If Not Now, Then When? Early Childhood Education, LRE, and Inclusion with Melissa McCollough and Jani Kozlowski ~ 1337

Melissa McCollough: We were able to provide that for her, just the gift of her seeing other children near him just fighting over being able to push him down the hallway, or fighting over being able to be a part of the therapy session where they’re helping him with a switch or whatever. Just seeing that outpouring of love from not just the adults, but also the peers and the other families in the programming, was pretty powerful. And like you said, just a gift to be able to give a family that, maybe that is not gonna be the same picture for his kindergarten through 12 experience.

Jani Kozlowski: It’s excellent for the individual child who then is able to be served in the place they would be. Maybe their siblings go to that childcare center, or it’s more convenient to that family’s work, or for whatever reason, but that’s where they would be if they didn’t have a disability. But the other neat thing that happens is that the childcare teacher or the Head Start teacher learns really valuable strategies that then they not only use with that child with an IEP, but they can use with other children as well.

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 getting inclusion right from the very start, because when belonging is built into a child’s first experience of school, there’s nothing to undo later.

Or as one of my guests likes to say, “If not now, then when?” I’m joined by two people who live this work every day. Melissa McCollough is the principal and director of early childhood for the East Moline School District in Illinois, where every preschool classroom is an inclusive one. And Jani Kozlowski, a technical assistance specialist with the Early Childhood Technical Assistance Center at University of North Carolina’s Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute, and the author of Every Child Can Fly.

We talk about what makes early childhood inclusion different from K-12, how to explain least restrictive environment to a family hearing those words for the first time, and a model where teachers travel to children instead of children traveling to services. Oh, and Jani recently got back from Japan, where she spent some time observing early childhood classrooms. I’ll let her tell you why.

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, 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 Melissa McCollough and Jani Kozlowski. Catch you on the other side.

Melissa McCollough and Jani Kozlowski, welcome to the Think Inclusive podcast.

Melissa McCollough: Thank you, Tim.

Jani Kozlowski: Thanks for having us.

Tim Villegas: All right. Who’s ready to talk about inclusive early childhood education?

Melissa McCollough: We always are.

Jani Kozlowski: That’s right. Bring it on.

Tim Villegas: All listeners and watchers and viewers of Think Inclusive are very familiar with us talking about inclusion from a K-12 lens. But I love having people on to talk about early childhood education. Jani, you’ve been on a few times. Melissa, we had you on, gosh, a few years ago now, to talk about inclusive early childhood. So either one, jump in, but why don’t we get started with the question: how is early childhood education different from inclusive education K-12?

Jani Kozlowski: Maybe I can take that, and then Melissa can talk about what it looks like in your district. We’ve loved this partnership with you, Tim, because for the early childhood leaders in states, in order to make inclusion happen in places like state pre-K programs or early childhood special education programs, there really needs to be partnerships with childcare and Head Start.

And so reaching out into the community is very different from the way inclusion looks in K-12 settings. This connection back and forth between the community is so critical in early childhood. I remember when I first heard Melissa’s interview a few years ago, and she talked about how she had learned about what early childhood special ed should look like, and then she got out of grad school and went to a district and it wasn’t necessarily that way.

And so the first thing she did was reach out to the community and do some field trips with teachers and think about how to implement it in her district, and it was really powerful. So anyway, Melissa, I know you have a lot more experience with this in the real world than I do. How is it different from your perspective?

Melissa McCollough: Yeah, thanks, Jani. So I think, just the initial question, it’s the perfect opportunity. What makes it different from K through 12 is just that natural environment in the early learning world, whether it’s zero to five or three to five. It’s just the perfect opportunity when the brain is ready and when we’re just beginning that journey.

And we always say, “If not now, then when?” So it is different, because developmentally appropriate practices are different in early childhood than they would be K through 12, but it just seems to fit. It seems to be just the right thing to do at that age level. Not that it’s not the right thing to do later, because it is for sure.

But it just naturally lends itself with those practices, to be able to have those opportunities in early childhood and build it straight from the start, right? Just build that right into our foundation of that effective workforce, for not just our staff, but for kids too. And then hopefully we can keep paving the way and keep the momentum going so that it does continue up into elementary and K through 12.

