Unlocking Inclusive Education: Master Scheduling with Natural Proportions ~ 1210

Tim Villegas

Hey everyone, it’s Tim Villegas with the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education, and you are listening or watching Think Inclusive, our podcast that brings you conversations with people doing the work of inclusion in the real world today. I’m coming to you from my back porch in my backyard. It’s a beautiful fall day in Marietta, Georgia, where I live, and I’m excited to bring you this conversation that I had with my colleague Brittni Sammons. Brittni Sammons is a professional learning coordinator, and she’s been with MCIE for the last couple years, but she’s a former educator in a public school system in Maryland. This week, Brittany and I are talking about scheduling, and while that may not sound interesting to you in the context of our usual conversations about inclusive education, it is one of the most commonly requested explanations of how inclusive education works. Let me give you an example. When I was a teacher in a segregated special education classroom, one of my colleagues used to say to me, Tim, you’re advocating for inclusion, inclusive education and inclusive practices. It seems like you’re really advocating yourself out of a job. And I said, Actually, that’s not what I’m saying. As a special educator, I don’t actually need to be in a special classroom to deliver services. I can be anywhere where the kids are, so if the kids are included in general education, I can deliver services there. That’s what I was trying to explain to my colleague, that I’m not trying to advocate myself out of a job. I’m trying to advocate for learners to be included in general education classrooms, where I believe they belong and should learn grade level standards. Well, how does that all work? Exactly where are the kids supposed to go? Scheduling is a big part of that. Brittany and I break that down, and while it’s a pretty complex issue, hopefully after the conversation, you will understand a little bit more about what we mean by master scheduling and scheduling in natural proportions. If you’re on YouTube, you can see that my dog, Jupiter, is sitting next to me on the porch. Are you ready to tell them about IXL? Before we get into my interview with Brittany Sammons, I want to tell you about our sponsor for this season, IXL. Good boy. Now I know you’ve heard of data driven instruction. Well, what does that all mean? IXL is an online teaching and learning platform designed for kindergarten through 12th grade, and it’s used in 95 out of the top 100 school districts in the United States. With this one platform, educators can design learning for students from kindergarten through 12th grade and IXL gives teachers tools to help differentiate instruction for all these learners. As the students practice the skills on the platform, IXL automatically adapts to the learner based on their skill level. If that sounds interesting to you, check out ixl.com/inclusive. That’s ixl.com/inclusive. Okay, when we come back, my interview with Brittany Sammons, and I’m gonna see what Jupiter is huffing about. See you on the other side.

Tim Villegas

Brittany Sammons, welcome to the Think Inclusive podcast.

Brittni Sammons

Thanks, Tim. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Tim Villegas

Brittany, we’re going to talk about scheduling, and I think a lot of people are going to be interested in this topic, but before we get into scheduling, assigning learners to classrooms and all that, how it all fits in with inclusive education and inclusive practices, I’d love to know why this work that we do at MCIE is important to you.

Brittni Sammons

Such a good question. It really is. You know, Tim, that MCIE’s work is grounded in supporting schools and school systems to create inclusive school communities. But I think that it’s the outcome of inclusive school communities that is most important to me. When our learners are a part of inclusive school communities that provide the conditions to cultivate the opportunity for students to develop a sense of belonging. We know that as humans, having a sense of belonging is one of the most critical parts to our survival and happiness within our world. That really is why it’s so important to me, because I believe in the necessity for each person to develop their own sense of belonging.

Tim Villegas

Yeah. And as you were a special educator, right? What other roles led you to this work?

Brittni Sammons

So I was a special educator, then became an assistant principal at a high school, and then had an opportunity to be an inclusive education facilitator. That’s when I actually started a partnership with the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education. It’s when Calvert County became partners with MCIE, and for six years, I had the honor to truly make sense of the systems change process and apply it in Calvert County Public Schools. From there, I was hired as a supervisor of instructional performance, and in that role, I also engaged in continuing and supporting inclusive practices for the system, as well as culturally responsive instruction. Then I had the chance of my life, my dream job, which is to work for the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education. That’s what brought me here, which was such a great story for me.

