Navigating Political Challenges in Education—Advice from Jennifer Gonzalez ~ 1303

Jennifer Gonzalez
The thing that gives me the most hope is when I go out and give professional development in schools and at conferences and I meet teachers, people who are in the classroom, and I see how many really smart, dedicated, thoughtful people are out there doing this work.

And that makes me think that a lot of kids are still in very, very capable hands. My hope is that every kid in these rooms understands that we still got you, even though all this crap is going on. I’m still here. We still have this relationship. I still see you.

Tim Villegas
Hello friends. Welcome back to Think Inclusive: Real Conversations about building schools where every learner belongs. I’m your host, Tim Villegas. Today’s episode is about teaching through the turbulence of our times and finding smart human ways to keep doing the work. Our guest is Jennifer Gonzalez of Cult of Pedagogy, a national board certified teacher who spent over a decade in classrooms and now helps teachers sharpen their craft.

She’s clear, practical, and grounded. We talk about safety, performative versus real inclusion, what leaders can do, how teachers can support each other. We also dig into concrete moves you can make tomorrow and where to find hope when the news feels heavy. I don’t know about you, but it’s been very hard to stay hopeful in our current educational and political climate.

So it is my sincere hope that my conversation with Jen can provide all of us a little bit of light in the darkness. 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 needs. So 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 Jennifer Gonzalez.

And just a heads up, Jen and I recorded this conversation over two sessions because of some technical hiccups. So if you hear us mention different times of the year, that’s why. Catch you on the other side.

Tim Villegas
Jen Gonzalez, welcome to The Think Inclusive Podcast.

Jennifer Gonzalez
Thank you so much, Tim. I’m happy to be here.

Tim Villegas
First of all, let me say this: huge admirer of your work. The Cult of Pedagogy. I was a classroom teacher, special educator for 16 years, blogging, podcasting. I definitely feel like your work was an influence on me, so thank you.

Oh, thank you for what you do.

Jennifer Gonzalez
Thank you so much. I appreciate the kind words. Thanks.

Tim Villegas
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. The reason why I wanted to have you on is you talk to a lot of people in the education space and you are also a former teacher, and so there’s a lot of things going on in the world right now, especially with the Trump administration’s executive orders that are affecting teachers in real time right now. And one of those things is this assault on DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion initiatives. And I think you and I are on the same page here as far as why these initiatives are needed. I’m wondering to start us off, what is on top of mind for you as we look at what teachers are facing right now? We are recording this in early May, 2025. But I feel like whatever we talk about now is not going to go away. So teachers will also be feeling this struggle whenever this publishes.

Jennifer Gonzalez
So the question is just sort of what is top of mind right now?

Tim Villegas
Yeah. Gosh.

Jennifer Gonzalez
It’s so chaotic right now, so it is really difficult to know how to advise teachers and what to even tell them. I think it’s so different from state to state. There are states that are saying, no, we are going to continue doing what we’re doing. Take away our federal funding if you want to. And then there are states that are like, time to wrap it up, guys, get all your posters down. We’re getting rid of that. And I think it just depends a lot on who your governor is, honestly.

In the past, I think I have been more like just do it anyway. But I think there are real threats now to people’s jobs and sometimes I feel like in some places there are even potentially physical dangers, including, apparently you could even just get picked up in a van and taken out of the country. At this point, I don’t think anything is out of the question.

I think the first thing top of mind is just everybody’s safety is really important. I do think that this moment is going to pass. I think it’s going to take a while and I think all of this nonsense is eventually going to be something we look back on. But right now I think there are some very real threats.

I do think that most people know their communities pretty well in terms of what the threats are there. So that is the first thing. I don’t have any more blanket advice to give anybody. We’re probably going to get into this a little bit later, but I do think that there’s a lot of stuff that we have been, and I say we, I’m talking about a lot of the people that I’ve had on my podcast and a lot of people that are in the DEI space. A lot of the stuff that they’ve been recommending for years would not get the attention of the anti-woke crowd anyway, because they are looking for some really specific books and phrases and practices that are still important.

But I think those practices probably only make up about 10 to 20% of what is true diversity, equity, and inclusion practices, and while they go about their nonsense of trying to get us to stop doing those things, there’s a lot of other things that we can continue to do that are not even things that they’re targeting, things that really do help any student that is in an under-resourced group of some sort to continue to grow and thrive.

