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7/1/2024 170. Partnering with Culturally & Linguistically Diverse Families in Special Education with Dr. Kristin Vogel-CampbellRead Now
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In this episode, Dr. Kristin Vogel-Campbell shares how we can make IEP meetings with families better. She emphasizes the importance of an assets-based mindset, the critical need for accurate language interpretation, and the value of direct communication with families.
Kristin Vogel-Campbell began her career as a Special Education aide at the Chinatown Head Start in New York City and was a classroom teacher for thirteen years in California. She has served as a district-level Program Specialist and Director of Special Education and is currently a Coordinator of Special Education for the San Mateo Foster City School District. Dr. Vogel-Campbell recently earned her Doctorate of Education from California State University, East Bay. She’s the author of Partnering with Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Families in Special Education, which we talk about in this episode! The Big Dream Dr. Vogel-Campbell’s big dream for education, deeply influenced by Dr. Bettina Love's concept of 'freedom dreaming,' is that all education is Special Education (i.e., differentiated). Mindset Shifts Required Transformational change begins with the mind, enabling relational change and eventually influencing policy and practice. Dr. Vogel-Campbell shares many mindset shifts including: presuming competence of students and families, approaching family communication with positivity, refraining from assumptions about family involvement, honoring familial knowledge, and recognizing we (educators) need to earn families’ trust. She urges educators to engage directly with families, centering their voices in the educational conversation, and ensuring that the interpretation is accurate and culturally sustaining. Action Steps Step 1: Create concise, clear, and accessible summaries of complex educational documents, like procedural safeguards, and offer them alongside comprehensive versions. Also offer translations of the summaries. Step 2: Invest in effective language interpretation, ensuring interpreters have specialized vocabulary and share the same dialect as families. Step 3: Center the student’s humanity and strengths. One family brought a binder each year with the child’s smiling face on it (and updated the picture each year) to remind everyone why they were there. Challenges? A big one is precise interpretation and space for families to ask questions. Dr. Vogel-Campbell shared a heartbreaking anecdote about a misinterpretation that led a father to believe his child needed leg amputation instead of ankle-foot orthoses. Had the interpreter been trained in specific terminology and the father had space to ask questions within the meeting, this confusion would have been eliminated or remedied quickly. One Step to Get Started Engage in personal reflection to understand biases and past missteps. Commit to relationship-building with students and families, and take the time to ensure all families feel like valued, co-creators of IEPs. Stay Connected You can connect with or follow Kristin on LinkedIn and Instagram @drvogelcampbell To help you implement equitable practices, Dr. Kristin Vogel-Campbell is sharing her PK-12 school meeting accessibility protocol with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 170 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Hi, everyone. Today's guest is Doctor Kristen Vogel Campbell who began her career as a special education aide at the Chinatown head start in New York City and was a classroom teacher for 13 years in California. She has served as a district level program specialist and director of Special Education and is currently a coordinator of special education for the San Mateo Foster City school district. Doctor Vogel Campbell recently earned her doctorate of education from California State University, East Bay. She's the author of partnering with culturally and linguistically diverse families in Special education, which we talk about in this episode. Now, let's get to the episode, educational justice coach Lindsay Lyons. And here on the time for teacher podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling, and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings if you're a principal assistant superintendent, curriculum, director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nering out about co-creator curriculum of students I made this show for you. 00:01:15Edit Here we go. Doctor Kristen Vogel K. Well, welcome to the Time for Teacher Podcast, Lindsay. Thank you so much for having me on the podcast. Um It's a huge honor. I am so excited. You have an incredible book, done some incredible research. And I'm really excited. I think that'll kind of house our conversation today. But I'm excited to know if there's anything else that you think is important for listeners to know either about you. I know sometimes the form mobiles can feel very formal and there's like, you know, we're whole people. So if you want to add anything to that or just have people kind of keep anything in mind as we jump into our conversation, say, feel free to share that. Yeah. Um One of the things that I like to always bring up when I'm in conversation about like the work that I do and my experience is that, you know, I've worn a lot of hats that people think of when they imagine a special educator. Um I've been a teacher's assistant, a student teacher, um special ed teacher in a variety of settings. Um, a program specialist, a director, a special ed and a coordinator. 