Charmaine Thaner
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Hi, friends. This is Think Inclusive. I'm Tim Villegas. My guest on today's podcast is Charmaine Thaner, a trusted advocate for families navigating the IEP process. As a mom to a son with Down syndrome and a teacher with 30 years of experience, she understands both the challenges parents face and how to create real change.

Tim Villegas: Charmaine breaks things down into simple actionable steps, helping parents feel confident and capable. Passionate about inclusion. She works to create schools where every child belongs. Her relatable approach inspires parents to advocate for the education their children deserve. Now, you may be asking yourself, why does Tim sound so weird?

That is because what you are hearing is an AI generated clone of my voice. No, I didn't get sucked into my computer. But I wanted to switch things up a bit, given our topic today is ai. In this episode of the Think Inclusive Podcast, I speak with Charmaine Thaner, a passionate advocate for inclusive education about how AI tools can empower parents and educators.

Charmaine shares how she uses tools like Chat GPT to write emails, summarize meetings, and prepare for school board presentations, making advocacy clearer and less stressful. We explore the power of custom GPTs AI tailored to reflect personal values and goals, and how Charmaine integrates negotiation techniques from Chris Voss to foster more productive conversations with educators.

She also highlights AI's role in legislative advocacy, helping parents craft personalized messages to lawmakers. Throughout. Charmaine emphasizes that while AI is a powerful support tool, authentic human connection remains at the heart of advocacy. If you're curious about using AI in your advocacy journey, Charmaine invites you to join her Connecting for Change Group for coaching and access to custom tools.

Before we get into my conversation with Charmaine, 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 I xl.com/inclusive. That's ixl.com/inclusive.

Alright, after a short break, we'll get into my conversation with Charmaine Thaner, catch you on the other side.

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Tim Villegas: And I need to get my questions back up.

How you doing? 

Charmaine Thaner: Well, you know, given all the national stress, it's like, oh my God. 

Tim Villegas: It's been stressful, man. It's been really stressful. 

Charmaine Thaner: Yes. And I can imagine as a director of communications in this time, it's like, oh my, 

Tim Villegas: uh, yeah. You know? That's interesting. That's interesting because, um, I think I've never been, like, personally, I've never been so vocal in my.

You know, in my beliefs. Um, and, and so that's like just a personal choice. And also as an organization, we've really just had to figure out, like we still are a nonpartisan org organization, but it feels like just telling the truth, right? Mm-hmm. Um, actively goes against this administration, so it's like we're not even spinning anything.

Right. Exactly. You know, you know, so yeah, we've, we've really just, um, we've made a choice to offer the best information we can about what's going on and, and then, uh, yeah, I, I've definitely made a, I've definitely made a choice to be more vocal about things, so. Yeah. Anyways, um, let me just, let me get us started.

So, uh, Charma, Charmaine Thaner. Welcome to the Think Inclusive Podcast. I think I'm gonna leave all that stuff in at the beginning 'cause why not? 

Charmaine Thaner: Yeah, it's true, right? It's true 

Tim Villegas: life. It's true life. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, um, you're like, I. We've been wanting, I've been wanting to have you on to talk about artificial intelligence and the connection, um, with inclusive, um, education advocacy for a while.

Um, so I wonder if we just start with like, I don't even, I didn't even really realize that was a thing. I think you made it a thing.

So let's start there. Like, um, how did this even start to happen for you? 

Charmaine Thaner: Well, yeah, it's interesting because usually when I learn something new, even if it's not connected to advocacy or inclusive ed or whatever, I always have this like thought in my head it's like, how could I use this in my advocacy?

You know? Yeah. So I started using AI before chat, GPT when it was Jasper and. Jarvis and all these other names. Um, and you know, I wasn't, it was just kind of at the beginning of like regular consumers using ai. So it was still kind of like, I don't know, what do I really do with this? Um, but then when Chat GPT came out, it was like.

Wow. I saw the potential. It was like, this is amazing. So I started just playing with it and learning about how to season your chat or your AI tool. You know, I learned more about like prompt engineering and how important it is that the AI tool have that context or you get this generic response, which is not what you want as a advocate, right?

Or as a parent. Um. And so it was just, you know, so as I started learning those things, um, and I think about the questions I get a lot from parents, especially kind of late at night questions or te text messages about like, I have. To respond to this email. It's like, I've been, I can't sleep because I can't figure out what to do.

