Creating Truly Inclusive Schools: Insights from Jennifer Spencer‑Iiams ~ 801

Jennifer Spencer-Iiams:
I have three adult children who for years have been saying, “Mom, you have to watch Parks and Rec.” They had talked about a little bit of Leslie Knope perhaps being in my personality.

Tim Villegas:
You’re bringing some Leslie Knope energy.

Tim Villegas:
Hello, and welcome to Season Eight, Episode One of the Think Inclusive podcast presented by MCIE. I’m your host, Tim Villegas. This podcast features conversations and commentary with thought leaders in inclusive education and community advocacy. Think Inclusive exists to build bridges between parents, educators, and disability rights advocates to promote inclusion for all students. That’s right, y’all: all means all. To find out more about who we are and what we do, go to thinkinclusive.us, the official blog of MCIE, and check us out on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Tim Villegas:
Thank you for joining us for our conversation with Jennifer Spencer-Iiams, Assistant Superintendent for the West Linn-Wilsonville School District near Portland, Oregon. We’ll be talking about the transformation that took place in her district toward inclusive practices. And guess what, y’all? She’s got the receipts.

Tim Villegas:
But before we get to Jennifer, if you’ve ever visited thinkinclusive.us over the last eight years, you know that we’ve always had ads on the website. Well guess what? Since joining MCIE, there are no more ads getting in the way of you accessing all of our content. Here’s the catch: we need your support to keep Think Inclusive ad-free. Your tax-deductible donation will help us expand our reach to people across the United States and the world to promote inclusion for all students. Go to bit.ly/mciegive to make your donation. One more time: that’s bit.ly/mciegive to make your donation today. Stick around—after the break, our interview with Jennifer Spencer-Iiams.

Jennifer Spencer-Iiams:
Hi, this is Jennifer and welcome to the Think Inclusive podcast.

Tim Villegas:
Alright, Jennifer. It is a pleasure to have you on the Think Inclusive podcast. Everyone, we have Jennifer Spencer-Iiams here. She is the Assistant Superintendent of the West Linn-Wilsonville School District, which is part of the Greater Portland area. She recently wrote a book with her coauthor, Josh Flosi, called Leading For All: How to Create Truly Inclusive and Excellent Schools. Thank you for being with us today.

Jennifer Spencer-Iiams:
Thank you so much. It’s my pleasure.

Tim Villegas:
So we had a chance to talk a little bit before this podcast, and you got to tell me a little bit about your journey towards inclusion and your district’s journey toward inclusive education. I would love it if you could just give us a little bit of background. What was the impetus for your school district to go through this transformation toward inclusive education?

Jennifer Spencer-Iiams:
West Linn-Wilsonville has 10,000 students, give or take, between 16 schools, and about 10% of students in our district are identified as students who experience a disability and are served by special education. But I really think about a day that I spent with a parent—this was nine years ago—and this was a parent who was very invested in her child, as all of our parents are, and had spent time thinking about her child being included as a kindergartener. Her daughter is very lively and fun and social and also experiences disability. She was committed to her daughter being able to be part of her community and go to her neighborhood school. So she started the year in kindergarten at the neighborhood school, and it was challenging.

The supports that she needed were not in place. The instructional methodologies and strategies were not in place. That mom came to me frustrated and worried about her daughter. At that point, we had, as many school districts do, specialized or segregated classrooms for students who experienced more significant disability. We had the supports and expertise to support her daughter, but it wasn’t at her neighborhood school. So we sat there together and realized that to help her daughter meet her needs, we were going to have to bus her to the other side of town, to a different school out of her community. That mom cried. And I cried. I realized in a way that I’d always known, but in a more personal way, how that was going to impact this family and this child—and it was not okay. So I sat with that mom that day and I pledged to her: we can do better. We will do better. Together, we’re going to change our school system.

Jennifer Spencer-Iiams:
A couple years later, we were having a teacher welcome-back event, and we had invited a student who had just graduated from high school to come and address our teachers. It’s very important to us to include student voice and really listen to our students and their experiences. I invited this student—his name was Everett—to speak about his experience in high school. He had lived most of his life in our district and spent most of it in segregated classrooms with teachers who had lots of expertise in supporting his learning needs and were doing really good work trying to support him and help him work toward his IEP goals.

