This CollabCasts theme is Collaboration and more specifically the importance of collaborative planning. Join us as we speak to Dr. Bill Henderson and Danielle Merdin as they share their experiences in developing collaborative practices and systems. As a principal Dr. Bill Henderson was able to set up systems in his school that supported collaboration between multiple stakeholders. Danielle was one such stakeholder, a teacher and instructional coach in the same school, she will share what these systems allowed her as an educator to accomplish and also how she continues to use and build on those lessons learned.
Unknown Speaker 0:00
Welcome
Unknown Speaker 0:05
to collab.
Unknown Speaker 0:21
Cast, Hello. I'm Ruchika Chopra, host of colab cast our colab cast conversations are a resource from the urban collaborative supporting over 100 districts in 29 states across the country to build equitable and inclusive practices. We are here to listen to stories and personal experiences of people in our community, their successes, how they got there, and advice they might share with others who are facing some of the same challenges and opportunities they may have had. Each of our colab cast speakers connect us to the theme of the month that we are looking to explore with you all our urban collaborative members, these themes concern issues that you have told us you are grappling with and want to learn more about
Unknown Speaker 1:08
this collab cast theme is collaboration. We all recognize the importance of collaboration and have, as educators, developed collaborative practices that have supported ourselves as professionals and helped to develop communities where students and learning thrive. Even though we recognize the importance of collaboration, we also know that developing collaborative practices and systems is extremely challenging. Today, we are going to speak to a principal, even though now retired, who was able to set up systems in his school that supported collaboration between multiple stakeholders. We will also meet with one such stakeholder, a teacher and instructional coach. She will share what these systems allowed her as an educator to accomplish, and also how she continues to use and build on those learnings. Before I officially introduce our guests for today, I wanted to be sure that we all recognize that when we use the term collaboration, we're not specifically only talking about co teaching or inclusion in an article. Co teaching an illustration of the complexity of collaboration in special education. Marilyn Friend, along with other co authors, speaks to how we in the field use co teaching, sometimes interchangeably with collaboration, and goes on to clarify that although co teaching should be highly collaborative, collaboration refers to how professionals and others interact in a variety of situations, including meetings teams and parent conferences, narrowing the mean of collaboration to apply to just the classroom setting detracts attention from the importance of collaboration across all contemporary school endeavors, and belies the well established knowledge base on this broader topic. The article continues to also speak about the other terms sometimes used interchangeably with co teaching, which is inclusion. Some professionals equate the philosophical belief system of welcoming all students into the learning community, whether or not that means sitting in a general education setting all day with a not uncommon practice of providing a special education teacher to any classroom where students with disabilities are present, this misunderstanding often leads to concerns about adequate staffing and leads some general educators to perceive that they should not be expected to work by themselves with students with disabilities, both misunderstandings can negatively affect program success. Clarifying this for our conversation today is important, as we want to be sure that today we will be talking about how we set up broader collaborative structures to help sustain and develop practices that work for all members of our school communities, including the educators, families and students. Let me introduce you to someone who has inspired us at the Urban collaborative to start developing resources like these podcasts to bring voices from the field forward for us to share our successes and common challenges. Bill Henderson. Bill Henderson started as a middle school teacher in the Boston Public Schools in 1973
Unknown Speaker 4:22
and later became an assistant principal at a two way bilingual school in 1989 Bill was appointed principal of the OHearn elementary school with a mandate to integrate students with significant disabilities. The School gained widespread recognition for inclusion, academic progress, arts and family involvement upon his retirement in 2009
Unknown Speaker 4:45
the OHearn was renamed the Doctor William W Henderson inclusion school, and it now serves students in two campuses, from early childhood through grade 12. Bill continues to advocate for inclusion through consulting and representing at university.