Tim Villegas: Now, in the intro of this episode, I’m sure that I mentioned the district that you work for in Illinois. But I’m wondering if you could set the scene and paint a picture for our listeners of what it looks like for an early learner who is enrolling in a class or a program, and maybe how that model is different from a, I would say typical—I don’t know if that is the right word—program where you have a student with particular learning needs, and the program that they go in is not an inclusive one. Maybe it is a, quote-unquote, “special needs” program, or a program that only serves students with disabilities.

Melissa McCollough: Sure. In our district—yeah, we’re in Illinois, we’re in the East Moline School District. And since we talked last time, Tim, we have been able to expand our program. So currently, if you’re an early childhood student here, you might be in an early childhood classroom for half the day, a half-day session, or we now have full-day sessions. So that has a whole other list of advantages to being here for the full day.

But obviously, all of our classrooms are blended, so we have the opportunity for children with and without disabilities to learn together and to play together. And depending on what your needs are—whether you need to have some differentiation happening because we need to challenge you a little bit more because you’re maybe at the higher end of typical development, or maybe it’s a child who’s transitioning from early intervention or birth to three services and this is the first time that they’ve ever been in a setting with other children or anything structured.

And in terms of how it’s different, like I said, our classrooms are blended, so our general education teacher is also the special education teacher. All kids in that classroom receive the same experience, and they just get what they need. Which is different than if maybe a child is transitioning out of the zero to three program and their parents are trying to figure out what’s the next step for them, and they’re getting the input from their early intervention providers, and they’re looking to see what all is available.

There are more restrictive options in the community, and there are community-based organizations that are not restrictive at all because they don’t have the services that they need. And so I think we just have the just-right challenge here. If we’re talking about the three bears, it’s just the right porridge here, because we’re giving all kids what they need, with a wraparound plan of services, and always thinking about the least restrictive environment.

Tim Villegas: Jani, I’m wondering if you could bring a perspective—and Melissa, you mentioned LRE. How do you describe LRE to a family who is navigating this for the first time? Maybe they just received a diagnosis, or maybe in the zero to three they’re figuring out what kinds of support needs are right for my child. And then they get hit with this concept of least restrictive environment. How do you go about explaining that and how it relates to placement in a program?

Jani Kozlowski: Yeah, and I was thinking too, when we started out talking about what’s the difference—the difference is also that families come to us with a preschooler, they don’t have this experience of school. So that’s another difference: that early childhood can really have a big impact on supporting families right from the start, when their child just enters school.

But the thing that I would go back to in talking about families about what LRE means is that children with disabilities, according to IDEA, should be educated in the place that they would be if they didn’t have a disability, unless it’s not possible without supplemental supports, aids and services.

And for families to think about, “Where would my child be? What would be the place where I would most want my child to be educated in preschool if they didn’t have a disability?” If that’s childcare, then let’s bring the services there. That’s something that Melissa is trying in her district right now: taking services into a visiting model. Or if it’s in a program that’s available, like in Melissa’s, where every child in the district that gets public pre-K is in this blended program. So either way, I think it starts with the family recognizing that the least restrictive environment is the place where the child would be if they didn’t have a disability. And it’s really up to us to bring the services to the child so that it’s possible for them to experience that.

Tim Villegas: Melissa, and then just before I forget, I wanna talk more about the visiting or itinerant model—and I’m assuming that is the same thing, right? Yes. Okay. So I wanna make sure we talk about that, but yes, Melissa, if you have anything to add.

Melissa McCollough: Yeah, I just wanted to say, Jani, you mentioned that transition is so important from early intervention to the school district, and I think it’s so important for the school district and the early intervention system to have those strong partnerships and those strong relationships so that we can pave the way and facilitate that transition process.

So by the time that the school district is reaching out to the families, they should be aware of what’s available in their community and be given the information about some of their options: what do I do after I turn three, what are the next steps? We work very closely with our child and family connections, our CFC, and having that transparency and openness with the service coordinators, and being able to even do tours ahead of time just to kinda ease some of the parents’ apprehension about that transition process, ’cause it is a big deal. It’s really hard.

