Mommy Won: Elana Meyers Taylor on Sign Language, Worth, and Inclusion ~ 1405

Elana Meyers Taylor: I see my kids in front of me, and I realize they don’t know what’s going on. All they see is me crying. And so at that moment, it was a truly parent moment. I needed to let my kids know that I’m okay, so I signed to my son, “Mommy won.” And that’s the moment that went viral, that everybody saw: me just trying to communicate to my kids that this amazing thing just happened, and Mommy won a race she’s been trying to win for 20 years.

They’re worthy because they’re here on Earth, and they’re breathing, and they’re human, and that’s why they’re worthy. It’s the same as, you wouldn’t say a dog isn’t worthy because they haven’t run the Boston Marathon. And not to compare people and animals, but we don’t put these achievements on any other life form, so why do we put status on achievements on humans, on other beings?

Tim Villegas: Hey, friends. Welcome back to Think Inclusive, real conversations about building schools where every learner belongs. I’m your host, Tim Villegas. This is a special episode. October is Down Syndrome Awareness Month, and my guest wanted this conversation to air during that month. So today’s episode starts with two words signed from the finish line: “Mommy won.”

My guest is Elana Meyers Taylor. In February, at the Milan Cortina Winter Games, Elana won gold in women’s monobob by four hundredths of a second. It was her sixth Olympic medal, which ties her with Bonnie Blair for the most Winter Olympic medals by an American woman. She’s a five-time Olympian. She played softball at George Washington University, and she was just inducted into the DC Sports Hall of Fame. She’s also a mom of two boys. Both are deaf, and her older son, Nico, has Down syndrome.

Sign language is the main language in their house. We talk about why her family learned to sign when doctors told them not to worry about it, what one evaluator missed because she didn’t know a single sign, and why an Olympian wants you to know that people are not defined by what they achieve.

We also talk about school. Elana is honest about what inclusion looked like for her older son, what didn’t work, and the choices her family has made since. I’m grateful she shared it. Her starting point is the same as ours. Ask, “What does inclusion look like for this kid?” first, and build from there.

And listen for what she says about siblings. Her younger son treats his big brother like any other kid because he doesn’t know any different. That is belonging, and it’s the thread that we keep pulling on this season.

Stick around after the interview because we are playing Awake Among the Stars, our micro role-playing game adapted from Alone Among the Stars by Takuma Okada. Link to the original game is in the show notes.

Before we meet our guest, I want to tell you about our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by IXL. IXL is an all-in-one platform for K-12 that helps boost student achievement, empowers teachers, and tracks progress in one place. As students practice, IXL adapts to their individual needs so that every learner gets just-right support and challenge, and each student gets a personalized learning plan to close gaps. Check it out at ixl.com/inclusive. Again, that’s ixl.com/inclusive.

All right, after a quick break, it’s time to Think Inclusive with Elana Meyers Taylor. Catch you on the other side.

Elana Meyers Taylor, welcome to the Think Inclusive podcast.

Elana Meyers Taylor: Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

Tim Villegas: I didn’t realize your name is a tongue twister, but apparently it is.

Elana Meyers Taylor: Oh, it definitely is. Elana Meyers Taylor. Yeah.

Tim Villegas: Yes. Say that 100 times fast, right? Awesome. Thank you so much for being with us today. I think you are our first Olympic champion on our little podcast, so I really appreciate that.

I’d love to start there. Take me back to February and Cortina. You’re down after three runs, and you win it on the last run by, what, four hundredths of a second? And then you find your son in the stands, and you sign to him. So tell me about that moment.

Elana Meyers Taylor: Oh, yeah, it was absolutely crazy. So in bobsled competition, it’s four total runs, and combined time wins an Olympic medal. So it’s over four miles of ice, and it’s split between two days. The first day you do two runs, and the second day you do two runs.

We have this saying in Olympic bobsled: everybody’s gonna have a bad run. And bad is relative. You could have a run that’s so bad it completely tanks your race, but for most people, there’s gonna be one bad run, and it’s not devastating, or it may not be devastating if you don’t let it. Hopefully your bad run is not as bad as some other people’s bad runs, so to speak.

So the first day, after the first run I was in second place. After the second run I was still in second place, but my second run was my bad run. So I went into the next day knowing that I was in second place, but knowing that I got my bad run out of the way. I knew that was behind me, and I knew I was gonna have a really strong day.

I also knew from experience that it’s very hard to sit overnight on a lead. So I knew the German athlete who was in front of me was going to have a rough night, because I’d been there before. I had done this. I was very confident that she would have a much rougher night than I would, and that would make all the difference.

After the third run, I came down and set a track record. And as soon as I did that, I could see it getting into her head: “Oh, man, this girl’s gaining on me. I have to be perfect.” As soon as you put your competitors in that kind of mindset, that’s when it’s most difficult.

