The Inclusion Think Tank

Arthur: This is the Inclusion Think Tank Podcast, brought to you by New Jersey Coalition for Inclusive Education, where we talk about inclusive education, why it works, and how to make it happen. On Today’s Episode, I welcome my guest Lauren Tyndrof. Lauren is an Inclusion Facilitator with NJCIE. Today, we talk about how physical education classes can be adapted to include all students, including those students with disabilities.

Arthur: I would like to welcome everyone back to another episode of the Inclusion Think Tank podcast. I'm your host, Arthur Aston, and I am excited to welcome my guest on today's podcast, Lauren Tyndorf.

So, Lauren, thank you for joining me today.

Lauren: Thank you so much for having me. I am super excited to be a part of this.

Arthur: Yes. So to start off the podcast, I always ask a form of this question, and that is for my guests to share a little bit about themselves with us. So can you share, things you like to do for fun a little bit about your educational background and, all those kinds of things?

Lauren: Of course. So I received my undergrad degree in health and physical education. I was a high school health and P. E. teacher for about five years. I started as adapted B and then we got it into an inclusive P.E. program. I received my Masters in Motor Learning and Control, and I did my thesis on children with cerebral palsy and the connections that can be remade between the brain and their affected hands.

And then I received my doctorate in curriculum and teaching and phys. ed., with a focus on how students with disabilities perceive inclusive physical education. So really trying to see if there's a disconnect between how students with disabilities experience physical education to help improve our teaching practices. I've worked for Special Olympics for a number of years. I volunteered. I have always wanted to, and I've always loved working with teachers on creating these inclusive environments so that we can have all of our students succeed.

Things that I like to do for fun, oh that’s a tough one, I don't know how much time I have on the side, and I do enjoy reading. I love reading books. I love watching true crime. That's probably the biggest thing that I do in my free time. And then spending a lot of time with my rescue dog. She's taking a lot of work out of me. So working with her.

Arthur: Great! Yes. I also enjoy reading. It's so interesting. I moved recently and I have a huge bookshelf and my friends who are helping me move, they said, Have you read all of these books? I said, Yeah, at one point or another. Yeah, I did. So, it's really great that you like to read and you have a rescue dog.

I appreciate what you said about working with the teachers to make the inclusive environment work for everybody. That is. I say it a lot in this podcast, but that is something that a lot of people bring up, who I have as guests on the podcast. They talk about collaborating and making sure that everybody is involved and everybody is on the same page about the inclusion and what it is that you want to see happen in that school environment. So that's great, that you mention that as well.

Arthur: So the next question I have for you is how would you define inclusive education?

Lauren: So I would define inclusive education as looking in our classrooms that all students of all ability levels, disabilities, lower skills, higher skills, everybody is working together for the common goal. So whatever our lessons are trying to focus on, but really including every every student, every body inside of our classrooms so that all of our students can succeed.

As teachers, we are teaching all students. There is not we're not focused on one group. We are focused on educating all of our students. So if we can really create these environments where all students are together and we can provide the modifications that we may need or different changes to rules, whatever it can be, so that all of our students can be successful, learn in the same environment together.

Arthur: That’s great. You're like you said, you're educating everybody. That's the that's the key thing. It's not a separate thing, for students with disabilities over here and everybody else over there. Yeah. So that's that's really awesome that you mentioned that.

And as a follow up question to that, was there a particular something that happened in your life that made you interested in the world of inclusive education? How did you choose this path?

Lauren: Yeah, so that's a loaded question. I feel like I've my career path has changed so many times that when I started out teaching, I didn't have a background of working with kids with disabilities in my family. I don't have anybody who has a disability. I wasn't around them. And throughout my student teaching experiences, I really started to find my passion working with kids with disabilities and learning and seeing the milestones be accomplished and getting through challenging tasks and life was giving me all these opportunities when I went for my master's and my advisor was a big researcher in the field with cerebral palsy.

So he took me under his wing and I got to learn all the intricacies that he had known and the knowledge. And then when I started teaching, I did not feel as prepared, looking back as I should have been to working with kids with disabilities. So it was a lot of me doing research and sometimes it was a total failure on my end as a teacher with different things that I was trying to do.

But I didn't want my kids by themselves. I knew that they should not be. Why are my kids disabilities not included for sports? Sport is sport. And that was kind of where I started to change where my path was going to be and really focus on inclusive education and working with teachers that I didn't feel that teachers always felt prepared to work with kids with disabilities in the gym setting.

Lauren: that’s why my doctorate had changed for what I initially wanted to do with the focus on curriculum and in our curriculum and teaching, and with that focus on inclusive education so that I had the knowledge for curriculums. And how can we write curriculums, how can we develop curriculums and how can we work with teachers to say, Hey, kids with disabilities are supposed to be in the gym and working together with their peers?

Sport is sport and I will continue to work and help teachers at whatever facet they need to really promote inclusive education because it is so important and vital. We know what the benefits are. Being in the realm of inclusive education. So trying to get everybody else to understand that and so that they can see the differences that it does make in everybody's educational background and just in life in general.

Arthur: I’m enjoying this conversation so much because I when as soon as we were talking about like topics that we could talk about and you mentioned the physical education part and your background in physical education, and I immediately thought about myself as a wheelchair user all through my time in high school, the physical education teachers were always looking for ways to make sure I was included.

And being that I use a manual wheelchair, I pushed myself, you know, on the nice days, everybody had to do a mile out on the school track, and the physical education teacher looked at me and said, and you will too. You may not get a mile done. You don't have you can't physically run it, but you will go around as many times as you can in this time that we have with everybody else.

And then they would eventually say, well, we'll give you one or two friends that can go with you. So that was the big thing with everybody. Oh, I want to walk with Arthur! So they didn’t have to run it! So that was the really big thing. But just again, going back to, like you said, with the collaboration of how everybody just works together to make it happen to come together and just have, everybody included.

Arthur: And I graduated many years ago. And to think that maybe the conversation of inclusion wasn't like a really big thing then, but it's like they were they were doing it without knowing it probably at that time to say, okay, he can physically do certain things. So we're going to have him included in this gym class.

Thankfully I wasn't part of the dodgeball games or anything like that, but they did have me doing quite a bit of things, from the physical education classes. But I can remember.

Lauren: yeah, it's interesting. I had as I was doing my research on my dissertation, it was really understanding perspective. So I never had mentioned a disability. It was if the students brought it up, then we could talk about it, but if not, as an outsider and really trying to understand their perceptions, I didn't want to bring up a disability.

I wanted to see if they related to it that they identify with having one. What was the situation? Because I, as an able bodied person, I can see things, I see things differently than what my students were doing.

One of the things that had come up and when you had mentioned the wheelchair, it always resonates. I had one of the students who was involved in their warm up games that were outside on the turf, and for a portion of the game he would play, but then he would come and he would be on the sidelines and he would sit next to me and we would talk.

And I had asked him if he wanted to keep playing or why did he play for a little bit and sit on the side. And it had come out that the turf was so hard for him to move himself around, and it was for me as I was no longer teaching at the time, but it was, oh my goodness, I always thought as a teacher I was doing the best thing, and we're going outside and we're going on the turf.

Lauren: We’re taking advantage of the beautiful days. And then when he had said that the wheelchair was harder to roll on the turf, I was like, I never even thought about that. And then it even more started to get me into like, what are the what else can I do? Because I didn't think about things. And it was to me, it was a huge learning mode where it was, okay, we have more that we need to get out of our students with disabilities and their perceptions to see what they really need from me and what do they need from the rest of their teachers to help them.

Arthur: Wow, That is that's so interesting because it's,, like you said, you're thinking you're doing the best thing that's possible. And it's like, well, actually, like this is kind of hard.

Lauren: Yeah, yeah, I love learning from my students. Like you had your experience and you enjoyed doing that. I welcome all those perceptions and hearing it from the individual who are living in this moment.

Arthur: Yes. And again, it goes back to what we were saying before about the collaboration and involving everybody, including the students in these conversations, because they they have a voice. And like you said, their lived experience is the best education for everybody. It's the best learning experience for everybody to to hear from them themselves who are actually living, you know, the disabled experience.

And they can share what it is that they need, you know, to make it better for them and make it more inclusive for them so that that's great.

Arthur: So we've been talking about it, this whole conversation. But your dissertation, like you said, was on the perceptions of students with disabilities, in inclusive physical education settings, can you share with us because I off the top of my head, you're the first person that has a physical education background that I've had on the podcast to talk about this.

So which again, it's so important that children all the children in the class are included in physical education, including those with disabilities. So can you share what some of the modifications that physical education teachers can make to their classroom, to their class experiences, so that they are more inclusive for everyone?

Lauren: Yeah, absolutely. So I think first and foremost is equipment.

There's so much equipment that is out there. And I if I can find different ways to use standard equipment, I'm going to do that. So there's no reason to say that I can't use beach balls when we're playing handball or using beach balls for soccer or basketball. So changing just what piece of equipment you're using in your inclusive classes can really help the game for all students.

So a lighter ball is going to move a little bit slower or you can deflate a soccer ball if you don't have the slow roller soccer balls that exists. There's different pieces of equipment that have bells in them. So students who have visual impairments or need another focus, a different type of sensory item has a basket of oh my goodness, has a bell inside of it. So it can draw more attention to it.

Lauren: So equipment first and foremost, I think is huge to help create these more inclusive classrooms. The second is rules of the game. I have always said that I have. Am I going to have somebody come into my gym from the NBA watching to see if I'm playing basketball by what the NBA rules are?

And I then I laugh even more because they double dribble and they travel in the NBA. That doesn't get called. So and my kids are double dribbling and traveling. That's fine. So creating your own rules. And that's where I really would talk to my students about what modifications work for them. So I had when I taught and I had a student who was a wheelchair user, I had asked him because dribbling for him is going to look very different than how my students are who are running and walking.

So I asked them, I said, What modification do you want to do? So he said, I want to put the basketball on my lap and I want 3 seconds before a defense can get on me. I said, okay, let's do it. So we did. And the class was started to count down from three. So they got to the end.

So it was you got this sense he was building a self-esteem. Everybody was excited. So I was able to change the rules for what were for my individual students to make the class more fun and beneficial for them. And I think that just leads into a third point in just talking with your students. I can create modifications that I think work or that I have used that had words.

But students with disabilities also know they know what they can do and how they may be able to manipulate an object in a way that I haven't even thought of. Or they may create a modification that actually is way better than anything I would have thought of. So they're being able to advocate for themselves as to what they need to be successful in the class.

Lauren: And then it in-turn benefits them because they're more engaged. We're building their self-confidence. They're able to really talk for themselves and not have me doing it for them. So working definitely with the students as to what other modifications are there, I love learning from them and if I could give back a portion of what my students with disabilities have taught me about my teachings and how to create these environments that I try to aim to give back some of it.

And I don't know if I ever will, because they've always taught me more things.

Arthur: When you have that some, that's usually how it goes. It's, you know, you're it's like you go into something expecting one thing and then like you said, you learn tenmore things and yeah,

Lauren: I always thought I would get some of the kids towards the end of the marking periods or let them create different obstacle courses.

So when we had all the gym space for their inclusive class, they can choose over equipment they want and they'd be split up into groups and do an obstacle course. And it was fun as you got to see them start to strategize for what their other peers were able to do. So if they knew some of their students were really quick, they would try to figure out, okay, how can we slow them down in this obstacle course?

Or they would they would take into consideration are wheelchair user and okay, well, he's not going to be able to go under this hula hoop or through it. So how can we create something that he's able to do? So then I got to see more. It was kind of a second objective for what the lesson was, but how they were able to modify and adapt other equipment which we then we can use for other activities or other games that they were doing, but they were doing it all on their own.

Arthur: And it's so amazing how fast other children pick up on things and understand things.

Lauren: Yeah, that really is incredible.

Arthur: I feel sometimes like we don't give children much credit for those kinds of things. They, t's like, okay, so, this child who's a wheelchair user has to he won't be able to dribble the ball. So we have to have the ball on his lap.

Okay, No big deal.

Lauren: Yeah.

Arthur: Like you said, they make it part of the whole experience. Okay. He needs 3 seconds before we can actually try to get the ball or whatever from it. So. All right, let's all count down and then let's all go get it.

Lauren: Yeah, that's what it would be, and he would start laughing like, I can picture it. He, loved it. And it was I got him. He was not a student who always and not everybody loves PE. This is it's not a secret. We have a good number of kids who like it. Other kids don't want for whatever reasons there are.

And he for him was hard. And this class, anytime there was basketball he would crack up like he loved it because he thought it was so funny that after 3 seconds of what his rule was, everybody was coming. They were getting to him!

