We’re Raising Adults: Building Trust at the IEP Table with Karen Ford Cull ~ 1407

Karen Ford Cull: But I think, in the IEP situation especially, the IEP becomes a horrible thing if there’s no trust between the team members and the parents, right? It’s just really a nasty couple of hours if you haven’t got that trust, and that’s really the main thing I’m trying to do is protect the parents’ rights, but at the same time try and build a collaborative team that can work together.

And so we need to train teams together. You can’t collaborate in that situation of diffidence. I often get into an IEP, and we get everything agreed that the parent wants, and they’re still like, “What’s the catch? What’s the catch?” There must be a catch, right? Because they’ve never seen their IEP team agree with them before.

Tim Villegas: Hi, 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 trust and what happens at the IEP table when there isn’t any.

My guest is Karen Ford Cull. Karen is an inclusive education advocate, a parent coach, and the mom of a 21-year-old son with Down syndrome. Through her business, Plan4Inclusion, she helps families build IEPs that lead to meaningful inclusive education. She is the content specialist at Undivided. She is a legislative advocate on the California State PTA Board of Managers, and she served on the CalTASH board for six years.

She’s a graduate of the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles USC LEND program and a COPAA-trained advocate. And before any of that, Karen was a political theorist. She studied at Oxford, earned her PhD at the University of Manchester, and taught in the UK, Poland, and Latvia. That background shows up in this conversation in a way I did not expect.

Karen asks a question I can’t stop thinking about. In the rest of education, family engagement is talked about as the number one thing that makes a difference for students. So where is that conversation in special education? We talk about why so many IEP meetings run on conflict and what educators and families can each do about it.

Listen for this line from Karen: “We’re not raising children, we’re raising adults.” It’s how she starts every IEP, and it changes the whole meeting. And that’s belonging, too. It’s planning for a kid’s whole life, not just the next school year. Stick around after the interview because we’re playing Awake Among the Stars, our micro role-playing game adapted from Alone Among the Stars by Takuma Okada.

Link to the original game is in the show notes. Before we meet our guest, I want to tell you about our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by IXL. IXL is an all-in-one platform for K-12 that helps boost student achievement, empowers teachers, and tracks progress in one place. As students practice, IXL adapts to their individual needs so that every learner gets just-right support and challenge, and each student gets a personalized learning plan to close gaps.

Check it out at ixl.com/inclusive. Again, that’s ixl.com/inclusive.

All right, after a quick break, it’s time to Think Inclusive with Karen Ford Cull. Catch you on the other side.

Karen Ford Cull, welcome to the Think Inclusive podcast.

Karen Ford Cull: Thank you for having me.

Tim Villegas: Karen, it’s been a while since we’ve talked. When did we last see each other? Probably at TASH?

Karen Ford Cull: TASH, yes. In December, yeah.

Tim Villegas: Yes. July as well. It’s always a, it’s always a good time talking with you, ’cause we’re passionate about the same things: inclusive education. So some of our listeners may not know who you are, what your work is. Most do, I’m sure. But if not, could you just tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into this work of being an advocate for inclusion?

Karen Ford Cull: Yeah. Thank you. I’m not particularly famous. I wouldn’t expect people to know who I was.

Tim Villegas: You never know…

Karen Ford Cull: I have a 21-year-old son with Down syndrome, as well as two other sons, and so that’s what, like most people, that’s what got me into this. And really early on we realized that he was gonna need inclusive education, and we had to advocate very hard for that.

And then I had a journey. First, Club 21 was a huge support, and at Club 21 I realized, okay, we need to hear more from who’s training the teachers. And that got me to CalTASH, and so I was involved with CalTASH for a long time, and of course, that brought me to TASH.

And listening to your show like forever. So all of those things brought me into a situation where I knew a lot about inclusive education, and as my son got older and I saw that what happens is, as the parents who have really learnt about inclusion go, their kids become adults, and then they start working on adult stuff.

And I decided I’m not gonna do that. I’m gonna stay with the kids, and I’m gonna help other parents do that. So I did some family support training with LEND, and then did COPAA SEAT training. And I have various support roles, but the main thing I do is work as a special education advocate directly with families and help them in their IEPs.

I also work with Undivided, which is an online platform for parents. I work on the content side there, just really trying to get the best resources for parents. But I’m also a passionate advocate for systemic change, right? So I see my other role is really trying to work towards a legislative or policy change through different organizations.

Tim Villegas: And you do fantastic work, and I don’t think you mentioned your work with the California PTA. Do you wanna mention that?

