Inclusion Stories

For this edition of The Weeklyish, I preview my trip to Seattle, Washington, to visit schools in the Inclusionary Practices Project (IPP) and more!

Transcript + Show Notes: https://weeklyish.substack.com/p/mr-villegas-goes-to-washington

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Hi, Y’all!

First a big shoutout to all my kids for leveling up this year. I’m now the proud father of a 16, 13, and 10-year-old. The single-digit days are over.

Thanks for being great kids. I love being your dad.

Oh, and by the way. Welcome to our new subscribers and listeners. Remarkably, we went from 209 downloads for our August 5 edition of the Weeklyish to 700 downloads for our latest episode on August 19. I sincerely appreciate it.

If you are wondering who this Tim Villegas guy is, please check out “The Misunderstood Inclusionist,” for a little background info on me and why I’m extremely fortunate to do what I do.

So, one of the perks of the job is that I get to read and think about inclusion. When I was a special education classroom teacher, I still did this. But I didn’t give myself dedicated time to digest the information.

For this edition of the Weeklyish, I wanted to share two journal articles that I think you’ll find interesting and possibly give you hope for a unified educational system. There is another one that I don’t think deserves any of your time, so I’m not going to mention it. But some themes are not uncommon in any critique of an “all means all” philosophy, and I have a few things to say about that.

First up is an article (from 2020) by Michael Giangreco. It’s called “How Can a Student with Severe Disabilities Be in a Fifth Grade Class When He Can’t Do Fifth-Grade Level Work?” Misapplying the Least Restrictive Environment.

Isn’t that a great title? It is from the journal Research and Practice for Persons with Severe Disabilities.

Here is the big idea: the concept of Least Restrictive Environment or LRE should facilitate inclusive placement for students with extensive support needs. Instead, LRE often is used as justification for a segregated placement in a special education classroom.

Shout out to Charmaine Thaner and her interview with Cheryl Jorgensen about this on her Facebook Live show.

How many times have you heard, “well...this student’s LRE is an autism classroom.” I would argue that the Least Restrictive Environment is meant as the general education classroom. All other placements are just plain restrictive.

Here is an excerpt from the article. It’s Giangreco’s concluding statement.

The fact that so many students with severe disabilities are being successfully included in general education placements is evidence that it can be done, and begs the question of why it is happening in some schools and not in others. Even in those situations where students with severe disabilities are placed in general education classes, there is undoubtedly much work that remains to be done because placement in general education classes is necessary but not sufficient to be truly included. In the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” The US history of general education class placement of students with severe disabilities has followed this long slow arc toward inclusion and justice. Granted, we still have a long way to go! Whatever steps we can take to continue and speed up the process are important so that more students can benefit from inclusive schooling sooner, rather than later, if at all.

I want to reiterate what Giangreco says here: general education placement is necessary but insufficient. Ok. I’ll get back to that in a minute.

Take a deep breath. Ready for the next one?

This article is “An Interview on District and School Transformation: Practical Approaches to Facilitating Sustainable Systemic Change.” And it’s from a journal called Inclusive Practices from 2021.

If you’ve been following me for any length of time, you’ve probably heard me talk about school districts that are right now changing their practices to become more inclusive. Well in Illinois, there is a special education cooperative that is reimagining what education services look like for all learners.

A regional cooperative has a number of districts that they serve in various ways, but historically through special education classrooms and indirect services like professional development. And so, when Dr. Kurt Schneider came to True North, the focus of the cooperative changed to assist with providing instructional supports and services within general education curriculum and classrooms, so learners could be meaningfully included in their home schools and communities.

Here is an excerpt from t...

For this edition of The Weeklyish, I share an interview from my trip to Club 21's Tools for the Journey Conference in Pasadena, CA, where I presented the pilot episode of MCIE's new podcast series, Inclusion Stories.

Hi, Y’all!

I love how things come full circle sometimes.

For example, in March, my buddy Zeke texted me a link to a Radiolab episode called The Right Stuff.

The Right Stuff (ASL Translation) | Radiolab Podcast

When I looked up what the episode was about, I was so excited.

Essentially it asks the question: “Who gets to be an astronaut?”

And follows a crew of disabled people (called Ambassadors) on a mission to prove that they have what it takes to go to space.

So, in this episode of Radiolab, reporter Andrew Leland joins crew members from Mission AstroAccess to Long Beach, California, where they get on an airplane to take a flight that simulates zero-gravity. It is the kind of flight that NASA uses to train astronauts. And here is a twist, Andrew, Radiolab’s reporter, is legally blind himself. Which I thought was brilliant because who better to report this story than someone with a disability?

It’s a great episode, and I encourage you to listen to it.

Here is the full circle part.

Sometimes when I don’t know what to write about, I’ll scroll through my podcast feed. You don’t want to know how many podcasts I subscribe to. Way too many to listen to.

But this past week, I was feeling a little lost. On the top of my feed was a podcast called How Sound. It’s a joint project of Public Radio International (PRX) and Transom - on radio storytelling.

Yeah, yeah. Super nerdy. But I love it and always learn something.

For this episode of How Sound, host Rob Rosenthal interviewed a reporter from Radiolab. Yep! The same reporter from The Right Stuff episode.

Andrew explained the challenge of recording in zero gravity and how they had to get creative. Not only did Andrew use some fantastic recording techniques, like taping a microphone to his head, but he also talked about the difficulty of figuring out his identity on the flight. Was he a reporter or a member of the flight crew?