00:02:18Edit But the two hats that I have not worn are a student with an IEP or a parent of a student with an IEP. And I'm very, very clear about my personality in this regard. So I let the voices of parents speak for themselves. Um I try not to uh presume or assume anything about parent experience. And I think that's a really critical piece kind of moving forward into this conversation. That's such a great point. Thank you for situating that. And I, I love how much you do that within the book too is just a real um situated this of like I am a researcher and in this work and working closely with a lot of these families and it just, it really comes through how thoughtful that you are in all of this. And so I, I appreciate that grounding because I think it is like an intro into just who you are and how you do things, which is phenomenal. Thank you. Yeah. And, and I think one of the things that comes really clear in the book as, as you kind of read it, but I wanted to ask on the podcast is, you know, I, I love Doctor Patina loves thoughts around freedom dreaming. 00:03:25Edit And so when she talks about dreams grounded in the critique of injustice, I think what a beautiful way to anchor the dreams that we hold for education. I'm curious, how would you describe that outside of the book or reading from your book however you want to do that? But like, what is that dream for you? Yeah. Um I, I was so excited. I'm, I'm so excited that you also sent her um this question in the work of Doctor Love. Um She's been a huge source of knowledge for me. Um I cannot comprehend doing my job without. Um So, you know, just really brutally honest, special education is one of the only legally sanctioned forms of segregation outside of our carceral system. Um And when we think about abolition, like Doctor Love talks about, um when we think about intersectionality and justice, disability always needs to be considered and included. Um you know, just thinking about that school to prison pipeline. So many of our incarcerated folks, persons of color are student uh are are folks either with, you know, a history of disability in school or with undiagnosed disabilities and kind of the dream that I hold for education. 00:04:38Edit I think about when I was a middle school resource specialist and I would share with my students that my ultimate goal was for them to exit my classroom. And I would always frame it and saying I adored them. I enjoyed working with them, but I wanted them to develop the skills and the agency to learn and thrive in a general ed setting. But at the same time, I also let them know that this was not something that was their sole responsibility that the adults in education need to shift their attitudes as well as learning new skills in order to make this happen. So my dream is that, you know, all education is special education. When we think about special education, it's, it's differentiated and all of our students learn in different ways. So why can't that happen in a setting where everyone is getting that at the same time? That that's equity and that's justice for me. Oh, that's so beautiful. Yes. And I, I love that you anchor your work in disability studies frameworks, um and disabilities studies in education framework. 00:05:44Edit And like, I think that's absolutely it, the, the ties to the carceral state that connections, you need the idea of the goal being to exit the classroom. I mean, how many, how many educators but also like lead and system wide leaders really articulate that goal or even honestly have it in their heads. Like I, I can say, I as an educator, like hadn't had when I was in it, you know, I had not had that kind of um thought process, right? And we're just kind of like, ok, this is your students are here and they are here forever, right? And we don't think about that, that dream, that extension. Mhm. And I mean, yeah, that, that's, it's a journey that I've been on and my, you know, 20 ish years in special education, that's not the mindset that I held at the beginning or even in the middle of my journey. But I think my, my doctoral program doing a lot of very like in depth research into, like you said, disability studies, but also, you know, uh abolition studies, uh critical race theory. Black feminist thought. 00:06:46Edit Um you know, abolition looking like our students being able to, you know, thrive in setting that the majority of our other students are, are in. It just, it just comes down to that. Um So, yeah, that, that's, that's kind of how I, you know, ground myself in, in, in the work that I do. Beautiful. Oh my gosh. I, I love it so much today. It really speaks to the idea that like our our system is set up to fail students versus that there is an individual, right? Like issue with students. It's just like our system has made it. So that differentiation isn't like just like go to thing for all students, right? Which it should be. And so I think there's a lot of structural things that you point out in the book which I, I think are so eye opening. I mean, even for me as a special educator who was like in it realizing for example, that 94% of the procedural safeguards documents from the 2012 research anyways were written in a post secondary reading level. 