Navigating Identity: Poetry, Disability, and Inclusion Advocacy with LeDerick Horne ~ 1339

LeDerick Horne: I used to help run and organize a few open mics in the tri-state area as part of a poetry group. Spoken word was something that I was doing. I was using spoken word, just poetry and writing in general, I think really to explore the dual identities of being a Black man and then a person with a learning disability.

And so I had been, through the course of my time in college — and it took me seven years to get my degree — but through that time I collected this body of work. And I would read it at open mics.

But I also am very clear that disability is a political identity as well, right? And it connects us to a very long history of people who have struggled and contributed to the human race. And so for me, when I first started hearing the word disability, learning disability, that was so much better than silence, and it helped me to connect to a larger struggle and a larger place in the world.

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 the classroom at the end of the hall and what it does to a kid to spend most of their school years inside of one. My guest lived that story and then turned it into poetry, literally.

LeDerick Horne is a spoken word poet, advocate, and speaker who has performed everywhere from state departments of education to the White House. He is the board chair of All In for Inclusive Education, co-author of Empowering Students with Hidden Disabilities: A Path to Pride and Success, and co-host of the Black and Dyslexic podcast.

So what happens when a kid labeled neurologically impaired in the third grade grows up to help lead an inclusion movement? We talk about how teachers can support students with dyslexia and other hidden disabilities, why collaboration, not proximity, is the real marker of an inclusive school, and how race and disability intersect in ways schools still struggle to name. Also, somewhere in this conversation, we accidentally invent a new job title: inclusion pirate. You’ll know it when you hear it.

Before we meet our guest, I wanna 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 LeDerick Horne. Catch you on the other side.

LeDerick Horne, welcome to the Think Inclusive podcast.

LeDerick Horne: Hey, Tim. Thanks for having me.

Tim Villegas: We did it. We did it.

LeDerick Horne: We did. We did.

Tim Villegas: After a few challenging technical difficulties, we are here, and we’re ready to rock and roll. So I’m so glad you’re with us today. And let me just say welcome to Atlanta. Now, how long have you been here?

LeDerick Horne: About three years now. Three years. I’m originally from New Jersey. My wife and I moved down about three years ago. We were in the city. We were in Reynoldstown for the first year and a half. We’re in Decatur now, but we recently bought a home in the city, so we’re getting a little work done there and getting ready to move in.

Tim Villegas: Wonderful. Wonderful. And then for everyone who’s listening who’s like, “Where’s that?” — just in case this is the first time you’re listening, even though I work for our nonprofit that is in Maryland, I live in the Atlanta Metro area, and I’ve lived here since 2008. Originally from California. So you know, we’re just moving all over the place. And I love Atlanta, and am in Decatur quite a bit, so yeah. I’m very happy to talk with a local.

LeDerick, I wanna talk about your personal experience with disability, and then also just inclusion in the classroom. So can we just jump right in and talk to teachers, as a lot of teachers listen — and a lot of teachers listen that are interested in creating inclusive classrooms. So I’m wondering if you have any advice or ideas about how teachers can support students with dyslexia and other disabilities that may not be so obvious, how they can support them in their classrooms.

LeDerick Horne: Yeah. I think some of the first steps in creating that support is just kinda being honest around the things we know and the things we don’t know. And I think that can be challenging for educators and family members, but particularly for educators, ’cause they’re expected to be the one who’s gonna teach. And so I think oftentimes educators have this sort of air that they’re supposed to know it all. But the reality is that many of our teacher prep programs are never gonna really prepare educators in a meaningful way on how to support folks with disabilities more generally, and then particularly, there’s not enough teacher preparation and professional development around dyslexia. So I think beginning with that.

And then the other piece with inclusion is, I think one of the key pieces that makes inclusion work is teachers being able to collaborate with each other, right? Realizing that there may be those gaps in your knowledge base, but knowing that you can draw from members of the IEP team in the school, the learning specialist, right? You can make a request of the administration and say, “Hey, we need someone who’s a specialist in literacy,” and different experts like that to come in and collaborate with you and your colleagues on how to address whatever the specific needs are that you’re seeing for specific students in your classroom. So the collaboration piece I think is a key one.