Um, and so to me, email was kind of an easy entry point for a lot of parents to understand how AI could help them without being afraid of like, what is this? Is it taking over our world? I, you know, it's like, but. So that's what I did is I started with email. Mm-hmm. And I. I have this, um, you know, like this old digital handout for parents about emails, and I thought I could take that handout in that process and insert it as instructions to Chachi pt.

And come up with better emails. So that's what I did. I, it's based on, um, Dr. Marshall Rosenberg's Nonviolent Communication Framework. Um, so I took his basic four steps and I added, start with a positive and with a positive, and then I had these other steps in there and, um, chat like when you had a good prompt like that, it was amazing.

But the thing that I keep telling people is it's gotta start with us as humans, right? Mm-hmm. I had to get a, get an email from somebody and I know I have to respond. I wanna respond first, and it might be a late night. Just mad typing and, and knowing not to send it yet, right? And then to take that raw feeling and, you know, whatever from your email, and plug it into chat and, and give it the right prompt and everything for it to rewrite it as more conversational.

Or maybe you wanna rewrite it as more assertive. Um. So I started playing with that and it's like, this is like perfect for parents, you know? So that was kind of the beginning of it. 

Tim Villegas: Uh, that is, that is so relatable. And, uh, I, uh, as a, you know, you talk about com, you know, as a, as a communications director, uh, I use AI all the time.

All the time. Uh, I don't always necessarily have it write emails for me, but I do like check grammar, check tone. Yes. Um, and, uh, I wanna, I wanna get into. A little bit of the nuts and bolts of, of what you're saying, but um. I'll just give you a quick example, and maybe this might resonate with, with, uh, how, how you're helping people utilize ai.

Um, I, I use AI quite extensively in, uh, our podcast production, and so I. What I have it do, and, and this is like in the last three to four months I've been doing this, is I will help it clean up podcast transcripts. Um, so I have the raw transcript. I. And I will feed the raw transcript into the, into the ai.

Uh, we use copilot 'cause that we're a Microsoft, uh, um, organization. And it will clean up the transcript and take out the ums and all that stuff and kind of even, even like change, uh, you know, check spelling and just make it more readable. 'cause that's the, the, the point of the transcript is to make it readable and, um, and then.

I'm able to scan the transcript to make sure that it, it reads correctly and it has the right information. Um, but then after all of that happens and we're talking, you know, uh, it's like, I don't know, 50, 80, 70,000 characters right into, into ai. And then I will ask questions about. Um, the episode and it will give me information because it has all of that context, and it's so helpful.

It's so helpful to me because it's like, I mean, I'm the one who did the, uh, interview and so I have a memory of what it is, but if I wanna ask a specific question, it's all right that the information is all right there. So. I would imagine that 

Charmaine Thaner: magical. Yeah, 

Tim Villegas: exactly. It's like 

Charmaine Thaner: amazing. And it does it in a few minutes, 

Tim Villegas: right?

Right. Yeah, exactly. I 

Charmaine Thaner: mean like how much manual time would that have taken you? To do that. Oh my, to go back actually so much scrub through a podcast and delete words and such, so, right. Yeah. And I use a similar format for when I do my Facebook Lives and I use Descript, which is a video editor. Right. And it does a same thing, you know, you can remove all the ums and, you know, long pauses or whatever.

And Yeah. It's, and, and what I look at too now. Um, is, it's not just. Individual advocacy that we can use AI for, we can use it to help us when we go to a school board meeting and we have to figure out how to say something in two or three minutes, right? 

Tim Villegas: Right. Yes. So 

Charmaine Thaner: again, you could type out everything. You just wanna make sure the school board knows.

And then it's like, Charmaine, that's six minutes long. So it's like, so you put in and you know, you. You say, this has to be a two minute long speech. You know, cut it down for me, but keep those points. You know, and so things like that, you know, it always starts with that human interaction. And then I. After you get that response from the AI tool is to do what you were saying, you gotta go back and kinda edit and tweak it.

You know, and I tell parents, you have to like course correct with an AI tool, right? It's like, oh, you're on track. But no, really, I, I really want it to be more of a pointed question that I can ask tomorrow or whatever. Right. You know? So you can tweak that, which again, makes it more individualized, more meaningful for your situation, you know?

Tim Villegas: Yeah. Um, could you walk us through like, um, if, if a, if a parent is listening to this, uh, or you know, or an educator who wants to maybe bring some points to an IEP or you know, how, uh, what's kind of the entry point for, for people, uh, to use AI in advocacy? 

