Episode 17: Increasing Access to College for Students with Disabilities

On this episode of the Inclusion Think Tank Podcast, I welcome my guest Dr. Jessica Bacon. During our conversation today, we will discuss the Increasing Access to College project that she co-founded at Montclair as it relates to inclusive education and why it is important to begin teaching inclusion and anti-ableism curricula in early childhood classrooms.

Episode Transcript

Arthur: This is the Inclusion Think Tank podcast brought to you by New Jersey Coalition for Inclusive Education NJCIE, where we talk about inclusive education, why it works, and how to make it happen.

On today's episode, we welcome our guest, Dr. Jessica Bacon. Dr. Bacon is associate professor at Montclair State University in the Department of Teaching and Learning, where she teaches classes on inclusive education and disability studies. During our conversation today, we will discuss the Increasing Access to College project that she co-founded at Montclair as it relates to inclusive education and why it is important to begin teaching inclusion and anti-ableism curricula in early childhood classrooms.

Arthur: Welcome back to another episode of the Inclusion Think Tank podcast. I am your host Arthur Aston, and this podcast is brought to you by New Jersey Coalition for Inclusive Education. I am happy to welcome my guest today, Dr. Jessica Bacon.

Dr. Bacon is an assistant professor of teaching and learning at Montclair State University. Jessica, welcome to the podcast today. I'm looking forward to our conversation.

Jessica: Thank you. Happy to be here.

Arthur: Yes. So you and I met briefly over the summer in person at the NJCIE summer conference and Dr. Pria Lalvani, she introduced us and immediately when

she introduced us and we had a chance to talk over lunch for a few minutes. I knew you would be a great guest for the podcast, so I'm really happy to have you join us today.

Arthur: To start the conversation off, can you share with the audience a little bit more about yourself?

Jessica: Yeah. So, yes, I am a professor, actually an associate now recently tenured at Montclair State. And so I have been here at Montclair State for about seven years now. So I'll tell you a little bit about my background before I got here.

I grew up in Ohio in the Cleveland area. I went to undergraduate at a small school called the College of Worcester, and I studied sociology and education. And so that was actually a really good background for where I ended up going to those two fields of study coming together.

And then I started working while I was still in undergrad. I had a friend recruit me to come and work at a summer camp in Connecticut that was run through the arc. And so it was a summer camp for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

So I was sort of thrust into the world of disability at that point and got really interested in it. And so that's sort of where my focus of my career stayed ever since then. I was 20 when I first started that work and then I got my teaching degree, actually did my student teaching in New Zealand. And then I started working more actually in adult services for people with disabilities. So I worked in a group home, I worked as a job coach. I did various things like that. And then I decided it was time to go back to grad school.

Jessica: And so, I was sort of interested in the combination of sociology, education and disability at that point. And so I sort of stumbled onto the field of disability studies by kind of doing some research on those kind of three fields together.

And it looked really interesting to me, and it was a critical approach to understanding the kind of history and phenomenon of how disabilities are understood in our society. And so I found quickly that one of the best programs was at Syracuse.

Jessica: So my master's degree was in cultural foundations of education and disability studies at Syracuse, and I loved it. One of the things that I did right away that has also really informed my work up until today is that I started working with the self advocates that worked in collaboration with the university, and there was a center there called the Center for Human Policy that actually was like back in the day. It was a center that was instrumental in shutting down institutions for people with more significant disabilities. I learned so much from the people who were advocating for their own rights, right away as I was studying disability studies and at that point, I just couldn't imagine leaving or stopping learning because there was so many great faculty at Syracuse and I got to explore so many things. So I decided to stay for my doctorate.

But because I had a background in education, I decided to pursue my doctorate in special education. But it still had the strong critical disability studies perspective that sort of how Syracuse does everything related to disability and special ed.

So it was a great education there. I continued to work with self-advocacy groups and all of that all the way through my doctoral studies. And I pivoted to my research being interested in actually failing schools and standards based reform and high stakes testing movement and how those impacted in more impoverished areas, the inclusion and exclusion of kids with disabilities and more significant disabilities, kids who are multiple marginalized. And so that's been a strong area of interest. But alongside topics of curriculum and access to learning in school and society for kids with more significant disabilities.

Jessica: So that's kind of maintained throughout. So. Before I came to Montclair State, I worked for three years as a professor at Lehman College, which is part of CUNY in the Bronx, and then found this job, which had a lot of other people doing similar disability studies oriented work to me within teacher education.

And so this has been a really great fit and a great place for me to be for a while. So that's a little bit about my background.