Tim Villegas

Yeah, and we’re so glad you’re with us, and I’m so glad that we’re having this conversation. We’ve produced a lot of episodes, and we just don’t have, there’s not a whole lot of information about scheduling. I remember the first time I heard about natural proportions, and it was actually in a conversation I had with Julie Costin, who you know. Shout out to Julie Costin and her group in New York Inclusive Schooling. She’s been doing this work for a long time as well, and just having a conversation about, oh, what does natural proportions mean? How does that work exactly? There just isn’t a lot of information. What I find is when we’re having conversations with people about the how, like, how does this actually work in practice in a school, conversations around where do the kids go, and how are teachers assigned to classrooms? The majority of the time, when people think about inclusion, they think about a quote, unquote, co-taught class where there’s a general and special education teacher in one class all day. People say, Well, we just don’t have the staffing for that. We can’t afford to put a special education teacher at every grade level, or even every other grade level. So let’s start with natural proportions. What does it mean? What does that mean? And then, what does it mean to schedule using that principle?

Brittni Sammons

One of the most important things for us to understand is what we mean by natural proportions, right? I first learned about the origin, the term natural proportions, because I watched a video clip produced in 1987 with Lou Brown, and he was talking about natural proportions. Have you seen that clip?

Tim Villegas

No, I have not seen that.

Brittni Sammons

I’ll share it with you. It’s just a couple of seconds, over two minutes, and it’s really amazing to hear him give his explanation. He was talking about learners with disabilities being segregated from non-disabled peers, and how that environment for learning led to learners with disabilities not being prepared to live in their world. Lou also shared, as they continued to discuss, okay, if this isn’t working, then what is this going to look like for children with disabilities to be included? They started investigating what it means to be included and really started talking about, within your community, about how many people have disabilities. They even transferred that conversation beyond humans, and asked, How about animals? How—

Tim Villegas

Interesting.

Brittni Sammons

It’s interesting because it led them to the term of natural proportions. So, what is natural within your surroundings or community, and in educational terms, it means we’re talking about the inclusion of children with disabilities in proportion to the presence of those without disabilities in the general population of the school. For example, if the entire school population had 10% of their learners with disabilities, then you could translate that to each class should have 10% of learners with disabilities. The technical principle around natural proportions is that it is proportionate to your community. So if 10% of the humans in your community have a disability, then about 10% should be in the schools, which means about 10% should be in each class. If it’s one thing we know, a high volume of children with disabilities in one place really doesn’t foster the learning conditions which replicate real living conditions. It’s this whole notion that if that’s what living is, then shouldn’t our learning and schools reflect the same conditions?

Tim Villegas

Yes, got it. And a common complaint by teachers that are co-teaching in a school or a grade level that has an overrepresentation of children with IEPs or identified disabilities is that you have a class that’s the inclusion class, and there’s over 50%, sometimes even 60 or 70% of those students have received special education services. The people listening to this podcast will get it and be like, yeah, that’s not inclusion, right? But even within the school environment and the staff trying to figure out how best we serve kids, it’s a real head scratcher. Why do we do this? Why do we place so many students? I know the common line is, we want to consolidate services, right? But it doesn’t seem like it’s a real efficient way if you’re overrepresenting a classroom for students with disabilities.

Brittni Sammons

I agree with that. Another layer to it is that we want all of our students to have the experience of learning together with disabled and non-disabled humans. That is how we support our little humans to respect and expect difference and value that diversity, not just accept it. It’s not about accepting, it’s about expecting that. If we want all learners to know how to live together, then they really must learn together, and that really is the premise of natural proportions. When you overpopulate a class, you’re minimizing the experience that you want for all of your educators to teach diverse learners, and not just a few of those educators to be teaching diverse learners, but also that our students, our learners, are having that experience.