I’m board chair of a nonprofit called All In for Inclusive Education, and we have a really great team of inclusion facilitators. We work primarily in New Jersey, but we’re a national organization, so we do work all over the United States. And one of the things that I’ve learned from being in collaboration with those folks is just how a lot of times when we think about what inclusion is, we just think it’s like folks with disabilities being in the same room with kids who don’t have disabilities, or it’s just team teaching, right? Or co-teaching. But one of the key markers about whether your school is really practicing inclusion or not is whether you’re in a regular practice and have regular time set aside for that collaboration piece. Because it’s just not realistic, given the diversity of our student population, the diversity of students’ needs, for one person to be able to address everybody and have all that information just in their head and at their fingertips at all times.

Tim Villegas: Yeah. Collaboration is absolutely key. And shout out to All In, our friends from New Jersey and beyond. Love, love that organization. We’ve had Michelle on, and actually Arthur Aston has been on as well.

LeDerick Horne: Two great people.

Tim Villegas: Yeah. Two great people. Fantastic people. I’m wondering, with your experience with disabilities and being in school, can you talk a little bit about your own experience in school and how you felt supported or not supported with your own disability?

LeDerick Horne: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I come to this work not as an educator, not as a parent, but as someone who’s lived the experience of having a disability and going through special education.

And so when I was born, I gave a lot of indication I was gonna do really well in school. But it was pretty clear very early on that I was gonna struggle. I did the first grade two times, started out at a private school, and then after that second go-around in the first grade, they basically were like, “We think he should go back to district.” Come the third grade, I was basically recognized as having some kind of disability. Had that first evaluation done and I was labeled as being neurologically impaired, which was apparently a fairly common label used in New Jersey at the time. And resource room, and the resource room led to special education.

And my first special ed educator was just really a remarkable teacher. And I’ll let everybody know that I could barely read. My spelling was really badly impaired, my ability to do math, all of that, by the time I stepped into my first special ed classroom. But my first special ed teacher was Miss Priscilla Yates, and she was my champion. And she really pushed me and everybody in our class to do the best that we could.

The downside to her class was that it was self-contained. We didn’t spend much time with any other students in the building. And that really began to work away at me. In the district I was in, even through middle school and in high school, I would just go from one special ed classroom to the next for the most part. There were attempts here and there to get me into general education classes, and I even had the opportunity to be in one honors class my senior year. But for the most part, I was just in these classes with the same kids that I’d been in classes with basically from elementary school.

And yeah, it left me with a lot of challenges. And by the time I was in high school, I was just terrified. I was terrified because I knew my skills were really low, and I had no idea what the roadmap was gonna look like for me in the adult world given all the challenges that I had. I didn’t think I could go to college, and I didn’t think I was gonna be able to earn a living or do work that I cared about. And so I sank into a real deep depression and was fortunate that I was able to pull myself out of that. And with a lot of resilience and a whole lot of “I’ll show you,” I decided I was gonna go to college.

And my IEP team — and shout out to the IEP team at Franklin High School in Somerset, New Jersey — they recommended me going to Middlesex County College, where there was a really great disability support program, and that program just opened the world of learning up for me. We talked a lot about disability, and that was something that I just hadn’t experienced prior. And then I started actually getting accommodations. Prior to that, I think the work was just dumbed down for us. But I started using audiobooks and getting extra time on my tests and having my tests proctored, and it just made a huge difference to me.

And there was that culture. It was the first time that I was really exposed to an inclusive educational setting. It was just this culture that, we expect you to be excellent. We’re gonna give you the tools you need to be able to push yourself to your fullest potential. And you’re also gonna work your butt off. And that’s what I did. And I realized I was good at writing, and I was good at math, and I declared myself a math major. From Middlesex, went on to New Jersey City University, got a BA in mathematics, minored in fine art with an emphasis in painting.

And then my last semester as a college student, these two guys, Bob Hall and Bill Freeman from the New Jersey Department of Ed, saw me speaking on a panel talking about my experiences, and they recruited me to work for the Department of Ed. And in Jersey, we have this long-standing tradition, a set of conferences every spring called the Dare to Dream Conferences. And so I was asked to be their keynote speaker, and I got the opportunity to be a part of the team that organized those conferences.

And it was like — I’m thinking about it now — it’s like a group of pirates, man. It was like these folks who just really cared about kids, kids with disabilities, and did whatever they had to do to make these incredible experiences happen where these kids got to learn from each other and learn what self-advocacy is and see examples of how your IEP meetings should run, and they were just learning from each other.