Charmaine Thaner: So I would, I would suggest using the free version of chat, GPT, um, because it has amazing capabilities.

I use just the one level up, which is $20 a month, which is like pretty amazing to hire a virtual assistant for, 

Tim Villegas: right.

Charmaine Thaner: But, um, so, and I say chat just because that's one I've used the most, but Claude is equally as good. Some people think Claude writes better than chat. Um, I've had parents use Poe and be really impressed with that, and that almost has like a UDL kind of framework, which I really love too. Hmm. So there's some nuances to the tools that you use and for the situation.

So I think for most parents situations, chat, GPT works fine. The other thing that I like about their free version of chat, GPT, is you can use. Custom GPTs to even up level the, the work that you do with the, with chat gt. So I've developed, I don't know, a handful and more custom GPTs for parents in our, um, parent community connecting for Change, and those custom GPTs take it.

Because you don't have to worry that much about the prompt engineering because how I make my custom GPTs, there's usually some entry quest introductory kind of questions that the GPT will ask the parent first. So for instance, with the email custom GPT that I have. You know, it will say, let's get started.

You know, and you can say, yes, you know, I need help with this email or whatever. And then the GP T's been trained to say, well, tell me more about the situation. I. You know what occurred, you know, what have you tried? Tell me who you're writing the email to. Do you want it to be a formal tone? A conversational tone.

So anyway, this GPT kind of frames up and, and gives you those prompts so it has that context without you having to. Say, like, I wonder exactly how much do I have to tell Chad in order to get a good answer, you know? Um, and so with a free version, you can use these custom GPTs and I, you know, I would Now, when I work with parents in our group, it's like, I, I don't do all of those long prompts anymore.

It's, it's not necessary. Um. So, yeah, I don't know if that answered your question. 

Tim Villegas: Well, um, I, I've never used a, a custom, uh, GPT, so, and, and I, I'm, I wasn't aware that that was something you could even do with the, with the free version. So what I'm hearing you say is that you can create something that is, uh, very targeted to your particular situation, and then the more information that you give.

The, the, the custom, I don't know the, the custom GPT, um, it, like, it holds all that information so you can continually ask questions within this little, this little framework. Right. Right. And it, it will, you know, help you in your particular situation is that. Um, is that right? Yeah. 

Charmaine Thaner: Yeah. And there's a whole nother part of, you know, what stays in memory and all that.

But, you know, for parents that are just beginning, you know, you don't have to like, worry about some of that technical stuff, you know? Mm-hmm. At an entry level. Um. And you. Um, the other thing I, I was thinking about when you were talking about getting your transcript from your podcasts and looking at it and, you know, I just, the, the newest GPT that I just custom GPT that I just made, I always have to remember what I named these things.

It's kind of like. Naming your children. I 

Tim Villegas: know, right? 

Charmaine Thaner: It's like, I think I, you know, I named it like, what's next or something. Totally. What in the world are you talking about, Charmaine? However, what it is is using ai, I use Otter AI to record meetings. Um. And Otter still has a way to go, like everyone, you know, like it will say weird words sometime, or Misconnect names or whatever.

However, what I like is you get the audio file, you get a written time. Stamp transition or transcription. And the timestamp. Transcription is the key that you wanna find. You know? So if you use another tool, just make sure it's timestamped and then Otter gives a summary. It's been doing that for a while, but I am not in impressed with the summaries.

I find like. There's like really big things that went on in the meeting and it's like Otter totally missed it. So what I started doing was taking the transcript and putting it into chat. And um, when I first start making a custom GPT, I have to go through the long prompt because then that's gonna be part of my instructions.

I give the. The tool on the backend. Um, so I started with this prompt and I, you know, I, I put in the written transcripts. I didn't have timestamps. I just put in the transcript and, you know, I kind of started easy saying, you know, like you're an experienced special education advocate. You're used to reading transcripts and summarizing them.

So I'm giving it like a role to play. And then I'm saying, you know, like, I want you to summarize this. Transcript, the important points that were made, the decisions that were made. Um, and so it, it did its thing, you know, within a couple minutes, right? It had produced this document with a pretty good summary, except again, there were like certain points that were missing, and it's like, no, this.

To be detailed. Yeah, and you do, I mean, that's that course correction where you say, this isn't good enough. And so when I get. Frustrated with chat. I will say chat. I won't say chat, but I'll say, what, what? How can I make my instructions more clear? I need this to be really a detailed, you know, reporter, whatever, and chat will back and tell you, you have to ask it this way.

