Transforming Inclusive Education Through Inclusion Indicators 

Tim Villegas: Hey friends, this is Think Inclusive. I’m Tim Villegas. Who you just heard was Alissa Rausch and Ben Riepe. As the director of a Research and Technical Assistance Center at the University of Denver, Alissa Rausch is a passionate advocate for the educational rights of young children, particularly those with disabilities and intersectional identities. With extensive experience as a provider, program leader, advocate, faculty member, and technical assistance provider, Alissa has successfully developed inclusive programs, collaborative partnerships, and promoted equitable practices. A leader in early childhood education, Alissa has contributed to legislative initiatives, professional development, and systems-level transformation through work with organizations such as Disability Law, Colorado, NCPMI, and the ECTA Center. 

Ben Riepe is a senior project manager for the Positive Early Learning Experiences Center at the University of Denver. He supports ECTA and the National Center for Pyramid Model Innovations as a technical assistant. He has 13 years of experience supporting Head Start Classrooms as a teacher, coach, and trainer in Denver, Colorado. This program served as a demonstration site for high-fidelity program-wide implementation of the Pyramid Model. His focus for the last decade has been to support systems to embed evidence-based practices into communities and classrooms. 

Thanks so much for being here with us today. We appreciate each and every one of you that is listening to or watching Think Inclusive, MCIE’s podcast that brings you conversations with people doing the work of inclusion in the real world. And while you are here, make sure to hit the follow or subscribe button wherever you are so that you can keep getting Think Inclusive in your feed. 

In this episode, I speak with guests Alissa Rausch and Ben Riepe about their work with the Early Childhood Technical Assistance Center (ECTA) and the development of inclusion indicators. They discuss the critical role of these indicators in guiding inclusive practices across various levels—state, community, local programs, and environments—emphasizing family partnerships and collaborative teaming. They highlight the importance of early childhood inclusion as a foundation for lifelong success. They share insights on how these indicators can drive systemic change, improve educational outcomes, and ensure that all children, including those with disabilities, experience belonging and dignity in their educational setting. We also touch on implementation science and the significance of intentional community-based approaches to inclusion. 

Before we get into my conversation with Alissa and Ben, I want to tell you about our sponsor for this season, IXL. IXL is a fantastic all-in-one platform designed for K-12 education. It helps boost student achievement, empowers teachers, and tracks progress seamlessly. Imagine having a tool that simplifies what usually requires dozens of different resources. Well, that’s IXL. As students practice, IXL adapts to their individual needs, ensuring they’re both supported and challenged. Plus, each learner receives a personalized learning plan to effectively address any knowledge gaps. Interested in learning more? Visit ixl.com/inclusive. That’s ixl.com/inclusive. 

All right. After a short break, we’ll get into my conversation with Alissa Rausch and Ben Riepe. Catch you on the other side. 

Tim Villegas: Alissa Rausch and Ben Riepe, thank you so much for being on the Think Inclusive Podcast. How’s everyone doing? 

Alissa Rausch: Great. Thank you so much for having us. We’re honored to be here. Thanks for your incredible work. 

Tim Villegas: Yeah, we’re very excited about this day, so thank you. Absolutely. Well, one of the reasons why we wanted to have you on was our relationship with the Early Childhood Technical Assistance Center. Jani Kozlowski actually is the one who suggested that y’all be on to talk about the inclusion indicators. So why don’t we start with what your role is, wherever you are, in whatever agency or organization you work with. So just say that and then also your connection to the indicators. And let’s just start there. Alissa or Ben, either one can go first. 

Alissa Rausch: Great. So my name is Alissa Rausch, and we’re at the University of Denver. We have a subcontract on the Early Childhood Technical Assistance Center, and the team at the University of Denver does a number of things at the Early Childhood Technical Assistance Center. One of the things that we spend quite a bit of time on is the implementation of inclusion for young children, both birth to three as well as ages three to five and also five to eight. Our team at the University of Denver has spent a number of years working on the inclusion indicators, supporting the development of those indicators across all the levels—the state, community, local program, and environment levels. 

Ben Riepe: Yeah, and we’ve also helped with their dry run. You had an earlier podcast in May with Meredith Villines, and that was one of our first states, Oregon and Illinois. We went through them with those folks, got feedback from people who have used them, and then updated the indicators over time. This work is just super near and dear to us—a lot of inclusion work over the past couple of decades. Having a list for folks to look at and consider, have conversations around, is a real joy for us to share with others. 

