I share in Shattered and Becoming, and that is how important leadership is. And it starts with leadership, and that’s not just the administrators.

It’s leadership across a program, and they added that to the grant. And so I became a more important piece in it, or at least that’s the way I saw it. Again, back to the best teacher ever. Now I’m like the best college teacher ever. I’m actually being able to inform what’s being taught in classes, not just at the college I work at, but across the entire state, because our community colleges are all part of one system.

And it just felt so good. And then, yeah, we got this email, as a lot of institutions did. It was the Office of Special Education Programs through the Department of Education. So OSEP sent that email to the research lead, and it said, “We are terminating your grant. One year in, you still have four years of it, but we decided that this is no longer worth our time and money and investment.”

And we worked hard to try to get that reinstated. There was a petition sent in. The lead investigator, this meant so much to her. She is an amazing person. She worked so hard for 15 years. It might have even been longer than that. She was so dedicated, and they rejected it. And so as I was writing the epilogue, just coincidentally, I’m writing the epilogue and an email comes across saying, “All future meetings have been canceled for this grant.”

And it’s, you gotta be kidding me. How crazy. So coincidental. Because it’s more or less the same thing. And going back to why I say the college students I work with, I find that it’s very easy to find a villain. It’s very easy to point fingers and say, “This is the wrong idea. Here’s the wrong person.”

But just like in the classroom, it came back to, “Okay, how do I keep going? And how do I keep going with my work right now? How did I keep going with my work after I left the classroom, the events in Shattered and Becoming?” And it doesn’t help me to villainize. It helps me to connect with more people, to find my allies, to share my work, to speak to my experience, help disseminate information.

And yes, bad things are gonna happen, and I just have to put faith in the work that I do and the people I know and whatever else I can put faith in and say, “Time is going to pass, and villains come and go, but love stays.”

And love prevails, and that is what our being is all about. It’s grounded in love.

And so as long as that’s the view, as long as we have that mindset or just that disposition or that recognition that love is underneath it all, then we can’t really hold space for villains. We are opened up for possibility. Whatever emerges from this, just keep doing what makes you you. Keep going without the chains and shackles and cages of saying, “I’m the best teacher ever,” because that’s what holds me back.

At least that’s where I’m at.

Tim Villegas: How are you, after the book, after this has shaped you for who you are right now, how are you moving forward with supporting educators and schools and administrators?

Andrew Goff: I’m doing the work at the community college department, and it’s really how am I designing my courses. And I never use the word love. I use a lot of philosophical views in my coursework, lots of quotes and everything, and still teach what I teach, and still connect the way I connect. But to become, it is just following really what’s put in front of me, just like following the breadcrumbs.

And I don’t know where they’ll lead. I’ve been teaching college courses since 2009. I became full-time in 2015. And so I’ve been doing this for a very long time, and I’ve always thought, “Okay, what’s my next step?” And it’s just continuing to follow that. And I’ve come to a point where I’m recognizing the incredible value of college courses and seeing it as what I call the skill set and the will set.

You develop the knowledge, and these are like the technical skills, and then the courage to make change. But following those breadcrumbs has really brought me to here’s what I feel my work can contribute at this point in time, given the resources I have and what I’m ready for. There’s been so many points in my lifetime where I’ve said, “This is what I want, but I’m just not ready for it.”

And sometimes, even though I’m not ready for it, someone reaches out and says, “I think you are ready for it.” And they grab me by the hand and they pull me along and things work out. Sometimes there just aren’t people there to pull me up and say, “Let’s go do this,” but I really want to. And finding that patience in myself, following those breadcrumbs and saying, “Hey, here’s where I’m at right now, and this is how I can continue to do the work that I believe strongly in,” despite the grant being canceled, despite some policies that say, “Here’s what’s right, here’s what’s wrong.”

Do I know what the future brings? Absolutely not. But I think that as long as I keep doing what I’m doing, it allows me to continue to keep becoming, and there are lots of pitfalls and stumbles. And one of the things about this book, and Love Is a Classroom, is it’s not just about the classroom. It also has experiences with my family, it has experiences that I’m having with friends, it has experiences that I’m having at the university.

That’s in Shattered and Becoming. I couldn’t, as an individual, try to hollow out the story of a teacher to what’s happening in the classroom.

And so as I talk about becoming, I think it’s really important to recognize that my becoming as an educator is also part of my becoming as a father, is also part of my becoming as a partner in life.

It’s all part of one. And so as I continue to work and get better, or just be better, then things just, and this might just be my hopeful view, things tend to work out in my own becoming, as long as I’m just continuing to follow those breadcrumbs. And I’ll tell you what, it is really hard to eat some of those breadcrumbs because they just don’t taste good.