Tim Villegas

Yeah, that’s a really good point, because it’s not even about being fair, right? It’s really the students, the learners and the teachers are just missing out. They’re missing out on educating learners because they have been designated with the label.

Brittni Sammons

No matter who you are, we all have gifts to give, and when we reduce the opportunity to receive and give our gifts, we really are limiting what we have access to grow as humans among one another. I really feel that it is about the gifts that we have to give each other because of who you are, not in spite of who you are.

Tim Villegas

Right? Yes. Okay, so natural proportions. What’s the best way for us to think about the process of assigning learners to classrooms? I’m trying to make this as practical as possible, because as a former educator, every year, right around January, February, we would start thinking about what our classrooms are going to look like for the next school year. A lot of times, those conversations were driven by the assistant principal, and we would have planning meetings, and we’d be like, okay, everyone’s in one room. We have special educators and general educators, and we think about all the grade levels. We start placing students with index cards with their names on it, putting them in, okay, Billy’s gonna go over here, Susie is gonna go over here. Is the process the same? Help me understand that. Help our listeners understand that.

Brittni Sammons

Sure. Maybe just a little advanced organizer to help frame the process, which we won’t get into the finite details today. If that’s where you can partner up with us, we can work through that process or access the resource that we have on our MCIE website. The three major phases of scheduling with natural proportions include: one, scheduling children; two, assigning support and service educator roles; and three, building the master schedule. Those three major areas or phases are how we ensure that students have what they need, by making sure that adults have what they need and that the master schedule reflects the priorities for an inclusive community. The entire process is contingent upon data strength and solution-based problem solving. It’s collaborative. The last one, which is so critical, is that it has to be flexible and responsive. Those are the major components. When we specifically talk about the best way to think about assigning learners to the classroom, that first phase, we talked about the principle of scheduling with natural proportion, and how it’s like if you had 10% in the building, you have 10% in each class. One of the important things for people listening to remember is that when MCIE works with any of our partners in this process, we ground the phase in that premise and principle of natural proportions, but we understand that the volume number and access to service providers may not allow for students to get what they need if they are equally distributed, like 10% 10% 10%. When we apply the principle of natural proportions to scheduling, it is grounded in assigning students strategically, and when we say strategically, it does not mean equally. It really is about understanding students’ strengths, services, and the supports which allow for us to assign students and distribute the services necessary for them. I would also say that we consider academic and social emotional supports so that we’re really capitalizing on the strengths of our students and the strengths of our adults to best group and meet their needs. That takes soliciting information from the people who work with the students in order to inform the next year’s schedule. If we were scheduling in a school for fourth grade the upcoming year, we would be consulting and getting input from all of the educators and service providers who worked with those students in third grade. It really does rely on staff understanding the intensity of support or needs of individual learners in order for us to make the best choices around how to assign learners to the classes.

Tim Villegas

Okay, so we have those three phases, right? How long does that typically take? I’m just remembering my own experience of scheduling and taking weeks, and so I would imagine these phases kind of go—

Brittni Sammons

—in phases, yeah.

Tim Villegas

So, my point is that it wouldn’t happen all at once.

Brittni Sammons

Correct, absolutely. Depending on where you are, depending on the structures and systems that you have in your district, county, or school for scheduling, all of these timelines are subject to change. The notion is that we start thinking about scheduling in February, considering course requests, staffing, influx of students leaving and coming over the summer. How do we start gathering as much information as we can about the students that we have and what we know about them before everybody leaves for the summer? How do we back map and schedule opportunities and time for those staff members to support and participate in the scheduling process for grouping students, because they are the ones that know the kids best, aside from the parents? This idea of bringing them all to the table and being like, do not put Tim and Brittany together, because—or quite opposite, put Tim with Brittany, he is such a great peer model. Fill in the blank of the skills that you bring to the table to support learning or vice versa. When we have those conversations and you have access to the people to contribute to that decision making, it removes the guesswork. We often use the phrase when we are scheduling with our teachers: you are gifting the next grade level the best possible option for them to start the school year. That’s really what it is—you really are gifting the next grade level when you are able to have this opportunity to determine what are the strengths, what are the best combinations to put students together so that teachers have the partnerships they need in order to meet the needs of the individual and collaborative class needs.