Karen Ford Cull: Sure. Yeah, so I’m now on the legislative team at California State PTA, and that’s something I’m very proud of. I’m very proud of State PTA.

Obviously, it’s not every minute about inclusive education. It’s a much broader role. But I’m learning so much about how to advocate through PTA because PTA really know how to do that. And so I’m really excited about my role there. Yeah.

Tim Villegas: Yeah. Yeah. And so there’s a few things I just wanna clarify for anyone who’s listening.

So Karen, you’re in California. I am originally from California and connected to Club 21. So Club 21 is, I don’t know if I’m saying this right, but it’s a family resource that helps families understand the diagnosis of having children with Down syndrome, but also how to advocate for inclusive practices for your child, and just a fantastic group of people in Pasadena, California, which is also, I consider my hometown.

So very connected to Karen, California, and the work of Club 21. And then also, just that the CalTASH, so if you know what TASH is, the national organization, there are some chapters that are large enough to have their own conferences and kind of their own systems and organization, and California is one of them.

And I know that you’ve been involved with CalTASH for a long time, and listeners in California would know what CalTASH is as well. So just setting that for context ’cause I know we have a lot of people who listen from all over the place. I’d like to talk about this tension between, I guess, building the capacity of educators and school systems to change for inclusive education, and then there is the family advocacy side.

And at MCIE, our primary function is to provide support to school systems. And we talk about what inclusive education means, what authentic inclusion means, the practice side of it in a classroom or a school or a district.

And way back, way, like over a decade ago, MCIE actually had an advocacy wing, and I’m just gonna give props and a shout-out to Selene Almazan, who was the director of that side of MCIE, who is now with COPAA, the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates. And, they do great work.

But there is this tension between… Sorry, this is a long setup, Karen. I apologize.

Karen Ford Cull: It’s good. It’s good.

Tim Villegas: Okay. So there is this tension between advocacy for inclusive practices in the sense that we want systems to change and everything like that, but also, like, how to let families know what to ask for, right?

And as an organization, we really stay on the side of equipping school systems. We don’t go to IEPs. We don’t engage in any other advocacy that’s family-facing. But Karen, you’ve listened to Think Inclusive for many years. There’s a lot of families that listen to and use our resources.

So I’ve just been, I’ve been thinking a lot about that, and while we’re not at the IEP table, we wanna be able to provide the right information. So I’m wondering, as a parent… Sorry, here’s my final question. As a parent, how do you see these two kind of ways to get at inclusive practices?

How do you see them working together?

Karen Ford Cull: It’s a big question.

Tim Villegas: Sorry, yeah. Only the best questions for you.

Karen Ford Cull: But let me separate it into two things, right? Because firstly, I do spend a lot of time with inclusionists, right? By which I mean educational academics, who are training teachers, who are designing systems, who are doing that fantastic work that you feature all the time, right?

Amazing people. I am always surprised at how little time they spend thinking about parent engagement in what they do. When I’m in PTA, we spend a lot of time talking to educationists from other parts of education about parent engagement. I just went to this amazing conference in Long Beach.

The national PTA was having us talk there. There were 4,000 educators there from all over the country. It was huge. And they were talking about family engagement and student involvement.

And for that group of educators who weren’t necessarily special education, they did have a disability element to it, which I was pleased to see. But they weren’t special educators, right? They were general educators and counselors, and they were interested in including marginalized students, who are marginalized in different ways. And they were talking about family engagement as the number one thing that makes the difference for student success, right?

And where is that narrative, where’s that discussion in the special education field? Where is it? It’s absent, right? Yeah. And I think there’s so many exciting things to do in that field. Firstly, there’s the idea of rethinking the way we train educators about what an IEP is. So it’s not about following the law or compliance or ticking boxes, but it’s about family engagement.

This is the place where you have that individualized family engagement in special education, right? And then secondly, thinking about how do we involve parents really in that systemic change process. And it can’t be what you just said, which was to tell the parents what to ask for.

To prime them, “Here, you ask for this and you’ll be able to get it ’cause we’ll be on the other side giving it to you,” right?

Most of the time when I’m in IEPs, the parent knows way more about inclusion than the other team members. They can’t train their IEP team, and they can’t change systemic things.

They can’t change where the resources are in the district in an IEP, right? That has to be put in place in order for their individualized advocacy in the IEP to be effective. Otherwise, you’re just creating this bomb zone, right? Where there’s naturally gonna be conflict because the parents have been trained by COPAA and CalTASH and all these other organizations that their children have a right to be included, and the teachers have been trained on something completely different.