Arthur: And then, like you said, if you you know, if you had a certain activity where the other children realized that, like, okay, this would be difficult for my classmate to get through, like, how can we help figure this out for, you know, for them?

It just makes everything so much better. And, for everyone and especially like at a young age, for elementary school children to have these experiences is interacting with, people their age, children, and other children their age who have disabilities so that when they get older and get out into the real world, it's like, oh, I remember Johnny, who was in my third-grade class, it's no big deal.

Arthur: That’s what I say all the time about my friends and their children and spending time with them and letting them being able to ask me questions about my wheelchair or about my braces, my like braces and my crutches or if take my braces off, why can't I walk? Why do I have to crawl around?

So it's not a big deal to them when they start school, when they go to school and see that the new student who just moved into town has to use a wheelchair, they can say, Oh, a guy comes to the house all the time in a wheelchair. it's no big deal.

Arthur: Yeah, just this past weekend I was at an event and one of my friends who I've known since we were in ninth grade, I was telling the story about her, and I met her my very first day of ninth grade.

She walks up to me and tells me her name and she says, My brother uses a wheelchair. I know how to help transfer. I know how to do this. And you know, if you need help, everybody knows me. You know, go to the office. They can find out what class I'm in. Whatever you need, find me, and we're 42 this year, and we're still the best of friends.

And it's it's just great because it does provide that connection. And it lets the other children know, like in the class that like, okay, they have to do things differently, but they can still participate, and we can all still participate too. And like you said, you give them the three-second countdown and then we can go get him. Like we would just get everybody else,

Lauren: It all goes in together like with equipment there’s what I always call adjusted nubby ball because it makes me think of it. It's not a dog toy but there's a stuffed toy and it has little spikes.

It's going to sound like it's dangerous. And I promise it's not what it is. It's like a rubber it's a rubber ball, but it gives a different texture. So for my students who are playing handball, the gator ball or what typically would be called the dodgeball back would be would be in P.E. it slips out of students hands. So they were catching it.

And it wasn't because they couldn't catch, but that material was too slippery for them. So when we changed the equipment with that ball, all the kids were able to catch it and it didn't matter if you had a disability or not. Everybody started the whole game, started to just increase in skill and teamwork and sportsmanship. Nobody's getting frustrated about what's happening because it's too slippery.

Lauren: They’re able to catch the ball and it it works for everybody and there is nobody that was singled out for whatever it could be. Everybody really was just working together to achieve that goal for handball for the class, which is what our goal is for inclusive education, is that everybody works together with whatever modifications are needed and everybody succeeds.

Arthur: Yeah, I again, I love this conversation because we haven't talked about this on the podcast yet and it's it's so important to talk about because like for myself I can't walk for long distances but I can push myself in my wheelchair for long distances. So physical activity is so important for people with physical disabilities. But then also just for everybody to break up the day, the school day to get out and have some activity, release some energy.

It’s so important for everybody. So I'm so glad that, we're having this conversation. That's cool. I'm excited about it.

Lauren: I love talking about it. I love movement. So any chance I can get anybody to get up and move and knowing that they can do it. And that's always my focus is focus on what people can do.

There are so many times people are hit. They know that they can't do certain things that we don't want to focus on, that we want to focus on, okay, we can this is what we can do. And we are going to we are going to go off of what we can do and we're going to keep building off of that, right?

Arthur: Yeah. Like you said, it's always like I like I know what I can't do, but I'm well aware of that. But to have someone, like yourself in a position of being like a PE teacher to show me like, okay, you can't do this, but here's what you can do to participate with everybody else is really awesome. Really great.

Arthur: So you are recently. Oh, sorry. Wow. I don't know what I was, but I just messed up. So you are an inclusion facilitator with NJCIE. Can you share with us what are some of your responsibilities in that role and what are you most looking forward to with this position?

Lauren: So my role for inclusion facilitator is I get to work with individual schools on different topics that they have applied for so it can be co-teaching or building inclusive environments and we work one one-on-one with each school.

I'm doing observation is going through training and really helping them create these more inclusive environments for things that they feel that their schools need. And then on the systemic change side of it, it's a three-year program right now and we really look at the data that's in the schools. So what are percentages that students are with their general education peers and how many students are out of district?

We try to really change where numbers are and how can we create these more inclusive environments, but really working individually with each school. I think one of the fun parts is that I've been involved in inclusive education and I love to work with kids with disabilities and how can we get them more involved in what is a typical school day in general education classes?

Lauren: And that's what I get to do, is every day I get to work up. It's something different. Each school has their own different needs and we get to be creative and find, okay, this works for here, but it may not work here and how can we change it? And that's what we're learning constantly as we're going through and working with each school.

So I just love being able to share my background and working with people to achieve something that's a greater good for everybody that's involved.

Arthur: Yes, I, I love what you said, that this position allows you to be creative because every setting is different. You know, you're going into these different schools and like you said, something that might work over here doesn't work over there. So you have to think of,a different way to approach, you know, what might be a theme, a similar topic or a similar challenge that the school is facing.

But because of each school having its own unique people and set of circumstances there, you have to approach it differently and you can,, forces you to be creative, to come up with different solutions for every school, every setting that you're in. So that's really yeah, that's cool. So it's like a new like every day is a new a new day like so you get to try some.

Lauren: Yeah. You're on your toes a lot.

Arthur: Well, Lauren, thank you so much for joining me for this conversation to share your story and your experience and to shed light on the world of physical education as it applies to inclusive education because it's a topic like I said, I've been doing this podcast for two years now and we have not really talked about that.

And it's again, it's so important because it is part of the school day for all students. And I love the suggestions that you gave about for the modifications that can be done because it's not if it's not costing a lot of money or any money at all to do those things that you said.

Yeah, it's just purchasing different balls. Like you said, instead of using a a soccer ball, you get a beach ball, you know, and if you get the right deal, you might be able to get a couple of beach balls, you know, and then save money. So yes  I thank you again for this conversation. And it was great to meet you virtually. And I will be in touch with you.

Lauren: Of course. This was awesome. Thank you so much for having me on, Arthur. It was a great conversation. I'd be happy whenever you need me. I'm here.

Arthur: Great. Thank you. Oh, well, you have a great day.

Lauren: Yeah, you too!

Arthur: This is the inclusion Think Tank Podcast, where we talk about inclusive education, why it works, and how to make it happen. On today’s episode, I welcome my guest Amara. Amara is an inclusion facilitator with NJCIE. During our conversation, we discuss how Amara has been applying her over 10 years of experience in education, and her interest in servant leadership in her role as an inclusion facilitator, and also what she is most looking forward to in this position with NJCIE.

Arthur: I would like to welcome everyone back to another episode of the inclusion. Think Tank podcast. I am the host, Arthur Aston, and I am happy to welcome my guest to the podcast today, Amara. So thank you so much for joining me for this conversation.

AmaraL Thank you for having me.

Arthur: Yes, I ask all of my guests to introduce themselves and to share some fun facts about themselves. So if you'd like to do in your free time, if you have any, and a little bit about your background and and all of that. So if you could do that right now, that's great.

Amara: Thank you. So, yeah, my name is Amara. I'm a new inclusion facilitator with the New Jersey Coalition for Inclusive Education. I consider myself a pretty feminine spiritual woman, and I'm in my early to mid-thirties.

I am a mom to a 15-month-old and actually, I have another one on the way in about four months. Five months. I love personal and spiritual development. I love those kinds of books and like aligning myself with the season. So like we're in fall right now, so I like to get more sleep If I can. Eat more seasonally and generally kind of slow down and kind of take a step back from everything I'm doing to kind of follow the season and just kind of rest as we're approaching winter, and that's here in the Northeast.

I've been an educator for ten years. I taught in Washington, D.C., where I spent the majority of my teaching career. I've also taught in Maryland and in Florida. I am duly certified in special ed in elementary education. And I've taught elementary school and high school special ed, general Ed. And I was also a reading specialist for a little bit.

Amara: my college career, I have a Bachelor of Science from Cornell University. I actually thought I was going to be a veterinarian, but that is obviously not the case anymore. And I had an education minor, which is really what introduced me to the world of education, but my mother is a teacher and has been in Asbury Park, New Jersey for like 23 years, I want to say she's close to retiring. and I have a certificate of administration and supervision as well.

As you said, I don't really have a lot of free time currently, with the little one when I do is probably reading something I like to read before bed or journaling. And I like yoga a lot when I get the opportunity to do that.

So that's a little bit about my background.

Arthur: Yay! Well, congratulations for the one on the way and awesome. Yeah, I, I also enjoy reading and journaling. So I, when you said that, I was like, yeah, that's really a cool thing to do. I've really gotten into audiobooks in the last few years. Listening to audiobooks and doing that right before bed is really been great or I can't listen to them in the car.

People are like, Oh, I listen to audiobooks in the car.

Amara: I’ve tried, I’ve tried the audiobook thing, but I really think, like my dad is a reader too, so he's just like, he likes to smell books and I think I got that from him. It's like, I need something in my hand if I want to go back and highlight or write notes, and I can’t always do that as efficiently with audio.

Arthur: Yeah, that is the great thing about having a real book, like you said. Yeah. You know, to fold the page back like, Oh, I love that. I think that that's really a good time to be able to hold a book. Yes, that's yeah, that for sure.

Arthur: So can you share with us what does inclusive education mean to you?

How would you define inclusive education?

Amara: So for me, inclusive education would mean giving all students, regardless of background, socioeconomic status, race, gender, or ability, an equitable opportunity to live out their greatest potential as their same-age peers and with their same-age peers in their classroom.

So for me, I think that equitable peace is really important because that means if we're thinking through a lens of equity, especially when it comes to special education, we're designing our classrooms, our curriculums, our lessons, thinking about our students furthest away from success. Due to some sort of barrier at designing our classroom from the outset to address said barriers so that they can be successful?

But what happens is when we do that, we find all students end up being successful. It's like the handicap ramp, for example. We put them in buildings expecting people who are in wheelchairs, who maybe might be pregnant, who are on crutches to use those ramps, but what do we see? Everybody uses those ramps or even whether they need it or not. And so I definitely think that we need to think about education in the same way so that we can ensure that every student has the opportunity to be as successful as they want to be in the classroom.

Arthur: I always use the example of the ramp, as I always do, because I'm like, everybody can use a right tomorrow no matter what. You can use the ramp. And it's like you said, with inclusive education, the equitable piece is the. So the most important part, it's just, you know, brings everybody together and everybody can learn and we can learn from each other.

You can learn from the children who have the disability needs and have those experiences, because in the real world, outside of school when they go on to graduate or go on to college or work in the workforce, they will be other people with disabilities.

Amara: Yeah, everybody is out there.

Arthur: Exactly. Everybody is out there. So you will, I think the earlier we can have these interactions and have the students together with their peers, no matter if they have a disability or not, I think the better society can be as a whole as they grow to be teenagers and older and into adulthood.

Yeah, it's really important to start that. So at an early age, which is, really important.

Amara I would add to that that the data supports that, right? The data that we've done within inclusive education shows that all students actually do better when everybody is included, both the students with disabilities and students without disabilities to everybody thrives and does better and are successful when everybody is included. Regardless of people's personal feelings about it, the data does support an inclusive classroom over a non-inclusive one.

Arthur: Yes, and the data has been the same consistently for 30 years. It's out there and it's, easy to find. The data supports that is inclusive setting is the better overall for everyone.

Arthur: So as you mentioned, you are an inclusion facilitator with NJCIE. Can you share with us some of your responsibilities in that role?

Amara: So far the biggest part of my role has been working with school teams on a long-term basis, talking to improve their inclusion rates.

So I know that I'll be with these schools for at least the next three years. These schools have been identified to receive a grant through the New Jersey Inclusion Project, and basically these schools, we want to serve as models within their districts of what inclusive education is and should look like. So basically, New Jersey has the worst inclusion rates in the country, where about 24% included students and national averages about 66%, with the goal obviously being 80%.

And so what this includes is that I meet with these school teams on a monthly basis for the entire school year, basically educating the team, and building capacity of these teams to create a more inclusive school environment for their students. So we do professional development, we do walkthroughs, we do observations, we do modeling, we also do professional development with their entire staff around things like inclusion 101, things like coach teaching, universal design for learning anything that would really be instrumental in creating an inclusive environment. We're going to be building the capacity of these school teams to be able to do that within their school environments.

Amara: And so we also help them with analyzing their own data, thinking about students who they're identifying for special ed and kind of making sure that they're included from the outset instead of having to go back to re-include them.

We help them create action plans, analyze the action plans, implement action plans, and even involve the school families when appropriate, to make sure that they're also considered a valuable stakeholder as well. So that's what my job is entailed, because also sometimes schools are require a one off training, like I did a training at a school not too far from here.

