Disability Justice and Inclusion: Meghan Ashburn & Jules Edwards Speak Out ~ 1309

Jules Edwards
Most of the money that is spent on quote unquote autism doesn’t benefit autistic people. It benefits people who are around autistic people.

Meghan Ashburn
If your kindergarten isn’t fully inclusive, you shouldn’t have a kindergarten. There’s something wrong with your kindergarten if you can’t include every 5-year-old. There’s something terribly wrong with your kindergarten setup.

Jules Edwards
But imagine if everybody had attended a school that was inclusive, where disabled kids and abled kids were learning together and learning from each other. Imagine how much better of a people we would be, just generally and culturally.

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 what happens when two people from very different backgrounds come together to challenge the dominant narratives around autism and disability and decide to write a book about it. Our guests are Meghan Ashburn and Jules Edwards, co-authors of I Will Die On This Hill. We talk about how their relationship started with tension and grew into collaboration, the colonial capitalist lens of autism advocacy, and why inclusive classrooms aren’t just better for disabled students—they’re better for everyone. We also dive into disability justice, the ethics of genetic research, and what it means to learn out loud in public. Before we meet our guests, 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. 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 Meghan Ashburn and Jules Edwards. Catch you on the other side.

Tim Villegas
Meghan Ashburn and Jules Edwards, welcome to the Think Inclusive Podcast.

Thank you for having us. Thanks for having us.

This is exciting. I have actually listened to about half of I’ll Die On This Hill and I am just blown away by the authentic truth that comes out in the book. I love your stories and one of the things that I think I’d just like to jump in here is that the way both of you met and collaborated on this book is really interesting to me. So I’m wondering if we could just start there, because it seemed like you had a little bit of an adversarial type of relationship. So who would like to start?

Jules Edwards
Meghan wants to start. Are you gonna make me start this time, Charles?

I am. Yeah. She usually makes me go first, but for this question I feel like it’s only fair.

Meghan Ashburn
Well, I guess we met online and we didn’t know each other and we were both in very different journeys and we’ve had very different experiences when it came to learning about autism, being autistic, and all of that. So we met kind of—it was a little bit adversarial, just a little bit, but not too much. Jules would see some of my posts and she would comment on things that were problematic and I didn’t really understand why they were problematic because I didn’t have the knowledge that Jules had yet. I guess you could say it started a little bit adversarial, but over time, I think Jules kind of did a little bit of reaching out to me and commenting on things that she did like after a little bit of time. Then I think there was a time when I messaged her at some point and asked her if she wouldn’t mind answering questions that I had. That, I think, kind of turned it around a little bit. Correct me if I’m wrong, Jules. My memory is always a little bit fuzzy.

Jules Edwards
Yeah. Meghan and I, our introduction to the world of autism generally and disability was around the same period of time. So we were both learning new stuff, but from different sources. She had a blog and I didn’t have a blog at first. I think Meghan is one of the few people who told me, start your own. So I did ultimately, but it was kind of messy at first because she would post some stuff and there was some problematic stuff. But overall, she had really good content. She had good ideas. She loves her kids, would do anything to protect them. But certain things just hadn’t occurred to her because the mainstream information that we have about autism, especially ten years ago, was very ableist, very biomed driven, just problematic. So I would comment and one of the comments that I made to her was, someday your kids are gonna read this. That just got under her skin. She did bite her tongue in her response, but it was kind of like, what do you mean? Because up until then, she had been told from medical professionals, doctors, etc., your kids are never gonna X, Y, Z, and this really fatalistic attitude.

Meghan Ashburn
They had never mentioned the future, that there was any hope for the future. It was all just, your kids are broken almost. That’s kind of the message that the professionals were giving me. I was like, who is she to say my kids are gonna be able to do something that nobody ever told me they would be able to read one day? It did rub me the wrong way, but it also was at the time when I was starting to learn from autistic people. I started reading books from autistic people and that learning experience turned everything around for how I was acting and maneuvering those spaces.

Tim Villegas
Meghan, you were a teacher, right? Elementary, is that right?

Meghan Ashburn
Elementary. That’s right.

Tim Villegas
And so I’m wondering, and I don’t know, Jules, about your background, but I was a former special education teacher and in teacher training, what you learn about autism, what you learn about disability is all from professionals, doctors, and you come at it with this way of, I’m gonna step in and fix. So I’m wondering, how much did that really inform how you approached raising your kids, at least at the beginning?

Meghan Ashburn
Honestly, I feel like I’m a little bit lucky since I had a general elementary education, so I think there was like a paragraph about autism in our textbook. So I didn’t even have that. Luckily I didn’t even have that. My background, I went to an inclusive preschool, I think back in the day it was called reverse inclusion. My mom had a daycare. I’ve always been in that kind of mindset about inclusion. Honestly, this was kind of the first time that I’ve been introduced to that real ableist, deficit-driven narrative is when I had my kids. A lot of it just didn’t sit right with me. My instincts were there, and then I was just getting all of this negative stuff thrown at me. So when I did start learning about ableism and from the disabled community, it just kind of clicked and was like, ah, that sounds more better. Definitely.