So that fourth run, I came down, and after I got through curve two, which was one of the most difficult corners on the track, I knew it was my time to fight for a medal, so I just blacked out and went down. I came across the line, knew I had won a medal, and was just so excited.

It goes in reverse order at the Olympics, so the German athlete was coming down next, and she made a mistake in curve two. As soon as I saw that, I knew it was possible. The clock immediately went red. Green means you’re ahead. Red means you’re behind. The clock went red, and she was bleeding time. And then in the middle of the run, she started to gain back time.

So I’m watching with my teammates next to me, and one of them is going, “I don’t know if this is gonna happen. I don’t know if this is gonna happen.” And under my breath I’m like, “Shut up. Shut up. This is gonna happen.” And when the German athlete finally crossed the line and I saw I won a gold medal, I just completely went crazy and was jumping up and down.

The crazy thing is my nanny at the time, Macy, is actually a bobsled athlete, and she had given up her spot on the team that year to come with me, watch my kids, and help me achieve this amazing dream. She had gotten my kids down to the finish line, and it’s so tightly controlled at the Olympics, nobody gets through there. My husband couldn’t get through there, and he was a chiro for the Jamaican team. So I don’t know how she did it, but she got my kids to the finish line right when I saw the results.

We’re jumping up and down yelling. I’m hugging her, and then I see my kids in front of me, and I realize they don’t know what’s going on. All they see is me crying. And so at that moment, it was a truly parent moment. I needed to let my kids know that I’m okay, so I signed to my son, “Mommy won.” And that’s the moment that went viral, that everybody saw: me just trying to communicate to my kids that this amazing thing just happened, and Mommy won a race she’s been trying to win for 20 years.

Tim Villegas: Oh, my gosh. I can’t even imagine all the hard work and dedication you put into a moment like that, and then to have your kids there. It’s just unbelievable. Thank you for sharing that. And I just saw on social that you were inducted into the DC Sports Hall of Fame at Nationals Park. Is that right?

Elana Meyers Taylor: Yep.

Tim Villegas: That’s so cool.

Elana Meyers Taylor: Yeah, I was incredibly proud of that, and it was very unexpected. I went to school at George Washington and played softball there for five years, and that was a little bit of my origin story. I don’t know if I would’ve achieved what I’ve been able to achieve if those foundations hadn’t been laid at GW about what it means to be an elite athlete and what it means to be a high performer.

Tim Villegas: I’d love to talk about your family and your sons, if that’s okay. Both your sons are deaf, is that correct?

Elana Meyers Taylor: Yep.

Tim Villegas: Okay. And one of your sons has cochlear implants. Is that right?

Elana Meyers Taylor: Both of them have cochlear implants.

Tim Villegas: Both of them do? Okay.

Elana Meyers Taylor: Neither of them chooses to wear them, so that’s where we’re at. We communicate mostly in sign language in our house, and my older son has Down syndrome as well.

Tim Villegas: Okay. I want to make this connection for our audience, because at MCIE we work with school districts on how to include learners with disabilities in general education settings. And one of the things we talk about is how the setting needs to be ready for the learner, not the learner ready for the setting.

One of the things I learned about you is that your whole family learned how to sign, right?

Elana Meyers Taylor: Yes.

Tim Villegas: So while you may use tools like cochlear implants, you changed your family, essentially. You got your family ready for your sons. I’d love to know more about that decision and why that made sense for your family.

Elana Meyers Taylor: Very early on, they failed the newborn hearing screening, so we got their diagnosis right away. We were very new to cochlear implants, and we didn’t really know where to go, but we knew we needed to communicate with our children.

When my children were born, I only knew how to fingerspell. There’s also a gap in time between when your child is born and when they can be implanted, and for my first son, at least, it’d be an extra long gap because I had my season coming up and all this kind of stuff. And my husband and I were like, “We’re not gonna let not having access to sound prevent us from communicating with our children.” So at that moment, we did everything we could to start learning American Sign Language.

Now, I’m not fluent. I’m still working. Fortunately, I’m at their level, and as they start to ask more existential questions, I’ll have to learn a lot more. But it was all about doing everything we can to make sure we can communicate with our children, and we have Gallaudet University to thank for that. My first son was born during COVID, and Gallaudet stepped in right away to make sure there were online programs for parents of kids with hearing loss so they could learn sign language.

And this was even at a time when doctors were telling us, “Hey, don’t worry about learning sign language. Just rely on the cochlear implants.” But we felt it was really important. At that time, it’s nine months before you can even get implanted. My kids are profoundly deaf. You want us to not communicate at all with our children? That didn’t fly with me, and so that’s why we took the steps to learn sign language.

And boy, are we glad we did, because they did eventually get implanted, and my younger son actually had an implant failure. And right now we’re going through the process with my older son, and it looks like he has an internal implant failure too.

Tim Villegas: Wow.