Jani Kozlowski: And another big difference between early childhood and K-12 is that early childhood special education programs have these relationships with Part C programs, which are not typically in the education system. They’re in all different types of places. So having those community-based connections is naturally in place just by those expectations for transition right from the start.

Tim Villegas: Do either of you have a story that comes to mind about a particular learner—and maybe it was a family that was processing this model of, my child is included with typically developing peers, and they just weren’t used to that inclusive model. Do you have a story that you can think of that illustrates the power of inclusion?

Melissa McCollough: I have several that come to mind. I’m thinking of just an IEP meeting that we had yesterday where it was a child who is actually currently attending here, but then throughout the evaluation process we’ve determined that he meets the criteria for eligibility for services. And the parents were just so grateful that he’s already been attending here, but so grateful that he would be able to receive the services here just throughout his day. He doesn’t have to go to a different school or have anything different in his plan, just that he’ll get that extra support.

So that would be for a child that’s already here—just the appreciation that our families have for that opportunity to be educated with non-disabled peers. And then, yes, we have families that move in from other districts. We’re part of a quad-city area, so four cities that are here in the immediate area. And some of our neighboring districts maybe don’t have the same opportunities or the same type of structure when it comes to service delivery. In other districts, children might be served in a more self-contained setting or more restrictive environment, smaller class size without the opportunity for other peer engagement.

And whenever we have kids move here, it’s, we’re gonna have to amend the IEP and change the placement because we would like to give them the opportunity in the model that we have here. And we’ve seen tears and just that gratitude from families, because they never thought that would be an option for them, until it presented here. So we’re really proud of being able to provide that for families who have already gone through that grieving process and already gone through that realization of like, “Oh, maybe my child does learn differently.” But then if we can normalize that a little bit more and provide all of those inclusive opportunities with language models, peer models, it’s exponential.

Jani Kozlowski: It’s so powerful. It’s really powerful to think about the impacts on families, especially at the start of their journey in parenthood. There’s so much they’re trying to process. And for first-time parents, not only what it’s like to be a parent, but then this whole notion of what it is to be a parent of a child with a disability. How is that gonna look in my life? What’s that gonna mean for us as a family? And to be able to say, yeah, your child might need some additional supports, but other than that, it’s not gonna look all that different. Your child will be in the same place as the other children in the neighborhood, in the preschool here.

So it’s a really powerful gift to give to families. And I think what’s so cool about those stories too, Melissa, is you think about the picture in the minds of those families in terms of their own child’s competence, and just right from the start making the assumption that this is where my child belongs. So of course my child will belong in a classroom with children with and without disabilities in kindergarten and then on up.

Melissa McCollough: And I think too, it’s easy to come up with examples of some of those situations where children on the surface look like they are typically developing. They look like other kids that maybe don’t have a disability. But when you’re talking about children that might have more of a severe disability or a significant medical condition, where they might have to come to school in a wheelchair, they might have a breathing tube, or they might have a feeding tube or something like that.

I can also share another example of a student that we have had that needed a lot of support like that. The mom never dreamt that her child would ever be able to go to a typical or a normal school, is what she would say. From the time that he was born and started having some pretty significant challenges, she always assumed that he would be in a separate school by himself, or with other children like that.

And we were able to provide that for her—just the gift, like you said, Jani, the gift of her seeing other children near him just fighting over being able to push him down the hallway, or fighting over being able to be a part of the therapy session where they’re helping him with a switch or whatever. Just seeing that outpouring of love from not just the adults, but also the peers and the other families in the programming, was pretty powerful. And like you said, just a gift to be able to give a family that, maybe that is not gonna be the same picture for his kindergarten through 12 experience.

Tim Villegas: After the break, Melissa and Jani unpack the itinerant model—what happens when special educators bring services into childcare and Head Start classrooms instead of asking families to choose, and why the money argument actually works in inclusion’s favor.

This episode is sponsored by Adaptiverse. If you are a special education teacher, you already know the time problem. Every week, educators spend 15 to 20 hours manually adapting curriculum for students with complex communication needs, non-speaking learners, AAC users, and students with apraxia or language-based disabilities. Creating personalized materials, building visual supports, and designing multiple expressive pathways is essential work, but it’s exhausting, and it pulls teachers away from actually teaching.