00:07:50Edit I mean, and you talked about how like the special education teachers sometimes were even like, I don't even know, right? Like what? And then so I remember being a first year special educator and just being like, whoa what on earth is this massive document we're sending home? Oh, we have to do it. Well, I guess I'll just send it home, but I don't really know what's going on here. Right. That's not, it's, it really, it doesn't make a lot of sense and, you know, procedurally, one of the things that, you know, we're obligated to do is to either send that home for parents to review beforehand or to present it to parents at the beginning of the meeting. And it always looks like here's this 19 page document. Do you have any questions? OK. That, that, that doesn't really set us up for a level playing field. Um So what we, what we've done in the past is, you know, taking that 19 page document first off providing our educators and our site leaders with um kind of an in depth like training on what, what that document looks like, what those rights uh look like what parents and students are entitled to um under I DEA and then creating kind of like a one or two page bullet point that we can share with families. 00:09:09Edit In addition to that 19 page document, it's a little bit easier for them to digest. Um And then, you know, the challenge is our procedural safeguards, I believe right now, we have procedural safeguards translated into 30 something languages um in our district and in the state of California, um the, the, the resources and, and the time and, and the, the skill to translate that. So we're making sure that all of our families regardless of language differences have that uh Chi or cliff notes, how I like to, I always like to preface it by saying that. But yeah, it's, it, it's not setting us up for a successful meeting if we're just growing a really important document appearance and expecting them to participate without having a lot of uh front loading. Yeah. And so yeah, I love that idea of the bullet point bullet pointed list. Brilliant and, and just thinking about, right, it is very resource intensive. But what are the ways that we can support, like the, the way that it's set up? 00:10:15Edit Like, I know you talked about how like in the book, there's, you know, really special education services in general are like it's a legal compliance model. So it's not, let's get creative, let's figure out what's best for students. It is like we are checking the box, we are doing this thing and that's kind of what the structure uh lends itself to. And so that's kind of what happens and there's all sorts of barriers. I mean, you talk about language translation being actually one of I I think Gonzalez and Gable uh said it was one of the most significant barriers to family engagement in the IEP process. There's, you know, the idea of gender, which came up, which was really fascinating to me that most of the research in this is actually done with moms, not dads. And there was like a dad in there who was saying, you know, there's a separation between me and the female teachers who talk to my wife, look at her and, and use mister when they talk to me. It's like a a removal like it, it's not, it was interesting to me reading that. I was like, oh I see that as a sign of respect but also problematic in a gendered way. But it's actually to him like you don't respect me in the same way or you don't connect with me, I should say in the same way. Um There's like, you know, lost wages that you cited from people taking work off just to be able to make it to the meetings. 00:11:19Edit Um All of these structural problems, like I I'm just thinking about maybe a leader listening who's not intimately involved with the IEP process who may not be aware of all of these pieces, but like that's just to paint the picture, that's what we're working in. And then given that, I mean, feel free to expound about any of that. But I I'm thinking, given all those challenges, you know, what is the path forward? What kind of brought you to this research? What advice would you give someone who is listening? Thinking like, well, well, we don't want to do that in our school or district. So like, where do we go now? Yeah. Um So when we think about systems and structures, we always think of that triangle that pyramid. Um And you know, information flows from the bottom to the top. And we usually think about it in, you know, resources and, and, and policy are the first things that need to happen when it's actually the opposite. Um And one of the, the visuals that I share with my teams and I I use in some of my research is that inverted triangle. Um Peter Senge and a couple of his colleagues developed it. 00:12:24Edit Um Transformational change needs to start with minds. Um that allows us to shift to the relational change with relationships and connections, policy practices and resources like A K A money that comes last. That's where we, we, we come into the problem of, well, we're just throwing money at a problem and nothing is really happening. If you're not, if you're not focused on mindset before you invest money in a, in a, in a problem, you're not really gonna see results. Um So my passion is really getting into the weeds with the mindset and the relationship building and repairing those relationships. Um And you spoke about it uh a little bit when you mentioned some of the dialogues that I engaged in with families. Um But the repairing of the relationships also goes into work with teachers and students. And, you know, I, you know, continue my work with dialoguing with families, even outside of the examples in the book, the most recent kind of conversation and vision planning that I had with uh a parent was a translation issue um where the parent only spoke Spanish. 