Elana Meyers Taylor: It’s extremely rare that they both have it. I think internal failures are less than 1%, and what that means is they have to be surgically reimplanted.

So we are extremely grateful that we learned sign language, because without it, the cochlear implants so far have had limited success. My older son wore his for a long time. He loved it. He loved the music. But now we find out it’s broken, and he can’t wear it anyway. I have no idea what it sounds like in his head. Sign language has been vital for us, and it’s our primary language in the house.

Tim Villegas: Wow. I had no idea they could even fail like that, so that’s really interesting information. For people who are listening to or watching this, is there anything about parenting children who are deaf, any lesson or nugget of wisdom, you could share with teachers? Because teachers may or may not have any interaction with deaf students. Sometimes those students are in a separate program, or sometimes they have an interpreter. It’s not as common as you would think.

Elana Meyers Taylor: Yeah. First, a little bit of sign language goes a long way. My younger son in particular is neurotypical, and he picks up very quickly on whether or not you know sign language. When we went for his IEP evaluation, the woman who was evaluating him didn’t know sign language, and so she gave him lower marks for communicative language, because he wouldn’t use sign language with her. He realized very quickly she didn’t know it, so he wasn’t gonna sign with her. He’s like, “Well, you don’t know it anyway.”

But if she had come into that evaluation with some basic signs, like hello, mommy, daddy, she would’ve gotten much more out of him than she was able to.

The other thing is, there are a lot of different accommodations you can make for deaf children, regardless of whether they have hearing devices. A lot of deaf children, and this was especially hard during the pandemic, rely on facial cues to receive the whole message. They rely on what your mouth is doing, even if they’re not reading lips. Lip reading is incredibly difficult. Even a lot of deaf adults aren’t very proficient at it.

But there’s a lot you can do, whether it’s lighting, making sure they can see your mouth moving, or seating them strategically in the classroom so they have access to sound and to the different gestures people make. They will pick up a lot. My sons pick up everything visually, so it’s very important to make those accommodations.

But they’re deaf. They’re not dumb. I know “deaf and dumb” used to be a thing, and there’s history behind it, but they’re deaf, they’re not dumb. A lot of our families and a lot of our kids are very proud of their deafness, and it just requires a little bit of accommodation.

Tim Villegas: I love that you are outspoken about your sons, and also about believing in a person’s ability. I’m gonna quote something I’ve read you say, so hopefully this is correct: “I know it’s weird to hear an Olympian say this, but I want everyone to know that they’re not defined by what they are able to accomplish.”

You’ve also said that one of the big problems in our society is that we don’t value those who aren’t able to achieve as much. Which is interesting for an Olympian to say, right? Where does that belief come from? Tell me more about those thoughts.

Elana Meyers Taylor: Yeah. I think it’s funny coming from me, because the first thing people say is, “Elana Meyers Taylor, six-time Olympic medalist.” That’s always the tagline. Five-time Olympian, always the tagline. So people think I’m tied incredibly to achievement. But I believe the real value of a person lies in who they are, not in what they can do, and that’s how they’ll best contribute to this world. Approaching it that way allows us to have more kindness, allows us to approach people with more curiosity, and allows us to get the best out of people.

At the end of the day, I don’t know what my sons are gonna do. No parent knows what their children are gonna do.

Tim Villegas: That’s right.

Elana Meyers Taylor: That’s the funny thing. People think about me as a mom of a child with developmental disabilities, and they think, “Oh, what’s he gonna be able to do in life? Is he going to be able to be a bagger at a grocery store? Is he gonna do this or this?” And nobody knows that about their child. Nobody. You have no idea what your kids are gonna do. You can try to have as much influence as you want, but at the end of the day, they’re gonna do what they’re gonna do. Some of that is nurture, but some of that is nature, too, because they have their own autonomy. They have their own thoughts and feelings. You can try to steer them one way, and they can go a completely different path.

So for me, it was always important to approach people with kindness, knowing that their worth is more than what they can achieve. They’re worthy because they’re here on Earth, and they’re breathing, and they’re human, and that’s why they’re worthy. It’s the same as, you wouldn’t say a dog isn’t worthy because they haven’t run the Boston Marathon. And not to compare people and animals, but we don’t put these achievements on any other life form, so why do we put status on achievements on humans, on other beings?

I find some of the kindest people in this world are the people who are not gonna go out and break world records or cure cancer. I just got a text from one of my teammates, and she’s not the highest-ranked teammate, just a text to say, “Hey, how are you doing? I just wanted to check in on you.” Some of the people with the kindest hearts aren’t necessarily the ones with the best accolades.

Tim Villegas: Are you familiar with Stella Young and the problem with disability inspiration?

Elana Meyers Taylor: Yep.