Tim Villegas

Yeah. And it also sounds very flexible, right?

Brittni Sammons

Yes.

Tim Villegas

So, along with that flexibility, considering how, when most people think—at least a lot of people—think about co-teaching, co-taught classrooms as an example of inclusion, which we know that’s not exactly aligned with what we’re talking about. Help the listener understand, if we’re not talking about co-taught classrooms, or like a co-taught classroom in one grade level and then everyone else maybe has para support or doesn’t have any additional support, what does that actually look like in practice? If everyone is spread out like we’re talking about, how do kids actually get what they need if they’re not in a quote, total classroom?

Brittni Sammons

Absolutely. We talked before about understanding what relationships adults might need to have in order to actually provide students what they need, and that’s really what you’re talking about. Historically, it has been that—this is terrible language—but any student who had a need, whether you were a student who had an IEP or a 504 plan, or maybe you had an intervention plan, it would be like, Oh, you’re going into this teacher’s class, they’re really good with—so the density of need was overwhelming. We talked about some of the reasons why not only is that not appropriate for our students and for our adults, but it’s also not really the replication of the society, the real world that we live in. We start thinking through the collaborative relationships, through three specific types: we think about co-taught daily, which is what you mentioned. So I’m assigned to grade as a special educator—let me preface that. If I was a special educator, I could be assigned to your class, your third grade class, and it could be that we co-teach all day long, or it could be that we co-teach every day for ELA or math. That would be our definition of co-teaching daily.

Okay, we also have another type of collaborative relationship, which would be co-taught targeted. The idea behind that is that we strategically design a schedule for when I am co-teaching as a special educator with my general educator—you—based on what we know about the needs of the students, individually and as a whole, the services that need to be provided for those who receive special education services, as well as the content. What specifically is coming up in the content that might require me to co-teach with you more one time or another based on the topic or the intensity of the skills required? That is the relationship that tends to throw a little panic in our general educators and special educators’ worlds when we first introduce this, with good reason, right? Because who wouldn’t want to co-teach all day long with a partner, and you just have these rock star relationships, crushing goals, right? Well, the same thing can happen once you gain an understanding on how to capitalize and decision-make for when you are present. A strategy that we often use when we implement the scheduling process is we say you have a set schedule if you are in a co-taught targeted relationship. An example might be that you as the general educator, Tim, and me as a special educator, that on every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we co-teach for 30 minutes during math. It might be that I, as a special educator, co-teach with a different general educator on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Eventually, after the first quarter or semester, we might realize that I need more time with that other teacher when they start doing more intensive writing and less time with you. That’s when we may start negotiating the amount of time or the actual schedule that we have, but in the beginning we say, set the schedule, learn how to co-teach together, learn how to meet the needs of your students first, and then start reaping the benefits of the flexibility that co-taught targeted really allows for you to have.

So those are two relationships: co-taught daily and co-taught targeted. The third type of collaborative relationship that we use in our process is consultation. That would be you as the general educator and I as the special educator. We co-plan together, but you are the one that delivers instruction. I don’t actually co-teach with you, utilizing co-teaching models for instruction in the classroom. It may be, though, that one day you’re like, Brittany, you gotta come see this. We are on fire. You have got to see how this is working. I make arrangements to come observe what’s going on in class, because there’s huge celebrations, whether it’s because of the interpersonal relationships of the peers, it could be because of the independence and academic gains, whatever. It could also be that you’re like, girl, you gotta see this. I need your help, right? So I make arrangements to come observe. It could be an individual student that we are trying to problem solve for success. It could be a structure. It could be something you want me to give feedback on the delivery. There’s an endless number of things, but that consultative relationship really allows for the co-planning to be the root of how the services and needs of students in that class are met.