Tim Villegas: Fantastic. The indicators, how did that come about? You said you had a dry run, Oregon was one of the first states you worked with. Where’s the need for the indicators coming from? Was it something that was already in the works, or did ECTA facilitate that? How did that happen? 

Alissa Rausch: Yeah, so there have always been supports through ECTA around supporting states to create the circumstances, policies, procedures, and practices that support inclusion. There have been a number of tools that ECTA has put out over time. In 2017 or 2018, a group came together that really said, “Okay, we’ve got a lot of tools that help with inclusion at the environment level that really say this is what we know the practices should look like.” But really, there’s a need that in order for really good practices to be happening, for teachers and providers to use really good strategies that include all children and help them to belong in the environment, there needs to be a system that exists that supports them. Those systems include what’s happening at the local program level, what’s happening with administrators, principals, and those folks who are making the policies within the school that supports teachers. We also know that children with disabilities are everywhere in the early childhood environment. They’re not just in schools; they’re in childcare, community childcare, Head Start, and all those places. So there does also need to be some guidance for communities to say, “Wherever the child is, how can we support getting services to that child?” Really making sure that things are in place so that services follow the child rather than a place. At the top, we also know that there need to be things in place at the state level that break down barriers for the communities and local programs to do their work, that offer guidance for how that should be done, and how inclusion is a priority. Really, to raise awareness around children birth to age five or birth to age eight with disabilities. That is how that really got started—to really say, “What does this look like at a systems level?” 

Ben Riepe: You know, for a lot of early childhood educators, I’m speaking for myself circa 25 years ago, you may have the desire to want to help children with disabilities, and your heart is in the right place, but your skillsets just don’t align. Having tools to support programs to make those systems possible, that the teachers get the skills they need, having classroom strategies so that you can have conversations about what it is that I’m doing, what it is that I want to do to get children’s needs met, that’s something that really drives me. Also, the community piece, because I worked with communities who were trying to get these things in place, and it can be a really isolating feeling if you think your program is the only one using these practices, if your classroom is the only one trying to support a pool of children with disabilities. But if your whole community is working together to make these things happen, it’s beneficial for everyone, but it’s especially beneficial for children and families that they don’t feel like they are isolated, that they have to fight to get their kids included, which is just unfortunately what happens in a lot of places. 

Tim Villegas: Yeah, absolutely. I’m assuming that it’s challenging for families who really want an inclusive setting and can’t find one, right? Or they don’t even know what they’re looking for. They don’t know what it looks like. They may have an idea of, “I have a child with a disability, and I know that I’m able to receive services to support my child, but the only options that are available are ones in special education classrooms or only students with support needs.” How do families know that this is something that their settings can’t even access? 

Ben Riepe: Yeah, that’s another one of my favorite parts of all the levels—addressing the biggest challenge of all, which is attitudes and beliefs. It’s not that the skills are unresearched or ineffective; it’s that people don’t know what the strategies are, especially at the community level. You don’t go to the 7-Eleven for financial advice or marital advice from the dude, unless you know them, right? But you go to people that you do know, and people in the community know. There will be people in different communities that you look to for advice. If the community has a plan for how to share information with the doctors, with faith groups, and lots of different people in the community, and reach out to them and share with them, “Here’s what it is that we’re doing as a community in the early childhood community to help support children and families to get their needs met in their programs,” that can be a real driver to address that really challenging piece. It’s the same thing for special educators, speech-language pathologists—there are so many folks that just don’t understand. They either have all their experience in an isolated setting or they have this better experience where they’re supporting different classrooms along the way and supporting the teachers to know what practices they need to use to support the needs of all the children they’re supporting. Newsflash: it supports all the children. The myth of inclusion is powerful—that it’s going to somehow take away from someone else’s experience versus enrich it, that the time spent to support children with disabilities somehow doesn’t also improve the social outcomes of all the children in the classroom. That’s something that at all the levels we think carefully about—how are we connecting with families and how are we bringing them in to learn their experiences? Part of that is getting to know what the families in our community believe about inclusion and what they know about the facts on the research and studies on inclusive outcomes. Can we do a better job of letting all the people know what’s available and providing professional development supports for the folks who are ready, wanting to know, like me 25 years ago, who didn’t have the skillset yet but are going to learn them? It’s putting a plan in place to make those things happen. 

