Episode 6: Inclusive Education, Tips4Inclusion

On this episode of the Inclusion Think Tank Podcast we welcome my guests Tim and Amy Rohrer. Tim is a speaker, author and self-advocate. He and his mom, Amy, share their tips for how schools can become more inclusive and the projects that Tim is working on to advocate for better social inclusion. 

Find Tim’s resources on his website: https://tips4inclusion.wixsite.com/disabilityinclusion

Episode Transcript

Arthur: Welcome to the Inclusion Think Tank podcast brought to you by New Jersey Coalition for Inclusive Education, NJCIE. As the name suggests, this podcast will discuss inclusive education and, most importantly, why it works.

On this episode, I welcome my guests, Tim and Amy Rohrer. Tim is a speaker, author and self-advocate. He and his mom, Amy, share their tips for how schools can become more inclusive and the projects that Tim is working on to advocate for better social inclusion. 

Arthur: Welcome back to another episode of the Inclusion Think Tank podcast brought to you by New Jersey Coalition for Inclusive Education.

On today's episode, I welcome my guests, Tim and Amy Rohrer, and I'm really excited to have you both on today. Thank you for joining me. 

Amy: You’re welcome. Thank you for having us. 

Tim: Thank you for having us. 

Arthur: Yes. So I would like to start off this conversation with this first question, which is, can you just tell us about yourselves and share something fun that you like to do in your free time? 

Tim: My name is Timothy Rohrer. I'm a speaker, self-advocate, and author for disability inclusion and something I do during my free time. I like to do art like painting, drawing. Occasionally, I've been going out fishing, hiking, kayaking, riding a bike and doing outdoor activities. 

Arthur: That’s fun. I love fishing.

Amy: And I guess I'm Tim's mom and I'm kind of like his business manager now, just kind of developed into that, but he's amazing and does great work. Everybody is inspired by him. As far as myself, I also have another child who's 16 years old and as a family, we also are part of a nonprofit foundation called 5-Help Foundation, where we give back to our community.

We just had a food drive. We're having a clothing drive coming this weekend, so Tim is a partner in that as well. It's a teen-founded program and I run the volunteer operations for our teens.

Arthur: What does inclusive education mean to you? How would you define inclusive education?

Tim: Inclusive Education means not only teach special ed students how to communicate with other people, but we teach the regular ed peers how to communicate with them. Inclusive education means allowing people with disabilities to be part of the regular ed population.

And one of my analogies, I made a flag about inclusion, in which the yellow stripe means people without disabilities. Blue meaning people with disabilities, and the center stripe is green, which means we're integrating both groups of people to live together.

Arthur: Wow, that is such a great analogy.

Amy: I don’t know if you can see but it says, even though some people are different, we can all be friends on the bottom. But the flag wouldn't typically have the words on it, but he came up with that idea.

So I think inclusive education just really basically means giving people the same opportunity as everybody else in the same environment. 

Arthur: Yes, that is such a great analogy that is so simple and so true, it's like we can mix. you know, we can put everybody together, I love that.

That's a great analogy, you said, that's a bookmark that you have?

Amy: Yeah, that's a bookmark. He has the idea for a flag and we have it in a, like a banner size as well. Like, really big.

Arthur: Oh, that is great. That just made my day. 

Arthur: So Tim, can you tell us about the educational guide that you have written? It's called: “How to be a Good Influence to People with Disabilities.” And can you share with us what inspired you to create this?

Tim: This pamphlet is called “How to be a Good Influence to People with Disabilities.” It lists what a disability is to children and then lists ten steps of how we can include them. This set says “What is a Disability” and gives a walk through about what disabilities affect people. And all of this is the steps that children can take to include them. Like the first step, number one: When you see someone who is different from you, don’t be afraid of them. They just want to be like everyone else.