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That's not part of my official workload of schools. But they wanted a training on some behavior modifications and accommodations for students with ADHD. So I did some of like one-off trainings as well. I also have some walkthroughs on my calendar, so a school might request a walk-through for someone to come in to look at their inclusive classrooms or look at their self-contained classrooms and see what can be done to improve that within their school environment.

So that's what my role has consisted of as far.

Arthur: That’s awesome. You sound very busy.

Amara: That would be correct!

Arthur: So when we were planning to record, you shared with me that you have an interest in servant leadership.

And I did a little research on that and I found that listening, empathy, and awareness are three of the common characteristics of servant leadership. So can you share with us how these characteristics can be applied in the world of inclusive education?

Amara: So I got interested in servant leadership and I was doing my certificate of admin supervision. It was through Loyola University and it's a Jesuit-affiliated university.

And so that was kind of the foundation with which our program was based on. And so for me, those characteristics are really just part of a humane, just equitable society, not just inclusive education. But if we're looking at inclusive education honestly and any really any other societal system, we're thinking about, we'd make the jump more readily to an inclusive education, educational environment because we'd be able to empathize with students who are not included and really think about the barriers that they're facing from the jump and be able to create our classrooms, our schools, our buildings, our what am I thinking of, like our social systems from the outset to make sure that everybody has what they need to survive and to thrive.

So, basically, it just means to me that we're really taking a humane, humanistic approach to what we're doing with students in the classrooms every day and every part of it, from them arriving in the morning to eating lunch, to how they're learning the material, to interacting with their peers, to the behavior systems we use, we would really create really humane, very kind, compassionate classroom environments from all aspects.

So it just means that, we're giving students what they need to in order to survive and to thrive in our classrooms.

Amara: I had done some work in DC through a program called City Bridge, and at that time that program was focused on people who were interested in founding their own schools in the city. And we worked with somebody named Caroline Hill, who is the founder of something called the 228 Accelerator.

And it was basically a community of practice centered around a theory called Equity by Design. I'm bringing it up because something that stuck with me from that training was that she had a theory that we called designing from the margins. So thinking from the student, thinking about the students who are furthest away from success or furthest away from opportunity, because that was most focused on the opportunity gap.

But what can we put in place from the outset to have these students fill these gaps so that they are closer to the success that is required or that they would like to achieve for themselves?

Amara: And so for me, it's very applicable to inclusive education because it's the same thing. We're thinking about the margins, students furthest away from opportunity, furthest away from being included, furthest away from being successful in our school environment.

What is missing? Why aren't they being successful and how can we put those things in place to help eliminate those barriers in order for them to be successful?

And, ultimately, when we create these kinds of environments, we then help to create a better world and a better society because students take that with them as they graduate, as they go out into the world, as they do their jobs, as they are creating more things for our society, we end up affecting the world as a whole or the country as a whole.

Arthur: I agree with everything that you that you just said. I think for those were just three of the many characteristics of servant leadership that I found.

They all like you said, they applied to society as a whole and not just inclusive education and, you know, I think the big thing is listening, because inclusive education takes work from a lot of different people that are involved. From the top levels of the school board all the way down to, you know, the people in the lunchroom and the custodian building, It involves everybody, including the students themselves.

So, listening and realizing what needs to be done and hearing all sides of everything. I think that's a really big part of it. And then just having empathy and awareness, that's so important. You don't it's like you can't fix what you don't know kind of thing. Exactly. So being aware of what the challenges are can help you arrive at solutions and, so I think those are, really big things for applying and being able to apply this to the inclusive education world.

Arthur: So to wrap up our conversation, can you share with us something that you are looking forward to in your role as an inclusion facilitator?

Amara: I think what I'm looking forward to the most would probably be seeing the transformation of the school communities, and I hope it's like palpable because like data will be one thing, like to say, Oh, we have like instead of, 20% or 30%, that's cool.

But I also want to be able to like, feel it when I walk in the classrooms and throughout the school, like seeing all kinds of students in one classroom, working together, creating together, laughing together. I think that would be the thing they looking forward to the most, because ultimately this work is going to require a paradigm shift, and we know that that is really hard to do no matter what we're talking about.

And so this is going to require us to look at education in a whole new way. And there are going to be some people who are going to be able to understand it and get with it and some people who aren't going to be able to, and maybe they'll transition to do something else.

But ultimately, as our world gets more diverse, we're going to have to shift this anyway in how we're doing education and the US, New Jersey. We're not the only ones grappling with this. Other countries are also doing this as well. We have pretty decent data about how other countries are educating all students in an inclusive environment, and they're doing a lot better job than we are.

Amara: So we know it's possible. And so I think for me, you know, the future of the world literally depends on it, because we want to be able to create a world that works for everybody. And starting at our schools is one way of us to be able to accomplish that. So being able to see that happening, I think in real time would be the thing I'm looking forward to most.

Arthur: That’s great. Yes, It's always it's always fun to know that you're part of making the change and then being able to see the change that has taken place. That’s really great and rewarding for, you know, for everybody to to have that happen.

So, Amara, thank you so much for your time for having this conversation with me on the podcast and, wishing you the best and all of the things that you're doing and now I will be in touch with you soon.

Amara: Sounds good. Thank you so much for the invitation.

Arthur: We thank you for listening to this episode of the Inclusion Think Tank podcast. This podcast is brought to you by the New Jersey Coalition for Inclusive Education NJCIE. Be sure to subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcast, and don't forget to follow us on social media @NJCIE. Until next time.

The Inclusion Think Tank Podcast is back with a brand new episode. Today, Arthur is joined by his guests Brittany Seeley and Dr. Kelli Petrone. Brittany and Kelli discuss the New Jersey Inclusion Project (NJIP) grant. If you are a school administrator in New Jersey, you can sign up for NJCIE’s Community of Practice meeting, training, and discussion session here:   https://www.njcie.org/cop

Arthur: This is the Inclusion Think Tank podcast brought to you by the New Jersey Coalition for Inclusive Education, NJCIE, where we talk about inclusive education, why it works, and how to make it happen. On today's episode, I welcome, I guess, Dr. Kelli Petrone and Brittany Seeley.

Join our conversation as we discuss the New Jersey Inclusion Project, NJIP, a program collaboration between the New Jersey Department of Education and the New Jersey Coalition for Inclusive Education, that offers free technical assistance, long-term systemic change projects, leadership development events and additional materials and resources to support inclusive education.

Arthur: I would like to welcome everyone back to another episode of the inclusion Think Tank podcast brought to you by New Jersey Coalition for Inclusive Education. I'm your host, Arthur Aston, and I am happy to welcome my two guests on the podcast today, Brittany Seeley and Dr. Kelli Petrone. So thank you both for joining me for this conversation today.

Kelli: Thanks for having us.

Arthur: Yes. So to start off, can you each share a little bit about yourself, who you are, what your titles and responsibilities are working with NJCIE, and also something or some things that you'd like to do in your free time if you have any. And we can start with KellI and then Brittany, You can follow.

Kelli: Sure. So I am Kelli Petrone. I am a Program Director at NJCIE. I primarily do I work with systemic change in schools. And then I also work with a few other grants as well as we work with individuals on different needs that they have that they may contract with us for. In terms of what I like to do, possibly in my free time, my family and I like to go hiking and I also go to a ton of pro sporting events.

So that seems to be what occupies most of our time.

Brittany: And hello, I’m Brittany Seeley I am also one of the Program Directors at NJCIE. And kind of following what Kelly had said, we both oversee the New Jersey Inclusion Project grant work, which is throughout the state of New Jersey. We are making sure deliverables are met, and data is collected, and we are supporting the work around inclusion across the state and, supporting our amazing inclusion facilitators who are regionally based.

Something I guess I enjoy doing when I'm not working is traveling or in the summers being up on the lake where I grew up and being out in the boat as much as I can be with family and friends.

Arthur: Awesome. I love both of your answers for what you like to do in your free time.

Being on a boat is one of my favorite things. I don't get to do it too often, but I definitely enjoy it, and being anywhere outdoors is always fun and sporting events. I have definitely become more interested in those and have attended more of those in more recent years with some friends and family.

So it's always a good time to take a break, like you said when you're not working If you have any free time to spend time with family and friends.

Arthur: So this conversation will center around the New Jersey Inclusion Project, also known as NJIP, which is a collaboration between the New Jersey Department of Education and the New Jersey Coalition for Inclusive Education. This project is described as a program that offers free technical assistance longer-term systemic change projects, leadership development events, and additional materials and resources to support inclusive education.

So can you share with us why it was important to create this project and some of the goals that have been created for the project store?

Kelli: So according to a report published by the Law Center. New Jersey is currently the least inclusive state in the country, with an inclusion rate defined as students with disabilities, included with general education peers, 80% or more of the day with the inclusion rate of 45.2%.

So that means that of the 225,447 students with this service in the state, currently 101,902 students are included 80% or more of the day. And I know that's a lot of numbers, but it's a pretty low rate. So if if New Jersey included students at the national rate of 66.2%, 149,246 students would be included. So this means that there are about 47,000 students currently excluded who could otherwise be serviced in their general education classrooms along with their peers, which yields many benefits not just for students with disabilities, but for all students.

So NJCIE’s inclusion facilitators will provide strategic and targeted support to educators and school leaders serving students with disabilities and grades. Kindergarten through Grade 12. So support will be provided to schools from districts demonstrating a need through the New Jersey Department of Education, least restrictive environment data, and will include technical assistance for 15 sites every year and systemic change facilitation for 48 sites throughout this entire project.

Kelli: So support will also include leadership development through conferences and community practice activities and the development and dissemination of universal resources and guidance. So the wide array of support that will be provided will help administrators and staff members acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to meet the needs of all learners.

Arthur:  I shared with both of you before we started recording that, and I've been doing this for two years with NJCIE already, which is wild to believe.

We use a lot of acronyms and sometimes I myself have to ask what they mean. So I've been familiar with this, the NJIP. And what you all are doing, But I wanted to make sure that we took some time out for an episode that was dedicated just to this to share the important information. Just because it is important to the work that you all are doing to help increase the inclusion rate here in New Jersey, as you mentioned, it is at the lowest in the country.

So, having something like this getting started is really important to help with t raising that inclusion rate.

Arthur: So for someone who might be listening to the podcast and may be interested in possibly having these services for their own school district, can you provide some information about what NJIP and each of the areas of programming provides?

Brittany: Absolutely. So there's a lot, as Kelly mentioned before. So this grant, it's a multifaceted plan, really intended to support and facilitate and enhance already in place current initiatives through the Department of Education in New Jersey, such as the NJTSS, which is the New Jersey tiered system of supports as well as the PBSIS The Positive Behavior Supports in New Jersey Public Schools.

And we're really looking to develop, expand, and improve inclusive practices within all of the schools in New Jersey. The vision and the collaboration is an effort between NJCIE as well as the New Jersey Department of Education, Office of Special Education. And the goal together is really to increase the number of students who attend the school they would attend if they did not have the support needs. If they weren't assigned to age-appropriate gen-ed grades and classes and instructed with this core curriculum, based on research and principles of universal design for learning, really that is furthering the differentiation for diverse learners in each classroom.

So the first portion of the grant that we have is called technical assistance, which Kelli had meant, and we are targeting 15 sites yearly through this three-year grant and NJCIE team of inclusion facilitators has developed both synchronous and asynchronous materials and resources through pamphlets and webinars and different Moodle courses to deliver support for approved topics such as inclusion in 1 to 1 or building an inclusive culture, Universal Design for Learning, Co-Teaching differentiation. Development of IEP’s, positive behavior and modifications and accommodations. And how it's structured is we have its five sessions. If you receive the grant for technical assistance, it's targeted technical assistance provided in five sessions where the first session is specific for administrators so that they can really hear and understand the content that their staff will be receiving in Session two, so that they can continue monitoring and checking and conducting walkthroughs to make sure these practices are followed through.

Brittany: The Session two is the participants. They're receiving the content and then the sessions three and four are really specific to two classrooms where there's the inclusion facilitator is coming in, observing coaching, and providing individualized feedback right in the classrooms with staff and then the follow-up session, that session five is the wrap-up session. And then we're really tracking a lot of data through a pre and a post to see the growth from sessions to all the way through session five with the main participants.

I may throw it over to Kelli to talk a little bit more about the other piece of the grant, which is the systemic change portion.

Kelli: So systemic change implementation is a science-based systemic change process for building and sustaining inclusive schools. So if you're selected to participate in this longer-term partnership and JCT is regionally based inclusion facilitators will provide three years of implementation, science-based systemic change-facilitation.