Unknown Speaker 5:00
And conferences, he has facilitated efforts to promote inclusion at individual schools as well as across districts. Bill's book, the blind advantage from Harvard education press, describes the joys and challenges of including students with a wide range of abilities. Welcome bill. Thank you joining bill today is Danielle Meriden, a 20 plus year Boston Public Schools educator who is currently working as an instructional coach and grade 10 geometry teacher at new Mission High School in Massachusetts. She leads the special education department and serves as school wide testing coordinator Prior to her work at new mission, Daniel taught and coached at the Doctor William W Henderson K through 12 inclusion school for 20 years, she has teaching and coaching experience at elementary, middle and high school levels, primarily in the areas of mathematics and science. Daniel's work has focused on collaboration through building and fostering co teaching, relationships, coaching and development of effective teams. She is dedicated to inclusive practices, and has led work implementing principles of universal design for learning. Her practice is highlighted in the spring 2018 teachers, college, record Columbia University. Daniel has facilitated Learning Institutes at Harvard University. Is a guest lecturer at local universities and welcome numerous visitors to her classroom to see inclusive education in in action. Her passion lies in creating a learning culture where all are expected to achieve at high, high levels, because they can. Hi Daniel, thank you for being with us. Hi Richard, thank you so much for having me. I am so excited to be having this conversation with the two of you, because, like I said in our in the introduction, collaboration is something that we all know and want to develop in our schools and in the in the work that we do, but it is so difficult and challenging, and I know that our conversation today with the two of you from the different places and vantage points that you have been part of the school systems that you'll be able to help, help us kind of understand and visualize what this could potentially look like. So can we start a conversation today by you both sharing what you believe is the purpose of collaboration as you see it, and give us some examples of collaboration that you have participated in that that will help us visualize what collaboration could potentially look like in our different schools. So I probably was nudged into collaboration more than I naturally would have wanted to do so
Unknown Speaker 7:47
and 1981
Unknown Speaker 7:49
while I was teaching at a middle school, I started going blind. I need some help, so I had to reach out to leaders in the blindness community for both training and support. I also received a lot of support from colleagues in the Boston Public Schools. And then in 1989 when I was appointed principal at a school with a mandate to include kids with significant disabilities, I did not have much experience doing that, and neither did many of the staff at the school, including some of the new staff, so we had to bring general and special education together to come and share ideas. We needed insights from our families. We reached out to universities and agencies supporting students with disabilities for their suggestions. And with all this, we came together to figure it out. The collaboration happened on a number of different levels. What's most critical is the teaming in a classroom and then the planning that happens either at grade level or subject area meetings in order to be effective and to solve problems. There's also collaboration that needs to happen at the school wide level. It was really critical in early days for our governing board, we call the school site council with teacher, parent and community representatives to come together to draft a strong mission statement with our commitment to inclusion and diversity, and to set some school wide priorities and committees for which we needed participation of lots of different stakeholders, representing both students with and without disabilities and from from different backgrounds.
Unknown Speaker 9:33
I will say that the purpose of this collaboration always is and should be to help improve teaching and learning with a focus of helping students learning and succeeding, and inclusive classrooms doing that together. So I would say, and not to sound cliche, but collaboration is,
Unknown Speaker 9:53
I think, absolutely foundational to effective education, particularly effective inclusive education.
Unknown Speaker 10:00
Education, I'm actually just thrilled that it's the topic of today's podcast, because I oftentimes think that we underestimate the importance of collaboration and the time that it takes to grow and foster productive, collaborative teams. As a person who has worked in a fully inclusive school for the majority of my career, and in a co teaching or co teaching relationships for 14 years of that time, working with four different co teachers, really. And I think I'll come back to these two terms throughout the time of the podcast. But I think the two takeaways for me are earning respect and building trust. And I think that as you really focus that that is, in my opinion, the bedrock of effective collaboration and of inclusive education. And in my time, I've had the opportunity to, you know, serve on numerous different teams, coaching team at the Henderson for five years, I'm now working as part of a coaching team at new Mission High School instructional leadership team, language acquisition, team, science and math content teams, grade level teams, special educators team. So, you know, a lot of opportunities are working in teams and building teams and focusing on effective teaming. And, yeah, collaboration is what it's all about. And it's not easy. No, it's definitely not easy. And I just Daniel, you started with talking about the coaching component of the work that you've done. And I know Bill that in setting up your school and all of the things that happened after, as you built your communities, you have seen so many good examples of collaborative practices, and you've helped develop that, because it's like, like we said, it's not easy, it's not something that, even though we know needs to happen, it's not easy to set up. So can you both share some examples where you've seen some of these collaborative practices working, and what, in your opinion, contributed to the successes of those collaborative practices, structures and systems. And if you when you share an example, if you can then share what you thought was the reason why that that happened, so that we can kind of see how, how we want to set up a specific structure, what it takes to make that happen. So one collaboration which was transformational for our school was the inclusion and infusion of the arts.
