Episode 10: Jesse C. Suter and Michael F. Giangreco

https://youtu.be/UIreD4b60bI     On this episode of the podcast, CDCI Executive Director Jesse Suter is joined by UVM University of Vermont Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Education Michael F. Giangreco. Giangreco shares memories, observations, and advice from his more than 30 years of service at CDCI. Dr. Giangreco is a widely published and respected innovator in the field of special education, as well as being the author of the much-loved cartoon series, Absurdities and Realities in Special Education. A full transcript of the episode appears below. 1 00:00:01,339 –> 00:00:03,922 (upbeat music) 2 00:00:10,140 –> 00:00:11,700 Hi, I’m Jesse Suter. 3 00:00:11,700 –> 00:00:13,920 I’m the Executive Director of the Center on Disability 4 00:00:13,920 –> 00:00:16,290 and Community Inclusion at the University of Vermont. 5 00:00:16,290 –> 00:00:18,540 I use he/him pronouns, and I’m really excited 6 00:00:18,540 –> 00:00:21,660 to be doing a podcast with Michael Giangreco. 7 00:00:21,660 –> 00:00:25,890 Michael, you are my mentor, colleague, and friend, 8 00:00:25,890 –> 00:00:30,100 and also University of Vermont Distinguished Professor 9 00:00:30,990 –> 00:00:34,230 Emeritus in Special Education. 10 00:00:34,230 –> 00:00:36,750 That’s still hard to say because we work together here 11 00:00:36,750 –> 00:00:39,243 for so long and you have retired. 12 00:00:40,170 –> 00:00:44,010 So thank you for doing this as a quick visual description. 13 00:00:44,010 –> 00:00:48,030 So I’m a white man in my 50s with no hair, 14 00:00:48,030 –> 00:00:49,560 some facial hair turning gray, 15 00:00:49,560 –> 00:00:51,990 and I’m wearing a pink striped shirt. 16 00:00:51,990 –> 00:00:54,900 And Michael, I think, distinguished professor 17 00:00:54,900 –> 00:00:56,610 is almost a good enough description, 18 00:00:56,610 –> 00:00:59,040 but you are a white man, a little bit older, 19 00:00:59,040 –> 00:01:00,090 a little more hair. 20 00:01:00,090 –> 00:01:03,090 You’re wearing brown glasses and a red sweater 21 00:01:03,090 –> 00:01:05,163 over a blue white striped shirt. 22 00:01:07,200 –> 00:01:08,400 Thank you for joining me today. 23 00:01:08,400 –> 00:01:09,270 Thank you. 24 00:01:09,270 –> 00:01:10,740 Glad to be here. 25 00:01:10,740 –> 00:01:14,130 So when I thought about sort of what we could talk about, 26 00:01:14,130 –> 00:01:17,490 ’cause we’ve talked with each other for a long time. 27 00:01:17,490 –> 00:01:21,480 We met, I think, when I was a graduate student. 28 00:01:21,480 –> 00:01:25,110 You’re at the center, and I always have to look 29 00:01:25,110 –> 00:01:29,697 at that wall over there, ’cause it’s my internship diploma. 30 00:01:31,239 –> 00:01:35,220 And it reminds me that my internship was in 2003. 31 00:01:35,220 –> 00:01:38,337 And so that must mean I met you the year before that, 32 00:01:38,337 –> 00:01:40,530 ’cause that’s when I left. 33 00:01:40,530 –> 00:01:44,250 And you were a big reason that I wanted to come back. 34 00:01:44,250 –> 00:01:46,830 So I went to graduate school here. 35 00:01:46,830 –> 00:01:48,690 We met during one of my placements here 36 00:01:48,690 –> 00:01:51,810 at the Center on Disability and Community Inclusion. 37 00:01:51,810 –> 00:01:56,040 And it was you and Ruth Hamilton and a few other people 38 00:01:56,040 –> 00:01:59,610 that just sort of introduced me to the heart 39 00:01:59,610 –> 00:02:04,440 and soul of this work, community inclusion. 40 00:02:04,440 –> 00:02:06,120 And so I wanted to come back immediately. 41 00:02:06,120 –> 00:02:07,503 So I did my internship, 42 00:02:08,550 –> 00:02:11,647 and I talked to Ruth and I said, 43 00:02:11,647 –> 00:02:12,750 “Can I come back, please? 44 00:02:12,750 –> 00:02:16,200 Is there anything I can do at the center?” 45 00:02:16,200 –> 00:02:18,420 And then you and I started working together 46 00:02:18,420 –> 00:02:21,360 more formally not long after that. 47 00:02:21,360 –> 00:02:23,280 Right, it was actually, 48 00:02:23,280 –> 00:02:28,170 I was asked to serve as your mentor 49 00:02:28,170 –> 00:02:29,610 through the mentoring program. 50 00:02:29,610 –> 00:02:30,600 Oh, that’s right, yeah. 51 00:02:30,600 –> 00:02:33,417 And then I realized very quickly how talented you were, 52 00:02:33,417 –> 00:02:36,030 and I wanted to you work on projects with me. 53 00:02:36,030 –> 00:02:37,560 Oh. 54 00:02:37,560 –> 00:02:39,330 I mean, so this is exactly why I was happy 55 00:02:39,330 –> 00:02:41,820 that you wanted to do this, ’cause you always make me 56 00:02:41,820 –> 00:02:44,910 feel so good about myself whenever we talk. 57 00:02:44,910 –> 00:02:49,110 So it’s all just an excuse for more of that. 58 00:02:49,110 –> 00:02:52,443 We’ve had many good years of collaboration and friendship. 59 00:02:53,460 –> 00:02:54,420 Yeah. 60 00:02:54,420 –> 00:02:57,660 So what I was thinking about what we could talk about, 61 00:02:57,660 –> 00:02:59,910 I just thought about all of our conversations 62 00:02:59,910 –> 00:03:01,470 that we’ve had since we met. 63 00:03:01,470 –> 00:03:06,470 And not only did you support me as a mentor professionally 64 00:03:08,370 –> 00:03:10,620 in terms of the research, but again, 65 00:03:10,620 –> 00:03:13,560 that heart and soul aspects of the job 66 00:03:13,560 –> 00:03:15,150 is something that was really absent 67 00:03:15,150 –> 00:03:18,570 from all of my training in clinical psychology 68 00:03:18,570 –> 00:03:20,040 and through graduate school. 69 00:03:20,040 –> 00:03:23,070 It was much more about, we do the research to come up 70 00:03:23,070 –> 00:03:24,960 with the best interventions and then the goal 71 00:03:24,960 –> 00:03:26,640 is to just get those interventions 72 00:03:26,640 –> 00:03:28,080 to as many people as we can. 73 00:03:28,080 –> 00:03:29,460 That was the whole model. 74 00:03:29,460 –> 00:03:31,560 That was the approach. 75 00:03:31,560 –> 00:03:33,750 And what I think about 76 00:03:33,750 –> 00:03:35,610 some of the first conversations we had, 77 00:03:35,610 –> 00:03:38,460 and I’d love to talk about this a little bit, 78 00:03:38,460 –> 00:03:43,320 which is you got into this area, as I recall, 79 00:03:43,320 –> 00:03:47,220 not because research was the solution for everything. 80 00:03:47,220 –> 00:03:49,170 That’s not how you improve the world. 81 00:03:49,170 –> 00:03:51,600 Yeah, I did get through research. 82 00:03:51,600 –> 00:03:52,433 Yeah. 83 00:03:52,433 –> 00:03:55,110 So I’d like to talk about kind of your journey. 84 00:03:55,110 –> 00:03:55,943 -Okay. -A little bit. 85 00:03:55,943 –> 00:03:57,180 So if we could kinda start there, 86 00:03:57,180 –> 00:04:00,360 so how you got into working with people with disabilities, 87 00:04:00,360 –> 00:04:04,083 got into schools, ’cause I always loved working this part. 88 00:04:05,160 –> 00:04:06,993 I got into it by accident. 89 00:04:07,860 –> 00:04:09,060 This is why I love it. 90 00:04:10,200 –> 00:04:15,200 As a student in high school, I was at best a marginal, 91 00:04:16,230 –> 00:04:19,023 maybe B minus student in high school. 92 00:04:20,513 –> 00:04:22,080 My high school teachers would be shocked 93 00:04:22,080 –> 00:04:24,423 to learn that I got a PhD. 94 00:04:25,320 –> 00:04:26,817 Did you tell any of ’em? 95 00:04:26,817 –> 00:04:28,050 No, I don’t think I ever did 96 00:04:28,050 –> 00:04:30,090 tell any of my high school teachers that. 97 00:04:30,090 –> 00:04:35,040 But the summer between my junior 98 00:04:35,040 –> 00:04:36,690 and senior year in high school, 99 00:04:36,690 –> 00:04:41,490 I was visiting some friends outside of Pittsburgh, 100 00:04:41,490 –> 00:04:44,400 a little place called Marysville, Pennsylvania. 101 00:04:44,400 –> 00:04:48,277 And one day when I was there, they said, 102 00:04:48,277 –> 00:04:49,260 “Oh, come with us. 103 00:04:49,260 –> 00:04:51,780 We’re volunteering at this day camp.” 104 00:04:51,780 –> 00:04:54,900 And they never thought to mention to me 105 00:04:54,900 –> 00:04:57,810 that it was a camp for students, 106 00:04:57,810 –> 00:05:00,993 children, youth with intellectual disability. 107 00:05:02,070 –> 00:05:06,810 So when I arrived there, they had kind of planned things 108 00:05:06,810 –> 00:05:09,127 that they were scheduled to do, and they were like, 109 00:05:09,127 –> 00:05:12,990 “Oh, just go here and play with these kids.” 110 00:05:12,990 –> 00:05:17,490 And I didn’t know what to do, 111 00:05:17,490 –> 00:05:22,490 because as a kid growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, 112 00:05:22,980 –> 00:05:26,103 kids with disabilities were not around. 113 00:05:28,140 –> 00:05:31,830 I mean, I have three strong memories from childhood 114 00:05:31,830 –> 00:05:33,540 of interacting with people that had 115 00:05:33,540 –> 00:05:35,670 pretty significant disabilities. 116 00:05:35,670 –> 00:05:38,620 One was a little girl who lived on our block 117 00:05:39,990 –> 00:05:43,410 who I know used a wheelchair for mobility. 118 00:05:43,410 –> 00:05:46,200 And I’m pretty sure she was non-verbal. 119 00:05:46,200 –> 00:05:48,780 And a bus came and picked her up every day 120 00:05:48,780 –> 00:05:52,290 and took her to some place that I don’t know where it went. 121 00:05:52,290 –> 00:05:57,290 And her parents took her on walks, but none of us knew her. 122 00:06:00,810 –> 00:06:02,700 That was pretty common. 123 00:06:02,700 –> 00:06:07,060 I also remember that one of my mother’s friends 124 00:06:08,400 –> 00:06:12,450 had a child at the time who was a teenager 125 00:06:12,450 –> 00:06:14,430 who had very severe cerebral palsy. 126 00:06:14,430 –> 00:06:17,310 I didn’t know it was cerebral palsy at the time. 127 00:06:17,310 –> 00:06:19,110 And I remember being at their house, 128 00:06:19,110 –> 00:06:23,550 and I had this distinct image of his mother 129 00:06:23,550 –> 00:06:26,253 feeding him a tuna fish sandwich. 130 00:06:27,750 –> 00:06:29,130 And I’d never encountered somebody 131 00:06:29,130 –> 00:06:31,440 with that level of disability before. 132 00:06:31,440 –> 00:06:35,430 And the third was, I remember in our elementary school, 133 00:06:35,430 –> 00:06:40,430 we had a classroom of kids who people made fun of. 134 00:06:41,760 –> 00:06:43,113 I remember that. 135 00:06:44,471 –> 00:06:48,750 And one of the reasons was because they weren’t our age. 136 00:06:48,750 –> 00:06:50,850 They were all older. 137 00:06:50,850 –> 00:06:53,820 They were kids old enough to have a five o’clock shadow. 138 00:06:53,820 –> 00:06:54,653 [Jesse] Yeah. 139 00:06:56,127 –> 00:06:58,530 But again, they didn’t eat in the cafeteria 140 00:06:58,530 –> 00:06:59,640 at the same time that we did. 141 00:06:59,640 –> 00:07:02,280 They were very segregated from us. 142 00:07:02,280 –> 00:07:04,170 We just didn’t know them. 143 00:07:04,170 –> 00:07:08,820 And so disability had never really been on my radar. 144 00:07:08,820 –> 00:07:10,743 But that day at the summer camp, 145 00:07:13,140 –> 00:07:15,630 it felt very natural to me. 146 00:07:15,630 –> 00:07:19,020 Like just interacting with people that, in this case, 147 00:07:19,020 –> 00:07:22,500 it was people with primarily intellectual disability. 148 00:07:22,500 –> 00:07:24,323 And I had fun. 149 00:07:24,323 –> 00:07:26,550 I mean, I really enjoyed it. 150 00:07:26,550 –> 00:07:28,710 And I thought, I didn’t know 151 00:07:28,710 –> 00:07:30,180 what I was going to college for. 152 00:07:30,180 –> 00:07:32,573 I didn’t have a profession in mind. 153 00:07:32,573 –> 00:07:33,463 And I thought, “You know what? 154 00:07:33,463 –> 00:07:35,490 I could do this. 155 00:07:35,490 –> 00:07:37,680 Maybe I’ll go to school for special education.” 156 00:07:37,680 –> 00:07:39,060 And so I did. 157 00:07:39,060 –> 00:07:42,377 And my first semester, or actually, 158 00:07:42,377 –> 00:07:44,340 it was my second semester in college, 159 00:07:44,340 –> 00:07:49,340 I ran into an old high school friend 160 00:07:49,980 –> 00:07:53,370 who was working at a summer camp, 161 00:07:53,370 –> 00:07:56,550 a residential summer camp called Cradle Beach Camp, 162 00:07:56,550 –> 00:07:59,610 outside of south of Buffalo and Angola, New York. 163 00:07:59,610 –> 00:08:01,740 And she encouraged me to apply. 164 00:08:01,740 –> 00:08:04,620 And that was one of the most important 165 00:08:04,620 –> 00:08:06,870 decisions I ever made in my life, 166 00:08:06,870 –> 00:08:11,490 because Cradle Beach has been around since 1888. 167 00:08:14,040 –> 00:08:16,380 It first was considered what was called 168 00:08:16,380 –> 00:08:21,380 a “Fresh Air” mission, which was to bring economically 169 00:08:21,690 –> 00:08:24,780 disadvantaged inner city children to the country 170 00:08:24,780 –> 00:08:27,090 to try to put some weight on them 171 00:08:27,090 –> 00:08:28,743 and give them some fresh air. 172 00:08:30,000 –> 00:08:32,100 And then after World War II, 173 00:08:32,100 –> 00:08:35,490 they started including children with disabilities. 174 00:08:35,490 –> 00:08:37,830 First, separately at a separate time. 175 00:08:37,830 –> 00:08:41,760 But then within a few years following World War II, 176 00:08:41,760 –> 00:08:46,760 they started integrating children with disabilities 177 00:08:46,830 –> 00:08:51,630 and their non-disabled peers at the camp. 178 00:08:51,630 –> 00:08:54,420 And it was very unique. 179 00:08:54,420 –> 00:08:58,680 And it still is unique today in terms of a place 180 00:08:58,680 –> 00:09:00,630 where kids with and without disabilities 181 00:09:00,630 –> 00:09:02,220 go to camp together. 