Inclusion Today Minisode Two MASTER.mp3
2025-07-10
Transcript
0:00:06 Aurora Dreger: So congratulations to [inaudible]
0:00:23 Tim Villegas: This is Think Inclusive. I’m Tim Villegas. What you just heard was a celebration of the winners of the participatory grant funding through Educating All Learners Alliance. Community of Action, an event that took place in December 2024 at EALA. Change doesn’t come from the top down. It starts with the people closest to the challenges. That’s the heart of their community of action. A space where organizations come together to co design solutions that directly support students with disabilities and learning differences.
0:00:57 Tim Villegas: Late in 2024, 22 mission aligned organizations gathered for a 36 hour sprint of innovation. The result, two powerful projects chosen through a community led grant making process. Each receiving $75,000 to bring their ideas to life. In this bonus episode, you’ll hear from participants behind the two winning initiatives, Youth Action Power and the Transformative Engagement alliance, as well as voices from other teams who brought their passion and creativity to the table.
0:01:34 Tim Villegas: These projects aren’t just inspiring, they’re proof of what’s possible when we trust educators, families and students to lead the way. So whether you’re an educator, advocate or change maker, this episode is for you. After a short break, you’ll hear from from a cross section of folks who helped bring the community vaccine to life. Stick around, we’ll be right back.
0:02:06 Theresa Kowcheck: Theresa Kowcheck. I am with Elevate Literacy. This, in fact, I was just talking about this. This couple days have been, has been remarkable. The people that I have networked with, the people that I have met has really inspired me and is moving me in ways that I did not imagine that it could. And I’m excited to be here. And it’s new beginnings for me, to be honest with you.
0:02:34 Tim Villegas: Yeah, yeah, it was great working with you.
0:02:36 Theresa Kowcheck: It was phenomenal working with these brilliant minds. Yeah, I’m not. I was more of a spectator, I felt, because I didn’t know what I was coming into and I felt like that spectator. But I’m leaving feeling like a team member.
0:02:52 Tim Villegas: Hey, can I ask you a couple questions?
0:02:53 Cara Laitusis: Is it for a podcast or something?
0:02:55 Tim Villegas: I’m just collecting audio. I may use it, I may not.
0:02:58 Cara Laitusis: Okay. I’m Cara Laitusis I’m a senior associate at the center for Assessment.
0:03:02 Tim Villegas: This is the first time you’ve been here, right? So what are some takeaways? Just after one full day of, you know, collaborating.
0:03:11 Cara Laitusis: So this is my 31st business trip of 2024 and the first time that I’ve really participated in such a cross sectional group of People, everyone from teachers to former administrators to organizations that are helping departments of ed. And it’s just been a really diverse experience. I feel like it was a worthwhile experience just working with my team and getting to know people. And I didn’t come in with any expectation to get funding. I didn’t even know how much funding was, so.
0:03:43 Cara Laitusis: And you know, my 2025 will be just as good whether I get it or not. Okay.
0:03:50 Tim Villegas: Awesome. Awesome. Well, it was great meeting you and thank you for. Thank you for indulging me.
0:03:55 Sarah Sandelius: I’m Sarah Sandelius. I’m the founder and CEO of the Ability Challenge.
0:03:59 Tim Villegas: Do you have any takeaways from like our full day yesterday and kind of preparing for your pitch and all that stuff, like, what’s on top of mind for you?
0:04:07 Sarah Sandelius: We’re totally going to win the pitch.
0:04:09 Tim Villegas: First of all, I like the confidence. I like the confidence.
0:04:14 Sarah Sandelius: And no, it’s been a really great opportunity to get to know other folks in the space and also sort of get out of the day to day of the logistics of running an organization to think more about what do we need as a sector and how do we collaborate across different organizations.
0:04:33 Tim Villegas: Yes. I remember last year feeling like I don’t think I’ve ever collaborated as well or as intensely as I did with our group. And so that was a brand new experience for me. And I’m like, how can I get more of that? Right. So even if we hadn’t won last year or one funding, I just wanted to keep doing more of that. Right?