Tim Villegas: I don’t know if you’ve come across this yet, whether you’re being interviewed or talking to somebody, and they say, “Oh, your sons are so inspirational because they have disabilities and they’re just living their life.” Do you have any thoughts about that, or a response when you get that?

Elana Meyers Taylor: Yeah. It’s hard as a parent, because some of these inspiration porn moments, or what have you, are moments you would love to have your child have. You would love for your child to be the one who’s named prom king, even though he’s in a socially isolated classroom. Or you’d love your kid to be the one the other kids wanna hang out with on the playground, and all these other inspirational moments, so to speak. But as a parent, you want it to come from people who genuinely value their worth, not because of some disability or because they feel they have to treat them special.

I think in this area, one of the best groups we can learn from is actually the siblings of disabled children.

Tim Villegas: Oh, interesting.

Elana Meyers Taylor: Neurotypical siblings of disabled children have grown up with disabled children their entire lives, and they naturally know how to treat disabled children. Even though my younger son is deaf as well, he knows how to treat his older brother, and he treats him just like any other kid. And he treats other children with developmental disabilities, or children with all kinds of disabilities, like any other kid, because he doesn’t know any different.

That’s the kind of world we wanna be in. They’re not inspirational because they have disabilities, and their disabilities aren’t something to overcome. Their disabilities are part of who they are. At the end of the day, they can be inspirational for the same reason I would be inspirational. Maybe my son goes out there and wins Special Olympics medals, and that’s pretty dang cool. That’s something to be inspired by. But if my son goes to the grocery store by himself, and you would expect a neurotypical person to be able to do that, I don’t know why it should be inspirational that he does it as well.

Tim Villegas: That’s a great distinction. And I love the idea that we’re just treating everyone like they’re people.

After the break, what happens when a school starts with inclusion and a family still has to make the call?

Let me take a minute to tell you about our other sponsor, Inclusive Schooling. Here is something we hear from educators all over the country: “We believe in inclusion, but what about students with challenging behavior? How do we include those learners, and how do we support everybody else in the room when so much of the day is going to behavior?”

That’s a fair question, so let me tell you about Behavior 360 from Inclusive Schooling. It starts from a completely different premise than most behavior training. Behavior is not just something to manage. It’s something to understand. Behavior 360 is grounded in neuroscience, in relationships, and in inclusive education, and it gives educators practical strategies they can use before, during, and after a hard moment, not theory and not another framework to put in a binder.

So if you’re a teacher, a coach, or a school leader looking for professional learning that makes classrooms safer and more inclusive at the same time, take a look at inclusiveschooling.com/mcie-behavior. We’ll put that link in the show notes. Again, inclusiveschooling.com/mcie-behavior.

And again, if you’re comfortable talking about school for your children: one of the things on our audience’s minds is how we make school more inclusive for learners with disabilities, and how we avoid segregating students based on disability category. So if a student has an intellectual disability, or autism, or another disability where it’s commonplace for the school or district to say, “Well, you’ve got this particular disability category. We’ve got a program for you over here,” how do you navigate that? And again, I’m not looking for a right answer here. I just wanna know your thoughts.

Elana Meyers Taylor: I think the thing we always lose sight of is that an IEP is supposed to be an individualized education plan. It’s individualized. If you’ve met one person with Down syndrome, you’ve met one person with Down syndrome. If you’ve met one autistic child, you’ve met one autistic child. Even though we have similar diagnoses for all these different conditions, everybody is a unique individual.

I used to be of the mindset that inclusion is the only way to go, that everybody needs to be included all the time. I wanted my older son, Nico, to be included in a typical classroom. And then when we started working through what that would look like, it changed my mind a little bit. Yes, I want him to be around his neurotypical peers, but I also need to ensure he’s getting an appropriate education for him.

For us, that did not look like him being in a classroom with 25 to 30 neurotypical students and him just having a one-on-one aide. His education level isn’t at the point where that’s appropriate. So at the time, it was appropriate that he had pullouts where he was in an art class or a PE class or whatnot. Now he’s homeschooled, so that’s a whole other story. We’ll get into that later.

Tim Villegas: Sure.

Elana Meyers Taylor: He was in a position where he needed more one-on-one attention. He needed more of a secluded classroom where he could really thrive. He was just getting lost in the shuffle in the effort of inclusion, and so that wasn’t appropriate for him.

Versus my younger son. Even though he’s deaf, and using an interpreter is a skill deaf people have to learn, and as a three-year-old he doesn’t have it yet, I would feel very comfortable with him being in a general ed classroom with an interpreter. That would make sense for him. And if we can do those types of things to include him in the classroom, then it makes sense.

There are all types of strategies, but I think the most important thing is that it’s different for every single kid. Yes, we want to work toward inclusion for everybody, but at the end of the day, it might not be appropriate. I think you start with the mindset of, “Hey, what does inclusion look like?” and go from there. If it’s not appropriate, how can we be as inclusive as possible and still make sure this kid is getting the quality education they deserve?