Alissa Rausch: Yeah, I love that. One of the things that, you know, there is this notion of what’s been the experience, the personal experiences of folks with inclusion that really drive what have been their experiences in education that really drive the decisions that they make. One of the reasons that we feel so strongly about the systems approach to this, particularly the community approach, is because even when inclusive opportunities are present, sometimes the experiences of families when their child gets a diagnosis anywhere from the NICU all the way up into age three, sometimes those medical diagnoses are medical in nature, and families are often hearing all the things that their child will never be able to do. So they move into this setting and what they hear is, “Oh, these inclusive opportunities are available.” But their lived experience has been, “People have told me that my child will be capable of this.” The systems approach really helps us to think about these birth through five or birth through eight indicators, and they really help us to think about what’s happening with these families, what’s happening with the diagnoses that are coming out of the medical profession that are even just setting these families up with immediate barriers and really a lack of presumed competence. So really thinking intentionally about that and using that as a leverage point, I think, supports families later on in understanding all of the great things that are available. 

Tim Villegas: Let’s break down what the indicators are so that listeners can conceptualize how they might be useful for them. We certainly have special educators, general education teachers, school administrators, and educators who work in early childhood listening. I’m often surprised at how many people don’t know that there are inclusion indicators or that there is even a national center like the Early Childhood Technical Assistance Center. If you were to explain how the indicators could be useful for a school system or a community, how would you explain that to someone? 

Alissa Rausch: I’ll take a stab at it, and then I’ll let Ben take his stab at it because I think based on our different roles, we’ll come at this potentially differently. The indicators are called indicators because they indicate something—they point toward something. Across the four levels—the state, the community, the local program, and the environment level—there are lists of what inclusion looks like and feels like, the experience of inclusion in each of those systems, and what the ideal policies, processes, and practices that should be in place that describe high-quality inclusion, belonging, dignifying, humanizing, identity-affirming sorts of things. This is the ideal situation for that. So that’s what the indicators are in terms of what they actually are. The process of using them includes implementation science. We often know that we say stuff like, “Let’s just start implementing inclusion.” That doesn’t just happen overnight. There are lots of things that have to be put in place. While we know that those indicators are a guidepost, we also know that implementation is what guides that process. We spend time with the states, communities, and programs we’re working in to explore what it is that they’re already doing, what it is that they want to get better at, what it is that their families are telling them they need more of or less of, what their data says about the least restrictive environment, and some of those sorts of things. After we explore that, we begin to think about how we want to install these. What are the first things we want to get after? It’s after we set that base that we start to think about initial to full implementation. We know when we move through those stages in that way, using the indicators as a guidepost at any of those levels, that we’re more likely to get to sustainability and scalability because we have all of those things in place moving forward. When I try to explain it to folks, it is that their indicators, their guideposts, their North Star, and it’s the process of how we support systems to do that where the rubber meets the road. 

Ben Riepe: For a lot of preschool teachers out there, you have this desire to be supportive, but you’re looking for those guideposts. There are the bigger indicators and then the elements inside of them. For the classroom level, there are things like social-emotional learning and development. How am I going to make predictable class activities so that the children in my classroom can manage their way through that classroom activity? I use my Outlook to make sure that I’m in the right place at the right time and in the right Zoom meeting. Children need their circle time to be pretty predictable so that they can say, “Alright, Miss Sunshine is getting through the book, she’s going to sing a song afterward, and then we’re done with circle time. I can manage it through the book and the song.” But if I don’t know, it’s really stressful for me, and I might start acting out. It’s providing teachers with ideas and opportunities to have conversations about how to support peer interactions between the children in their classroom. What opportunities can I provide for them to practice those interactions in ways that are meaningful for the child and the families we’re working with, versus Ben’s version of what an interaction should look like? What do the children in my classroom and their families say about interactions? Then I weave that into my lessons so that things are impactful. It’s the same process all the way up and down the line, whether you’re a program or a community. What are we doing with these different guideposts? Let’s talk about it and make action plans so we can meet the goals we want to make and get better outcomes for the children and families we’re providing care for. 

Tim Villegas: I think this is a great discussion about how someone can use these indicators very practically to improve their own practice or classroom, especially a special educator or even a center administrator. But to your point, Alissa, the process of systems change is not something that you can just snap your fingers and do, or even really do by yourself. You need a process to go through. You’re speaking for MCIE; our technical assistance work is steeped in implementation science. You’re really speaking our language when you’re talking about installation and getting ready for this change in process. My next question is, while the indicators can be useful for the here and now, as systems are looking for that long-term process of change, how can people use the indicators to further their work long-term? 