Adaptiverse changes that. Teachers simply describe what they’re teaching and who they’re teaching, and the platform generates grade-level lessons personalized to each student with built-in scaffolds and multiple ways to show understanding. And these aren’t watered-down worksheets. They’re rigorous, engaging lessons that presume competence. Built on 60-plus years of combined education experience, Adaptiverse has already powered more than 2,000 lessons in 35 states, with educators calling it life-saving and irreplaceable. If you’re ready to get those hours back and focus on what matters most, visit adaptiverseapp.com to learn more.

How powerful it is to offer that and to have that available for that family. So I wanna talk about, what does an itinerant model of inclusion look like, where teachers go and take services to where the learner is? Because that doesn’t seem like it happens everywhere.

Jani Kozlowski: Maybe I can talk about it from what I know from working with states that have this model. There are some state early childhood special education programs that have really adopted this model and run with it, in multiple districts around the state. It’s really just about changing the mindset about what early childhood special education looks like—that it doesn’t look like a brick-and-mortar facility. What it looks like is taking the services to where the child is.

For example, in some cases, an early childhood special educator might have a caseload of children served across maybe four different childcare centers or Head Start centers. And so they have a schedule, based on what the children’s IEPs are, and they go to those programs and either provide services directly with the child, or they provide coaching and supports to the educator, and maybe do some demonstrations, depending on whatever the services are.

But it’s much more a coaching kind of role, so that then the child gets services not just for 30 minutes, three times a week. They get services not just from the early childhood special educator but also from their classroom teacher and also from the family as well. And so the services become embedded in the daily routines, the activities, the transitions, just the natural order of the day through that support.

And then that expertise of that early childhood special educator can then be shared among various programs. So this educator would go to the multiple different locations, support multiple children across those locations. And there’s a lot of really cool things about it. It’s excellent for the individual child who then is able to be served in the place they would be—maybe their siblings go to that childcare center, or it’s more convenient to that family’s work, or for whatever reason, but that’s where they would be if they didn’t have a disability.

But the other neat thing that happens is that the childcare teacher or the Head Start teacher learns really valuable strategies that then they not only use with that child with an IEP, but they can use with other children as well. So it really has a multiplier effect, and we have found that it improves classroom quality in addition to just being a really good thing for that child and family. So we’ve got some really excellent models of itinerant special education happening across the country. And Melissa’s trying it this year.

Melissa McCollough: We are.

Tim Villegas: How’s it going?

Melissa McCollough: We’re building it as we fly it, right? Is that how you say it? We’re piloting it. But I will say too, maybe in some of the smaller districts, the itinerant model is already what the school district is used to. We do the dual certification. Our teachers have both the hats of general education and special education. And that’s just one model, that blended model. But the itinerant model in a school district too could look like, as Jani said, you’re bringing the services to that classroom, so maybe it’s a teacher that is traveling to different classrooms to provide the special education support in the classroom. So they’re not having to leave the classroom to go to a special ed room or something like that, like back in the old days.

But in terms of using the itinerant model to provide those community-based services, that is something that we have been fortunate in the state of Illinois to work with Early CHOICES and STAR NET. And so they have really facilitated those conversations and that community collaboration for school districts and community-based organizations, and then from that state-level perspective, to get groups of people in the right room together around the right table to just start having the conversations to figure out how to make that happen.

Because, like Jani said, if you have a child that’s in a community-based organization, and they’ve been there since birth maybe, ’cause maybe it’s a childcare center and both parents work full-time, so they need childcare—then once they’re entitled to specialized services, we make them leave. We make them transition again throughout the middle of the day to come to the school district to receive the services, and then they oftentimes go back to that setting because they need the childcare for the remainder of the day too. So it’s an added transition that’s just harder on kids, when really we’re looking at it from a different perspective of, maybe it can be harder on adults trying to figure it out and make it easier on the kids and the families.