Tim Villegas: If it’s okay, I’d like to camp out on this just a little bit longer. What I’m hearing you say is it wasn’t right for your son and your family at that moment. I think what often happens is we want a setting to look a certain way, and we want a setting to welcome and accommodate a student in a certain way. And what you’re describing, someone with a one-on-one aide who maybe is doing something completely different than the rest of the class, is that really authentic inclusion? Right?

As MCIE, we have this delicate balance. We want to equip educators and school districts to be able to include any learner. But there’s also this tension: a family has to make the right decision for their child. That family does the best they can with the options they have. And if that school isn’t able to accommodate, and doesn’t have the skill or isn’t equipped, then they have to make a choice.

So we never want to look at your situation or any other situation and say, “Well, you should have.” Of course not. You do the best thing you can for your family. I just wanted to put that out there and make sure everyone knows that’s where we stand. And to your point, it’s really about how we have that mindset in the first place, as family members and as a school district, being willing to say, “Okay, how can we make this work?” So thank you.

Elana Meyers Taylor: And for my son, he started school in California. We had that type of environment where they were really trying to work with us to create an inclusive setting, and that was amazing. But what we found through practicality is it just wasn’t the best environment for him.

I fully believe a lot of neurotypical students can get a lot of benefit from having disabled students in their class. I think it’s a two-way street: my son would benefit from them, and they would benefit from my son. I was appreciative to have a school district that started from that premise. And then when we got down to the nuts and bolts, it was like, “Hey, we need to change things up here so he’s able to get the attention and the education he deserves.”

I think that’s always a great place to start, because I think the majority of disabled students can be included in a classroom, and there are ways to do it. In my son’s case, he had higher support needs that needed more assistance. He was getting pulled out even for mobility exercises. He’s not able to walk from class to class, and it just wasn’t working for him. So those options need to exist as well. But there needs to be somebody championing inclusion, and I fully believe that’s what we had. We had a principal and a school district that really championed inclusion first, and then were willing to work with us to find other options when it wasn’t quite working out for our son.

Tim Villegas: Let’s talk about play and sports, because obviously I’m talking to an Olympian here. What does an ideal inclusive sports team or play look like? I know you talked about Special Olympics, and I’m assuming maybe possible participation in Unified Sports. What does that look like for you and your family?

Elana Meyers Taylor: So we are about to start adaptive baseball.

Tim Villegas: Nice.

Elana Meyers Taylor: Which is hopefully going to be a lot of fun. Other than that, we haven’t gotten into too many other sports yet. How adaptive baseball works is they basically allow you to come as you are. They allow you to bring whatever skill set you have and try to teach you the structure of the game, and they break it down by age group.

The other thing about my older son is he’s immunocompromised, so he’s sick quite often. The first day was yesterday. He was sick, and we weren’t able to go. But they’re able to accommodate that too, and having those accommodations makes a world of difference. He can show up when he’s able, and they’re gonna work with him in whatever capacity he brings and adapt the sport to him. He might wanna take an at-bat and then probably wanna sit in the outfield and stim, and they’re fully accepting of that.

One thing I will say that’s important on the deaf side of things: my youngest son is probably the most athletic person in our family. He’s more athletic than me, and my father was a professional athlete.

Tim Villegas: Wow. Okay.

Elana Meyers Taylor: Yes, he’s very athletic, and he wants to be out there. We’ve taken him to gymnastics class and all different types of things. But the difficulty we’ve found is that a lot of times the organizations themselves aren’t as open to having interpreters as we would like them to be. Or they expect me to interpret.

Expecting parents to interpret is difficult. Yes, we can do it, we have the skills, but we also wanna enjoy our kids, same as the other parents. We don’t wanna be out there coaching when we’re not the coach. And I don’t know all the terminology a gymnastics coach needs. We have swim lessons tonight, and I don’t know all the swimming terminology. I’m not a professional interpreter. So it shouldn’t be the expectation that parents interpret for a child in these sporting activities.

What other deaf parents have told me made a world of difference is the same kind of thing: coaches learning a little bit of sign language. A little basic sign goes a long way. And for hearing devices, it’s finding adaptive ways to include them, like putting them in the helmet, or finding ways for swimming, and making sure that when a coach is speaking to the child, they’re face to face so the child can see them. It takes a few accommodations.

For my older son, for the most part, we’ll do Special Olympics Young Athletes and those types of adaptive programs. But for my younger son, it’s more of a wild, wild west. We want him in typical activities, but the interpreter so far has been the issue.

Tim Villegas: I can imagine. I think there should be some sort of national campaign where we make ASL mandatory or something. Everyone needs to know a little bit of sign language. Maybe not ASL all over the world, obviously, but some sort of sign language so we can have some basic interactions if we need to.