0:05:01 Sarah Sandelius: Yes. It’s hard when you’re thinking about. When you’re thinking so much about how your work can have impact, to also think about how do you work with others to make sure that the impact is lasting. Especially like, for us, we’re still thinking about, like, what’s our theory of change and how do we really work with schools and districts most intentionally and has always been very important to me to be able to work with other organizations. But then it’s been hard to figure out actually how to do it. So this has been a really great example and like, throw you in the deep end way of being able to think about that.
0:05:36 Tim Villegas: Yes, exactly. All right, well, thank you.
0:05:37 Ana Evancic: Hi, I’m Anna Evancic and I am a program officer for the International Youth Foundation, IYF.
0:05:44 Tim Villegas: Okay. And we’re here at the EALA Community of Action retreat, day two, and you all just won $75,000 of the funding for your project. Can you just tell us a little bit about your project?
0:05:58 Ana Evancic: Yeah, for sure. Our project, it’s centered around youth boys. So most often in education and in youth development, we’re just, like, here, like, gathering all this expertise from leaders in this space on how to solve the problems that most affect our students. But we never actually include the students in the process. So for us, it’s not about romanticizing. Right, like, the process of, like, involving youth, but recognizing that they deserve a seat at the table. And when they get those seats, like, the transformation that, like, that occurs to them. Right. Like, all the impact, how it impacts their lives and, like, being able to have a voice and, like, share and, like, critically think about what are the solutions to the problems that most affect them.
0:06:42 Tim Villegas: Awesome. Any takeaways just from this whole experience these last couple days?
0:06:49 Ana Evancic: Yes, I believe there are so many. Our project was a collaboration from seven different organizations. So I think it’s just like tapping into our humanity and recognizing that everybody has value to and just give ourselves the time to really get to know each other at a different level, centering what we care about, which are young people and the opportunities that they should have to transform this world.
0:07:17 Tim Villegas: Well, congratulations. It’s great to meet you. Hopefully we can collaborate on other things. We’ll stay in touch. Are you on LinkedIn or anything? Yeah, yeah, I’ll find you. If you could just say your name, your role in your organization.
0:07:31 Maribel Gardea: Maribel Gardea, executive director of MindShift at Parent Institute.
0:07:36 Tim Villegas: Okay. And we’re here at day two of ELA Community of Action retreat, and you all just received $75,000 of funding. So that’s so exciting.
0:07:46 Maribel Gardea: So excited. We are super pumped. Yeah.
0:07:49 Tim Villegas: Can you tell me a little bit about your project?
0:07:52 Maribel Gardea: Yeah. So our project is really trying to get to the nitty gritty of parent engagement, but also providing the access for some of the barriers that we face every day to day with the parents that we serve, which is language access, but even more with a deeper layer of special education. So our hope is that our project will be able to come up with a solution where you can measure whether you’re actually doing it right and maybe doing small steps on how to improve this engagement with families that speak a different language.
0:08:21 Tim Villegas: Awesome. Do you anticipate any barriers to completing the project?
0:08:30 Maribel Gardea: I think there’s always barriers. I think, honestly, the amount of work that we have proposed for ourselves is going to be immense. But I do feel that we’re the type of women that we’re not going to let anything stop us from getting it done. So, yes, I’m worried about it, but Do I feel like I will accomplish what we were meant and set out to accomplish? 100%.
0:08:51 Tim Villegas: Absolutely. Thank you so much for your time, and congratulations.
0:08:54 Maribel Gardea: Thank you so much.
0:08:54 Tim Villegas: Yes, absolutely.
0:08:56 Justine Katzenbach: Hi, my name is Justine Katzenbach. I’m the director of organizational strategy at the Diverse Learners Cooperative.
0:09:02 Tim Villegas: All right, so day two. We didn’t get the funding, but how are we feeling?
0:09:08 Justine Katzenbach: I feel great. I feel so excited for the projects that won. And I also feel like, to me, this is not really about winning. It’s really about the experience and the connections that you make. And so I feel like I learned so much in this. In this 36 hours. And so whether or not we’re walking away with funding, I think feel like there’s so many actions that I’m going to take to improve what I’m doing in my organization as a result of the time that I spent here.