This concept of identity is something that I think about a lot, especially when it comes to how to represent disability in my writing and our work promoting inclusive schools.

Here is one of my favorite quotes from the episode. Andrew is talking about his observations in the lead-up to the flight about how nondisabled people related to disabled people.

“You know, it's in that moment...in the very beginning, when the former astronaut says to me, like, oh, so you're obviously one of the Ambassadors and there was a lot more of it, that didn't make it into the story of just like tons of these interactions between the nondisabled people who are there to help and the disabled people. And it's something around how to negotiate unnecessary help and low expectations from people who look at a disabled person and think like, oh, that person is definitely going to need help. And is definitely not here, just like in the normal capacity that everybody else is here.”

So how does this relate to inclusive education?

I think there is some truth to be uncovered here in Andrew’s reflections about this flight.

Disabled people aren’t “supposed” to be training to fly to space. And I’m sure some nondisabled people, have no idea what disabled people can or can't do. So, when the astronaut looks at Andrew, with all the outward signs of being Blind, they automatically assume he is one of the Ambassadors.

Isn’t this exactly what we do in schools? When we see a student with autism or Down syndrome or a learner with multiple disabilities? Someone will inevitably say, “What are they doing here?” “What are they going to get out of it?”

And so, the ableist attitudes continue for the Ambassadors, “what are they going to get out of training to go to space?”

As much as we can, as educators, we need to fight against low expectations. And listening to Andrew's reflections just confirms it for me.

When I heard the episode of How Sound I texted my buddy, Zeke. Isn’t it great when things come full circle?

Make sure to check out Radiolab and How Sound in your favorite podcast player.

As always, if you ever have questions or comments email at [email protected] or go to mcie.org to learn more about how we can partner with you and your school or district.

Thanks for your time, everyone. I’ll be back in a couple of weeks with another edition of The Weeklyish.

Have a great week!

ICYMI

Why I Created My Podcast, Exceeding Expectations

Liz Weintraub &...

Hi, Y’all!
This week, I celebrated my two-year anniversary at MCIE.
That’s right. I left my job at a public school district in the Atlanta Metro area to work in the nonprofit sector, and it’s been a huge learning curve.
You see, I used to be a special education teacher. That was my role for 16 years. 13 of those were in the classroom, and 3 were in a district support specialist role. And the whole time I was in the special education department of the districts I worked for, there was something that bothered me. Segregated special education classrooms.
You probably already know about this, but just in case you don’t know, here is a simplified explanation.
Public education is split into two systems. General education and special education. They are supposed to work together to meet the needs of all learners but to be honest it rarely happens. Real talk...it is hard to change a system that is set up to separate learners in the first place.
There was a law passed in 1975, which had a funny name (PL 94-142) and then after a few years it was called the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. That law made it so that learners with disabilities had a legally protected right to be educated in public schools. Before that law, they were often educated in separate schools or institutions, or if they did go to a regular school, they were not treated that great.
But then as learners started attending their neighborhood schools, school leaders didn’t necessarily want them there because they thought it would be a distraction or that they were too disabled to learn with everyone else. So, they were put in separate classrooms. And a lot of people thought this was a good idea. But not everyone.
As time passed, organizations like MCIE started helping school districts make changes in how they taught all learners. Specifically, how they supported learners with significant disabilities in general education classrooms. And when I mean significant disabilities, I mean learners on the autism spectrum, those with presumed intellectual disabilities, and challenging behavior among others who have been historically excluded. Researchers, school administrators, and teachers all were learning that when school met the needs of all learners in a systematic way rather than by segregating students by disability everyone benefitted.
When I entered the field of special education in 2004, the inclusive education movement had already gone through its biggest push in the 1990s. But in my teacher education program, they taught me all about how learners should be together, how general and special education teachers could collaborate to plan for every child in the classroom, and by distributing students with high support needs across a grade level it kept certain classrooms from having more learners with disabilities than other ones.
But then when I entered the school system, I realized this is not how schools are run.
Cal State Fullerton ruined me! Not really... I love all of you. But they did ruin me in the best way.
Because I spent essentially my whole career as an educator trying to change the system from within.
Why are you telling us this Tim? Well, we have some new people who have subscribed to The Weeklyish, and since I’m reflecting on the last two years, I wanted to share my story again. And give you my why.
Why is this important to me? You know I’ve been asked this question a number of times, and the best answer I can give is that I saw a need and something compelled me to devote myself to it. I suppose some people say it is a calling, and I can’t disagree. But for whatever reason, the fact that the vast majority of school districts segregate students by disability is to me a grand injustice. And I want to work toward righting that wrong because I do believe it is wrong. And it is not just a belief; we have evidence that it is not the best for kids.
And you know what I keep hearing out of the mouths of school leaders that segregate kids? “We do what’s best for kids.”
Here is what I say. No. You are not doing what is best for kids. You are doing what is the most convenient to sustain an inequitable system.
So, it is in that spirit that I wanted to share with you my favorite Weeklyish articles since I started writing this newsletter in January of 2020.
This first one is from February 2020, called On Separate Spaces, and Why They Are and Are Not Needed.
Here is the key takeaway. The goal is always 100% inclusive placement with support. But there are very rare instances where a learner may need something else, and though inclusionists don’t like to talk about it, it is a reality that I think hurts our credibility when we want to stick our head in the sand and pretend this scenario doesn’t exist.
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