Elana Meyers Taylor: And it goes a long way. My husband and I will be in a crowded place where you can’t hear, and we can sign to each other. So it’s useful for that too. Or if your kids are hearing and don’t know sign language yet, and there’s stuff you don’t want them to know about, you can sign with your spouse and your kids can’t understand it yet.

Tim Villegas: Ah, that’s funny. That’s what happened with my parents speaking Spanish.

Elana Meyers Taylor: See?

Tim Villegas: You’re like, “I’m gonna learn Spanish.” My parents would speak Spanish, and I’d be like, “Wait a minute.” And to your point, my wife is a nurse, so she knows some basic sign language because she uses it in her practice. So a lot of times we’ll be in the store, and she’ll wave at me and sign, and I’m like, “Going to the bathroom. Okay. I know where you’re going.” So it’s pretty funny.

Last question before we get to our last segment. This episode is going to air during October, which is Down Syndrome Awareness Month. Let’s do a little thought experiment. Your son is six right now. Think about 20 years in the future. What would you want for your son when he’s 26? And what do you wanna say to listeners to help make that happen?

Elana Meyers Taylor: Health insurance.

Tim Villegas: Hey. Let’s be real.

Elana Meyers Taylor: Let’s be real. Health insurance. That’s what I want for him. I will speak to this. Right now there are so many things happening within the disability community. There’s a lot of uncertainty. And frankly, a lot of parents and a lot of people who work in the disability community are worried and rightfully scared about what’s gonna happen and what the future looks like for our children. Will the Olmstead decision stand? What’s community involvement gonna look like? All these different types of things.

I would like my child to be able to live as independently as possible. I would like him to be able to have a job that he feels purpose in, that he gets up every morning and feels like he’s adding value to the world, even though I know his value is in who he is and not in what he does. I think it’s important that he’s able to do those types of things, and that’s what we’re working toward every day: trying to get him to those opportunities.

What exactly that looks like, I’m not sure, but I do know I want it to come from him. I want him to be able to pursue his dreams to the fullest, and I want him to be in a situation where he feels capable, supported, and loved in doing so. So we’re working to help him not only figure out what his dreams are, but also figure out how to make them happen. Not so much us as parents making it happen, although we’re willing to do the work. We’re trying not to be helicopter parents, but to give him the tools so he can make his dreams happen.

So I say health insurance in jest, but it’s legit. What do his career opportunities look like, so he can have health insurance, or he can survive on Medicaid, if Medicaid’s still a thing? As parents, those are the types of things we worry about: making sure our children are okay 20 years, 40 years down the line, and when we’re gone, quite frankly.

Tim Villegas: Yeah. Something I think about all the time. So we’re not alone, and I’m sure everyone has been thinking about that lately, too.

Elana Meyers Taylor: Yep.

Tim Villegas: Anything else you want to share with our audience of educators, advocates, and family members before we wrap up?

Elana Meyers Taylor: Yeah. I mentioned my oldest son is now homeschooled. The biggest thing that led to that decision is that he’s immunocompromised. That caused a complete shift in whether we felt comfortable with him in the school setting. He is a very social kid. He needs to be around other kids. But as parents, we’re weighing the risk of him coming home with a communicable disease that will land him in the hospital at a bare minimum, and have worse outcomes, versus keeping him at home and educating him.

And I will be the first to say I’m not an educator. I’m not a professional. I highly applaud what educators do. Their work is very commendable, and they should get paid more. Let’s start there.

But it’s not a situation we necessarily want to be in. Where we are, within the state of Texas, we feel like it’s necessary, because we’re literally weighing my son’s health outcomes against his education outcomes. And in our mind, if he’s not healthy, he’s not gonna learn anything anyway. It’s not a situation we prefer, but that’s where we find ourselves.

Once we’re in a better situation and feel more comfortable that he’s able to be reintroduced into a school, it’s going to be important that we create systems that recognize he’s been homeschooled for the past year or two. Because that’s also something we wanna work toward. He’s gonna grow up and be in a world where he’s not gonna be able to stay at home every day. He’s gonna be in a world with people with disabilities and people without disabilities, and it’s important that he lives and thrives in those environments and that he’s part of the community.

We wanna get him back out there as soon as possible, while recognizing that it’s not possible for all families at all times. So there is some nuance in it. At the end of the day, I know whenever he goes back to school, the teachers and I will have the same goal of making sure he’s able to achieve his dreams and goals. Just recognize that school isn’t gonna look one way for every child, and it can’t.

Tim Villegas: Amazing. Thank you again for sharing your thoughts. I’m not sure we prepared you adequately for this last segment, so I’m going to explain what it is, and then I’ll see how you feel about it.

This season of Think Inclusive, we’re ending with a game. It’s called a micro RPG, or micro role-playing game. Have you played any tabletop games, like Dungeons and Dragons?

Elana Meyers Taylor: No.

