Building Inclusive Classroom Tools: A Conversation with Tany Holzworth ~ 1037

Tim Villegas
Hi friends, Tim Villegas here from MCIE with a preseason bonus episode. As I was preparing for season 11 of Think Inclusive, I found an old interview I did with the really fascinating person, Tany Holzworth. I think we originally recorded it to be part of my newsletter, The Weekly-ish, but it just never got produced. Sorry, Tany. But now, it gets new life as a bonus just for you, dear listener.

And if this is the first time you’ve ever listened to Think Inclusive and you’re like, “What is this pod? I am not sure if I like this,” I would listen to the last episode of season 10, where I interview Carolyn Teague Lind and Carol Quirk. We talk about the mission of the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education and some success stories from the past year. It’s a great listen, and it really sets up what we’re trying to do with this pod going forward, which is to bring people together from all different backgrounds to create a shared understanding of what inclusive education really means.

For this episode, my guest is Tany Holzworth, a Content Designer for inclusive classroom tools at Microsoft. She shares her journey from being a paraprofessional for students with disabilities to working at Woodland Park Zoo, and eventually joining Microsoft. She discusses the importance of inclusion and diversity in volunteer programs and highlights the impact of her work at the zoo, including a story of a volunteer with autism who went on to become a paid staff member. Tany also talks about her role at Microsoft where she focuses on making products more accessible and inclusive for all learners.

After a short break, my interview with Tany Holzworth.

Tany Holzworth
I’m Tany Holzworth, my pronouns are she/her. And right now, I’m a content designer for inclusive classroom tools at Microsoft.

Tim Villegas
So how long have you been doing that, working for Microsoft?

Tany Holzworth
For Microsoft, I’m coming up on two years.

Tim Villegas
Okay, and it hasn’t been all inclusive classroom tools?

Tany Holzworth
Yep, I was hired specifically to work on the set of inclusive classroom tools that they are building and have built. Some of the things you might be familiar with are Immersive Reader, Reading Progress, Math Assistant. We’re building a product called Reflect that helps people share their emotions with their educators and tap into that SEL part of seeing the whole student. So those are some of the big main projects that we’re working on right now.

Tim Villegas
Okay, and tell me your background. Were you an educator?

Tany Holzworth
Yes, so when I first got out of college, I was a paraprofessional for students with severe profound disabilities for about seven years. I did it in Fort Collins, Colorado for a while at a school that was really progressive at the time for what inclusion is. I don’t know that we would call it super progressive these days, but it was a leader at the time. And then I moved to Denver and worked at a school that had a way more segregated special education program. We were in the back corner of the building and got forgotten about a lot, had maybe 15% inclusion in that school. And it really made me feel like I wanted to go back to school and be able to push back against that.

As a paraprofessional, I didn’t have a lot of space for pushback. So I went back to school and got my master’s with the intent of being a general education teacher who had this experience with people with disabilities and was ready to invite them into my classroom. Because I know how hard it is for special education teachers to flip that on its head and say, “Please, invite these kids, support these kids. They deserve to be in your class.”

But you know how the education system is, and I was pretty burned out by the time I got done with school and was really excited about moving into a space where I could help with inclusion without dealing with the politics of the school system. And so that’s when I got to work at Woodland Park Zoo and help build an inclusive volunteer program there.

Tim Villegas
So I’m just trying to figure out your path here. So your path was paraprofessional, and then you went back to school wanting to become a general education classroom teacher, and then you detoured into working… So that was in Seattle?

Tany Holzworth
Uh-huh. Yeah. So I moved to Seattle so that I could support that program.

Tim Villegas
So you moved to Seattle for the program at the zoo?

Tany Holzworth
Yeah.

Tim Villegas
Wow. Okay, so tell me more about that. How did that even start?

Tany Holzworth
Yeah. So the zoo was really looking to build a more inclusive volunteer program. I think you can imagine volunteer programs—a lot of the time, they’re mostly privileged, white, elderly, retired folks who have the time and the privilege to volunteer, which is wonderful. But they’re not very diverse, and it can be alienating to guests to only have volunteers that are elderly white folks.

So the zoo recognized that and said, “Okay, we want to take some steps to make this volunteer program more diverse. What barriers are in the way of that happening?” They decided to take on including more folks with disabilities as a first step to making that volunteer program more diverse.