0:09:35 Tim Villegas: Absolutely. I think that I learned more about, like, putting together a project last year, and that really helped me, you know, with our project planning and with just even communications, which is my role, you know, like, how to streamline things and think about how much it costs to do things right. So this is super valuable, I think. Yeah.
0:10:00 Justine Katzenbach: Yeah. I was just talking to someone else about this right now about, like, how do we think about. I think one of the things that’s most powerful about this is talking to other similar organizations, hearing how they’re doing things both from a programming side of things, but also from an operational side of things. And how do I then reflect similarities or improve what we’re doing at our org?
0:10:25 Tim Villegas: Yeah. Any other final thoughts?
0:10:29 Justine Katzenbach: No, Just love being at EALA.
0:10:32 Tim Villegas: Go EALA. Yay. All right. Great. Awesome.
0:10:37 Alicia Ciocca: Hi, my name is Alicia Ciocca. I am a coach and consultant.
0:10:42 Tim Villegas: You were a coach this year for the Educating All Learners Alliance Community of action. What was that experience like for you?
0:10:49 Alicia Ciocca: It was really wonderful. It was my first time, so I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect, but I ended up just gravitating towards that group, and it was the largest group that we had. So we were kind of thinking as coaches that we were gonna, you know, circulate around. But then we decided if there was a bigger group, we would stay put with that group. And it was just so wonderful to see all of the different ideas coming together because there were so many powerful folks with such great vision. And I love folks who dream big, and everyone dreamed big, but we had such a finite time to put together a proposal, so we really had to work together through kind of like, this beautiful chaos to take all these wonderful ideas and, you know, help guide them and coach them and ask questions to see, like, how their organizations could really do something powerful with the time that we had. And.
0:11:38 Tim Villegas: Right. You were. So you were, you were one of the coaches that really helped one of the, one of the groups that won the $75,000. So there was two groups. This one was youth. I’m sorry, what is it?
0:11:51 Alicia Ciocca: Youth Action Power.
0:11:53 Tim Villegas: Youth Action Power.
0:11:54 Alicia Ciocca: Okay. Yeah. All right.
0:11:55 Tim Villegas: And can you, like, if you were to summarize what the project entailed, like, how would you describe it?
0:12:03 Alicia Ciocca: So I think first, what really started the question that they wanted to see resolve was like, how do we amplify youth narratives to really get people to center youth voices? And then folks were like, okay, we had all these lofty ideas about how to do it. And then we looked around and. Which is a question that I’m always asking myself, like, who’s missing in this room? Right. Whose voice is not centered? And we actually brought it up. I remember in our pre service work, I was like, where are the youth? Where are the youth? And then from that came like, okay, we can’t make decisions for the youth. The youth have to make the decisions to guide the change that they want to see. And we’re there to facilitate and support that.
0:12:40 Alicia Ciocca: And so folks came up with an idea about doing like a youth action led project. We’re thinking about going like a ypar, like youth participatory action research. And folks brought up really good points about how there’s not enough time to do the research component and everything. So how do we kind of scale that down, but also think about the future? Like, if folks in these organizations had capacity and wanted to build more like YPAR work in, they could.
0:13:01 Alicia Ciocca: But let’s do what we can right now with the time and the resources of what we have, the capacity that the folks have.
0:13:07 Tim Villegas: Thank you!
0:13:08 Aurora Dreger: Let’s start with Amber.
0:13:09 Tim Villegas: All right. All right. If you could say your name, your role and your organization.
0:13:13 Amber Fowler: My name is Amber Fowler and I am the project associate for ela.
0:13:18 Tim Villegas: Okay, perfect. What? I mean, what are your takeaways from these, these last couple days?
0:13:24 Amber Fowler: Yeah, this is actually my first commute of action and I didn’t at first, I didn’t know what to expect. But coming here in this environment and seeing how collaborative everybody was and seeing how people really came together from different organizations and made a way to combine their thoughts and their processes to make an impact in the ed tech sector or education sector was really an amazing experience.
0:13:49 Tim Villegas: Yeah. Yeah. What if anything, would you. Have you. Have you reflected at all about, like, next year and kind of like, what. What else? Like how we could expand on it or anything like that?