Unknown Speaker 12:46
When we started in 1989 we really didn't know what we were going to do, and a deputy superintendent gave us a small grant and connected us with an cultural agency at the time called very special arts of Massachusetts. They sent visiting artists into our school. Teachers love what they did in their classrooms. Parents want more of it, so we formed a committee, and the first thing we did was we requested of the district that we want to select our own specialist, and we wanted to ensure that we had arts folks, movement, dance, visual arts, music, drama, folks who are committed to inclusion and folks who are willing to collaborate, we added that to their job descriptions, and so their impact was yes during the electives and specialty periods, also supporting, and I say they and also the visiting artists that we brought In through grants in our after school program in Richmond, but going into classrooms, bringing arts in the classrooms, was really significant. So for example, and this is all universal design, multiple ways of engaging students, multiple ways of showing understanding, which is so essential and inclusive schools. So in history opportunities, in addition to reading and writing and discussing of making murals or dioramas in English language arts, opportunities for doing some role play. In science, we had kids dancing when they're studying the bodies in skeletal costumes and singing the different parts of the body, even mathematics, when they were doing fractions, bringing different beats and rhythms,
Unknown Speaker 14:22
all of this engage the students more that participated more and in addition, then we committed to supporting and having all the students involved in large performances. These kinds of arts activities motivated the students. They engage the students, it impacted their academic performance, and it would not have happened without the collaboration of general education teachers, special education teachers, therapists, helping out, parents, supporting some of these activities, and lots of involvement from the community of the wonderful artists here in the Boston area. So Bill before Daniel.
Unknown Speaker 15:00
Join us in this piece, when you were doing that as a community, as you were growing with this, what would have been some of the structures that you put into place for that to happen? Because that's, I think a lot where people struggle, is to be able to have sustainable structures in place that allow for that conversation and for that collaboration to actually occur. So what, what did you do at the Henderson that that helped to create those, those collaborative practices? I can think of a few structures. First, the governing board. We had both a programmatic priorities by some of our budgeting priorities and our personnel practices, looking for people who were going to help us with the arts and bring arts into the classrooms, also in our classroom, meetings and discussions talking about universal design, what are the ways that students can be involved, engaged and showing understanding at different levels. And then we had our Arts team, connecting with also artists from the community and parents involving and supporting that, writing grants. So it really was a multi tier effort, governing board discussions in classrooms, and also committees involving parents in the larger committee with our existing arts team. So it seems like when you said, you said, initially, you were talking about the vision, right, that you were as a as a school community, along with your governing board, having that same vision and knowing what you were going to work towards as an outcome, helped create some of those, those structures and instructional practices, in some ways, to help make that happen. And then you said something that I want to reiterate here is the hiring of the people that were part of it, the people that you you brought into your school community. They had this they needed to have this belief and inclusion. But then no and it was part of the job description. You said that knowing that their job description included collaboration, so kind of setting yourself as a community up for that work to happen. And Daniel as a as a member of that community, and I know that you were a member, both as a teacher and as a parent in that community. How did you see that playing out? Can you share some examples on your end as to what what that looked like, and what you think helped you in being able to do that work, absolutely. I mean, I think that having a very clear mission and vision, and as Bill talked about commitment to that, is something that, as we we went on in time, growing the school even from a K to five school to a K to 12, and then K to transition school. That's a lot of different grade levels. It's a lot of different ages. It you know, students, as they grow, they have different needs. You have different areas that you need to prioritize as you're building students towards independence and preparation for, you know, their post graduate life. I think that within each of those different I guess I don't know, grade bands, age levels, you know, things look a little bit different, but you have a common mission and vision for the school and for the work, and everyone is bought in to that they have to be or else it might not be the place for everyone.
Unknown Speaker 18:34
And I will say that like I always I would say like that, the Henderson School is a place that draws a, you know, unique type of educator, because you from the day that I started there, you have this real, I use, keep using the word commitment, but feeling that you're part of something that really matters, right, that your work is Not just your work, and it is something that is about how you see yourself and how you live your life. And it is, I mean, for me anyway, right? Was the work was always more about, really something you're passionate about and you and you're figuring something out together, right? Like, that's, you know, the our principle that we had after Bill, you know, would always say, like, what would be great if we had the roadmap for how this works? But we don't. So we have to collaborate together. We have to try things. You have to have a atmosphere for trying looking at whatever data you have available to you to see if it's effective, and revising and trying again and sometimes saying, Well, that just didn't work. And so my learning is not to do that thing again, right? And.
