“Building a Culture of Inclusion and Belonging” Webinar

On March 23, 2021, in cooperation with the Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction and the nonprofit Roots of Inclusion, Dr. Carol Quirk presented “Building a Culture of Inclusion and Belonging.”

Audio Transcript

Carol Quirk (00:00:00):

We moved from mindset to systemic change. And then I’ll move that to focus on school basis and what an inclusive school looks like. And the last part I’ll address some barriers Several of you have provided questions and I’ve tried to intersperse answers of those questions throughout. But in the end of it, we’ll talk about some of the barriers and opportunities because sometimes the same thing is that some barriers are also opportunities. So let’s begin.

Carol Quirk (00:00:33):

What is inclusion? What do we mean by it? So inclusive education begins in the school house, but there are many other communities in a neighborhood. So when we think about inclusion as a thing, it has to happen somewhere or in some space, either a physical space, a virtual space, or some kind of a defining space. These are all in a neighborhood, the kinds of physical places: a home, a work environment, recreation. I know that we’re doing a lot of this all virtually now, but there are these communities within which we may participate.

Carol Quirk (00:01:14):

So we’re going to focus on the schoolhouse. The state education director for special education in Georgia posed this question in a meeting I was in just about a month ago and what she said really struck me because she said she wanted all of her administrators to ask the question as if they were students. Is this school for me? Because often we’re thinking about, are students ready? Are students able to go into a classroom? Can students go into a school? Are students able to participate in instruction at a certain grade level when their performance level is far below that? What we should be asking: is this school built for me, not, am I ready to be in that school? Do I have a sense of belonging? And we’re thinking about in the every day engagements within the school building extracurricular activities, socially and academically, do I have a sense that I belong here? When we’re thinking about access to social and academic activities, we’re thinking about our participation. So do we feel like we’re a valued member valued for what’s unique about us as well as what we share together, and then are we actually participating like our peers do who don’t have disabilities? Are we valued and brought into those engagements.

Carol Quirk (00:02:43):

This picture on the right are students in a cafeteria, it looks like middle school, probably high school. Any of you who are educators especially in secondary schools where you have a special program for students with more extensive support needs and they spend most of their day together in a classroom. When they go into the lunch room, are they sitting in a table along the side of the wall? Do they enter early? Do they leave early? Is their schedule and engagement socially like their peers? How much do peers engage with them in those environments? So, you know, we might say, well, in the cafeteria, they are included, they’re there at the same time as everybody else, but are they really included? Are they valued as members in the same way that other kids are valued? And are they participating in the same way with the same opportunities or are they sitting with adults with less social engagement?

Carol Quirk (00:03:49):

When we’re thinking about being included, we’re thinking about the level of comfort that students have engaged in instruction. The content of which at grade level may not be at their level of performance. They need adaptations for that, but is there a sense of comfort that they will learn and be able to participate? Are the materials modified and provided to them in a way that they can engage with peers? Which means that the lessons need to be designed with a sense of universal design for learning, differentiating based on the actual students, that you have their interests and talents, and then further adapted for students who have IEPs as they’re needed to address the unique needs of their disability. And is that okay? Is that an expected thing to happen?

Carol Quirk (00:04:40):

Now when we’re thinking about building a school for all learners, this is a quote that I found that I think is particularly important: “planning for the successful inclusion of diverse learners and meeting the needs of our students with learning differences requires thoughtful something between general education teachers and specialists.” So what does it require? We have children in a classroom, diverse learning needs. We may have students with an intellectual disability. We may have two students with autism. We may have one student with a significant behavioral challenges based on trauma in their past. We could have any number of students. We could have students who are learning English. What does it require between the specialists and the generalists? Time, planning, and collaboration.

Carol Quirk (00:05:37):

There’s this thought, I think, you know, in many schools that, and by many administrators as well or IEP teams, that there is a place that’s special and we should have our students go there when they have more extensive support needs, because special things happen there. And those specialists they know and understand and care for those students. And I, the general education education teacher, I’m not prepared. I don’t know what to do. What we really need is time planning and collaboration. And if you haven’t done this before, you may need some support in how you use that time in order to plan and collaborate, which is basically planning tools.

Carol Quirk (00:06:18):

How do you look at your lesson plan? How do you match that to the IEP? How do you look at the communication and other ways that students are expressing themselves and how do we match that to the expectations that I have for all learners in my class. So here’s a pretty good diverse group of students, and we’re going to put them in school and here they are in that physical building, in a regular ed classroom. Now I just talked to you about membership and participation in order to get learning as the markers of inclusive education, because we know the law doesn’t mandate inclusion. And I, my colleagues in New Hampshire and Kansas and Oregon, as we have worked together in the past, really emphasize that inclusive education is an equity issue. We have an equity lens to look at. Are we providing the services that all students need available in all parts of the school, building from a variety of generalists and specialists who collaborate together?

Carol Quirk (00:07:23):

What I’ve realized more recently is that we can’t ignore the issue of place, because if you’re not there, you cannot be fully included. There is a school that I’ve been working with that is really working very hard to support teachers to promote inclusion. And they have a physical education class. It’s an adapted PE class where the students who have intellectual and developmental disabilities participate to get their physical education. So they’ve invited general ed students who actually sign up. They can get a course, they can get training, they can get credit if they’re a junior or senior, and they go into this class and they interact with and support the students who need more supports to participate in physical education activities. The teacher who’s been there for 17 years is a very good teacher and they don’t understand why it’s not inclusive. Why is it not inclusive?

Carol Quirk (00:08:23):

It’s because of special place. General ed students do not go there for their physical education. They go to other parts of the building. And so we’re working with the special education teachers to understand it’s not that you’ve done anything wrong, and it’s not that you’re not good teachers. You are. We want to take your talents and these students and give them opportunities to enroll in the variety of other physical education courses that are available to all of our students. And not only that, we’re going to for each and every student with the family, so that we make sure that their needs are met and provide some additional information to the peers in the class, and perhaps assign a student teaching assistant. So we’re spreading the wealth by spreading the opportunity to engage with these students and enable them to participate in other parts of the physical building.

Carol Quirk (00:09:17):

So you have to be there. We want to promote membership and a sense of belonging. And if you think about, for kids in your school who’ve been bullied, who are left out ,particularly challenging in middle school. My children as middle-schoolers both had some challenges in being accepted in different parts of the cliques and groups of kids, but the adults then have to be cautious and aware of what’s going on in that social interaction. And they have to model the acceptance and appreciation of students who have those differences so that there is a sense of belonging that’s fostered. The participation engagement is what’s going to happen as a result of that collaboration among specialists and generalists as they create lessons and look at how students are engaging in learning. And this will lead to the academic and social outcomes with students achieving more and having more appropriate or acceptable social engagement and behavior.