And I did that in New Jersey for two years and then got the opportunity to start connecting with some folks across the country. One of the first groups I worked with was NASDSE, the National Association of State Directors of Special Education, doing youth leadership and development work. I was the founding board chair of a nonprofit called Eye to Eye, which is now, I believe, the Neurodivergence Alliance. And we really focused in on building mentoring chapters where we got college students and high school students with learning disabilities and ADHD to mentor middle school students.

And yeah, it’s just been — I do a lot of professional development days, speak at a lot of conferences. I have two collections of my poetry out, and then I co-authored the book behind me, Empowering Students with Hidden Disabilities: A Path to Pride and Success.

Tim Villegas: Wow. What a ride.

LeDerick Horne: Yeah, man. We still on it.

Tim Villegas: Yeah. What a ride. Oh, man. When I was hearing you talk about being pirates, I was like, “That’s another name we could add to the list, to inclusionist and all that stuff — inclusion pirate.” Oh, my gosh. We need to make a T-shirt or something.

And then Dare to Dream, that’s the name of one of your poems. Is that right?

LeDerick Horne: Yeah, probably my best-known poem. And it was — I had started writing, so I was a college student in the ’90s. And it was just, the open mic scene was really strong then. I used to help run and organize a few open mics in the tri-state area as part of a poetry group. Spoken word was something that I was doing. And I was using spoken word, just poetry and writing in general, I think really to explore the dual identities of being a Black man and then a person with a learning disability.

And so I had been, through the course of my time in college — and it took me seven years to get my degree — but through that time I collected this body of work. And I would read it at open mics. And so when the folks at Department of Ed asked me to MC these conferences, I was drawing from my experience in the open mic world. But then I also had these collections of poems, so I was like, “I’ll try to read this to these teachers and these kids who are in the audience,” and it hit.

And then like the last couple of conferences in that first spring of me MCing them, Bob Hall said, “Hey, why don’t you write a Dare to Dream poem?” And so it was literally this very utilitarian piece where it was just like, all these kids just had this amazing experience of advocacy and self-determination and community and reinforcing a positive identity as people with disabilities, and then they’re gonna get on their buses and go back home, so what do I need to say to them? And yeah, I just wrote the Dare to Dream poem.

And then so many things — when you’re specific, it tends to allow you to be very general. And so yeah, I’ve done this at the White House. The poem has really connected with a bunch of people all over the world.

Tim Villegas: Yeah. And I’m imagining that it’s just one of those things where it’s this perfect moment in time. You made this poem for this one thing, and it’s just one thing in a long line of things that have driven you to where you are today. So I can imagine how just — I don’t know — special that is. I might be projecting. I might be projecting. I don’t know. But I think that’s really cool. I don’t know about you, but sometimes things in life just seem to lead from one thing to another to another, and I think my brain sees the through line.

LeDerick Horne: Yeah.

Tim Villegas: Like it’s all connected.

LeDerick Horne: Yeah. One of my favorite professors, Ben Jones, who’s a painter — when I was at New Jersey City University, I took him for a few classes. There are these educators and mentors that we have in our lives, and it’s like you love them and you appreciate all that they give you, but you’re kinda scared of them at the same time.

Tim Villegas: Yeah.

LeDerick Horne: So Professor Jones was one of those people, right? But it was only because you couldn’t hide, right? You had to show up, you had to do the work. And he demanded so much of everyone. And I remember being in his class and being like, I majored in mathematics. I have a minor in art. Towards the end of my degree, I was spending most of my time just with artists, finishing up my art requirements. And I told him, I was like, “I don’t know what I wanna do next.” Maybe I’ll do architecture. I thought about being an actuary. I’d always had this interest in real estate, which I have pursued in addition to the advocacy work.

But what he said to me was, he said, “LeDerick, it’ll all make sense in the end.”

Tim Villegas: Yeah.

LeDerick Horne: “When you get to the end of all of this, you’ll look back and it’ll all connect and make sense.” And all that time I spent just bumming around Central New Jersey, New Brunswick, going to open mics, writing my little corny poems, MCing these shows — I didn’t realize that was helping me to build craft on stage and a presence. And particularly when I was going through the darkest times, when I was a teenager and just questioning whether I was gonna survive or not, I didn’t know that was gonna kinda fuel me to have what I needed to be able to help, hopefully, make the world a better place for this next generation. But it all makes sense.