Unknown Speaker 20:00
You can't have the type of environment for teachers, for students or for parents, where it's one way, right? It's just not. You really need to think about what is the challenge, you know? What's the problem of practice, and how are we going to work together around this to try something to we did, we would determine, well, how much time are we going to try it for? How are we going to determine if this is effective? And then, you know, and I mean, I'm kind of talking like in the ethereal here, but there's lots of examples I could give for that as well, and that's how you get better, right? And that's how you build. It's one of the ways that you really build a true culture of a collaboration, because nobody is an expert. We're all trying to learn together, and we're all committed to the same mission and vision. Yeah, I'd love that you built on what Bill said about this commitment that you need to have towards a similar vision and mission. And then you talked about this before, also that the trust component right to do the work that you do as a community, where you can problem solve and try and you can think about other ways of doing things, or flexible ways of doing things, you need to have a level of trust between each other as educators, Administrator, educator, student, educator, parent, family, educator. So to do that, it takes a lot of work and certain things that need to be encouraged and need to be able to be helped build those practices right? So what as an educator in the school, did you think helped you to build on those pieces? It almost feels like there's this innate respect that everybody has for each other. But what else were certain things that allowed for that to happen? Because a lot of times, people talk about issues such as time and scheduling and money and staffing and all of that. What were some of the things that you all did in in the school and Daniel, as you continue your journey, as you're doing in other schools, what is it that you've created to help that to happen? I think that the answer is simple. It's not simple, but it's simple.
Unknown Speaker 22:22
I would say that where it starts is being a listening leader. And so it starts with your leadership. When Bill, for instance, was my principal, Bill always says that his primary disability is not blindness, but ADHD. And so Bill, as a leader, would could never sit still. So Bill was everywhere. He was in your classroom as a teacher every single day. So when your principal, when your leader, comes into the you know, into your class, it's not anxiety producing at all, because he's just a fabric. He's the part of the fabric of the class. You know, as a leader, and Bill would come in, he would sit down with the students. He would ask the students the same question, what are you doing? And students would explain what they were doing. And he would be part of the lesson. He would raise his hand, he would engage with the with the lesson. Sometimes, you know, as he would listen, he would ask that question, that maybe it was the question that needed to be leveraged in that moment from the students. And yet, you know, when you're teaching and you're thinking about so many different things same time, you know it's just really great to have that person there to say, Oh yeah, thank you. I need to take a moment for clarity. But another thing Bill always did is he always followed up with at least two glows in a grow, or sometimes he says three glows in a grow. And so you had somebody there as your leader, giving you this feedback, always starting with the positive. There's always positive and not not a positive to puff you up or to make you feel, you know, whatever, but real, authentic, very specific, when you ask the question again, in this way, to the student who was really struggling with that productive language you gave the time you helped them to really, you know, process their thinking, and what they said highlighted the brilliance, you know. And you're just like, Yes, I am going to work to ask questions in multiple different ways, because that is feedback that I can institute immediately. And then there was always a grow. So once you're like, wow, I've been seen as an educator in my work, you know, and just like in what I'm trying to do, then there was that, okay, but next time give a little bit more wait time, or next time I'm.
Unknown Speaker 25:00
Great job asking the question in various different ways so the student could really understand what you were getting at. But it's okay to have silence. Don't let it make you feel uncomfortable. And I think for myself, then growing as a leader, growing as an instructional coach, that is something I take to heart, and it's how I also approach my teachers. Teachers are doing so much, and everybody has some incredible, very effective practices. It takes time to be in the practice, to learn that it takes time just sitting there, engaging in a class as a learner, coming through it to the instruction through the perspective of, what is it like to be a student in this class? How do I feel? What you know, what am What am I experiencing from this instructor? It's, I think, important, like, as I said, a listening leader, but you also need to be a humble leader. And that's that bill is very humble person. And talked about, you know, losing his eyesight. He always has to ask for help. He has to ask for help to, you know, find the urine when
Unknown Speaker 26:21
he's using a public bathroom, right, right? Because it is that humbleness as a leader that like you're talking about Daniel, that I know that in all my interactions with Bill, comes through so clearly, which allows you to be able to take those risks and say things and be okay with oh, did I say this, right? Or did I not? And I can imagine, I can only imagine, as an educator in the school, to have an administrator, a principal, come in and have that humble, humbleness about them. Allows you, as an educator, to be able to say, okay, and we were talking about that trust piece, right? How do you build that trust, to have that collaborative relationship between a leader and a teacher, to have that humbleness, must must help develop some of that components of trust. That's right, and I think that's how you start to earn respect. And so when you show yourself to be trustworthy, and it doesn't mean that you're not pushing back, it doesn't mean that you're not getting someone to stretch outside their comfort zone. That's how learning happens. But learning starts with a willingness to be vulnerable. Our students cannot learn if they do not feel safe to be vulnerable. We cannot I mean, any of us, right? We cannot learn, we cannot grow, we cannot effectively collaborate, until we feel that we can be vulnerable with what we know and what we don't know, and that be in that vulnerability, whether it's within the classroom, whether it is within, you know, coaching relationship, whether it is with an administrator, a leader, even with parents, you know you, as you mentioned, my own child was a student at the Henderson school for five years. And to know that, you know, as a parent, I know my child, you know, and yet, to have a teacher really say, like, this is a two way this is a two way street. And for you to say, you know, I'm seeing this at home. Are you seeing at the school? How can we problem solve around this together? And for that to really, truly collaboratively happen, it's so powerful. But you can't feel, for instance, as a teacher that you need to know everything. You have to be able to feel vulnerable enough to say, like, well, I'm experiencing this. How can we work together, not as an attack, not as a, you know, like, whatever, really, truly and it is a beautiful thing. And I think, like, how do you develop? It takes time, right? It also takes modeling from the leaders. And when a leader and a leadership team, whoever's in whatever type of position of power, right, have them, I think in the classroom, it's the teacher modeling authentic vulnerability growth mindset, saying, I this is my first time teaching this thing. We're going to learn it together. These are the ways that I'm learning from you. This is some feedback that you gave me, and I'm going to change this because of that feedback, but it requires you looking for feedback, asking for feedback, and being willing to act and respond to that, and it's powerful. So
Unknown Speaker 29:51
no, that's great. And I'm like,
Unknown Speaker 29:55
I'm sitting with that a little bit, and that's glad that Bill said something about sound.