And I experience that on a daily basis. So that’s the first thing: on the teacher side, let’s start a discussion about how we have parent advisory committees, and how we train parent advisory committees, and how we train special education admins to work with parent advisory committees.

And often when I do talk to administrators, they will tell me, “Look, I wanna do inclusion. I love inclusion just like you do. I just have all these parents who want something else.” Yeah. So when you are doing systemic inclusion, you have to think about, let’s get those parents in and find out what their concerns are first.

’Cause if their concern is they heard that inclusion is dropping the kid in the general education classroom without any support, we can fix that really easily, right?

And if it was, “Oh, we tried that once, and it didn’t work,” let’s look at the reasons why it didn’t work. So that’s that side.

But then on the other side, you’ve got those parents and, how are we training them on what to expect in an IEP, and how are we training them about how to advocate in a way that is not just gonna end up with more conflict, but is actually a way of building a team that is gonna work.

And I think I’ve forgotten the other part of the question now, but I think I got it.

Tim Villegas: It was a long question.

Karen Ford Cull: Yeah, I’m trying.

Tim Villegas: It was a long question, and the setup was really long. The concern that you brought up from the administrator about I’m fully in support of inclusion, inclusive practices, but the families, they don’t want that or they don’t want the version that you were talking about.

And it’s probably better to just talk about it hypothetically, you know, because these are general themes that we both are aware of. Let’s say you have a school district that is on their way, right? It’s a journey where they’re moving toward inclusive practices.

They are equipping their general and special education teachers to work together collaboratively in co-teaching and co-planning. And there’s a family who has a child with a particular, it doesn’t matter what kind of disability or needs or whatever.

But that family is aware that the district may have a regional, disability-specific program that district has had for a long time, right? And so they are interested in that kind of support for their family. And so you have these kind of competing interests where a district who wants to move away from those segregated programs because you and I both know that the research doesn’t support that. Learners with disabilities can grow towards making progress on grade level standards in general education with the right supports.

But that family is like, “No, absolutely not. I want the classroom that’s just for students with, quote unquote, ‘X disability.’” What do we do with that, as you’re coming from it with educating families? But also, I’d love your perspective on what you would say to that administrator who’s like, “I have these families who are really interested in these programs, and, personally, philosophically, I’m really not excited about them. I think we should move a different way.” So what would you tell them?

Karen Ford Cull: So I think, first of all, let’s start with the families who want it, right?

And sadly, in California that’s a lot, often that is what actually happens, right? Is that we have ad hoc inclusion with the families who are wanting that, the families who’ve hired a lawyer, the families who know enough to ask for that, right? Get it, and everyone else goes to SDC. But I have seen, like for example, there was one county, not gonna name names, where they had a really great effort towards inclusion.

And of course the county education offices here in California don’t have that much control over the districts. But they did have control over their county programs, and they were trying to do inclusion from there. And they had a lot of parents very angry.

Like, “My kid has been in this program for three years. I want him to stay there for another two. Don’t do this to my kid.” And we’ve seen it in other districts, school districts as well. “Don’t move my kid when he’s happy there.” So that’s the first thing I’d say. Don’t touch the kids where the parents are happy in their program, however bad that program is, right?

There’s things we can do to that program, right? We can make sure that program has really good access to communication so that when the kids are able to move out of that program, they have the communication skills. ’Cause as you and I know, the research on inclusion being good has another side to it, which is these separate programs are not doing literacy, they’re not doing communication skills. If we have to have these programs, let’s make sure that we’re giving the tools to those students that’s gonna make it easier to transition. It might take you years, but you’re not gonna move a child before the family’s ready, right? That’s just asking for trouble. But I think as well, we know the research. There is a research paper that shows if you have a program, people will put the kid in that program, right?

If you have an autism program, they’re gonna send all the kids with autism there. They’re probably even gonna send a few of the kids with Down syndrome there because they don’t know the difference, right? Yeah. And so if you have a program, the IEP team is gonna send them there. There’s gonna be families who think, that’s the right place for my kid because it’s got their diagnosis on the door. “This is obviously the right place.” That is really a key first step, is taking those labels off, right?

And if you don’t like it, just call it the segregated program and see if people still want to choose it, right?

Tim Villegas: Yeah, there’s always an acronym. There’s always something really clever, you know.

Karen Ford Cull: But you can do inclusion gradually and you can do it partially, and that’s something where I often disagree with inclusionists who want it to be 100%, you know, or nothing. But I think a large part of the time that’s not what’s real.