00:13:39Edit Um And we brought in a Spanish language interpreter. Um A physical therapist was reviewing their report and was talking about how the student needs um braces um or A F OS in order to walk effectively, the interpreter didn't have the language and the knowledge of that very specific vocabulary and interpreted to the parent that the school team was recommending that he go to the doctor and that the doctor should fit the student with prosthetic legs. And we had uh yeah, like, and, and so this interpreter told the dad, well, you know, we think that his leg should be amputated because they're no good and he needs a prosthetic leg. We needed to pause the meeting because of time because IP meetings are stacked one right after the other. 00:14:46Edit We had a, we had a second part of this meeting two weeks later where we had a different translator come in and the dad was like, well, wait a minute, like I went to the doctor and the doctor had no idea what I was talking about. And we found out that this dad had been, you know, kind of starting over the fact that he thought that the school team was recommending that, you know, his son have his legs amputated and it was just, it was, it was horrible. Um And, you know, I found this out through talking with the dad. Um, and then touched base with the school team to kind of get their thoughts about. Well, you know, how did that sit with you when, when you found out that we had this interpretation different or, or, you know, just like the worst case scenario and, you know, several of our school team members, you know, broke down in tears. And so I think it, it comes to effective interpretation. First of all, making sure that, you know, our interpreters speak the same dialect as, as our families. 00:15:51Edit Um You know, I think about um all of the different languages um in India. So, you know, some of our educators might say, well, the parent that the family speaks Indian, OK, Indians and not a language, there are dozens of Indian languages. So making sure it's the right dialect and then making sure that that interpreter has the specific vocabulary to be able to convey like educational, like scientific based terms and then having the team stop and give the families an opportunity to ask questions. So yeah, that every time I come up to a situation where I hear something like that, it, I realized that, you know, the work isn't done that even if a successful day happens the day before. And I'm working on repairing and restoring a co uh a relationship with a family that we have so much more work to do. And the the, the week that that dad spent wondering what disconnect was, was happening. 00:16:59Edit Like, why does his son need this medical procedure? Like, we're never gonna be able to give that back to him. We're never gonna be able to give back the, the, the, the peace and serenity that the reduced stress. Um, that could have, it could have been easily preventable. Wow. That is bananas. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's, that's a really great descriptor of it. It's just, you know, we always say special education, you know, that there's always something new but, um, I would never imagine that it would be that, um, that horrible and I'm getting goosebumps just thinking about it and talking about it again. Yeah, I mean, and thank you so much for sharing it. I think it really illuminates. I mean, that's a, that's a, like you said, worst case scenario version of a lack of the technical term in interpretation. But I, I do think that there are so many, probably smaller versions of or examples like that that are maybe not as extreme, but they happen all the time because that is such a, I mean, even just monolingual like English to English speakers talking about the technicalities of diagnosis, uh you know, an apparatus or something or a tech support piece to a student with an IP that it's very specific like a nuance, we might not even have that language in the same language. 00:18:25Edit Right. So, I think you're absolutely right there are nuances to this that we don't always think about. We're like, oh, there's a translator. We're, we're good. Yeah. And you know, even, even with monolingual English speaking families, you know, you're a former special educator, we have all of our acronyms and, you know, special educator sitting at a table, we can talk about IEPSSTAT A AC and if we're using those acronyms with, with parents and families and even general education teachers, their eyes are gonna glaze over because they don't know what the heck we're talking about. So we need to break down those terms. Um One of the things that I intentionally did at the end of my book was um a glossary of all the acronyms. So, you know, the first time that I use an acronym in the book, I, you know, spell out what the acronym is and, you know, just for the sake of space, acronyms are used throughout the book. But, you