So for us, we have several community-based organizations in our district, and that’s where we’re just starting. We allocated one of our teachers to be that itinerant teacher to start working with the community-based organizations. And honestly, we’re really starting at just that relationship building and building the trust between the two partners. Because, as she said—she’s our teacher that’s doing this work—if you’re a teacher, it’s hard to have people in your classroom to tell you how to do things. It’s hard to get somebody in there, and then somebody tells you that you should be adding more, or you should be doing something different, or you’re not doing it right.

And that’s what I think the first mindset or shock is: “Somebody’s gonna come in my room and tell me what to do differently. I know what I’m doing here, just because I’m not in a school district.” So being able to provide those services there and build capacity in all the adults working in there—the teacher, the paraprofessionals, the teacher assistants, center directors, everybody—to just be able to do what’s right for kids.

Tim Villegas: For East Moline, what was the catalyst to start this model?

Melissa McCollough: So I feel like it’s always been brewing. We’ve had one student here or there whose family, we’ll do the evaluation and the family’s already attending the center down the street. “So how can we make it work? Can they come to you for half the day and then go there for the other half the day, or do we have to choose?” And sometimes they do, because of funding they can’t be dually enrolled in both programs anymore. So it always felt bad to say, “Yeah, unfortunately, door number one you get all the things that you need, and door number two you pick the childcare and then you forfeit the services that we’re telling you that your child needs.”

So that’s a really hard decision for parents to make, especially parents that need the childcare to work. So for us, I think that catalyst was, those scenarios started to add up and we started to say, “Oh, we’re having this happen again where a child is enrolled somewhere else and they’re eligible for services.” But then really with the work and that funding through ISBE, the State Board of Education, Early CHOICES, and STAR NET, really getting those stakeholders together and starting that collaboration and sticking with it, ’cause it’s hard work and it takes that perseverance from their level too. They work really hard to just even get the emails together, set the times that work for everybody, so that we can all get around the table to start having those conversations and learn about each other, and not be intimidated by each other and each other’s roles in the community.

Also the other thing that’s a little bit of a barrier is nobody wants to lose their enrollment, right? Nobody wants to lose the child that’s been with them. Whether it’s a funding issue, or it’s because I have to be fully enrolled or they’re gonna shut my classroom down, or it’s just that they love that child and they don’t wanna lose them. So it gets tricky and almost a little territorial. Navigating all those nuances with the adults at the program level too, and with funding and requirements for enrollment, is another area to figure out.

Jani Kozlowski: But the funding, if you think about it, it’s a cost savings. It will ultimately be a cost savings for your district, because you won’t have to pay for that classroom and the busing or transportation for that child back and forth to that regular early childhood setting. That’s covered by the family, or maybe it’s childcare—federal childcare dollars or state childcare dollars. So it’s a way to leverage those dollars, so that what the school district special ed program is paying for is the special ed services, and that’s what you’re required to pay for. You’re not required to pay for it in a specific place, you’re just required to pay for the services.

So the research that we have seen over the decades around this is that when districts move to that model, it really does save them money, because they’re not paying to heat a building, cool a building. They’re leveraging staffing from this other system that’s already there and is already the chosen placement for that family.

Tim Villegas: Yeah, that goes along with so many things that we already know about inclusion and the cost of inclusive practices—that it really doesn’t cost any more money. In fact, it usually costs less, for the very reason you suggested: we have all of these extra spaces that we’re trying to have logistically, and then it’s a matter of using our resources differently. And I don’t mean to call people resources in the sense that they’re to be used, but the people are the ones delivering the service. So if we’re using people—

Jani Kozlowski: They’re human resources, Tim.

Tim Villegas: Yeah, they’re human resources, exactly. So then if we’re using people wisely and more efficiently, then we’re gonna have better outcomes, period.

Melissa McCollough: Right.

Tim Villegas: So, anything else about the itinerant model that you feel like we haven’t touched on?

Melissa McCollough: Jani asked, we’ve talked about including one of our teachers—our teacher right now that we’re piloting this with. We wanted to get her input for some of those questions too. And she really just reiterated that building those relationships and meeting people where they are, the adults in the community and the other partnerships, and just starting with the willing. Because we have had some shut doors, and we have had some people not respond when we’ve said, “Hey, we just want to start having some conversations about coming into your center and offering some consultation support or things like that.” And again, that’s not always well-received, because they’re not really sure what to expect.