Tim Villegas
I think that’s an important point. Just echoing your call for safety, knowing whatever it is you need to do to keep yourself safe, and then also to keep yourself employed if that’s what you want to do. I think because, this is a little bit of a tangent, but I worked in school systems where my values didn’t necessarily align with my idea of what inclusion is. But that doesn’t mean that I quit necessarily. I mean, I did eventually. I kept going because I wanted to support my family. I wanted to work with kids. I wanted to be a teacher. So there are things that you do in order to keep yourself safe and employed.

So I want to value that. I want to value that.

Jennifer Gonzalez
I think you bring up a good point there though. You sort of implied this, but I do think that there comes a point for every teacher where they do have to make the decision, am I working in a space right now or in a community where my best efforts are going to largely go down a drain or be considered threatening? Could I be working in a place where what I have to offer is going to be valued more?

I think that as much as we want to help kids in every community, there are some spaces right now that may be so resistant to that help that we have to take care of ourselves also and go places where we are going to thrive. I think teacher wellbeing is so important and so overlooked sometimes that we are not this bottomless well of energy and time and teachers get very burned out and very discouraged and so I don’t think anybody would fault you for looking for another placement that would be a better fit if you are an equity-minded teacher and you realize that you might be fighting a losing battle where you are.

So stay safe, stay employed. But I think what you said is that if you do want to be employed there, then yes. But maybe keep your eye open for another place that’s going to be more welcoming.

Tim Villegas
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Let’s get back to this idea of performative actions. I’m wondering if you could give an example.

Jennifer Gonzalez
Yes. Using the word performative is in itself sort of a judgment call. Here is an example. If a teacher has a Black Lives Matter poster up in their classroom, chances are they have been asked to take that down. Having that poster up definitely sends a message to students that this is a safe place.

There are also a lot of safe spaces posters, let’s just use posters as an example. Sure, it communicates something to your students that they are welcome and that this is an inclusive environment, but those things on their own don’t actually make it an inclusive environment. So removing them certainly communicates a level of compliance with a law or a pseudo law, but it actually doesn’t change it if your classroom is still one that recognizes everyone’s identity and celebrates everyone’s identity and puts time into building relationships between the students. There are so many things that having that poster up or down is not going to change.

I think there probably are people and places that have had the posters up or whatever version of the poster is and really haven’t done much of the work necessary to really make themselves supporters of equity and really interrogating their own biases and looking at whether or not certain practices are supporting the growth of all of their students.

It’s the poster that it seems like a lot of politicians want to get rid of. It’s like, fine, get rid of the poster. I’m not changing my relationship with my students.

Tim Villegas
That’s a great point. It also shows the lack of imagination in the anti‑DEI push—this idea that you can just get rid of the poster.

Jennifer Gonzalez
That’s the thing. That is a certain segment of the things they’re trying to get rid of. They are also trying to get rid of some pretty important and impactful practices, like how we teach history and current events, that I don’t have a workaround for quite yet.

Although I have been working with a history teacher who is coming up with some ways of going at history objectively and throwing the question out to the students, like: does our country actually ensure liberty and justice for all? Find me evidence. Let’s look through the news. Let’s look through history. You tell me. Make an argument. Use textual evidence. The teacher has not given an opinion or anything.

I think the problem with so many of these initiatives is that they are so ignorant, and in general you can usually get around ignorance by being smart and doing smart things. There are a lot of critical‑thinking approaches that can still allow our students to look through accurate history without us pushing an agenda. That’s a slippery slope, honestly, because one whiff of something like that in certain counties and the kid’s going to go home and tell their parents and you’re in trouble. It’s not easy.

I think that stuff is not performative and important and also under threat. I don’t want to put it all into one basket and say you can keep doing everything just the same. But we don’t have to get rid of everything.

Tim Villegas
Absolutely. Context matters, and you have to figure out what’s going to work for your classroom and your schools. Some principals in a district that may be signing that letter and saying, “No DEI here,” might actually say, “We’re going to keep doing it. We’re just going to call it something else.”

Jennifer Gonzalez
Exactly. I think there are a lot of different types of subversion going on. That would be one of them: sign the thing—sure, I’ll sign it—we’re going to just keep doing everything exactly the same.

Tim Villegas
Right.

Jennifer Gonzalez
I have heard there are superintendents and states that are saying, no, we refuse to sign it. They’re sticking their necks out.