Unknown Speaker 30:00
Right. So there was that pause over here where I was like, huh, you're absolutely Of course, you're absolutely right. And I'm thinking about the different instructional pairings that happen in our classrooms, right? Because to be able to create that trust, we talked about it between leaders and teachers. We talked about it with our families, we talked about it with our students. But there's so many times these days, more Currently, we have so many educators in the same room, the same time, working with the same students. To have that level of trust in between those educators is key to be able to make that a functioning relationship and a functioning collaborative relationship, I think, and that, I think, when you were both talking about that stance of listener, a learner, not seeing ourselves as always, as an expert in certain certain places, that can help develop that trust in a classroom when there are so many adults who might be in that same room, how have you both seen some of those collaborative relationships in a classroom? I know again we said, I said in the introduction to we, lot of times, talk about collaboration, and we quickly go into co teaching, but we know that there are other ways, not only to teachers, but other ways that we see collaboration happening between educators. So just wanted to get your insights into both the co teaching aspect of collaboration, but then also other ways that you have seen collaboration happen with adults in a classroom where everybody's working with the same group of students. So in inclusive education at the heart of collaboration, it means that general and special education have to come together. And when we look at individual classrooms, how many adults and who the adults are in a classroom really is going to depend on the number of students, the number of students who have disabilities, and the number and intensity of those needs, and it's going to vary. The bottom line is that whatever monies were spent for educating students in either substantially separate or partially included resource rooms needs to follow into the general ed classroom. In some situations that won't be a teacher with some part time co teaching, or some part time para support might be full time. Para support might be a full time co teacher. It really depends on the situation, number of students, the intensive needs and not to provide those supports is dumping because the district is spending money on those special education students and the teachers need and deserve the support in the classroom. Now, in addition to that, those teachers need some opportunities to plan and to problem solve, and so the administrators have to, right from the start of the year, provide some of that time in the schedule, and also to encourage therapists, occupational speech, whatever, and other folks to be able to have some of the same times together with teachers at similar grades or similar subject areas. That meeting time needs to be meaningful, so we want it to be effective, and people to get something out of it. So there needs to be an agenda. There needs to be a facilitator. You don't want anybody hogging the conversation. You don't want somebody coming off as arrogant. There should be administrative leaders, teacher leaders, coaches, who are also participating in some of these conversations to the maximum extent, providing some resources for that. I know schools that have written grants with universities and nonprofit agencies that have gotten some additional funds and stipends has been wonderful for teachers to have some additional time in the summer or in the school year to do to do that kind of planning and problem solving and collaboration more in depth, it's not always possible. When meeting on some school wide collaboration, like a school site Council after school with parents, we had to figure out how we were going to provide childcare and refreshments in order for parents to participate, and staff who had younger children after school hours, how they were going to participate in a way. So all of that takes some planning, and then we want to make sure, as Daniel mentioned, that we're actively listening to folks. We're empowering groups that come up and work very hard to make recommendations, that we follow through and implement some of those recommendations, as long as they align with school priorities, and then to appreciate the hard work of all the collaboration. The worst thing that I've ever heard is that people who've had lots of meetings, they spend lots of time bringing together special educators, general educators, resource folks, and then they say nobody listened to us. It didn't make a difference. And that's disgrace.