Tim Villegas: Yeah. When did you start identifying as an advocate, or in the advocacy space or movement?

LeDerick Horne: I would say shortly after graduating from college. But particularly once I started kinda understanding that there was more to this work outside of just working for the Department of Ed in New Jersey. And being able to — particularly once I got to connect with nonprofit organizations and support other people’s work.

Tim Villegas: After the break, LeDerick tells about knowing even as a kid that separate wasn’t working, and why educators who care about equity can’t show up for their students without understanding how race and disability play against each other.

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I wanna bring back something you mentioned about your teacher in the resource room — Miss Yates. You said that her classroom, it’s a little bit problematic, right? Because you have students with disabilities who are only interacting with other students with disabilities. And I’m wondering, as a student, it sounds like you had that realization. Or was it after the fact, and then once you started getting into more advocacy you looked back and you’re like, “That was a problem”?

LeDerick Horne: No, I knew immediately, man. I knew immediately.

Tim Villegas: Okay.

LeDerick Horne: Yeah. I knew immediately because we were experiencing bullying, right? So it was clear, there’s a target on our backs here. I remember going to a music class, and again, it was all of us with disabilities, and then I could tell by how the music teacher was communicating that she was dumbing the work down.

Tim Villegas: Yeah.

LeDerick Horne: And I called her out on it. And then slowly worked to turn the class against her, right? It was like I was that kinda—

Tim Villegas: Inclusion pirate.

LeDerick Horne: Yeah. Inclusion pirate. Yeah. Like I was a little bit of a jerk when it came to what I saw as an insult. But I could feel it. And I think one of the things — and I don’t know if I 100% had the exact language — but I remember always focusing on just wanting to be in a different environment, right? Saying to my mother, “I wanna go to a different school.”

And then even as a little kid — and it’s not uncommon for all kids to just have these visions — if there was a time machine, I know I’d do great in like the West, right? Back then, or like in medieval times. And you didn’t realize, but you were picking these places where you could survive without having to know how to read and spell like everybody else, right? But by the time I got to middle school, I had become pretty politically aware. My Black identity was pretty secure. And the music and the larger culture was reinforcing a lot of that. So I began to get an understanding of, there are systemic issues at play here that create not only the systems like our schools, but also our identities. And then it really kinda bubbled up by the time I was in high school. It solidified when I got to college.

Tim Villegas: Yeah.

LeDerick Horne: But I think I had enough of the pieces and the indication. It was the brave step, when I kinda went through that breakdown, for me to very clearly say, “I’m not the problem. Y’all are the problem.”

Tim Villegas: Yes. Yes. And I think there’s a tension there with Miss Yates, right? Because she sounds like a great teacher, right?

LeDerick Horne: But in a bad system.

Tim Villegas: Yes.

LeDerick Horne: Right.

Tim Villegas: And I guarantee you that resonates with the people who listen and watch this podcast, because — this is a generalization — but when you look at how school districts still in 2026 serve students with disabilities, it is by far mostly segregated, especially for some students, right? And we’re not even talking about students with the most significant disabilities. We’re talking about students with learning disabilities, and who have been diagnosed with dyslexia and who have been diagnosed with dysgraphia or whatever, right? And educators have been told, or believe, that someone else needs to teach them. Somebody else with highly specialized training or whatever needs to teach them. But what I’m hearing about Miss Yates and about other people is that you just have to have a commitment to teach this kid.

LeDerick Horne: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely, yeah. And New Jersey has a really challenging track record around that. I was visiting a district back in February, and we went to a few different schools in the district, and then they were very clear: this is the one where 85% of the kids here all have IEPs, right? And you could feel it being like a very different climate when you were in this space. And I’m doing like a school assembly, and the kids were carrying a lot. And I don’t know if the staff realizes it. And it doesn’t take away from who these teachers are, right? Because a lot of them have also bought into the idea that we’re doing the best for our students. But I think so often it’s just because we don’t have those examples. There’s not enough educators and administrators who are interacting with folks like you in this podcast and being able to see that there’s a different way to approach education.