Tim Villegas: Right? You have to do it gradually.

Karen Ford Cull: Yeah.

Tim Villegas: Yeah. I mean, in our experience, you know, since I’ve been at MCIE, which has been six years now and has flown by, the approach that we are always taking and advocating for is a gradual process and a phased-in approach.

Because if you decide to say, “Okay, I’m gonna snap my fingers and everyone,” like, “We’re getting rid of programs. We’re getting rid of, you know, any separate space and we’re…” It’s like you haven’t equipped anyone. That is a recipe for failure. So yeah, I didn’t mean to cut you off there.

Karen Ford Cull: No. No, sorry.

For some reason my computer will only let me have focus time turning all the pings off for 20 minutes at a time. I don’t know how to change it, I’m so sorry.

Tim Villegas: It’s all right. It’s just we’re getting lots of fun noises from your side. It’s fine.

Karen Ford Cull: Yeah. But I think, you know, when we involve parents in that process, they do want… I have never met a parent who doesn’t want their kid to spend time with children who don’t have a disability, right?

And very often what I hear is their main worry is safety, right? And if you dig down into their safety worries, it’s interesting ’cause from PTA I know general education parents have those same safety worries.

They’re worried about the children getting bullied, you know? That’s a school-wide policy issue we have to deal with, right? They’re worried about whether their kid can, you know, have enough support there, whether their kid is going to learn anything there. So you know, we can put that in place for parents, but they’re gonna have to be part of the process or they won’t have trust in it.

And I think that trust thing is the biggest portion. ’Cause often you’re talking about someone who’s come new into a district. Sometimes parents feel that moves towards inclusion are really just ways of saving money. Especially at the moment in California, a lot of school districts have not adjusted to their numbers, so they’re having to make drastic cuts, quite suddenly. And so people often see it, “Oh, they’re doing this inclusion thing in order to save money, and that’s not good for my kid.” So there’s a trust thing that’s just missing between parents and teachers, and I actually think that is both for general ed and special ed.

But I think in the IEP situation especially, the IEP becomes a horrible thing if there’s no trust between the team members and the parents, right? It’s just really a nasty couple of hours if you haven’t got that trust, and that’s really the main thing I’m trying to do is protect the parents’ rights, but at the same time try and build a collaborative team that can work together.

And it’s really often more of a conflict resolution job than an advocacy job.

Tim Villegas: After the break, Karen’s playbook for an IEP meeting that doesn’t end in a fight for families or for case managers.

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

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Well, do you have some maybe tips you can share with the families who are listening, and educators, regarding conflict resolution? Because I have a feeling like a lot of people would find that very useful.

Karen Ford Cull: I think my main thing that I do with all my families straight off is get them to write a vision statement that looks at the kid as a grown-up, right? We’re not raising children, we’re raising adults, right? And so getting them to think about what kind of education they need for what kind of an adult they’re gonna be.

And, you know, if they’re in kindergarten, that’s a very open question, right? And so getting the parent to present that vision at the IEP team somehow changes the dynamic in the room so that they are really thinking more forward and not just thinking about how do we get this first-grader from the beginning of first grade to the end of first grade, right?

But thinking, okay, about the whole education. And the parent is often the only one who’s gonna be in the IEP team for that whole time. Everybody else comes and goes. So you’re the memory of the IEP team, and you’re the one who gets to deal with the outcomes, right? So you’ve got the most invested, and that’s often the parent’s role.

We often say the parent is the expert on their child, right? But a lot of team members don’t like having a parent expert in the room. So finding ways of getting the parent to ask questions rather than make statements.

And quite often I will mention research and I’ll back it up by sending it to them if I make a note of it.

I’ve got to figure out a way to do that easily, like I think I need some kind of a link tree or something that I can just easily refer people to the research. But I think that is the biggest thing, is changing the way the IEP team sees their job. Their job isn’t to write a document, right? The job is to figure out what this kid needs to get the most out of second grade in terms of they’re going to graduate with a diploma, and they’re gonna go to college, and then they’re gonna have a job like everybody else.

Tim Villegas: I liked how you framed the idea that the parent is the expert of their own child, but also that they are the memory of the IEP and what has happened. And I’ve certainly been to many IEP meetings over the course of my career. And I’m remembering parents bringing binders and binders of previous IEPs or, you know, research, data, as almost evidence that like, “Hey, I’ve been through this before,” you know?