know, you can always go back and kind of see what, what that, what that is. Um And I think we need to be very, very specific about doing that. 00:19:31Edit We weren't just talking about accessibility in general. Absolutely. Oh my gosh. Yeah. And even even, and you mentioned a story about this actually in the book as a family who was like east coast to west coast, moving back and forth. Um or, or I made the move at least once and the differences between like the structures of the school and the policies of the state. And just even as a special educator myself, talking to people who are in different systems, like there might be a different acronym or a different platform to house the IP documents or whatever. And it's like this is so exclusionary to educators, even just within an educational space, it's not ab absolutely. Um You know, I started um I did my, my uh grad undergraduate and master's degree in uh New York, which is where I'm from. Hi, this is Leah from the podcast team. In this episode, Doctor Kristen Vogel Campbell is sharing the free resource of PK through 12 school meeting accessibility protocol. You can get it at Lindsay, Beth lions.com/blog/one 70. 00:20:33Edit Now back to the episode, you know, special education spaces, we, we talk about special education as a service, not a place, but, you know, in reality, there are designated spaces that and I'm air quoting, of course, you can't see that. Um But there are spaces that are designated as special education spaces. Um You know, on the east coast, they're kind of uh called like self contained classrooms in California and in some of the West Coast, they're referred to as ST CS or special day class. Um So without being really uh specific and explaining all of these things, you know, parents are not able to effectively participate, which is one of the things that districts and schools are obligated to ensure um and it is more than just checking that box at the end of the IUP meeting, it's, you know, going back like, hey, do you have any questions? Hey, you know, just being very clear at the beginning of the meeting, if something doesn't resonate with you, if, if, if anyone on the team is saying something that does not sound like your child like, you know, feel free to, to, to ask or to probe or to question. 00:21:49Edit And when we're talking about families from, you know, other cultures who, you know, position educators, you know, kind of as like the, the, the, the sage and the end all be all they, they have part of their, their culture is to not question educators. And so in working with um like culture and linguistically diverse families helping them shift their mindset to it's OK and it's acceptable to ask a question or to say, hey, you know, that doesn't really sound like something my kid would say or do. Um so that those are some of the, the shifts that are really difficult. Um And I think, you know, I, I would put more of the onus on, on teachers and educators to, to shift their mindset, but in, in empowering families and making sure that their voice is centered. Uh Sometimes it does require them to go out of their comfort zone and to um shift away from some of their uh cultural beliefs and norms as Well, yes. 00:22:59Edit Oh my gosh, I love it. And I, I wanted to name that you distinguish too in, in the book involvement versus engagement of families. And so to be able to say, you know, involvement, I think you said is really just including them in these procedures, we have to kind of go through. But the school owns those procedures. It's not truly like engagement or partner chef. Whereas engagement is like the parents are actually leading that conversation. And I love how you are kind of started us down the track of thinking about this specific actions that educators could take or that we can do together with families. Um And, and you, you what I loved about this is you had all these dialogues with these family members and, and many of them actually suggested like either this is what we do and we, it has worked for us. So like learn from that or like educators, if you're listening, you know, here's XYZ ideas that I have as a family member and like, you know, we should try to implement them, which I love that those voices were really central to the possibilities. And I love that language that you use to possibilities versus recommendations. Uh The possibilities that you painted in in the book. 00:24:02Edit Do you mind talking us through some of them? Yeah, absolutely. Um Yeah. And, and, and possibilities is it's, it's open minded. Um I think recommendations, it's very prescriptive and you know, thinking about looking at more of a social model versus the medical model, like I'm not prescribing that you do this because your school community looks a lot different than the ones that I work with. Um So I think some of the mindset shifts that, you know, parents have recommended in, in the book, um assuming competence, you know, just in presuming competence in our students, presuming competence in our families and frame things through an assets based mindset. Um I think our families here about especially students in, in special education. Well, they, they can't do this, they're not able to do this. They struggle with this. Semantics are really powerful and, and framing things and they are working on or they thrive when provided with this support or even just starting it out with, they're able