Be nice and introduce yourself to them. Start to talk to them. And then with more steps, like if they're having a hard time doing something like tying their shoes, or opening their snack, offer to help them with it. And my favorite part, this, number nine: Be sure to spend time with them outside of school.

Invite them to come over for a playdate or for a party. Try inviting them to spend time with you in a group of friends. Be it the park, movie, bowling, mini golf, library, or the museum. 

Amy: And this pamphlet is available for free on his website. Tips4Inclusion, the number four. He created it.

It's a free resource on his website for anybody that wants that.

Arthur: That’s great. The one thing I really love about it is that you made it for children because you broke it down into very simple–

It's ten steps, but they're very simple and easy to do. I love that you said, number nine, what's your favorite to invite them places outside of school. 

And I was born with a disability myself. I have spina bifida, so I use a wheelchair and crutches, so I definitely can relate to that. And, having friends in school and outside of school, I think, is really important to stress. And so that's a great thing that you created there.

And we'll definitely put a link to your website in the show notes for this episode so everybody can go and download that free resource, because I think it's very useful and will be very helpful to many, many young people.

Tim: I’m gearing towards young people because children learn fast when they're little, and they're open minded to learn new things. Once they reach middle and high school, they start to close their mind toward new learning opportunities.

Arthur: Yes, that's so true, they definitely absorb a lot more when they're younger. It's easier to show them things and they really understand it right away. It's really very interesting how that works.

So in addition to the pamphlet, you also have written a book which is really great. It's called Timmy’s Story, a story about autism and friendship. Can you share with us a little bit more about your book and what it's about and why you wrote it?

Tim: This book is called Timmy’s Story, A Story About Autism and Friendship. This book is about a boy named Timmy with autism. And it shows what he’s sensitive to, and what he's obsessed with and going to speech therapy and being diagnosed with autism. 

Then at the end, his teacher, Miss Bethany, was concerned about Timmy being different and not fitting in, so she decided to teach her class about Timmy and about autism, and the kids decided to hang out with him, like at pizza party and other places at the very end of the book. 

Amy: Tim not only wrote the book, but he illustrated it. He did all the pictures. 

Arthur: Yes, I was just going to say that that is so fantastic. I love the illustrations. I'm not an artist at all. So anyone who can draw and illustrate things, I really admire that in people. I love looking at art and illustrations and things. So I really thought it was really great that you wrote it and illustrated it.

And it shares such a great message of friendship and the importance of, again, making friends and just talking to people. I always say that people should talk to someone who is different than they are, and you find out you like a lot of the same things. 

Like you said in the story, they go to pizza parties and things. So it's like a lot of people like pizza. so if you find that you know that one thing that you have in common with somebody else, it really can create a good and long lasting friendship. 

Amy: Yeah, He’s actually working on a sequel to it. But this book, if anybody's interested, it's available on Amazon. He's working on a sequel about a sensory-friendly birthday party so people can understand how to adapt and include people with disabilities to make them more comfortable.

Arthur: Yeah, you said it was a sensory-friendly birthday party?

Amy: Mm-Hmm. 

Arthur: That’s great. Wow. These stories are so needed, and I think that's what's missing a lot of times. As you said, it's available on Amazon. You can go to Amazon and search for books about disabilities and topics related to disabilities, and again, I think they miss out a lot. 

They've gotten a lot better, but they miss out a lot on children's stories. And that is, again, that's where we need to begin educating others about disabilities. When they're small, when they're young, so when they grow up and like you said, when they're in middle school, they can remember the story they read when they were a younger child about the person with autism or another disability and not be afraid and want to become friends with somebody who has a disability. So it's really important that you're sharing these stories and, I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for that sequel on that story. That's great. 

Amy: This book, Timmy’s Story, the one we just shared, is a conversation starter for children in school like grades K to 5. It’s kind of what it's geared towards. But it's been purchased, our local school districts, we have two school districts with two different high school districts. They each purchased over 100 copies, but other districts have bought multiple copies for their classrooms, and he's even the keynote speaker where they bought a bunch of books for their staff at back-to-school year. 