182 00:09:02,220 –> 00:09:07,220 And the one downside of it, so to speak, 183 00:09:07,500 –> 00:09:10,200 is the fact that it’s a bit out of proportion 184 00:09:10,200 –> 00:09:12,720 in terms of there’s proportionally 185 00:09:12,720 –> 00:09:16,470 more children with various disabilities 186 00:09:16,470 –> 00:09:19,140 than there are kids without disabilities. 187 00:09:19,140 –> 00:09:20,250 It’s about half and half. 188 00:09:20,250 –> 00:09:22,350 And that’s kind of out of proportion 189 00:09:22,350 –> 00:09:24,510 to what you’d see in the real world. 190 00:09:24,510 –> 00:09:26,970 But one of the things that it did, it did two things for me. 191 00:09:26,970 –> 00:09:31,560 One was it exposed me to an enormous range 192 00:09:31,560 –> 00:09:35,610 of different types of physical, intellectual, 193 00:09:35,610 –> 00:09:38,520 emotional, sensory disabilities. 194 00:09:38,520 –> 00:09:40,530 But the more important part, 195 00:09:40,530 –> 00:09:42,150 and I did this for seven summers 196 00:09:42,150 –> 00:09:43,713 -during college. -Wow. 197 00:09:44,790 –> 00:09:47,640 And then my early teaching career 198 00:09:47,640 –> 00:09:51,120 was that I was living in community 199 00:09:51,120 –> 00:09:52,893 with people with disabilities. 200 00:09:52,893 –> 00:09:56,250 And we also had a lot of counselors and staff 201 00:09:56,250 –> 00:09:58,683 who had disabilities of various sorts. 202 00:09:59,610 –> 00:10:02,010 The guy who ran the arts and crafts program 203 00:10:02,010 –> 00:10:04,233 had severe cerebral palsy. 204 00:10:05,340 –> 00:10:06,750 We had counselors who were deaf, 205 00:10:06,750 –> 00:10:11,340 counselors who were blind, counselors that had different 206 00:10:11,340 –> 00:10:13,923 physical or orthopedic disabilities. 207 00:10:16,380 –> 00:10:21,000 It was just an amazing kind of mix of people. 208 00:10:21,000 –> 00:10:26,000 And we were together 24/7 for, 209 00:10:26,340 –> 00:10:28,713 our camp sessions were two weeks at a time. 210 00:10:29,929 –> 00:10:33,120 There were 200 kids at the camp at one time. 211 00:10:33,120 –> 00:10:34,420 That was really big, yeah. 212 00:10:34,420 –> 00:10:38,670 Yeah, and like a hundred staff. 213 00:10:38,670 –> 00:10:43,670 And we ate together and we slept in cabins together, 214 00:10:45,840 –> 00:10:47,127 and we camped together. 215 00:10:47,127 –> 00:10:51,090 And our whole purpose was having fun. 216 00:10:51,090 –> 00:10:52,050 -Safely. -It was camp. 217 00:10:52,050 –> 00:10:53,140 It was camp. 218 00:10:53,140 –> 00:10:54,450 -Yeah. -And anything 219 00:10:54,450 –> 00:10:56,700 that any other kid could do, 220 00:10:56,700 –> 00:10:58,380 any kid with a disability could do. 221 00:10:58,380 –> 00:11:02,670 And we just thought, and none of us were trained, really. 222 00:11:02,670 –> 00:11:04,710 And there was a little bit of orientation, 223 00:11:04,710 –> 00:11:07,293 but it was really more of a mindset. 224 00:11:08,610 –> 00:11:11,577 These are kids, and we’re gonna do fun kid things, 225 00:11:11,577 –> 00:11:13,932 and we’re gonna do them all together. 226 00:11:13,932 –> 00:11:15,900 And if there’s some barrier in the way, 227 00:11:15,900 –> 00:11:18,693 we’ll figure out a way to make it work. 228 00:11:20,340 –> 00:11:22,680 And it was a grand, I mean, 229 00:11:22,680 –> 00:11:26,550 it was a grand time and it was probably 230 00:11:26,550 –> 00:11:29,670 one of the most meaningful things in terms of, 231 00:11:29,670 –> 00:11:31,500 you mentioned kind of the heart and soul, 232 00:11:31,500 –> 00:11:36,500 because you never can know exactly what it’s like 233 00:11:38,400 –> 00:11:42,270 to be the parent of a child that has a severe disability 234 00:11:42,270 –> 00:11:44,670 or some kind of really intensive need. 235 00:11:44,670 –> 00:11:47,430 But you get a tiny glimpse of it 236 00:11:47,430 –> 00:11:50,730 when you’re living in a residential situation, 237 00:11:50,730 –> 00:11:54,420 because for kids that needed it, 238 00:11:54,420 –> 00:11:58,800 we were dressing them, we were changing diapers, 239 00:11:58,800 –> 00:12:02,610 we were feeding kids, we were carrying them 240 00:12:02,610 –> 00:12:04,653 from their wheelchairs into the pool. 241 00:12:05,520 –> 00:12:08,370 We were doing everything that a parent would do. 242 00:12:08,370 –> 00:12:09,870 We were up in the middle of the night 243 00:12:09,870 –> 00:12:13,470 if somebody woke up with a nightmare. 244 00:12:13,470 –> 00:12:16,020 And so you got a small glimpse of that. 245 00:12:16,020 –> 00:12:20,040 But the cool thing about the socialization of it 246 00:12:20,040 –> 00:12:23,340 was we weren’t there to be their teacher. 247 00:12:23,340 –> 00:12:25,410 We weren’t there to be their counselor. 248 00:12:25,410 –> 00:12:28,314 We were there to have fun together. 249 00:12:28,314 –> 00:12:31,530 And it just created, 250 00:12:31,530 –> 00:12:34,800 I think in many ways it kind of inoculated me 251 00:12:34,800 –> 00:12:38,220 from some of the professional socialization 252 00:12:38,220 –> 00:12:40,590 that puts professionals here 253 00:12:40,590 –> 00:12:42,540 and people with disabilities here. 254 00:12:42,540 –> 00:12:45,270 I mean, there certainly is always a power and balance 255 00:12:45,270 –> 00:12:48,540 when you’ve got a child and adult, a camper and a counselor. 256 00:12:48,540 –> 00:12:53,540 But it’s different than kind of professional socialization. 257 00:12:53,760 –> 00:12:55,590 So that was super influential. 258 00:12:55,590 –> 00:12:59,463 And then one of the people that worked at the camp, 259 00:13:01,290 –> 00:13:02,940 it was actually a married couple at the time. 260 00:13:02,940 –> 00:13:07,350 They worked in the only group home that was available. 261 00:13:07,350 –> 00:13:10,140 Remember, this is the mid-1970s. 262 00:13:10,140 –> 00:13:13,830 The institutionalization is just getting started. 263 00:13:13,830 –> 00:13:17,310 And group homes were like brand new. 264 00:13:17,310 –> 00:13:20,220 There was one in Western New York. 265 00:13:20,220 –> 00:13:23,460 Granger Place on the west side of Buffalo. 266 00:13:23,460 –> 00:13:28,460 I volunteered there and did some internship credits there. 267 00:13:29,880 –> 00:13:32,630 And then I ended up getting a job. 268 00:13:32,630 –> 00:13:36,180 In the last two and a half years I was in college, 269 00:13:36,180 –> 00:13:38,373 -I was working full-time. -[Jesse] Oh wow. 270 00:13:38,373 –> 00:13:41,490 At a group home for adults 271 00:13:41,490 –> 00:13:44,340 with developmental disabilities. 272 00:13:44,340 –> 00:13:46,230 Mostly those with intellectual, 273 00:13:46,230 –> 00:13:48,210 all of them had intellectual disabilities. 274 00:13:48,210 –> 00:13:51,213 Some of them had other disabilities as well. 275 00:13:52,290 –> 00:13:54,240 About how big was the group home? 276 00:13:54,240 –> 00:13:55,800 Like people who were living there? 277 00:13:55,800 –> 00:13:58,890 There were six residents in the group home. 278 00:13:58,890 –> 00:14:03,510 And today, we have kind of more natural options 279 00:14:03,510 –> 00:14:05,460 than congregating people in group homes. 280 00:14:05,460 –> 00:14:08,190 But at the time, it was kind of an innovation. 281 00:14:08,190 –> 00:14:10,620 Yeah, as opposed to a big institution. 282 00:14:10,620 –> 00:14:11,463 Right. 283 00:14:13,410 –> 00:14:18,090 Originally, I was working in the 11-7 shift. 284 00:14:18,090 –> 00:14:21,330 But I was really, I was showing up at dinner time. 285 00:14:21,330 –> 00:14:22,650 I was having dinner with the residents, 286 00:14:22,650 –> 00:14:25,710 hanging around in the evening and doing my homework. 287 00:14:25,710 –> 00:14:29,220 And then I was responsible to be there overnight, 288 00:14:29,220 –> 00:14:32,700 and in the morning to get them making their breakfast 289 00:14:32,700 –> 00:14:37,700 and off to work or day programs that they were in. 290 00:14:38,070 –> 00:14:43,070 And again, the goal was helping people live their life. 291 00:14:45,000 –> 00:14:47,250 And none of us knew what we were doing. 292 00:14:47,250 –> 00:14:52,250 I mean, they hired a 19-year-old kid. (laughs) 293 00:14:52,380 –> 00:14:55,950 That gives you an idea of how devalued, you know. 294 00:14:55,950 –> 00:14:59,190 Like a 19-year-old kid that is still in college 295 00:14:59,190 –> 00:15:01,050 could get a job doing this. 296 00:15:01,050 –> 00:15:02,730 I mean, those were the exact same options 297 00:15:02,730 –> 00:15:04,590 that were options for me 298 00:15:04,590 –> 00:15:06,660 in graduate school in mental health, 299 00:15:06,660 –> 00:15:08,820 ’cause we had the same thing, but we had overhead programs 300 00:15:08,820 –> 00:15:10,710 or residential treatment centers. 301 00:15:10,710 –> 00:15:12,540 And some of them were small and some of them were big. 302 00:15:12,540 –> 00:15:17,160 But yeah, that’s who you hired to have the overnight shift. 303 00:15:17,160 –> 00:15:17,993 Yeah. 304 00:15:17,993 –> 00:15:19,980 And then later, actually, during student teaching, 305 00:15:19,980 –> 00:15:23,850 I had the 3-11 shift, and the group home 306 00:15:23,850 –> 00:15:27,690 gave me some flexibility once residents 307 00:15:27,690 –> 00:15:30,100 were kind of getting ready to go to sleep 308 00:15:31,590 –> 00:15:34,743 to do my lesson planning and stuff like that. 309 00:15:35,910 –> 00:15:40,380 But I think that basically, I was living with people 310 00:15:40,380 –> 00:15:45,380 with disabilities in community for several years. 311 00:15:46,380 –> 00:15:49,470 And that’s a really different experience 312 00:15:49,470 –> 00:15:51,060 than just showing up and seeing people 313 00:15:51,060 –> 00:15:54,450 at school or a clinic or something and then going. 314 00:15:54,450 –> 00:15:57,390 So now, then I became a teacher, special ed teacher, 315 00:15:57,390 –> 00:16:02,310 and I was there at the beginning of the IDEA. 316 00:16:03,870 –> 00:16:05,280 Whether it was, of course, 317 00:16:05,280 –> 00:16:08,730 then it was originally called EHA, 318 00:16:08,730 –> 00:16:11,253 the Education for All Handicapped Children’s Act. 319 00:16:13,050 –> 00:16:17,130 But as you know, and probably many of the listeners 320 00:16:17,130 –> 00:16:20,130 know that law passed in 1975, 321 00:16:20,130 –> 00:16:24,210 but it wasn’t to be enacted until 1977. 322 00:16:24,210 –> 00:16:27,150 They gave schools two years to ramp up, 323 00:16:27,150 –> 00:16:29,400 in states, two years to ramp up. 324 00:16:29,400 –> 00:16:34,400 And my first year of teaching was the ’77, ’78 school year. 325 00:16:37,140 –> 00:16:39,390 I started in January, but it was the ’77, 326 00:16:39,390 –> 00:16:41,409 it was the very first year 327 00:16:41,409 –> 00:16:43,920 of the federal law being in place. 328 00:16:43,920 –> 00:16:47,670 I was a preschool special ed teacher in a rural, 329 00:16:47,670 –> 00:16:49,830 very, very rural community. 330 00:16:49,830 –> 00:16:50,880 I didn’t remember it was preschool. 331 00:16:50,880 –> 00:16:52,953 Yeah, preschool special ed. 332 00:16:54,180 –> 00:16:56,370 We had some kids that were there for a morning session, 333 00:16:56,370 –> 00:16:59,013 some for an afternoon, and some that stayed all day. 334 00:17:00,180 –> 00:17:03,000 And I worked with a team there. 335 00:17:03,000 –> 00:17:07,110 And then I had two other teaching experiences. 336 00:17:07,110 –> 00:17:08,760 These were all in New York state. 337 00:17:10,530 –> 00:17:13,785 Starting up in Plattsburgh the next year, 338 00:17:13,785 –> 00:17:18,420 the first classroom, and again, 339 00:17:18,420 –> 00:17:20,730 this was during an era of segregation, 340 00:17:20,730 –> 00:17:24,360 particularly of people with severe disabilities. 341 00:17:24,360 –> 00:17:27,840 The first public school classroom for kids 342 00:17:27,840 –> 00:17:32,840 with what was then called severe and profound disabilities. 343 00:17:33,360 –> 00:17:36,660 So I had kids with blindness, kids with severe autism, 344 00:17:36,660 –> 00:17:40,860 kids with severe intellectual disability, you name it. 345 00:17:40,860 –> 00:17:44,490 They were in there and they were from 5 to 21. 346 00:17:44,490 –> 00:17:46,890 And it was in the wing of a vocational center, 347 00:17:46,890 –> 00:17:50,703 but it was a special ed kind of segregated setting. 348 00:17:52,380 –> 00:17:55,380 It was the very first public school program. 349 00:17:55,380 –> 00:17:59,340 And the personnel preparation programs at that time 350 00:17:59,340 –> 00:18:01,170 didn’t prepare you to work with kids 351 00:18:01,170 –> 00:18:03,810 with more intensive needs. 352 00:18:03,810 –> 00:18:08,670 So I’m winging it based on camping. 353 00:18:08,670 –> 00:18:09,720 Right. 354 00:18:09,720 –> 00:18:11,379 Well, it sounds very similar to the camp 355 00:18:11,379 –> 00:18:12,212 where you guys were, 356 00:18:12,212 –> 00:18:14,670 it was just a community figuring it out. 357 00:18:14,670 –> 00:18:15,747 Yeah, I mean, 358 00:18:15,747 –> 00:18:18,030 and IEPs were brand new. 359 00:18:18,030 –> 00:18:22,770 So one of the things that I learned quickly 360 00:18:22,770 –> 00:18:25,320 was right across the lake from me. 361 00:18:25,320 –> 00:18:26,940 Here at the University of Vermont, 362 00:18:26,940 –> 00:18:29,010 there was a new federally funded 363 00:18:29,010 –> 00:18:32,190 personnel preparation program to prepare teachers 364 00:18:32,190 –> 00:18:35,520 to work with students who had severe multiple disabilities. 365 00:18:35,520 –> 00:18:40,500 And so I got on the ferry at Cumberland Head 366 00:18:40,500 –> 00:18:44,700 and came across Lake Champlain twice a week. 367 00:18:44,700 –> 00:18:48,466 And during the summer, over a year and a half period, 368 00:18:48,466 –> 00:18:52,290 to get my master’s degree focused on students 369 00:18:52,290 –> 00:18:53,757 with severe and multiple disabilities. 