0:14:06 Amber Fowler: Not as much yet. I’m still just, like, dwelling down from the whole experience, but I know next year it will be amazing if we could have possibly a bigger turnout, a bigger audience. I know it’ll be like, a lot of working and processing, but as many people we can have in this, like, type of environment will be even better.
0:14:29 Tim Villegas: All right, awesome. Thank you.
0:14:31 Tim Villegas: Any.
0:14:32 Tim Villegas: Any other thoughts before I turn it over to Aurora?
0:14:36 Amber Fowler: Yeah, no other thoughts.
0:14:38 Tim Villegas: Okay. Thank you for your time. All right, Aurora, you ready?
0:14:41 Aurora Dreger: Yeah.
0:14:42 Tim Villegas: All right, Name, role, organization.
0:14:44 Aurora Dreger: Hey, I’m Aurora Dreger, and I’m the project director of the Educating All Learners alliance, otherwise known as eala.
0:14:51 Tim Villegas: All right, excellent. Part of the. What you. You keep talking about the Elaverse. Yeah, I really enjoy that.
0:14:59 Aurora Dreger: It’s a little mcu. Little like mcu, like, you know, Marvel Universe kind of. Yeah. Reference.
0:15:04 Tim Villegas: Exactly, exactly. And MCIE is part of the EALAverse, so we’re very. A proud member. A proud part of it. Like how. How many. This is the third year you’ve done this.
0:15:14 Aurora Dreger: This is the third iteration or the third phase. So there’s another Marvel reference. This is phase three. This is phase three of the community of action in the Elaverse.
0:15:25 Tim Villegas: I’d say stay consistent with the metaphors. Yes, exactly. What was this one like? Like, you’ve been a part of all three. Like, what are your immediate kind of takeaways on top of mind right now?
0:15:39 Aurora Dreger: The biggest thing is about being flexible, being adaptive, and finally feeling like stepping into my own as a leader. You know, I’ve been working for ELA for almost three years. I love the work. And being able to do this final iteration as the official project director was really, really a great moment professionally and, you know, personally and being able to use all the things that I’ve learned along the way to make this the best event yet.
0:16:07 Tim Villegas: Well, we were a part of last year’s event and just. You did a great job, a fantastic job. We were so pleased to be a part of the event. We did not receive funding, but it, like, honestly, it was so worth it just to be here because of the connections and everything that we learned about project planning and the design thinking and everything.
0:16:29 Aurora Dreger: I love to hear that. That’s the biggest thing. I want people to walk away. You know, there’s going to be 80% of the participants are not going to receive funding at this event, but everybody walks away hopefully feeling like it’s been a good use of their time. And, you know, it’s, it’s being able to adapt to feedback, to like looking back on, on past years, suggestions people have made and so just hearing from people to see what, what comes next.
0:16:55 Tim Villegas: Well, great job. Thank you for your time and we’ll be in touch. All right, before we wrap up, I just want to say thank you once again to the Educating All Learners alliance for not only the opportunity to participate in the community of action, but supporting MCIE through our podcast, Think Inclusive to share a little bit about what it was like to be part of the community of action. If you get a chance to be part of it, please do. It is a fantastic experience.
0:17:34 Tim Villegas: It’s such a collaborative experience. I just can’t say enough about what that has meant to me and our organization, but also be part of the Educating All Learners Alliance. Check them out at educatingalllearnersalliance.org it’s a community that you want to be involved with, especially if you are an organization that supports learners with disabilities. Okay, that’s all the time we have for this bonus episode of Think Inclusive.
0:18:06 Tim Villegas: Let’s roll the credits. Think Inclusive is brought to you by me, Tim Villegas. I handle the writing, editing, design, mixing, and mastering. This podcast is a proud production of the Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education. Our music was brought to you by Melody. We truly appreciate each and every one of you who tunes in. Do us a big favor. Rate us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
0:18:33 Tim Villegas: You can always send me a note and let me know what you think of the episodes that you listen to. Email me@TVagascie.org we’ll be back next week with our regular episodes through the end of July and then we are taking a break until the beginning of September, which will be the start of our 13th season. Thanks for your time and attention. And remember, inclusion always works from mcie.