Tim Villegas
Yeah. And Jules, your journey to learn that you were autistic later in life, right? How did that inform a diagnosis of your kids?

Jules Edwards
Yeah, so my two oldest kids were diagnosed before me, and so we kind of suspected for a year or two. I was trying to learn more about it. Finally, when we got my oldest two kids in, they had full team neuropsych evaluations. The oldest was diagnosed right away. My second, they tried to diagnose him with oppositional defiant disorder because he’s an Afro indigenous kid, doesn’t fit the train scheduled stereotype as much. So they were like, you just don’t wanna listen. I was like, I don’t think that’s it. During his evaluation review meeting, you meet with the team afterwards to review the results from their evaluations. They’re like, well, we don’t think it’s autism. I’m like, well, what about this and this and this and this? They’re like, oh yeah, maybe we should add this evaluation on. Okay, he’ll come in again next week. I’m like, okay. Then they said he’s autistic. I’m like, okay, well I need to know everything about this, because I knew that I knew nothing. I think the reason that my kids were so delayed in their diagnosis—they were, I think, 11 and nine or something like that—was because of the misinformation that we got in the early 2000s. When my oldest was two years old, he was a flapper. His family sometimes called him Birdman just because he was flapping all the time. I Googled, I searched on the internet, why is my toddler flapping? Autism stuff came up. But the way that Autism Speaks and other organizations that hold that dominant narrative, the way they talk about autism, I couldn’t relate that to my kid. The way they were speaking about autistic people was gross. I’m like, nope. My kid is a gift. My child is a gift. So I knew that everything I knew about autism was wrong. I read every single book that was available in my county library system. I was requesting them from all the other branches from my city. I was listening to audiobooks and I watched VHS tapes. The more that I learned, I was like, wait, that’s me. So that was an interesting journey to discover that about myself. At the same time, I was learning how to be the parent my kids needed, because I know that for the first decade of my parenting journey, I was struggling. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was doing my best, but it wasn’t good enough. So blogging was very helpful.

Tim Villegas
I started a blog and podcast in 2012, so I totally relate to putting yourself out there and being surprised that people actually listened, number one. But then also writing something and being immediately regretful that you wrote it, because you get so much flack. So I give both of you a lot of credit for putting yourself out there and building your understanding in public, which I definitely can relate to. What made you want to do that in the first place? For me, it was about using this tool of blogging and social media and trying to connect with as many people about inclusive education as possible. I was so trying to figure it out and trying to get so many different people’s perspectives. Is that something similar? Why even step out into this kind of more public figure type of advocacy?

Meghan Ashburn
I think part of it was that, and then the other part was especially after I started learning things about AAC devices. Once I found the autistic community, I didn’t want other parents to have to wait as long. It took me way too long to learn these things and way too long to find the autistic community. I wanted it to come faster for other parents. I think that was the biggest thing for me in the beginning. Some of it was venting and some of it was just seeing who could help inform me about what I was going through as a parent. I just didn’t understand what was happening. Mainly, I think it’s been like, I want other parents to see this quicker. I want to reach them before they go down that other rabbit hole of—what’s it called?

Bio?

Tim Villegas
Like biomedical?

Meghan Ashburn
Yeah, before they go out. I want to reach them before they hit that rabbit hole because that’s a deep one to go down.

Tim Villegas
For sure.

Meghan Ashburn
So yeah, I think that’s for me, that’s why I kind of learn out loud.

Tim Villegas
Yeah, absolutely. How about you, Jules?

Jules Edwards
I didn’t want to do this publicly. I still kind of am uncomfortable with it. When I started the Autistic Typing page blog, etc., I was anonymous and I want to say it was for two years. I think the first two years I was anonymous because I didn’t want the spotlight on me or my kids. I still protect my children’s privacy very, very strongly. They have fake names, I never post pictures, etc. Meghan’s met them, so they’re real. I didn’t want to do it publicly, but I saw a need because so much autism advocacy, autism information is very white-centric. The native community has very, very little representation. One thing I don’t want to be is a token in this disability advocacy field, and it feels like that happens quite a bit. Having that cultural lens changes the way I think about autism, it changes the way I experience autism. I think that’s something that needs to be shared because it is very lonely to not know other native autistic people. You go to an autism support group and people have a completely different lens and it’s like, I don’t fit in here. I don’t fit in. I have met a few other native autistic people and I love that for me, including within my own family. Over time, it’s like, oh, okay, this apple comes from an apple tree. So that’s cool. But really it was like fulfilling a need. My name only became associated with my social media and stuff because of the book. But here I am and I much prefer doing stuff behind the scenes, like going to the capitol and testifying or consulting and meaningful change to things. I’ve worked with medical providers to provide culturally responsive care for disabled kids. I’ve done some consulting with schools. I’ve done all kinds of stuff, and I think it’s really fun and it really fits for my brand of ADHD that gets tired at a regular job after two years. Like, okay, I’ve mastered this. What’s next?