Unknown Speaker 35:00
And disheartening for someone to keep doing that piece right out to be, keep getting engaged in these conversations, if it feels like it actually didn't have an impact. Daniel, how did this? How does this look like currently in your work, how these collaborative relationships have developed in your own instruction and your own classrooms, as well as, how did some of those structures that that bill was talking about, how have that helped you as an educator currently, as well as when you were working with Bill and in this in the Henderson school? Yeah, I would say you started by asking about, like, when you have many people in the classroom, and you've got different individuals who are, you know, really experts in what they do right? And now you're bringing a lot of voices and a lot of different viewpoints and perspectives together, and then really thinking about, well, how are we going to do this work together? And I think one of the really important thing is to always keep again. It goes back to the mission, the vision at the forefront. And what are we there for? We're there to serve students, right? They are our clientele. There are going to be disagreements, that is without without exception,
Unknown Speaker 36:19
agreements. There are a time when you're not going to see eye to eye, where people are going to have very strong viewpoints about something, and how you navigate that conflict is really important. And it goes back to that respect and the trust. And I think that communication is key. Coming up with structures that support communication are really, important. So I would say when we are talking about planning, for instance, at the Henderson The teachers use an online plan book that's shared. So general educators, special educators, therapists, administrators, coaches, all have access to common planning because we've talked a little bit about time. Time is a huge barrier. It's not, it doesn't make the work impossible. It just means you have to be a little bit more creative. And I remember again, my previous principal, who was principal, the leader after Bill, you know, she would always say, work smarter, not harder, right? And that really resonated with me, because, you know, we work really hard, and boundaries are important, and we don't want teachers to burn out. And sometimes this work feels really overwhelming, but having a structure like a shared plan book, where individuals can communicate with one another, they can see, you know, what the lesson is coming up, giving time and respect to as a general educator, for instance, you're collaborating with a special educator, collaborating with a therapist, collaborating with a paraprofessional. How do we communicate what it is, you know, the objective, the big idea of the lesson, the you know, structure, and so on and so forth. But if we want to make changes, we can't make those lessons. Those last minute, because people's work is depending upon it, right? So I think, yeah, time is is a big deal, but we can use our time creatively and effectively, and we have to respect one another with our time. So I think, like a lot, starts from the planning and from the communication and how we structure that in my current setting. Now, something that's very, very impressive is that teachers have dedicated time every week to meet with their content team, to meet with their grade level team, special educators meet together for a dedicated time to focus on whatever. It couldn't be more logistical things related to special education, related to writing IEPs, to testing and so on and so forth. But it might also be bringing a lesson and getting feedback from one another, bringing a summative task and looking at the scope and sequence and seeing, are we leading our students up towards success with this, looking at an assessment that's been accommodated, and saying, Are we keeping the rigor of this assessment through the accommodations? Are the accommodations providing access but not decreasing rigor? Right? There's so many. It's so important for us. And as Bill talked about having an agenda, having a facilitator, it comes back again to the mission and vision and making sure that everything that we do, we're kind of cross checking against that and saying, is this moving us closer to that? I think also, you know, this year has been my first experience with an inclusive class that I'm teaching on my own. I'm teaching high school geometry. I just finished my first year as a high school geometry 10th grade
Unknown Speaker 39:51
teacher, and it was wonderful. I love that my current school structure is anyone who's coaching also is teaching.
Unknown Speaker 40:00
And that's really important, because you need to be deeply connected with the work, in the day to day and in the challenges, if you are coaching and leading others around that. So I love that structure. I think that there's a lot of wisdom in that structure, and it's been a year of learning around inclusion and collaboration for me, and I have found that my biggest collaborators and thought partners have been my students and so, you know, you think about, well, what structures you need to put into place for that, it goes back to there has to be vulnerability. In order for learning to take place, you have to show yourself to be trustworthy. And I think sometimes teachers struggle with this little bit, because it doesn't mean you have to be your kids, your students friends,
Unknown Speaker 40:50
not my students friends, but they know that I am open. I'm honest with them when it's something that I you know, maybe I am learning, or I just saw in a new way. I'm excited to share that, to be learners with them, but also for them to have the assurance that I'm taking them in a direction that is my responsibility, right? You know, to make sure that you know, I'm covering the standards and all of those things. But I'll share, like one particular student that I worked with this year struggled a lot with anxiety, crippling anxiety, to the point that she wasn't coming to school, and so I had to go to her house. And you know, that was, I think she and her family were shocked, you know. And just say, like, hey, guess what? You're my neighbor. Like, what's going on? Do you do you need a ride to school? Do you need? You know? And then she was coming to school that was a like, first, yay. And then she was having a really difficult time getting into class. And we realized, well, her knowing where she's going to sit in the class helps her feel a sense of calm and predictability, and that helped her get through the door. Then, you know, she started spending some time with me, and she wanted to know what was going to happen the next day or