Arthur: That's great. I always like to ask a question like that to people to see where they began, where the interest started in the disability studies, and quite a few times I found that people started in summer camps, volunteering at summer camps and when they were young adults in college and things like that. So it's really, really cool to have people answer that question.

I always like to find out a little bit more about how you became interested in a topic like disability studies, topics related to inclusion.

Arthur: So one of the many things that you have done there at Montclair and throughout your career is that you co-founded the Increasing Access to College project there at Montclair State University. Can you share with our listeners what that project is about and information about it?

Jessica: Yeah, absolutely. I would love to. And so this has been a project that I have done with my colleague, Dr. Sue Baglier, and so actually the way it started and I think it was like I was starting my first year at Montclair, Sue was kind of beginning the very, very early work. So she was actually approached by a local day habilitation center to have some of our teacher students collaborate with the folks that went there that were young adults, and they actually wanted her to send our students over there.

And she went to visit and realized that, from an inclusive perspective. And these are for students who are learning to be high school and secondary teachers that it wasn't as inclusive as the goals that we have for our students to learn from. So instead, she actually invited the folks to come to campus and collaborate on campus with her, with her class. And so it sort of just started off as a class project and then I became involved.

And actually one of the things I didn't mention that I also did while I was at Syracuse is Syracuse has a really, really strong program. It's now called Inclusive University, but they've had a few different kind of sub programs under that.

And so when I was actually a teaching assistant for Doug Beclin, I got my first teaching assistant job was to actually support the peer relationships for a teacher education course at Syracuse with the students with intellectual disabilities who are on campus.

Jessica: So I got involved and informed about that kind of work in my doctoral studies. So Sue asked me to work with her to sort of expand the work at Montclair State. And so one of the first partners we have, we actually were in collaboration with Bloomfield High School and there was a state grant to improve transition services.

Jessica: This was like six years ago or so. So we worked with Bloomfield to apply for this grant. We did not get the grant. However, we decided to basically do most of the work that was in the grant proposal anyway without any money.

And so about six years ago we informally kind of started working with our teacher Ed students and a group of students from Bloomfield High School who are transition age. So, they're 18 to 21 year olds and the district provided support by bringing up teaching assistants or para-professionals.

And they provided the busing. And we had our teacher ed students. Finding, you know, developing relationships with them and finding learning and social and recreational opportunities on campus kind of through the back door. So over time, we realized that trying to do everything through the back door was not the most effective route.

And it really didn't provide, you know, quote unquote, ‘full inclusion’ for our students. They didn't have IDs. They weren't able to get into the systems. You know, some of them start informally getting professors to agree that they could audit or sit in the courses.

So over time, we've established a lot of structures and policies and practices at the university. So now when our students come, we now partner with a very new, very early partnership with Clifton. We actually just have one student from Clifton.

We've been partnering with Montclair Public Schools now for a couple of years, and we've had our longest and most robust partnership is still a student Bloomfield. We have anywhere usually from like 6 to 10 students from Bloomfield come up every day.

And so now the students, every student audits one or two courses every semester. They and then everything is peer supported. So we work with our Center for Community Engagement on campus. And so we get student volunteers who are Bonner leaders through that.

Jessica: We sometimes collaborate with service learning students from other courses in other disciplines, and then our teacher ed students often will do volunteer work because they like it and they want to or because it's part of a course.

And so now our students they audit courses, they get support, they go to a class with a peer with the same peer, they go to the gym or go to events. They do any kind of recreational stuff other undergraduates would do, and they get some support for their homework and their schoolwork.

So now it's a pretty robust, inclusive experience after a lot of years of development. And then the other thing we're really very excited about that it seems ready to announce is that we have created a certificate program and we've got a generous donation from the Lacy family, which is a local Montclair family.

And the Lacy’s, Wendy owns and runs Cornerstone Montclair, an inclusive store or just general store. And so we are planning at this point to be launching a certificate program next fall, hopefully. So that is moving forward and that we have developed a full curriculum.

It's a two year program at this point where students would come and they would take about nine credits per semester for two years. It has an internship component. And so, we're excited that we are going to be able to announce and launch that for starting next fall.

So we'll be able to have an incoming class of students that are either are or are not associated with it. With the high school transition program, it could also be a post-high school student who isn't able to access higher ed through a traditional route, and they would be able to come to campus through the certificate program, get peer support and take courses either for audit or for credit, depending on their their interests and choices.

Jessica: So it's a little bit of a long history about where we have come in, and where we are now.