They applied for an Institute of Museum and Library Services grant to support that program. So that’s how I got funded to work full time on the project. We had funding to run focus groups and build a coalition of folks to provide feedback and continue to iterate on the program so that we could make it work for folks with disabilities.

Tim Villegas
And this started in…?

Tany Holzworth
2018.

Tim Villegas
And so I might have missed it—so the grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, how were you involved with that?

Tany Holzworth
The grant was issued to the zoo, and that paid my salary and allowed me to work at the zoo, advise, and run this program. I managed the grant and the budget to see what we could do and what we could build.

Tim Villegas
So you were in Colorado, and did you think, “What am I going to do next?” and then you found this opportunity?

Tany Holzworth
Yeah, it was a great opportunity. Perfect match.

Tim Villegas
So you moved to Seattle to help facilitate and start this. How long were you there?

Tany Holzworth
It started in 2018, and then obviously, we had COVID in 2020. The idea was the IMLS grant was supposed to last for two years, but the zoo had committed to investing in inclusion and having a person that was the accessibility and inclusion expert full time indefinitely. But then 2020 happened and I got laid off. So the intent was for it to be longer, but I was there for two years.

Tim Villegas
Has the program continued?

Tany Holzworth
The program has continued. There’s somebody there supporting it now. They got a second grant that is supporting making the zoo more accessible for guests as well—going through and making physical and programmatic changes to make everything more multimodal so that people can engage no matter how they engage with things.

Tim Villegas
Yeah. So I find this really interesting because the museums or zoos that I’ve been to that have made an effort toward inclusion—usually that’s the kind of thing that we’re talking about: making things more accessible, whether the content is more accessible or the physical spaces more accessible. But I have yet to hear about what was originally proposed about having diversity in the volunteers. My mom used to call those people docents. Do people call them docents anymore?

Tany Holzworth
Yeah. We kind of had a setup at the zoo that had two levels of volunteers. We had volunteers and we had docents. Docents take a lot of classes to be a docent, and so there’s a certain amount of prestige with it. They dedicate a certain amount of hours and have a lot of knowledge, which is awesome.

We also have volunteers at the zoo that just help people navigate. They walk around, answer questions, tell people where the bathroom is or where their favorite animal is, or what the animals’ names are. For most folks that visit the zoo, that’s what they’re looking for. They don’t really want to talk for 20 minutes about animal bones, especially when we’re talking about little kids—they’re going from one exhibit to the next.

So we have a lot of volunteers providing those basic supports: handing out maps, answering questions. There are so many opportunities for people with any level of disability to participate in a way that suits them best.

I had people who were coming in and just providing hand sanitizer after kids had the chance to pet turtles, and that was their one task. They loved it. They made kids laugh and gave them hand sanitizer every day. I had people who were super into giraffes and would go and stand by the giraffe exhibit all day and talk to people about giraffes and what their names are and where they came from. They had every detail about each giraffe’s life memorized.

So there are so many opportunities for different types of people with disabilities to participate in a way that really made them shine.

Tim Villegas
That sounds like a fantastic opportunity. Is there any particular story about your experience at Woodland Park Zoo that comes to mind? Like if I said, “What was the most amazing thing that you ever saw while you were there?”

Tany Holzworth
The most exciting thing that happened for us is we had a volunteer who has autism and volunteered with a family member before the program had started. They interviewed together, and the family member said, “This volunteer has autism. I’d like to come with them and provide the support.” That worked out well before the program, but unfortunately, their family member got sick and couldn’t continue to support them coming to the zoo.

At that point, they kind of fell off the radar and weren’t volunteering anymore. I went to talk to the supervisor of the program and asked, “Is there a reason why this person needs to volunteer with their family member? Can we bring them back in? What kind of support can we get them so they can come back?”

The supervisor said, “Well, they just never have volunteered without their family member.” And I said, “That doesn’t necessarily mean they can’t do it. It just means they haven’t.” So let’s try it out.

We got their job coach involved. They came to the zoo a couple of times with their job coach, and it was evident within a day—they don’t need anybody to support them. They can come volunteer at the zoo all by themselves, no problem.

It was interesting to see that some sort of mental barrier had been put up—that this person wasn’t capable—even though there was no indication that they weren’t. That came from their own family and from the volunteer program.