Tim Villegas

Got it. I can imagine somebody listening and thinking, this all sounds great, Brittany, but what about those IEP minutes?

Brittni Sammons

The minutes, what is—

Tim Villegas

How does that all work? The reason I know people are thinking this is because every time we’ve presented at conferences, that question always comes up. What’s a good way for our listeners to understand how those minutes work?

Brittni Sammons

The foundation that this comes from is that federal law indicates that a general educator is the primary provider for services in consultation with a special educator. You may have states or counties or districts that have guidance or regulations that have extra layers or requirements associated with that. But actual law says that a general educator can provide those services with the support and planning of a special educator. If that is the law, then that allows for that last relationship that we talked about—consultation—to be okay, which just means that the special education services, those minutes, are provided by the general educator because the special educator planned with them to ensure it happened. There’s a lot of reaction that comes to that response, and based on the experience that I’ve had working in my previous county, but also in the different places that we work now, when you understand how to co-plan, and when a general educator feels confident in what they are doing, there are no issues. But it is getting people feeling like they can do it, because we all can, but it does require that consultation with a special educator in order for it to be legal and to make sure that we are not leaving any general educator out there to figure it out or do it alone, because no one person is responsible for knowing how to do it all, or should be expected to. There’s always this understanding, especially in this process, that it is collaborative, and no one individual is responsible for knowing how to meet each and every student’s needs in their class. It is a collaborative structure that needs to be established in order for it to be successful.

Tim Villegas

It’s a collaborative practice. I had this memory of me sitting in my first teacher ed class, Ed 101 or something like that, and the professor was like, education is a practice, which means that it’s constantly evolving. When we find out how to do things better, we try to do that, and you don’t do it alone. He—I don’t remember his name, but he was at Cal State Fullerton, wonderful program—I remember him saying, it’s very much like medicine, because you don’t have one doctor and you only see the one doctor and they make all the decisions. Usually a practice is there’s a team, a team of practitioners who are figuring it out and working out together. I really like that parallel and that comparison. Where was I going with that? That’s a great question.

Brittni Sammons

I think it was just all grounded in no one has to do it alone. In order for all of our children’s needs to be met, disabled or non-disabled, we do have to work together.

Tim Villegas

Exactly, and oh, I know where I was going. Thank you, Brittany. A lot of times as a special education teacher, especially those who work in segregated and self-contained environments, how alone you feel when the expectation is that you’re not collaborating. Even if you’re listening to this and you’re going, I’m in a special day class, segregated special ed class in the corner in a bungalow outside the building, this is your call to action to figure out how you can make your role more collaborative, and that is a way to help your students and your learners be more a part of what’s going on in the life and the community of your school. It may just be a drop in the bucket for what you can do, but at least you’re doing something, at least you can try to move it forward. I’m thinking about how this impacts students and having classrooms and grade levels that are really inclusive, and the educators are collaborating together. Do you have any stories, maybe from our partners, of how this impacts students and even teachers?

Brittni Sammons

Absolutely. I think one of the most amazing consistent traits of the leaders who engage in the scheduling process is that they trusted the process. They asked questions and they understood the why, and I think that was the foundation to successful implementation when it comes to scheduling with natural proportions. When you have teachers who may react to the changes we’re asking them to make in scheduling practice, and how it directly impacts their role as the general educator or the special educator, the leaders are able to support them in working through the feelings they may have, through the changes that may occur, and troubleshooting those things. That, to me, is really foundational, because I have had some of the most vocal—and I don’t want to use the word resistant, but they were really nervous and scared about these changes—end up being the largest advocates, the biggest advocates for the process after they’ve lived it. My favorite quote was from a principal who said, we’ll never go back to how we used to schedule. This just makes so much more sense. We’ll never go back. So that’s like, Okay, how do I sign up for that? When it comes to the students, I think it’s more heart wrenching because of some of the statements that might have started with the phrase of, when they let me out I was able to—and then you fill in the blank with what celebration they may have made about how their social or academic life positively changed. Those are the pieces. I don’t have exact quotes from any children, sorry, Tim. But that phrase of, when they let me out, that was just like a—whoa, what have we been doing? Oh my goodness.