Tim Villegas
I listened to your episode where you read a Facebook post by the superintendent of Harrisonburg City in Virginia. I did not know that he wrote that, but Harrisonburg City is one of our partners. At the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education, we have a number of partners, mostly in Maryland, but we have two in Virginia and some in Illinois. When I heard that, I thought, oh my gosh. We mostly work with a district leadership team, and that may or may not include the superintendent at times, so his name wasn’t top of mind. But when I read that post—and I will make sure to put that in our show notes—wow. Such a fantastic statement by the top leader of a school district to say, we’re going to keep doing what we’re doing, so no thanks.

Jennifer Gonzalez
It is, and that’s what we need because the teachers can’t necessarily be the ones to do that. It really has to come from leadership. One of the things that I uncovered this past week is that colleges—there’s a coalition now of colleges that are creating something, and I need to find it, but they’re banding together and saying if we are under threat for this stuff, we’re going to form a coalition to pool resources so that if our funding is removed, we’re going to help each other so that we can continue doing what we’re doing. That’s what it comes down to: if we lose the funding, where do we come up with the money? I wondered if these places were doing GoFundMe or whatever, but the Big Ten universities—out of the 18 that are in the Big Ten, as of last week, 11 of them had signed this agreement to back each other up and share money and legal fees to fight it.

It’s encouraging to know that people aren’t just capitulating.

Tim Villegas
Yes. What I’m hearing is that no matter what, we are stronger when we collaborate and we have partners. If you’re feeling alone, this works on a micro level too. If you’re a teacher and you’re feeling alone because you really believe in this stuff but your district is ordering you to take down posters and examine your curriculum, you really need to find your allies. Find the people that are like‑minded and stick together. Then you’re encouraged, and you may be able to come up with different ideas of how to navigate this situation.

Jennifer Gonzalez
Yes. Sharing resources, sharing ideas—that’s exactly it. I think those who are pushing this down on us are not prepared for the kind of solidarity that happens between people who focus on nurturing human relationships and building community. We have each other’s backs.

Tim Villegas
Do you have any specific stories of how this has impacted teachers, either personally or what you’ve heard over the last few weeks?

Jennifer Gonzalez
So many of them come from the news about teachers who have lost their jobs over using student‑preferred names. The most recent one I heard is a teacher who was using a student’s preferred name, and it was not the name the parents had given the child, and they were fired. I think it was maybe Oklahoma. I understand that Oklahoma immediately signed the papers and said, yeah, we’re good, let’s get rid of DEI.

Stories like that are disheartening. My hope is that in a lot of classrooms where students have relationships with their teachers, where it’s a situation like that—I’ve asked you to call me this, you’ve called me this all year, my parents don’t know anything about this—our goal as teachers is to protect and love our kids. My hope is that every kid in these rooms understands that we still got you, even though all this crap is going on. I’m still here. We still have this relationship. I still see you.

Tim Villegas
After the break, Jen goes full tour‑life: PD stops, conference halls, and the moments that give her hope—spoiler, there are a lot of them—and kids are in very capable hands. Then we trade origin stories about the tiny compliment that turned into a big life move. This show is produced by the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education, MCIE. MCIE partners with educators and school systems to promote authentic inclusion, foster change, and support the implementation of inclusive practices, whether it’s district‑wide transformation, customized learner planning, or professional learning and coaching. MCIE walks alongside educators every step of the way.

And here’s the best part: our work begins with a conversation. So if you’re ready to create schools where every learner belongs, visit mcie.org, get in touch, and let’s start that conversation today.

Tim Villegas
What’s giving you hope right now?

Jennifer Gonzalez
The thing that gives me the most hope is when I go out on the road—it makes me sound like a rock star—but when I give professional development in schools and at conferences and I meet teachers, people who are in the classroom, and I see how many really smart, dedicated, thoughtful people are out there doing this work.

There’s so much media around the teacher shortage and teachers leaving the classroom in droves, and that may be true, but there are still incredible people who are staying and are reinventing the work so that it’s not so draining, which I think you can do when there’s a teacher shortage because it’s like, you only have us, so we’re going to make this work for us. I’m always blown away by how smart a lot of teachers out there are. That makes me think a lot of kids are still in very capable hands.

Tim Villegas
I’ve talked to so many people, I don’t remember exactly what we discussed. I was talking to somebody about being the teacher that makes a difference in a particular student’s life—you can be that teacher. I’m wondering if there’s someone that made a difference in your life, in your career trajectory. Who was that person, if you don’t mind sharing?