Carol Quirk (00:10:22):

These are the components that say is this school built for me? And it’s the membership, sense of belonging, and participation that will create the opportunities for academic and social success. Now, I did not plan to share research with you. I’ll, I’ll mention a few things. But all of this that I’m saying is based on research. We do have a lot of different research in the last 40 years for students ranging from students with learning disabilities, to students with particular disabilities like autism or other health impairment or emotional disabilities, to students who have intellectual disabilities. And looking at whether it’s their learning, social engagement, friendships, whether there’s a difference in participation based on where you live in the country. And all of this research is pointing to positive outcomes. There are no negative if outcomes to being included, there’s none recorded anywhere. And I subscribe to a lot of journals.

Carol Quirk (00:11:25):

What’s interesting is that there is additional research that looks at college students and adults in terms of the concept of belonging. And in this research, they described a sense of belonging and have asked the participants, the people who were being researched about their different levels of belonging, and then looked at the outcomes they experienced in life. And people who report a greater sense of belonging are more likely to have academic success in college and more likely to be employed. So we know that these are important characteristics.

Carol Quirk (00:12:02):

So inclusive education. So what does this mean in practice? I will be talking a little bit about natural proportions when I talk about how schools transform and natural proportions refers to the percentage or proportion of a population in your community. So if you have 20% of the students in your neighborhood, if you have a neighborhood school, are learning English and their primary language is another language, you would expect 20% of the students across your classes or grades to be English learners.

Carol Quirk (00:12:41):

If 12% of your students have disabilities, you would expect approximately 12% of your students across your grade or your subject in secondary education to have disabilities. So we’re also thinking about students who are gifted and talented. When I first started this work, we really thought special education students with disabilities. We then realized that we are including kids in general education. This is the general education initiative, but as we still focused on children with disabilities, we realized that we can’t just be inclusive if we’re only talking about one group of students. Who are the students who are suspended, is that a subgroup of one more than another? Who are the students who are not coming to school whose attendance is low? Is that one sub group more than another? Are we looking at racial differences and disproportionality? So all of these things need to be considered when we’re really talking about inclusive education and natural proportions means that we’re being very considerate about how we’re assigning students to subjects and classes based on their natural proportion in our community.

Carol Quirk (00:13:54):

If your school has inclusion classes, you’re not fully inclusive, you’re on a path. Because what are those other classes? Are they exclusion classes, classes where kids don’t have to go, or if I’m in the inclusion class does that mean I need more even if I don’t have an IEP and can I go to the other class where there’s no students with disabilities? So we want to think about labels. Another barrier that I had seen in some schools is where the IEPs are written so that if you’re a student with a disability and you’re going to be receiving services in a gen ed class, you can only go to a co-taught class. Well, there’s no, there’s no law about that. That’s a tradition and mindset that we have that you have to be in a co-taught class in order to receive your services. So we’ll drill down a little bit more on when we talk about school transformation.

Carol Quirk (00:14:54):

The intentional support for social engagement means that we’re not expecting students to just fit into the social environment in the classroom or a school building without supports. Students who look different, communicate differently use different equipment may need to have an introduction to the rest of the peer community so that peers are comfortable and understand that they certainly can approach the student talk directly to the student and not to an adult that’s standing there. And, you know, look for ways that students can be engaged.

Carol Quirk (00:15:31):

And I want to tell you a story about that, because this is I think significant of the fact that children more easily adapt than adults. I was in another state in the Western part of the country, observing a student who had Down syndrome. He was in second grade and he was fully included and the teachers were doing great. He was very slow because of low tone in his movements. And as he was moving class to class or like from the gym to the cafeteria, from the cafeteria to his classroom, he often lagged behind. So we were moving from a, the library upstairs, going down the stairs to his regular class. And as the students marched down the stairs, he would get further behind because he was slower on the steps. So I was moving back so I could stay back and just see what was going on. And one of the boys who I’d noticed had talked with him frequently, he moved further back as well.

Carol Quirk (00:16:31):

Until finally, as they got to the bottom of the steps, they were the last two boys in line. And the other boy, the peer, looked at me not knowing who I was, but clearly seeing that I’m observing what’s going on. And he just looked at me and he said, “Hey, look, I’ve got this.” And for him, it’s like, “why is she hanging around here?” And he was fully prepared without any prompting because that’s how the culture of the class was. If this boy ever needed supports, the other students were expected to just support him in natural engagements, not in instruction, but just being a member of the class.

Carol Quirk (00:17:11):

Adapted materials and instruction. And I think this is one of the biggest fears for general educators, especially if a special educator is not assigned full time. It’s can be pretty frightening to think “I’m responsible, I’m accountable, and I don’t know what I’m doing.” So there does need to be time spent with those teachers with some planning tools to help them in advance of a unit figure out how they’re going to adapt, who’s going to do what are the big lessons that we’re going to learn, how do we match this to the skills that the students should be learning based on their IEP which should have goals that aligned with grade level standards. Are teachers using cooperative and collaborative learning with their kids instead of a lot of verbal and print learning? And our schools are moving really well in this direction. And secondary schools probably need to focus on this most.

Carol Quirk (00:18:08):

And then finally it means changing the roles and relationships, which, you know, special educators are very caring. If they’ve been in a self-contained class they have learned how to teach in that way. They have learned specialized instructional strategies, and we want them to bring those strategies to their general educators so that the general educators can collaborate in the design of lessons. Cheryl Jorgensen, in one of her books, talks about an inclusion facilitator. I think that a special educator does shift to be an inclusion facilitator, but they are also a direct teacher. You’re a direct instructor, a co-teacher, a co-planner, a co-assessor of student learning. And there may be times when you are the direct Instructure instructor for a small group of students in a classroom where you’re co-teaching some kids having disabilities and some not.

Carol Quirk (00:19:12):

So now I’m going to shift to the LRE or least restrictive environment. You know that I was just talking about inclusion as being about membership participation and learning in the general ed setting and the general ed curricula. But what about LRE? So I’m going to explain a little bit about what the law says and how we look at the data because the LRE data is only about place. So in the IDEA, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act this is some of the language. It says that each public agency must ensure that children with disabilities are included and are including children in public and private institutions are educated with children who are not disabled. So there are certain language that is repeated over and over in the law. So one repetition is that you’re educated with children who are non-disabled. It also says that special classes, separate schooling or other removal of children occurs only if the nature or severity of the disability is such that supplementary aids and services are not enough to achieve satisfactory progress.