But what he didn’t have was a sense of belonging with the school as a whole—respect and access in general ed classrooms with his typical peers. In his junior year, we had shifted things in our structure and system, and he was able to participate in school in a different way. We asked him about his experience and what it was like for him in his earlier years compared to his junior and senior year. He got very excited and said, “You know, once they let me out, I discovered I’m a lots-of-classes kind of guy, I’m a lots-of-friends kind of guy, I’m a lots-of-teachers kind of guy.” He talked about how the classes were harder and he had to work a lot harder, but he learned through that. That phrase—“once they let me out”—has stuck with us. It reminded me that sometimes, as adults and educators, we create things with the best intentions that students might not perceive or experience in the same way.

Tim Villegas:
So when you started this process, what was your original goal? Because for some districts or even some states, their strategic plan is all about the LRE number. What was it for you and your district that made you say, “Okay, we’re going to tackle this goal first”?

Jennifer Spencer-Iiams:
When we first started, we had lots of conversations—with teachers, administrators, parents, and students—gathering information in the spring and summer before we really started the work in the fall. We wanted to understand where we were, what strengths we could build upon. There were already a lot of strengths in this district: strong community support, strong academics, strong co-curricular activities. Much like we think about in the IEP process, we’re really trying to build on students’ strengths and help them move forward toward their next goals. We think about that as an organization too—where are your strengths as an organization that you can build on to reach those next goals?

Jennifer Spencer-Iiams:
As we had those conversations, three areas of focus became clear. First, we needed to improve our instructional practices. We needed to change the way we teach so that more students are successful and accessing learning at high levels every day. Second, we needed to create inclusive cultures. We needed educators who share ownership and believe all students are our students. We needed to create cultures where co-curricular activities are valued and participated in by all students, and remove any barriers that might exist. Third, we needed to increase student voice. One of the things I continue to learn by reading authors who experience disability is the importance of working with people and honoring their voice as we think about change. That’s been a really important part of our work.

Jennifer Spencer-Iiams:
Within those areas, we set very specific goals. One of the goals we wrote down that first year was “Every student educated at their neighborhood school.” It sounds simple, but it’s actually kind of complicated when you really mean every student. Over the years, special education has set up a model of expertise and specialized supports. I put quotes around “specialized” because the more we learn about student needs, the more we realize they are universal in many ways—the need to belong, to learn, to participate, to feel safe. We need to support those. That goal—every student at their neighborhood school—took us a couple of years to achieve, but we knew we had written it down and were very specific about it.

Jennifer Spencer-Iiams:
Another specific goal was that every student served by special education participates in at least one co-curricular activity per year. Just writing that down helped us get very specific. We added it as a question on the special factors page of our IEPs, so that once a year, the team checks in: “Hey, what are you doing in terms of co-curricular activities?” We found that some students didn’t even know they were allowed to be in co-curricular activities. Some parents didn’t know how to join the robotics team, the debate club, go out for a play, or join an athletics team. That goal helped us increase our percentages every year of students participating in co-curricular activities. But perhaps even more importantly, we’ve gathered stories about the sense of belonging and being part of something that students get when they join a co-curricular activity.

Tim Villegas:
What do you think right now is the biggest challenge to inclusive education?

Jennifer Spencer-Iiams:
Changing large systems is hard. It’s hard work. We’ve been embedded in doing things a certain way, and shifting that is difficult. One of the keys to making change work over time is having lots of ways to gather data about success and sharing that out frequently—even small successes. We have structures in place, like our “Monday Message,” where every week we share successes from around the district. It helps people understand they’re not in it alone, that others are working through this too. It inspires people through the successes of colleagues and students. That’s a commitment we’ve kept for nine years.

Jennifer Spencer-Iiams:
We also think about what we can measure. When you’re trying to learn a new skill and it feels hard, having something that shows you’re making progress helps people feel excited and empowered.

Jennifer Spencer-Iiams:
One of our focus areas is student voice. One of our concrete goals is that 100% of students will lead their own IEP meetings. Of course, we recognize that what this looks like for a kindergartener and for an 18-year-old will be different, but we believe all students need to be captains of their learning, in the words of Ron Berger. There are developmentally appropriate ways for even our youngest children to be part of that learning. We added a question to our IEPs: “In what ways did the student participate in this?” We have graphs to measure whether more students are leading their IEPs each year.

Jennifer Spencer-Iiams:
Some years, we didn’t go up as much as we thought we would. That pushed us to ask, “What were some barriers?” We discovered that sometimes families aren’t sure their child should participate in their IEP, or maybe they don’t want them to. We took that to our parent collaboration group, another structure we have to work with parents and stay rooted in inclusive cultures. We realized they maybe didn’t know why it’s important. Leading their own IEP actually leads to academic growth, makes it more likely they’ll achieve their goals, reduces stigma, and helps them know themselves as learners. It increases their ability to be advocates and transition into adulthood with the skills to build on their strengths and get their needs met.