It’s not what I wanted. I wanted a cookie crumb, and instead I got some rat poisoning. But I have to just keep going. It didn’t kill me. I just have to keep going.

Tim Villegas: Oh, Andrew Goff, thank you so much for sharing about Shattered and Becoming. And listeners, please go out and get the book, read it, and digest it, and reflect with Andrew, ’cause I think it’s a story worth telling and a story worth hearing.

So thank you so much. Where can people find you and your work?

Andrew Goff: Yeah. They can go over to heartsetandmindset.org. Up there I’ve got trainings, but I’m working on developing a course that more or less takes all these… I teach 12 courses at the university. I’m the department coordinator of a very small college.

Been doing this for so long, and this stuff is so compartmentalized, even though we try to overlap. And so I’m working on developing a course based on dissertation research, based on my knowing of the students. And it’s about how to grow a truly inclusive program, which is not just about the children, it’s about the professionals, it’s about the families, it’s about the community, it’s about the administrators.

So that’s one thing. I’m still in development with that. But go over to heartsetandmindset.org. You can learn about the trainings that I already offer. Perhaps by the time you get over there, this class will be up and running, and you can enroll in it. But I want a whole program or a whole school to go through it, because one person, as I’ve learned teaching college classes, one person taking a course doesn’t change pedagogy.

And my own work as an individual is, the only way we can bring about change is as a community. And yeah, go over to heartsetandmindset.org and learn more about my work. Look at classes, trainings. I’ve got the podcast. I’ve got a new season coming up that I’m working on that’s looking at more or less the mechanics of how do you grow a program that’s truly inclusive.

And some other things I’ve got up there.

Tim Villegas: Awesome. Thanks, Andrew.

Andrew Goff: Yeah.

Tim Villegas: All right, Andrew, you’re gonna be my guinea pig for our last segment. So our last segment is called Awake Among the Stars, and it’s a micro role-playing game that is very much in development.

Andrew Goff: That’s what I’m all about. I am all about role playing.

Tim Villegas: This is like the beta of beta right here.

Andrew Goff: That’s what I am for you.

Tim Villegas: So what I asked you to do to prepare for this is you needed one six-sided die and a standard deck of cards.

Andrew Goff: Yep.

Tim Villegas: And I am going to act as the game master or dungeon master, ’cause this is loosely, very loosely based on Dungeons & Dragons.

Which the whole reason I’m doing this, Andrew, is I am rediscovering my love of RPG. And my good friend Josh, who is an animator and graphic designer, he has encouraged me along in this rediscovering of RPG. And so I was like, hey, Josh, I have this idea that I’d like to bring into the podcast.

And so we brainstormed a few ideas, and so this is what happened. So what I’m gonna do is I’m going to read the narration, and you are going to be an explorer. And in this story, you’re going to discover a few different things, and then we’ll end. And it should last about 10 minutes.

But then again, Andrew, this is the first time I’ve ever done this.

Andrew Goff: First time for me too. All right. So are we ready? And I was not an RPG guy.

Tim Villegas: But you are a storyteller.

Andrew Goff: I am a storyteller. That is true.

Tim Villegas: Yes. Yes.

Andrew Goff: Yes. If I completely mess this up, it’s an opportunity to learn.

Tim Villegas: There’s no messing anything up.

Andrew Goff: Okay.

Tim Villegas: There’s no wrong answers. And I am going to keep that in mind as I’m doing this as well, because I’m very much like the wanna do it right, but there’s no right way. So we’re…

Andrew Goff: There’s…

Tim Villegas: This is us growing in something that’s a little uncomfortable. It’s at least uncomfortable for me.

Andrew Goff: What is this called?

Tim Villegas: What?

Andrew Goff: What is the game called?

Tim Villegas: It’s called Awake Among the Stars. It’s adapted from a solo RPG called Alone Among the Stars. But anyways, so here we go. Close your eyes just for a second.

Okay. And now open them. You wake up gasping, cold, floating in a dim metal room. Your head is pounding and your memory is syrup. It’s classic hibernation sickness. A calm voice, your ship’s computer, says, “Good morning. You have been asleep a very long time. We are in orbit above an uncharted planet. Also, minor note, our teleporter is running on reserve power. Please explore responsibly.”

Through a porthole, you view a world you have never seen, and it turns slowly beneath you. First things first, let’s find out who you are. Take your die and roll it.

Andrew Goff: One.

Tim Villegas: Your name is Captain Dash. You are a washed up legendary pilot. You’re gruff, but you’ve got a heart of gold, and your motivation is you’ve got one last discovery that you want to be big enough to be remembered for. Does that feel right?

Andrew Goff: Sounds perfect.