So I’m just wondering what other kinds of strategies you could give to educators to help them reframe their approach when they’re at an IEP meeting? I don’t know if there’s any tips or tricks that you’d wanna share.

Karen Ford Cull: I’ve been in meetings where we’ve got an annual IEP, and they’ve slotted 45 minutes for the meeting.

And then we have to have a recall meeting, which takes a month to schedule because we’re not allowed to schedule it until we’ve finished that 45 minutes. And then we end up with, like, maybe four meetings over four months. The kid’s annual IEP took us all four months, and we’re all exhausted, and we never want to speak to each other ever again.

And then, you know, it’s only a few months before we have to do it again.

So I think, number one, I would say to case managers, make sure that you have a good two-hour meeting, and if you have a kid with extensive support needs and they have five services, schedule two meetings a week. You know, one this week, one next week, right?

For their annual. Because then you don’t have to remember what it was all about in a month’s time, right? So they have to give time, and the districts don’t give time. They have these horrible computer systems. It’s not their fault. It’s the administrators buying these computer systems that don’t really understand what it’s like, right?

And then the other thing I would say to any case manager, do what I do. Meet with the family beforehand. Give them a draft. If they have an advocate, share it. Involve the advocate as well, right? Ask them what they want their kid to be working on. Bang out those goals before the meeting.

Yes, it’s not predetermination, as long as in the meeting that goal can change, right? Be the person that they see as being the one on their side, right? And go into the meeting knowing that these are the goals that they want to have for their child, right? And sometimes in IEP meetings, I’m trying to rewrite these goals, which are very often very badly written, sadly, in real time, like in the meeting time, right? “Do you think you could put in a benchmark? Do we need some visuals in here?” And so on. It’s very difficult to do that in that real time. Get that, like, little bitty work done before the meeting, and then the meeting just becomes where we agree to everything, right?

Tim Villegas: Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Those are fantastic strategies. And I hope everyone who’s listening takes those to heart. Especially the contacting the parents beforehand and saying, you know… Like, you shouldn’t be hearing about the vision for the child from the parents at the IEP meeting. That’s some pre-work that you could do, for sure.

Karen Ford Cull: I’m excited about the new California template. I don’t know what, I mean, I know what’s in the template, but we don’t know what it’s gonna look like when it’s in these programs, right? But the new California template has the vision in it, like some states do.

So, you know, then it does become the teacher’s job to go to the parent and say, “What is your vision for your child?” Right? But I hope that it’s still something authentic and genuine and doesn’t just become, “Oh, we always put this in that box.” Like the inclusion statement, right? Which always says the same thing in every IEP.

And, you know, I fear a little bit that if you give it a box, that happens, but I think you can really do a lot of work with an IEP team if they share a vision of what’s gonna happen for that child.

Tim Villegas: Hmm. I love it. I love it. Any other thing on your mind that you wanted to talk about in relation to, you know, how we’ve been talking about how educators and families can work together?

Karen Ford Cull: Yeah, I think we need to think on a systemic level about training parents and educators together, right? Right at the beginning of this, I did a conference where we asked people to have their educator and the parent there at the conference together. And Club 21 does something similar, right? They have an education partners program. But often the schools don’t participate, right?

But I think we need to really work towards having some kind of training where you’re training the team, including the parent, right? And just make that partnership with the parent be a normal thing. And often, you know, it’s kind of a lack of trust, but I like the word diffidence, which comes from international relations. The idea that if you don’t trust somebody else to act in good faith, your best strategy is not to act in good faith, right? That comes from game theory, right?

And so we need to train teams together, because you can’t collaborate in that situation of diffidence. I often get into an IEP, and we get everything agreed that the parent wants, and they’re still like, “What’s the catch? What’s the catch?” There must be a catch, right? Because they’ve never seen their IEP team agree with them before.

That level of mistrust isn’t what we talk about as family engagement in PTA, right? That’s a whole other level of engagement that is riven with conflict.

And I sometimes feel that the advocates and COPAA, they have that so much as their basic assumption, that they almost train the parents to expect conflict. But it is realistic. It’s what happens, right?

They’re not doing anything wrong, but we need to find a way out of that.

And I think the only way is to train parents and teachers, and therapists, and psychologists, school psychologists who often don’t get a lot of training in inclusion, to train them all together, and I think that would be a huge step forward.

Tim Villegas: Yeah. Yeah. Are you aware of any organization that does that?

Karen Ford Cull: Oh, I know that, for example, Club 21 has their program, but it’s very difficult for them to get the educators to participate.