And so what Chad told me is. Don't use the word summary. Don't say, I want a summary of this because, and this is in chat's voice, because then I just compress, you know, the dialogue instead. Chat said, use the word analyze. 

Tim Villegas: Oh, okay. I 

Charmaine Thaner: changed that one word. And I got the best detailed analysis of that meeting and what went on, what the dec and then I have it, have it ca So then it was like, okay, so now I'm gonna modify this.

So let's, I need this to be categorized and these categories, um. So it did that. And then chat will say things at the end like you didn't even think of, and it will be like, oh, do you want me to make this into a checklist for you so you know what has to be done at the next meeting? I'm like, really?

I love a checklist. My 

Tim Villegas: gosh. I know. Wow. That's amazing. It's 

Charmaine Thaner: amazing. 

Tim Villegas: That is great. That is great. Um. Yeah, I just, uh, I'm just imagining like, what a powerful tool this could be. I'm, Ima I'm just imagining if, um, you had a custom GPT, uh, that you used throughout your, you know, your, um, your child's journey right through.

Through their educational, uh, career and system, and the every IEP transcript is in this. And you could, you could just constantly ask like, I remember us talking about this, you know, around this date. Uh, and then it would pull that up for you, right? Wow. 

Charmaine Thaner: Yeah. And in chat and I'm sure other AI tools too, you can do like a word search 'cause you, you know, you wind up with a lot of conversations saved and flat and it's like, where was that one?

So you could type some keywords and chat will pull up all the conversations that dealt with that word. Or there's a project thing, which is kind of like a folder where you can keep, so you can make a project folder for your child and keep all those conversations in that one place, you know? 

Tim Villegas: Yeah, yeah.

Wow. Um, what are some of the, um, what's some of the feedback you've gotten from parents using this tool? Uh, like are there any kind of success stories that you, that you've, uh. You know that they, they've shared with you. 

Charmaine Thaner: Yeah, and I, I go back to the beginning with the email one, um, and there's this one parent in our Connecting for Change group, and she just, like, that was the best thing for her since sliced bread.

I have to think of a modern day, uh, metaphor or whatever. 

Tim Villegas: Spreads pretty good though. 

Charmaine Thaner: No bread usually doesn't come sliced. Oh, well. Um, but it's like amazing because. You know, I would help her craft, um, emails kind of as a ghost writer, right? Mm-hmm. Because she just felt so insecure about being able to say what she wanted to say.

Um, and then it was like, okay, and this was before we were using chat, but, and then it was like, okay, so now you try to write this and I'll look at it after you write it. So like the. Kind of scaffolding, right, of helping somebody. And then when we started using the custom GPT tool. I mean, she just like blossomed.

It was like so fun to see and the impact that it had on the staff for her being really clear about what was going well and what she wanted to make sure continued for her child. Right. What her specific concerns were. An example of what she was talking about. The other thing that I love about chat is it can come up with such good questions, um, in a way that's not gonna make teachers and administrators feel so defensive.

Um, and so that's part of that backend and instructions that I give my gpt. Um, can I tell you who one of my best resources is for my gpt? Yeah, it's somebody that's not in the advocacy field really. 

Tim Villegas: Okay. Okay. 

Charmaine Thaner: Um, he's written a book. He's written probably more than one, has a podcast he's well known. Um, the book is called Never Split the Difference, and the auth author is somebody who was a ex FBI negotiator.

Chris VAs is his name, so 

Tim Villegas: Wow. Okay. 

Charmaine Thaner: Chris Va. When I found him, it's like another world. It's like, how can I use this when I do my advocacy? So he has this whole thing of, um, tactical empathy. He has questions. He talks about wanting to get to the no instead of the yes. So like I, when you make your custom GPT, you can give it knowledge files.

So I give it what I've learned about Chris VA's techniques and then the GPT, there's a flavor of Chris VAs in there. Um, and if it doesn't come out as strong as I want, I'll say rewrite this in a stronger voice using Chris. Voice. So that's a tip you can use today. 

Tim Villegas: That's amazing. And I've never heard of Chris Vasa that, that's 

Charmaine Thaner: Oh, you'll have to, he is so good.

Um, I'll give you the, one of the best questions I learned from him that's, that I, that's been worth over $500 for me. So one of the questions that he asked that I just think is brilliant is. Now I'm thinking of how to phrase it to make sure I say 

Tim Villegas: it 

Charmaine Thaner: right. But this is a part you cut out of the podcast.