And I think at the beginning of the work, it is just investing in those collaborative conversations, and non-threatening relationship building, and coming to where they are, and starting with the people that are willing to really go outside of the box and try something like this. Because ultimately, it’s gonna benefit their children. And for us, ultimately, those children that are enrolled there are gonna be our students later anyway. So it’s mutually beneficial for us to get that started.

Jani Kozlowski: But I think it’s a mindset shift for an early childhood special educator, that maybe the picture in their mind of what their role would be was to be a teacher in a self-contained classroom, with 10 children with IEPs. Maybe that’s their vision of what their career would be. And so it’s different to say, “Okay, now what your career is, you’re gonna drive around to these different facilities and you’re gonna work with other adults.” So I think there’s a staffing conversation that should happen as well as part of it.

But from what I understand, the itinerant teachers that are doing this work find that they’re able to impact so many more families than they would just teaching in a self-contained classroom. Because like I said, they’re having an impact on children with and without disabilities just by being there and by supporting regular education teachers.

And I think the other thing about this is it’s not just a one-way street. Itinerant special ed teachers find that they learn just as much from a childcare teacher or a Head Start teacher as the other way around. Having the chance to engage with other professionals that love this work and care about children is really cool and a lot of fun, and can be very enriching professionally. So if they go into it with this attitude of, “I’m gonna learn from you and you’re gonna learn from me, and together we’re gonna really make this classroom incredible for Jose and for all of the other children in the class.”

Tim Villegas: If there was a school leader that is listening and wants to move more into this model, how would they go about it?

Jani Kozlowski: A school district leader? Is that what you’re thinking?

Tim Villegas: Yeah—or, I guess I’m so used to saying that. But an inclusive or early childhood program director, or somebody in charge of an inclusive early childhood program that wants to move towards this model, where would they find out more information?

Jani Kozlowski: They could email me, and I’ll put them in touch with the right people. Every state has an early childhood special education coordinator—that’s the Part B, Section 619 part of IDEA. So every state has those folks, and they are all inclusion groupies. They wanna see this happen, and states are in a lot of different places on the journey toward this. But I know that those ECSE coordinators are definitely a resource to reach out to and can help make those connections.

Tim Villegas: Awesome.

Melissa McCollough: Yeah, definitely. You gotta find your people. You gotta find those connections, and then ultimately you’ll find a connection, and that person will have more connections, and then you get connected with other districts that are doing it or other communities that are doing it. And I think if you’re a school district leader, the other thing is, it’s messy work, it’s hard work, and sometimes you have to be willing to put yourself out there and it might not work right away, or there may be a lapse of time.

Like I thought, “Okay, we’re gonna allocate this teacher, and then people are gonna be like, ‘Oh yes, please come in and start working with our teachers.'” Once we build it, they will come, and all these programs will be wanting us to come in. And that hasn’t quite happened yet. We just have to adjust a few things, and we just need to invest a little bit more time in building those relationships and having those connections. So you have to be willing to know that it’s the right thing to do and see it through and champion it, and have the support of your people.

Tim Villegas: Yeah, fantastic suggestions on how to move forward. I want to wrap up our conversation going back to my question about a family. And let’s just pretend the family is right on the cusp of finishing up early childhood education for their child, and now we’re talking about a transition to kindergarten. Oftentimes that means the program and the district don’t know—it’s not always a clean transition. What kind of advice would you give them as they’re moving towards those transition IEP meetings?

Jani Kozlowski: And so is this a family whose child has been in an inclusive early childhood setting?

Tim Villegas: I would say—possibly. I’m thinking of a family that maybe inclusion is a priority for them, right? And maybe they went to a private school, or a program where the learner was included as much as possible. Let’s just make that assumption. But now we’re going to kindergarten, and that’s not a guarantee, right? Because we know as the school district, sometimes they’re not always ready for that conversation, because the child has particular needs. So that’s where I’m going with that.