And then also being able to hear the voices of folks like me, who — I can point directly to, no, it is still issues that I’m working through from being in that classroom at the end of the hall for so many years, and having that sort of quiet reinforcement that I wasn’t as smart or as good as everybody else. And then just, it’s the act of othering. And that’s never good.

Tim Villegas: Yeah. Yeah. And then how do you see — we talk to a lot of people about equity, or they come to this work with an equity mindset, right? But they don’t always connect the intersectionality of race and disability. So I’m wondering, with your experience, how do you approach that in your advocacy? Yeah, we’ll just leave it there.

LeDerick Horne: I mean, you first have to call it out, right? You have to call it out. And I think that’s still really important, right? I don’t think a lot of folks understand the way that the civil rights movement and racial integration of schools, and then the creation of special education — just how that played and continues to play against each other.

And how, unfortunately, a lot of our districts are still segregating people of color, a lot of boys, a lot of poor people, into special education. And that in itself, it’s okay if you’ve got challenges that need supporting, but it’s that separate is never equal type of dynamic.

And you used the word intersectionality. There are these multiplying effects that come with that as well, right? So you’re dealing with redlining and environmental racism, and then you put on top of that issues related to disability. And some of this stuff goes back multiple generations. I think that as a school looking to serve a community, as an educator looking to serve a child and a family, if you don’t take the time to at least try to unpack some of that and see the ways in which it plays against each other, it’s gonna be really hard for you to really show up for your students.

Tim Villegas: Yeah. Yeah. Do you feel comfortable talking a little politics?

LeDerick Horne: Yeah. Are we gonna talk about this jab our president took at Gavin Newsom?

Tim Villegas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. There you go. So since you’re already there, I’m teeing that up for you. I don’t have to explain it. Depending on when we all hear this, you can look it up or whatever. But I would like to know your thoughts about that. And this is not — on this podcast we don’t particularly endorse any particular candidates, but we do talk about topics related to disability, equity, inclusion. And this seems very on topic. So I’d like to know your thoughts.

LeDerick Horne: I’ll just be blunt. I think it’s a stupid thing to say. And then it’s also dangerous. I can only imagine — I don’t own a TV, so I didn’t see this when it came through, but the texts started coming in. And it was my friends and my colleagues who are dyslexic, and it’s, “This hurts. This hurts.”

And silence around dyslexia and us having a culture where we don’t talk enough about neurodiversity and disability is bad enough, but when the person in the highest office in America says that someone is disqualified from being president or can’t be president because they’re dyslexic, it’s like another form of bullying, and it’s another thing that eats away at our young people’s self-esteem, and then it also reinforces these horrible stereotypes that people who don’t really understand what dyslexia is are gonna start believing.

I’m fairly certain we’ve already had dyslexic presidents.

Tim Villegas: Yeah, I was like, “Yeah, it’s probably already happened.”

LeDerick Horne: Yeah, right? If not some folks with ADHD, and I can think of some within my lifetime which I think would probably qualify. But yeah, I could try to be kind and say it’s a misinformed opinion. But it’s just terribly inaccurate.

And I would go as far as to say that, given where we are now with the complexity of both geopolitics, our economy, the shifting that technology, and particularly artificial intelligence, is gonna bring in this new era that we’re entering into — you would want a dyslexic president. America would benefit from someone who has the neural makeup to be able to integrate disparate sources of information very quickly, and that’s one of the sort of dyslexic advantages, right?

Tim Villegas: Right. Exactly. Yeah. So yeah, the president is incorrect. I’ll just leave it there.

LeDerick Horne: Leave it there.

Tim Villegas: I’ll leave it there. To the listeners, I appreciate your candid response.

Educators that listen, they’re deeply committed to equity, deeply committed to creating inclusive classrooms. And a lot of times, around dyslexia in particular, and hidden disabilities, they just don’t know what to look for, right? There may be students in their class that are undiagnosed, or they just don’t know how to approach supporting them because they don’t feel equipped. They don’t have the resources. So I would love for you to imagine you’re talking to them, talking to this kind of teacher. And what I’d love is your advice on how to approach students who learn differently, and if there’s any sort of general advice you could give them as they move forward in their teaching career.