They started volunteering on their own, and then two weeks later, they applied for a job at the zoo. They interviewed with minimal support from their job coach and then were preparing meals for the animals just a couple of weeks later. They went from having fallen off the program to being a paid staff member at the zoo within just a couple of weeks. That was the most exciting thing that ever happened.

Tim Villegas
That is exciting. Wow. What did it mean for you? I know that one particular story seemed like confirmation that this was a good thing for you to be doing. It reinforced some of the things we talk about in inclusion, like presuming competence—don’t assume a person can’t do something when we haven’t given them a chance. Are there any other lessons or things that were reinforced when you had this position?

Tany Holzworth
Yeah. There are a couple of things. When we first got started, the attitude was kind of like, “How do we create a track for people with disabilities to join the volunteer program?” And I said, “We’re not going to create a separate track for people. That’s not what inclusion is. We’re going to see how we can make the main track more accessible for more people.”

Tim Villegas
Can you explain what that means? What would that have meant—having a track?

Tany Holzworth
Sure. The process of onboarding to be a volunteer: people have to fill out an application, come to an info session to confirm they understand the commitments, then do two full days of training, and then shadow an existing volunteer for two days. That’s how it was before I got there, and it had been that way for a long time.

We kept it that way because it had aspects that were really accessible—repeated information, supported learning opportunities from experienced volunteers. But what we did was make sure all the applications had information about requesting accommodations, getting an interpreter, and so on.

For example, one woman who was blind couldn’t fill out the application independently, so she called me and I did it over the phone. It was super easy, but there had never been a phone number to call before. Just providing that information made a big difference.

The other piece was deciding that the only way to get people comfortable with disability was to just do it. A lot of volunteers were elderly and hadn’t had exposure to people with disabilities. There was fear and hesitation. People asked, “How are you going to prepare us? How are you going to train us?”

We did some trainings, but I told them, “You’re never going to feel ready. Introducing you to concepts is not the same as being around people.” So we brought people into the program. If you don’t like it, that’s too bad. And it worked out great. People joined the program, and the trepidation melted away. Everyone saw that volunteers were contributing in their own way, and it didn’t bother anyone else.

Tim Villegas
I’m curious—when you were here in Atlanta, did you visit Zoo Atlanta?

Tany Holzworth
I volunteered at Zoo Atlanta when I was in Atlanta because I missed being there.

Tim Villegas
Yeah. I’m trying to think if they had sensory bags.

Tany Holzworth
Zoo Atlanta has that too.

Tim Villegas
This is so great because whenever I talk with anyone about inclusion outside of schools, the same issues come up: mindset, presuming competence, people being afraid.

Tany Holzworth
Exactly. People worry, “What if this happens?” We’re not going to ask someone to volunteer who has a trigger for elephant noises. We interview people for a reason and invite the right people to be volunteers. The requirements for being a volunteer aren’t about how much you know about animals or how much you can lift. It’s about: Can you provide customer service? Can you commit to six hours a month? Do you love animals? Are you willing to say you don’t know when you don’t know something? Great—welcome to the team.

There were some people who felt their value as a volunteer was devalued by people with disabilities being part of the program. We had to address that and work on our internal culture to say, “That’s not acceptable. Your contributions are different from someone else’s, but your value isn’t different or hierarchical.”

Tim Villegas
If somebody is listening to this conversation and says, “I want this model to be replicated at Zoo Atlanta, the Chattanooga Zoo, or anywhere else,” do you have any suggestions on how they could start?

Tany Holzworth
The first thing to do is assess your accessibility webpage. That’s what we did at Woodland Park Zoo. A lot of people didn’t perceive the zoo as a place they could volunteer because it wasn’t perceived as accessible. There wasn’t a map showing accessible bathrooms, for example.

So we improved the webpage and added phone numbers so people could call and ask questions. That made a big difference. We changed volunteer applications to reflect what we were actually looking for in a volunteer and make them less docent-oriented. You don’t have to be a scientist to volunteer at the zoo.

A lot of zoos and conservation organizations are embracing the idea that getting anybody involved at any level in conservation is the point. So shifting from “We’re an educational organization” to “We’re a community and conservation organization” makes a big difference.

But number one: just bring people into the program. You’re never going to prepare people for disability. They’ll always feel hesitant until they meet someone and realize it’s not a threat to share space and passion with someone who’s disabled.

Tim Villegas
This is great. I’m really happy you reached out to talk about this because it wasn’t on my radar. So cool. Let’s talk a little bit about Microsoft.