So the ultimate goal of the systemic change process is to support schools in their improvement of school-based LRE data or at least restrictive environment data and practices that support sustainable and effective inclusion inclusive school communities. So the process includes support by creating awareness and commitment to improving your LRE data, working on collaborative decision making, fostering greater awareness and curriculum and instructional adaptations, building capacity for individualized support, using like doing some trainer model, cultivating in an inclusive school community, and then allocating necessary resources and inclusive scheduling.

And it sounds like we're doing a lot because we are, but this is not done all at once. Of course, this is over the course of three years, but all of the school we work on throughout the three years. So a lot of times what we're doing is we're working with the schools on, you know, developing and allocating time and resources for the work of school-based implementation team.

Kelli: So which will include, monthly meetings, there's other activities such as we do walkthroughs, but we also do like a coaching model with some teachers working with the team on overall school staff. So looking at it as the whole school in smaller groups as well, and to gather information to the current functioning of the school building and understanding built growing knowledge and then working on best practices in an inclusive environment.

We will work collaboratively with them on gathering and interpreting a bunch of different data that we collect the data, but we work with the schools on interpreting it and understanding it. So we typically will gather their LRE data and making sure that it's specific to their school site. We survey the whole staff, but we do a lot of collection of other data pieces as well.

We create opportunities for best practices in an inclusive education to be woven into the current diversity. So again, we don't want them to like not work on other components to the change process. So we try to collaborate with whatever initiatives they're working with.

Kelli: We try to select a support as a liaison at the school site that can help build capacity so that when we're no longer there and three years after we've done all of this work together, that they can continue the efforts towards their inclusive practices. We will try to work on advocating for inclusive education within their school and then within the district by encouraging an open dialog, fostering a culture of inclusion, and then working towards removing barriers to the development of a full, inclusive school community.

A lot of times what we do is we evaluate efforts to ensure the goals of the school are continuously alined with the NJIP components and also to determine readiness for change and continued engagement and systemic change. So it's a lot of different pieces and we do these through monthly meetings.

We do this through training. We talked about we do synchronous and asynchronous training, but we also do the trainer train or model monthly, which is a great way for the trainers at each school site to work with other school sites and to learn what they're doing to make their practices work at their school sites. And Brittany, did you want to talk about leadership?

Brittany: Yeah. So the the last piece of this multifaceted grant is really the leadership development. And JCI team members are planning and facilitating various opportunities for leadership development and stakeholder engagement, which includes two regionally based leadership development conferences, one that typically in the South and one in the North. Our first one will be January 19th down in the southern region, which will give you information to find that on our website shortly, as well as community practice opportunities.

Right now we by the end of the year will have held and conducted nine community practice opportunities for leaders across the state with the topics and the regionally based. So we would have three in the north, three central and three south. The first topic is inclusive master scheduling. The second topic is inclusive hiring practices, retention and recruitment. And the third topic is mental health foundations, as well as culturally responsive teaching practices.

So these leadership development activities are really helping to support the capacity building, creating systems to ensure each child with a disability has that equitable access to all the resources needed to achieve the optimal outcomes.

Brittany: The targeted attendees of the Inclusion Leadership Conference include school administrators who are actually offered free registration, other school faculty, staff, parents, students and self-advocates.

And opportunities even include breakfast, lunch, and meet and greets. And we will be providing attendees to build these connections with other educators in their fields. Field of study and more information. And information is on our website at nicie.org/Conference. And you could actually sign up now for the Southern Conference on January 19th. Registration is available.

Arthur: Thank you both for that Great answer, and Kelli, as you said, it sounds like you're doing a lot and you are. It's you know, I felt it was really important, again, to just share what this is all about, and thank you both for providing all of that information and also the information about the upcoming conference that's taking place in January. So to wrap up our conversation, for schools and districts who are interested, how can they go about inquiring or applying for the NJIP services?

Kelli: So you can learn more on our website, you can go to www.njcie.org/njip, is a great place to start. Applications for next year will begin probably in March or April, but you can also look to apply, that’s for formal application, but you can also just see what we're doing if you just go to NJIP.

So any additional questions, please feel free to reach out to our email at [email protected].

Arthur: Thank you both so much for this great conversation. I appreciate you taking the time to talk and to share about the New Jersey Inclusion Project. And I hope you have a great rest of your day.

Brittany & Kelli: Thank you Arthur.

Arthur: We thank you for listening to this episode of the Inclusion Think Tank Podcast. This podcast is brought to you by New Jersey Coalition for Inclusive Education NJCIE.  Be sure to subscribe on YouTube, Spotify or Apple Podcasts. And don't forget to follow us on social media @NJCIE, Until next time.

This is part two of my conversation with Monica Ahern and Maureen Holly Kerne. The conversation continues as Monica and Maureen share what they wish districts knew about inclusive education and some of the success stories they have seen over the years.

Watch the Webinar here: https://www.facebook.com/IncludeNJ/videos/734331308528353

Arthur: This is the Inclusion Think Tank podcast brought to you by New Jersey Coalition for Inclusive Education NJCIE, where we talk about inclusive education why it works and how to make it happen. This is part two of my conversation with Monica Ahern and Maureen Holly Kerne. The conversation continues as Monica and Maureen share what they wish districts knew about inclusive education and some of the success stories they have seen over the years.

Arthur: So the next part of the conversation I would like to talk about what do you wish districts would understand about inclusive education and the importance of working collaboratively with parents?

Maureen: I think what I would hope that districts would understand about inclusive education is that it is based in research, it is based in theory, and it has been demonstrated over to improve students progress.

I also wish that districts would understand that all students can learn in inclusive environments with the appropriate supports and accommodations and that districts would create cultures that accept diversity and that accept all children as equals in their school district.

Monica: That it's a win-win situation for everyone because all children can learn best when they're in a classroom filled with diversity.

Right? We all learn from each other. So our neurotypical peers are students with IEPs. We all learn from each other. I always and I'm going to show my age. I talk about when we used to track students, right when we used to have the high track, the middle track, the low track of students, we knew that didn't work.

We proved that didn't work right because we learn from each other. And we all have different strengths and weaknesses. So when we put students together, we have students who want to put in self-contained classes or in resources. And those students bring so much to the conversation and to the classroom, and then they in turn learn from their peers.

So it is really a win-win situation. And the world is not segregated. Right? We all have to come together in the workplace and in the community and work together. So we need to learn that from when we start preschool. We need to learn how to accept each other and work together and be together, and the best place to do that is in preschool and through school. So everyone wins.

Maureen: I think the other thing that I think that districts need to understand is inclusion is not about opening a class. Inclusion is about a cultural shift in this school, including everybody in the school, the principal the assistant principal, the teachers, the janitors, the people in the lunchroom.

So it's really about creating a culture of acceptance in your school, in your district. And inclusion is never going to work by just opening by simply opening a class. Because, again, what we're doing is we have the inclusive class instead of looking at the entire school and saying, how do we become a culture that accepts diversity, that embraces diversity, that is able to appropriately address diversity? How do we become that?

When you start asking those hard questions, then I think you're starting to create a culture of inclusion.

Arthur: Yes, that is the culture of inclusion. I love that. That's another common topic that comes up in these conversations. And it goes beyond just the one inclusive classroom. It's not just a classroom. It's not a place, it's a whole culture of the school.

As you said again, including everyone from the top administration level down in the district, it really does take, like the village. It takes the whole the whole village every everybody to participate, make this a success. So thank you both for sharing that.

Arthur: So the next question, I know it can be hard to choose just one, because as you said, you've been in this, you know, in this profession for so long, for so many years, but was there a positive interaction that either one or both of you have had with the district as it relates to inclusive education that you can describe and share with us?

I think we've both had them. Maureen, do you want to start or do you want me?

Maureen: You can do yours. We practiced this already. We went over these.

Monica: Most recently, I had a really good experience with a family that I was working with. And the family had been in a district and I went to the district, of course, so actually the family was in a district and they had a really good experience.

Their child was completely included and doing great and then they moved into another district and things just went downhill. And the kid is amazing. He's an amazing musician and he's just a great kid. They moved into the new district. He started high school and the district immediately put him in a self-contained class, which he had never been in. For close to a year, we tried to work collaboratively with the district and have him included, and it just didn't work.

The reason I tell the story, because we want to show how we parents become so desperate to do what's right for their kids. They moved. They actually moved from one town to another and moved into a district where the students started his second year of high school and he is 100% included in high school. Went from a self-contained class, an M.D., self-contained class, multiply-disabled to full inclusion.

He's in the band. He is in the play in the crew. He doesn't like to act, but he's in the crew in the back. He is so happy. I got his first day of school picture, just so thrilled. I receive pictures of him playing in the band He's joined and just so thrilled and 100% included.

When he was in the other high school, he wasn't allowed to choose any of his electives because he had to go where the self-contained class chose all his own elective. SAT with him at his IEP meeting, sat with him with the guidance counselor. He was able to choose all his own electives. He's doing woodworking because his dad's in construction and he works with his dad. Just amazing.

The difference for this kid is just like so night and day, I can't even explain it. He literally went from a self-contained multiple-disabled class to full inclusion just by moving one town over. So if this town can do it, the town next door should be able to do it.

Maureen: And I'm going to tell you, I actually am going to deviate. I'm going to tell a totally different story. One of the things that I have been adamant about is transition. So students who are getting ready to move from school to adult life. So I've had many students who spent their life and their days in self-contained classes. And the parent expectation for one of the kids was that he was going to go into what's called a day program.

So in the adult world, that is a separate, self-contained program that students will go into if they need those supports and I met with the parent. And I met with the student and we did something called person-centered planning. And when we started to talk, it became very clear that the student wanted to go out and work. And I said to the mom, let's go for it. Let's go for it, and we did go for it. It was a long road. It was a hard road.

Maureen: But at the end of the day, this student has been working now for I'm going to now I'm going to age myself. I'm probably about ten years. He is the happiest. He is part of his community. He is employed. He goes to company picnics, he goes to company parties. So this is a child to the district. So I needed to be in a separate, self-contained class for his whole life. And the community took a chance on this child and said, we're going to hire him. He's going to become one of us. And he is just doing I still go and visit him at work.

He is just the happiest person in the world because he is out there, He's earning money. He's doing all of the things that we want to do. He had all of the same hopes and dreams that we did, and we were able to help him realize those dreams, and it was just an absolutely amazing experience.

Arthur: Thank you both for those great stories and listening to both of them, it it showed to me like what people are capable of when given the opportunity to be placed in specific settings. And they surprise people all the time. And it's just, you don't know what someone is capable of until you give them a chance to see what they can do.

So these are really great examples. And Monica, in the story that you shared, thinking about how just that one town over a few towns over, you can change and see something totally different than what you saw previously. And as you said, if one district can do it everyone should be able to do it, in their own way, because districts are different, they're different sizes and have different resources available to them and things like that.

But it can all be done, and can all be done successfully, matching up with your district and the needs of those students within that district. So thank you both for sharing those stories.

Arthur: And to wrap up this conversation, I would like for you to share what you feel makes you different. And other advocates, other parents advocates.

Maureen: We’re better!

Arthur: Perfect. Yes.

Maureen: I mean, I don't want to say it, but, I think I think and I'll start and Monica will chime in. I think what makes us not necessarily better, but different is that we have lived this our whole professional careers. We've lived in on both sides of the fence, meaning that we've been in the system and now we're working outside the system.

So we have a very good working knowledge of how the system works. I think the other thing is that both Monica and I and Monica has mentioned it before, have known each other for forever. We are both extremely passionate about what we do. We believe in what we do and we believe strongly believe that all kids can be included if we can figure out the right way to support them.

So I think with that belief and with that passion, we could change the world. We could take a world one kid at a time.

Monica: Absolutely. And I think for us, as a former director, I have dealt with advocates and like in any profession, some are good and some are not so good. But for us, it's not about the fight, it's about doing what's right for the kid.

So, again, you know, as both of us former directors, we understand both sides of the fence, but we also believe in going we're not going to go in there, you know, yelling and screaming. We're going to go in there trying to collaborate and make the relationship work, always thinking about what's in the best interest of the child, which is inclusion.

We're going to try get what we want because it's right for the kid, but it's not going to be an adversarial thing. We were going to try and work and again, I'm going to age us both, Maureen, but we've been around a long time and we know a lot of people.

Monica: So usually we can go in and have like a really professional conversation and say, hey, listen, let's sit down, let's talk. Here's how the parent is feeling, Here's what we know is right, Here's all the resources we can give you.

We can write goals. We can set somebody up a DVR or DVRS or a case manager. We can assist the district and assist the parent. So I think that’s it, and we're just better .

Arthur: Oh gosh, that was funny.