LeDerick Horne: Yeah. Some of it, I think, is recognizing some of the signs, particularly when you’re dealing with someone who hasn’t been diagnosed, right? And there’s the basics of just not acquiring the ability to read and write and spell on the same timeline as everybody else.

There’s things like subvocalization, which is something I do where I need to hear words, right? So if I can say it out loud while I’m reading, there’s a higher chance it’s gonna get into my ears, and then I’ll understand it. But little kids who are struggling with reading, they do that.

There’s also a high comorbidity around dyslexia and ADHD. So the distraction, or inattentiveness, right? Showing some of those signs as well.

And then as our kids get older — and when I say that, I don’t even mean middle school, high school, but just once they’ve been stung by not feeling like they’re adequate as students — it’s gonna be the avoidance. And then it’s the behavior, and that can go all kinds of different ways, from acting up to just not coming to class. And a lot of us are doing that just because we wanna avoid embarrassment. So seeing those signs.

And then I would also put forth that I’m the co-host of a podcast, the Black and Dyslexic Podcast, and we have a bunch of literacy experts and advocates and individuals who are dyslexic who have come on that podcast over the years. And I think one of the things that’s helped me in interacting with those folks, and then from the podcast building community, is just the realization that just ’cause you’re dyslexic doesn’t mean you can’t learn to read, right? Given the science of reading, given a real strong approach to teaching literacy skills, you can teach someone who’s dyslexic how to read, right? It just means having that in your school, and being trained on it. And I know, if someone had really taken a systematic approach to literacy for me, it would’ve made a huge difference.

And then the other piece is being okay talking about difference, talking about disability. I went to a school and I was in a family where we just didn’t talk about disability at all. We didn’t talk about learning disabilities. I remember my father, when it came up, he was like, “Oh, you’re really special. You’re just special. The way you learn is special.” And the refreshing experience for me as a college student was being a part of a disability support program on campus, and from day one, having conversations about disability.

And I still get into these debates with folks in the dyslexia world — and I deal with disability broadly defined. But for folks who are kinda narrowly just in the dyslexia world, there’s a lot of play around language, and I think that’s great, and it’s beautiful, and it kinda shows where the movement is now. But it’s like learning differences or different abilities, and I’m here for folks defining themselves however they want.

But I also am very clear that disability is a political identity as well, right? And it connects us to a very long history of people who have struggled and contributed to the human race. And so for me, when I first started hearing the word disability, learning disability, that was so much better than silence, and it helped me to connect to a larger struggle and a larger place in the world.

Tim Villegas: Where can people find your books, website, how to contact you? What are your details for people if they wanna reach out?

LeDerick Horne: I think I’m the only LeDerick Horne in the world, so if you just Google my name, it’ll come up. But my website is lederick.com, so that’s L-E-D-E-R-I-C-K dot com. I have two albums of poetry that are on Spotify and Apple Music. Been featured in a few documentaries, so one is Normal Isn’t Real, and the other is a PBS documentary called Being You, which is a Roadtrip Nation documentary.

And then I would also encourage everyone to check out the website for All In for Inclusive Education. I know Michelle and Arthur have been guests on this podcast before. If you really wanna dig into inclusion, that’s the place to go. And we also have a brand-new organization that’s come in under All In called the Urban Collaborative, and I would encourage folks to check out their stuff on social media as well as their link on our page. They do a great series of member meetings that sort of rotate throughout the country every year. And it’s the heads of some of the biggest districts in America, school administrators who are coming together and having really challenging conversations around equity and how we show up for our young people in our communities.

Tim Villegas: I love it. Thank you so much for sharing, LeDerick.

LeDerick said the word disability was so much better than silence, and that kind of honesty carried the whole back half of this conversation. Which brings me to one more thing I wanna get to, and it involves a stack of cards. Are you ready for the mystery question? Do you know what I’m talking about?

LeDerick Horne: I think I do.

Tim Villegas: Okay, so stack of cards. They have a bunch of different questions written on them. I’m gonna select one random one, and we’re both gonna answer it.

LeDerick Horne: Okay.

Tim Villegas: All right. So it’s been a while, so I don’t really know what is on these cards, but we’ll see. So here we go. This is the question: What’s a dream you haven’t given up on?

LeDerick Horne: Man.