Tim Villegas: Okay. Do you happen to have a deck of cards or a die with you?

Elana Meyers Taylor: No. Sorry.

Tim Villegas: Okay, I have them for you. I’m gonna walk you through this, and it won’t take more than five or 10 minutes. Really, all we’re doing is telling a story together. This is just a fun way to end. I’ve done this seven or eight times, and it’s always different.

What I’m gonna ask you to do is close your eyes, and then I’m gonna count down from three, and then I want you to open them, and I’m going to read a script and walk you through what we’re gonna do. Okay?

Elana Meyers Taylor: Okay.

Tim Villegas: All right. Three, two, one, and open.

You wake up gasping in the cold, floating in a dim metal room. Your head is pounding and your memory is syrup. You have classic hibernation sickness. A soft chime dings off in the distance, and your ship’s computer, Cora, says, “Good morning. You have been asleep for a very long time. We are in orbit above an uncharted planet. Also, minor note: our teleporter is running on reserve power. Please explore responsibly.”

So you are on a spaceship above a planet that’s spinning, and you don’t know who you are. The first thing we’re gonna do is roll a die, and then I’m gonna give you your character.

Elana Meyers Taylor: Okay.

Tim Villegas: Here we go. I just dropped my die, so here it is. All right, you are Doc Fern, who is a botanist. Your motivation is that you want to find a new plant on the planet you’re exploring. So, Doc Fern, are you ready to explore your planet? I’m gonna roll the die one more time, and that’ll decide what planet you’re gonna be on.

Okay, you rolled a 6. We haven’t done this one yet. You are going to the Skyworld. Imagine there’s no ground. It’s only floating mountains all across the planet, with clouds all over the place, and there isn’t one big, long stretch of land you can walk through.

So we’re going to teleport you down into the Skyworld. You get enveloped in a big ball of light, and all of a sudden you’re on one of these mountains. You look around, and you see nothing but air and clouds.

Now we’re gonna use the deck of cards that I shuffled. These are gonna tell us what kind of adventure you’re gonna go on. Okay?

Elana Meyers Taylor: Okay.

Tim Villegas: For the first adventure, you get to make a choice. Do you want to stay where you are and explore that little area you’re in? Or do you just wanna say, “Nah, I’m done, Tim. Let’s go back to the ship”?

Elana Meyers Taylor: Explore the area.

Tim Villegas: Explore the area. Okay. Pick a number: 1, 2, or 3.

Elana Meyers Taylor: 2.

Tim Villegas: You picked the ace of clubs, and I look on my sheet and read what it is. On the mountain where you are, you look all around, and you’re in this big circle where nothing is growing. But just a few steps away, you see lots and lots of grass, like a wall. So you’re in the middle of this space, and all around you, in a circle, there’s a wall of grass. You go up to it and touch it, and the whole wall of grass in front of you starts to shake. What do you do?

Elana Meyers Taylor: Oh, gosh. Scream? What would I do in this situation? I guess I would try to push through it and see if I could walk through it.

Tim Villegas: Great. So the wall is shaking, but you can put your hand in. It’s really thick, kinda like if you’ve ever been in a corn maze. You can kinda see through, and you push through. You start to move through this thick, tall grass, and it’s soft, so it’s really easy to walk through. And all of a sudden, you hear a noise. What’s the noise that you hear?

Elana Meyers Taylor: A rumble.

Tim Villegas: You hear a rumble. Is it a high rumble or a low rumble?

Elana Meyers Taylor: A low rumble.

Tim Villegas: A low rumble. So you stop in your tracks. Do you wanna keep exploring, go back to the ship, or what do you wanna do?

Elana Meyers Taylor: I’ll keep exploring.

Tim Villegas: Keep exploring. Pick 1 or 2.

Elana Meyers Taylor: 2.

Tim Villegas: Five of spades. Let’s see what happens. The rumble isn’t coming from the ground. It’s coming from the sky. You look up and see a huge thunderhead moving over your location, and all of a sudden it starts pouring rain. You’re soaked. It’s a deluge, and it just won’t stop. What do you do?

Elana Meyers Taylor: I don’t really have many options here. I gotta keep exploring. I’m trying to find a plant, so I gotta see what else is out there.

Tim Villegas: All right. Let’s use your last one: eight of clubs. I like that you remembered your mission.

Elana Meyers Taylor: I got to.

Tim Villegas: Eight of clubs. You keep pushing through the grass, and you just keep going, and finally you get to the edge of what seems to be another open area. The thunderhead moves on. The rain didn’t last that long. And in the middle of this really large area, you see one single pot. It looks like a pot you’d put a plant in, but there’s no plant in it. You walk over and look into the pot. What do you see?

Elana Meyers Taylor: You said there’s no plant in it?

Tim Villegas: From afar, it doesn’t look like there’s anything in it. But when you peer over and look into the pot, what do you see?