Jennifer Gonzalez
I think there were a lot of people, and it’s been almost like a patchwork of people. There was a college professor—one of my education professors—and she had so much passion and conviction. I don’t even really remember technically the things she taught us, but I remember a lot of the things she said, and she acted as a mentor.

I also remember when I was a junior in high school, I did an Outward Bound three‑week outdoor program. One morning my leader was walking with me and he said, off the cuff, “You really have a lot of leadership qualities that I’ve noticed.” That was almost all he said. I can remember floating on that the rest of the week, and then I started acting like it, if that makes sense. We don’t realize how many little comments like this can really matter. We should say whatever’s on our mind, especially if it’s something positive.

Tim Villegas
Absolutely. I had teachers say that to me. The one I remember the most was my fifth‑grade teacher, Mrs. Winchester. She encouraged me to run for class president. I had no idea what that meant. I thought, really, me? Why me?

And then I remember we might have given a speech—I honestly don’t remember—but I do remember putting my head down on my desk and then there was a vote, everyone with thumbs up for whoever. She either circled my name that was on the board or put a star or something. I lifted my head and saw that I had won the vote for class president, and I was on top of the world. That was so special. I did not advocate for a leadership role in that class. I don’t even remember what I did; it was more of a title with some responsibilities, but I always remember that.

Jennifer Gonzalez
I love that story. That’s great.

Tim Villegas
We talked about what teachers could do in this educational and political landscape in summer 2025. Even since the last time we chatted—before our technical difficulties—there have been a lot of changes, a lot of actions by the current administration that have people worried. Is there anything else you might want to add to the action steps for people?

Jennifer Gonzalez
I think everybody has to come at this from a lot of different angles. I went to an online Zoom conference a couple nights ago. Those are the people that organized the No Kings March. They had a huge Zoom meeting with next steps, and they talked about how every person has their own risk tolerance and their own ways to influence things.

They talked about everything from boycotting certain stores that promote these policies to writing letters and making phone calls to talking to people you think might be convincible. For teachers, so much of what we already should be doing to build equity in our schools we can keep doing.

When the election happened, I was in a conversation with a couple of people, and one was Zaretta Hammond, who is probably well known to your audience for writing about culturally responsive teaching. She said—in some ways, and she’s not saying this is a good thing—this could end up having a positive result because it could flush out a lot of the performative DEI stuff that looks good but doesn’t create real lasting change and focus on the practices that would never raise anybody’s attention as obviously DEI: things like building students’ cognitive capacity, continuing to build relationships with our students, making school a safe place, looking at practices like dress codes that have been discriminatory. These are things we can do that nobody would say, “Oh, that’s a DEI practice.”

A lot of those are the more sustaining long‑term things. There are still loads of things teachers can do that no one is telling them they can’t do—the things I just listed. As citizens, there are things we can do outside of our school buildings to stay involved in what’s happening politically and do what we can, whether it’s donations to people doing the harder, scarier work or work we don’t have the skill set for, or speaking out when we feel comfortable and safe to do so. That may not be on a public platform, but it might be in a living room or a conversation with a friend.

People are afraid to engage because we’re so divided. I feel like I can’t reach most people. But sometimes simply saying, “I see it a different way,” and not even getting into it—just letting people in the room know—or telling our experiences as teachers. If someone says, “They’re dismantling the Department of Education; you’re a teacher, what do you think?” talk about what you think. Talk about your own experiences. All of these things make a dent. It’s a complicated problem.

Tim Villegas
Do you listen to podcasts?

Jennifer Gonzalez
Not that much because it’s my work. I listen to podcasts, but I don’t listen to education podcasts.

Tim Villegas
I’m just curious. I’ll give you some that are top of mind. I listen to If Books Could Kill. Are you familiar with that one?

Jennifer Gonzalez
I was going to say: there’s Michael Hobbs. He does two amazing podcasts, Maintenance Phase—I listen to Maintenance Phase—and If Books Could Kill. Anything that guy does, I will listen to it.

Tim Villegas
I was just finishing up the one about Blink, about Malcolm—

Jennifer Gonzalez
Yes, I listened to that a few days ago. I haven’t subscribed yet, so I go through everything that isn’t for subscribers only. I’m almost ready to subscribe because it’s so good.

Tim Villegas
It is so good. Then I listen to a news one called The Daily Beans. Are you familiar with that one?

Jennifer Gonzalez
No. I have gone through multiple phases of trying to listen to news and the downloads start to get overwhelming after a while, and it’s also depressing.