Ben Riepe: It’s really intended for leadership teams across the way to take them, look at them, and action plan based on their priorities. There are teams we worked with five years ago who we just spoke to earlier today, and they said family partnerships are still one of their top three priorities. It was a priority back then, and it’s still a priority. They are always reaching out, trying to find ways of gathering information from families, finding out which families aren’t getting access to their work, and supporting them to get better access to inclusive practices. It’s part of a leadership team process. That’s how they’re intended to be used. They’re a little different than sometimes people have rubrics or whatever, and you might use them, but we’re more interested in you using them to determine action plans, have conversations, and find solutions. Less than getting a high score and then three weeks later, Alissa leaves and goes to Wyoming, and now we’re back to square one because one person was doing all the work, and we don’t have any of the systems or pieces in place. We’ve intended them to be used alongside leadership teams to have conversations with those teams, action plan accordingly. The community teams that used these early on really did have great outcomes over time. Now, they’re sharing their knowledge and experience with other communities inside the state. Because there was a state system supporting this, they’re allowed to do that and given agency to support each other. It feels really good to help other people, and it feels really good to have hard-fought victories in terms of inclusive practices and increase the number of children served and the quality of services provided. 

Alissa Rausch: I think there’s a qualitative piece to the inclusion indicators that is responsive and supportive in nature. When we support technical assistance around the inclusion indicators, we rarely say, “Here’s what you do. Here’s the recipe. Here’s how to move forward.” Rather, we say, “What are your strengths? We believe in building on the lasting capacity of others. What are you already doing? What are you really good at? How can we help you continue that path towards continuous improvement in a logical way that matters for your context, for the experiences of the providers, children, and families?” That’s how you build that fabric so that if one person goes away and you pull one thread, the whole blanket doesn’t fall apart. You’re weaving it into the culture and climate of the state, local program, community, and classroom, and building on what they have there. I think one of the things that we know will be sustaining about these is that they will be responsive and supportive. 

Ben Riepe: There’s another indicator that weaves its way through these, and it’s on collaborative teaming. I think that’s a really important one. If we’re all getting along and working together, also in the family engagement indicators, we’re working together to level the playing field. There isn’t just this expert. We have experts in the field of early childhood special education, but that doesn’t mean they’re experts on the families in the community. We want to make sure that knowledge is shared back and forth. The teachers know a lot about their classroom, but how do we share this information back and forth so that meaningful change happens based on the context of the people we’re supporting? That leads to lasting change and prevents people from leaving the program out of frustration because nobody’s listening to what’s going on in their room. It also prevents teachers from leaving the profession because they feel unsupported. 

Tim Villegas: I apologize, I just hit my microphone pretty good. Someone’s going to be like, “Sorry,” while listening to this. I want to explore what you said about family engagement because I think in the K-12 space, that’s certainly something we talk about, but not enough. I’m wondering, in your perspective, with putting together these indicators and working with people in the field, how do you see the role of the family in this process of co-creating inclusive spaces? 

Ben Riepe: Critical. Essential. It’s interesting because early childhood providers are often seen as lesser than the K-12 system, like babysitters who don’t understand the challenges of education. Yet, inclusion happens so much more frequently in early childhood settings where children feel they belong and have joyful learning experiences. Those things can happen in early childhood and also in the K-12 system. What we’re hearing from families and providers is that they did all this work and had great outcomes, but when they moved their child into the kindergarten system, the child was isolated into a different classroom. It’s devastating for families and children, and for the providers who did all this great work. Community work can address that by saying, “Hey, this is what the family’s experience has been, and let’s keep that child included.” Families are advocates for their children and should be essential decision-makers in the process. They should share what’s working for them at home, and that should be implemented in classrooms. They should be able to advocate for themselves and support their children in learning to self-advocate. We believe that dignity is a right, and children and families should be treated with dignity. Dehumanizing practices are not okay. For those who have children with disabilities, it hits differently when you see how people treat your child. It’s important to support families because they’ve been hearing all the things their child can’t do, and that’s not okay. They should hear what’s working and what the next steps are for their child. 