Jennifer Spencer-Iiams:
So we created a welcome packet for parents when their child either moved into our district with special education services or was newly identified. It included materials to help them understand our beliefs about inclusive education. We also included a great article—I’m not thinking of the author’s name right now—but the title is “Why Is This Cake on Fire?” It’s a great article about student voice in IEPs and why it’s important for them to be involved. Sharing that with families early on and helping them understand the “why” has helped us move the dial and get more students positively and actively engaged in the IEP process.

Tim Villegas:
Well, that’s great. I love that idea of the welcome packet. I just want to compliment you on how well thought out it is. From a communications perspective, all I’m hearing from you is, “We want to make sure our families know what’s going on. We want to make sure families whose children are identified for services know what to expect.” That kind of clarity and priority is so obvious in your district, and I think it will trickle down throughout the whole system. So anyway, that’s great.

Jennifer Spencer-Iiams:
Tim, I want to say that we keep discovering more that we need to do in terms of communication and more stakeholders we need to think about. A couple of years ago, we had an opportunity through our district’s leadership forum, which involves all the principals and all the heads of departments—HR, operations, maintenance, business. We had a leadership retreat in August before school started, and our superintendent was amazing. I went to her and said, “Could we spend a significant amount of time with this whole group talking about inclusive practices and showing everyone the why?” It was very well received. We were able to show some powerful videos and share great successes.

Jennifer Spencer-Iiams:
One of the outcomes from that was later that year, we had a high school student who uses a wheelchair for accessibility. She was very involved in her student body and activities and wanted to be at the football games with her friends to engage in the social life of high school. She reached out to me and said, “I am not finding this stadium to be accessible.” I reached out to our operations department, and they said, “It is absolutely accessible. We meet ADA compliance. There’s a ramp and a place where wheelchairs can be.” So we went out there to look at it, and sure enough, it was accessible by the book. But where the students stood and sat to cheer on their team together was not near the accessible area. So it was technically accessible, but it wasn’t really leading to an inclusive culture, which is our goal.

Jennifer Spencer-Iiams:
What was amazing was that the physical therapist who knew that student well and the principal reached out to the head of operations. I believe because we had spent time talking about the importance of inclusivity, he was just amazing. He went over there, met with them, and really heard what the student was saying. That was on a Thursday afternoon. By Friday night football, a new platform had been built right there so she could be with her peers. As we think about communication, we have to keep thinking about all the stakeholders. Do our high school staff really understand? Do our school secretaries know why we’re being inclusive? Do our nutrition services folks feel connected to the work? Do our business folks feel connected to the work? So I thank you for the compliment, and I appreciate that. But I think we still have more work to do.

Jennifer Spencer-Iiams:
Our book, Leading For All, is coming out—I believe on November 2nd—from Corwin Publishers. We’re excited to share it and see what conversations come about as folks begin to dig in and hear some of our stories. Some of the challenges we faced are in there as well, along with tools that may be useful to schools and some of our future goals. We’re still working on making our preschool more inclusive. We’re also thinking about college opportunities—what happens after high school—and working toward inclusive college opportunities for students. There’s still work ahead, but it’s been an exciting journey. It has taken our whole community to be engaged and on board. I’m excited to have this opportunity to speak with you, Tim, as someone I know has been such a champion for inclusion over the years. I’m excited to keep learning alongside others throughout the country.

Tim Villegas:
Well, Jennifer—oh, you know what, before I sign off, I have two questions. Well, actually one question, and if you don’t want to answer that one, I have another. It has nothing to do with inclusion at all. During the pandemic, everyone’s been watching lots of TV. So what do you think would be your guiltiest pleasure for binge-watching? And if you don’t want to answer that, you can tell me what you’ve been snacking on—or both!

Jennifer Spencer-Iiams:
I’m not sure if it’s my guiltiest pleasure, but I have three adult children who for years have been saying, “Mom, you have to watch Parks and Rec.” They’ve talked about a little bit of Leslie Knope perhaps being in my personality. So anyway, we’ve been digging into Parks and Rec, and I love it. It’s so much fun.

Tim Villegas:
You’re bringing some Leslie Knope energy. Very good. Well, Jennifer Spencer-Iiams, thank you for being on the podcast and sharing your thoughts with us.

Jennifer Spencer-Iiams:
Thank you so much. It was really a pleasure.

Tim Villegas:
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This podcast is a production of MCIE, where we envision a society where neighborhood schools welcome all learners and create the foundation for inclusive communities. Learn more at mcie.org.

Thanks for your time and attention. Until next time.