Tim Villegas: Okay. So in your best Captain Dash voice, say good morning to your computer.

Andrew Goff: Good morning, computer.

Tim Villegas: All right, so…

Andrew Goff: I do the audio recordings for the books. I’ve got all these different voices, and I read a lot of picture books for kids.

Tim Villegas: Fantastic. Fantastic. Okay. Cora locks down coordinates. Now it’s time to find out where you’re going. So take your die and roll it one more time.

Andrew Goff: Four.

Tim Villegas: You are going to the glass desert. The gravity is low, so Captain Dash, you’re gonna be bounding as you are on this glass desert of smooth glass under twin moons. Designation UC3, the Glass Desert. Surface conditions, dark. You’ve got two moons ahead of you. Teleporting now. Captain Dash, the light swallows you, and then you’re standing on the surface of UC3, the Glass Desert.

Your mission is simple. Learn what this world is. And we’re about to make points of interest on your scanner, which is your cards. So take your cards and draw six of them without looking at what they are, and place them face down in front of you. So six cards.

Andrew Goff: Three, four, five, six. And if it’s a joker, what happens?

Tim Villegas: Ooh, take out the joker.

Andrew Goff: I don’t know. I didn’t look at the cards. We’ll just hope that there isn’t one. Okay.

Tim Villegas: If it… We’ll make it work.

Andrew Goff: Okay. Adapt. Adapt.

Tim Villegas: We will adapt. We will adapt. Yeah. Okay. You’re running on reserve power, so there may be a point where we need to get you back on the ship.

So just letting you know that, okay? You have a choice here. You are on the desert planet. Gravity is low. Twin moons ahead of you. You can either explore, wait, or teleport back. What do you do?

Andrew Goff: Oh, I wanna meet my first goal, so I’m… Or my last goal, so explore.

Tim Villegas: You’re exploring. That feels right. Captain Dash wants to explore. Okay. Of course. So flip over any card.

Andrew Goff: All right.

Tim Villegas: Okay. Are you exploring fast or are you exploring careful?

Andrew Goff: My name is Dash, so is it ironic if I explore slowly?

Tim Villegas: However you wanna do it.

Andrew Goff: Okay. This is up to you. If it’s me, if it’s me who I am, then I just coincidentally got the name Dash, and I do the exact opposite, so I’m exploring slowly.

Tim Villegas: Okay. All right. So what’s your card?

Andrew Goff: Number three.

Tim Villegas: Three of what?

Andrew Goff: Diamonds.

Tim Villegas: Three of diamonds. Okay.

So from a distance, you see a river and you walk up very closely to this river. And as you are going up to the river, you see a six-eyed otter creature that’s floating on its back watching you. It taps the water twice with its paw, pauses, and then taps twice again, like an invitation. What do you do?

Andrew Goff: Because of my past experiences with otters, I understand how friendly they can be, and I approach, and I mimic what the otter does to see how it will respond after that. I have the belief that the otter is trying to communicate with me. I see them as very intelligent creatures. And as they move, I continue to move alongside.

Tim Villegas: So the otter sees that you’re mimicking its actions, and the otter dives under the river and then comes back up. What do you do?

Andrew Goff: I pause and just watch. I observe, trying to figure out what are they trying to communicate?

Tim Villegas: The otter sees that you are not mimicking anymore and dives and swims away.

Andrew Goff: Then I ponder. This is going to be a lesson that’s going to continue to follow me through the rest of my journey.

Tim Villegas: All right. All right. What do you wanna do now? Do you want to explore, do you want to wait, or do you want to teleport back to the ship?

Andrew Goff: Explore.

Tim Villegas: Explore. All right. Turn over another card. Okay, what do you got?

Andrew Goff: Nine of diamonds.

Tim Villegas: Nine of diamonds. Okay. Are you exploring fast or careful?

Andrew Goff: Carefully.

Tim Villegas: Carefully again. Okay. So you get out of the water, you shake yourself off. You’re floating a little bit because the gravity’s not so great, okay? So you’re shaking yourself off a little bit. And in the distance…

You said nine of diamonds. Off in the distance you hear a rumble of… They sound like elephant feet. And all of a sudden, off in the distance, you see a herd of pale-looking creatures that are huge but are not exactly elephants, but close to that, and they’re moving towards you through the dark.

And they’re singing this song, and they’re humming.

And then as the herd comes to you, your equipment that you have, your scanner, starts beeping very rapidly, and the herd looks at you and waits for what you’re going to do next. So what do you do?

Andrew Goff: I’m shocked. I didn’t expect that beeping. I was so engaged with the herd coming toward me, it throws me off of my observation.