to do this, this and this and they are, you know, um developing their knowledge and being able to do this. 00:25:15Edit Um That's a really amazing way to capture uh parents uh and engage them in the, in the conversations being proactive. Um And just very simple as don't always touch base with parents when something bad happens, you know, when something amazing happens or if a student has a great day or they, you know, a fair, you know, speech and language session, send a parent a quick email or a phone call and just let them know that so that they're getting a balance of communication from school and also, you know, asking not assuming. And I think that's, that gets us into a lot of, um, a lot of trouble sometimes where we assume, for example. Oh, well, you know, parents not able to make parent teacher conferences or they, they really have a difficult time coming to the IP S that we scheduled according to our, you know, our niche schedule. 00:26:21Edit They, they don't care or they're not involved. Parents work two or three jobs, they have nontraditional work hours. Uh Sometimes, you know, expanding the definition of who family is um intergenerational families, having, you know, aunties or uncles or grandparents, older siblings. And, you know, parents can, you know, send those folks in as a proxy if they're not able to participate in meetings. And that kind of leads into just honoring familial knowledge and recognizing the wealth and the skills, especially those like second language skills that, you know, I think uh in English based schools that we are in America, you know, bilingualism needs to be honored more than it is. Um And then finally just, you know, speaking with families, not at families and then going back to the interpreter piece, one of my major pet peeves is when we have an interpreter in the room during a meeting and the parent and the, the staff are making eye contact with the interpreter when they're talking. 00:27:35Edit And I think it's a natural instinct because we're speaking to the interpreter. So that they're able to uh interpret to the parent in their home language. But that is really uh disinviting and disengaging to families. So making eye contact with parents or like making gestures and making sure that even if you don't speak the same language that you are connecting with them in, in your messaging, so that the interpreter is then able to use your words and pass that along to uh to families and trust is earned not given, especially when we are working with families who have been burned in the past or, you know, have encountered harm within education systems. A lot of our families, you know, maybe didn't have the best experience in, in schools themselves. Some of them may have received special education services and, you know, we've made a lot of progress in special education. 00:28:39Edit But if families were part of special education in the eighties or the nineties or the two thousands, we've come a long way. But their perception is that things are just the same as they were back then. Yeah. Absolutely. Oh my gosh. Yeah, you went through so much there. And I, I was thinking too about like the trust fees when you had said is not given. I was thinking, yeah, like for educators, right? Should have to earn the, the trust and, and I'm hoping that like educators can give the trust instead of making families earn their trust because I was thinking about that example. Um when a couple was speaking, the parents were speaking in Japanese to each other to translate a word. And the principal actually stopped the meeting and requested the translator, the family didn't even want, right? It's just like this display of I don't trust you, like you're speaking language. I don't, I don't speak and therefore there there's like a breakdown of trust. It was like what? Yeah. Yeah, that, that, that was, that was a pretty, that was a pretty difficult um dialogue to engage with. Also the father in that dialogue was a school site administrator and his wife was a parent educator. 00:29:48Edit So they were part of the school system in the in the district that their child went to school and there was still that lack of distrust. And the father went on to say like what a waste of resources, you know, bringing an interpreter in when it's not necessary like interpreters, you know, their, their services cost money and that money could have been allocated elsewhere. So that, that was, was definitely the school team not being trustful of families, which is really unfortunate. Absolutely. Yeah. So, so well said and, and I think there's, there's so many things I just could talk to you all day about this book. A couple of things that I I know that family members in the stories and the dialogue that, that you shared had just these incredible like things that they were doing that I just wanted to highlight like um there was a couple, oh, there might have been actually the same couple who were taking the IP S home. They would add things, request more things, they would add a parent statements. Like this is what we're talking about. 