Carol Quirk (00:20:29):

So the federal law does not talk about continuum of placements. This is what it says right here, but the regulation. So after a law is passed the department associated with that law, in this case the US Department Education writes regulations. So when the US Department of Ed wrote the regulations, they wrote about a continuum of placement with the idea that the least restrictive place was being educated in the school you’re supposed to go to in the class you would go to if you don’t have a disability along with your peers. But that removal would occur on a graduated basis, only as much as needed in order to implement the IEP and make satisfactory progress. So our LRE data is, is based on time. It’s based on time in and removed from general education.

Carol Quirk (00:21:30):

This, I put this in here because the law says that special education is specially designed instruction. And that specially designed instruction is adapting regular ed. Adapting the content, the method, or delivery of instruction for two reasons, addressing the unique needs of a learner based on how their disability affects them. And then secondly, ensuring access to the general ed curriculum in order to meet the educational standards. Now, there was something called a policy letter or guidance letter that was put out around 2016, I believe from the US department of education that strengthened this saying that the intent of the IEP is to promote progress and access to grade level content even for students who are taking the alternate assessment. Now, the law talks about supplementary aids and services specifically for this purpose to enable children with disabilities to be educated with non-disabled children. So the whole idea is that special education is instruction to address the disability and to enable the student to meet grade level standards and be educated with their peers without disabilities.

Carol Quirk (00:22:56):

That’s the whole thing in a nutshell. It does require on IEPs that we have something called an impact statement that asks how does the disability affect involvement and progress in the curriculum and participation with non-disabled peers. We’re seeing the same language over and over again. Now it also says in a comment section. So when the law was last reauthorized, I think it was 2004, when Congress is going to reauthorize a law, they put it out for public comment and before they publish the new or revised or reauthorized law, they also publish the comments and they describe how they responded to those comments. Did they say, “Nope, sorry, we’re not doing that. And this is why.” Or do they say, “this is the comment. This is the request. This is the rationale. You know what, you’re right. We’re going to change that.”

Carol Quirk (00:23:54):

So there is a section and if anyone is interested, if you put that federal register number in, you will get exactly to that part of the federal register — where it says public agencies are strongly encouraged to place a child with a disability in the school in classroom that they would attend if they did not have a disability. So there’s some discussion that’s happening or has happened around the country about, well, do you have to go to the school that in your neighborhood, or can the district send you someplace else to be included. And sending you someplace else simply doesn’t make any sense when you think about the intent of the law, which is to be educated with your peers. But if you’re bused away from your friends, your siblings and neighbors who go to the neighborhood school, you’re missing out on a whole part of that intent.

Carol Quirk (00:24:46):

Now it also talks about if you’re thinking about removing a child, if you’re thinking about serving them outside of general, ed, you must consider the full range of supplementary AIDS and services. So when you justify your removal in that section of the IEP, you should talk about, well, we thought about this supplementary aid and that one, we considered all of these things, and these are the reasons why we cannot implement those in a general ed classroom. And I think if, if teams really thought about that, they would find it really hard to figure out why they can’t implement those supplementary aids and services in a regular class. Now it does also, IDEA also does talk about removals and there are two reasons that are mentioned both in the comments and in some of the language, which is if there are harmful effects on the child or on the quality of services.

Carol Quirk (00:25:47):

So there is case law meaning that families who have wanted their child to be included and the district said, no, we want your child to go to a special self contained classroom where in the judgment of that lawsuit the judges talked about if there are harmful effects on the child or not. So you must consider if there are harmful effects on the child or the quality of services, if they are going to be removed from their peers If a child does have a behavioral problem that is disruptive so much so that it impacts the education of themselves or others, then they’re saying, yes, the regular ed class is not the least, not the most appropriate place for that child. In thinking about this, though, I want you to think about kids who’ve been given certain labels. EBD is the one that I’ve come across most recently, emotionally behaviorally disabled or some language like that.

Carol Quirk (00:26:50):

What happens to those students? Think about this. Where do they go? They go to a place in the building or in another building in your district that has services that are intended to address the behavioral problems. How many times, however, do students return to their regular class? Some do, but is that the intent of the program is it really intentionally designed that way? One district that was really working to be inclusive, they designed because they did have students who were very disruptive. They designed what they considered to be temporary behaviors support programs. And they were in they couldn’t put them in every school. So they had them in, they called regional programs like a school across a couple of miles away. The principal of the school, where the child belonged, had to come to that program every two to three weeks and observe the child in that setting, really sending a message that this child belongs to you in your school, look at what’s going on here, look at how they’re supporting the student with an expectation that within one and a half to two months, they would be returning that child. Were they successful a hundred percent of the times? No, but that was their intent. And that was their purpose.

Carol Quirk (00:28:14):

Now, importantly, the law specifically says the fact that that a child needs modifications to the curriculum is not allowed. That’s not the reason that you can use legally to disallow a child from being included. So now let’s, let’s look at the data, remember that this is only place and it’s not quality of instruction. So this is the most recent data published by the US department of education for the 2019-2020 school year. I’ll be able to show you Washington’s data over time. So at the left end a lot of the territories like American Samoa, Northern Mariana’s they are small and they often are more inclusive. They physically have less places to send children, but we also have Alabama, Nebraska, Vermont, Colorado, Mississippi has actually been working for the last several years on promoting inclusive practices as well as Indiana. So these are States where there is some history of a systematic effort either because of university partners, connection to a technical assistance center or some other motivation where they’ve really tried to look at inclusive practices.

Carol Quirk (00:29:41):

The States that are here New Jersey, Hawaii, New Mexico, traditionally have been, over time, continue to have students in more self-contained classes. So you can see that Washington state is currently, or in the 19-20 school year, at 57.73%, 58%, which means that 42% of your children are removed for some or all day. You have very few students in separate facilities, unlike many of the East coast States that have a higher percentage of children in separate places because they had built buildings. So now this is so let me just go back. This is what you would call in Washington LRE one. Different States have different ways they refer to it. So this is your LRE two data, and this is children who are placed in regular ed 40 to 79% of the day. Now, the problem here is you could have a student who in one year was in going to a special class for core subjects and was actually included in general ed 42% of the day, but was getting most of their instruction in a separate place.

Carol Quirk (00:31:07):

And the next year school is trying to be more inclusive and that student is now receiving almost all, but they have two classes. So they’ve gone from maybe 42 to 65%. That’s a, that’s an increase in participation in general environments. That’s not going to show up here. So this is something that has been noted as somewhat problematic in looking at this, because you could be in this category for a long time, but actually have increased participation in general ed. Now, Washington state’s was pretty high. The average seems to be, and I don’t always like to look at averages, but the average seems to be certainly under 20%, you know, usually around not more than 15%. So a larger number of your students are being removed for probably, you know, reading, language arts, and math instruction.