Elana Meyers Taylor: A plant.

Tim Villegas: What kind of plant? Describe it to me.

Elana Meyers Taylor: There’s a little bit of topsoil, and actually some rocks in there surrounding it, and there’s just a little sprout of something green.

Tim Villegas: I forgot to tell you this, but you have a backpack. You look through it, and you have some fertilizer in your backpack. What do you do?

Elana Meyers Taylor: Put the fertilizer on the plant.

Tim Villegas: As you put the fertilizer on the plant, it starts to grow, because we’re on a different planet, so the rules are gone. It grows and grows and becomes bigger and bigger, and it completely fills the pot, and now it’s taller than you. What does the plant look like?

Elana Meyers Taylor: It’s a tree, and it’s got a type of fruit I’ve never seen before. It’s like a mix of a dragon fruit and a banana.

Tim Villegas: Oh, wow. Do you have a name for this kind of fruit?

Elana Meyers Taylor: No, because I’m just now discovering it. The fruit is sweet, because I love sweet things, and you have to peel it. It can’t be a dragon fruit, it can’t be a banana, and I don’t wanna do something cheeky and mix the two. So we’re just gonna call it a grass fruit, because it was waiting in the grass.

Tim Villegas: I like it. Grass fruit. Okay. Your ship’s computer, Cora, starts talking to you in your headset: “Doc Fern, we are running out of power. You have to come back to the ship.” So you get to decide: do you take a grass fruit with you, or leave it the way it is and be happy with the exploring? What do you want to do before you get back to the ship?

Elana Meyers Taylor: I take two pieces of the fruit, but leave the tree. Just the individual fruit, because it’s got the seeds.

Tim Villegas: Exactly. You put those two grass fruits in your backpack, you’re enveloped in light again, and you’re beamed back to the ship. Cora says, “Welcome back, Doc Fern. We’re so glad you’re safe. You look a little wet, but I hope everything’s okay.” And now Cora says, “Doc Fern, you get to name the planet you just explored.” What’s the name of the planet?

Elana Meyers Taylor: Good question. You’re really working my imagination today.

Tim Villegas: That’s right. That’s what it’s all about. I like where you’re going with the grass fruit, so maybe something about grass? Green? There’s no wrong answer.

Elana Meyers Taylor: Yeah, but I want it to be something I would remember. Hilltop Grassland.

Tim Villegas: Hilltop Grassland is the planet. What is one thing you will remember about Hilltop Grassland?

Elana Meyers Taylor: Shaky grass.

Tim Villegas: Shaky grass. Very good. And that concludes this session of Awake Among the Stars, which is based on a solo RPG that I will put in the show notes. That was so fun.

Elana Meyers Taylor: Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s fun.

Tim Villegas: It’s so different every time. Elana Meyers Taylor, thank you so much for being on the Think Inclusive podcast and playing our game.

Elana Meyers Taylor: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Tim Villegas: That was Elana Meyers Taylor. Here’s what I’m taking with me.

Elana said that if you’ve met one person with Down syndrome, you’ve met one person with Down syndrome. An IEP is supposed to be individualized. That means the question is never which program fits this label. It’s what does this learner need to learn and belong?

And then there’s what she said about worth. People are worthy because they’re here, they’re breathing, and they’re human, not because of what they can do. And that’s a lot to hear from someone with six Olympic medals.

One practical step for educators, and for coaches too: learn a few basic signs before your next IEP meeting, evaluation, or first practice. Hello. Your name. Good job. Elana’s son stopped signing with an evaluator the moment he figured out she didn’t know any. A little bit of sign goes a long way. And please don’t count on parents to interpret. They want to watch their kid play, same as every other parent.

Share this episode with a colleague who’s building inclusive schools. Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and follow Think Inclusive wherever you get your podcasts. If you have something to share, please email me at tvillegas@mcie.org.

Now, let’s roll the credits. Think Inclusive is brought to you by me, Tim Villegas. This show is a proud production of the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education. Writing help from Claude, editing by Rey from Internet, scheduling and extra production help from Jill Wagoner. Our original music is by Miles Kredich, with extra vibes from Melod.ie. Awake Among the Stars is adapted from Alone Among the Stars by Takuma Okada. You can find the original role-playing game at the link in our show notes.

Big thanks to our sponsors, IXL and Inclusive Schooling. Visit ixl.com/inclusive and inclusiveschooling.com/mcie-behavior. If you’ve made it this far, you’re officially part of the Think Inclusive inclusion crew.

Want to help us keep moving the needle for inclusion? Head to mcie.org and click the Donate button. Give $25, $55, $100, or even $1,000. It helps us keep partnering with schools and districts to move inclusive practices forward and support educators doing the work.

Find us on the socials almost everywhere at Think Inclusive. Thanks for hanging out. And remember, inclusion always works.