Tim Villegas
Right. I really liked your description in the book about constantly having to do things, and if you stop, you’re like, I’m done. I think that’s a really clear description of who you are. I picked up on that. I thought that was great. Well, it’s interesting about the book, right? So when did the book come out?

Jules Edwards
Two years ago. Two years ago, I think. In January.

Tim Villegas
Because I think I had been following at least Meghan on social media for a while, and I don’t remember how long that’s been, but it feels like the book just came out, honestly. I don’t know about y’all, but for me, it’s like, and so how has the book been received? What kind of feedback have you gotten? I know I’m way off script on the questions, but I’m just, you know.

Meghan Ashburn
That’s okay. We’re good with that. I feel like it’s been received well. I don’t even know how to answer that, honestly. I feel like people have reached out to say how much it has impacted them, so I feel like that’s awesome. It has sparked some conversation. I feel like it’s a very niche book and it’s not an easy read. I mean, I feel like it’s written easily to read, but it’s not a light read, you know, so it’s not like, oh, I loved your book. I felt so great afterwards. I don’t feel like anybody has said that or anything, but I feel like people have said that it’s important, you know? So I feel like it was a contribution. I also don’t think it ages that much, because we’re really talking about really broad topics and things that are just repeatedly happening over and over. The topics in the book just keep happening over and over again.

Tim Villegas
Yeah.

Meghan Ashburn
I like that part of it.

Tim Villegas
You said it sparked some conversation, so I’m wondering if you have an example.

Meghan Ashburn
No.

Tim Villegas
I mean, I can. Okay. So I didn’t mean to put you on the spot, but something that jumped out at me—and I’m not gonna get this right, so I apologize. It might be something that was in one of Jules’ chapters, but about, like you said before, the information coming out about autism really is white-centric and has this colonial, colonizer type of—I’m not gonna say it right. How would you say that? How would you say it? Because I don’t have the print version in front of me, so I should have bookmarked it.

Jules Edwards
No, it’s okay. I think you’re talking about that colonial capitalist lens.

Tim Villegas
Yes. There you go. That’s it. Oh my gosh, yes. Unpack that for us. Because I think—I was walking my dog and I listened to that, and I was just like, oh, yes. The colonial capital. Yes. Because I think that, and I think it goes along with the biomedical way of treating, quote unquote treating autism, right? You have this overwhelming—all of these curriculums, all of these medicines, all of these ways and procedures. People make a lot of money treating autism. Let me just say one thing before I let you go on this, because I think that—I come from this, when I first started in the field of special education, before I even became a teacher, I was a behavior therapist. Right out of college, I was a psychology major, and I was looking for a job and the first job I could find was as a behavior therapist. So they taught me discrete trial, ABA, all this stuff, right? I worked with young children on the spectrum, three, four, and five-year-old. I did in-home therapy and in-school therapy, and I was so blown away just hanging out with families and all of the money they were spending on all of this specialized food, curriculum, treatments, all this stuff. It’s not like that hasn’t stopped, right? However many, twenty-ish years later, people continue to spend a lot of money on treatment. So when you said that capitalist lens, I’m like, oh my gosh, that so rings true to me. Help us with our audience and unpack some of that for us.

Jules Edwards
There’s a lot to unpack there.

Jules Edwards
So, I mean, right now in the world, not to be too political, because I don’t want anybody turning off our interview before the end, but right now, this—few who have named themselves after a meme. And it’s doge. I don’t know how other people pronounce it, but that’s how I pronounce it. Yes. So, looking fraud, right? They’re looking for cost savings, they’re looking for whatever. And I’m thinking in my head, please discover the ABA effectiveness and cost effectiveness. Studies like TRICARE did a study, I think it was around 2018. You might be wrong, but around 2018, TRICARE, which is the military insurance provider, discovered that it’s not cost effective. They’re spending millions, billions of dollars on ABA. And it’s because we’ve been sold this idea by private equity firms that if we put our kids into essentially a full-time job to comply, they’re gonna be more normal because—

Tim Villegas
Forty hours a—yep.