And the initial idea was for everyone to be together, and then they found that the educators told them they need the space to ask dumb questions, right?

Like, and I get that. I get that. As a professional, you don’t wanna be sitting in front of the parent and asking, “But how is this gonna work?” right? So it’s one of those things where you need a bit of both, right?

But maybe it helps the parent to hear the professional vulnerability there, right? Maybe it doesn’t really help you to have a conversation with someone if you don’t know that inside they’re terrified of not looking professional. Because that isn’t the message parents get from the way that the teachers and providers act in the IEP. They get messages like, “They don’t want my kid there. They see my kid as being a problem. They don’t wanna teach my kid. I’m not welcome.”

And I know that’s not what the teacher means. The teacher means, “Somebody told me I could get sued for this,” which isn’t true.

Tim Villegas: Yeah. Yeah, the mistrust can go both ways, for sure. Well, Karen, this is a great conversation. I love it. Before we jump into our last segment, if people are listening and they’re like, “Oh, I wanna talk to Karen about whatever,” how would they get in touch with you?

Karen Ford Cull: Oh, well, I have a Facebook group called Parents for Inclusive Education California that I am the admin for. If they’re listening to this show and they’re in California, they should join that Facebook group, right?

So that’s one way. I have a website, Plan4Inclusion.com. That’s where I run my special education service. So that’s another way. I’m on LinkedIn. There’s multiple ways to get a hold of me.

Tim Villegas: Awesome. Awesome. Well, really appreciate your time, and great conversation. So are you ready for something a little different?

Karen Ford Cull: Yeah. Yeah. So I’ve got my dice, my die. Do I need one or two? Just one?

Tim Villegas: Just one is fine. Okay. And then do you have a deck of cards?

Karen Ford Cull: I do. I do. I have a deck of cards.

Tim Villegas: All right. So get the deck of cards out and shuffle them up so that they’re ready to go.

And then, while you do that, I’ll explain what the game is, because it’s new. This season we’re starting a game at the end of our episodes called Awake Among the Stars. I have forgotten to say this a few different times previously, but it’s adapted from a solo role-playing game called Alone Among the Stars.

I’ll put that into the show notes when we actually publish it. It’ll take about 10 minutes, and I’m gonna narrate and kinda walk you through the experience. And so I won’t say too much more than that because I want it to be kind of a surprise. So what we’ll do first is, just close your eyes, and I’ll count down and you can open them and then we’ll start the experience.

So here we go. So three, two, one. Open your eyes. You wake up gasping and cold, floating in a dim metal room. Your head is pounding and your memory is syrup. You’ve got classic hibernation sickness. A soft chime rings off in the distance. In a calm voice, your spaceship’s computer, Cora, says, “Good morning. You have been asleep for a very long time.

We are in orbit above an uncharted planet. Also, minor note, our teleporter is running on reserve power, so please explore responsibly.” Through a porthole on the side of the ship, you see a planet you’ve never seen before, and it’s slowly turning around beneath you. So first things first, let’s find out who you are.

Take your die and roll it and tell me the number.

Karen Ford Cull: Three.

Tim Villegas: Three. Your character’s name is Bolt. You are a painfully literal maintenance robot.

And all you want to do is understand why humans laugh. So you’re a robot apparently. Okay. So in your best robot voice, I want you to say good morning to Cora. She’s a computer.

Karen Ford Cull: Okay. Good morning, Cora.

Tim Villegas: There you go. Perfect. Perfect. Good morning, Bolt. We have to find out where you are going to explore, so take your die and roll it one more time.

Karen Ford Cull: Two.

Tim Villegas: Two. Okay. Bolt, you are going to the Ash World, which is a planet that has ash that’s fallen across the whole planet like snow.

And it’s also a planet that has a really heavy gravity. So I’m not sure how that’s gonna work if you’re a big metal robot. There’s heavy gravity, so it’s kind of like slow to walk around. The ground is warm. And one thing about this planet is if you stand in one place for too long, your boots or your, you know, your robot feet will start to sink.

So you kind of have to keep moving, otherwise you will sink into the planet. Okay. So are you ready to go to the Ash World? Thumbs up?

Karen Ford Cull: Yeah.

Tim Villegas: All right, here we go. All right. So the light swallows you, and now you are standing on the surface of the Ash World. With you is a backpack, and in the backpack there is a number of items, right?

But the one important item is a scanner. And so you take the scanner out, and there’s a little screen on the top of the scanner, and you are moving the scanner around to kind of see what is around you. You may have other things in your backpack. We just don’t know yet. And now we have to decide what you are going to do.