He is going to be doing a professional development book talk on the book come December. So I think it's a great tool if people want to look into.

Arthur: It is, and it's great again that you wrote it and you illustrated it. So you're the best person to talk about it. So it's really awesome that you're getting invited to all of these events to get a chance to talk about it and that people are purchasing the book and school districts are purchasing the book in such large quantities, because again, it's a very important message that needs to get put out there. So, I just wish you the best of luck with everything. It's really cool to see all of this happening for you. That's really great.

Tim: And one thing to mention that even though this virus is not going to end anytime soon, like I don't want COVID to stand in the way of people hiring me to do presentations about disability inclusion. It could be virtual or in-person, but either way, I'm making an impact—to make the stigma against people with disabilities less common, one small step at a time. 

Tim: For many years, we've been hearing about social skills, to teach them to special ed students. Sometimes, like it may work for them and sometimes they still talk about the things that are in their comfort zone. If we only teach special ed students and the regular ed students will not have any understanding how to communicate with special needs people.

It needs to be a two-way street. We have social skills lessons for people who are regular ed and social skills for people who are special ed. 

Amy: So I think his point is we should educate and teach these skills to everybody. So when he goes out, he's trying to educate the general population, to learn how to include, communicate, and interact with people that have disabilities because they're always the ones pulled out to try to learn how to interact with the people that don't have a disability.

Why don't they teach the general population? It really should be taught in schools. The other children need to learn how to adapt to them as well. And they'll learn and they'll benefit from it. They'll help everybody. 

Arthur: Absolutely. It's that's so true and how you know, and it goes back to your tier, your flag idea with the colors and just bringing everybody together and teaching everybody everything. So everybody can just mix together and make things happen. And just it's all that; I'm so happy that you're here and with the two here about the work that you're doing, it's really exciting for me.

I am much, much older than you, but I really, really appreciate the work that you're doing for people with disabilities and just helping to educate everybody. I'll actually be 40 years old next week. Yeah. So like I said, I've been passionate about these topics for a long time and to see you at such a young age, going full force at it and writing books and things like that, it's really exciting to see. 

Amy: He’s only 21. Yeah, it's a lot in the last three years since he's been out of high school, it's kind of made it his mission to get out there and educate about inclusion because it really was hard for him at high school. It was kind of a dark point for him. So I think the way he kind of dug himself out of it was first when he wrote that pamphlet and then that landed on the front page of the New Jersey Coalition for Inclusive Education was the first one to publish it.

That's how we came to you guys. That kind of started our journey where it got on the front page of the newspaper and went viral. And then we started making other resources and people started asking them to speak at major conferences and in schools, then COVID hit.

And that's when he wrote the book, because we had a lot of time on our hands. And he also has YouTube channel Tips4inclusion. (The number four). He animated educational videos about different disabilities, autism, friendship, and inclusion.

If people want to check that out, there's a lot of great videos to help educate on it. He also was—during the pandemic, he's a busy boy—he works on this stuff like day and night. We created all those resources into printable resources on Teachers Pay Teachers.

So he's doing pretty well selling things on there. So it's called Tips4—It's always the number four—inclusion on there as well. With a lot of great posters, worksheets, lessons, videos, all kinds of things about inclusion. Games that he made to help teach. This is what he wants to do. He's just out there trying to get out there as much as we can. 

Arthur: Yeah, and you're right. As you said, you're very busy. That's really great. And,  I think the time that we all spent the last year and a half or so, spending time in the house and finding a way to be productive, I think has been helpful for many people. So that's really great that you took that time and found a way to continue your mission. So that's really cool. 

Amy: And we have to learn to navigate the virtual worlds, but that's just kind of opened a burst of opportunities because now you present anywhere in the world, he doesn't have to physically either. So. 