Jules Edwards
Because we see human value as what they can contribute to capitalism, right? So we want to train these young humans to be workers. We want them to produce something. And so we have sub minimum wage. We have people in these—what is it called? 14C certification, I think that’s what it’s called, where employers can pay disabled people less than minimum wage to work. But it’s not often self-determined. It’s not often in consultation with a disabled person. So there’s very little choice. And it’s profitable for the employers. But then those people who are working can’t pay rent. They rely on food stamps in order to eat or food support. I’m old, so I grew up calling it food stamps. So these people who are often coerced or forced into these sub-minimum wage jobs can’t even reap the benefits of working, but they’re working. So it’s a lot of systems that are pulling money out of autism in whatever way they can. Most of the money that is spent on quote unquote autism doesn’t benefit autistic people. It benefits people who are around autistic people. So it could be providers, usually, it could be goods and services or whatever. But we know that autistic people are generally living in poverty—not generally, but very often. There was a study in the UK where 10% of all unhoused people meet the diagnostic criteria for autism but don’t have a diagnosis. If that’s happening in the UK, what is it here in the US? We don’t even have research on that because so little regard goes to our quality of life. It goes to fit in, fit in, fit in, because the United States loves assimilation. Like, oh, you’re weird. We don’t want you to be you, we want you to change, to fit into our narrow scope of what it means to be a person. It’s really dehumanizing. But it’s all about following the money. Where’s it coming, where’s it going? Because autistic people aren’t necessarily benefiting from it. I don’t know. And I don’t like it, and I don’t like the idea of having to change a disabled person because it makes somebody else uncomfortable. Like, okay, well be uncomfortable then. That sounds like a you problem, because I’m good over here if I’m managing my sensory stuff, if I’m eating foods that don’t make me sick. And that’s another thing that gets under my skin. You mentioned special diets and stuff like that to so-called help autistic people. Autism is a social communication and sensory disability. That’s it. That’s all, that’s the whole of it. It’s not a behavioral disorder, it’s not a behavioral disability, it’s not that. But the problem is that it’s diagnosed based on observable behaviors rather than a person’s experiences, and that’s kind of garbage. So there’s been work on tools to improve the diagnostic experience so we’re actually catching people who are traditionally missed.

Tim Villegas
Like girls and women, right?

Jules Edwards
Yeah, that’s—I mean, yeah. There’s a lot, right, there. But I think, you know, even when we first learn about autism, it’s like, the overrepresentation or underrepresentation of girls in the diagnosis criteria, period.

Tim Villegas
And then, as long as we’re making people mad, is there anything that you want to mention about the focus of the current administration on this false idea of the autism epidemic? Because one thing that—I mean, you don’t know this about me, but I teach an autism course for upcoming special educators who are going through alternate certification in Georgia. I might even actually have them listen to this conversation. But one of the things that is always a little bit scary to bring up is this idea of the rising rates of autism and that they have nothing to do with a vaccine schedule. There’s no connection between vaccines and autism, and there’s usually one or two students that are really upset by that because they have really strong beliefs about that connection. So I don’t know if that’s anything you want to talk about. You don’t have to, but—

Jules Edwards
So this is—listen, Tim, this is why I have a reputation.

Tim Villegas
Just like—

Jules Edwards
Okay.

She’s just sitting back slowly.

Yeah. Vaccines do not cause autism. That’s a thing. I know that there are people who believe that it is. And you know what, I understand people’s curiosity because we don’t have a definitive answer and a little bit further. I think it is possible that autistic parents of autistic kids—generally we like answers, we like real true facts, right? So our kid gets diagnosed and most of the time as parents, we’re not diagnosed. We don’t even have a clue. We think something is different about our kids and we don’t see ourselves in it necessarily. But I think that a lot of those people who are searching for answers are autistic themselves. Those parents who are like, well, something changed in my child after the vaccines, etc. Well, they probably were a little cranky that day. And you’re trying to pinpoint what happened and when. Well, kids are born autistic, that’s the thing. We know that autism is like an epigenetic thing, so we know that it’s genetic. It isn’t always heritable, but it is part of a person’s DNA. So it could be—what do they call it—a de novo mutation. So genes change one off, or it could be heritable, meaning you inherited a gene mutation from your parents. Whatever. Everybody has gene mutations. I’m not saying we’re mutants. Everybody has a bunch of them, just for those who aren’t familiar with those terms. And I know that RFK is—how do I say this nicely? I can’t. But he is nonsensical. He is irrational. He doesn’t care about facts. And let’s just be real. We know that even if they find a specific single cause of autism, if it’s an environmental thing, they’re gonna decide it’s not worth spending money on to prevent, because let’s look at what happens with lead in our water. We know it’s a neurotoxin. We know it causes harm, especially to children. And when we find it in our pipes, we just kind of shrug. Okay? And it’s like, oh, deal with it on your own. We look at places like Flint, Michigan. I just got a letter in the mail within the last year telling me that my house has lead pipes. We didn’t live in this house long ago. When my kids were diagnosed, we didn’t live in this house. We bought that house afterwards. So I’m not saying my kids have lead poisoning, but I’m saying there are a whole bunch of kids all over this country with lead poisoning and we just don’t care. So I know that people who probably cried when they had vaccines as kids and felt very victimized by those vaccines have carried that trauma forth to today. And they’re like, well, don’t put my kid through that. And they just want to come out with some villain also. What is it to think like, well, I would rather my child die of a preventable illness than have an autistic kid. But these people who think that way—and it’s a real thing. There was a child who died in Texas this year, like a month or two ago, and their parents are like, well, my child is with God now. Their whole thing was they didn’t want their kid to be autistic. Well, I would’ve—I mean, if their kid ended up being autistic and they didn’t want their kid, I would take the kid in. That’s the person I am. I love babies. But it doesn’t even make sense. It doesn’t make sense. And I am concerned about the implications for genetic research because there’s that Spark study. They’re trying to sequence DNA and find the specific DNA code that is related to autism. And there has not been any kind of ethics statement about we aren’t going to use this research to develop a prenatal test. Because what’s gonna happen, they’re gonna develop a prenatal test, and the US is going to start aborting millions of babies a year—or fetuses, pregnancies, I’m sorry, whatever. And based on incomplete information, because they aren’t going to sequence the mom’s DNA and the dad’s DNA and be like, oh, this is where it came from. You’re autistic too. Congratulations. It’s just like this weird target on children because we focus so much on kids and we have zero information or support for adults.