the next week. So I started previewing some material with her, and then this led to her actually leading and introducing a game, an activity, a task, to a small group of students in class. Now suddenly I can have a group of students working independently. I can have a group of students that I'm pulling to work with in a small group. I can have a group of students using technology to interact and to engage with and I'm starting to differentiate in a way that, again, creativity, you know, and thinking outside the box, you really are able to start to do. And I guess, like, you know, really leveraging students, asking students for feedback, responding to their feedback, show them that you actually looked at what they shared with you, you know, and and finding ways, as Bill said, to honor what they are sharing and what they're, you know, bringing to you to better and better your practice. It just helps, you know, earn that respect. That example really showed an amazing way that you can think about collaboration and how that happens, collaborating with your students, both as learners, but then also as individuals in the classroom who could also provide support, just in that particular example and in your current work. Use the word inclusive classroom, and then you talked about the students being your collaborators, who are other people that you're collaborating with, even though you're maybe the only teacher in the room when you're providing instruction. Yeah, great question. So I have I'm not the only 10th grade geometry teacher. So last year, there were a team of four of us who are teaching 10th grade geometry, and we would meet routinely together to plan, to look at the instructional materials, to look at our summative task and work backwards. So that was one group. I would meet weekly with the other special educators. And as I described before, we would share problems of practice. Share, you know, best practices. We used a couple of different protocols, such as the success protocol to
Unknown Speaker 44:33
really like, you know, as Bill brought up before, it's important that these meetings are actually honoring of people's time and well planned and well designed. And I find that using protocols often really helps with that. And so, you know, collaborating with our special educators and then collaborating with other coaches in my current school, every individual teacher has a coach, and every coach has a coach.
Unknown Speaker 44:59
So um.
Unknown Speaker 45:00
Um, you know, I had a lot of coaching myself, not only in my teaching practice, but our director of coaching watching me in coaching meetings, giving me feedback really again, helping to leverage what effective practices Am I using as a coach, and where do I need to push my practice? So I think that you know that Teaming is just so important and it has to happen at every level. There are certain things that I lead in my settings, such as the testing coordinating, but I have a team of people that I work with, and then other things, maybe relating to scheduling or to inclusion planning, I'm part of the team not leading that team. So everything is really a team approach, down to scheduling. And one last thing I wanted to say that Bill had mentioned about structures was talking about the schedule, and I think that's a really important one, like the schedule is the structure. It's, it's, it's the embodiment of what we value in a school. So if we are not creating opportunities for intentional collaboration through how we schedule and we expect everyone to be doing that on their own, we are absolutely setting ourselves up for failure. So that, I think is another that would be a good line at the beginning of your show? Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 46:23
I think it actually does take us into the to one of the questions that I had, because when you're both talking about the schools that you've either led, being part of, taught in being a parent at whatever they seem like perfect places, right? Perfect places, on, on, on where, as an educator, we all want to be at, and all want to be a part of. But I know that that doesn't come just by us saying that that's what it's going to be. What were some of the barriers that you faced and face currently in being able to continue building these practices and sustaining them, because, again, sustaining some of these things take, take a lot of work. So how, what are some of the barriers that you've that you faced and are facing to be able to keep these practices going? Lack of time. Individuals who are arrogant, know it alls
Unknown Speaker 47:20
and we're not listening to the people who would be negative, not validating and appreciating what's happening and when there are disagreements, and they're going to be a willingness to try a strategy first. And the the good news is that there is always a focus here in collaboration, the focus what works best for the student to help him or her learn and succeed at the highest possible level, and inclusive classrooms to do so together. I would agree. I chuckled when Bill said time,
Unknown Speaker 47:56
and I had mentioned, you know, time as well as the barrier. But I think of it also. I think a lot of times when we are approaching inclusive education, we want to know, okay, well, what's the best teaching strategy, what's the best tool, what's the best graphic organizer that's going to help with this. What's the best, you know? And there isn't one answer. There's lots of great tools and strategies and techniques. And you know, Bill talked about Universal Design for Learning. That is absolutely the place to start to dig in when we want to really learn. How do we think about inclusive education in practice? I think that, though, when we talk about time being a barrier, time to create collaborative systems and time to earn respect, time to build trust, there's no magic fix. But you know, my co coach that I've worked with, and she's just a very dear colleague, she always says you have to go slow, to go fast. And it's so true. When we build, when we take the time to allow for this deep work to happen. It is truly transformative, and it we can go fast once we, you know, once we build those really strong foundations. And I think a lot of times, you know, we're, we are very data driven, right in our school system. We are, we want to see results, and we have very short amounts of time to see those results, and we're always looking for the quantitative data, and I think that one of the shifts we need to make is to, yes, look for a quantitative data, but we have to look at our qualitative data. And that comes through this, this teaming work. It comes through looking at agendas and outcomes. And.