370 00:18:53,757 –> 00:18:57,063 And that was absolutely invaluable. 371 00:18:58,290 –> 00:19:00,420 So was the master’s program connected to the center? 372 00:19:00,420 –> 00:19:01,740 I know there was faculty that worked. 373 00:19:01,740 –> 00:19:02,610 Absolutely, yeah. 374 00:19:02,610 –> 00:19:03,840 It was connected to the center. 375 00:19:03,840 –> 00:19:05,740 Yeah, so that’s how you became connected to us first. 376 00:19:05,740 –> 00:19:09,079 Yeah, that’s how I got connected to the center. 377 00:19:09,079 –> 00:19:12,000 So I taught, then for a short time, 378 00:19:12,000 –> 00:19:13,950 I went down to Virginia, 379 00:19:13,950 –> 00:19:16,440 worked at the University of Virginia 380 00:19:16,440 –> 00:19:17,970 Children’s Rehabilitation Center 381 00:19:17,970 –> 00:19:21,513 as an outpatient orthopedic clinics. 382 00:19:23,250 –> 00:19:25,230 Did some graduate work down there. 383 00:19:25,230 –> 00:19:27,510 Did an EDS degree in special ed down there 384 00:19:27,510 –> 00:19:30,210 with some wonderful people, 385 00:19:30,210 –> 00:19:32,700 but really talented, talented folks. 386 00:19:32,700 –> 00:19:37,700 And then went back to teaching and taught in Ithaca. 387 00:19:38,940 –> 00:19:43,590 And then from there, became a special ed administrator, 388 00:19:43,590 –> 00:19:46,890 where I really got into desegregating 389 00:19:46,890 –> 00:19:49,500 some programs in Auburn, New York 390 00:19:49,500 –> 00:19:51,960 with a wonderful team of people there. 391 00:19:51,960 –> 00:19:53,490 And while I was doing that, 392 00:19:53,490 –> 00:19:58,200 I did my doctoral degree at Syracuse. 393 00:19:58,200 –> 00:20:02,163 And when I finished, folks here at the center said, 394 00:20:03,307 –> 00:20:05,640 “We have an opening for a grant position.” 395 00:20:05,640 –> 00:20:10,640 And we joke about it now, but I almost didn’t get that job. 396 00:20:11,820 –> 00:20:13,560 Even though there were only two applicants, 397 00:20:13,560 –> 00:20:15,240 I almost didn’t get that job. 398 00:20:15,240 –> 00:20:16,350 That’s come up a few times. 399 00:20:16,350 –> 00:20:19,620 But I did get that job and that led 400 00:20:19,620 –> 00:20:22,260 to a 34-year career here. 401 00:20:22,260 –> 00:20:24,330 But the thing is that the research 402 00:20:24,330 –> 00:20:28,800 that I ended up doing was all related 403 00:20:28,800 –> 00:20:32,940 to challenges that I either encountered 404 00:20:32,940 –> 00:20:37,940 personally in 13 years of working in the field 405 00:20:38,640 –> 00:20:41,531 or things that I thought were really holes 406 00:20:41,531 –> 00:20:43,830 in the literature. 407 00:20:43,830 –> 00:20:44,850 Right. 408 00:20:44,850 –> 00:20:46,470 And so that’s another big transition 409 00:20:46,470 –> 00:20:48,150 that I wanna talk about was from teaching 410 00:20:48,150 –> 00:20:50,310 and administration to research. 411 00:20:50,310 –> 00:20:52,230 So that first grant that you came to, 412 00:20:52,230 –> 00:20:54,000 was that a research position, 413 00:20:54,000 –> 00:20:58,110 or were the future projects that you worked on research? 414 00:20:58,110 –> 00:20:59,700 The first grant was a grant 415 00:20:59,700 –> 00:21:02,970 that had been originally co-written by Wayne Fox, 416 00:21:02,970 –> 00:21:04,830 who was the longtime director 417 00:21:04,830 –> 00:21:07,350 of the center and Chigee Cloninger. 418 00:21:07,350 –> 00:21:11,100 It was a project to support students 419 00:21:11,100 –> 00:21:13,860 who were on the Vermont DeafBlind Register. 420 00:21:13,860 –> 00:21:15,780 We now called it sensory impairment. 421 00:21:15,780 –> 00:21:19,030 But at the time, it was the DeafBlind Register 422 00:21:20,790 –> 00:21:23,250 in inclusive classrooms around Vermont. 423 00:21:23,250 –> 00:21:26,130 And I became part of the Vermont eye team, 424 00:21:26,130 –> 00:21:29,400 and I serve statewide, supporting schools 425 00:21:29,400 –> 00:21:32,610 who were working with kids who were on the register. 426 00:21:32,610 –> 00:21:36,900 Now, for people who maybe are not in the deafblind 427 00:21:36,900 –> 00:21:39,330 or dual sensory field, 428 00:21:39,330 –> 00:21:42,760 people often think of like Helen Keller 429 00:21:43,920 –> 00:21:47,040 as a classic example of somebody who’s deafblind. 430 00:21:47,040 –> 00:21:50,970 There was not the population that we were serving. 431 00:21:50,970 –> 00:21:54,273 The vast, vast majority of students. 432 00:21:55,200 –> 00:22:00,000 And there were only about, I think, 28 or 30 statewide 433 00:22:00,000 –> 00:22:03,440 who were considered deafblind or at risk of deafblind 434 00:22:03,440 –> 00:22:05,493 as they met certain criteria. 435 00:22:07,770 –> 00:22:09,630 They were almost all students 436 00:22:09,630 –> 00:22:13,203 with quite intensive multiple disabilities. 437 00:22:14,880 –> 00:22:17,550 Very few had verbal language, 438 00:22:17,550 –> 00:22:21,930 very few had the physical capability to use sign language 439 00:22:21,930 –> 00:22:25,860 because of severe orthopedic disability. 440 00:22:25,860 –> 00:22:30,570 And so it was very difficult to really fully know 441 00:22:30,570 –> 00:22:33,753 what their cognitive abilities were. 442 00:22:35,610 –> 00:22:38,100 We did what I think everybody 443 00:22:38,100 –> 00:22:42,240 at the Center on Disability believes in, 444 00:22:42,240 –> 00:22:44,040 which is we made decisions based on 445 00:22:44,040 –> 00:22:45,870 the least dangerous assumption. 446 00:22:45,870 –> 00:22:50,370 So we approached everyone as if they were cognitively 447 00:22:50,370 –> 00:22:53,310 capable because that was the least 448 00:22:53,310 –> 00:22:54,870 dangerous way to approach them. 449 00:22:54,870 –> 00:22:55,703 [Jesse] Right. 450 00:22:57,000 –> 00:22:58,983 And so that led to, 451 00:23:00,600 –> 00:23:03,750 that was a grant-funded position, 452 00:23:03,750 –> 00:23:06,180 which was only gonna last for three years. 453 00:23:06,180 –> 00:23:08,130 And the only way I could stay at the university 454 00:23:08,130 –> 00:23:11,100 was to start writing my own grants, which I did. 455 00:23:11,100 –> 00:23:14,670 And that first grant was a model demonstration grant. 456 00:23:14,670 –> 00:23:17,250 And then I wrote a series of research grants 457 00:23:17,250 –> 00:23:20,010 and model demonstration grants and training grants 458 00:23:20,010 –> 00:23:25,010 over the next 20 years to fund myself and others here. 459 00:23:27,450 –> 00:23:29,400 And that’s where we started getting into 460 00:23:29,400 –> 00:23:34,400 some research and related services, decision-making, 461 00:23:35,610 –> 00:23:38,313 and paraprofessionals and service delivery. 462 00:23:39,330 –> 00:23:42,150 Yeah, that’s what got the ball rolling. 463 00:23:42,150 –> 00:23:43,230 Right. 464 00:23:43,230 –> 00:23:45,900 And I mean, and you talk about sort of getting into research 465 00:23:45,900 –> 00:23:48,000 because you needed the funding in order to stay here. 466 00:23:48,000 –> 00:23:49,620 And that was true for everybody. 467 00:23:49,620 –> 00:23:52,200 But I don’t think there were many researchers here. 468 00:23:52,200 –> 00:23:53,650 There certainly aren’t today. 469 00:23:54,660 –> 00:23:56,520 So there’s lots of people that were writing grants, 470 00:23:56,520 –> 00:23:58,740 but they might be a personnel preparation grant 471 00:23:58,740 –> 00:24:00,333 or a training grant. 472 00:24:00,333 –> 00:24:03,543 Even when we were doing model demonstration grants, 473 00:24:04,830 –> 00:24:08,100 I think that having gone through 474 00:24:08,100 –> 00:24:11,610 three graduate programs at Vermont, 475 00:24:11,610 –> 00:24:13,710 then Virginia, then Syracuse, 476 00:24:13,710 –> 00:24:17,970 I was exposed to a number of scholars 477 00:24:17,970 –> 00:24:22,970 who kind of socialized me to think 478 00:24:24,210 –> 00:24:26,910 that if I was doing something 479 00:24:26,910 –> 00:24:31,593 that was useful or potentially valuable, 480 00:24:32,730 –> 00:24:35,760 that I needed to disseminate it. 481 00:24:35,760 –> 00:24:40,157 And that the best way to disseminate it was through writing. 482 00:24:43,650 –> 00:24:45,570 I was doing presentations as well. 483 00:24:45,570 –> 00:24:48,453 But through writing and through published research, 484 00:24:50,010 –> 00:24:52,887 I felt like I was, in schools., 485 00:24:54,406 –> 00:24:55,620 I had opportunities to do 486 00:24:55,620 –> 00:24:58,320 a lot of observing and collecting data. 487 00:24:58,320 –> 00:25:01,800 And I was trained as a single subject researcher. 488 00:25:01,800 –> 00:25:05,880 And I did single subject research in my early career, 489 00:25:05,880 –> 00:25:07,083 but not here. 490 00:25:08,250 –> 00:25:13,020 Once I got into the schools, the nature of my research 491 00:25:13,020 –> 00:25:17,910 changed based on what schools would allow. 492 00:25:17,910 –> 00:25:18,743 Sure. 493 00:25:19,800 –> 00:25:22,410 So a lot of the research that I did 494 00:25:22,410 –> 00:25:24,360 was descriptive research, 495 00:25:24,360 –> 00:25:28,350 both qualitative and quantitative descriptive research. 496 00:25:28,350 –> 00:25:31,590 And some of it was, a little bit of it 497 00:25:31,590 –> 00:25:33,630 was quasi-experimental, 498 00:25:33,630 –> 00:25:36,810 and some of it was evaluation research. 499 00:25:36,810 –> 00:25:41,310 But we pretty much, throughout all of my projects, 500 00:25:41,310 –> 00:25:45,840 we always took data and we always shared it. 501 00:25:45,840 –> 00:25:48,390 And sometimes we shared, 502 00:25:48,390 –> 00:25:51,030 we ended up sharing things that we didn’t intend. 503 00:25:51,030 –> 00:25:55,680 Like the whole strand of the work 504 00:25:55,680 –> 00:25:59,100 that was done at the center partially that I led 505 00:25:59,100 –> 00:26:01,773 on paraprofessionals in inclusive schools, 506 00:26:03,390 –> 00:26:05,820 we didn’t start that with a grant on paraprofessionals. 507 00:26:05,820 –> 00:26:07,950 -Right. -That started with a grant 508 00:26:07,950 –> 00:26:11,430 on unrelated services for kids with deafblindness. 509 00:26:11,430 –> 00:26:16,430 And we ended up with a ton of data related 510 00:26:17,280 –> 00:26:22,280 to paraprofessionals that was not part of our grant plan. 511 00:26:22,440 –> 00:26:25,297 But I remember talking to the team and saying, 512 00:26:25,297 –> 00:26:28,533 “I think we’ve got some pretty interesting stuff here. 513 00:26:29,617 –> 00:26:32,400 I think we should really analyze these data.” 514 00:26:32,400 –> 00:26:37,353 And it ended up with the publication of an article called, 515 00:26:39,120 –> 00:26:42,240 something like Helping or Hovering Effects 516 00:26:42,240 –> 00:26:44,550 of Instructional Assistant Proximity 517 00:26:44,550 –> 00:26:47,380 on Students With Disabilities. 518 00:26:47,380 –> 00:26:48,669 That sounds like the exact title. 519 00:26:48,669 –> 00:26:49,502 -It might be. -Okay. 520 00:26:49,502 –> 00:26:50,335 It might be. 521 00:26:50,335 –> 00:26:51,168 Just something like that. 522 00:26:51,168 –> 00:26:52,001 It’s pretty close to that. 523 00:26:52,001 –> 00:26:54,323 It’s definitely starts with helping or hovering, 524 00:26:55,290 –> 00:26:59,373 but it was published in 1997 in Exceptional Children. 525 00:27:01,140 –> 00:27:06,140 And that article turned out to be really a turning point 526 00:27:08,250 –> 00:27:10,800 or a demarcation point in the literature 527 00:27:10,800 –> 00:27:12,573 related to paraprofessionals, 528 00:27:14,250 –> 00:27:19,250 and has become kind of a seminal article 529 00:27:19,680 –> 00:27:21,840 along with another one that came out 530 00:27:21,840 –> 00:27:24,390 of an early grant called “I’ve Counted Jon”. 531 00:27:24,390 –> 00:27:26,550 Transformational experiences of students 532 00:27:26,550 –> 00:27:29,700 with disabilities in regular classes. 533 00:27:29,700 –> 00:27:32,400 Those both came out of early grants 534 00:27:32,400 –> 00:27:33,903 and early data collection. 535 00:27:35,580 –> 00:27:38,070 Yeah, well, I mean, so I mentioned at the beginning, 536 00:27:38,070 –> 00:27:41,310 some of the things that I gained from our mentorship 537 00:27:41,310 –> 00:27:43,950 and that idea of research is communication 538 00:27:43,950 –> 00:27:47,730 and sort of really like giving back, in a sense, 539 00:27:47,730 –> 00:27:50,970 ’cause as you described in your own journey, 540 00:27:50,970 –> 00:27:53,130 and I don’t think it’s really changed much, 541 00:27:53,130 –> 00:27:57,060 schools and different communities are left on their own 542 00:27:57,060 –> 00:27:58,440 to figure things out. 543 00:27:58,440 –> 00:28:00,300 And they might come up with amazing solutions 544 00:28:00,300 –> 00:28:01,830 that are exactly what they needed, 545 00:28:01,830 –> 00:28:03,870 or they might really spend a lot of time 546 00:28:03,870 –> 00:28:05,847 -reinventing the wheel. -Yeah. 547 00:28:05,847 –> 00:28:08,610 And so this idea that no, when you do something, 548 00:28:08,610 –> 00:28:10,200 you should share it. 549 00:28:10,200 –> 00:28:13,350 Again, my own, whether it’s more traditional 550 00:28:13,350 –> 00:28:15,630 or just different experience in research, 551 00:28:15,630 –> 00:28:18,210 was always, no, you do research because it’s almost like 552 00:28:18,210 –> 00:28:21,660 that’s the widgets we create as researchers, 553 00:28:21,660 –> 00:28:23,370 or it’s part of career advancement. 554 00:28:23,370 –> 00:28:26,073 It’s something that’s a pressure that you need to do. 555 00:28:27,452 –> 00:28:29,850 And in sort of just a demonstration of your accomplishments 556 00:28:29,850 –> 00:28:32,190 in and of themselves as opposed to, 557 00:28:32,190 –> 00:28:34,350 no, it’s a communication tool. 558 00:28:34,350 –> 00:28:35,970 It’s just a way of sharing. 