Alissa Rausch: Every level of indicator has a connection to family partnerships. We prefer the term “family partnerships” over “family engagement” because we want to see it as a partnership in terms of what families have to offer. Whether it’s the state level or any other level, what is the family’s partnership in those decisions, and how does that look? How are they compensated for their time when supporting guidance at the state level? We believe that for young children, the way a system recognizes or doesn’t recognize families is a direct reflection of how they do or do not recognize adults with disabilities. What we see in terms of self-advocacy and how families are treated in the system can be a good measure of how adults will be treated in that same setting. We want to establish early on that across the system, voice, autonomy, and identity are important for everyone’s experience in the educational system and beyond. 

Tim Villegas: I really like what you said about family partnerships instead of engagement. I want to bring up this idea of co-construction of inclusive spaces because sometimes the conversation is about making a space inclusive without thinking about who is actually in the space. When we’re talking about collaborative planning and co-teaching, we’re looking at a lesson and thinking about who is in the class, who are the individuals, and what kinds of people and cultures are represented. Then we figure out how to make it accessible for everyone. I’m imagining this is the kind of collaboration you’re talking about—who is in my center, school, or community, and how can we bring those people in and co-design something that works for everyone? 

Alissa Rausch: Yes. The indicators guide across all levels ways in which we can partner with families that aren’t just checking a box for having a family night or parent conferences. We’re working with programs now that are doing focus groups with families or individual interviews, saying, “Even though you might only be here for a short period of time, we want to capture your experiences to create a culture and environment driven by families.” It takes a lot of intention and positioning yourself not as an expert over families but rather with families. When programs do that, they can capture a lot of great things that families can and should offer in co-construction. 

Ben Riepe: I have two thoughts. One is that intentionality is why it’s a system. As a teacher, having the time to meet with families and hear their feedback takes time. As a program, you need to provide the opportunity for those things. I already hear a couple of squeaky wheels saying, “This is a lot of work. I don’t have time to plan intentionally for all the children in my classroom.” You’re already doing the work, mentally and unsuccessfully, because you didn’t do these steps. It is hard work, and we can do hard things. If you do the work, your job becomes more meaningful, your outcomes become superior, and you feel better about who you are as a teacher. It’s all available and in front of you to do. It does take a system, so if you’re a director or a community person, you can be part of the energy that helps address a level of the system to make things happen. I know people get worried about extra work, but the work is already there. You’re already putting in all this energy. Wouldn’t you prefer that the energy you use is effective? Thinking carefully about the children in the program resonates with me. 

Alissa Rausch: You’ll also read in the indicators that there’s a level of presumed competence of families. We want to make sure that these inclusion indicators help identify that when families enter, they are full vessels. The notion of building on capacity is important. We don’t devalue what families bring and exclude them from co-constructing with us. We enter from the posture that every family, child, and provider has lasting capacity. A colleague of ours at ECTA reminds us not to say we build capacity but rather build on capacity. That mindset is important when engaging in family partnerships. 

Tim Villegas: Thanks, Allison Jones. I really like that. Something Ben said made me think of something that Shelley Moore says: “This work of inclusive practices is not more work; it’s different work.” I really like that phrasing. We hear that this is a lot for educators to think about changing the way they do things. Hopefully, you are getting some support and not doing this work alone. It’s not about putting more things on your plate but utilizing your resources more efficiently. Great discussion. Are you working with any particular states right now, or as we look into the future of the indicators, is there anything else left to do? 

Alissa Rausch: Yes, we do multiple levels of support and technical assistance related to the indicators. Some of that is intensive work with states, and some of it is with communities trying to figure this out at the local level. We’re also developing wraparound supports around the idea that our colleague Sally Hansen brings in, connecting with implementation science around how to use these indicators to get ready, set, and go. We’re building supports that guide this, looking at all the complex dimensions of inclusion. Inclusion is a system, not a set of anything. We hope the tools widely available on the ECTA website will help programs, communities, and states think about what they’re doing with children, families, and collaborative teaming to support outcomes. Those will be widely available on the ECTA website soon. There’s also an impact story on the ECTA website. We know there’s data related to the least restrictive environment and other points within the IDEA statute. We can measure impact through stories—stories of families, communities, and providers who feel differently about their work and are doing different things. We’re looking forward to continuing this work as it’s in line with success across the educational experience and into lifelong citizenship in the community. 