Unknown Speaker 50:00
And through coaching relationships, and through mentorship, and through, you know, taking time to do a survey, to look at the responses, to give opportunities for individuals, to actually give narratives, and then to take the time to look through the narrative and to see what trends we see there, like we that's that's not easy, but it is so powerful, and I think we under value it. And I think I just want to come back to something that you said before about about Bill as a leader, and you had talked about following through. So when you take when people take the time to do surveys or to have these conversations with us, taking the time to follow through and thinking through with them some of the challenges and opportunities that they might want, that that we can help support them at thank you both. This has been great before we leave one last piece, and we always end with this, a piece of advice that you want to give educators? I know it's very hard to come down to one, and you've already given us so much, but is there one that you want to leave us with as educators, as advice that you think that they might want to think about? I want to give two pieces of advice, but I will do so quickly. First, make sure that we are not negative and critical in our collaborative meeting. So it's okay to talk about how we improve reading, but not Miss Jones was a grade one teacher. It's okay to how we improve relationships on the playground, but not Francisco, who's been a little bit of a bully, and it's okay what we can do to increase family involvement, but not the negligent or disruptive family. So we we have to be careful, unless it's confidential, meetings with teachers talking about problems in particular students, but when they're public, we have to focus on the policies, the programs, but not name individuals. That is very divisive, and I think particularly with social media, it has been really divisive to for people to publicly criticize individuals. And the other advice is we need to show much more appreciation for the hard work of teachers who are working so hard and who are collaborating so validate, publicize and celebrate the kindergarten teachers special and general ed who are coming together with the speech therapist to figure out how to teach phonics better, validate, publicize, celebrate middle school drama teacher who is bringing together parents, artists in the community and involving teachers in the school for a major production for that school, validate, publicize, celebrate that physics teacher at the high school level who's including students with intellectual disabilities and has just a power and maybe even a job coach to help prepare those students for setting up the labs involving them and materials, not focusing so much on the complex formula, but ways that the participation will be meaningful and that their performance will be successful. There's so much good collaborations that's happening in schools, the media is not capturing it. We need to a better job as administrators, teachers, parents and agencies to celebrate the good news that's happening in inclusion in our schools. And I would just piggyback. And I guess for me, it is a,
Unknown Speaker 53:34
you know, it's very, very important to leverage the expertise that you have internally, and to make strategic moves from that, there needs to be a marriage between individuals bringing new ideas, new initiatives, and what is already in existence. You know, I think about my current setting. I'm just finishing up my first year, and I cannot pretend to have the institutional knowledge that the educators who have been at the school for many more years than me do right now. I'm really proud that as we are officially next year, building full inclusion in seventh and ninth grade, or growing full inclusion in seventh and ninth grade next year, which is where, which is what the city of Boston is doing in their Boston Public Schools, my school has looked For some funding to stipend teachers to engage in summer learning around inclusion, and I am helping to lead that work with a team of four other teachers that have been at the school that know, you know, some of the mindsets and maybe some of the.
Unknown Speaker 55:00
Barriers, or some of the really incredible practices that have been happening that we can leverage and grow and share. So I might be bringing some new ideas, but marrying those with what already is in existence and what these individuals are already trying in their practice, and what we know is working and that we can grow for our own setting. And that is really, really important and powerful. You have to leverage the expertise from within and marry that with, you know, with some others, but it has to come again through the respect and the trust building, and then I don't know, I think you're unstoppable. I think you're absolutely right that this is doing that kind of work creates communities that are unstoppable, where all students learn and thrive, right? And that's exactly the purpose, like we all said, of this collaboration is think about teaching and learning and the impact that's happening on each of the students in our classrooms. Thank you both for joining us today, sharing your journey as educators and your learnings. We know that our listeners will learn from this, reflect on their own journeys and support school communities that they work with to help set up systems that support collaborative practices. We look forward to hearing from all of you, our listeners, on how bill and Danielle's experiences connected with you, how you might consider sharing this with your own communities, and the changes you may consider as always, we will have zoom meetings and access to connected resources on our website, urban collaborative.org
Unknown Speaker 56:46
Please reach out with topics and themes you would like us to share additional resources with you about and as always, we thank Keith Jones of Krip Hop for providing the Music for the collab cast. Thank you all. Thank you