So just take three cards from the top of your deck and put them face down in front of you.

Okay, Bolt. You have three choices. You can explore, you can wait where you are, or you can teleport back to the ship. What would you like to do?

Karen Ford Cull: I think I’ll explore.

Tim Villegas: Okay, explore. Okay, so pull one of the cards and give me the…

Karen Ford Cull: 10. 10 of diamonds.

Tim Villegas: 10 of diamonds. Okay, 10 of diamonds.

Okay, so like I said, Bolt, you are wandering around on the Ash World, and you have to kind of keep wandering because the longer you stay in one place, you’re going to sink. So as you’re moving forward, you see a cliff. And the cliff is pretty steep, and on the cliff face, as you are looking over the cliff, you see winged creatures in front of you, and they are circling in front of you, and they’re making a loud shriek.

And so on the ledge right next to you is a really small chick that’s stranded right on the ledge in front of you. The chick is looking up at the birds, and you’re looking down at the chick, and what do you do?

Karen Ford Cull: Well, I think I might pick it up and hold it up to the birds so they can come and get it, but I’d be a little bit worried that the birds are gonna be scared of the robot.

Tim Villegas: Okay. So what do you decide to do? Are you gonna leave the bird alone, or are you gonna pick up the bird?

Karen Ford Cull: I think I’m gonna pick it up.

Tim Villegas: Okay. So you pick up the bird, and the bird lets you pick it up. In fact, the bird is actually very friendly and wants to get on your shoulder. So the bird ends up on your shoulder, and you look at the winged birds in front of you. Again, you’re there, it’s this big ditch, and the birds are flying around in front of you, but they don’t notice you.

So what do you do? I mean, I don’t wanna tell you what to do. You could look in your backpack to see if there’s anything in there.

Karen Ford Cull: Yeah, let’s look in the backpack and see if there’s anything in there.

Tim Villegas: Okay, so you open up your backpack, and you notice a few different items.

So you notice a flare gun. You notice a big wand of some sort. You don’t know what it is, it’s just a wand. It looks kinda like a magic wand, but you’re not exactly sure. And then you see your scanner. So which one are you gonna pull out?

Karen Ford Cull: Well, I think the flare gun is gonna scare the birds, right? So I’ll take the wand. Find out what it is.

Tim Villegas: Okay, perfect. All right. So you pull out the wand and the little chick is still on your shoulder, and you pull out the wand and you, what do you do with it?

Karen Ford Cull: Wave it around.

Tim Villegas: You wave it around? Wave it around? Yeah. And what happens when you’re waving the wand around and something is coming out of the wand, but you’re not sure what it is. What is coming out of the wand?

Karen Ford Cull: Oh, maybe pretty colors, like, you know.

Tim Villegas: Like colors or glitter or something?

Karen Ford Cull: Rainbow colors.

Tim Villegas: Rainbow colors. Okay. Exactly like that. Okay. So you’re waving this wand around, and the bird is really excited, and the bird really likes the colors, and starts hopping up and down on your shoulder and starts making these loud noises. And all of a sudden the winged creatures in front of you, there’s two of them, they all of a sudden notice you.

So what happens?

Karen Ford Cull: Well, are the winged creatures like the bird’s parents, and they’re gonna come and get their bird back?

Tim Villegas: They could, yeah.

Karen Ford Cull: Or they could, like, attack the robot. Could go either way really, couldn’t it?

Tim Villegas: Okay. Well, in this scenario there’s no attacking of the robots. The birds are entranced by your magic wand and the colors, and they swirl around you, one in front of another, and they land right next to you on the ledge.

And if you take out your scanner… They’re trying to talk to you in bird language, but the scanner actually interprets the language for you. So you look at the scanner and you hear them say, “Oh my gosh, thank you so much for rescuing our baby bird. We had no idea where the baby bird was. Thank you for alerting us.” So what do you say back to them?

Karen Ford Cull: I say, “Well, you’re very welcome. Glad I could help.” I don’t say, “Look after your chick better.”

Tim Villegas: Like, why was the baby chick on the ledge in the first place, right?

Karen Ford Cull: Exactly. But some things you don’t have to say. You can just understand it yourself.

Tim Villegas: No, that’s true.

All right, Bolt. So the parents pick up the chick, put it on the back of the bird, and then they fly away.

And in your earpiece you hear Cora say, “Bolt, you only have one minute left on this planet. You have one opportunity to do something else. Flip over a card and let me know what’s gonna happen.”