Tany Holzworth
It’s funny—actually a little ironic. The way I found out there was a position at Microsoft was that one of the volunteers I supported at Woodland Park Zoo had a mom who works at Microsoft. I saw on LinkedIn that there was a position and thought, “I know her, and I write things—articles, grant proposals, lesson plans. Maybe I could be a writer for Microsoft.” So there is a connection from the zoo to Microsoft, but it’s not super direct.

Tim Villegas
So you said you write for Microsoft. Tell me more about that.

Tany Holzworth
Content design is a new discipline. I didn’t know what it was when I applied. What it means is writing the buttons and interface inside the products. Engineers know what things mean and how they work, but they might not know how people interpret them. My job is to take it from engineer language to customer-facing language and make it as inclusive as possible.

I also write support documents so people can troubleshoot on their own. And I work on shifting the mindset in the writing community at Microsoft about how we talk about disability and inclusion.

For example, destigmatizing the word “disabled.” It’s okay to say disabled. Not saying it implies it’s scary or bad. We also frame products not in age ranges but in support needs. For example, Immersive Reader might be labeled for ages 7–12, but that’s not inclusive for adults who are dyslexic. I use Immersive Reader because the white in Outlook hurts my eyes.

Language isn’t just semantics—it frames how people think. Being intentional about it makes a difference.

Tim Villegas
Do you have any stories about how some educators have used the tools? Or do you just want to highlight what the tools do?

Tany Holzworth
I know you said you used Immersive Reader with your students.

Tim Villegas
Yeah, I did. I taught 13 years in the classroom and three years as a district support specialist. When I was in the classroom, I taught in segregated self-contained classrooms because my districts didn’t have inclusive options for students with intellectual disabilities. So I was a self-contained teacher trying to include my kids—collaborating with gen ed teachers to get them in.

We used Immersive Reader a lot. Some online textbooks had that feature, but sometimes they didn’t. So we would copy and paste text into Immersive Reader, and it would read it for them. Or we’d assign lessons and use Immersive Reader to read prompts.

Tany Holzworth
Yeah, I love Immersive Reader. It’s my favorite tool because it’s so applicable in classrooms. Students can use it in Edge on any webpage, turn it on, and have text read to them or highlighted so they can read along.

I used it with students to reinforce basic reading skills. They could read but had a hard time attending. Immersive Reader helped them stay engaged without hand-over-hand support, and it made them feel more independent.

The other tool I’m excited about is Reading Progress. Students can record themselves reading out loud, rewatch the recording, decide if they like it, and submit it. It gets returned with edits—words highlighted if they were skipped or repeated. They can redo it and see improvement from one practice to the next.

Tim Villegas
Are the texts self-selected?

Tany Holzworth
Texts are assigned by educators, but they can choose anything.

Tim Villegas
And the edits—are they teacher edits or AI edits?

Tany Holzworth
AI. It interprets the student’s speech and pronunciation and flags skipped or repeated words.

Tim Villegas
Is this product out now?

Tany Holzworth
Yes, it’s out now. Educators are starting to use it. We released it last year, so we expect more adoption this school year.

Tim Villegas
As an educator, that would have been really nice to have.

Tany Holzworth
A lot of educators use it for running records. Instead of pulling a student into the hallway and leaving chaos in the classroom, you can manage the class while students record themselves.

Tim Villegas
Anything else about the tools you want to mention?

Tany Holzworth
Less about the tools and more about Microsoft’s framework. Microsoft is a great company for disability inclusion. Everything goes through accessibility checklists and standards. But there’s still work to do on how people think about inclusion—moving away from “inspiration” stories and toward designing with and for people with disabilities as part of the community.

Tim Villegas
Thanks for listening to this preseason bonus episode of Think Inclusive. Make sure you check out all of the inclusive classroom tools Microsoft has to offer. I’ve put a link in the show notes to a blog post that highlights some of the ones we talked about today.

Can’t get enough of Think Inclusive? Become a patron at patreon.com/thinkinclusivepodcast. Follow us on socials—Facebook, Instagram, Threads, LinkedIn, and more. Find us at thinkinclusive.us. For more information about inclusive education or how MCIE can partner with your school or district, go to mcie.org/contact.

We’ll be back next week with another preseason bonus. Enjoy the rest of your week, and remember: inclusion always works.