559 00:28:35,970 –> 00:28:40,050 It’s one of the reasons why in many of the articles 560 00:28:40,050 –> 00:28:42,900 that I wrote over the year, I tried to have 561 00:28:42,900 –> 00:28:45,840 some kind of catchy little subtitle 562 00:28:45,840 –> 00:28:47,820 or beginning, like helping her hovering. 563 00:28:47,820 –> 00:28:49,440 People remember that. 564 00:28:49,440 –> 00:28:51,870 Or “I’ve Counted Jon”, they remember that 565 00:28:51,870 –> 00:28:55,980 as opposed to some long academic title. 566 00:28:55,980 –> 00:28:56,813 Right. 567 00:28:56,813 –> 00:28:58,170 -Precarious or purposeful. -Right. 568 00:28:58,170 –> 00:28:59,820 Yeah, yeah. 569 00:28:59,820 –> 00:29:01,233 -Simple, not easy. -Yeah. 570 00:29:02,340 –> 00:29:04,170 Just little phrases that, 571 00:29:04,170 –> 00:29:08,220 because I was always really conscious of, 572 00:29:08,220 –> 00:29:11,220 I’m doing this because I’m trying to influence 573 00:29:11,220 –> 00:29:15,120 certain people to improve opportunities 574 00:29:15,120 –> 00:29:17,220 and supports for people with disabilities. 575 00:29:17,220 –> 00:29:18,690 So who’s my audience? 576 00:29:18,690 –> 00:29:21,990 My audience, teachers, principals, 577 00:29:21,990 –> 00:29:24,843 special ed directors, to some extent, parents. 578 00:29:26,880 –> 00:29:29,730 So it was one of the reasons, it’s interesting, 579 00:29:29,730 –> 00:29:32,760 I came out of Syracuse, and for people that know 580 00:29:32,760 –> 00:29:36,000 higher education at that time, and this would’ve been 581 00:29:36,000 –> 00:29:39,543 in the mid-80s to the late 80s, 582 00:29:40,590 –> 00:29:43,530 Syracuse was a hotbed of qualitative research. 583 00:29:43,530 –> 00:29:46,720 Some of the people who were writing the most 584 00:29:48,480 –> 00:29:52,140 like widely used qualitative textbooks at the time, 585 00:29:52,140 –> 00:29:54,630 Steven Taylor, Robert Bogdan, 586 00:29:54,630 –> 00:29:57,573 Sarah Beckwin were at Syracuse. 587 00:29:58,680 –> 00:30:02,583 And most of my classmates there were on a qualitative track. 588 00:30:04,020 –> 00:30:04,920 And I was not. 589 00:30:04,920 –> 00:30:08,430 I was on a quantitative track, which was different. 590 00:30:08,430 –> 00:30:12,690 But all of us who went to Syracuse were all exposed 591 00:30:12,690 –> 00:30:16,740 at least at a introductory level to qualitative research. 592 00:30:16,740 –> 00:30:20,943 And interestingly, I always saw the value in it, 593 00:30:22,869 –> 00:30:26,337 and I started really doing it more fully 594 00:30:29,010 –> 00:30:30,963 once I left Syracuse. 595 00:30:33,060 –> 00:30:37,507 And my two most cited articles ever 596 00:30:39,030 –> 00:30:41,820 are qualitative, and a couple of others 597 00:30:41,820 –> 00:30:45,870 that are qualitative are also among the kind of most used. 598 00:30:45,870 –> 00:30:49,050 And when I look at it and when I know 599 00:30:49,050 –> 00:30:51,690 about the feedback I’ve received from people, 600 00:30:51,690 –> 00:30:53,700 it’s because people relate to it. 601 00:30:53,700 –> 00:30:55,590 They can see themselves, 602 00:30:55,590 –> 00:30:58,740 and they can see their own circumstance in the data. 603 00:30:58,740 –> 00:31:03,690 In fact, I saved very little from my office 604 00:31:03,690 –> 00:31:06,300 when I moved out, but one of the things I found 605 00:31:06,300 –> 00:31:11,190 tucked away in a couple of journals 606 00:31:11,190 –> 00:31:13,980 were some letters that I had saved 607 00:31:13,980 –> 00:31:16,740 -[Jesse] Oh, wow. -That I got after the icon 608 00:31:16,740 –> 00:31:19,650 John article was published. 609 00:31:19,650 –> 00:31:23,190 And I remember, one of them said a colleague 610 00:31:23,190 –> 00:31:26,970 was sharing some responses from some of his students, 611 00:31:26,970 –> 00:31:31,530 and one of them was like, “I think you were eavesdropping 612 00:31:31,530 –> 00:31:35,700 in my teacher’s room because I’ve heard people say 613 00:31:35,700 –> 00:31:39,780 the exact same quotes that are in your paper.” 614 00:31:39,780 –> 00:31:44,780 And the other one that I got from Bob Algozzine, 615 00:31:46,770 –> 00:31:50,400 who is just an amazing special education scholar 616 00:31:50,400 –> 00:31:52,590 and has been for decades 617 00:31:52,590 –> 00:31:55,260 down at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, 618 00:31:55,260 –> 00:31:58,380 somebody who I respect so much. 619 00:31:58,380 –> 00:32:00,240 And so it was super meaningful for me 620 00:32:00,240 –> 00:32:02,190 to get a letter from that. 621 00:32:02,190 –> 00:32:05,280 He was the editor of Exceptional Children at the time, 622 00:32:05,280 –> 00:32:10,110 and he was talking about his own feeling 623 00:32:10,110 –> 00:32:13,983 that basically, that inclusion was the way to go. 624 00:32:16,680 –> 00:32:17,850 I hope I can get this right, 625 00:32:17,850 –> 00:32:21,000 because he made an analogy about swans, 626 00:32:21,000 –> 00:32:24,980 and basically that citing a thousand white swans 627 00:32:28,500 –> 00:32:30,870 does not prove that all swans are white, 628 00:32:30,870 –> 00:32:33,030 but the citing of just one black swan 629 00:32:33,030 –> 00:32:35,760 proves that all swans aren’t white. 630 00:32:35,760 –> 00:32:38,557 And he basically was saying like your article, 631 00:32:38,557 –> 00:32:43,557 “I’ve Counted Jon”, and I should say credit 632 00:32:44,010 –> 00:32:49,010 to Ruth Dennis and Chigee Cloninger and Susan Edelman 633 00:32:49,500 –> 00:32:52,400 and Richard Schattman who were co-authors on that article, 634 00:32:54,000 –> 00:32:57,600 that our article was like a black swan, 635 00:32:57,600 –> 00:33:01,477 and it was gonna disrupt things when people said, 636 00:33:01,477 –> 00:33:03,180 “Well, kids with severe, ’cause it was about kids 637 00:33:03,180 –> 00:33:04,887 with severe disabilities.” 638 00:33:06,270 –> 00:33:07,103 People were saying, 639 00:33:07,103 –> 00:33:09,000 “Well, you can’t include kids like that.” 640 00:33:09,000 –> 00:33:12,660 You can include these kids, but not those kids. 641 00:33:12,660 –> 00:33:16,200 And he basically said, it’s gonna make it much tougher 642 00:33:16,200 –> 00:33:18,450 on people to claim that these kids 643 00:33:18,450 –> 00:33:22,200 can’t be included when they read the transformations 644 00:33:22,200 –> 00:33:25,320 of the teachers in this article.. 645 00:33:25,320 –> 00:33:30,030 And so qualitative research, I mean, 646 00:33:30,030 –> 00:33:33,000 I’ve always liked mixed methods research, 647 00:33:33,000 –> 00:33:36,390 but qualitative research, I think when done well, 648 00:33:36,390 –> 00:33:39,750 can be super powerful in telling the story 649 00:33:39,750 –> 00:33:44,010 and communicating to people in a way that sometimes 650 00:33:44,010 –> 00:33:48,480 when the statistics are really complicated, 651 00:33:48,480 –> 00:33:51,480 it’s like, you and I have had this conversation many times. 652 00:33:51,480 –> 00:33:53,160 -Yes. -Cause you know. 653 00:33:53,160 –> 00:33:56,010 You’re much more skilled at statistics than I am. 654 00:33:56,010 –> 00:33:59,199 And I’ll be like, Jesse, you gotta explain this to me. 655 00:33:59,199 –> 00:34:01,770 I can’t write about this stuff 656 00:34:01,770 –> 00:34:03,960 and we gotta translate this into lang, 657 00:34:03,960 –> 00:34:05,760 we can put the statistics in, 658 00:34:05,760 –> 00:34:07,200 but we’ve gotta put this in language 659 00:34:07,200 –> 00:34:09,870 that a teacher can understand and relate to. 660 00:34:09,870 –> 00:34:11,210 Well, yeah, I mean, part of it is explaining it. 661 00:34:11,210 –> 00:34:15,900 Part of it, it is the marriage of both the quantitative 662 00:34:15,900 –> 00:34:17,760 and the qualitative, because again, 663 00:34:17,760 –> 00:34:21,450 my own background and this, I feel like, again, 664 00:34:21,450 –> 00:34:23,343 is also sort of values that I got from you 665 00:34:23,343 –> 00:34:25,200 that were just so helpful to me, 666 00:34:25,200 –> 00:34:27,510 is that having exactly the right statistical test 667 00:34:27,510 –> 00:34:29,880 for the specific situation that you’re in 668 00:34:29,880 –> 00:34:34,880 is not necessarily the answer that is needed 669 00:34:35,220 –> 00:34:37,470 for any of the goals that you might have for research. 670 00:34:37,470 –> 00:34:41,700 And again, often, the sort of the the advice 671 00:34:41,700 –> 00:34:44,430 that I was getting was just sort of research publication 672 00:34:44,430 –> 00:34:48,330 for its own sake is a value as opposed to, 673 00:34:48,330 –> 00:34:50,430 no, a teacher might wanna read this 674 00:34:50,430 –> 00:34:52,440 and might see themselves in it 675 00:34:52,440 –> 00:34:56,040 and then need to understand, what did you learn? 676 00:34:56,040 –> 00:34:57,000 What came from this? 677 00:34:57,000 –> 00:34:58,170 -What should I do? -One of your, 678 00:34:58,170 –> 00:35:03,170 one of your other mentors who we both loved, John Bircher, 679 00:35:04,230 –> 00:35:07,290 I remember so clearly early in my career here 680 00:35:07,290 –> 00:35:08,217 at the University of Vermont. 681 00:35:08,217 –> 00:35:10,140 And of course, for those who are listening 682 00:35:10,140 –> 00:35:13,530 and don’t know John, he was a psychology professor 683 00:35:13,530 –> 00:35:15,240 on the faculty here for many years, 684 00:35:15,240 –> 00:35:17,313 along with his wife Sarah. 685 00:35:18,390 –> 00:35:20,430 And they did a lot of work around people 686 00:35:20,430 –> 00:35:22,830 with both developmental disabilities 687 00:35:22,830 –> 00:35:26,940 and people with kind of serious emotional 688 00:35:26,940 –> 00:35:30,150 behavioral issues and mental health issues. 689 00:35:30,150 –> 00:35:34,050 And he always told me that the simplest statistic 690 00:35:34,050 –> 00:35:35,790 is the most powerful. 691 00:35:35,790 –> 00:35:40,020 I mean, literally, as simple as numbers and percentages. 692 00:35:40,020 –> 00:35:42,930 And I think that that’s true. 693 00:35:42,930 –> 00:35:46,020 To go from sort of like the most traditional roots 694 00:35:46,020 –> 00:35:47,940 of sort of behaviorist principles, 695 00:35:47,940 –> 00:35:50,490 which people say are kind of stripping away 696 00:35:50,490 –> 00:35:55,490 all humanity of, whether it’s in teaching 697 00:35:55,823 –> 00:35:57,840 or in clinical psych, which is my background. 698 00:35:57,840 –> 00:36:01,410 Both of you took that to like what are the tools 699 00:36:01,410 –> 00:36:03,420 from those sort of quantitative 700 00:36:03,420 –> 00:36:04,530 and whether it’s a single case 701 00:36:04,530 –> 00:36:07,623 or multiple folks for communication. 702 00:36:08,868 –> 00:36:11,640 And I can picture of the graphs that I created with you 703 00:36:11,640 –> 00:36:13,500 and the graphs that I created with John. 704 00:36:13,500 –> 00:36:15,990 And it was really just to communicate the things 705 00:36:15,990 –> 00:36:18,930 that are happening that you need to pay attention to. 706 00:36:18,930 –> 00:36:19,950 -Yeah. -But it’s not 707 00:36:19,950 –> 00:36:21,270 the whole story. 708 00:36:21,270 –> 00:36:23,220 The real story is what does this person 709 00:36:23,220 –> 00:36:24,390 want out of their life? 710 00:36:24,390 –> 00:36:26,490 There was a guy who was a part of the faculty 711 00:36:26,490 –> 00:36:31,140 that was working during the first summer program. 712 00:36:31,140 –> 00:36:33,750 His name is Michael Friedel. 713 00:36:33,750 –> 00:36:36,210 And he told me that he had 714 00:36:36,210 –> 00:36:39,300 some of the same kind of concerns. 715 00:36:39,300 –> 00:36:42,150 And he said that one of the ways that he was able 716 00:36:42,150 –> 00:36:45,300 to understand it better for himself 717 00:36:45,300 –> 00:36:48,540 was to think of these behavioral approaches 718 00:36:48,540 –> 00:36:52,650 as humanistic empiricism, 719 00:36:52,650 –> 00:36:55,683 where you were pursuing humanistic aims, 720 00:36:56,910 –> 00:36:59,580 but using empirically sound approaches, 721 00:36:59,580 –> 00:37:03,540 because like as a teacher of kids 722 00:37:03,540 –> 00:37:04,860 that had more intensive need, 723 00:37:04,860 –> 00:37:07,110 for example, I had a student 724 00:37:07,110 –> 00:37:11,550 who had really, really severe head banging behaviors. 725 00:37:11,550 –> 00:37:15,730 I mean, he would put his head through drywall. 726 00:37:17,400 –> 00:37:20,940 He had a kind of a permanent callous 727 00:37:20,940 –> 00:37:22,890 on his forehead from hitting his head. 728 00:37:22,890 –> 00:37:25,560 He was in danger of concussion 729 00:37:25,560 –> 00:37:28,470 and retinal detachment all the time. 730 00:37:28,470 –> 00:37:33,470 And trying to help him reduce that 731 00:37:34,020 –> 00:37:35,790 through positive approaches, 732 00:37:35,790 –> 00:37:39,450 positive behavioral approaches as opposed to punishments 733 00:37:39,450 –> 00:37:43,980 or negative kind of things was really important, 734 00:37:43,980 –> 00:37:45,720 really important in his life. 735 00:37:45,720 –> 00:37:50,451 And so I kind of reluctantly learned 736 00:37:50,451 –> 00:37:52,500 these behavioral approaches. 737 00:37:52,500 –> 00:37:55,770 And then I went back into my classroom in the fall, 738 00:37:55,770 –> 00:38:00,240 and I thought, well, I’ve spent all this time 739 00:38:00,240 –> 00:38:01,073 learning this stuff. 740 00:38:01,073 –> 00:38:02,550 I should try it out. 741 00:38:02,550 –> 00:38:06,210 So I wrote systematic instructional programs 742 00:38:06,210 –> 00:38:08,130 for my students’ IEP goals. 