Yeah, that's it's great. And I really appreciate this conversation with you both. And it's it's funny, it reminded me of a friend of mine who was a teacher, and I came to do a presentation for one of her classes. She was an English teacher. And what I didn't share with you both is that I. I also have a disability.

I was born with spinal bifida and I went and spoke to her classroom one day, and it was the day that she was getting observed by her principal. This is someone I've known since middle school at the conversation with you both in the way that you've known each other for so long reminded me of that day because her principal said, I don't know what you two just did, but it was like, magnificent, and you need to take the show on the road like this. It was so good!

Arthur: She would ask, or she would say like a few words to me, and I would have a whole story about something that we did. So it just reminded me, you know, listening to you both talk and, as you said, you've known each other for so long and have worked together on inclusion and getting inclusion into schools in New Jersey and helping parents and working for that collaborative relationship between districts and parents is so important.

So thank you both for joining me for this episode and sharing your story and your experiences. thank you.

Monica: Thank you for having us.

Arthur: Yes. So I will be in touch with you soon.

Monica: sounds great. Thank you.

Arthur: Have a good day. Take care.

We thank you for listening to this episode of the Inclusion Think Tank podcast.

This podcast is brought to you by the New Jersey Coalition for Inclusive Education NJCIE. Be sure to subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcast, and don't forget to follow us on social media @NJCIE. Until next time.

On today's episode, I welcome my guests Monica Ahern and Maureen Picolli-Kerne, in this part one of our conversation, Monica and Maureen, share what has surprised them most having both worked in school districts and now as parent advocates. They also share some of the common challenges that parents face when they are pushing toward an inclusive education environment for their children.

On Today’s episode, I welcome my guest Katherine Kelly. Katherine is the Executive Director of IncludeNJ. Join us as we discuss why it is important to include parents and caregivers in the inclusive education conversation.

Arthur: This is the Inclusion Think Tank Podcast brought to you by New Jersey Coalition for Inclusive Education, NJCIE. Where we talk about inclusive education, why it works, and how to make it happen. On Today’s episode, I welcome my guest Katherine Kelly. Katherine is the Executive Director of IncludeNJ. Join us as we discuss why it is important to include parents and caregivers in the inclusive education conversation.

Arthur I would like to welcome everyone back to another episode of the Inclusion Think Tank podcast brought to you by the New Jersey Coalition for Inclusive Education. I'm your host, Arthur Aston, and I am happy to welcome my guest to the podcast today, Katherine Kelly. So, Katherine, thank you for joining me for this episode.

Katherine: Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Arthur: Yes. So, we talked a few minutes before I started recording and, let you know a little bit about myself, and so I'm excited to hear about you and to learn all of the great things you all are doing there at IncludeNJ, so again, thank you for joining me.

Katherine: Yeah. Thank you. I can just jump into it and let you know a little bit about myself and a little bit about the organization.

Arthur: Yeah, that would be great, can you tell us who you are and what you do? And I always like to know how people became interested in the world of inclusive education. And also if you could share something fun you'd like to do in your free time.

Katherine: Thanks. Yeah, that's a lot. I'm a full person, so I've got a lot to share with you, but I'll pick one.

Arthur: Great.

Katherine: Okay, So again, my name is Katherine Kelly. I am the executive director of IncludeNJ, and we are a brand-new organization that seeks to help parents and caregivers of students, 3 to 21. So running the whole gamut of pre-K all the way to transition. We are here to help those parents really navigate the school system and work towards an inclusive education for the students that they care for and the students in their families.

Myself, I have a background in nonprofit marketing. I have been doing nonprofit marketing for too many years, so I come to the organization through a different organization that I worked at previously. It seems like many of my roles in the past have always gravitated toward students and towards education. So I have worked for the Muscular Dystrophy Association and I've worked for Little Kids Rock I have worked for Eye2Eye.

I have worked for all these organizations that are kind of looking to have the same end goal, and that is to create a society that we want to have. We want our kids to grow up and model the society that we want to build for them. So that is what lands me here IncludeNJ is my background in nonprofits and my background in marketing.

Katherine: And really, when I talk about myself as a marketer, I like to think of myself more as kind of a storyteller of the organization that I work for. So I really have to have that kind of passion in me to be able to share those stories, and finding out about NJCIE, and finding out about the drive for inclusive education just was a natural fit in all of the work that I've been doing for over a decade now in nonprofits.

Arthur: Wow, that's great. I love that you said, you’re being A storyteller for the organization, that is it's so true because you really are. You’re putting out to the world what the organization does, telling their story. You are the storyteller. That's a great way to explain it. That's cool.

Katherine: So I am actually a part of a community chorus here in my hometown of Jersey City. So I love that's what I'm doing in my free time is just belting out Broadway and American songs from the American Songbook.

Arthur: Oh, that's great. That's so cool. I love Broadway. I love going to shows in New York. And I recently saw Fat Ham on Broadway before it closed.

it was a really fun show. But wow, that's great. So you're a singer. that's cool.

Arthur: So can you tell us what does inclusive education mean to you?

Katherine: Absolutely. So inclusive education, I can tell you from my own perspective as a parent, I discovered I found out a lot more about what goes on in a special education setting versus a general education setting, when my child was diagnosed with ADHD at a very young age. I got to learn the ins and outs of students being pulled out of their classrooms and being segregated for their special time with their paraprofessionals and with their special education educators. I also got a really good understanding of what that felt like. On the other side of it.

I was diagnosed myself through having my child diagnosed with ADHD, which is how it happens these days as especially as women. We are diagnosed much later in life and people find out, Hey, this whole time I've had ADHD that answers so many questions, so I was diagnosed later in life. And looking back at my own education back in the nineties, aging myself here. But I would have had such an easier time had I known that at the time.

I think that it would been great if other students around me also had an understanding of what was going on with me and that would have prepared them to be able to collaborate better with me and prepared me to be able to work in the classroom with everyone around me.

So that's my back story. And then as coming up and being the mama bear and fighting for your kids and fighting for the education that they're entitled to, I ran into so many roadblocks just as a mom, and I'm just a mom with a kid with ADHD. And I know that it's neurodiversity that a lot of us have and a lot of us are being we're getting more precise in how we diagnose that now.

So a lot of us are coming up and a lot of our children are coming up with ADHD. And so it is just generally out there and a lot of information is out there on how to teach children with those different learning differences that we have. Yet you still run into the walls in the general education classrooms.

Katherine: As a mom, just coming up in IEP meetings and 504 meetings, just like I don't understand why we can't have these accommodations for my kid. That's just going to make it easier on everybody involved. It was always a fight with my school district, and that was in everything I tried from pulling out of public school into charter systems and going back into the public school system.

I never encountered any collaboration as a parent in the school district that I'm in. So that's where I'm coming to this from, and seeing students that are completely pulled out of the system and watching how they don't have that integration with their peers and their peers don't have the integration either. That’s a problem on the other side like it's not like they’re living in a society where everyone is sitting exactly the same at a desk and everyone is, you know, and learns exactly the same way.

So these people are going to have to graduate from school at some point and work with tons of different people with tons of different learning styles, and we're not preparing our general students to do that either.

Arthur: Yeah, I really appreciate what you said about if you had known about ADHD earlier, your peers would have been able to better collaborate with you and understand and you would have a better understanding of them as well.

I think that's the the good thing about the early diagnosis and the early integration of both classes to have, people with disabilities in the general education setting to have everybody just understands everyone a lot better.

it makes it okay because as you said, eventually these children who are now in kindergarten or first or second grade, eventually they're going to graduate high school and be out in the working world where people like you said, they learn differently and they will have to work side by side and on teams with people who learn differently and have different styles of learning and ways of doing things, and the earlier we can have them working together and understanding each other better, I think that really sets everyone up for, a better future.

Katherine: Completely agree. And this is a party that we're trying to build. And I think that every generation does that, trying to build a better society for our children and the generation after us, and if we want to build that society, we have to model it in our education system.

Arthur: Wow.So true. You started talking a little bit about IncludeNJ when you were introducing yourself. Can you share a little bit more about the organization with us? Things like their mission and vision and the core values of includeNJ

Katherine: Yeah, absolutely. So as I said, IncludeNJ is a fairly new organization and we are coming into New Jersey as the least inclusive of all of the school districts, all the states. We're coming in as a tool for parents. We're supporting and empowering the family so all the families of students with disabilities because we feel like we need that kind of networking and advocacy to come from a kind of a groundswell of parents and caregivers and all of the people basically in the students lives that are fighting for their right to a free and appropriate public education.

So our mission is to support parents, and guardians. And I'm reading it because we just updated it and I'm so excited that we did. Support parents, guardians, caregivers, and their families to advocate for inclusion, equity and belonging and education. So that's for students with disabilities from age 3 to 21.

So like I said, we want to run the gamut from pre-K all the way to transition planning.

We want to ensure that the parents have someone they can go to, or community, that they can go to that also agrees that inclusive education is research-backed and is the way to go.

Arthur: Yeah, I love that a recurring theme is collaboration through this conversation and so many other conversations I've had on the podcast. It’s so true because I can remember as I've shared with you and other guests, I was born with a disability, so I've had it my whole life and going to school, I can remember what you said about advocating for your own child. I can remember my parents doing the same thing and, the mama and papa bear came out of them to make sure that I had what I was supposed to have in the general education setting.

Arthur: I was young, so I don't of course, I don't know everything that was going on. But from my perception, I can recall that it just seemed like, it was just my parents. There were never other parents that were involved.

Like I said, having a collaborative effort to make a change. So to hear that organizations like IncludeNJ and others like NJCIE are working together to make sure that, as you said, everyone in that child's life is on the same page to really move that child forward to reach their full potential.

It is really encouraging to hear. Really great to hear, and I'm proud to really be a part of NJCIE, and the work that they are doing to make these changes happen. And in our great state of New Jersey.

Katherine: Well, NJCIE is an amazing organization and they are what I'm seeing with NJCIE is that they are really going in at the school level, at the district level. So going in on that side of it

What IncludeNJ does is give a voice to the parents on the other side of it and really give them a friend on the inside that knows like knows what's happening. I know when I first started meeting with the school and started having these special education meetings for my own child, I had no idea and I had no idea where to look and what were my rights as a parent.

Katherine: Am I allowed to come in and see what's happening in the classroom? Am I allowed to get any kind of information from the school? And the school wasn't forthcoming on giving me like, here's what you can do. The school wasn't forthcoming on telling me like, this is your right to be able to have all of this information on what's happening with your student throughout the year and all of this collaboration.

So going into it, we actually have former special education leaders that help out and speak directly with parents and review their IEPs or review their final four designations and give advice and advice on how to advocate for their own students. And if that's exhausted that the parent is not able to do that on their own.

We have special education professionals that have been in districts for years and years that are now retired from the districts that can come in and advocate for the student and be there as a support for the parent so that they're getting all of the information they need to really collaborate with the school, which is what we all want. We just want to come in and be able to work with the school as a partner to come in and ensure that the student has the education that they deserve.

Arthur: Yes, the partnership is key. It's so important to have those partnerships with everyone nvolved, because it takes everybody to move hat student forward and to again, have that collaboration with everybody is really key.

Katherine: right

Arthur: Yes. So my last question I have for you is: Why do you feel it is important to include parents and caregivers in the inclusive education conversation? And the second part of that group, this question is what positive impact do you feel that parents or caregivers can bring to the inclusive education conversation?

Katherine: Well, yeah, that definitely goes off more into what I was just alluding to about the partnership, right? So having the parents at the table and having them working directly with the educators and being really involved in the student's care and the students education moving forward, that ensures that at home they are learning as well that the education doesn't stop when they walk out of the school building, that education continues and it's all coming from different directions, but leading the student to the same place and giving the student education that they deserve and that they are entitled to.

It's also important that parents are educated on what their rights are in the state of New Jersey. And a lot of that information is buried. And it's not easy to go just Google and figure it out because everything is in legalese and it's all there's so much out there that sifting through it can be time-consuming.

And on top of that, it's just confusing different directions that you can go in with your own student's education.

Katherine: So being able to sit down with the school and come up with a plan and have that plan agreed to by everyone in the room, that is just that is exactly what our students need. So that's the importance of having parents in there for inclusive education.

Also, some parents don't understand the research behind inclusion. Some parents will be told, you know, the best thing for your student is to be pulled out. The best thing for your student is to be in a segregated space and that's not the case. We've got years and years of research backing that up, that that is not what's best for the students.

It's not what's best for the students on either side of it. The general education students that aren't dealing with the special education and the special education students, it doesn't work for anybody.

What works is to have everyone working together in the classroom because everyone is learning from everyone else in that setting. And it's a shame that that information isn't as readily available to parents.