Ben Riepe: There are opportunities for technical assistance centers to participate in the same process that Arizona, Washington, Oregon, and Illinois went through, where you get more technical assistance to think about that process and run leadership teams. Those are available and show up on the ECTA website occasionally. I encourage people to check that out and see if things are coming up soon. Build a sense of community between yourself and other states. Figure out what’s going on and what lessons were learned. These people make themselves available to others to share their hard work and help others make fewer missteps along the way. 

Tim Villegas: Any final thoughts as we wrap up this conversation for our audience—educators, families, administrators? 

Alissa Rausch: I would say that the early focus on inclusion in early childhood in this birth to five or birth to eight way is so important as a foundation because it shapes the positive and negative experiences that families and children have. The investment in this is important because it sets the stage for educational success and community success. We’re always looking for partners who want to be engaged with us and move into the K-12 setting to make this a continual process so that we don’t have disruptions or moments where not great experiences are happening for children, families, and providers. 

Ben Riepe: A couple of colleagues talk about how if you can say you’re helping a child or family belong, you don’t have to continue to talk about why that’s important. You could stop there. But if you’re driven by money, don’t waste your money by waiting until the car engine blows up to get a new engine. Just change the oil. Early childhood is a way of doing that. It’s also a way of helping children not experience traumatic things because your system wasn’t set up for them. We can set systems up for everyone. It’s a good use of your time, makes you feel better, and saves you money. 

Tim Villegas: Amazing. Thank you. That is such a relevant analogy. I just got an oil change, so that was actually on my mind. What’s funny, Ben, is I’ve had a car blow up on me on the freeway. 

Ben Riepe: Same. Student teaching on the way back from Cedar Rapids to Iowa City, my car burst into flames, and it was raining. I felt like there was a lesson I wasn’t learning, and it was that I probably should have had that oil change 5,000 miles ago. 

Tim Villegas: Yep. Oh my goodness. Can you hang on with me for a few more minutes to do a mystery question? 

Ben Riepe: Yeah, of course. 

Tim Villegas: I have a stack of cards here with random prompt questions. The mystery question is: If you were a server at a restaurant that may or may not serve adult beverages, what famous person would you like to serve? It doesn’t say dead or alive, so you can decide. I’ll go first while you all are thinking. I recently saw a magician I really like, Justin Willman. He’s a comedian and magician from Los Angeles with a couple of Netflix specials. I was in New Orleans for the Tash Conference, and he was performing there. I asked my wife if I could go see him by myself, and she said, “Please, go right ahead.” So I took one of our coworkers, Stewart, and we had a great time. Justin Willman seems like a really cool guy, and I would love to be his server. 

Alissa Rausch: I’ll go. Here on this podcast, the act of serving someone is such a giving thing. I would love the opportunity to reciprocate service to someone who has demonstrated service in so many ways to me, not just in acts but also in their way of being and experiences. Judy Heumann came to mind as someone I would love to serve a drink to and admire as a human being, advocate, woman, and all those things. I think we’d all have drinks lined up ready for her. 

Ben Riepe: I’m thinking, which rockstar do I want to serve? Michael Stipe from R.E.M. would be really interesting to talk to. Or Patton Oswalt would be hilarious. These are great options. 

Tim Villegas: Great job. Thank you so much for indulging me in the mystery question. Alissa Rausch and Ben Riepe, thank you so much for being on the Think Inclusive Podcast. 

Ben Riepe: Thanks so much. We appreciate all you’re doing. Thank you so much. 

Tim Villegas: That’s all the time we have for this episode of Think Inclusive. Now let’s roll the credits. Think Inclusive is brought to you by me, Tim Villegas. I handle the writing, editing, design, mixing, and mastering. This podcast is a proud production of the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education. Our original music is by Miles Kredich with additional tunes from Melodie. A big shout-out to our sponsor, IXL. Check them out at ixl.com/inclusive. We truly appreciate each and every one of you who tunes in. We’d love to hear how you are using our episodes. Are they part of your teaching toolkit? Are you sharing them with your school administrators? Drop me a line at tvillegas@mcie.org and let me know. And hey, if you’re still with us this far into the episode, it probably means that you love Think Inclusive and the work MCIE is doing. Can I ask a small favor? Help us keep the momentum going by donating at our website mcie.org. Just click the button at the top of the site and chip in $5, $10, $20. It would mean the world to us and the children in the schools and districts we partner with. Thanks for your time and attention, and remember, inclusion always works. 

Download the entire unedited transcript here.