Karen Ford Cull: Okay. Nine of diamonds.

Tim Villegas: Nine of diamonds. Okay.

Karen Ford Cull: Not very well shuffled.

Tim Villegas: Oh, that’s okay. All right. So you pick up your scanner, put the magic wand back in the backpack, and you put everything on, and you’re making your way away from the ledge. And off in the distance you hear a kind of rumble. Okay? So again, it’s ash everywhere you can look. You’re walking away from a cliff. You’re not really knowing where you’re going, and all of a sudden in the distance you see the ground kind of cave in.

And so there’s another one of these ditches forming right in front of you. And all of a sudden you just, you hear all of these grumblings and these, you know, loud noises. And you peer over the cliff, and what do you see?

Karen Ford Cull: Oh. Maybe there’s more creatures there that have just been stuck in the ash and need to escape from the ash.

Tim Villegas: Yeah, so what is happening is the creatures are coming out of the ash to be able to go on top and, you know, free themselves from being stuck. And so you are there to kind of see this amazing thing happen. And so you hear Cora in your earpiece say, “Bolt, it’s time to go.

I’m beaming you back to the ship. Here we go, three, two, one.” And now you are back on the ship. The light swallows you. You are back. You are a little bit dusty ’cause of all the ash that’s around. But you’re in one piece, and you got to see some really cool stuff. So Cora reminds you that the star charts still say it’s just the Ash World, so you, as the first explorer of the Ash World, get to name the planet.

So what is the name of the planet?

Karen Ford Cull: I think it was called Ash World, right?

Tim Villegas: It was called Ash World, yeah.

Karen Ford Cull: I’m thinking of a nice word for a baby bird to kind of…

Tim Villegas: Examples of what people have said, because again, we’ve only done this a few times: sometimes people name it the name of a pet or just anything that comes to their mind. There’s no right answer.

Karen Ford Cull: I just keep thinking of Ash and Pokémon, so can I call it Ketchum Planet?

Tim Villegas: Oh, I like that. I like that. Okay, so the planet is called Ketchum. It’s beautiful. It’s beautiful. And so as you’re writing in your ship’s log, you’re typing just one thing that you’ll remember about this place, about Ketchum.

Karen Ford Cull: It’s got friendly wildlife that, you know, can speak if you have the translator with you.

Tim Villegas: Beautiful. Beautiful. All right. The designation has been changed to Ketchum, and your journal is complete. And now, Bolt, it’s time for you to go back to sleep as we set course for the next unfamiliar star.

Thank you for playing. All right. That’s great fun. That is fun. That is fun, and it’s different. It’s different every single time.

Karen Ford Cull, thank you so much for being with us on the Think Inclusive podcast.

Karen Ford Cull: Thank you very much. It’s been fun and nice to talk to you, and I look forward to seeing you again at some of these conferences we like to hang out at.

Tim Villegas: I know, right.

That was Karen Ford Cull. Here is what I’m taking with me. Karen said the parent is the memory of the IEP team. Teachers, therapists, and case managers come and go. The parent is the one who is there the whole time and the one who lives with the outcomes. And then there’s what she said about program labels.

If a district has an autism program, kids with autism get sent there because it has their diagnosis on the door. Her advice, take the label off, and if you don’t like that, call it the segregated program and see who still chooses it. One practical step for educators, especially case managers, before your next annual IEP, call the family.

Ask them what they want for their kid as an adult and what they want their kid working on this year. Send a draft of the goals ahead of time and tell them everything can still change in the meeting. Then book enough time, Karen says two hours, and two meetings if a student has a lot of services. We will link Plan4Inclusion and Karen’s Facebook group, Parents for Inclusive Education California, in the show notes.

Share this episode with a colleague who’s building inclusive schools. Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and follow Think Inclusive wherever you get your podcasts. If you have something to share, please email me at tvillegas@mcie.org. Now let’s roll the credits. Think Inclusive is brought to you by me, Tim Villegas. This show is a proud production of the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education. Writing help from Claude, editing by Rey, scheduling and extra production help from Jill Wagoner. Our original music is by Miles Kredich with extra vibes from Melod.ie.

Awake Among the Stars is adapted from Alone Among the Stars by Takuma Okada. You can find the original role-playing game at the link in our show notes. Big thanks to our sponsors, IXL and Inclusive Schooling. Visit ixl.com/inclusive and inclusiveschooling.com/mcie-behavior. If you’ve made it this far, you’re officially part of the Think Inclusive inclusion crew.

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

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