Carol Quirk (00:32:06):

So this is what we might call self contained, this is your LRE three. And the reason we refer to this as self contained is because if you’re in special classes for 60% or more of your day, so you’re in regular class less than 40%, almost all of your instruction, almost all of your instruction is in special education settings. Typically what happens is you may participate in what we call the resource of special area subjects like art, music, physical education, health, technology electives. So you may have some time with peers. Now, what you want to think about is the quality of that interaction. So are students in a special class, are they going to art together? So you have an art class that has the kids who have more significant support needs and are they enrolled as members of that class? So there’s a lot to think about again, in terms of your membership and participation.

Carol Quirk (00:33:14):

So this is Washington state over time. Now, the reason I’m showing this is because it’s really important to think about your change or your projection over time to evaluate your change. All districts are generally, and have been for the last 20 years, improving the extent to which students are participating in gen ed. So LRE one participation in general ed over 20 years, from 2000 to 2020, went from 51% to 58%. So there’s a 7% more students are participating in general at 80% or more of the time. So as Washington state has engaged in your inclusionary practices project, you have engaged in some very systemic efforts with multiple partners to promote change. Now, while I’m going to say again, that place is only place and not an indicator of quality. It’s not an indicator of membership and participation. It’s the only measure we have, and we can’t count it as inclusion if you’re not there.

Carol Quirk (00:34:35):

So what you want to look at is what happens in the change process. So this is one district’s journey. This district from 2000 to 2018, the blue bars are the time in which they systematically and strategically engaged in partners, had a district leadership team that focused on inclusion, had demonstration sites that they started with four schools added four more added eight more, took a breather didn’t add anymore because they needed to support those schools. Then added more schools until all 30 of their schools were included. So this happened, they began the discussion actually in 2002, 2003. That should probably be a blue bar now. So look at the trend until they get close to 90%, but what’s important is they have maintained that trend over time. So they have been able to maintain 90% of their students included in their neighborhood schools in a regular ed class, at least 80% or more of the day. You might ask, who are those other 10%?

Carol Quirk (00:35:49):

And I can tell you the answer, the other 10% are students with medical needs, students with significant behavioral challenges. Some of those students with behavioral challenges were students with unpredictable behavior students with significant emotional disability or mental health concerns. Ssome had students with emotional disability coupled with family concerns of high mobility rates and other family issues that impacted their participation and attendance et cetera. So those are the students who are those 10%. Now we’re working with another district who was on a path, they’re not there yet. They started in 2016-17, they started a little bit more slowly. They started with three schools, they added on two more then they added on three more. Last year they didn’t add any on because, this school year rather, because of COVID. But what you can see here is the change in trajectory.

Carol Quirk (00:36:58):

So in developing demonstration sites, what they’re not doing is dumping kids. They’re not just placing students and taking students out of special classes and just moving them over. They’re very deliberately in both of these examples identifying schools where they’re going to build the capacity of the educators and move kids. Because I worked with districts who did not want to have a strategic move. They didn’t want to upset families. They wanted to do it very gradually by building capacity and while their educators became more proficient, their movement was very, very limited because as long as educators don’t have to move kids, they don’t have to change.

Carol Quirk (00:37:47):

So another way to look at it, I’m just going to show you a couple more slides here, because if you’re a state, Washington state is looking very strategically at working with districts, targeted districts and targeted demonstration sites. So here’s an example. This is the state of Maryland, and this is in the year of 2000-2001. I want you to notice two things. I want you to notice the change in participation in general ed and the yellow districts are ones that asked their state for a partnership in order to improve their inclusive practices, which lasted over anywhere from four to eight years. So I’m going to go to the next slide, which is these districts. Now, of course they’ve been rearranged because the districts who were the yellow districts now moved up and they are the districts, and have maintained this probably for the last five to eight years, where they are the ones including or placing students in general ed 80% or more of the time consistently. Now I’m going to go back because this is the rate overall. The average was probably around 50 to 54% at that time. And I want, this district over here, that’s a little over 70%. I’m going to show you which one that district is. While everybody increased their LRE, this district, where are they? I’m going to show you this one, it’s right over the engaged. They have only increased by a couple of percents. So everybody is doing a little more, but not everyone is pushing really hard.

Carol Quirk (00:39:40):

So how do we change? How do we make that? How do we go from mindset to systems change? Mindset is nearly impossible to change unless we have demonstration sites where people can see what it looks like to include children they’ve never included before and where they can talk with educators about their experience in the change process, and then experience it themselves. Talking will not change mindset. So I want to think about the kids that we’re talking about. Including so up in the upper left-hand corner we have students in a classroom they’re working on something together. It’s an instructional activity. One of those students for one of those students, English is not their first language. So here they are together being supported by their peers, as well as with having adaptations on their materials related to the fact that their first language is not English.

Carol Quirk (00:40:45):

In the upper right-hand corner is a student who has cerebral palsy, very significantly impacted. This is her general ed teacher. This is a science class. It was seventh grade. And the general ed teacher had been giving some whole group instruction, directed the students to work in pairs. And then she went over to work with the student directly using it’s an eye-gaze device because the student doesn’t have any movement below her neck. And so the gen ed teacher wanted to have some direct instruction time with her so she could assess how long it takes her to respond. Because given an instruction, it’s a lot of work for her to use her eye-gaze device to develop the answer. She also wanted to see what her answers were before having her then, or with a peer or with an assistant.

Carol Quirk (00:41:43):

On the lower left side is a boy with autism that’s in second grade. He did use a communication device though we don’t see it now. He had a lot of hooting behavior. He had a lot of call-out. He’s wearing headphones because he was very impacted by extraneous sounds. But his second grade class was basically taught, “Don’t worry about those sounds. That’s what Jacob does. That’s how Jacob soothes himself. That’s how he helps regulate himself. It’s what he does.” So the kids didn’t care. So the sounds that he made became a part of the classroom and nobody frankly paid any attention. This was morning time when they were working on alphabet. And the students to the lower right. One of those students may have a learning disability and they’re working with a peer who may provide some peer mentoring. There’s a lot of literature on the value of peer assisted learning and peer mentoring. There’s research that demonstrates that when peers are working together and when a peer is assigned as a mentor, they learn as much or more than they would have if they were working more independently.

Carol Quirk (00:43:01):

So there is, you know, I didn’t have any questions to this about what about the time? Is there time taken away from teaching others? There’s, there’s no evidence and there is some research from the university of Kansas that looked at instructional time, and there’s no evidence that we have that there’s any impact of reduced instruction when you’re in general education.