743 00:38:08,130 –> 00:38:13,130 And those kids learned more in the first two months 744 00:38:15,330 –> 00:38:17,940 than they had the whole previous year. 745 00:38:17,940 –> 00:38:21,510 And it was because we were using sound 746 00:38:21,510 –> 00:38:25,860 instructional procedures and doing database approaches, 747 00:38:25,860 –> 00:38:27,643 database decision making and so on. 748 00:38:27,643 –> 00:38:29,610 And then I was hooked. 749 00:38:29,610 –> 00:38:32,340 But when I always wanna use it 750 00:38:32,340 –> 00:38:35,370 and always when I taught the behavior analysis course, 751 00:38:35,370 –> 00:38:37,380 I think that the behavior analysis course 752 00:38:37,380 –> 00:38:42,063 that was taught here at UVM was different 753 00:38:42,960 –> 00:38:46,050 than a lot of what is taught in behavior analysis 754 00:38:46,050 –> 00:38:49,830 around the country, because the idea that behavior analysis 755 00:38:49,830 –> 00:38:54,830 has a heart is not anything that we invented here. 756 00:38:56,490 –> 00:38:59,010 I mean, it goes all the way back to Montrose Wolf, 757 00:38:59,010 –> 00:39:02,250 who was one of the key people along with folks 758 00:39:02,250 –> 00:39:05,010 like Donald Bear at the University of Kansas 759 00:39:05,010 –> 00:39:07,770 and a whole bunch of others at the University of Kansas 760 00:39:07,770 –> 00:39:10,107 back in the 1960s and ’70s. 761 00:39:10,107 –> 00:39:13,830 And he wrote an article about applied behavior analysis 762 00:39:13,830 –> 00:39:18,830 finding its heart in terms of talking about social validity. 763 00:39:19,500 –> 00:39:21,990 And that’s a classic in the field 764 00:39:21,990 –> 00:39:24,120 of applied behavior analysis. 765 00:39:24,120 –> 00:39:26,100 And you know what? 766 00:39:26,100 –> 00:39:27,420 The way we taught applied behavior 767 00:39:27,420 –> 00:39:29,220 analysis here was two ways. 768 00:39:29,220 –> 00:39:33,500 One was, there are certain negative punishment, 769 00:39:35,520 –> 00:39:37,680 response, cost, overcorrection. 770 00:39:37,680 –> 00:39:39,810 There are a whole bunch of procedures 771 00:39:39,810 –> 00:39:41,850 that we made students aware of, 772 00:39:41,850 –> 00:39:45,060 but we didn’t teach or we didn’t encourage them to use, 773 00:39:45,060 –> 00:39:48,570 because we thought that using those approaches 774 00:39:48,570 –> 00:39:51,570 would interfere with them developing 775 00:39:51,570 –> 00:39:54,150 constructive relationships with their students. 776 00:39:54,150 –> 00:39:58,290 And if you think that a positive constructive relationship 777 00:39:58,290 –> 00:40:01,950 is the basis for a safe learning environment 778 00:40:01,950 –> 00:40:03,210 and a healthy learning environment, 779 00:40:03,210 –> 00:40:04,890 you don’t wanna do things with kids 780 00:40:04,890 –> 00:40:06,810 that are gonna interfere with you 781 00:40:06,810 –> 00:40:08,610 developing that positive stuff. 782 00:40:08,610 –> 00:40:13,534 So we just said, “Yeah, these things exist.” 783 00:40:13,534 –> 00:40:15,180 They were used in the olden days. 784 00:40:15,180 –> 00:40:16,680 Some people still use them today, 785 00:40:16,680 –> 00:40:19,230 but we really don’t encourage you to use these things. 786 00:40:19,230 –> 00:40:21,690 We’re gonna stick on all the positive stuff, 787 00:40:21,690 –> 00:40:24,540 and we’re gonna talk about how we can apply 788 00:40:24,540 –> 00:40:27,330 these things in the most natural way. 789 00:40:27,330 –> 00:40:31,260 So people think, oh, ABA’s only for behavior problems, 790 00:40:31,260 –> 00:40:33,210 only for kids with autism. 791 00:40:33,210 –> 00:40:38,210 It’s only this kind of mass trial, discrete trial training. 792 00:40:38,460 –> 00:40:41,820 It’s like, no, it can be done in a very natural way, 793 00:40:41,820 –> 00:40:44,010 incorporated into the regular class. 794 00:40:44,010 –> 00:40:48,030 And in fact, I would argue that whether they label it 795 00:40:48,030 –> 00:40:51,570 as such or identify it as such, 796 00:40:51,570 –> 00:40:55,350 every parent on the planet and every teacher on the planet 797 00:40:55,350 –> 00:40:57,690 has used behavioral approaches. 798 00:40:57,690 –> 00:41:00,090 They may or may not use them systematically. 799 00:41:00,090 –> 00:41:01,860 They may or may not use them correctly. 800 00:41:01,860 –> 00:41:03,780 They may or may not label them. 801 00:41:03,780 –> 00:41:06,960 But they’ve all used modeling and queuing 802 00:41:06,960 –> 00:41:09,030 and fading supports and providing 803 00:41:09,030 –> 00:41:11,133 different types of prompts. 804 00:41:12,045 –> 00:41:13,410 -Feedback, yeah. -And feedback 805 00:41:13,410 –> 00:41:17,935 in terms of positive reinforcement or correction procedures. 806 00:41:17,935 –> 00:41:20,160 I mean, it’s just ubiquitous. 807 00:41:20,160 –> 00:41:24,030 It’s not like behavioral approaches were invented. 808 00:41:24,030 –> 00:41:27,900 They’re just really a description of what humans, 809 00:41:27,900 –> 00:41:30,000 how humans teach each other. 810 00:41:30,000 –> 00:41:33,540 And then in applied behavior analysis, often, 811 00:41:33,540 –> 00:41:38,280 you’re exaggerating those or you’re doing them 812 00:41:38,280 –> 00:41:41,190 very systematically to try to get 813 00:41:41,190 –> 00:41:42,963 a specific behavior change. 814 00:41:44,004 –> 00:41:46,980 But they can be used extremely naturally, 815 00:41:46,980 –> 00:41:50,160 and often are by parents and teachers 816 00:41:50,160 –> 00:41:53,250 without even realizing what they’re doing or naming it. 817 00:41:53,250 –> 00:41:58,200 So I worry sometimes that with people 818 00:41:58,200 –> 00:42:01,290 being attracted to ABA or repelled by it, 819 00:42:01,290 –> 00:42:04,260 that the people that are repelled by it 820 00:42:04,260 –> 00:42:08,523 are focusing on the misuses of the tools. 821 00:42:09,990 –> 00:42:14,990 The fact that it has been used in ways that harm people, 822 00:42:16,650 –> 00:42:18,210 physically or emotionally, 823 00:42:18,210 –> 00:42:23,194 it has been used to control people inappropriately. 824 00:42:23,194 –> 00:42:24,510 -And still is. -And still is. 825 00:42:24,510 –> 00:42:25,650 But it doesn’t have to be. 826 00:42:25,650 –> 00:42:28,960 There’s nothing about the tools themselves. 827 00:42:28,960 –> 00:42:33,000 that you can also use ABA procedures 828 00:42:33,000 –> 00:42:35,880 to improve someone’s communication skills 829 00:42:35,880 –> 00:42:39,813 that encourage them to be able to self-advocate, 830 00:42:41,280 –> 00:42:45,210 to open up opportunities for them in work 831 00:42:45,210 –> 00:42:47,760 and recreation and communication 832 00:42:47,760 –> 00:42:51,633 and all kinds of really positive things. 833 00:42:53,580 –> 00:42:58,580 And so I think that it’s too bad that it’s so polarizing, 834 00:42:59,160 –> 00:43:03,393 because I think if it’s looked at in a particular way, 835 00:43:04,260 –> 00:43:09,260 it’s hard to deny that these are legitimate strategies, 836 00:43:09,720 –> 00:43:14,107 but it’s how people use them and to what end they use them. 837 00:43:14,107 –> 00:43:15,960 And that’s where the heart part comes in. 838 00:43:15,960 –> 00:43:20,430 So when people think of special ed or related fields 839 00:43:20,430 –> 00:43:25,430 as only about using research-based approaches, 840 00:43:26,820 –> 00:43:30,627 everything we do is rooted in a set of values. 841 00:43:30,627 –> 00:43:35,070 And if it’s not rooted in a set of constructive values 842 00:43:35,070 –> 00:43:39,660 that really support and raise people 843 00:43:39,660 –> 00:43:44,040 with disabilities or others, 844 00:43:44,040 –> 00:43:49,040 then it’s either not very useful or it could be harmful. 845 00:43:49,320 –> 00:43:53,070 So you always gotta check the relationship 846 00:43:53,070 –> 00:43:56,670 between I think the values and the practices. 847 00:43:56,670 –> 00:43:58,140 Yeah, well, I agree with you, 848 00:43:58,140 –> 00:44:00,780 because that’s another thing that you taught me. 849 00:44:00,780 –> 00:44:04,800 So I remember when we first started working together 850 00:44:04,800 –> 00:44:09,430 on our research, and I knew about inclusion 851 00:44:10,590 –> 00:44:13,020 and trying to help students with disabilities 852 00:44:13,020 –> 00:44:16,550 and help schools keep the students with disabilities 853 00:44:16,550 –> 00:44:19,080 in the regular education classrooms. 854 00:44:19,080 –> 00:44:21,480 And the more we looked into that 855 00:44:21,480 –> 00:44:25,140 as part of the numbers we count in EVOLVE Plus, 856 00:44:25,140 –> 00:44:28,090 and the more we were sort of pulling from the national data 857 00:44:29,010 –> 00:44:32,460 and thinking about research grants, and especially, 858 00:44:32,460 –> 00:44:34,860 we looked at the Institute of Education Sciences grant. 859 00:44:34,860 –> 00:44:36,930 It was all about academics. 860 00:44:36,930 –> 00:44:40,380 Like that really has to be the end goal of everything. 861 00:44:40,380 –> 00:44:43,050 Arguably, it should be for education. 862 00:44:43,050 –> 00:44:44,470 And I remember the conversation as, 863 00:44:44,470 –> 00:44:46,620 okay, so we’re focused on inclusion, 864 00:44:46,620 –> 00:44:48,510 and they’re focused on academics, 865 00:44:48,510 –> 00:44:49,890 so that’s what we need to study. 866 00:44:49,890 –> 00:44:51,300 We need to demonstrate the students 867 00:44:51,300 –> 00:44:53,280 with higher levels of inclusion, 868 00:44:53,280 –> 00:44:56,340 or we can look at that lead to better academics. 869 00:44:56,340 –> 00:44:59,670 And I love you that you just sort of stopped everything 870 00:44:59,670 –> 00:45:02,760 and said there’s civil rights issues, 871 00:45:02,760 –> 00:45:04,740 there’s things that conflict with our values, 872 00:45:04,740 –> 00:45:06,600 and then there’s research questions. 873 00:45:06,600 –> 00:45:08,070 And so as we’re talking about behaviors 874 00:45:08,070 –> 00:45:10,440 and when we’re talking about research, 875 00:45:10,440 –> 00:45:12,330 this is one of the things I’ve taken 876 00:45:12,330 –> 00:45:17,280 is that these are tools in service of bigger- 877 00:45:17,280 –> 00:45:18,240 -Yeah, it could- -Humanistic values. 878 00:45:18,240 –> 00:45:20,490 I’m sure part of the conversation we had 879 00:45:20,490 –> 00:45:23,070 was that inclusion is not a research question. 880 00:45:23,070 –> 00:45:24,660 That was exactly what you said, yes. 881 00:45:24,660 –> 00:45:26,940 Whether or not kids get included 882 00:45:26,940 –> 00:45:28,800 is not a research question. 883 00:45:28,800 –> 00:45:31,410 An appropriate research question is around, 884 00:45:31,410 –> 00:45:34,020 in what ways can we better, 885 00:45:34,020 –> 00:45:39,020 more successfully include more kids with more diverse needs? 886 00:45:39,120 –> 00:45:43,230 But not whether or not, because they are human beings 887 00:45:43,230 –> 00:45:47,160 who deserve and have the right to the same civil rights 888 00:45:47,160 –> 00:45:49,860 and opportunities as any other person. 889 00:45:49,860 –> 00:45:53,910 So people that say, well, we’ve done this study, 890 00:45:53,910 –> 00:45:57,300 and inclusion doesn’t produce this outcome. 891 00:45:57,300 –> 00:45:59,283 Therefore, kids should be segregated. 892 00:46:00,630 –> 00:46:02,880 To me, that’s a misguided thing. 893 00:46:02,880 –> 00:46:05,730 And if you look at the law, if you look at the federal law, 894 00:46:05,730 –> 00:46:08,160 -it’s rooted in values. -Yes. 895 00:46:08,160 –> 00:46:10,050 It tries to implement those values 896 00:46:10,050 –> 00:46:13,260 by asking people to use research-based approaches, 897 00:46:13,260 –> 00:46:14,790 but it’s rooted in values. 898 00:46:14,790 –> 00:46:18,060 We’re still not following nationally 899 00:46:18,060 –> 00:46:23,060 all the values that are embedded or enshrined in the law. 900 00:46:23,070 –> 00:46:27,030 And this is evidenced by the dramatic differences 901 00:46:27,030 –> 00:46:30,363 across the country and who’s segregated and who’s included. 902 00:46:31,269 –> 00:46:35,370 And even kids that are “included”, 903 00:46:35,370 –> 00:46:36,780 we got a lot of work to do. 904 00:46:36,780 –> 00:46:38,643 I mean, it’s not pretty. 905 00:46:40,530 –> 00:46:42,513 There’s no utopias out there. 906 00:46:43,890 –> 00:46:45,983 Well, I mean, and some of the, 907 00:46:45,983 –> 00:46:47,520 I mean, they’re not utopias, 908 00:46:47,520 –> 00:46:49,770 but I think some of the examples that you’ve shown me 909 00:46:49,770 –> 00:46:51,870 over time as we’ve been working in schools, 910 00:46:51,870 –> 00:46:54,930 and you were always inclusion-oriented. 911 00:46:54,930 –> 00:46:56,283 It was aspiration. 912 00:46:57,450 –> 00:46:59,760 It always came down to it was a community 913 00:46:59,760 –> 00:47:02,070 of people trying to figure it out. 914 00:47:02,070 –> 00:47:04,380 And I think, and you can talk more about this, 915 00:47:04,380 –> 00:47:07,620 but I mean, a lot of the more recent work that you did 916 00:47:07,620 –> 00:47:10,170 was just how do schools do that, 917 00:47:10,170 –> 00:47:12,810 given the environments that they’re in? 918 00:47:12,810 –> 00:47:14,691 So the resources that they have 919 00:47:14,691 –> 00:47:16,137 and the pressures that they’re under and- 920 00:47:16,137 –> 00:47:17,910 And they’re under a lot of pressures. 921 00:47:17,910 –> 00:47:22,530 I mean, I think that what schools are being asked to do 922 00:47:22,530 –> 00:47:26,370 and what teachers and administrators do, frankly, 923 00:47:26,370 –> 00:47:28,590 I think it’s harder today than it was 924 00:47:28,590 –> 00:47:31,920 when I was a teacher and an administrator, because frankly, 925 00:47:31,920 –> 00:47:34,170 when I was a teacher, a special ed teacher, 926 00:47:34,170 –> 00:47:36,480 -it was like the wild west. -Sure. 927 00:47:36,480 –> 00:47:41,480 As long as like nobody was getting seriously damaged, 928 00:47:41,760 –> 00:47:44,760 just do whatever you’re doing with those kids. 929 00:47:44,760 –> 00:47:46,683 Nobody’s complaining, we’re happy. 