Tim Villegas

Yeah. I think I know that story actually, because I’ve heard that story, and there was this other one that I’m remembering. Again, I don’t have specific quotes right now off the top of my head, but it’s very similar in the sense that the learner feeling completely unstimulated, the work was too easy, and being affected by the lack of actual activities that were going on in the classroom. If you’ve ever taught—and if you know my story at all, even a little bit—I taught in segregated classrooms where there would be, you know, 30 minutes would go by and nothing would happen. The reason why nothing would happen is because we were taking kids to the toilet and taking care of health needs, or there’d be some sort of behavioral challenge that needed to be supported. That’s one or two students with multiple staff, and what happens to everyone else? They’re just waiting. But imagine, just imagine, you had learners that were assigned or scheduled with everyone else, take all the students that would have been in my class, K through five, and they were in their grade levels, and they were supported. If one person needed to be supported in a particular way, whether it’s health, whether it’s behavioral, it’d be the one student. Everyone else is learning and being educated with their peers. When you really think about it that way, it’s so much more of an efficient way to teach and to support kids.

Brittni Sammons

Agreed, and I’ll align with your experience as a special educator. I was a teacher of a regional program. I taught in segregated, self-contained classes. I did co-teach also, and I did teach in inclusive class. But a lot of my experience as a special educator started there, and I was a fierce advocate for my students with disabilities forever, but what I was advocating for was wrong and I did not understand it. I literally, in my past, thought that I was doing what was best for kids by suggesting segregation. I thought it was the right thing to do. I was so ignorant of the research that actually proves that segregation is not appropriate and what’s best for kids. I was more concerned about my students being included because they wouldn’t have what they would need, and that wasn’t the right thing, and I couldn’t have been more wrong. I think sometimes that’s the hardest thing when you are shifting mindsets, is that it goes back to what you say you know, and Maya Angelou with the “once you know better, you do better.” That is literally the foundation of this work. If we cannot say now that I know better, I need to do differently to be better, then that’s really the sad story associated with it. So the big ahas that you really asked for in the actual question about the success stories, is when you have the educators and leaders who say that this is better for our students and for our staff, and they’re able to see the connections associated with it. We have the research that proves it, but for people to have their own experiences is probably one of the best rewards we could ask.

Tim Villegas

Yeah. Are there any words of caution as we’re scheduling like this?

Brittni Sammons

There are a lot of nuances to the scheduling process that can’t be captured in a document that explains all the steps, so having someone with experience and capacity to guide you through really is critical for working through the phases of scheduling and ensuring that when compromises have to be made, they’re made with all the critical information and understanding to uphold the integrity of the process and the outcomes desired from it.

Tim Villegas

Yes, which is why, if this work is interesting to you and you’re listening, you may want to reach out, right?

Brittni Sammons

Absolutely. They can call you and I, but they can access our website, mcie.org, and there’s a link to start a conversation. We would really love to hear from you.

Tim Villegas

Yeah, we would. We would love for you to reach out and, you know, conversations—that’s how we start this work, right? It always starts with the conversation, and we want to work with you. So please reach out. You can find us on social media. You can email us. You can send snail—we don’t have an address for you to send snail mail, so sorry, but please do. All right, anything else before we wrap up that you want to make sure educators leave this conversation with?

Brittni Sammons

Absolutely. Number one, all the educators listening and the leaders who really have the heart and mind for doing what’s best for kids, thank you, because what you do every day matters, and it’s never too late for us to make change to our practices and to engage in the work. So thank you for everything you do every day for your students and your families.

Tim Villegas

All right, mystery question time. Are you ready?