Um, but would it be a ridiculous idea for us to look at how UDL would really make a difference in the classroom? And when you, 

Tim Villegas: interesting, 

Charmaine Thaner: when you phrase it as, would it be a ridiculous idea? Most people will say no. It wouldn't be, you know, I mean, they'll just maybe say no and then Chris VAs goes into this whole thing, why you want people to say no versus traditional kind of marketing.

It's getting to the yes. You know? So anyway, it's just intriguing. That's another rabbit hole we could go down, but. Anyway, so how it saved me $500, I forgot to like unsubscribe from something that was costing me $500 a month, and it was like the day of a deadline. So I wrote the person, I knew the person, I wrote them and I said, would it be a ridiculous idea for me to get a refund for this month because I really meant to cancel?

And she was like, no, that's not a ridiculous idea. I'm gonna do it right now. 

Tim Villegas: Wow. So Chris Moss became my hero. Chris Moss was your hero. Absolutely. 

Charmaine Thaner: I've, I've had other parents use that question for, I've had another parent use it for a refund. I have people use it in IEP meetings. 

Tim Villegas: That is so fascinating.

What is, um, can you just like, um, give us a little bit of like why that phrasing works so well? 

Charmaine Thaner: Well, like I said, it's, it's, it's not confrontational uhhuh, right? And, and of course it's gonna depend on your tone, right? You're not gonna be sarcastic with your tone. So the tone is always the body language.

You gotta check those kinds of things. But yeah, it's, I think it just, and I'm not gonna do his work justice, but I, to me it's like. It almost catches people off guard. Like, oh, hmm. You know, it's like I never, it's kind of a pattern interrupt. Maybe that would be a way to say it too. 

Tim Villegas: Yeah. Um, 

Charmaine Thaner: and it just kind of takes the conversation to another turn, you know, and it it, to me, an IEP meetings and such, it opens up that world of possibilities of.

This is our goal. This is, you know, not IEP goal, but this is where we wanna be, what we wanna see happen now, what are all the ways that that can come true? You know, besides the one solution I'm thinking of. 

Tim Villegas: Right. So 

Charmaine Thaner: it's just, I love it. 

Tim Villegas: That's great. Yeah. Um, I'm definitely gonna look more into that and check out his podcast and we'll put it in the show notes.

Um, that's, that's. Wonderful. Um, I, I've been wanting to ask you this question about, uh, specifically about inclusive, uh, education, uh, advocacy. And I'm wondering is, is this something that you do as well, like put in, in information about inclusive ed and maybe even like, this might be a separate aspect of it, but, uh, like IDA law.

Into the custom GPT as you're like crafting your arguments? 

Charmaine Thaner: Um, I haven't used the law that much. I'm starting to do some more. I. Um, technical kinds of things of, you know, could there be a custom GPT that could help parents? Right. State complaints. 

Tim Villegas: Mm. 

Charmaine Thaner: Okay. So I've started, when I was at the COPA conference, an attorney and I at night we're like, let's make a custom GPT for this.

So I started, I haven't finished it, but, um, but yeah, for sure I put in, like I said, there's, for custom gpt you can insert up to 20 knowledge files. So I, in, I have a knowledge file that I put it in every one of my gpt about my values, my, my definition of inclusive ed, my definition of UDL, you know, um. You know, things like that because Chad goes out to the internet, 

Tim Villegas: right, to 

Charmaine Thaner: look for answers, and I don't want it finding somebody else's definition of inclusive ed and.

Corrupting, you know what I want it to be responsible to, 

Tim Villegas: right? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I'd imagine, uh, yeah, it could get a little problematic if you have different definitions. Um, um, but yeah, so that's what I, I, that's what I was wondering is if, um, you have your own, um, knowledge files, uh. Ones that you've created, or you, I guess technically you could use, you know, uh, outside resources and create a, a specific one that was like, that looked at something in a, in a particular lens.

Um, right. But, um, I was wondering about like, so. Ha have you explored or talked to anyone about using this even for, um, like strategies for inclusion? So I'm just thinking of how this could, how this could inform our work, um, when partnering with the school district and. Like, let's say we have particular strategies, uh, you know, about co-teaching, about adapting lessons, um, what is inclusion, that type of stuff.

So if you had all of this information into a custom GPT, then a partner or a potential school district could ask those questions and get Yeah. Yeah. That 

Charmaine Thaner: would be cool for you guys to do. 

Tim Villegas: Yeah. 