Carol Quirk (00:43:23):

So how do we get there? I cannot emphasize more the importance of leadership. All of you know that when you get a new principal in your building that can change everything because the principal may change the structures of the school, may change the schedule. And outside of district policy for those things that are under local school control may have an impact. So I want to talk about managerial or leadership styles, because this is really important. In our change process, we have a three-year change process, and we have a school now that is in their fifth year, they’re at the end of their fifth year. And their change has been so slow. And it’s in large part because of where they are in this leadership lists. So the, the kind of basic level of leadership is managerial. It’s a very controlling authoritative. A managerial person is really concerned about accountability and is not necessarily a people person. When we have a manager who becomes more relationship oriented and wants to develop mutual respect with peers, as well as with the people that are being supervised. They are beginning to engage people in discussions about the work of the organization in this case, the school.

Carol Quirk (00:44:57):

Better yet is when the leader becomes motivational and not only has mutual respect, but it’s really fostering collaboration and team results, is really moving people to work together. And motivating that motive, motivating them to develop their own goals and strategies. Inspirational is when that leader is inspired by the work of those teams, when they recognize and value that and inspires others to growth. But best of all is that transformational leader who really transfers their influence to others and builds leadership. So we see these described in education world as adaptive leadership and distributed leadership, where you’re giving some of your leadership power away and you’re enabling others. But how do we see this in action? The leader has to have a vision and has to be able to articulate that vision and words really matter.

Carol Quirk (00:46:02):

I was in a meeting recently with folks from another state and they were talking about the sped teachers and the sped students and the sped programs. And I was like, I was beside myself internally thinking stops, stop saying sped. It’s like it’s an adjective. That was grouping. It was grouping teachers, grouping students as if they are all one. Think about, are you saying our kids or their kids or those kids, all of these words are messages. They’re signaling how we think about each other and how we think about our students. Are we talking about the CP child or the LD kids with EBD kids, those words matter. We’re labeling. So taking those labels away is really important. Are we sharing sharing videos, articles, research. Educators are really stressed these days. You all have little time to plan. In fact, time is the single most thing that’s mentioned whenever we say, what is the barrier to inclusion? What’s the barrier to collaboration? What’s the barrier to professional learning? It’s time.

Carol Quirk (00:47:17):

So educators don’t often have the time to seek resources. So sharing resources, looking at opportunities to build time for engaging in that, which brings us to the next one, which is the engagement. Are we having conversations? Are we talking about barriers? Are we thinking about what the stressors are for teachers so that we can help them move past those stressors to begin to accept and appreciate that there may be opportunities to find solutions to those problems and engage learners in a more collaborative and inclusive way. Are we inspiring others to share the vision? Are we thinking about how we can motivate the people in our building to feel comfortable and for them to be able to articulate that vision? And are we moving people to change?

Carol Quirk (00:48:12):

Sometimes moving people to change is not just reinforcing. In one district I worked with, there were three high school principals and the movement that we had included kids at cross elementaries across middles, beginning high schools. And there was pushback from the high school principals. And one of them wanted to group certain group of kids together and move them as a group throughout their day in co-taught classes, instead of dispersing them and engaging all teachers. And the superintendent brought them together. And he said, you can walk the walk and talk the talk. You can walk the walk and keep your mouth shut if you don’t agree with me, or you can find another job. And so there were some people who left and that the same time there was great joy and rejoicing over some of the accomplishments that schools had, both for students and for teachers you know, as they moved along.

Carol Quirk (00:49:19):

How can I engage others? A lot of your questions were about engagement. How do you sell this idea? It’s really hard for one teacher to influence another teacher and have that be sustainable. It’s hard work. That’s why you need leadership to support you in that. But in the process of that especially with limited time, we have found that there are, these are just some books. There are several books, Julie Causton is an author, Cheryl Jorgensen, Michael McSheehan, they have, and there are many more. In fact, Jenny Kurth out of Kansas recently published on participation for kids with more significant developmental disabilities.

Carol Quirk (00:50:07):

Having a book study, and these are not highly academic, we have used the principal’s handbook handbook with different principals groups. Read a chapter. They’re not hard to read. At least 45 minutes. An hour is better. Engage people and have three lead questions. That’s all, you need three questions that as they read the chapter, they’re going to think about those questions. You get together, you discuss those questions and then try to identify something that you may be able to implement. And then read the next chapter. And these are all very formative in helping people to struggle together and to plan together. There are also videos. Shelley Moore, some of you may have seen her, and if you haven’t, she’s got,usmall videos called five more minutes,uthat are all about different things to think about in relation to inclusion. And she’s got a Ted talk. Dan Habib, he has a film called Including Samuel that’s about his son,uwhen he was in early elementary and Samuel’s graduated college,ugraduated high school now. Dan has also done a Ted talk and he’s got up, I think it’s a three minute YouTube video called the power of inclusion.

Carol Quirk (00:51:23):

Ilene Schwartz, your own Ilene from the university of Washington, has a Ted talk that she published a while back. It’s great. We often use her Ted talk as a kickoff, as we’re talking about creating a shared understanding. Think Inclusive, Tim Villegas, who works for MCIE, he has podcasts that he publishes. Most of them are 30 minutes to an hour, but you can take snippets of them. If you have someone leading and listening to the whole thing, you can take a part of it, listen to five to seven minutes of it and have a 30 minute discussion. And you’re done. The SWIFT schools, and I know SWIFT schools are involved in your effort in Washington. Their YouTube channel has several videos that are anywhere from a couple of minutes to 35 minutes that are videos of kids in classrooms, in several States being included. And it also has teachers talking about their experience. So videos are a great way to go.

Carol Quirk (00:52:26):

So in a lot of our meetings with demonstration sites districts and schools, we will begin our meeting with a, probably more than five minutes, probably 10-12 minutes on shared understanding, like let’s look at something together, read something together and talk about, do we all agree? Do we understand this in the same way? And another thing that you can do is creative brainstorming. If you go to this site or just Google creative problem solving this is a strategy that can take at least 30 to 45 minutes to an hour if you’re doing action planning where people have the opportunity to say, look, these are our realities. This is the ideal. You brainstorm all your ideal. You kind of, somebody organizes that information. You come back together and you say, given the realities and given the ideal where we want to be, what are the things we need to do? And you come up with a list of solutions, brainstorm again, group those solutions and pick three to four priorities. And then you have your action plan that came totally from the people who will be most effected by that action plan.