Brittni Sammons

I mean, I’m not ready because I don’t know what the question is, but I don’t—

Tim Villegas

I don’t know what the question is either. Is it like magical mystery question?

Brittni Sammons

No, it’s a stack of cards. It used to be that big, and now it’s—I’m like, if you’re watching on the video, you can see my fingers, but it used to be a stack of 100 cards, and now it’s maybe 30. I’ve weeded out the bad ones.

Brittni Sammons

That’s good to know.

Tim Villegas

I hope. I hope I weeded okay. Here we go. The mystery question is, what is something in life you really have an appreciation for that most people don’t? If you can see that? There we go. Appreciation—

Brittni Sammons

—for that most people don’t. I don’t like that. I don’t like that “what most people don’t” because I don’t know what most people like and don’t like.

Tim Villegas

Well, then what’s something that you appreciate that is maybe not quite as popular as other things, maybe like an underrated appreciation for something?

Brittni Sammons

I have an appreciation—I can’t even say it without feeling bad. It’s not good. It’s so bad. It is so bad.

Tim Villegas

Okay, yes, keep going, go on.

Unknown Speaker

Trees.

Unknown Speaker

Okay, okay, no—

Unknown Speaker

No, tell me. Tell me more.

Brittni Sammons

You can ask my husband. I will stare at trees. I want to stand amongst the trees. I want to hug trees. They give me so much just from being in the presence of them, or being able to look at them, and that is so weird.

Tim Villegas

It’s not that weird. It’s not that weird. Do you have a favorite tree?

Brittni Sammons

No, and you would think that, because I have such an—well, no.

Tim Villegas

I just want to understand. Is it—

Brittni Sammons

No, it’s just the tree itself.

Tim Villegas

So the way the leaves move, the way they stand firm or bend, the quiet presence of them all, all of it. It’s ridiculous. It’s silly. I can’t believe this is recorded.

Tim Villegas

This is, yeah, it’s documented now. Yes, appreciation for trees, forever.

Unknown Speaker

For—

Tim Villegas

Oh my goodness. I’m trying to think—if you would ask my wife, she would say I have a lot of different things that I appreciate that most people don’t.

Brittni Sammons

Are you gonna tell me? Do you have to answer these questions too?

Tim Villegas

I do. Okay, no, I’m answering but I’m deciding what I want to focus on.

Brittni Sammons

I see, because there’s more than one.

Tim Villegas

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ll just throw away a couple. For instance, I love, love, love baseball. A lot of people like baseball, so it’s not really that great of an example. But the thing is—oh, I know what I’m gonna say. I know what it is now. My family could care less about baseball. So here I am watching my favorite baseball team, the Los Angeles Dodgers, right? I’m wearing an Orioles cap, but I’m still a Dodgers fan, and I will be hanging on every single pitch. I love it. I love the strategy. I love the attitudes of the players, the camaraderie, the skill level. I just love everything about it. But my family doesn’t share that with me. The other thing that is a little bit more niche is I really love the Muppets. Are you a fan of the Muppets, Brittany?

Brittni Sammons

Yes, but more like Fraggle Rock. Fraggle Rock, they’re like my people.

Tim Villegas

Fraggle Rock. Okay, so I never watched a lot of Fraggle Rock. I like it, but I’m not steeped in Fraggle Rock lore or anything. I grew up on Sesame Street, I watched all the Muppet movies, I made my kids watch the new Muppet movies—they absolutely did not like them at all. I’m like, we gotta watch the Muppet Christmas Carol at Christmas time—nope, nope. After they got to a certain point, right around 10 years old, they completely—nope, absolutely not. My dad, you cannot make me watch this. Here in Atlanta, because I live in the Atlanta area in Georgia, there is the Center for Puppetry Arts, and we’ve gone down there a few times for different shows. I am drawn to puppets. I’ve always been drawn to puppets. It’s just something that I really enjoy, and I have an appreciation for Muppets slash puppets, and I don’t think everyone does, especially not my family.