And so as I am sitting there and hearing this beeping, it steals that attention, and the rumble sound that’s in the distance then begins to grab my attention, and I have lost all focus on what’s happening. I am startled. I don’t know what to do.

Tim Villegas: So the herd just looks at you, and then all of a sudden your equipment scanner stops beeping, and then they wander off, and you are left just wondering, what in the world was that?

So they’re going off. Okay. We’re getting a message from Cora, your mission computer. “Reserve power at 10%. I can bring you home exactly once, and the window closes in 60 seconds. There’s time for one more thing.” What do you do? Do you want to explore? Do you want to wait, or just head back to the ship?

Andrew Goff: I’ve gathered enough information to reflect on. I understand that through those few moments, there’s a lot of information that came at me, and I think that because I want to accomplish this one last goal in my life, I want to be very intentional and thoughtful about what my next steps are. So I’m going to accept Cora’s opening of the ship, and I’m gonna go up there with the thought that I need to consider very deeply what it is that I gathered from the otter and these other two creatures and the sounds and how my backpack or my, what was it? That was…

Tim Villegas: Your scanner.

Andrew Goff: Scanner. My scanner. Yeah. I imagine it’s in a backpack, though now I think about it, it’s probably in my hand. So…

Tim Villegas: Either way, it’s fine.

Andrew Goff: Yes. So I return to the ship.

Tim Villegas: Okay. So light swallows you again. You’re back aboard your ship, still wet, but alive, and through the porthole, the planet turns below, and somewhere down there, those other mysteries that you had in front of you, they’re still mysteries.

But that’s okay. That’s okay. Some things have to remain secret. So Cora opens up the ship log and waits for you to type into the log. The star chart still says UC3. You’re the only one who has ever stood on this planet, so it’s yours to name. What do you name this world?

Andrew Goff: Oof.

Tim Villegas: No wrong answer here.

Andrew Goff: See, I could be like, what kind of explorer am I? Am I the one that would call it Dashtopia? Or do I go and name it after some of the monuments that I observed? And I think I would go with that. I’ll call it… Because it’s the river in the middle of the desert, there are these creatures, I’ll just call it The Oasis.

Tim Villegas: Oasis. Okay, Oasis. Excellent. Excellent. Okay. And then you’re gonna record one line in the ship’s log. What will you remember about this place?

Andrew Goff: There are a lot of mysteries. There’s a lot still to be learned.

Tim Villegas: Cora updates the chart, designation entered. The engine’s warm, and you, Andrew Goff, set course for the next unfamiliar star. Thanks for playing.

Andrew Goff: Thank you for including me.

Tim Villegas: How was that?

Andrew Goff: That’s fun. Now I’m gonna go upstairs and write. Got a whole new book to write.

Tim Villegas: Yeah.

Andrew Goff: I’m gonna head into the science fiction genre ’cause that’s a place that I’ve never really dabbled with.

Tim Villegas: That was a lot of fun, Andrew. I really appreciate you on our maiden voyage of Awake Among the Stars. I really appreciate that. Andrew Goff, thank you so much for being on the Think Inclusive podcast.

Andrew Goff: Thanks for having me, Tim. It was such a fun time.

Tim Villegas: That was Andrew Goff. Here’s what I’m taking with me. When Andrew brought data showing that David was thriving, the answer he got back was that, “Well, it worked in your classroom, but it’s not gonna work in anyone else’s.” Now, sit with that for a second. Nobody argued the child was doing well. They argued that no other adult could do what Andrew had done.

So the child’s placement changed instead of the practices of the educators. And there is Andrew’s point about designing for the margins. He set the classroom up around the child with the most support needs, and the other kids started doing well, too, kids he had not realized were missing anything.

One practical step for educators. The next time a team says a student cannot succeed in a general education classroom, ask what would have to be true about that classroom for the student to succeed in it?

And then write that answer down so the team can see it and reflect on it, and maybe make a change to make that condition true in the classroom.

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. If you have something to share, please email me at tvillegas@mcie.org. Now, let’s roll the credits.

Think Inclusive is brought to you by me, Tim Villegas. This show is a proud production of the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education. Writing help from Claude, editing by Ray from Internet, scheduling and extra production help from Jill Wagoner. Our original music is by Miles Kredich, with extra vibes from Melod.ie. “Awake Among the Stars” is adapted from “Alone Among the Stars” by Takuma Okada.

You can find the original role-playing game in the link in our show notes. Big thanks to our sponsors, IXL and Inclusive Schooling. Visit ixl.com/inclusive and inclusiveschooling.com/mcie-behavior. If you’ve made it this far, you’re officially part of the Think Inclusive inclusion crew.

Want to help us keep moving the needle for inclusion? Head to mcie.org and click the donate button. Give 25, 55, 100, or even $1,000. 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.