Tim Villegas: What’s a dream you haven’t given up on? That’s my chicken scratch right there. What is a dream you haven’t given up on? And you can go any way you want with this. It doesn’t have to be about inclusion or education, but it could be. So do you wanna go first? Do you got something?

LeDerick Horne: I got something, but I’d love to hear yours. You go first.

Tim Villegas: Oh, ’cause I don’t have anything.

LeDerick Horne: Okay. Then I’ll go. ‘Cause I’m ready.

Tim Villegas: Go, go.

LeDerick Horne: I wanna build a car.

Tim Villegas: Oh. Build a car. Okay. All right.

LeDerick Horne: I love the Mustang. I’d love to own an old ’65, ’66, that first iteration of the Mustang, and restore one. There’s also a company a little ways outside of Boston called Factory Five Racing, and Factory Five builds kit cars that sort of are replicas of vintage race cars and classic cars. And so they have a car that they call the Type 65 Coupe, but it’s a replica of Shelby’s Daytona Coupe. And Carroll Shelby’s another famous person with ADHD. But yeah, you buy the kit, and it’s a huge box that gets delivered into your driveway. And it takes folks usually a few years.

And actually — not this past birthday, but the previous one — I went up to Flint, Michigan, at Mott Community College. Factory Five has a builder’s school. And you pay, I don’t know, a few hundred dollars. It wasn’t terribly bad. But you show up on Friday morning and that box is there, and by Sunday you and a group of other folks have built a car and it is doing donuts in the parking lot.

Tim Villegas: That is wild.

LeDerick Horne: That is something I wanna do. And when we left Jersey, I had a house with a garage. We’ve been bouncing around in apartments now, and even this house we bought, I don’t have a garage. But I have to have — I’ll do it in a one-car garage, but a two-car garage would be nice to be able to take this project on. But yeah, it’s building a car. And as I get older, I think about how many more summers do I have in me where I’ll be able to rip and roar in some ridiculously fast and light vehicle. But yeah, that’s a dream I haven’t given up on.

Tim Villegas: All right. All right. Don’t give up on that dream, LeDerick.

LeDerick Horne: Tim, what’s yours?

Tim Villegas: Okay, so I have mine. I have mine. Ever since I was a wee lad, a young boy, I’ve always wanted to write and publish a book. Now, I know a lot of people do that. But a few years ago — and I’m not gonna name any names — I had a development deal with a particular publisher and it just was not the best timing. It just wasn’t there. It wasn’t the right fit. It wasn’t the right time. But I am talking with someone else, and I can’t say who right now, ’cause it’s not official or anything. But I’m revising my outline, getting some additional writing in. I don’t know when it’s gonna happen because we’re all so busy. You’ve written books before. But my dream is to write a book, my story, all that stuff out, in a book. And hopefully in the next few years that’ll be a dream that I can say I did. So I’m not giving up on that dream.

LeDerick Horne: No. And it sounds like you’re ready to make it happen. You’re ready to make it happen.

Tim Villegas: I’m ready to make it happen, man. I’m ready to make it happen. Yes.

LeDerick Horne: Writing a book’s hard, man. I’ll be honest. I co-authored — our book is published by Brookes Publishing Company. I co-authored with Dr. Margo Izzo. And Margo’s got ADHD and I’m dyslexic, and so it’s these two people together writing a book. But the advice I always give, if you want free advice, it’s like, don’t go into it trying to write a book. Just, you’re gonna write one page today.

Tim Villegas: Yes. Yes, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. All right. Advice received, so I appreciate that and I will take that into consideration and to heart. LeDerick Horne, thank you so much for being on the Think Inclusive Podcast. It was a great time.

LeDerick Horne: Tim, thank you so much for having me.

Tim Villegas: That was LeDerick Horne. Here’s what I’m taking with me. LeDerick called Miss Yates a great teacher in a bad system, and that distinction matters. It’s not just about who’s teaching our students, it’s about whether the system around them assumes separation or segregation is support.

And I keep thinking about what he said about the word disability. It’s so much better than silence. Naming it connected him to a larger struggle and a larger place in this world.

One practical step for educators: be honest about what you don’t know. LeDerick said support starts there. So this week, name one gap in your own knowledge and bring it to an IEP team or a trusted colleague instead of carrying it alone.

Share this episode with a colleague. Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and follow Think Inclusive wherever you get your podcasts. 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 inclusion? 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.