Brittni Sammons

Well, thanks for sharing, Tim. I appreciate you being out on that limb with me.

Tim Villegas

Got trees and Muppets. Brittany Sammons, thank you so much for being on the Think Inclusive podcast.

Brittni Sammons

Thanks so much, Tim, I appreciate the invite.

Tim Villegas

Welcome back everyone. It’s time for three for me and two for you. That’s when I give you three reflections from the conversation that I had with Brittany Sammons, and then two calls to action. So here we go.

Number one is, I just want to highlight the phrase and the concept of natural proportions one more time. That is something that when I was starting to figure out what inclusive education really means and how it actually works, this concept was new to me, and once I realized that it wasn’t about putting students with and without disabilities together and just hoping for the best. It was actually about being intentional about where students with more complex support needs were actually in the school building, and that they weren’t all clumped in one classroom. That is when it started to make a little bit more sense to me on how this actually could work in a school system and how it could work in my school district. I’m hopeful that as you are listening to this conversation or watching this video, that you’ll be able to take some of the language that you hear that Brittany and I talk about and bring that to your school system and your school leaders.

Number two, I think it’s really important to how we talk about and understand co-teaching, because again, co-teaching isn’t about having a co-taught classroom. You have only one classroom that is the inclusion classroom, and you have special educators that are in a co-taught room. Really inclusive practices, and what we’re talking about with scheduling, means that resources are spread out evenly across a grade level and a school building. Now that’s going to look different in each school based on the number of students, the number of supports that are needed, and the staff, but that school gets to decide how to deliver those resources equitably. As I’ve said many times before, putting all the students with disabilities in one class and calling that the inclusion class, or having segregated classrooms in the first place, it’s just not an efficient way to serve students.

Number three, both Brittany and I shared about what we used to think and now what we think. You may not hear this in our conversation in the video, but Brittany and I have had plenty of conversations offline about how there is a certain amount of shame and regret that we both have because we advocated for segregated environments for learners with disabilities. That’s something that we are both dealing with, and for anyone who is listening and going through this kind of period of reflection and thinking, oh gosh, my mind is really changing about this, and I need to do something about it. You can only do as much as you can in your own context and just make the next right move for you to make sure you and your school system are moving towards inclusive practices. I wouldn’t be too hard on yourself, but know that you can just keep going and keep going. For both Brittany and I, we just didn’t stop advocating, and we’re still on that journey. It’s okay to be thinking about that. It’s okay to have regret, but it’s also important for you to keep moving and to move on, which is another reason why we make this podcast. Hopefully, if we can help change your mind, that there’s something that you can do in your school system to move inclusion forward, then I think we’ve been successful.

Okay, now it’s two for you. I am going to drop a link to the video that Brittany referenced with Lou Brown. It’s a conversation that he’s having with the Minnesota Governor’s Council on Developmental Disabilities, and it is definitely worth the watch. It’s like five minutes—go and watch that now. Lou actually uses some outdated terminology, like the R word and stuff like that. The video was produced in 1987, so just keep that in mind.

And number two is for you to go to mcie.org and check out our resources page. I want to call out one particular resource: collaborative relationships. If co-teaching is interesting to you and how Brittany was describing targeted co-teaching, there’s a lot more information about what that means and what that looks like in our resources on the website, mcie.org/resources, and look for the file collaborative relationships.

Okay, that is it for this episode of Think Inclusive. Time for the credits. Think Inclusive is written, edited, designed, mixed and mastered by me, Tim Villegas, and is a production of the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education. Original music by Miles Credit, additional music from Melody. Thanks to our wonderful sponsor, IXL. Make sure you check out ixl.com/inclusive to learn more about how IXL can be a resource for you. Thank you so much for listening, and please make sure to, wherever you listen or watch, like, subscribe, give us a review, make a comment, send us a message on social media, let us know that you are listening. We love to know if any of these episodes have been useful to you. Thanks for your time and attention and remember, inclusion always works.

From MCIE.