Tim Villegas
That’s interesting. I hadn’t heard about that study or that practice yet, so yeah. I’ll have to look more into that.

Meghan Ashburn
Yeah. Scary. They got it shut down, didn’t they? Or at least paused?

Jules Edwards
I don’t think so. I think Spark is still going, but a lot of the projects that I’ve been working on have been cut off. AWN lost a $30,000 grant. AWN is the Autistic Women and Non-binary Network. We lost a $30,000 grant, and that had a significant impact on the organization. A research project that I was working on with the National Institute of Health, NIH, that shut down because we were looking for appropriate diagnoses and inclusive, gender-inclusive stuff within the world of autism. And they’re like, oh—

Tim Villegas
Yeah.

Jules Edwards
Can’t have any of that.

Jules Edwards
Now we’re just gonna end up decades back, like we’ve lost decades worth of research already. It will take so much money and so much time and so much effort to recover what we have already lost. Because you can’t end a study and then just pick it up again a couple years later. You have to go back to the beginning.

Tim Villegas
Yeah. Meghan, do you have anything to add? Sorry, Jules, I didn’t mean to cut you off.

Meghan Ashburn
Good. I mean, there’s just so many directions that you can go in with this topic. It’s endless. The one thing that keeps going in my head is we’ve been here before, right? Like, whatever that thing that he was talking about, the RFK guy was talking about with the, if we’re gonna find this and we’re gonna do this, sounds eerily like a hundred years ago. So we’ve done this before. We know where this goes. It’s dangerous, honestly. That type of thinking. I just feel like we’re in a fun house. It’s just not very fun at all. It’s just not fun.

Tim Villegas
Not in a fun house. No, no, no. Well, I do agree we could stay on this topic for the rest of our time. But I did—so thank you for sharing your thoughts about that. It’s such a frustrating time to see people’s work and research be completely, just essentially thrown in the trash because of all these cuts. So, you know, my heart, our audience, our heart goes out to you and anyone who’s been working on things that are trying to improve people’s lives. So really, it’s a huge shame.

I do want to talk a little bit about your perspective with disability justice, because that is also something that you talk about in the book, and I like that you frame it as disability justice within the context of autism advocacy.

Jules Edwards
So Disability Justice was created by disabled women of color, disabled queer women of color, I believe in San Francisco, who wanted to address the cliffhangers of the ADA, so the Americans with Disabilities Act, which is a good thing that we have that is currently under threat. And also an example of how the colonial capitalist lenses impact disability and inclusion, etc. Because the ADA relies very, very heavily on lawsuits. In order to enforce your ADA rights, you have to file a lawsuit. Well, who can afford to do that? Not most disabled people. It’s good, but also not enough. So disability justice has ten principles that were meant to ensure better inclusion, more equity in disability inclusion and just living our lives. It’s meant to center people who are most impacted by systems—people who are non-speaking, people of color, people with multiple disabilities, etc. It’s meant to see the intersectionality of our lives because we don’t live single issue lives. Audrey Lorde said that, I don’t remember what year, but a long time ago. Our lives are so much more complex than a disability. Our cultures, our economic status, our families, our environments shape our experiences so much. So we also have to care about Black Lives Matter because it is disabled black people and Native American people who are being killed at the highest rates by law enforcement officers. Just a few days ago, a young man was shot nine times and he is currently fighting for his life. It is too often that happens, like it’s happened in my community. Kobe Heisler, we mentioned him in the book. I am acquainted with his mom and she does a lot of work with the Black Lives Matter movement. So disability justice—so much more of our lives. It’s more comprehensive and it’s really a framework just to guide how we advocate for our community and how we support our—

Meghan Ashburn
I think that anybody who’s listening to the podcast should go check out the Ten Principles of Disability Justice from their website and learn more about that.