Carol Quirk (00:53:43):

So those are some of the things you can do. Working one-on-one is hard. It’s just hard. You can use books or videos or have conversations, but better to have a leader supporting you. Now, the other thing I wanted to address is engaging the community. Those others may be more about the change agents in your school, your families, policy makers, and community members. I did spend some time looking at the inclusionary practices project resources.

Carol Quirk (00:54:15):

You’ve got a ton of resources, your handbook. I know it’s draft, but it’s really well-developed. It’s got a lot of information in there. And I found this section on it takes a community and talks about engaging community partners. And so you have a resource homemade in Washington state that even it gives you how to get started. It gives you conversation starters. I think there’s a, how to prepare for it. So there’s a lot of resources that you can access through your own state site.

Carol Quirk (00:54:51):

So how does your school become inclusive now? It’s, it’s we have about 30 minutes left. So I’m going to take about, I’m hoping about 10, no more than 15 minutes. So we can have some questions. I don’t see any questions in the question and answer, but if you have any questions you might want to put them in there and I’ll get to them in the last 15 minutes.

Carol Quirk (00:55:14):

So here’s a framework. So how does your school move? This is not necessarily the framework you have to use, but it is a framework. So this is something that our organization uses. The leadership qualities are on the top, including family and community engagement and responsive, professional learning. Within the building, these are the practices you want to have at the school house level. What are the policies related to supporting positive social behavior? What are the policies or guidance related to how teachers teach? What are the structures that our school has to ensure that there’s planning time for those who need it? And when you have the time, do you know what to do with it? Do you have planning tools?

Carol Quirk (00:56:02):

And then in the classroom, what do we see going on in that physical space of the classroom? Are there clear, clearly defined rituals, routines, and relationship development to engage learners, especially those experiencing trauma, living in poverty or having other adverse experiences. Are teachers comfortable and confident in creating universally designed lessons that promote student engagement? Are co-teachers collaborating specialized in generalized educators? Is speech therapy brought into the classroom?

Carol Quirk (00:56:36):

And then when all of that is really strong and it’s still not enough, and some kids need more, are there tiered interventions that will address those specific skill needs? And over on the right side, are cross-disciplinary teams using data to evaluate the effectiveness of those interventions or plan for further participation? So another structure is the multi-tiered system. And both of the, this is compatible. It’s kind of a different way of looking at the previous structure. Some of you are getting training on SWIFT schools and they have the SWIFT schools framework, which is another similar structure focusing on the multi-tiered systems of support. So having a structure to follow to make your changes is important. Now you’ll notice here, the specially designed instruction is not tier three. It’s available to students throughout All tiers.

Carol Quirk (00:57:37):

Now I’m going to go over three specific ways that school organizations need to make structural changes if you’re going to become inclusive, there’s three. The first one is how you assigned students. So I know I’m going quickly on this. This usually takes an hour to prepare principals and leadership teams. But I think you’ll get the gist of it. If not all the details. You’re going to identify all of the adults in the building and all of the students. So here’s an elementary and a middle school. You’re going to do it by grade at middle school because you’re having students go to different subject area classes. And we want to know how many students in the grade and how many of those students have additional support needs.

Carol Quirk (00:58:24):

When we identify the students, we’ve started creating an Excel sheet so that teachers could put in for the students who needed support. Do they have an IEP? Are they struggling in one of those areas, but they don’t have any label yet. We’ve recently realized that we couldn’t leave out students who are gifted and talented because they may need more as well. So all of the students who need more are listed. Excuse me.

Carol Quirk (00:58:54):

Each student has a sticky note. We may try to put sticky notes by like the yellow ones are IEPs, pink ones are behavior plans. Students who have behavior plans, we have used chart paper in the past. This year, we’re going to do it with jam board. And we assign those students. Excuse me. So you see here that Students with the R are reading, M is math the green ones are students with a 504 plan, B as behavior. A, the yellow, are students with IEPs, A is autism, a reading disability, intellectual disability. So they’re generally spread across the class.

Carol Quirk (00:59:43):

So this is where we’re looking at natural proportions. You’ll see here that we separate out, we have three kids with problem behavior. We gave one to each teacher. Now we also, then the next step is going to be talking about roles and relationships. So when we go back here and think about who are the specialists we have, and how are they going to be assigned? We may actually compromise a little bit on the assignment in order to ensure that there is a specialist who’s going to have the relationship with the classroom teacher that’s needed. Now, you notice that we have teacher one, two and three, because we want to move away from the idea that these are Bonnie’s kids, or this is the so-and-so kind of teacher.

Carol Quirk (01:00:31):

So the second part is changing roles and relationships. So the collaboration between the generalist and the specialist will be fluid. It may be the co-teaching, but it may not always be co-teaching. And one of those classes based on the needs of the students, we said that in that class, we have students who need math adaptation, specially designed math instruction based on their performance and accommodations. So there were only a couple of those students. So that specialist special educator and or math interventionists is going to consult with the classroom teacher, will make the adaptations, but will not be co-teaching. But they will consult with regularly. They may actually go in the class to observe the student how they’re doing with those adaptations, but it’s more of a consulting relationship.

Carol Quirk (01:01:28):

Now, the next class had students with a reading disability. There were also students who needed differentiation and scaffolding because they were struggling. So we said, we’re going to have the special education teacher co-teach during the reading block. And so they will be working together to ensure that the specially designed reading instruction is infused within the core reading class. Now it could be that there is a group of students in there who need additional supplemental interventions. The challenge for the school is to figure out when in the school day, those students can receive those supports mental reading interventions, but not pulling them out of core instruction. And so that goes into the, the third one, which we’ll talk about shortly, which is the master schedule. So class C here has a student with an intellectual disability, and that will be targeted co-taught. There may be a paraprofessional assigned to support that student, but by being targeted co-taught that means that if I’m the specialized educator, special education teacher, I’m going to go into that class on some kind of predictable schedule, but not necessarily every day or every particular subject. So we’re assigned the relationship of the specialist based on the service needs in that classroom.

Carol Quirk (01:02:51):

So the third step is the master schedule. This is too much for you to look at, but I wanted to get a visual up there with the idea that all of these across the day, all of these teachers, this is elementary, but we do the same thing grade by grade and secondary, we have pre-K through five. This is an adapted schedule of a school. After we saw that the special educators were very much more case management oriented, and they were designing their own schedule to try to jump into classes, to provide minutes of instruction in the physical classroom. And, or they were pulling students out because they, their responsibility was focused on minutes. So I go in and I’m providing direct instruction, or I pull them out and provide small group instruction.