Katherine: So that's another reason that they should be fully engaged and present and asking for inclusive education, because our laws say that we have we're supposed to be delivering a least restrictive environment to all students and the least restrictive environment isn't segregation in any way, the least restrictive environment is keeping them with their peers in their general education classroom.

Arthur: Right. Yeah, That is, like you said, the research and the law are, you know, everything is there. It's written out that, inclusive education is, the best way to go. And, it's really great. Again, all the work that you all are doing there to make sure that the parents are educated about inclusion, inclusive education, they can figure it out together with you all and the other people and the other people involved in their child's education, like what's best for their child.

And I can definitely relate to, as you said, how information is just not out there. It's not easy to find sometimes. I can remember that again with my parents just looking for things and trying to figure things out. And this was I was a child in the eighties and nineties. And so, you know, the Internet wasn’t, Google wasn't there really when I was younger.

Arthur: So it was even a little more difficult to find information, I'm sure, for my parents. But, I'm glad that parents have that resource, the resources available to them through IncludeNJ, and the great work you're doing there.

Katherine: So back in August as school is just kind of ramping up to get started, we did a webinar for parents on our Facebook page and we've left that there as just a resource for parents so that if they have questions about going into IEP meetings and things like that, we're a resource for them.

So that recording is available on our Facebook page.

Arthur: Great. Thank you so much for mentioning that. We will be sure to include the link to your Facebook page in the show notes so everyone can go view that webinar with the much needed information to get the school year started. So school is up in full force at this point.

So it would be a great resource for parents to have access to that. So thank you for bringing that up.

Katherine: Absolutely.

Arthur: So thank you. Thank you for this conversation and again, for sharing your information with us about yourself and IncludeNJ and looking forward to connecting with you again at some point for some other projects and things.

So I hope you enjoy the rest of your day and we will be in touch soon.

Katherine: Okay. Thank you so much for having me.

Arthur: Yes, you're welcome. And thank you,

Today, I welcome you back for part two of my conversation with Christopher Conklin On this episode, Chris tells us how he defines inclusive education and shares why he is not a fan of the pull-out resource room model for special education.

On today's episode, I welcome my guest, Christopher Conklin. Chris is the superintendent of the Caldwell-West Caldwell Public School District in New Jersey. This is part one of our conversation.

Join me as I welcome Chris along with Fred from NJCIE. We discussed Chris's 30 years as an educator and we found out his thoughts on the topic of what characteristics make a good leader.

On today’s episode, I welcome my guest Dr. Jessica Neu. Jessica is one of the NJCIE Honors recipients of 2023. Jessica is the Director of Curriculum and Instruction for the Perth Amboy School District. Join our conversation as we discuss some of the inclusive programs Perth Amboy has implemented to create a district-wide culture of inclusion.

Arthur: This is the Inclusion Think Tank podcast brought to you by New Jersey Coalition for Inclusive Education NJCIE, where we talk about inclusive education, why it works, and how to make it happen. The NJCIE Honors recognizes local champions who are making a difference in inclusive education for schools, children and families in New Jersey. On today's episode, I welcome my guest, Dr. Jessica Neu.

Jessica is one of the NJCIE honors recipients of 2023. Jessica is the director of Curriculum and Instruction for Perth Amboy School District. Join our conversation as we discuss some of the inclusive programs Perth Amboy has implemented to create a district-wide culture of inclusion.

Arthur: So I would like to welcome everyone back to another episode of the Inclusion Think Tank podcast brought to you by the New Jersey Coalition for Inclusive Education. I'm your host, Arthur Aston, and I am happy to welcome my guest on today's show, Dr. Jessica Neu. So, Jessica, thank you for joining me today for this podcast in this conversation.

Jessica: Oh, thank you for having me. Glad to be here.

Arthur Yes. So you are one of the 2023 NJCIE honors recipients. So congratulations on that. And we were just talking about the videos that we create for our honors recipients. And I was just telling you how I really enjoyed your video.

Jessica: Thank you. They are so beautifully done. Yes.

Arthur: So to start the conversation, can you just share a little bit with us about yourself, who you are, what you do? And I always like to ask people to include something fun that you like to do in your free time. If you have any.

Jessica: Well, thank you for the introduction. I am Dr. Jessica Neu, and I'm a very proud New Jersey educator who has a passion for equity and inclusive education.

I earned an undergraduate degree in special education from Penn State University. I earned a master's in Seton Hall in leadership management and policy. I have a graduate certificate from Rutgers in Applied Behavior Analysis and a Ph.D. from Columbia University in teaching as applied behavior analysis. I was a general and special education teacher, and I am now going on nine years of central office leadership experience, formerly as a special education director and now as the director of Curriculum and Instruction.

So, I have some free time. I really do enjoy my work. So I do put a lot of time into the work, but I do exercise often. I love to travel, and I just love hanging out with my husband, spending time with my friends and family.

Arthur: Yes, that's always fun. Hanging out with friends and family and the summertime here in Jersey is always a good time.

Yeah. So that's great. Can you share with us what inclusive education means to you?

Jessica: So inclusive education, to me, is the greatest equalizer in education. It means providing individualized, authentic, sustained and really meaningful educational experiences in the general education setting for all students. I believe that it is the core belief that everybody really belongs. So what better way to prepare students for post-secondary than providing them with inclusive educational opportunities that mirror the diverse world that we live in?

I truly believe that that is the ultimate role of any educator.

Arthur: Yeah, that is so, so true, like the diverse world that we live in. As I shared with you and, I've shared on the podcast before that I have a disability, I was born with it and just realizing that I, as a person with a disability, have a place in the world and, need to be included.

Especially thinking back to my school years, elementary and middle school and high school, and how I was thankfully always included in things because in society outside of that, after college, like you're expected to be included in the workplace and, all those other spaces out in the real world outside of the classroom.

So it's great to be able to have that experience start when you're young in the classroom and just give for those students with disabilities and the students without to have that experience of all being together. And, just figuring things out together is really important.

Jessica: Yeah, that's what we're preparing all students for. We're preparing them for post-secondary where they want to go on to college or join the workforce. They have to be ready and have the skills that they need to be successful in whatever it is that they want to do. And a part of that is being included in society. And our society is extremely diverse.

Arthur: Yes, absolutely. And as you mentioned, when you were introducing yourself, you are the director of curriculum and instruction for the Perth Amboy Public Schools, which is the most inclusive urban district in New Jersey. That's really great to hear.

Jessica: Yes! yes! yes! yes!

Arthur: That’s really great. So can you share some of the things that you and your colleagues there have implemented in the district to try to promote inclusion?

I'm thinking of like your Panther Life program and the unified sports Program. And I'm sure you've done a few other things there as well.

Jessica: Yeah, we are so, so proud of this accomplishment and being the largest urban, inclusive school district, public school district in the state of New Jersey is something that we hold near and dear to our hearts.

I have the fortunate opportunity to work alongside many like-minded leaders and staff, so I'm very lucky in Perth Amboy. We have expanded our inclusion opportunities for all students at the elementary level and we provided specialized research-based instructional supports, especially in the area of reading, to help promote inclusive practices for all students.

Yes. So our Panther Life program is something that we are very proud of. Students at the high school level are able to engage in meaningful work-based learning experiences and community-based instruction to really prepare them for post-secondary. We have three seasons of unified sports, which is competitive in which non-disabled than disabled peers compete. We have a soccer, basketball, and spring track program in our entire high school community really rallies around that program.

We have a very skilled and dedicated teacher, Dr. Amanda Martin, who is also the coach of many of these seasons and we wouldn't be where we are with this program without the support of all of those staff members and leaders at that high school.

Arthur: That’s so great to hear of so many programs that you have. I love the Panther Life program concept of working, just really having something to do there in the school and, you know, learning the ins and outs of all.

All of that goes into work and running a business. In the video, I think it was like a coffee shop or something.

Jessica: Yes a little pop-up that we do to expand upon that when we move into our new high school in 24-25 to open up a cafe. But the students really are in the community working in Walgreens or the Salvation Army or the Housing Authority.

We've got many community businesses that we partner with to provide students with those experiences so that they have multiple opportunities to practice different career skills throughout their high school career with us, to really prepare them for anything that they would want to do when they graduate. So we like having the students out in the community for those authentic natural experiences as best as possible.

But of course, we love having them in the building too, because the coffee's great and in the winter they have hot chocolate and so there's never a bad day with coffee and hot chocolate.

Arthur: That’s right. That is right. I'm not much of a coffee drinker, but I can agree when I do have coffee, it's like, okay, this is good. This is a good day.

Jessica: One of the best things I love about the program, too, is that they partner with the YMCA in town. And so instead of taking a traditional P.E. class at the high school, the students go to the YMCA at least one day a week, and some students go for a work experience. But everybody goes to learn about physical fitness and to maintain healthy bodies.

And so that partnership has also been really important to us.

Jessica: Wow, that's really great. Having partnerships within the community is very helpful. I think one of the things that I have learned in my life, being in my forties now, is a lot of the, I guess, misunderstandings about those who have, who live with disabilities comes from the lack of knowledge that people have and the lack of conversation that happens.

There's not much conversation about people with disabilities. So the more that we can expose the outside world to disabilities and have these conversations and have these partnerships and relationships with companies and organizations like you mentioned the YMCA, that's really, really great.

Arthur: And it builds the relationship. And it also, raises the awareness of disability.

Jessica: It raises the capacity of our community members. They're learning right alongside of us and the students. And, there are lots of times when we have to provide some friendly reminders, please talk to the student, not to not to the job coach. And but having those conversations has been very helpful to us and the partner and most importantly, to the student.

Arthur: Yes. Yeah. And to move on to our next question, I think through doing this podcast and interviewing different guests and having these conversations, one thing that comes up quite often is how are individualistic, and individualized, each case is for people who have disabilities, and inclusion looks different for every district and again, look different for every student. So can you share some of the success stories you have had with non-English speaking students who are classified for special education?

And can you also describe some of the particular challenges that may have come up?

Jessica: Mm hmm. So certainly one of the biggest challenges that have faced us and probably many districts out there is the challenge with hiring Spanish-speaking and bilingual certified special education teachers, especially at the secondary level, when we're also looking for content certification, content expertise.

So that has been a barrier. certainly. We have a beautiful dual language program in which we service over a thousand students pre-K through grade eight. We do have students with disabilities, those in the preschool dual language program, and we are looking this year to finally expand and launch a special education program at the dual language school starting kindergarten and at the elementary level.

We wanted to start this years ago and then Covid happened and then it became very difficult to find again a bilingual certified special education teacher. But we feel like we are ready with personnel this year and we're ready to launch. And we have a fantastic director of Special Services and an equally great and dynamic principal of the Rose Lopez School who are both really committed to this work and ensuring that students with disabilities will be successful in the dual language program.

Jessica: The goal of a dual language program is for students to be able to be bi-literate in that they are reading, writing, speaking and listening in more than one language. So in our district, the other language that we teach in is Spanish. So students will be bi-literate in both English and Spanish by the time that they have left our middle school, which is eighth grade and usually many years before that.

So we're hoping to provide students with disabilities that same opportunity this year as we have in our preschool level and working to expand that.

Arthur: Wow. That's really great. I love that.

Jessica: I love that too! I love it so much, because it's equity. It's just it goes beyond providing the services you're required to provide in an IEP.

I think that the IEP is a great start, but we should be doing so much more like we talked earlier about the playgrounds. There is a difference between access and inclusion and what inclusion really means is that students have opportunities to meaningfully participate in all programs that we offer, and it's our role and responsibility to help the student get there and make sure that he or she has what he needs to be successful.

So I love that I have all of my faith in our director as special services, in our principal of the Rose Lopez School to launch this to this year.

Arthur: Yes. And I like what you said that, you know, the IEP is a great place to start. Going above and beyond that is so important because you never know, what each child is capable of achieving until you raise that bar and you really, push them and challenge them to, you know, meet those goals and to, keep pushing them.

I think that's a really great thing to mention, You know, IEP is a great, great place to start, but to go above and beyond

Jessica: I feel like compliance and the special education code and the administrative code that's the minimum that's the minimum of what we're expected to do. I think ethically, as educators, we should be doing much more and going beyond compliance.

Arthur: Yes, we should. you're right about that. It's so it's so great.

Again, I shared with you and before on the podcast, just seeing how far things have come since I was a child and going to school and seeing where they're heading and, having this conversation with you now to, you know, hear about the goals there for your school district. It's really encouraging and really makes me happy to hear that this type of work is being done and people are committed to it, to making it happen.

Arthur: You talked a little bit about your time in your studies at Columbia University. Can you talk a little bit more about that and the research work that you did there on topics related to the science of teaching and more specifically the implementation of Applied Behavior analytic teaching strategies for all students?