Tim Villegas
Yeah. And we’ll make sure to put that in the show notes of this episode. When you were mentioning, Jules, about the enforcement of ADA, it reminds me a lot of the enforcement of IDEA because you have this law, right? That’s not funded—it’s funded at 12, 13% of the promised 40%. So schools aren’t even implementing it with the full financial support of the federal government. And then in order for a family to have any sort of recourse if they feel like their child’s rights have been violated, it’s really the goodwill of the school to fix it. And if they don’t, they have to sue. So it’s very much like—I don’t think I ever put it quite together like that until you mentioned about ADA and it’s just a—it puts families in a really tough spot.

Jules Edwards
It—

Tim Villegas
Does—

Jules Edwards
Special education, IDEA, it’s all part of the same system of—the more privilege you have, the more privileges you can access, I guess. Because I genuinely don’t think that what we call our disability rights are actually rights. I think they are privileges because if you can’t afford to enforce your right, it is a privilege for those who can afford to enforce their rights. We’ve been kicked out of public schools, not officially. We were pushed out of our local public school district, and because I couldn’t afford to enforce my kids’ rights, we found alternatives. It shouldn’t have to be that way, but it unfortunately is.

Tim Villegas
Yeah. And that’s what families have to do, unfortunately. Well, a lot of the process—

Meghan Ashburn
Is put in place or just not accessible. They’re not, you know, only to a select few. It’s not due process and all of that stuff. I mean, who can do that except for somebody that has the time and the money to spend? Most parents that I know don’t have either of those two things.

Tim Villegas
Right. We’ve talked a little bit about inclusion in the context of just the broader disability rights community and justice. I’m wondering—a lot of people that listen to this podcast in particular are deeply invested and committed to inclusive classrooms and schools and districts. I didn’t hear anything in the book specifically about that, but in full transparency, I didn’t listen to all of it. Is that something that you cover or do you have any thoughts about creating inclusive classrooms and schools and districts?

Meghan Ashburn
Yeah, we cover that in the book. It’s towards the end, I think. But I have very strong feelings about inclusion. I think I talk about that on my blog all the time. I feel very strongly that when done correctly and when there is—when, you know, I have to put the caveat up there of when it’s planned, when it’s thoughtful implementation, that there really is no debate about whether inclusion or inclusive environments are better than segregated environments. There is no debate on that. The research is clear. Decades and decades and decades of research. There’s not a debate on that. The only time I see when it’s not working is when it’s not being thoughtfully planned out, when it’s approached with an ableist view or when it’s approached with, I have to do this. I do see that not working in those situations, but segregated classrooms are more dangerous for our kids, much more dangerous. The notion that they are more supportive with less kids and more teachers and they’re calmer, that’s just untrue. It’s not based in reality for what a segregated setting looks like. It’s much more chaotic. It’s kids going in and out and teachers going in and out and they’re separated from the community. They are inherently much more dangerous for our kids than an integrated setting. I do soapbox on this all the time, but it’s true because I’ve seen so many different angles of this, even with my own kids, with my friends’ kids, I’ve seen it all over the country. I’ve seen it in my state and the work that I’m doing now with families. I see the trauma that comes out of segregated settings. Honestly, I’m at the point now that if your kindergarten isn’t fully inclusive, you shouldn’t have a kindergarten. There’s something wrong with your kindergarten if you can’t include every 5-year-old. There’s something terribly wrong with your kindergarten setup.

Jules Edwards
Absolutely. And there’s more to that. I mean, it’s such a complex topic. But I also want to be sure to emphasize that inclusion benefits everyone. It’s not a charity case for disabled kids. It’s good for typically developing students, it’s good for abled students to have an inclusive environment. It’s funny because we look around today and we look at this, you know, the autism rates are one in whatever, and “Oh, we never had this autism when I was young.” Yes, you did, but you didn’t know because the kids were secluded or put in other schools or whatever else. Asylum, like, you know, for the older folks. But I was autistic in the eighties, but nobody knew. They just thought I was weird and whatever else. Bullied. So, I mean, when kids learn to be inclusive, when they learn how to interact with disabled people—which is a wild thing, a lot of abled people have no idea how to talk to a disabled person. There’s even books about it. There’s books about how to talk to a disabled person. They’re just people. We’re just people.