Tim Villegas
Very true. This one is a daily one, so it is a lot. I like Search Engine—are you familiar with that one? PJ Vogt. Search Engine is one where they’ll find a question—why are there so many chicken bones on the street in the city, something random—and dive into that question and explain it way more than you’d ever think. It’s super interesting.

Jennifer Gonzalez
Interesting.

Tim Villegas
For education ones, I really like Have You Heard, which is Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider, who are guests this upcoming season. They wrote a book called The Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door, about the privatization of school—exposing school vouchers and the whole idea behind privatization of public school. It’s fascinating.

That’s something I draw a lot of hope from: listening to what other people are doing. Podcasts have always been part of my media diet since 2005, when I got my first iPod shuffle—the little stick—and you had to manually load the podcasts. I was trying to remember how I found them. I think I went to iTunes and did a keyword search.

Jennifer Gonzalez
There would be rankings and categories like they do now. You downloaded it and decided if you liked it.

Tim Villegas
It was a different time, but it’s always been a source of information and hope for me. I try to hear the narrative, the story that says it’s going to be okay.

Jennifer Gonzalez
If you just watch the news, it can look as though all of the progressively minded, equity‑minded people vanished. But they didn’t. We’re all still out there, trying to figure out how to navigate the space. One thing I tell myself is: Barack and Michelle Obama still exist; they’re still somewhere. It’s not like the whole country suddenly turned into a scary alt‑right mob. There are great people still out there. A lot of them are scrambling to figure out how to respond because this is unprecedented.

I believe these very smart, resourceful people—here’s what I thought was interesting about Zaretta Hammond’s comment, and I’ve thought about it a lot: the people who are so anti‑DEI are not smart people. It’s pretty easy sometimes to say, fine, you want us to take this book off the shelf? Great. We’ll figure out other ways around this while you’re looking at the next thing you’re freaking out about. Not that they’re not dangerous, but they don’t actually understand what DEI is or what inclusive practices are. The number of people from that side who are shouting this and realizing that the “I” is inclusion—and half of these people have kids in special ed programs—do you even know what you’re saying?

They’re easy to distract with shiny objects. They’ll be mad about something else in a few weeks. They also have problems with executing anything in a sustained way or even keeping their staff. I’m not downplaying it, but some of the people I look to for guidance who I would think would be extremely worried are like, we’ve seen stuff like this before. This is going to pass. Just keep doing the good work. I still see good work all the time. The number of email lists and virtual conferences I’ve attended where people say, here’s more stuff we can keep doing.

There are tons of brilliant people out there, and such a body of work has been produced, particularly in the last five years. So many books have been written since the 2020 surge when budgets went toward that stuff. All those books got published. All those podcasts came out. There’s all this content now that people maybe can’t consume while they’re at school, but they can consume it outside of school. It’s still all there—for now anyway.

Tim Villegas
So many books, so many podcast episodes, so many documentaries—there was a lot of investment in that topic. Even though the investment isn’t going on right now, it’s not like that content has disappeared, at least not yet. It’s certainly disappeared in some portions of the internet, but you can still find it. That’s a reason for hope.

Jennifer Gonzalez
Yes.

Tim Villegas
Is there anything else you’d like to share specifically to our audience? Anything that’s top of mind for you right now?

Jennifer Gonzalez
My message would be: keep going. The people listening have so much training, wisdom, and experience—so much more than the people trying to push back on these practices. I suspect that in a lot of places, teachers are going into classrooms, closing their doors, and mostly doing what they’ve always done: meet the needs of the kids in front of them, create safe spaces, and continue to refine their expertise to keep doing that better.

The biggest loss is the distraction this is creating for those of us who know how to do this work well and are trying to get better. It’s such a distraction—an energy and time drain. There are real dangers, and we didn’t even get into the other stuff the administration has done. We’ve mostly focused on the anti‑DEI stuff, but there are schools where they have ICE at the door. You can’t just shut your door and do what you’ve always done.

All of the wisdom and experience is still there. I have a feeling there are a lot of teachers who are like, I’m just going to keep doing what I’ve been doing. To me, teaching has always come down to: what are you doing for the kid in front of you right now? What are you doing with this ten‑minute chunk of time? That person who told me I had leadership qualities—that was huge for me. He could have not said that, but that was a ten‑second bit of conversation. We have those opportunities in front of us every day, and lots of teachers are doing that actively all the time.