930 00:47:48,450 –> 00:47:51,633 The expectations were so low. 931 00:47:52,680 –> 00:47:55,366 And of course part of that changed nationally 932 00:47:55,366 –> 00:48:00,270 with the reauthorization, 933 00:48:00,270 –> 00:48:03,000 I think it was the ’97 reauthorization of IDEA, 934 00:48:03,000 –> 00:48:05,850 where they put in the requirement for access 935 00:48:05,850 –> 00:48:07,740 to the general ed curriculum, 936 00:48:07,740 –> 00:48:09,930 because so many kids with disabilities 937 00:48:09,930 –> 00:48:11,580 were not getting access. 938 00:48:11,580 –> 00:48:14,553 They’re still not, in many cases. 939 00:48:15,630 –> 00:48:20,373 So yeah, it’s changed so much over the years. 940 00:48:22,110 –> 00:48:24,210 I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say 941 00:48:24,210 –> 00:48:26,160 exactly that phrase, but I’m not surprised. 942 00:48:26,160 –> 00:48:28,260 -Which phrase? -Well, just that it’s 943 00:48:28,260 –> 00:48:29,807 harder today to work in a school. 944 00:48:29,807 –> 00:48:32,760 That’s just my speculation is, 945 00:48:32,760 –> 00:48:36,660 ’cause even though I haven’t been a classroom teacher 946 00:48:36,660 –> 00:48:40,800 or a direct service provider or administrator 947 00:48:40,800 –> 00:48:45,800 in a very long time, all of our research was in schools, 948 00:48:46,620 –> 00:48:51,240 and interacting with teachers and administrators 949 00:48:51,240 –> 00:48:54,780 and families and just seeing what’s happening. 950 00:48:54,780 –> 00:48:58,350 And this leads to, you had mentioned earlier 951 00:48:58,350 –> 00:49:00,870 of the phrase precarious or purposeful. 952 00:49:00,870 –> 00:49:03,220 It’s one of the things that sent me on 953 00:49:04,140 –> 00:49:09,140 along with you on a path to look at service delivery issues, 954 00:49:09,210 –> 00:49:12,993 because what I kept thinking to myself was, 955 00:49:14,370 –> 00:49:17,790 I wonder if I could have been a successful 956 00:49:17,790 –> 00:49:21,630 special ed teacher under these conditions, 957 00:49:21,630 –> 00:49:26,630 because I would like to think that I was a successful 958 00:49:26,700 –> 00:49:30,810 special ed teacher in terms of my kids learning some things 959 00:49:30,810 –> 00:49:33,450 and working with parents and so on. 960 00:49:33,450 –> 00:49:38,450 But you always think, I wish I knew then what I know now 961 00:49:38,730 –> 00:49:41,130 and like all the missed opportunities 962 00:49:41,130 –> 00:49:44,340 to teach kids certain things or to do certain things. 963 00:49:44,340 –> 00:49:46,200 Those kind of haunt you. 964 00:49:46,200 –> 00:49:51,200 But when I would see a teacher with a caseload of 18 kids 965 00:49:55,050 –> 00:49:58,110 and supervising five paraprofessionals 966 00:49:58,110 –> 00:50:02,160 and working across five grade levels 967 00:50:02,160 –> 00:50:05,670 with a dozen different teachers. 968 00:50:05,670 –> 00:50:10,590 And I think it’s impossible. 969 00:50:10,590 –> 00:50:12,870 How can they do this work? 970 00:50:12,870 –> 00:50:17,520 And we have a huge turnover burnout problem in special ed. 971 00:50:17,520 –> 00:50:19,066 -And there’s your answer. -Yeah. 972 00:50:19,066 –> 00:50:21,570 -A lot of ’em can’t. -Yeah, a lot of ’em can’t. 973 00:50:21,570 –> 00:50:25,710 And so you know, ’cause you were part of this work. 974 00:50:25,710 –> 00:50:29,910 Part of our work on service delivery 975 00:50:29,910 –> 00:50:33,840 was rooted in the idea that you can have the best staff, 976 00:50:33,840 –> 00:50:36,210 you can have people that are really skilled 977 00:50:36,210 –> 00:50:38,943 and have great values and working really hard, 978 00:50:40,380 –> 00:50:44,310 and they might have good instructional approaches 979 00:50:44,310 –> 00:50:46,440 and even in sound curriculum. 980 00:50:46,440 –> 00:50:49,830 But if they don’t have a service delivery model 981 00:50:49,830 –> 00:50:53,460 in which to work that is conducive to them 982 00:50:53,460 –> 00:50:56,670 using those skills and implementing those values, 983 00:50:56,670 –> 00:50:58,530 realizing those values, 984 00:50:58,530 –> 00:51:00,900 it kind of is all for naught. 985 00:51:00,900 –> 00:51:04,800 But all of the federal funding is about curriculum 986 00:51:04,800 –> 00:51:06,480 and instruction and behavior support. 987 00:51:06,480 –> 00:51:09,480 And almost nothing on service delivery. 988 00:51:09,480 –> 00:51:11,640 And to me, that’s kind of the third leg of the stool 989 00:51:11,640 –> 00:51:14,370 that people aren’t paying attention to. 990 00:51:14,370 –> 00:51:17,193 The Precarious or Purposeful, as you know, is based on, 991 00:51:18,418 –> 00:51:20,700 we’ve got a cartoon that’s in that article 992 00:51:20,700 –> 00:51:25,200 that’s in the journal inclusion that shows a house, 993 00:51:25,200 –> 00:51:29,550 and it’s precariously on the edge of a cliff, 994 00:51:29,550 –> 00:51:31,050 overhanging cliff. 995 00:51:31,050 –> 00:51:32,640 And there’s a big rope around it. 996 00:51:32,640 –> 00:51:35,568 It’s being held back from falling over the cliff 997 00:51:35,568 –> 00:51:38,490 by an army of paraprofessionals. 998 00:51:38,490 –> 00:51:42,595 And it asks On The Brink, 999 00:51:42,595 –> 00:51:43,710 do you know On The Brink? 1000 00:51:43,710 –> 00:51:48,060 And problems with service delivery models, 1001 00:51:48,060 –> 00:51:51,180 because every year it seems like the pressures 1002 00:51:51,180 –> 00:51:54,750 that schools are under financially and otherwise, 1003 00:51:54,750 –> 00:51:57,330 they try to get as close to the edge 1004 00:51:57,330 –> 00:52:02,220 as they can financially and resource-wise. 1005 00:52:02,220 –> 00:52:07,020 And then any little thing pushes it over the edge, 1006 00:52:07,020 –> 00:52:09,600 and it’s like, this is not where you wanna live. 1007 00:52:09,600 –> 00:52:11,160 You gotta live back here. 1008 00:52:11,160 –> 00:52:14,277 How do we create models that live back here, 1009 00:52:14,277 –> 00:52:16,683 and we move within a reasonable range. 1010 00:52:17,580 –> 00:52:20,880 And that means reducing caseload sizes, 1011 00:52:20,880 –> 00:52:24,519 reducing the number of grade levels 1012 00:52:24,519 –> 00:52:27,300 that special educators are working in, 1013 00:52:27,300 –> 00:52:30,240 reducing the number of different teachers. 1014 00:52:30,240 –> 00:52:33,930 So as you know, we took existing data 1015 00:52:33,930 –> 00:52:38,400 from 69 Vermont schools and looked at how that could be 1016 00:52:38,400 –> 00:52:41,583 reimagined, reconfigured so that it was real. 1017 00:52:42,538 –> 00:52:43,510 No new money. 1018 00:52:43,510 –> 00:52:45,173 No new money. 1019 00:52:46,680 –> 00:52:50,040 Turns out, you can have models of service delivery 1020 00:52:50,040 –> 00:52:54,420 if you’re proactive, where you’ve got one special educator 1021 00:52:54,420 –> 00:52:56,370 for every three or four teachers, 1022 00:52:56,370 –> 00:52:58,170 hopefully all at the same grade level, 1023 00:52:58,170 –> 00:53:00,360 or at least continuous grade levels. 1024 00:53:00,360 –> 00:53:04,410 Now, you’ve reduced the amount of curricular content 1025 00:53:04,410 –> 00:53:07,590 that the special educator needs to be thinking about 1026 00:53:07,590 –> 00:53:10,920 and responsible to support with the teachers 1027 00:53:10,920 –> 00:53:13,350 and reducing the number of teachers, 1028 00:53:13,350 –> 00:53:15,580 which changes the communication 1029 00:53:17,520 –> 00:53:19,830 and embedding them in those environments. 1030 00:53:19,830 –> 00:53:24,830 And that you can do that by reallocating resources. 1031 00:53:25,710 –> 00:53:29,492 Vermont of course has historically been extremely heavy 1032 00:53:29,492 –> 00:53:32,820 on the use of paraprofessionals. 1033 00:53:32,820 –> 00:53:35,490 And if you trade some of those positions, 1034 00:53:35,490 –> 00:53:37,770 then you’re gonna have fewer people, 1035 00:53:37,770 –> 00:53:40,680 but you’re gonna have more highly skilled people. 1036 00:53:40,680 –> 00:53:42,870 And that’s nothing against the paraprofessionals. 1037 00:53:42,870 –> 00:53:46,343 I mean, they’re a very important part 1038 00:53:46,343 –> 00:53:47,610 of the school community. 1039 00:53:47,610 –> 00:53:52,020 They work really hard, but it’s not fair to them, 1040 00:53:52,020 –> 00:53:53,760 and it’s not fair to students 1041 00:53:53,760 –> 00:53:56,223 to treat them as if they are teachers. 1042 00:53:57,270 –> 00:54:00,990 They don’t get compensated to function as teachers. 1043 00:54:00,990 –> 00:54:02,850 They’re not trained most of the time. 1044 00:54:02,850 –> 00:54:05,190 There are occasionally certified teachers 1045 00:54:05,190 –> 00:54:06,780 working as paraprofessionals. 1046 00:54:06,780 –> 00:54:08,283 But you can’t count on that. 1047 00:54:09,253 –> 00:54:11,340 And what people fail to realize is that 1048 00:54:11,340 –> 00:54:15,180 it’s an equity issue for kids with disabilities. 1049 00:54:15,180 –> 00:54:17,310 If you don’t have a disability, 1050 00:54:17,310 –> 00:54:19,980 you get all of your instruction 1051 00:54:19,980 –> 00:54:24,980 from a highly qualified, certified licensed teacher. 1052 00:54:25,320 –> 00:54:27,930 If you have a mild disability, 1053 00:54:27,930 –> 00:54:29,880 if you have a specific learning disability, 1054 00:54:29,880 –> 00:54:32,880 speech language impairment, high functioning autism, 1055 00:54:32,880 –> 00:54:35,910 you are pretty likely to get the vast majority 1056 00:54:35,910 –> 00:54:39,000 of your instruction from a highly qualified 1057 00:54:39,000 –> 00:54:41,430 teacher and/or special educator. 1058 00:54:41,430 –> 00:54:42,840 A combination. 1059 00:54:42,840 –> 00:54:44,880 If you have a lower incidence disability, 1060 00:54:44,880 –> 00:54:46,760 if you have an intellectual disability, 1061 00:54:46,760 –> 00:54:51,210 if you have severe physical and either sensory 1062 00:54:51,210 –> 00:54:53,280 or intellectual disability in combination, 1063 00:54:53,280 –> 00:54:55,770 any kind of developmental disability, 1064 00:54:55,770 –> 00:54:58,890 you are very likely to get a very high percentage 1065 00:54:58,890 –> 00:55:02,190 of your education from a paraprofessional 1066 00:55:02,190 –> 00:55:05,940 who not only is not as skilled or trained as the teachers, 1067 00:55:05,940 –> 00:55:08,523 but is substantively unsupervised. 1068 00:55:09,990 –> 00:55:11,370 And that’s based on the data. 1069 00:55:11,370 –> 00:55:14,550 And multiple studies demonstrate that. 1070 00:55:14,550 –> 00:55:18,390 And what people don’t seem to recognize 1071 00:55:18,390 –> 00:55:22,140 is that is a fundamental equity problem 1072 00:55:22,140 –> 00:55:24,367 for people with disabilities, 1073 00:55:24,367 –> 00:55:28,980 ’cause the mentality that undergirds that is, 1074 00:55:28,980 –> 00:55:32,640 do they really need a highly qualified person? 1075 00:55:32,640 –> 00:55:35,670 Isn’t it okay if they just have like a nice mom or dad 1076 00:55:35,670 –> 00:55:39,603 who is willing to work for close to minimum wage? 1077 00:55:41,010 –> 00:55:42,840 Well, because that’s not, 1078 00:55:42,840 –> 00:55:45,270 I think for most, that’s not even how it’s understood. 1079 00:55:45,270 –> 00:55:46,620 The way they’re thinking about is, 1080 00:55:46,620 –> 00:55:50,190 well, we all have access to the teacher in the school, 1081 00:55:50,190 –> 00:55:53,040 and you’re also getting the support. 1082 00:55:53,040 –> 00:55:54,270 But that’s what the data showed us. 1083 00:55:54,270 –> 00:55:55,230 That’s not what’s happening. 1084 00:55:55,230 –> 00:55:56,063 That’s not what, yeah, 1085 00:55:56,063 –> 00:55:57,450 that’s not what the data shows 1086 00:55:57,450 –> 00:55:59,800 for kids with developmental disabilities, yeah. 1087 00:56:01,755 –> 00:56:04,020 We have some students who are getting 1088 00:56:04,020 –> 00:56:08,490 80 plus percent of their instruction from paraprofessionals 1089 00:56:08,490 –> 00:56:11,013 and they’re not seeing teachers hardly at all. 1090 00:56:12,060 –> 00:56:14,610 They’re getting their first instruction, 1091 00:56:14,610 –> 00:56:16,200 not just supplemental instruction. 1092 00:56:16,200 –> 00:56:17,520 They’re getting their first instruction 1093 00:56:17,520 –> 00:56:19,920 from paraprofessionals. 1094 00:56:19,920 –> 00:56:21,630 And again, this is not a knock 1095 00:56:21,630 –> 00:56:23,940 on the paraprofessionals at all. 1096 00:56:23,940 –> 00:56:26,458 They’re being put in a very difficult situation. 1097 00:56:26,458 –> 00:56:28,470 -Yeah. -And parents are being told, 1098 00:56:28,470 –> 00:56:30,063 we’re doing you a favor. 1099 00:56:31,650 –> 00:56:32,850 And that’s one of the other things 1100 00:56:32,850 –> 00:56:36,150 that’s really interesting over time, and it’s just emerging. 1101 00:56:36,150 –> 00:56:39,060 But it used to be parents always fighting, 1102 00:56:39,060 –> 00:56:41,860 for I want my kid to have a one-to-one paraprofessional. 1103 00:56:43,140 –> 00:56:45,840 I think some of the most knowledgeable 1104 00:56:45,840 –> 00:56:49,560 and advocacy-oriented parents have realized 1105 00:56:49,560 –> 00:56:51,450 that that’s not the panacea 1106 00:56:51,450 –> 00:56:53,610 to have an adult attached to the hip, 1107 00:56:53,610 –> 00:56:55,623 an untrained adult attached to the hip, 1108 00:56:57,630 –> 00:57:00,363 or a lesser trained person attached to the hip. 1109 00:57:01,560 –> 00:57:05,640 They want their kid to have access to a highly qualified 1110 00:57:05,640 –> 00:57:08,733 teacher and special educator and other service providers. 