Arthur: And it shows, I think, the dedication and determination that you all had to see it through because it was long, like you said, but it's paying off right now and to have Wendy, she was a guest on the podcast last season and she's great.

It's really great to see everything come together and start you know, you start seeing results from the hard work that everybody has put in for this project to work, and, congratulations to everybody. That's really, really exciting.

Jessica: It's been a long, a long process and it's taken a lot of advocacy, and on a lot of people's part. But we're excited because we have a new president and a new provost.

And, their mission is really supporting community partnerships and community engaged work and our students learning in connection with community members. So, you know, we're excited that they have committed to continuing this work because you never know what's going to happen when you have a change in leadership. So we feel pretty optimistic at this point.

Arthur: It's great work that you all are doing there at Montclair. You know, in addition to what you're doing, are there any other college programs in the state of New Jersey that you're aware of that are working toward increasing the inclusivity and diversity of students with disabilities in their higher education settings on their campuses?

Jessica: Absolutely. So there are. I actually just looked it up today to see how many exactly there were in New Jersey. So if anybody's interested in knowing more, there's a national coordinating center.

There are about 260 ish programs in the U.S. and then there has been federal grant support for inclusive postsecondary education programs over the last almost 20 years. Now, the grant is called TIPSID, if you go to thinkcollege.net or to the think college website, you'll find a lot of information about these

programs. So they also have a map for each state. So in New Jersey, there's ten other programs listed, the ones that are most well known. And so the College of New Jersey, it's called Career and Community Studies. That program has been around for, I think, at least 20 years or so.

So they were kind of one of the early programs. They run a residential program. So that's a good opportunity. The other one that we've collaborated with quite a bit is at Turning Point, which is at Bergen Community College.

They have kind of vocational specific programs that lead to specific certificates in different vocational interests. So that's another really interesting program. Georgian Court has a newer program. I think it's small so far, but it's a residential program.

A couple of colleges use a national nonprofit that moves into campus is called College Steps. So Kean and County College of Morris have programs. So, you know, it's sort of interesting because we've also in our building of the IAC at Montclair State, we've done a lot of research both on our own programs.

We've published a couple of articles we've been interested in actually looking at, and this aligns to both Sue and I are disability studies scholars. So we're really interested in allowing the voice of people with disabilities to help inform our decision making.

So we've, done some research participant observation, qualitative oriented type research and listened a lot to the students who have come here. And so, what we've learned from them really is that belonging and peer relationships has been so central to the program and so has the the real thinking through what inclusion means as an evolving concept. As we have folks on a college campus that historically, academia is, thought of as sort of a more elite, right? You need an elite way of understanding knowledge to participate. And so we really we think that this kind of work pushes the boundaries of that way of thinking about academia.

So I say that to say, I think if you look at the national landscape of these programs, they really vary in how they approach ideas of inclusion and inclusivity. So some are frankly, they they bring people to campuses that they're not fully integrated or integrated at all into the college learning that's going on on campuses where others are really fully integrated.

Jessica: I think a lot of the work in New Jersey and we actually there's a New Jersey higher ed coalition that we participate in, too, that we work together to kind of share best practices.

So I think it's nice that a lot of the work in New Jersey has really pushed this idea of inclusive opportunity. So there's a lot of great and varie options and opportunities for folks to look at across the state.

Arthur: Yeah, that's really great and thanks for mentioning that website. That's a great resource for sure to find all the information in one spot. That's always a helpful, helpful thing. And to hear that there are so many colleges in New Jersey that are offering these types of programs and to to help those with disabilities, and I love what you said about listening to those who have participated in your you know, in your program there at Montclair. Like, I think listening to the disabled voices is very important.

Arthur: So I know you mentioned that you are currently working with certain school districts there and in your area for this IAC. So is it limited to those schools? Do you all have space for more schools to join or can you tell us where that is possibly heading in that direction?

Jessica: So, we're we're excited that we we believe that under our new administration, the the agreement that we have seems stable.

But because that was also under question whether the partnership with school districts would be able to continue in the same way as we launched the certificate program. And at this point, I'm not sure that we have unlimited capacity because honestly, Sue and I are running the program, and this is essentially volunteer work for us because we have full time jobs in teaching and research and running other programs and such.

But, we're always open to conversations and sharing what we do with other districts. I think the more clear opportunity for other districts to actually get involved is maybe not through what we call the fellowship partner that we're in partnership with that we're doing with districts right now. But if districts are interested in the certificate program, we are absolutely going to be launching in the fall. We're going to be looking for our first class of students to come join.