A message from your host, in the following answer Jessica mentions she graduated in 2023, when the actual year is 2013

Jessica: I really, really was so fortunate to be a part of that program. And I graduated in 2023. The teaching as Applied Behavior Analysis Program at Columbia University provides graduate level students both theoretical coursework during the evening at the university and during the day provides practical experience in partner lab classroom sites. The comprehensive application of behavior analysis to schooling, or what we call CABAS

This was founded by Dr. Robert Douglas Greer over 40 years ago, and it's an instructional technology based on data. So CABAS is a learner-driven, scientifically validated instructional set of procedures. And we implement those procedures to address student learning and performance behaviors.

So in the CABAS classrooms, generally, a master's level university student is assigned as a teaching assistant and the PhD students are assigned as the teachers of the classrooms.

All students are provided with university-level supervisory support and in we apply the tactics, behavior, analytic tactics and strategies when students are experiencing learning difficulties. And we also conduct study replication and new research as it applies to learning procedures implemented with students with and without disabilities. So my research was on observational learning and in fact there were no disabled students in my dissertation, which was published in a couple of years after I graduated.

I don't recall the year, but I just find that remarkable. It's just how it ended up. It wasn't intended to be that way, but the teaching tactics and strategies of applied Behavior analysis are really applicable to all learners. We measure teacher performances, we measure each student's response. Each student response data are collected and those data are graphed and they are analyzed using a decision tree protocol, which is a research-based algorithm for analyzing student data.

Jessica: And when we identify a problem in the context of learning, we go to the research and the literature, and we select a research-based tactic to help the student acquire that skill that we're working on. So we measure the learn units, we call them that teacher-student back and forth interactions, and and we tie them to the state standards.

So we measure the number of student learning objectives met and the number of New Jersey student learning standards also met. So students are successful. And when I taught a fifth grade class in the CABAS program, students at that level of verbal behavior were also collecting and recording their own data. They were using the decision tree protocol themselves and some of them were even selecting research-based tactics to implement.

So CABAS is usually what people sometimes don't think it is. They hear the word applied behavior analysis and they assimilate it with a self-contained autism program usually, and they assimilate it with discrete trial instruction. But it is so much more than that programed instruction, personalized system of instruction and direct instruction all come out of the applied behavior analytic research.

And with the CABAS program, a lot of the students that we have worked with, like I said, our general education students.

Arthur: What advice can you give to school districts that may think that inclusion is difficult to achieve?

Jessica: I don’t know, if it's inclusion or it's just anything new or different, I would take the approach the same approach with inclusion as I would most other things that I may want to change from an organizational structure standpoint.

So what I did when I first came to Perth Amboy, certainly with also the help of the NJCIE, thankfully you guys are around to help with this. I prepared and presented the data to all of our key stakeholders and I think presenting the data and sharing information and knowledge is very powerful and most of the time and in many of the cases when I was working with stakeholders in Perth Amboy, people were just weren't aware of the data and they weren't aware of the research on inclusion.

Jessica: So those are sort of two, first easy steps; is gathering information and data, sharing it with key stakeholders, and then taking a look at the research and also sharing that with key stakeholders. So to me, that's the first step in the process. I think when you are wanting to make any type of systematic change, certainly from that point, hearing the concerns, the needs, the strengths of the key stakeholders and what they think that we would need to move forward in terms of resources, professional development, different types of applications, personnel is also really important.

So hearing folks and their potential concerns and needs that they may have currently in the classroom and struggles and ideas and coming up with solutions together and always trying to keep the conversation solution-oriented is a very important part of the process and coming up with a common understanding of a core set of values and beliefs that everybody can then hang their hat on.

So it's a multilayered process to get to really where you want to be. But I think if you skip any of those steps along the way, you may have some disgruntled folks that you're working with. I do feel that everybody should have a voice in the process. I have learned so much more when I have genuinely included other people in the process, because that's the beauty of working with a team of stakeholders. Not one person can ever think of anything on their own.

And so always having a team behind you and beside you and in front of you is so important to help you reach that goal. And then as the leader sharing out the goals and a timeline of when you want to meet those goals is also really important. So guiding with a clear vision is really, really critical.

Arthur: Yes, having the right people involved and I like what you said, keeping things solution-oriented. like, keep your eye on the prize and what the end goal is. Because also, as you mentioned, anything where you're trying to change has challenges. It's going to be difficult and hard to change it.

Jessica: Yes, it's hard.

Arthur: So anything that you're trying to accomplish is, you're going to come up with the roadblocks and, you have to detour a little bit and, but always remaining the solution focused is, great, great advice. So thank you.

Jessica: Yeah. Like I appreciate when people identify the challenges. I think the challenge is or when folks try to identify, you know, things along the way that may pose a challenge to what we're trying to get to is great because that will only make for a smoother process in the end. I would hate to have somebody say, Well, I probably should have told you six months ago, we don't have the money for this.

Or, you know, I probably should have told you three months ago, we've never been trained in X, so knowing barriers up front is important. But then coming up with some solutions to help with those barriers I think is equally as important.

Jessica: So I'm here, I'm all ears. Come to me with your problems and your challenges, but also come to me with your solutions.

And your idea is for moving forward.

Arthur: Yes. So important! So as we wrap up this conversation, can you share how the curriculum and instruction department can support inclusive education?

Jessica: in every way. I’m hoping are there at some point while we're still here on this beautiful earth we won't even have a special education department any longer.

It should just be the office of Curriculum and Instruction, and we support all learners. But everything that we do through the Office of Curriculum and Instruction certainly does include our multilingual learners, our students with disabilities. And it may be as simple as a presentation to staff on a new reading program. But that new reading program also has to provide accommodations and modifications for students with disabilities.

For students who are multilingual learners, staff presentations, family presentations, curriculum guides, resources that we adopt all have to have all students in mind. We're no longer talking about most. We're talking about all.

Arthur: Yes, everyone. everybody. Yes, that is so true, and that is inclusion. Like you said, it doesn't say most, it says all.

Jessica: Yeah. Perth Amboy has always done a great job with that. They have always done a fantastic job with that and that's why I, I'm fortunate to be in the position that I'm in I'm so grateful that they have given me this opportunity to be on the curriculum side because now I'm I'm challenging myself to continue to take what they have done that's been so great and to continue to enhance it and make it better.

So they've gone beyond compliance. But I want to continue pushing myself to push them to go further beyond compliance. Compliance.

Arthur: Yes. Dr. Jessica Nu, thank you for this time, this conversation, sharing the great things you all are doing there in your district to promote inclusion. And, I'm very happy that we actually met in person before I interviewed you.

We met at the summer conference a few weeks ago, so it was great to introduce myself to you then and to have a more in-depth conversation with you now during this podcast. So thank you so much for your time and best of luck to you all there and I will definitely be in touch with you soon.

Jessica: Okay Thank you so much.

Arthur: Great. We thank you for listening to this episode of the Inclusion Think Tank podcast. This podcast is brought to you by New Jersey Coalition for Inclusive Education, NJCIE. Be sure to subscribe on YouTube, Spotify or Apple Podcasts, and don't forget to follow us on social media at @NJCIE. Until next time.

On today’s episode, I welcome my guest Alison Zylinski. Alison is the Director of Special Services for Bradley Beach School District. She is one of NJCIE’s Honors recipients of 2023. Join our conversation as we explore what inclusive education means to Alison, and what advice she has for districts that think inclusion is difficult to achieve.

Arthur: This is the Inclusion Think Tank podcast brought to you by New Jersey Coalition for Inclusive Education NJCIE, where we talk about inclusive education why it works and how to make it happen. The NJCIE Honors recognizes local champions who are making a difference in inclusive education for schools. Children and families in New Jersey. On today's episode, I welcome my guest, Alison Zylinski.

Alison is the director of Special services for Bradley Beach School District. She is one of NJCIE honors recipients of 2023. Join our conversation as we explore what inclusive education means to Alison and what advice she has for districts that think inclusion is difficult to achieve.

Arthur: I would like to welcome everyone back to the Inclusion Think Tank podcast brought to you by New Jersey Coalition for Inclusive Education. I'm your host, Arthur Aston, and I am happy to welcome my guest to the podcast today, Alison Zylinski.

And thank you for joining me today for this episode and to share your story and your experience.

Alison: Well, thanks for inviting me. I'm very excited to talk about inclusion today.

Arthur: Yes. So we have you on as a guest today because you were recently awarded with the NJCIE Honors as one of the recipients for this year.

And so we are really excited about that and the work that you're doing. So I'm looking forward to having you, you know, share all the great things you're doing there in your school district.

Alison: Thank you.

Arthur: Yes. So to start off the conversation, can you just share a little bit with the audience about yourself, who you are, what you do, and some things you like to do in your free time? If you have any free time.

Alison: So I am a social worker. I started in community mental health. I started my career working with families and children involved in the Division of Youth and Family Services, which is now our division of child protection and permanency. And so I used to do what's called family preservation. I used to go into families and try to help the families maintain custody of their children.

So whatever needed to happen happened. And so that really started my career working with families and working with children. I've always been really excited about education. I've always enjoyed being a student.

And so when the opportunity came to go into school social work, it was a natural fit for me. And so I've been a school social worker for probably almost 25 years, and I've been at Bradley Beach here for 18 years.

And I never thought I'd be here that long. I started as a part-time school social worker here and just worked and just fell in love with the community and serving this community, it's really been sort of like my passion, my life's work. And so this is where I chose to stay for that long. And I don't know where my path will take me in the future, but here I am.

Alison: I have four children at home, so I don't have a lot of free time. So when I'm not working because work takes up a lot of my time, I'm trying to be a mom to them and spend time with my family. Fun fact is, I'm a snowboarder, so you might not think that, but I started snowboarding in my twenties and my husband and I still enjoy doing it. So all my kids, I taught all my kids how to snowboard, so that was fun.

Arthur: Oh, that's fun. Yeah, it is. It's a lot of fun. My friends, they always find, like, random things on Instagram or TikTok of, like, accessible extreme sports. And they're just like, You have to try it.

Alison: Yeah. I am not extreme. My board does not leave the snow,

Arthur: They are like, you have to try it. Look, it's accessible. And I'm like, Yeah, okay.

So yeah that seems like a lot of fun. I'll definitely be checking that out, one of these days for sure.

Arthur: So I always like to ask this question of our guest and that is what does inclusive education mean to you?

Alison: It means equality.

It means everyone having equal access to good instruction and to the general education curriculum. And I feel like that's the starting point. Here we have a mindset that when we do have a child that's eligible for services, we go with what do they need? Not where or what placement are we putting or what program are we putting them in?

Because here it's assumed they're staying in their current class, in their current program. Where we going to fill in those needs and help them access what they need to access to progress and to support them.

Alison: So it's equality and over the years seeing comparing because I worked in schools for a long time and I've worked in schools with self-contained classrooms and I've worked with pull-out resource classrooms and seeing that and honestly, the progression of students educational skills and abilities, it doesn't really change whether you're in a smaller class or a larger class.

But what does change is their ability to form relationships with their typical developing peers and their friends in the general education classroom.

Alison: It limits their ability to access rich conversation and really hear from a wide range of students with a wide range of abilities. And so so we're removing those limits and just giving students what they need and it's not always, it's sometimes it's a challenge sometimes.

But when you have students with learning challenges, it's filling in where they have those weaknesses and working with their strengths. When you have students with behavioral challenges, it's a lot of work in trying to support them and have them correct them, which is difficult because sometimes it can, disrupt the classroom and what's going on.

But we've had great success here because we are very like a family here. And it's all about relationships. And I truly believe I know that we've saved lives because some of my students that we've been able to maintain in general education if they were in another district, they probably would have been placed out of district.

When you when you change a child's trajectory and put them in an out of district, then their their path back is very long and difficult. And whether it would even happen. So I don't know. It's one case at a time. It's one student at a time. Everybody's different. General education. Kids are different as much as special education students.

Alison: And I also supervise our English Language Learner program. And so it's the inclusion is about them, too. It's about, although they are learning English as a second language, they should also have access to general education just like everybody else and then filling in what they need.

Arthur: I love that you've said that every individual is that, they're an individual.

So, inclusion may look different for them and it may look different for the next student. And that's just so true. And it's so important to mention. So I'm glad that you brought that up.

And also the students who are learning English and the challenges they may face making things inclusive for them and helping them learn is also, you know, really important to mention.

So I'm glad you brought those those two things up.

Arthur: Also in your introduction of yourself, you mentioned that you are working with the Bradley Beach School District and you are the director of special services there. So can you share with us some of the ways that you and your colleagues there have worked to make your school more inclusive?