Tim Villegas
Amazing. Thank you, Jennifer. I really appreciate that. Everyone listening or watching, make sure to check out the Cult of Pedagogy website and podcast for all of Jennifer’s work. We’ll put all of that in the show notes.

We have talked about safety, solidarity, and those tiny mentor moments that change a learner’s life. Let’s end on something light and maybe a little spicy. It’s time for our favorite curveball: the mystery question. What topping never belongs on a pizza?

Tim Villegas
Before I let you go, Jennifer, I have a mystery question. The mystery question is written by my 12‑year‑old, so it’s not going to be anything too wild. She just gave me a fresh crop of questions. It’s a mystery to you too, isn’t it? It is. The mystery question is for both of us. That’s exciting.

What item does not ever belong on your pizza?

Jennifer Gonzalez
I’ll come out of the gate saying I have no problem with pineapple, because that’s probably a common answer.

Tim Villegas
Do you want me to go first?

Jennifer Gonzalez
Yeah, you go first, because I don’t know if I have a strong stance on this.

Tim Villegas
I also do not have a strong stance, because I like pineapple. Pineapple, bacon, ham—that whole Hawaiian combination—I’m into. You know what I’m not a huge fan of? White sauce on pizza.

Jennifer Gonzalez
Interesting. So the Alfredo.

Tim Villegas
I keep thinking I would like it, but I don’t. Here’s the other thing I thought I would like but I don’t: the barbecue chicken pizza.

Jennifer Gonzalez
If you put some jalapeños with it—

Tim Villegas
I live by Nashville, so we’ve got Nashville hot chicken pizza, and it’s fire.

Jennifer Gonzalez
Hot chicken, okay.

Tim Villegas
But the barbecue chicken—the sweet sauce. When I have a pizza, I want marinara. If it’s something else—Alfredo or sweet sauce—it’s not pizza then. It might still be delicious; it’s just not pizza anymore. I’m fine with other people enjoying it; I just personally don’t think that belongs.

Jennifer Gonzalez
I don’t love green pepper on my pizza, but I’ll eat it. If somebody wanted to throw some fruit on there, I wouldn’t eat it—like blueberries.

Tim Villegas
Thank you.

Jennifer Gonzalez
If somebody put blueberries, I’d say no. I’ll skip the pizza. Blueberries, strawberries, grapes—pineapple is the exception. I don’t know why, but it is. It made the cut.

My daughter doesn’t like pineapple on her pizza because she doesn’t like warm fruit—warm apple pie or blueberry pie.

Tim Villegas
That’s my favorite.

Jennifer Gonzalez
She cannot. A lot of people feel that way. Not for her.

Tim Villegas
Jennifer Gonzalez, thank you so much for being on the Think Inclusive Podcast. This was a lot of fun.

Jennifer Gonzalez
Thank you. Thanks for having me on.

Tim Villegas
That was Jennifer Gonzalez. Here’s what I’m taking with me. Safety first for educators and kids. Symbols aren’t the work—relationships are. Teach thinking and let students gather the evidence. Build capacity, not compliance. Protect your energy and find allies. Small, kind words can change a life.

Here’s one practical step for educators who are moving this work forward: tell one student a specific strength you see in them today. Ten seconds. Huge impact. Share this episode with a colleague who’s building inclusive schools. Rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform and follow Think Inclusive wherever you get your podcasts.

A huge shout‑out to some of our new listeners from Georgia, right in my backyard—L and L, you know who you are. Thanks for taking the time to listen and share what you’ve learned. If you have something to share, you can email me at tvillegas@mcie.org.

All right, time to roll the credits. Think Inclusive is brought to you by me, Tim Villegas. I write, edit, mix, master—I basically wear all the podcast hats and the baseball caps. This show is a proud production of the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education. Scheduling and extra production help from Jill Wagoner. Our original music is by Miles Kredich, with extra vibes from Melod.ie. Big thanks to our sponsor, IXL. Visit ixl.com/inclusive.

Fun fact: I recently started playing RPG‑style video games. Most recently some friends of mine are playing Baldur’s Gate 3 together. Right now I’m a level‑two wizard, but more importantly, in the thick of battle, it’s nice to know we have each other’s backs. How are you showing up and having the backs of your friends, family, and colleagues right now? I’d love to know about it. Email me at tvillegas@mcie.org. I read every single message.

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Thanks for hanging out, and remember, inclusion always works.