Jani Kozlowski: I would suggest that they first reach out to their parent center. The Office of Special Education funds parent centers in every state—many states more than one. And those parent centers have resources, so they would have somebody that could come along with the family to the IEP meeting that’s really knowledgeable about the law, that can speak from the parent rights perspective.

And there are so many great resources on parentcenterhub.org for families along those lines as well. Because I really think that families that know their rights, and know the fact that their child is entitled to be educated—that their child is a general education student first. We hear that again and again from OSEP: that they deserve a place in the regular education classroom, and that it’s up to the school to make that happen with supplemental aids and services. And only if, for some reason, it cannot happen—which I can’t imagine a case where it could not happen—only then should they be taken out and put into a separate class or separate setting.

And I just think so many families don’t realize that that is their right, and that is in IDEA, and it’s not new. It’s just, this is the way we’ve been doing things for so many years, that families don’t realize that that is what the law says.

Tim Villegas: Yeah.

Jani Kozlowski: I don’t know, what would you say, Melissa?

Melissa McCollough: I would just say that I would remind the family that they are their child’s best advocate. And building those relationships along the years of early childhood makes that initial first start for them so powerful, too, because then the families feel like we’re all around the table wanting the best thing for their child. So I agree, knowing what their rights are and knowing how to advocate, and having the data to support that. That’s always gonna be a thing too—the IEP team’s gonna be looking at, what data do we have to suggest placement decisions and things like that.

But yeah, if not now, then when, right? So hopefully we can make it happen now. But then it is scary, and especially when you’re looking at—I think we could do a whole podcast on kindergarten transition. Or transition in general.

Tim Villegas: Actually, that would be a great episode.

Jani Kozlowski: It would be.

Melissa McCollough: Because there’s so many nuances. Even the way we operate, we have an IEP meeting for transition, and we include the elementary team that would be receiving. So we do have some real open, honest conversations around the table with the families present, and it’s intimidating. It’s not just our team and the parents and whoever the parents would choose to bring, but then it’s this team of another principal sitting around the table and another teacher that don’t know my child. And so it is really scary, and even scary to speak up if you’re well-versed in your parent rights and well-versed with LRE, to be able to say, when it comes to the placement determination, “No, I kinda want what he had in early childhood.” It’s hard to speak up in those kinds of settings. So empowering families to be able to have those conversations and feel good and confident that this is the time to do it.

Tim Villegas: Awesome. Thank you for that. I hope that discussion was helpful for anyone who is navigating that transition. And I’m gonna take you up on that, Melissa. Maybe we’ll have you back on. Okay?

Melissa McCollough: Sounds good.

Tim Villegas: Only with Jani. Jani, is that okay with you?

Jani Kozlowski: I’ll listen in.

Tim Villegas: All right. Good stuff. Well, that’s the end of our conversation, but if you have listened to this podcast before, you know there’s a mystery question. Actually, two things. Anything you want to highlight for people to find, any resource, anything you wanna call out for people to do before we get to the mystery question—either one of you.

Jani Kozlowski: Thank you for that, ’cause I did forget. Melissa was talking about the community inclusion team that she’s been a part of with the support of Early CHOICES in Illinois. That is an initiative that we also support communities with at the Early Childhood Technical Assistance Center, that I work in. And we have a group of communities right now going through a cohort process. So they have been coming together, doing some work individually as community teams, and then coming together and learning from each other and engaging in professional development together.

Anyway, it’s been really cool to see, and there’ll be a lot of different outcomes, individual based on what the community’s needs were. But they’re all doing that work using the indicators of high-quality inclusion that the ECTA Center has available. Maybe we can put that link in the show notes.

Tim Villegas: Absolutely.

Jani Kozlowski: Those indicators are super helpful for community teams to use, because it helps to think about all of the different parts of this change process that we need to think about. It’s policy, it’s practices, it’s public awareness, it’s funding, it’s collaboration, it’s relationship building. There’s a whole lot of layers that go into that change process, and so the indicators can be a helpful guide in that way. And we have those indicators for state-level teams, community-level teams, and even teams within a program—like a childcare center or another type of early childhood program. And we also have indicators for individual environments, so classrooms. And those are all free, available online, and we have resources to support their use as well. So I hope people will go online and check out those indicators of high-quality inclusion.