1111 00:57:10,650 –> 00:57:11,700 Yeah, well, yeah. 1112 00:57:11,700 –> 00:57:14,170 I mean, so much of this work 1113 00:57:16,320 –> 00:57:19,890 points to just how difficult parents and families have 1114 00:57:19,890 –> 00:57:22,590 with what they end up needing to advocate for. 1115 00:57:22,590 –> 00:57:26,280 I mean, if you were talking about programs that still do 1116 00:57:26,280 –> 00:57:31,170 punitive and behavioral discipline and electric shock, 1117 00:57:31,170 –> 00:57:33,330 those programs are held in place by parents 1118 00:57:33,330 –> 00:57:35,310 who feel like they have no other option. 1119 00:57:35,310 –> 00:57:37,830 So it’s not that they’re thinking 1120 00:57:37,830 –> 00:57:38,820 that this is what they want, 1121 00:57:38,820 –> 00:57:41,040 but if they’re not presented with a service 1122 00:57:41,040 –> 00:57:43,590 delivery model that is healthy, 1123 00:57:43,590 –> 00:57:47,280 and sort of promotes those constructive relationships 1124 00:57:47,280 –> 00:57:48,750 that you say are sort of at the cornerstone 1125 00:57:48,750 –> 00:57:53,100 of academic achievement and social behavioral success, 1126 00:57:53,100 –> 00:57:56,040 then they’re gonna go with what somebody’s saying 1127 00:57:56,040 –> 00:57:58,530 is a solution if the school’s not offering one. 1128 00:57:58,530 –> 00:58:01,143 And a lot of times, in the regular schools, 1129 00:58:02,640 –> 00:58:06,030 because the parents, and this is what parents have told me, 1130 00:58:06,030 –> 00:58:08,940 many parents have told me they’re worried 1131 00:58:08,940 –> 00:58:11,370 that their child will fall through the cracks, 1132 00:58:11,370 –> 00:58:13,020 Or that they won’t get what they need 1133 00:58:13,020 –> 00:58:14,340 from the regular ed system 1134 00:58:14,340 –> 00:58:17,333 because the service delivery model is not in place. 1135 00:58:17,333 –> 00:58:18,166 Yeah, they see it happen. 1136 00:58:18,166 –> 00:58:22,710 And so they want the kind of security blanket 1137 00:58:22,710 –> 00:58:27,510 of that one-to-one paraprofessional as kind of, 1138 00:58:27,510 –> 00:58:29,010 this is somebody who’s gonna be watching out 1139 00:58:29,010 –> 00:58:30,420 for my kid all the time. 1140 00:58:30,420 –> 00:58:33,150 So it’s very understandable. 1141 00:58:33,150 –> 00:58:38,150 But to me, it’s a symptom of a systemic problem 1142 00:58:39,270 –> 00:58:42,930 that a set of systemic problems that we need to address. 1143 00:58:42,930 –> 00:58:46,170 And that’s why like the work that you and I have done 1144 00:58:46,170 –> 00:58:49,380 in the last particularly say 10 years, 1145 00:58:49,380 –> 00:58:53,220 has really been focused on trying to encourage people 1146 00:58:53,220 –> 00:58:58,220 to look at inclusive systems of service delivery 1147 00:58:58,260 –> 00:59:02,560 that are less reliant on care professionals 1148 00:59:03,630 –> 00:59:07,740 and that really are there to support teachers 1149 00:59:07,740 –> 00:59:11,820 and students with disabilities because special educators 1150 00:59:11,820 –> 00:59:13,893 and others aren’t there all the time. 1151 00:59:17,970 –> 00:59:19,350 I’ve got so many other questions, 1152 00:59:19,350 –> 00:59:21,300 and you gave such a good description 1153 00:59:21,300 –> 00:59:23,160 of one of your cartoons, 1154 00:59:23,160 –> 00:59:26,850 so that feels like too good a segue to let go. 1155 00:59:26,850 –> 00:59:29,160 So why cartoons? 1156 00:59:29,160 –> 00:59:30,810 How did you get into that? 1157 00:59:30,810 –> 00:59:32,400 We’ve been talking a lot about communication. 1158 00:59:32,400 –> 00:59:35,250 That’s obviously a very different communication strategy. 1159 00:59:36,523 –> 00:59:38,270 A lot of people love cartoons. 1160 00:59:38,270 –> 00:59:40,830 And some of the most popular cartoonists 1161 00:59:40,830 –> 00:59:42,090 at that time were people 1162 00:59:42,090 –> 00:59:44,370 like Gary Larson, “Far Side” cartoons. 1163 00:59:44,370 –> 00:59:45,930 -Yep. -And so I would always 1164 00:59:45,930 –> 00:59:46,830 -look through. -We’re really 1165 00:59:46,830 –> 00:59:48,090 dating ourselves right now. 1166 00:59:48,090 –> 00:59:48,923 So other people are gonna have to Google- 1167 00:59:48,923 –> 00:59:50,820 Google who Gary Larson is, yeah. 1168 00:59:50,820 –> 00:59:52,533 He was a famous cartoonist, 1169 00:59:54,180 –> 00:59:56,040 had a whole “Far Side” series, 1170 00:59:56,040 –> 00:59:59,760 but I would go through his books and calendars, 1171 00:59:59,760 –> 01:00:02,160 and I try to find things that were related 1172 01:00:02,160 –> 01:00:06,960 and they were funny, very creative, and excellent. 1173 01:00:06,960 –> 01:00:09,240 And they were kind of tangentially related, 1174 01:00:09,240 –> 01:00:11,691 but they were not like spot on. 1175 01:00:11,691 –> 01:00:16,691 And interestingly, there were education cartoons back then, 1176 01:00:20,370 –> 01:00:25,370 but many of the education cartoons made fun of students 1177 01:00:25,740 –> 01:00:27,960 and they made fun of parents, 1178 01:00:27,960 –> 01:00:29,523 or they made fun of teachers. 1179 01:00:31,140 –> 01:00:35,340 But mostly, they made fun of kids and parents. 1180 01:00:35,340 –> 01:00:37,110 And I didn’t wanna do that. 1181 01:00:37,110 –> 01:00:39,480 I kind of did wanna make fun of us. 1182 01:00:39,480 –> 01:00:40,560 Sure. 1183 01:00:40,560 –> 01:00:44,550 Because I think of all of the ridiculous things 1184 01:00:44,550 –> 01:00:45,990 that I’ve done in my own career, 1185 01:00:45,990 –> 01:00:48,000 and that I’ve seen well-intended 1186 01:00:48,000 –> 01:00:49,890 colleagues do in their careers. 1187 01:00:49,890 –> 01:00:54,360 And so my cartoon series is subtitled. 1188 01:00:54,360 –> 01:00:58,080 It’s Absurdities & Realities of Special Education. 1189 01:00:58,080 –> 01:01:01,410 And I did wanna poke fun at the things 1190 01:01:01,410 –> 01:01:03,090 that we as professionals do, 1191 01:01:03,090 –> 01:01:05,640 kind of hold a mirror up to ourselves. 1192 01:01:05,640 –> 01:01:09,120 So at one point I started to have these ideas, 1193 01:01:09,120 –> 01:01:10,520 and I started to write down, 1194 01:01:11,790 –> 01:01:13,500 I started to draw out cartoons 1195 01:01:13,500 –> 01:01:16,113 and the text and the images. 1196 01:01:17,460 –> 01:01:21,060 But as you know, I can’t draw to save my life. 1197 01:01:21,060 –> 01:01:23,823 So my cartoons did not look very good. 1198 01:01:24,870 –> 01:01:29,870 And luckily, I was already friends with an amazing artist, 1199 01:01:30,120 –> 01:01:33,630 Kevin Ruelle, who does all different kinds of art. 1200 01:01:33,630 –> 01:01:38,430 He agreed to work with me and he redrew my cartoons. 1201 01:01:38,430 –> 01:01:41,100 And you mentioned about communication before. 1202 01:01:41,100 –> 01:01:43,410 Most people don’t journal articles. 1203 01:01:43,410 –> 01:01:45,600 I mean, a lot of professionals, 1204 01:01:45,600 –> 01:01:47,010 if they’re not in graduate school, 1205 01:01:47,010 –> 01:01:48,780 if they’re not in a master’s program 1206 01:01:48,780 –> 01:01:53,280 or some other graduate program, they’re not like, 1207 01:01:53,280 –> 01:01:56,310 of course reading tons of literature, 1208 01:01:56,310 –> 01:01:59,223 where you’re publishing your stuff, but cartoons, 1209 01:02:00,570 –> 01:02:03,840 people will look at those and they’ll also remember them. 1210 01:02:03,840 –> 01:02:07,290 They remember the image even if they, 1211 01:02:07,290 –> 01:02:11,610 and the meaning even if they don’t remember 1212 01:02:11,610 –> 01:02:13,053 an article that they read. 1213 01:02:14,040 –> 01:02:16,443 So it was another way. 1214 01:02:17,310 –> 01:02:19,440 I always tried to have three or four 1215 01:02:19,440 –> 01:02:22,950 or more different ways to communicate the same thing. 1216 01:02:22,950 –> 01:02:25,320 So we’d have a research study, 1217 01:02:25,320 –> 01:02:29,160 then we’d have what we back in the day 1218 01:02:29,160 –> 01:02:30,990 called the Quick Guides to Inclusion, 1219 01:02:30,990 –> 01:02:34,020 which was a very non-researchy 1220 01:02:34,020 –> 01:02:36,960 teacher-friendly way of having like, 1221 01:02:36,960 –> 01:02:38,520 here’s the 10 most important things 1222 01:02:38,520 –> 01:02:40,590 we want you to know about this topic. 1223 01:02:40,590 –> 01:02:42,187 And then for each one of the 10 things, 1224 01:02:42,187 –> 01:02:45,060 there was one page of text, 1225 01:02:45,060 –> 01:02:48,458 and it was purposely not researchy, 1226 01:02:48,458 –> 01:02:51,213 it was purposely like talking teacher to teacher. 1227 01:02:53,040 –> 01:02:57,030 Our research quick guides, cartoons on the same topic. 1228 01:02:57,030 –> 01:03:00,750 So all the cartoons are either based on research findings, 1229 01:03:00,750 –> 01:03:03,900 or topical issues in the field of education, 1230 01:03:03,900 –> 01:03:05,760 special education. 1231 01:03:05,760 –> 01:03:09,270 And so it was a way to communicate. 1232 01:03:09,270 –> 01:03:10,560 And it was a lot of fun too. 1233 01:03:10,560 –> 01:03:14,670 I mean, it was really fun working with Kevin. 1234 01:03:14,670 –> 01:03:17,340 And it was fun going from my office 1235 01:03:17,340 –> 01:03:19,207 to colleagues offices and say, 1236 01:03:19,207 –> 01:03:22,446 “Look at this one, what do you think of this one?” 1237 01:03:22,446 –> 01:03:24,535 And they’d be like, “Not so good.” 1238 01:03:24,535 –> 01:03:27,030 Oh, that’s good, that’s good. 1239 01:03:27,030 –> 01:03:28,503 They vetted me. 1240 01:03:29,730 –> 01:03:31,080 It must have been so much fun. 1241 01:03:31,080 –> 01:03:33,180 It was a lot of fun. 1242 01:03:33,180 –> 01:03:37,413 And once they were done, nobody wanted to publish ’em. 1243 01:03:38,340 –> 01:03:39,660 Publishers were afraid of them 1244 01:03:39,660 –> 01:03:42,143 or didn’t know what to do with them. 1245 01:03:42,143 –> 01:03:46,230 They were worried that they would think 1246 01:03:46,230 –> 01:03:51,230 that their publication house was unscholarly, 1247 01:03:51,420 –> 01:03:54,172 or that I was unscholarly. 1248 01:03:54,172 –> 01:03:57,120 And so they were worried from like an image perspective. 1249 01:03:57,120 –> 01:04:00,573 Will people be offended by these cartoons? 1250 01:04:01,652 –> 01:04:03,480 I kind of hope that some people would be offended, 1251 01:04:03,480 –> 01:04:05,340 and some of people were. 1252 01:04:05,340 –> 01:04:08,370 Some of them are a little biting. 1253 01:04:08,370 –> 01:04:10,320 Some of them are funny, some of ’em are a little, 1254 01:04:10,320 –> 01:04:11,760 they’re all satirical. 1255 01:04:11,760 –> 01:04:16,263 Some of them are just absolutely 100% truth. 1256 01:04:17,220 –> 01:04:19,770 Like with no creativity on my part at all. 1257 01:04:19,770 –> 01:04:22,380 In fact, the one cartoon that’s probably 1258 01:04:22,380 –> 01:04:27,330 the most well known, and it is certainly the most reprinted, 1259 01:04:27,330 –> 01:04:32,330 is the one where it shows an image of a bunch of kids 1260 01:04:32,910 –> 01:04:35,400 showing up at school on the snowy day 1261 01:04:35,400 –> 01:04:39,270 and the school custodian is outside shoveling the stairs. 1262 01:04:39,270 –> 01:04:41,760 And a student who uses a wheelchair for mobility 1263 01:04:41,760 –> 01:04:45,810 is waiting to have the ramp shoveled. 1264 01:04:45,810 –> 01:04:50,567 And while the custodian is shoveling the stairs, 1265 01:04:51,540 –> 01:04:55,860 the student asks him if he would shovel the ramp. 1266 01:04:55,860 –> 01:04:57,660 And he says back to the student, 1267 01:04:57,660 –> 01:05:00,660 well, basically, when I’m done doing the stairs, 1268 01:05:00,660 –> 01:05:02,884 then I’ll do the ramp for you. 1269 01:05:02,884 –> 01:05:05,010 And the student says back to the custodian, 1270 01:05:05,010 –> 01:05:08,606 but if you shovel the ramp first, we can all get in. 1271 01:05:08,606 –> 01:05:13,173 And it’s like clearing a path for everyone. 1272 01:05:14,280 –> 01:05:15,357 That’s the moral of it. 1273 01:05:15,357 –> 01:05:18,393 And that was not my brainchild. 1274 01:05:19,410 –> 01:05:21,330 Pretty much the only credit I can take 1275 01:05:21,330 –> 01:05:23,730 is putting it into the form of a cartoon, 1276 01:05:23,730 –> 01:05:27,750 because that story was actually, 1277 01:05:27,750 –> 01:05:32,750 came from a student with disabilities in Vermont 1278 01:05:32,910 –> 01:05:37,770 and was part of a report that our dear colleague, 1279 01:05:37,770 –> 01:05:42,030 Deborah Lisi-Baker, had included in a report 1280 01:05:42,030 –> 01:05:44,820 that was produced here at the center. 1281 01:05:44,820 –> 01:05:48,870 And I saw that story and I asked her, 1282 01:05:48,870 –> 01:05:51,030 could she get me in contact with the student, 1283 01:05:51,030 –> 01:05:54,120 ’cause I’d like to make a cartoon about this. 1284 01:05:54,120 –> 01:05:56,010 She got in touch with the student. 1285 01:05:56,010 –> 01:05:59,400 The student said, “Yes, you could make a cartoon about it, 1286 01:05:59,400 –> 01:06:01,590 but I didn’t wanna be named.” 1287 01:06:01,590 –> 01:06:03,510 So I still don’t know to this day 1288 01:06:03,510 –> 01:06:05,544 -who the student was. -[Jesse] Oh, wow. 1289 01:06:05,544 –> 01:06:08,983 But I know that there is a student out 1290 01:06:08,983 –> 01:06:12,220 who’s certainly an adult at this point of time 1291 01:06:14,070 –> 01:06:16,140 who is responsible for that story. 1292 01:06:16,140 –> 01:06:17,887 And it says on the side of the cartoon, 1293 01:06:17,887 –> 01:06:20,247 “Inspired by a student with disabilities.” 