Carol Quirk (01:03:44):

So here, instead of specialists designing their own schedule, special ed teacher one, Miles, she’s assigned to third grade reading, she is going to co-taught because here’s reading from nine to 11. So she’ll be in that reading block, she’s going to co teach. And then she’s planning with third grade. So here we are, as third grade, the kids are in resource art music or PE. She’s going to plan with the third grade team. So while she’s co-teaching in a reading block, she’s planning with those teachers for student participation and other subject areas across those three third grade classes. And then she’s supporting kindergarten and you can see she’s up here, a special ed teacher one co-teaches reading in at least one of these kindergarten classes. Now this special educator is going to be more highly trained or have more skills in reading because she’s assigned to third and kindergarten based on those skills.

Carol Quirk (01:04:52):

Special ed two is you know, planning. I’m not going to go into all those details, but you can see how the educators are assigned to roles and spaces where they’re going to be providing support. Now what’s not in the schedule this we had developed a while back is that period for interventions. So what some schools are now doing is they’re looking at how they can structure an intervention time, which allows for enrichment, for gifted and talented students math and or reading interventions for students who need that. And then it may be an opportunity for clubs or debate or dance, or some other kind of general enrichment for students who just don’t need more. For students who do need more we encourage use of a learner centered planning process. There’s a process out there called MAPS, making action plans, that was designed, I don’t know, maybe 35 years ago out of Canada McGill university folks who develop this opportunity to think deeply about a student.

Carol Quirk (01:06:02):

And so when we’re planning for kids to be transitioning to an inclusive experience for the first time, especially if it’s school to school, these are the things that we ask about with the family. And we, sorry, we gathered together sending faculty, receiving faculty and family, and ask about history, hopes and dreams, fears and nightmares. What, who is this kid? What are their gifts and talents that they’re going to contribute to the school or the class they’re going to? How do we create a participation plan and an action plan for adults? Participation plan for how the student will engage and be supported. And then what else do we need to think about? And this is done once in a, in that student’s life or shortened version if they’re changing schools.

Carol Quirk (01:06:55):

So now I’m at the barriers and opportunities. General ed educator preparation is a barrier, and it can also be an opportunity Special education teacher preparation the same Is the coursework available for both general and special educators together to learn about universal design for learning to learn about collaboration with each other. I was talking with some folks a while back about their collaboration courses at the university, and they said, “Oh yeah, you know, we focus on how they collaborate with families and how they collaborate in the IEP process.” Well, of course that is important, but how do you collaborate during the week on a day-to-day basis when you have to prepare tomorrow’s lesson plan and how a particular student will be engaged.

Carol Quirk (01:07:47):

The vision, fears and beliefs. I’m often asked about how do we change mindsets and which your vision is based on your fears and your belief system. And there are some people who just believe that some kids should go someplace else. That kids perhaps with autism should go and be around other kids with autism, which doesn’t make any sense The district traditions it’s the way we’ve always done this and nobody’s complaining, why should we do something different.

Carol Quirk (01:08:23):

Policies that you don’t even know get in the way. The policy I mentioned before about that we had recently a district had to change was that you could only go in a a general ed class if you were in a co-taught class and they had to change how their IEP was structured. And then the organizational structures in the school, which the principal has a lot of power over including availability of data, how the data is provided to you, responsive, professional learning scheduling that we just talked about. So these are all both opportunities to improve and include kids and barriers if they’re not addressed.

Carol Quirk (01:09:08):

So I want to leave a little bit of time here. I’m going to leave this up. Someone asked, “have you seen districts where families have successfully pushed district leaders to embrace inclusion where they weren’t non-inclusive and what have families done to successfully push their districts in this direction?” Because of the work that I do, more of the change process that I’ve experienced has come from leadership. But you know, IDEA came about because of families. It didn’t come about because of professionals. So I think organizing making your voice known, going before the school board, going to the superintendent are strategies that I would strongly recommend. You know, I mentioned, I showed before those books, those videos research, you have a university of Washington hearing center, they could probably get you actual research studies based on the level, like if you’re elementary, secondary showing that there is data that supports what you’re talking about. That’s what I would recommend. Sarah?

Sarah Butcher (01:10:30):

Sorry, sorry, Dr. Quirk. I was just tagging that we were, you were going to answer that one live, so you covered it. You did great. Thanks. And just a reminder, if anyone else has questions, go ahead and put them in the Q and A.

Carol Quirk (01:10:46):

And now I’m looking at the chat and there’s a lot of great resources that have been shared here, and I’m just gonna, I’m looking at those chats, using people first language. Using the language that the people who have a disability want to have. Thinking always of that. So let’s see what else we have here.

Carol Quirk (01:11:17):

Oh, Ilene. Hi. Ilene Schwartz from a university of Washington says, “please have anyone who wants research articles to contact us ilene@uw.edu. And there’s so much so much information in the chat and someone put in, Sarah, thank you. You put in that dear colleague letter that I referred to earlier, where Melanie Musgrove, who was the director of the office of special ed programs wrote to clarify about accessing the general ed curriculum and work working toward grade level standards.

Carol Quirk (01:12:09):

“Can You give an example of social emotional behavioral, inclusive interventions would look like?” Yes. So right around the corner from you at university of Oregon is the home of the PBIS center, which has focused primarily on behavior and what we might call extrinsic motivators designing the rules behaviorally identifying them teaching rules around the school, in the classroom reinforcing them. And then for kids who are not responding to that, how we can design interventions. They have been doing more work with the restorative practices, people who are looking more at repair and engaging students in relationships with each other and building a sense of community. There’s a lot more and I am somewhat familiar but less experienced in, which is a lot of the literature related to trauma informed care has to do with relationship building. And I was just seeing something the other day about co-regulation. And this guy had posted, it was a social media post. And it was where students who were frankly flipping out and because of their, so social, emotional difficulty in regulating their anger, their, their emotions, where however, they behaved the adult who was responding to them, mirrored their behavior and engage with them, kind of communicating, “I understand I’m with you, I’m here with you until we can work you out of this.” So I am not as familiar with all of the strategies, but those are some.

Carol Quirk (01:14:01):

Inclusion and remote learning has been really a challenge. Special educators who are inclusionists have been really because of access issues related to technology. So what some of them I know have done is work with paraprofessionals to provide additional support, to engage them. But it is really a challenge. We are actually doing some coordination with a group of educators around the state of Maryland through a PLC process, but I don’t have all those answers. They’re creating a lot of opportunities for inclusive participation, but we don’t have them organized yet.