Tim Villegas
Right.

Jules Edwards
But imagine if everybody had attended a school that was inclusive, where disabled kids and abled kids were learning together and learning from each other. Imagine how much better of a people we would be, just generally and culturally.

Meghan Ashburn
I don’t want to cut you off, I’m sorry, Jules. But imagine how much better our teachers would be now if they had grown up in an inclusive setting. How much better would they be at inclusion right now if they had that experience growing up? My kids’ classmates right now are learning about AAC. They have access to it in the classroom. Some of them have it on their own tablets now. That’s just one example of how much richer their education is than people that don’t have my son in their class. They’re learning things that other people are not learning, and that is a rich thing for kids to have those extra experiences about things that they might not be exposed to otherwise. So yeah, it does, it benefits everyone. It definitely does.

Tim Villegas
Yeah. I feel like I’ve been pretty—I don’t know if blessed is the right word, but accidentally prepped for inclusive thinking. I actually did not go to public school. I went to private school. So literally, the first time I heard about special education was in one of my last classes in college, and it was called The Psychology of the Exceptional Child. I thought I was going to learn about gifted kids. That’s when I learned about this whole system called special education and public schools. I had no clue. No clue. Looking back, I really feel like there were learners in my classes that had learning disabilities, maybe more obvious ones, but it just wasn’t a thing. We just all were in the same class and we were learning. I don’t know if it was necessarily intentional by the school, but it was never a thing. So yeah, I feel like I was already prepped as I was a teacher educator to interrogate some of those, like, well, why aren’t we separating those kids and why do we need this and that? But we’re all on a journey. I definitely was one of the people that was like, “Oh yeah, autistic kids need their own special place.” It wasn’t until I really started seeing and including my kids into general education that I was like, “Oh, yeah, of course it works. You just have to plan for it.” Like Meghan, like you said, you have to plan for it. You don’t expect to dump kids in a classroom with and without disabilities and just expect it to go okay.

Jules Edwards
Yeah. And too, it’s important to remember, you know, the gifted and talented programs or exceptional learners or advanced learners, whatever label we slap on that, that’s just a different end of the bell curve as intellectual disability. It’s the same bell curve and we’re still two standard deviations away from the mean on either end. So students with intellectual disabilities and students who are identified as gifted have the same intensity of learning support needs and the same need for adaptation. Schools get it so wrong, even with gifted students, about—we just pile on extra work. But that’s not what having a high IQ or whatever means. It’s not like, “Oh, I have more capacity to do work.” That’s not what that means. It means that we need to be creative and proactive and take different approaches to learning, etc. I have kids who—I hate the term twice exceptional, but there’s a use for it in identifying that a kid has very unique support needs. So when you have an autistic kid, an ADHD kid, and they’re also—my kids’ district calls it advanced learner—you need to make sure you’re not just overwhelming them and pushing them into burnout by giving them a whole lot of work. You need to give them immersive experiences. A lot of advanced learners still need multisensory learning; that benefits everyone because everybody has a different learning style. But being in an inclusive environment, people can build on other strengths and learn to work collaboratively and that benefits everyone.

Tim Villegas
Well, what we’re hearing again—is there anything you want to leave our audience of educators with?

Jules Edwards
Based on my experience, I would love educators to be very proactive about addressing bullying. Keep your eyes out for it. Keep your ears out for it. Don’t have predeterminations based on your own experiences with a student, whether or not they may or may not be bullied, or whether or not they may be the person doing the bullying. Because I think sometimes those preconceived notions about a student can influence whether or not they’re being protected. I know that pretty much every autistic person that I know was bullied in school. Maybe not every single one, but most of them, including my own kids. It makes school so much harder.

Tim Villegas
Yeah. Thank you for that.

Meghan Ashburn
If I’m going to leave with something, I think that I would like to speak directly to gen ed educators and empower them to take more of an active role in their schools for inclusion. I feel like a lot of times gen ed teachers feel like they don’t really have anything to do with that and those decisions, and really they have so much control over increasing inclusion for kids because all they have to do is ask for them to come. Invite those kids to your class, let them know, “Hey, they’re welcome.” Yes, it might not work all the time. It might not always be successful, but the more they do it, the more successful they’ll be. For those gen ed educators, I’d like for them to be more proactive in increasing inclusion for kids.

Tim Villegas
Alright. Teachers, you heard it. Meghan is imploring you to get those kids, bring them to your room.

Meghan Ashburn
That’s right.

Tim Villegas
We’ve covered a lot from the economics of autism treatment to the power of inclusive classrooms. Now to wrap things up, it’s time for our favorite segment, the mystery question written by my daughter. Let’s see what Jules and Meghan have to say.

Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate that. And thank you both for being here. Before I let you go, it’s mystery question time. These questions written by my 12-year-old and I’m going to randomly pick one. Hopefully it’s a good one. And then we’ll all answer it. Okay. Here we go. What is your favorite word and why? Put that on the screen. What is your favorite word and why? PG maybe PG-13. Okay.

Jules Edwards
Okay. I’m just gonna go, I really love the word putrid.

Tim Villegas
Okay.

Jules Edwards
I don’t know why this would just come up as one of my favorite words, but it’s such a distinct word and it can be applied so many different ways. It’s a good descriptor when something is just not right. And it’s not offensive, it’s not mean, but it’s just kind of one of those things where it’s like, that’s putrid. I actually—I grew up babysitting a lot and I babysat for one of my cousins. I taught them that word when they were little. One of my cousins would sing a song about her brother, and it was about how putrid he was.

Tim Villegas
Oh my goodness. Putrid. Okay. That is a good word. That is a great word.

Meghan Ashburn
I want to go last, Tim. I still need time. Oh my gosh.

Tim Villegas
I’m gonna need a second. There’s so many words.

Meghan Ashburn
Rob, your kid asks such a great question. I wanted to make sure I’m accurate.

Tim Villegas
It’s a great question. She asks good questions. Maybe future podcaster. Gosh. I don’t know which way to go here. I’m just gonna try to not think about it too much. Okay, I’m gonna go this way. It’s not a super complicated word, but we’re gonna go with it. I really like the word mindful. So mindful. I’ve talked a lot about meditation on this podcast now, so I apologize for everyone who’s just like, “Oh, here he goes, he’s talking about meditation again.” But it’s such an important word for me now, about being mindful. I used to think that mindful or mindfulness was like this afterthought, right? That this was, “Oh, you should be more present, you should be,” you know, all this stuff. But being mindful or being present actually takes the pressure off of you constantly thinking about things in your subconscious and it actually brings your stress level down so much. Once you start to actually have this practice of mindfulness. So it has become so important to me. Once you learn something, you want to tell everyone about it. That’s exactly how I feel about this. So again, apologies for everyone who’s like, “This is like the hundredth time you told me, Tim,” but yes. Mindful or mindfulness, that’s really important and I love that word. So there you go. Meghan, did I give you enough time?

Meghan Ashburn
No, it—Meghan. Gosh, hard. Don’t think about it too much. I had to—I mean, it is a tough question, but good for you. The pressure is just mounting. I’m just gonna say my favorite word is sunset.

Tim Villegas
Okay. And why?

Meghan Ashburn
Because that’s my favorite thing to look at. So there you go. That’s what popped into my head. I know it’s not very deep or anything, but I don’t know. It’s my favorite thing. So my favorite word is gonna be sunset.

Tim Villegas
I like that. I like that. We should all watch more sunsets, right?

Meghan Ashburn
I think so. Yeah, I definitely think so.

Tim Villegas
Awesome. Awesome. Meghan Ashburn and Jules Edwards, thank you so much for being on the Think Inclusive podcast. We appreciate it so much.

Meghan Ashburn
Thanks for having us. Thank you.

Tim Villegas
That was Meghan Ashburn and Jules Edwards. Here is what I’m taking with me. Inclusion isn’t just about access. It is about intention. You can’t just place students with and without disabilities in the same room and expect it to work. As Meghan said, you have to plan for it. And when you do, everyone benefits. That’s at the heart of what we’re trying to do here—build schools where every learner belongs. If you’re a general education teacher, here is one practical step: take the initiative and invite learners with disabilities into your classroom. Let them know that they are welcome. Share this episode with a colleague who’s building inclusive schools. Rate and review us on Apple Podcast or Spotify and follow Think Inclusive wherever you get your podcasts.

Shout out to our listeners in Toronto, Ontario. I may be rooting against your team in the World Series. Sorry, I’m a lifelong Dodger fan here, but I’ll always be rooting for you and all of you who are doing the work of inclusion every single day. So thank you. If you have something to share, you can always email me at tvillegas@mcie.org.

Time for the credits. Think Inclusive is brought to you by me, Tim Villegas. I write, edit, mix, master—I basically wear all the podcast hats and the 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 for today: autistic people are more likely to be super tasters. That is from a 2014 journal article, Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders: Taste Identification in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders. What does super taster mean? Well, that means they may experience taste more intensely than non-autistic people. This heightened sensitivity can make certain foods taste overwhelmingly bitter, spicy, or sour, which may explain some common food aversions. Are you or someone you know a super taster? I’d love to know about it. Email me at tvillegas@mcie.org. I read every single message.

If you’ve made it this far into the episode, you are very likely a superfan and you’re officially part of the Think Inclusive Inclusion Crew. Want to help us keep moving the needle for inclusion? Head to mcie.org, click the donate button and 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.