00:30:51Edit Like this is our stance and just like that, that eventually happened so often that the IEP team was just like, OK. Right. You do this and you know another family member going in with like a kind of a bidding war kind of thing where it was like, OK, I'm going in at 90 minutes of speech and like, I can go down to 75 like, yeah, really taking the advocacy stance. This is beautiful. Another one I loved was that um a student uh sorry, a family member who took a binder out of their bag and places it on the table with a photo of their child on it who was like smiling and like, right, just like this is a child we're talking about like this is brilliant and educators can do that. We don't have to wait for family members to do that one. Right. Like we could just do it and they updated the photo every year. I love it. Yeah. Yeah. The and and, and that little guy is in high school now and um he's, he's thriving and he had a really um successful like upper elementary and middle school team that was supportive of the families listened to the families and, you know, took families input in when and kind of developing goals and they struggled, you know, in the first couple of years, um, first with kind of like a medical diagnosis and then having the school team see that the student required some pretty intensive services at first. 00:32:15Edit But once that student, you know, received those services, they had, they had to go out and, and hire an advocate for them. Um because that, that was another one of the families that um uh they were Filipino and the, the dad has a very salient quote that I always highlight. He's like we trust the system, but we don't understand it. We're immigrants. So they're relying on the system to do what's right. And at some point like that trust broke, they realized they needed to get an advocate, things were set in place, the kid is thriving and those intensive services were able to, you know, decrease as the kid was making uh success. Uh So I think it's just, you know, again reminding parents that they have the agency to push back if something doesn't resonate with them and you not having to sign the documents at the meeting. I encourage families to go back and to review everything. Um And I think special education used to be very much. 00:33:18Edit Well, we have to get parents to sign right now. We have to get parents to sign right now that never sat well with me, um, because they can add a parent statement, they can, you know, look through what, what, what teachers have said, um, they can, you know, ask clarifying questions and, you know, yes, eventually we want parents to, to be in agreement so that we can move forward with services, but it doesn't have to be right away and, and that, and that's where, you know, school staff, uh really need to be supportive of parents to a answer those follow up questions and to be respectful of, you know, the time it takes to digest information that, you know, they may not have gone to school about, but at the end of the day, they are their child's number one advocate and they know their child best. Absolutely. Oh, so well fed. I want to, to move to start closing because this is such a good conversation. But I, I do want to do one more thing that I absolutely love. I think this is a family member recommending us but to do a post IEP survey about the satisfaction and understanding of the IP meeting. 00:34:24Edit I love that. It's, yeah, it's so good. Um, it, it's, it's not something that we have put into place yet in, in a formal survey, but even a call, a phone call and email, you know, asking like, hey, did anything come up, you know, that night at dinner or in, in the shower the next morning? Um, you know, sometimes my best thoughts come up in the shower. So, you know, just like that, that is, that, that's a qualitative survey, but as easy as a Google form or, you know, something through another data collection system. So that, that's, that's valuable data for districts to look at and to see overall um parent satisfaction. Absolutely. Oh, my gosh. Oh, that would be so cool if you create one, I'd love to share with folks if you're willing. Yeah. Absolutely. I would be more than happy to share that with you. Awesome. Um, before I ask kind of the, the typical closing questions, is there anything else that we didn't get a chance to talk about that you wanted to highlight today? Um Yeah, I think, I think we've kind of gone all over the place and, and, you know, we've, we've, we can talk for hours about this. 00:35:39Edit Um, but, you know, I, I would just, you know, if, if folks are, um, interested in learning more, you know, the, the book is, is absolutely available. Um, and, you know, I would encourage you to, you know, read that and either get it from your library or if you have the means to do so, like ordering it through like your local independent bookstore. Um, do some research, talk to, talk to families, like, ask them like, hey, like, what do you vision for your child? Like, where do you see your child? Um What, what are you hoping get out of this school year. Just, just start answering those asking those questions and start the reflection process of, you know, what, what are some things that I may have made a misstep in the past? And how can I rectify that? How can I stop the cycle of harm? Beautiful. Oh my gosh, you answered the questions that I was going to ask. This is so great. OK, this is so good. And then, yeah, I, I love that you, you named the book. So the, the book is called and I will link this and type out the full name and everything in the blog post for this episode. 