Charmaine Thaner: Um, because yeah, it just, and then. You know, the other thing is, I don't know when this will air and what new adventures are out there like already.

I'm, I'm taking, um, two classes that teach you how to make AI agents, which is Yes, yes. A step, a step above a custom GPT. So, you know, I wanna keep it a little more simple for, you know, parents that are just. Entering this AI world. But yeah, I mean, you know, really there's, there's even more fascinating things that your organization could be doing, you know?

Yeah. I mean, it, it could start with a custom GPT. Yeah. You know, but yeah. I mean, and that's the other thing. I have one called, um. The belief shifter and the purpose of that GPT is to look at outdated limiting beliefs. How do we persuade people to try to see that there's another, you know, way of doing things or another perspective to take?

And that one is more, um, it takes longer to work through. Like an email. One is real easy, right? You give it a email, you ask it to write it better, and you get a better email. Well, when you're talking about, you know. Doing what you're saying is like strategies, well, not necessarily strategies, but the belief shape shifter.

But that mindset, right. I mean, that's a huge part of trying to get people to be open to doing something differently, you know? So that's what that custom GPT does. Um, and it's, it's, um. It's a process that, um, I use neurolinguistic programming, which is another framework of helping people see things from another perspective.

So that is like one of the knowledge files that I put in that GPT. But yeah, I mean, you could look at. The other thing that I like, what Chat does is it can format things in a lot of different ways. And I like tables. I just like how clean they are. Mm-hmm. You know, so instead of a narrative of something that, you know, you could have a narrative of strategies and definitions and examples for school district, but then you could also say, now turn this information into a table that's, you know, even like.

Easier for somebody to look and grasp and chat will turn it into a table that you can either copy and paste into a spreadsheet or have it make it into a PDF or so, you know, for your director communications, I. 

Tim Villegas: The sky's the limit. Yeah. Yeah. 

Charmaine Thaner: I mean, you know, you could use that transcript and say, make three social media posts, make two carousel posts.

Make, you know. 

Tim Villegas: Yeah. 

Charmaine Thaner: And it will do it for you. 

Tim Villegas: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, there's a, there's, uh, you're giving me a lot to think about Charmaine, so I, I'm so, so thankful to have this conversation with you. Um, uh, just hold on one second. 'cause my. My son just texted me. Okay. 

Charmaine Thaner: Alright. You know the last time I ha was on your podcast.

Do you remember that? 

Tim Villegas: I do remember that with the, didn't I? Was I, did I get a text? Did I get a text? Yeah. It's 

Charmaine Thaner: from your daughter. Oh, and it was, there was a lockdown at her school. 

Tim Villegas: Oh my gosh. You're right. I do remember that. I can't 

Charmaine Thaner: remember what we were talking about on the podcast, but I remember that was scary.

Tim Villegas: It was scary. Uh, yeah, for fortunately, well, my, my student, my students, my kids are, uh, on spring break this week, so, oh. So he was just letting me know he's, he's headed out the door, but, uh, so nothing like that. Um. But, uh, oh man, I, I think I lost my train of thought. Um, we were talking about, oh, I know what it was.

Um, so there's this podcast series I just finished called Shell Game, and it's a journalist and I can't remember his name right now. Uh, but we'll, I'll. I'll put it in the show notes 'cause we talked about it. Um, and what he did, he, what he did was he created a voice, ai voice agents of himself. So he, he basically fed uh, audio, he used the knowledge files, right?

He used all of these knowledge files about himself into this AI agent. And he created a, um, a voice chat. Bot 

Charmaine Thaner: have fun 

Tim Villegas: and he hooked it up. I don't know how, but he hooked it up to his phone. So if anyone gave him a call, like a telemarketer would call, then he would have this conversation. Well, the chat bot would have this conversation with the marketer and it like, and so it got really deep into like more existential.

Types of things like cloning yourself and, and all this stuff. But it was so interesting that, you know, I mean this was made like about a, maybe a year ago or like six months ago, just how far we've come with, um, what you can do with this kind of technology and just think like one or two or five years from now where we will be.

It's uh, it's unbelievable. 

Charmaine Thaner: One or two months from now. Right? 

Tim Villegas: I know. Yeah. True. I mean, true. Just 

Charmaine Thaner: yesterday, Chad announced they're increasing their memory, which is good because if you use it a lot, I mean, you know, I haven't run outta memory and I use it a lot, but you know, so every day there's almost new things.