1294 01:06:21,810 –> 01:06:25,943 So a few of them are absolutely like not made up at all. 1295 01:06:25,943 –> 01:06:28,473 They’re just depictions of reality. 1296 01:06:29,640 –> 01:06:30,990 Yeah, I’m smiling at them. 1297 01:06:30,990 –> 01:06:32,700 It’s literally right over your shoulder. 1298 01:06:32,700 –> 01:06:34,380 Oh, I didn’t know it was behind me. 1299 01:06:34,380 –> 01:06:36,203 I was gonna help you with that if you need it. 1300 01:06:39,180 –> 01:06:40,230 I don’t think there’s any debate, 1301 01:06:40,230 –> 01:06:42,270 but it’s probably one of the most recognizable things 1302 01:06:42,270 –> 01:06:43,890 that our center’s ever produced. 1303 01:06:43,890 –> 01:06:45,870 I mean, I see it everywhere, 1304 01:06:45,870 –> 01:06:47,700 certainly around campus and people’s offices 1305 01:06:47,700 –> 01:06:49,710 that I wouldn’t necessarily expect. 1306 01:06:49,710 –> 01:06:52,260 I see it pop up on Twitter from a group 1307 01:06:52,260 –> 01:06:54,300 that I’ve never heard of that have found it. 1308 01:06:54,300 –> 01:06:59,300 So it’s again kind getting back to communication 1309 01:06:59,340 –> 01:07:02,640 and just sharing stories as ways of educating 1310 01:07:02,640 –> 01:07:05,580 and influencing people, it’s powerful. 1311 01:07:05,580 –> 01:07:08,610 Sharing cartoons has really, I mean, 1312 01:07:08,610 –> 01:07:09,657 you can find dozens of them. 1313 01:07:09,657 –> 01:07:13,920 And there’s over 340 plus of the cartoons 1314 01:07:13,920 –> 01:07:17,610 that Kevin and I have developed over the years. 1315 01:07:17,610 –> 01:07:21,540 And you can find them in all different places. 1316 01:07:21,540 –> 01:07:23,990 You know ’cause you were in my office many times. 1317 01:07:24,870 –> 01:07:26,100 When I had an office here, 1318 01:07:26,100 –> 01:07:29,730 I used to have a shelf that included books 1319 01:07:29,730 –> 01:07:31,980 where the cartoons had been reprinted. 1320 01:07:31,980 –> 01:07:32,960 And it’s interesting to me. 1321 01:07:32,960 –> 01:07:35,050 It was always interesting to me because 1322 01:07:36,330 –> 01:07:39,210 I had a real hard time finding a publisher 1323 01:07:39,210 –> 01:07:41,730 originally for the cartoons, 1324 01:07:41,730 –> 01:07:45,720 even academic presses that had published, 1325 01:07:45,720 –> 01:07:48,000 that I published books with 1326 01:07:48,000 –> 01:07:49,980 didn’t wanna publish the cartoons. 1327 01:07:49,980 –> 01:07:54,240 And it took literally a mom and pop publisher, 1328 01:07:54,240 –> 01:07:59,040 very tiny publisher Peytral Publications in Minnesota 1329 01:07:59,040 –> 01:08:01,380 to take a chance on publishing them. 1330 01:08:01,380 –> 01:08:06,060 They ended up publishing four books of cartoons and a CD, 1331 01:08:06,060 –> 01:08:10,380 an interactive CD, which now, nobody uses CDs anymore. 1332 01:08:10,380 –> 01:08:11,253 What’s a CD? 1333 01:08:15,000 –> 01:08:17,730 And then they sold the distribution rights 1334 01:08:17,730 –> 01:08:22,170 to Corwin, a SAGE company. 1335 01:08:22,170 –> 01:08:23,730 And then eventually, they went out of print. 1336 01:08:23,730 –> 01:08:26,043 The first one was published in 1998, 1337 01:08:27,330 –> 01:08:30,120 which is a long time ago now, but they’re out of print. 1338 01:08:30,120 –> 01:08:32,130 But they’re still out there and available. 1339 01:08:32,130 –> 01:08:37,130 But they’ve shown up in the really unusual places. 1340 01:08:37,290 –> 01:08:39,990 You expect to see them in this special ed book. 1341 01:08:39,990 –> 01:08:43,530 But they’ve shown up in books 1342 01:08:43,530 –> 01:08:45,690 on Universal Design for Learning. 1343 01:08:45,690 –> 01:08:47,910 The UDL community has really picked up 1344 01:08:47,910 –> 01:08:49,860 on that particular cartoon, 1345 01:08:49,860 –> 01:08:54,753 but they’ve shown up in books about human diversity, 1346 01:08:56,760 –> 01:09:01,023 intellectual disability law books. 1347 01:09:02,460 –> 01:09:05,760 The American Physical Therapy Association 1348 01:09:05,760 –> 01:09:10,080 included five or six of them in one of their books 1349 01:09:10,080 –> 01:09:12,093 on school-based therapy. 1350 01:09:13,141 –> 01:09:15,480 And they just showed up in all kinds of places. 1351 01:09:15,480 –> 01:09:18,603 And they’re still showing up all these years later. 1352 01:09:20,010 –> 01:09:22,650 Yeah, I think I’d like to wrap it up 1353 01:09:22,650 –> 01:09:27,650 by saying we still have a lot of work to do. 1354 01:09:27,960 –> 01:09:29,400 Agree. 1355 01:09:29,400 –> 01:09:32,430 To support individuals with disabilities 1356 01:09:32,430 –> 01:09:34,020 and their families. 1357 01:09:34,020 –> 01:09:38,130 And one of the things I always encouraged my students 1358 01:09:38,130 –> 01:09:40,710 and anybody that I work with professionally 1359 01:09:40,710 –> 01:09:43,980 is to have a sense of urgency about this work, 1360 01:09:43,980 –> 01:09:47,100 because while we’re kind of researching 1361 01:09:47,100 –> 01:09:50,193 and debating about what’s the best thing to do, 1362 01:09:51,360 –> 01:09:52,620 kids are growing up. 1363 01:09:52,620 –> 01:09:54,690 Families are dealing with stuff, 1364 01:09:54,690 –> 01:09:58,920 and they don’t have the luxury of all of this. 1365 01:09:58,920 –> 01:10:03,920 And so we need to do as much as we can to approach 1366 01:10:05,640 –> 01:10:10,640 the challenges as quickly and effectively as we can. 1367 01:10:11,700 –> 01:10:14,730 And I think that one of the other kind of general things 1368 01:10:14,730 –> 01:10:17,340 that I always shared with my students regarding 1369 01:10:17,340 –> 01:10:22,080 any practice, whether it’s a paraprofessional 1370 01:10:22,080 –> 01:10:23,640 providing lots of instruction 1371 01:10:23,640 –> 01:10:27,330 or some therapy approach or whatever, is to ask yourself, 1372 01:10:27,330 –> 01:10:29,670 would that practice be okay 1373 01:10:29,670 –> 01:10:31,677 if the student didn’t have a disability? 1374 01:10:31,677 –> 01:10:35,010 And if it’s not, you probably shouldn’t be doing it. 1375 01:10:35,010 –> 01:10:38,640 But it’s a good question to be asking. 1376 01:10:38,640 –> 01:10:42,510 I think also, we need to be really continuing 1377 01:10:42,510 –> 01:10:47,510 to be reflective and kind of hold a mirror up to ourselves, 1378 01:10:47,970 –> 01:10:49,890 ’cause a lot of things that get labeled 1379 01:10:49,890 –> 01:10:52,413 as inclusive are not very inclusive. 1380 01:10:54,120 –> 01:10:56,940 Just physically having a student with a disability 1381 01:10:56,940 –> 01:11:01,143 in a regular class is not inclusive, I don’t think. 1382 01:11:02,220 –> 01:11:04,320 And we’re not gonna have time to go into all 1383 01:11:04,320 –> 01:11:06,720 the definitions of inclusion or characteristics, 1384 01:11:06,720 –> 01:11:09,780 but the point is that it’s about belonging. 1385 01:11:09,780 –> 01:11:11,070 It’s about, well, it’s about belonging, 1386 01:11:11,070 –> 01:11:16,070 but there’s a group of people that have created 1387 01:11:17,040 –> 01:11:20,490 kind of a paper tiger where they want you to make 1388 01:11:20,490 –> 01:11:22,920 a dichotomous choice and they’ll say, 1389 01:11:22,920 –> 01:11:25,440 look, we can include kids, 1390 01:11:25,440 –> 01:11:27,930 but they’re not gonna get good instruction, 1391 01:11:27,930 –> 01:11:30,600 or we can give them really great instruction, 1392 01:11:30,600 –> 01:11:31,980 but the price of that is we’re gonna have 1393 01:11:31,980 –> 01:11:36,000 to segregate them to do all of our systematic instruction. 1394 01:11:36,000 –> 01:11:38,853 And I think that that is a false dichotomy. 1395 01:11:41,130 –> 01:11:43,410 Not only is it an unnecessary choice, 1396 01:11:43,410 –> 01:11:46,620 it’s a bad choice because the only way people 1397 01:11:46,620 –> 01:11:49,830 with disabilities are truly going to have 1398 01:11:49,830 –> 01:11:53,070 the same opportunities and truly be included, 1399 01:11:53,070 –> 01:11:55,740 is if we say, “You know what? 1400 01:11:55,740 –> 01:11:57,267 You have to have both.” 1401 01:11:58,650 –> 01:12:01,920 Having good instruction in the segregated 1402 01:12:01,920 –> 01:12:04,470 environment is not acceptable. 1403 01:12:04,470 –> 01:12:07,530 And being physically present and not getting 1404 01:12:07,530 –> 01:12:10,650 good instruction is also not acceptable. 1405 01:12:10,650 –> 01:12:13,140 We have to have a really higher standard 1406 01:12:13,140 –> 01:12:16,020 in saying people with disabilities 1407 01:12:16,020 –> 01:12:18,300 have a civil right to be included. 1408 01:12:18,300 –> 01:12:23,190 Now, our job is to figure out how we’re gonna provide them 1409 01:12:23,190 –> 01:12:26,400 with high quality curriculum and instruction 1410 01:12:26,400 –> 01:12:30,690 that they deserve and the supports that they need 1411 01:12:30,690 –> 01:12:33,810 in order to access that learning. 1412 01:12:33,810 –> 01:12:36,060 That that’s where we should be focusing on. 1413 01:12:36,060 –> 01:12:38,580 Not this, should we do it, should we not? 1414 01:12:38,580 –> 01:12:40,770 You can have one or you can have the other. 1415 01:12:40,770 –> 01:12:44,234 And I think that I wanna just challenge people 1416 01:12:44,234 –> 01:12:48,480 to think about that and also to know that for those of us 1417 01:12:48,480 –> 01:12:52,380 that have seen this come from, I mean, 1418 01:12:52,380 –> 01:12:55,540 my earliest volunteer experiences were an institutions 1419 01:12:56,910 –> 01:12:58,710 and then I kind of lived through 1420 01:12:58,710 –> 01:13:00,690 the deinstitutionalization movement, 1421 01:13:00,690 –> 01:13:04,893 worked in that segregated schools toward inclusive schools. 1422 01:13:06,180 –> 01:13:10,570 Once you have experienced an effective collaborative team 1423 01:13:11,842 –> 01:13:15,120 as a teacher or a service provider or a family, 1424 01:13:15,120 –> 01:13:20,073 once you’ve experienced that true collaborative teamwork, 1425 01:13:21,660 –> 01:13:26,550 and you’ve seen the possibility of what actually can happen 1426 01:13:26,550 –> 01:13:30,570 for students with disabilities when they are truly 1427 01:13:30,570 –> 01:13:32,643 included and appropriately supported. 1428 01:13:33,750 –> 01:13:35,200 There’s just no turning back. 1429 01:13:37,230 –> 01:13:39,510 Every once in a while, I get asked 1430 01:13:39,510 –> 01:13:42,030 if I’ll do something for like a segregated school. 1431 01:13:42,030 –> 01:13:44,310 And it’s like, I know you’re working hard. 1432 01:13:44,310 –> 01:13:45,750 I know you’re trying to do good stuff. 1433 01:13:45,750 –> 01:13:47,460 I know you have good intentions, 1434 01:13:47,460 –> 01:13:50,310 but I can’t bring myself to do anything 1435 01:13:50,310 –> 01:13:52,980 that’s gonna strengthen you. 1436 01:13:52,980 –> 01:13:56,550 Creating a better segregated environment, you know? 1437 01:13:56,550 –> 01:14:00,473 But once you’ve tasted it and experienced it, 1438 01:14:00,473 –> 01:14:02,670 there’s just no turning back. 1439 01:14:02,670 –> 01:14:07,530 So I really hope that the next generation, 1440 01:14:07,530 –> 01:14:12,120 the current generation and next generations of teachers 1441 01:14:12,120 –> 01:14:15,610 and special educators and related services providers 1442 01:14:17,970 –> 01:14:22,230 do better, get farther than we’ve gotten, 1443 01:14:22,230 –> 01:14:25,350 because we’ve kind of ebbed and flowed 1444 01:14:25,350 –> 01:14:28,470 in terms of made progress and seen some backsliding. 1445 01:14:28,470 –> 01:14:29,430 Yeah. 1446 01:14:29,430 –> 01:14:34,390 And it takes diligence and it takes urgency. 1447 01:14:35,580 –> 01:14:39,270 And as my very favorite coach, Marv Levy, 1448 01:14:39,270 –> 01:14:41,040 former Hall of Fame, 1449 01:14:41,040 –> 01:14:43,620 Buffalo Bills coach used to say about women, 1450 01:14:43,620 –> 01:14:46,410 I say the same thing about inclusive education, 1451 01:14:46,410 –> 01:14:48,840 which is that it’s simple, but it’s not easy. 1452 01:14:48,840 –> 01:14:50,340 Not always easy. 1453 01:14:50,340 –> 01:14:52,380 And I think that that’s true about inclusion. 1454 01:14:52,380 –> 01:14:54,690 This is not rocket science. 1455 01:14:54,690 –> 01:14:57,453 Families do this all the time. 1456 01:14:58,410 –> 01:15:02,550 Families are the best models that we have 1457 01:15:02,550 –> 01:15:05,460 in real life for how you include, 1458 01:15:05,460 –> 01:15:10,440 really include someone who has a significant disability. 1459 01:15:10,440 –> 01:15:14,460 So it’s not rocket science. 1460 01:15:14,460 –> 01:15:18,750 It’s not that hard, but it’s not always easy. 1461 01:15:18,750 –> 01:15:20,400 So I think that’ll end there. 1462 01:15:20,400 –> 01:15:22,140 I think that’s a great way. 1463 01:15:22,140 –> 01:15:23,670 Michael, thank you for doing this, 1464 01:15:23,670 –> 01:15:25,830 and thank you for just all your support 1465 01:15:25,830 –> 01:15:27,333 and mentorship over the years. 1466 01:15:28,423 –> 01:15:29,760 I’ve loved it. 1467 01:15:29,760 –> 01:15:32,910 I’ve grown so much from it, and I’m still learning. 1468 01:15:32,910 –> 01:15:33,840 Me too. 1469 01:15:33,840 –> 01:15:35,390 You’ve been great to work with. 1470 01:15:36,330 –> 01:15:38,529 -Thank you, sir. -Thank you. 1471 01:15:38,529 –> 01:15:41,112 (upbeat music) Green Mountain Disability Stories is the monthly podcast of the UVM Center on Disability and Community Inclusion (CDCI). Each episode features a conversation on some aspect of disability, by and with people with disabilities and their families and advocates. The views of guests on the podcast do not necessarily reflect those of the CDCI.