Tim Villegas: That advice for families heading into kindergarten—know your rights, bring your data, and speak up—is where our conversation lands. But before we wrap up, I’ve got one more question for Melissa and Jani, and I don’t know what it is either.

All right, now it’s mystery question time. There we go. I have a stack of questions that have been pre-screened, pre-selected. I don’t know what question I’m gonna pick, and we all answer it. So here we go. Here’s the mystery question for today: What’s a place you want to visit? That’s pretty easy. Let’s see if I can get it on the screen. What’s a place you want to visit?

Jani Kozlowski: Just one place?

Tim Villegas: Any place. The question has one, but you can take it however you want. If you want multiple places—

Jani Kozlowski: I will be here all afternoon. Melissa, you go first.

Melissa McCollough: Oh, there’s so many. We love to travel with our kids, and we love to hit as many national parks as possible, but my husband just sent me a TikTok on Thailand, so I don’t know. Maybe that’s where we’re thinking about. But I’ll go anywhere. I love just traveling anywhere.

Tim Villegas: That’s great. So, Thailand for Melissa. Jani?

Jani Kozlowski: One place I’ve always wanted to go is Machu Picchu in Peru. And I’ve been a little bit anxious because there’s a lot of different modes of transportation you have to take to get there, so there’s a lot of things that could go wrong, but it’s so incredible. It’s so beautiful, and just amazing history.

Tim Villegas: Both of those places sound fantastic. I think the one we’ve been talking about the most lately is Puerto Rico, because we’ve never been. We went to Costa Rica last summer, which was amazing, and we did lots of great stuff, including zip lining, which I had never done before. And I’m a person that is not too fond of heights, so I thought that I would’ve freaked out more than I did. ‘Cause you’re pretty secure in there, so I felt okay. It was still pretty uncomfortable, but I had fun. But Puerto Rico is a place we’ve wanted to go for a long time, and I don’t know if it’s gonna happen, but we’ll definitely keep thinking about it. Have either of you been?

Melissa McCollough: No.

Jani Kozlowski: I have been to Puerto Rico. It’s beautiful. Beautiful country. And actually, I just got back from Japan. I was in Japan last November. I was studying inclusion in Japan.

Tim Villegas: Wow.

Jani Kozlowski: I got some funding to go and observe some Japanese early childhood programs, and observed using the frame of the early childhood environment inclusion indicators. I took lots of pictures. It was really incredible. So I’ll be writing an article about it, I’m sure, and sharing what I—

Tim Villegas: Oh, please share that with us so we can signal boost that. That would be great.

Jani Kozlowski: That’d be cool.

Tim Villegas: Awesome. All right. Melissa McCollough and Jani Kozlowski, thank you so much for being on the Think Inclusive Podcast.

Melissa McCollough: Thanks for having us, Tim.

Jani Kozlowski: Thanks, Tim.

Tim Villegas: That was Melissa and Jani Kozlowski. Here’s what I’m taking with me. Jani’s definition of least restrictive environment—the place a child would be if they didn’t have a disability—it’s not about finding a spot for a child in our system, it’s about bringing services to where the child already belongs.

And Melissa’s honesty about the itinerant pilot stuck with me, too. She said they’re building it as they fly it, starting with the willing and choosing to make things harder on the adults so they can be easier on kids and families.

One practical step for educators: the next time a placement conversation starts, ask Jani’s question first: where would this child be if they didn’t have a disability? And let that answer set the starting point.

Share this episode with a colleague who’s building inclusive schools. Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and follow Think Inclusive wherever you get your podcasts. And if you have something to share, you can always 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 Rey From Internet. 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 sponsors, IXL and Adaptiverse. Visit ixl.com/inclusive and adaptiverseapp.com.

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 forward for inclusive practices? Head to mcie.org and click the Donate button. Give $5, $10, $20. It helps us keep partnering with schools and districts to move inclusive practices forward and support educators doing the work.

Find us on the socials almost everywhere @thinkinclusive. Thanks for hanging out, and remember, inclusion always works.