00:36:44Edit But it's called partnering with culturally and linguistically diverse families and special education. It is so good everybody. So listeners just know it is excellent. And I also love, like you said, there's a ton of resources in the back, including an appendix with all of the, the glossary of terms there that is like so necessary even if you're in the field of special education. And I would love to know too. Um So 11 thing that I just asked for fun is something that you have been learning about lately. Now, this can totally relate to our conversation or not. It can be anything you wanna share. Yeah. Um Well, two things so not related to our conversation. Um I have been um learning how to uh play pinball. Um More uh just just better. Um I am um ranked in, in California and the world granted not very high, but that's been one of that. That's been one of my passions recently, but um connected to this conversation, um I just completed like my like year streak on um Duolingo Duolingo to begin to be more comfortable speaking to, to families in Spanish. 00:37:56Edit Um by no means, am I proficient but um you know, growing with confidence and I think that is something that really speaks strongly to, to families is when we make attempts and we learn to speak their same language. Um I apologize to uh to a parent last week that, you know, I was struggling with conjugating like future tense verbs. And, you know, in our conversation, he, you know, in Spanish said, you know, um your Spanish is better than my English and thank you for connecting with my language. Um So, you know, I'll call that a win, but, you know, it's still a growing journey. So I would absolutely recommend, you know, learning a second language, be it Spanish via a language in the community that you work with so that you can, you know, connect with families and students, even if it's just vocabulary words or if it's just like, hello, goodbye. It's great to, great to, great to see you. Um just teeny tiny things like that. But um yeah, I can, I can read uh early readers in Spanish. 00:38:58Edit So that's, that's what I've been uh really stoked about that is super, super cool. Oh my gosh. And, and so finally, people I think will want to get in touch with you, they'll want to follow your work at the book. All the things. Where can they find you online. Yeah. Um And I can Lindsay, I can also send you the um the links for this. So um I my website is still a work in progress. So it's not, it's not published yet. Um I'm pretty active on linkedin under my name and I'm on Instagram and my Instagram handle is Doctor Vogel Campbell. So, education related book related uh pinball related now and then just like kind of general life in San Francisco and I have a youtube channel um under Doctor KBC. Brilliant. I will link to all those in the blog post as well. And I think you're also sharing with listeners, a meeting accessibility protocol. So it was like a little checklist of like reflection questions which I think people will absolutely love. So, thank you for sharing that. 00:40:02Edit Yeah, absolutely. Um You know, there are a lot of things that, that, that site leaders can do to make meetings more accessible that don't cost any money. So, you know, if you have uh you know, money and resources that you can allocate through like your site plans or advocating um in, in the state of California through like your district like LCP, your local control accountability uh plan. You know, there are, there are baby steps that, that you can take, but absolutely, like, feel free to use the protocol with your teams and your sites. Amazing Dr Vogel Campbell. Thank you so much for this wonderful conversation and thanks for coming on the podcast. Thank you, Lindsay. It was a pleasure if you like this episode, I bet you'll be just as jazz as I am about my coaching program for increasing student led discussions in your school, Shane Sapir and Jamila Dugan talk about a pedagogy of student voice in their book Street Data. They say students should be talking for 75% of class time. Do students in your school talk for 75% of each class period. I would love for you to walk into any classroom in your community and see this in action. 00:41:07Edit If you're smiling to yourself as you listen right now, grab 20 minutes on my calendar to brainstorm. How I can help you make this big dream a reality. I'll help you build a comprehensive plan from full day trainings and discussion protocols like circle and socratic seminar to follow up classroom visits where I can plan witness and debrief discussion based lessons with your teachers. Sign up for a nerdy no strings attached to brainstorm. Call at Lindsay, Beth lions.com/contact. Until next time, leaders think big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the teach better podcast network. Better today. Better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there, explore more podcasts at teach better.com/podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode.
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AuthorLindsay Lyons (she/her) is an educational justice coach who works with teachers and school leaders to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice, design curricula grounded in student voice, and build capacity for shared leadership. Lindsay taught in NYC public schools, holds a PhD in Leadership and Change, and is the founder of the educational blog and podcast, Time for Teachership. Archives
November 2024
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