Arthur Right? Yeah. And I love what you said. Like, you didn't want, you know, the pandemic to stop people from hiring you to speak because like you said, if you can just do it virtually now. You can stay right in your home and speak anywhere across the globe now. So it's really great that you're doing this. So thank you again for the work that you're doing. 

Our next question is what are the benefits that you have seen as a result of inclusive education?

Tim: Inclusive education. The benefits of it is that it makes people with disabilities feel the same way as everyone else, and not have to have to label them into their own world. Like, people with disabilities deserve to be part of the rest of the community, but with accommodation to their needs, almost like how we have different options of food for people who are like diabetic, have allergies or are vegetarian. Like, we should have certain aspects like friendship and like college, like we should have programs tailored to their needs rather than just that traditional program.

Amy: I think it doesn’t just benefit the person with the disability, but it benefits everybody out there because they can learn a lot from somebody with a disability. They have a lot of strengths and things that they can do and people should be open to that.

I think if everybody is in the same environment, they'll understand more and be able to gain on both ends. 

Arthur: Yes. Yeah, all of what you said is so true, it does benefit everybody. And I think it makes it makes everybody better as adults, as they get older, learning how to interact with each other, as children and as students, helps you for when you're outside of school and it goes back to to your pamphlet that you created and saying, don't just be friends with somebody inside the school building, make sure that you invite them to places outside of the school hours. So it's really all just ties in together and it does make everybody better. So that's a really good point that you brought up there. Thank you. 

Arthur: Our last question is what is one thing that you feel that can be done in every school to better improve inclusive education?

Tim: Just as on my flag, we should make the school green like not yellow or blue. That we should be teaching regular ed students how to communicate with people who are different from them. Teach them like to include them on the playground during recess, let them sit,

invite them to their lunch table during lunch time. Ask for each other’s phone numbers, and so they can spend the time on the weekends or during school breaks doing fun things together.

Amy:  I think it really starts educating them when they're young, and that's the foundation of this pamphlet, his book, and everything he's doing to try to get into these schools to help them understand about disabilities. 

Children don't learn about what a disability is, and they wouldn't be afraid of it so much. And maybe they would. It would just be a natural part of every day and some day, maybe we won't even have to use the word inclusion. Everybody will just be included. And that would be amazing. So I think the more schools educate, whether it's with Tim's resources or on their own. I think the better.

Arthur: Yeah, that's it, 'cause it's so true just to continue to educate yourselves and, through great resources like Tim’s. I think that the resources that you're putting out are so important because you actually are someone who lives with a disability so you can better understand and you have a great understanding and a way to talk about it that I think is missing a lot of time. So again, thank you so much for the great work that you're doing to be 21 years old and to have that energy and enthusiasm for something that has such a great message and a great meaning that is very important.

Tim: Like, I really hope that that schools should be required to, like, teach regular ed students about disabilities. It should be, like, mandated more. 

Amy: He’s actually written to some politicians. He had a reaction or response from New York Governor Cuomo, and they put it up, when he was still in office, put it up his website and his book on their state social media site.

New Jersey, he spoke to the Jersey Department of Education in January 2020 before COVID hit. I think COVID just kind of like made it much harder for us to get back into things, but he’s doing it and he's getting word out, but he's still sending letters, and we're still always trying to find out ways to get word out about him and his resources and get him in more places and try to make it happen because it's so important. It shouldn't be forgotten.

Arthur:  It's so true. And I said, I look forward to all that is to come for you and from you. It’s very encouraging that you are out there and like you said, writing to politicians and to get some things changed. So it's great that you're doing this work. And I thank you both for your time and you all have a great day and I will definitely be in touch.

Amy: Thank you. 

Arthur: Thank you. 

Arthur: Thank you for listening to this episode of the Inclusion Think Tank podcast. This podcast is brought to you by New Jersey Coalition for Inclusive Education. Be sure to subscribe on YouTube or Spotify. And don't forget to follow us on social media @NJCIE.

Until next time.