Carol Quirk (01:14:46):

“Can You talk about opportunities that you’ve seen as part of teacher and school-wide support?” I think co-teaching is really good. Co-Teaching is always great to watch. I think some of the things that have inspired me is after a year, and is having conversations with teachers who ended up including kids they never thought they’d include and collaborating when they reflect on their experience. They’re almost surprised, like, you know, I’m such a better teacher now because of what I’ve learned through this process. I would never have taught that student that level of math because I didn’t expect them to learn. And lo and behold, when they were in fourth grade, they were learning stuff that I wouldn’t have taught them. So I think the reflections that you can see and we have some, MCIE has a YouTube channel with only very few videos on it, but I believe there are at least two videos of teachers reflecting on their experience. I think it’s Maryland coalition for inclusive education.

Carol Quirk (01:15:58):

Barriers with the SLPs therapists, speech OTPT, yes. Leadership. again, I’m going to say the leaders who encourage and support those therapists to provide that you may call it push in. I prefer inclusive, but provide their services within the class. The only pull-out instruction that I can see is for the dignity of the child or privacy issues. And it could be that articulation, if you’re really working on that, you can do some of that in the class. You may want to have a small bit of time one-on-one outside of the class, but we know that kids, if they generalize and are taught in generalized settings, they’re more likely to sustain those skills. So leadership needs to set that expectation.

Carol Quirk (01:16:56):

“Have Any of the schools that have implemented done anything to include families with support and resources to help them as well feel included?” Yes. That is always a decision that a district typically makes in response to how families are responding. So at a school house level, you may get the feel of how the general community is reacting when they know that kids are going to be included more and how they communicate to that community could be as simple as through a newsletter in advance, say, guess what, we’ve got going on. We’re really excited. You know, we’re going to have this happen. This is why it’s happening. These are the things we’re doing to support our teachers. We want to make it positive and show that you’re ahead. And you’re not just placing kids without thoughtful planning. The other part of it is engaging the families of the kids most effected who will be included perhaps for the first time. Our recommendation is that if a family says, hell no, over my dead body, my kid is where they need to be to not pressure that family, because they already have a kid with a disability. They’re doing extra things at home. Probably this is about building the community of the school. So focus on building capacity with the families who want their children included.

Carol Quirk (01:18:20):

One district actually created a, a night where families in the community could make 20 minute appointments. And so they paired up district staff paired up. So there were something like eight or nine pairs. And they came to a school because there was some rumblings that parents were upset and they went in different classrooms and parents had the opportunity to come in and have a 20 minute conversation with a pair from the district. They could say anything they wanted, they got no pushback. They had the opportunity to communicate and be heard. And that immediately changed the tenor.

Carol Quirk (01:19:02):

We’d like to understand more about emotional behavior health for students. So there are behavior support practices. I think that students whose behavior is so disruptive that it impacts other kids and obviously themselves, they do need to be removed at the same time. The issue, however, is, is it a permanent removal? Is it a temporary removal? And when they’re removed, what happens? And that’s where the strategies if you look at social, emotional learning. There’s CASAL, C-A-S-A-L I believe is the spelling. If you look up their website they have a lot of information there. If you look at ACE, A-CeE for, I just lost the words it’s for kids who experienced various traumas there is information out on the website and PBIS like I said, is, is doing some collaboration with restorative. So I’m hoping we see a lot more resources in that way. And it’s 8:27 with three minutes left.

Sarah Butcher (01:20:20):

Hi, Carol. This is Sarah. There was a question in the chat around how can we support and engage the Hispanic community with the, when the first language is Spanish? So, in other words, how are we, you know, what are some thoughts or best practices around engaging families who speak a language other than English?

Carol Quirk (01:20:42):

Well, you know, if you go back to the concept of membership and sense of belonging, do they feel like they are members of the community? And when It’s not just do they feel like they have a sense of belonging? Are we welcoming folks in to give them a sense of belonging? So, you know, ours are as simple as all the materials translated into Spanish. Are there interpreters for staff who don’t speak Spanish? Are, are there things done around the school to embrace the culture and bring the culture of that community into the school, as a culture that is valued and appreciated? You know, we often think of the word acceptance, and I think we have to move beyond acceptance to appreciation. A parallel might be an elementary school that had a few students who used pictures and augmented the systems to communicate. They took picture symbols, Nessus elementary, and they put them all along the sides of the walls. And every single classroom had core vocabulary plus content vocabulary on a table in the classroom, so that all students became comfortable with and used to seeing pictures as a form of communication. So I would go right back to that membership and belonging and what what’s being done to enable them to feel like this school is built for them.

Carol Quirk (01:22:20):

And I want to thank you all for putting all of those resources that I was mentioning Casal and ACE and all of the others. And there’s one on the Washington state, social, emotional learning framework. You’ve got a lot going on in Washington state.

Sarah Butcher (01:22:41):

Yes, we do. Carol. And I see there’s one last question, and I know we’re just about at time, but as I’ve heard from autistic adults that time with other autistic people is critical to identify formation and development of high self-esteem. How can we think about preserving these spaces for students within an inclusive framework?

Carol Quirk (01:23:02):

That is an excellent question. And I’ve heard that, especially from families who have recently families who have kids with down syndrome, as well as families of kids who have other similar, like physical disabilities. So we all, as human beings tend to enjoy being with people who share our interests, and that’s why we have clubs. And that’s why we have recreation. Some people like to work out and we may gather together with like-minded people who want to go for a bike ride, go for a run or go to the gym together. So I think the opportunity for people who have certain disabilities, autism, down syndrome, or other disabilities to have opportunities to be together, to share their experiences, that’s another place that they can have a sense of belonging. I don’t think that our classrooms are the place that we segregate kids by their characteristics. We should be including kids across our building for learning opportunities. But we, you know, certainly could create clubs after school or other ways that students can be together with others like themselves.

Sarah Butcher (01:24:18):

Wonderful. Thank you, Dr. Quirk so much. I feel like we could just continue going on and on. I just want to extend my gratitude as well, to all of those who chose to spend time with us this afternoon, we will be following up with an email. There was a survey link put in the chat and that survey link will also be in the email. Please take a minute to just give us some feedback this evening, we really do appreciate the feedback and we use it to help us think about planning for future events. You’ll be within that email, you also we’ll make a point to put a link to the video recording of this. I don’t know about you all, but I want to listen to it again, there was so much fantastic information. And then we also will put some of the surveys or just not surveys. I’m sorry. Some of the resources that were listed in the chat today there were a number of them, so we will make sure and include those in the email as well. And then lastly if you did not get a chance to register for clock hours and you would like those you can email us at rootsinfo@rootsofinclusion.org, and that information will also be in the email. So again, thank you all. Thank you, Dr. Quirk, and I wish you all a great rest of your evening.