And what you said about that. Voice agent reminded me of something that I just started using yesterday, and I've had it for a while, but you can get a chat GPT app on your phone, excuse me, and you can have a, you know, a verbal conversation with the chat app on your phone, and it will do the same thing as if you were on your computer.

I mean it. You know, after you have the conversation, you hit the arrow button, chat will come back and respond to your, you know, your thoughts or whatever you were sharing. And it also, that app is connected to your. Browser chat, GPT. So that conversation is always saved there. But what I love about it, and I think about parents late at night, you know, and it's like, oh, I should get up and do something 'cause I can't sleep, but I'm not gonna sit at my computer and type.

And it's like, you can, Jack can be your therapist and you can have this conversation. With Chad, have it. Then go back and it will say, you know what, you, you broke, you're brilliant. You came up with wonderful ideas. Would you like me to help you figure out how to make this for, you know, an actual strategy you could use tomorrow at the meeting?

And of course you say, yes, Chad. Yes. It comes up with a strategy that you can use tomorrow at your meeting. 

Tim Villegas: Wow. It's a, it's so, it's amazing. It's amazing, uh, just leveraging, leveraging all of these tools for advocacy. Um, um, I'm trying to figure out where to go here. I, I think, what, what am I, what am I not asking?

Like what, what's, what questions should I be asking about this? Because, 

Charmaine Thaner: you know, like I, 

Tim Villegas: yeah, you Go ahead. Go ahead. 

Charmaine Thaner: Well, I was gonna say, the other thing that comes to mind is, um, you know, now we're getting a lot of scripts that we can use to call our legislators to write an email to our legislators. And, and that's like wonderful, right?

That you, that we have that ability to have something right away, but instead, what you could easily do. This is the other cool thing about chat and other AI tools too, but you could take a screenshot on your phone. I don't know why these messages are up. You could take a screenshot of the script on your phone, like from five calls or something, and you could upload that screenshot to Chad and say, type the text in this image.

It will. And then you can say now, and then you can read it and kind of see like, you know, where you want changes. And you can say, you know, please insert this personal story in the second paragraph and you can, you know, either speak it or you know, type it. Because those kinds of messages to legislators are always more powerful, right?

When we have personal stories. So that's another way that it's not just. Individual advocacy or local at your school board? It could be conversations, emails to legislators at your state level, the national level. You know, if you work for a parent support group, you know you can take a news release and have chat, rewrite this as bullet points so parents can easily skim it and read it and your organization can put that in their next newsletter.

You know, so there's a lot of ways that you can use it besides your personal individual advocacy. 

Tim Villegas: Yeah, those are all, those are all fantastic ideas. Um, and I just wanna reiterate too, I think we talked a little bit, maybe we talked about it, the, just, just how much, um, of a, of a like mental load, this is like, it's just.

It's taken off of you when you're able to use this kind of tool. Um, I know how like you, you were just talking about. How, like if I would go, if I go through a transcript, right? A podcast episode transcript, uh, how taxing that is to go through line by line and like removing all this stuff, uh, or even like summarizing an episode, um, finding the key points.

I mean, it's not that I couldn't do it, but. You know, if I have this tool, it's allowing me to do other things, uh, in service of, of the resource, right? So, right. Um, just how much more of a stress relief this is for, for parents. 

Charmaine Thaner: Oh, I think so. It's a huge stress relief and it's a huge confidence booster, right?

It's like I got this together, you know? I mean, I'm gonna walk in that meeting and I feel confident. I've got my cheat sheet checklist right here. That C check wrote up last night. I got this, you know, so yeah, that confidence is, um, really expands when you use it too. Yeah. 

Tim Villegas: Yeah. Um, now you have a, uh, like a, a course or a, a class to, to, uh, help facilitate this kind of tool, uh, for parents.

So, um, uh. And where can people find that? And maybe if you want to talk a little bit about what that is. 

Charmaine Thaner: Sure. So it's, um, connecting For Change is a private monthly membership group for, for parents. And, um, in there you get. Individual and small group coaching from me all the time. We have at least one live a week.

Um, one of our lives every month is dedicated to ai. So, you know, using new tools or how can we expand on what we already have? Um. So in there, in the Connecting for Change group is where the custom gpt are. And you know, that was like an intentional decision to have those in that human group for parent support because I really want to emphasize, it's like I could give you these tools and you could go and use them and yes, but.

We need to come back as two parents talking to each other, um, we still need that interaction. So I consciously chose to keep the GPTs and the group. So if people, you know, are interested in that, hopefully they would also see the benefit to all the human coaching and interaction that we give too. You know.