Alison: It's been it's been a process, but I feel like it's become part of our culture here. And it started not when I was in this position. I certainly did not ignite this, but I've really supported it and made it sort of my vision to extend it and, grow it.

One of the things is when you start in preschool and you have all kids coming into preschool and you're saying all your kids belong in a preschool class together, there shouldn't be a separate class for preschool because they're all learning how they're learning social and emotional skills and some academic readiness skills.

But just learning how to be a learner is what they're doing in preschool. And so all children come into preschool and some are ready to be learners and some don't even know where to begin. And then we're supporting them through that process. But that’s where we start. And then so when we start with preschool and we support them and we give them what they need, they're then that naturally progresses into kindergarten.

And you certainly need the support of resources. You need the support of your board. And our Board of Education here at Bradley Beach has been very supportive of making sure that we have the resources that we need. And because, I mean, in reality, if I just said a bunch of like all our resource classes, I could take my students out of Gen-Ed, and I can service them with much less staff, you know, and but that's really not in their benefit. That's not what they need.

Alison: That’s not life. When they leave, when they leave education, they're not going to have somebody make accommodations for them in different settings. And in the workplace. And so it's really it's really kind of continuing and growing. You know, some of the foundations that we had here and having an administration team that is in favor of inclusion and having a board of education, of favor and willing to support those resources and seeing what a difference it makes in our students because you can see it everywhere when you see it on the playground because students that have they have a disability, but they're socializing and interacting with their peers just like anybody else.

They're forming those relationships. It makes it all worthwhile. And I see it every day, so it makes it really special.

Arthur: What you just said is really special that, you know, you have all of the support, like you said, from the school board to the administration level down to all of the people you work with and see every day in your school building.

And the fact of starting it, like you said from the very beginning and preschool that this is what a classroom looks like. And most importantly, this is what the world looks like when you're outside of the classroom. Everybody is together and, having that, visual at such a young age that, everybody belongs here together is very strong and very powerful to to see.

The students will remember that for sure, as they grow older and the experiences they've had there.

Arthur: So you mentioned that you have been at Bradley Beach for so many years. Can you share just one of the many student success stories that you have seen during your time there at the District?

Alison: Just one?

Arthur: Well, you can share a few if you'd like.

Alison: I’m passionate about reading. I think reading is essential for all students, all individuals to be able to function in our world. And so when I do when we do have struggling readers, it's it is a big concern.

And that's really where I'm going to focus a lot of attention on is to see those students progress in that area. And we have great reading specialists here. We have some good investments, a good programs. We have great special education teachers here that are supporting those students and developing those skills. And I've seen I've seen pretty incredible cases of students.

A lot of times we get students that are that are identified as eligible for special education. They come in from different districts and they might come in at third grade or fourth grade, and they're reading on a first-grade level. And so we we put them in, we give them intervention and we monitor their progress. And I've seen I've seen a handful of students move up three or four grade levels and get right near like right near below grade level in their reading, which is which is tremendous.

So The good thing about us is we're small. I know every student's first name and so you're not going to fall through the cracks and we're going to and everyone's going to do our best to make sure that you have everything that we can provide you before you leave here, for our students.

We are a pre-K to 8 District. So then they do go on to high school. So that's really our focus.

Alison: So I've had students that have said I remember when I came here and I couldn't read and now I can read. They say I remember when I couldn't read and because I came here, you know, later on, like in their mid-primary years and they remember struggling with that and now they can and I can probably name right now, five different students that have just made incredible growth in that area and so that's really great.

I have five students on the spectrum that we have in our Gen-Ed classroom who are with very social peers. And so they become part of their classroom. And they develop social relationships. And we know that that's one of the areas where students on the spectrum with autism they struggle with that social piece, that communication piece.

And so I always think to myself, like if you're in an autism program, and you're you struggle with that socialization, communication and you're in a classroom with other students that are likely struggle with socialization and communication, and how is that going to help support your socialization of communication? If everyone else is struggling and maybe the teacher doesn't struggle, maybe the teacher can do that for you, but that's not natural.

And so I don't know. I feel like looking at those those students with deficits in their communication and their socialization and their language is they need to be in language-rich environments. And that's Gen-Ed, and that's not self-contained. So just those are a couple of examples of what we do as far as academics.

Alison: And then we've had really significant behavioral challenges. We've had students that came here and we worked really hard to get their behavior under control and then they would leave. They left and in their new district, they were put in a classroom and then they came back to us. We put them right back into Gen-Ed, and it and it and it worked.

And we were able to give them what they needed emotionally, and socially. And so for them to function and, at times it's a lot of work and you question it and you wonder how long to go on, but those are just some examples of what we're able to do here.

Alison: And I know one of your questions was, are we able to do it because we're small?

Yes or no.

I don't think it's impossible at other places. But I just feel like you have to be dedicated to the cause. You have to be dedicated. You have to be you have to have the resources to be able to do that. And you have to know that it’s worth it. It's all that effort and energy is certainly benefits these students.

Arthur: Yes. Yes. To everything that you've said. It's great. It's really great. It has to be rewarding for you all to hear, like you said, those stories of students who have gone on to high school and beyond to come back and say, I remember like you said, when I couldn't read, but, I worked with you all and you all worked with those students and, taught them how to read and things like that.

And that's just it's really, really heartwarming for me to hear like those types of success stories because that's what they really are. It's a true success and I think a testament to, as you mentioned before, the dedication that you have from everybody in the district at all levels who are so committed to helping to make these changes happen and then to make the inclusion, part of the culture of the district and of what the students see and experience every day.

Alison: And we definitely set up a structure like that. We have tried to develop, and one of my focuses is, providing time within the school day to give students what they need. So when they do need more they're not missing something to get something.

And it doesn't always work that some of our students need a lot. And there's not only great time within the schedule to a certain amount right? Because there's a lot that we have to fill within a student's schedule. But even given a little bit of that time so that when we do include kids, we are able to give them supplemental instruction.

In the middle school, there are a lot of times they're not working on those basic skills anymore. But if that's what they need, then we kind of deliver that through a supplemental instruction type of program in that is what I need period to support their learning.

And our teachers are great with that because we have a strong M.T.S.S. program, too. So even before they get to special education, we're doing intervention with them.

We're doing tier one, two, three, or we're getting them, when they're not making progress, we move on, and then sometimes they do come to me. But when they come to special ed, when we do test them and we evaluate them, it might change the sum of the services that we give them. But it doesn't change their placement or their program.

Alison: We just provide them with additional programming. So that kind of strategic planning in your master schedule in seeing how that you can accommodate has to be a priority of everybody’s. Your district has to allow you to do that, and be okay with that.

I feel like it's good for all students because even students who might not need reading intervention at that time. Some students are high fliers and they can get enrichment. They can be pushed a little further. Or sometimes students need a lot of remediation. They might not need consistent intervention, but maybe they are having trouble comprehending a certain lesson or unit, and the teacher had the opportunity to come back to them and work with them on areas where they're struggling.

So it's really it's really beneficial for all learners, as far as I'm concerned. And so it allows that time.

My teachers are fantastic. My, instructional days are fantastic. They, make sure the students have what they need. They're always coming to me. I want to pull Johnny out and I want to I want to I want to work with him during during the period because I feel like he needs help in this area.

I’m not having to go look for them. They're coming to me. And this is what I want to do. And I'm like, Yeah, go. Yeah. So it's good stuff.

Arthur: Yeah, That's so great to hear. Everybody is so together with making it happen. And, what advice can you give to schools and districts that may believe that inclusion is difficult to achieve?

Alison: Oh, I would probably agree that it is. It's not easy. It's easy to stay status quo. It's easy to continue on with your current levels of programming. And but I would say that it's worth the efforts and it's worth the commitment and it's worth it for the students and their experience.

Alison: I feel like if the district is trying to take that on, I feel that the first place to start is preschool, and eliminating self-contained classrooms from preschool, and starting to allow all students to be together in the classroom and and and strategic and develop that. I mean, certainly they the state rightfully so, talk about having, a ratio. You don't want to have a preschool classroom with 15 kids and have 7 of them be in high need of service.

That's not going to be good for anybody. So being are changing and allowing having integrated classrooms in every classroom so you can spread the needs out and make it more like a universal ratio that you see in society.

So just starting there, starting in your early childhood education, I think is a good place to start with inclusion.

Arthur: That was a really good answer that you said, you will agree, that it's not it's not easy. It’s not easy, but it is worth it. And to stick with it and to stay moving in that direction toward being fully inclusive, I think is a good thing to say.

Like anything can be challenging, but you just have to stick with it and know that it will be worth it in the end. And what you will see and achieve in the end is worth all of the trouble and challenges you may face along the way of the journey.

So you touched on this a little bit earlier in one of your answers, and I know in the NJCIE Honors video, you mentioned it as well, that you know, all of the students’ names, and I think that is so impressive.

I try to do okay with learning people's names, with some of the things that I but I do but it's like if I'm in the context of seeing them in a certain place, I can tell if I see them outside of it, it's like, Oh, no, I know where I might know you from, but I have no idea what their name is.

So, again, you touched on it a little bit, but I wanted to see if you had anything else to say about it. Do you believe it is easier to make change in a smaller district versus a larger district?

Alison: Since it's been a really long time since I've been in a big district, I can only go for my experience in a small district and imagine that it's difficult, but not impossible.

When you have a small school and I'm not the only that knows most of the students by name you create an environment where teachers are all about the students and creating these really close relationships because in primary grades you're with your teacher all day and everything else.

But then our kids don't go to a large middle school, they stay there in a pre-K to eight sort of school setting. They stay a little bit younger.

Within our middle school, they have teachers maybe for two years so they might have the same math teacher for two years or the same English teacher for two years, and so in that looping they really get to know the students and it enables that report to be there, and those relationships which are essential to then having students engage in learning and being ready to learn.

You can't do it without that relationship. So we excel at that. That's something that occurs just naturally because we have awesome staff here and because of the size of our school. So that foundation and that kind of culture then sets us up for success when we do have initiatives such as inclusion.

Alison: Once you start, there are things that happen that confirm your belief that this is the right thing to do. I see it all the time.

Because you do question And,, there are some students that need something different because it's certainly not a one size fits all. I have all my students in my school currently are included, but it doesn't mean that I won't have a student involved that might need something different, but for now, that's where we are.

And I see it even when we move students. Last year I moved a couple of my students out of a resource and I got rid of that class and I moved them into the general education classroom. And then at the middle school level and in sitting down the teacher or the teacher being surprised at what that student was able to do when they had that access to that general education curriculum.

And for the teacher to get excited about that. And so those are the little signs that you're like, yeah, this is this is why this is good stuff. This is what we should be doing. Because sometimes we create expectations, and it’s not with any malintent.

Alison: We have all the information and evaluations and data and we kind of have an expectation of where the student can perform. But when you went and you raise that ceiling and you give them opportunities to exceed what your expectations are, which is what students get in general education is they say they have those ceilings raised.

It's amazing sometimes what can happen because of that. So those are the opportunities that occur when you when you are able to do inclusion.

Arthur: Yes. That's like you said, to keep raising that ceiling and being impressed and surprised at what they can achieve because that new bar has been set for them.

And it's it's all great. And I really enjoyed this conversation with you, Alison.

So I thank you again for joining us for this episode of the podcast and sharing your own journey, your own story of working in the education world and working there in Bradley Beach to make the district and your school inclusive and keep up the great work you and all of your colleagues and coworkers there, it’s really great.

And again, it's a heartwarming thing to hear that, you know, districts are committed to making these changes to make inclusive classrooms a real thing, a true thing, and part of the culture. I love that you mentioned that. And just from the very beginning of preschool and making it something that the students see every day from the very beginning, is really helpful, Really important.

So thank you for joining us for this episode. And you take care.

Alison: Well, thanks for having me. And I just want to say that, the work that the NJCIE does, it provides the resources to our districts is incredible. I've taken advantage of the resources in my own district to make sure that my teachers are supported.

And I really would encourage other districts to do so as well. They are fabulous organization and New Jersey is at an advantage having that resource within our state. And again, if anyone ever needs any support or has any questions, they're free to reach out to me. And I appreciate the work that you're doing in promoting inclusion and providing information to people.

It’s a great thing. So thank you. Thank you for having me.

Arthur: Yes, you're welcome. And we will be in touch.

Alison: Okay, great. Thank you.

Arthur: You’re welcome. Thank you, too.

We thank you for listening to this episode of the Inclusion Think Tank podcast. This podcast is brought to you by New Jersey Coalition for Inclusive Education, NJCIE.

Be sure to subscribe on YouTube, Spotify or Apple Podcasts. And don't forget to follow us on social media @NJCIE, Until next time.