Tim Villegas: Right, right. And, and then everyone can find that on your website. 

Charmaine Thaner: Well, you know, the best, um, thing to probably go to is iep.today/charmaine, and that gives like my email and my social media and all that. Um, so that would probably be the best contact, you know. 

Tim Villegas: Great. So we'll make sure to put that in the show notes so that people can find you and your resources.

And we, uh, this has been fantastic. I, I'm sure everyone's, everyone's brain is buzzing right now with new ideas on how to use ai. Um, any, uh, anything you wanna leave with, um, parents or educators, uh, as we, as we wrap up? 

Charmaine Thaner: Well, I look at, you know, my Facebook Lives, I, I talk about the art of advocacy. Um, and to me when I started getting into AI, I said, you know, there's also the art of AI advocacy, and at the center of that is the parent's heart.

So the AI needs to know what your most important values are. It needs to know your voice, your child's voice, and that's when we get to that heart of using AI advocacy. That's when we've really accomplished amazing things and you see the impact on your child's education. 

Tim Villegas: Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for spending some time with me.

Um, are you, are you up for a mystery question? 

Charmaine Thaner: Oh yes, yes. I wonder, is that my husband's mystery question is always, what are the winning lottery numbers? 

Tim Villegas: No, that's not my mystery question. So the mystery questions, uh, are written by my 12-year-old, uh, so she's given me a stack of cards. I'm gonna pick your card at random and we'll all answer the question.

Alright. So here we go. This is our question. If you had, if you had a TV show, what would it be called and why? Um, so my, there you go. I love 

Charmaine Thaner: it. What a good idea. I love it. I love it. Um, well, the easy answer would be it'd be called the Art of Advocacy, right? Yeah, exactly. From my Facebook Live to a TV network.

Um, but the other, the other thing that I am trying to do personally, um, is to be more real. And you know, I, I hear feedback from people like, oh, Charmaine, you know everything. You're so good. And, and I hear people say, oh no, you're kind of aloof. And, and it's like, I want to be more real with families and not feel like I have to have this mask of this professional.

Um. And so, yeah, I think a TV show for parents would be Be real. 

Tim Villegas: There you go. Be real. Yeah. Um, wow. Um, that's a good question. I mean, I guess, you know, I, I think, you know what I've thought of Charmaine is not necessarily a TV show, but I feel like. Um, in our field and our general field, you know, just about inclusive education, advocacy, we really need a network.

You know, like we need a network, um, like a, like a channel where people can go. Mm-hmm. And like have all of these different, you know, influencers talk about this kind of thing. And, you know. Um, anyone who's talking about this, it, it can all be in like one, one place. That would be my, that would be a dream of mine, I guess.

Um, we could have that network, so if any. If anyone's listening and has a lot of money. I know. 

Charmaine Thaner: No, we don't wanna necessarily just go to the highest bidder. 

Tim Villegas: Right. Exactly. We, you know, we've 

Charmaine Thaner: learned a lesson or two about that. 

Tim Villegas: That's right. We gotta match the values, right. Match the values and, uh, um, but, uh, yeah, so anyways, we should have an inclusive education network, inclusive ed network, or, I don't know what we'd call it necessarily, but, um, yeah, that would be.

Charmaine Thaner: Student voices, right? 

Tim Villegas: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. You 

Charmaine Thaner: know, like, I don't know, I think of a network, like, kinda like when you go on Netflix or something, but you know, like the home and garden channel and all the different, you know, so then we gotta make sure we got those student voices in there too, you know?

Tim Villegas: Exactly. Exactly. Well, hey, maybe one day, maybe one day that'll happen. You never know. I know. 

Charmaine Thaner: You and I and ai, we can do it. That's right. 

Tim Villegas: That I just gotta, we can write 

Charmaine Thaner: fundraising letters. That's right. 

Tim Villegas: Yeah. No, that's a whole other thing. That's a whole other thing. All right. Uh, Charmaine Thaner, thank you so much for being on the Think Inclusive Podcast.

Um, you're always welcome and it's always fun talking with you. 

Charmaine Thaner: Thank you, Tim. Thank you for the warm environment you always make for conversation, so thank you. 

Tim Villegas: I appreciate that. 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. I. Our original music is by Miles Kredich with additional tunes by Melod.ie. 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're using our episodes.

Are they part of your teaching toolkit? Are you sharing them with 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 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.

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