Jessica: We are intending to hire a director this academic year. And so if folks who work in school districts are interested in supporting their students to join the certificate program, that would absolutely be something that we would be willing to talk with folks about.

That's an exciting opportunity for those that want to apply.

Arthur: It's a very exciting opportunity. It's just great. I love hearing these types of conversations and seeing where things have come so far from when I was in college 20 years ago, which is hard for me to believe. To hear that, you know, the conversations are still being had and change is actually being made to assist those. And what you said earlier about the misconception that you have to have, college is something elite and the elite level of thinking and things like that.

And just to change that change that conversation and to make people realize that, college is accessible and inclusive for all students. Making those changes and having these conversations of getting the word out about these programs that exist in the state of New Jersey and around the country is so very important.

Jessica: And I think that, the assumptions so many people have about youth, young adults with intellectual disability labels are that their capacity or even interest in learning advanced concepts or, developing their skills and talents in the subject areas like philosophy or like sociology or, even like the arts or education, right? These fields there's so often assumptions that like, that's not for this group. And we found such the opposite. In allowing people to have the opportunity to explore these ideas. And it's also impacted, I think, our high school partners, and how they even see the literacy capabilities of the students who attend right there. They began seeing that these students actually have much more capabilities and interest. Yes. So we believe, especially as a public institution, that access to higher ed should be available for those who desire it.

Some people may need support. We really think about Instead of gaining skills towards independence, we look at how interdependent relationships with their peers, with everybody around them, allows people to do things and explore opportunities that are naturally available on college campuses that those people just didn't think was appropriate for that group of people.

Arthur: So leading into our next question. You have been at this work for many years now and, it can sometimes be a struggle and things come up that you didn't expect.

So can you share with us some of the challenges that arise when getting students with intellectual disabilities fully included into college? And can you also share with us some ways in which those challenges can be overcome?

Jessica: Yeah. Sure.

So some of the barriers that, you know, I think we've noticed and this is not unique to my state, but it's also, you know, pretty well documented in the broader literature base, I think is that assumptions. I mean, I've talked a lot about assumptions already.

Right. But, ableism is is alive and well in our society. And so I think, these reliance's on low expectations or sometimes it's the idea of like even exceptional protectionism is sort of a necessary response.

So we've definitely seen in some of our interactions with the university level. I don't know how to exactly say it, but bureaucracies that there’s sometimes worry that this group of people isn't or shouldn't be exposed to these particular kinds of ideas or even from some of the family or community partners.

There's worries that like adult content that's naturally available on a college campus is not going to be appropriate for a particular group of students. And I think that goes back to assumptions that we need to protect young adults because they have intellectual disabilities, and that a step further back even goes to the idea that this group of people has like a more childlike experience of understanding the world, or can't be exposed to things like sexuality discussions, which are common on college campuses. So those kinds of, and just like the nature of bureaucracy, right, that it's inflexible.

Jessica: And so to ask for them to become more flexible is sometimes a challenge. But it's also been a beautiful surprise, on the other hand, that when we actually work together and have conversations with different offices across campus, when we've worked with different faculty, we found incredible openness and willingness and kind of on the more individual level for

people to just kind of figure it out. There may not be, there's never a perfect formula, you know, and a lot of the faculty have said, Oh, wow, like, it's really stretched my thinking about my teaching practices and has actually made me a better teacher for all my students.

So those kinds of things have been just really beautiful surprises as well. Does that answer your question?

Arthur: Yeah. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, As you said, from the challenges we can find the beauty and the surprises that come out and realize how to start making change and making people change their way of thinking and the assumptions that they make, so that's how we do it. And it's really,great that it's all happening there. And this last part last question that I have, it touches on ableism, which you just brought up, which is that I found that, personally, I've found that it

has been a topic of conversation throughout the social media world, especially the last two years or so, that a lot of people have been home and realizing how things are not accessible to people with disabilities. And it's been a really big topic.

So I wanted to bring up this last question, which is that you have collaborated with one of our previous guests on the podcast who introduced us, Dr. Priya Lalvani, and on some research. So can you share with us some of the information about the research she did with Dr.Lalvani on the article entitled: “Rethinking We are All Special: Anti-Ableism Curricula in Early Childhood Classrooms”

Jessica: For sure. Yes. So one of the things that I think is pretty prevalent in our K-12 and now I'm kind of moving more from higher ed into K-12 systems, is that disability is a dirty word that shouldn't be talked about?

I think kids from early ages learn this idea that by just the fact that it's often silenced when a kid has a really natural question about human diversity, which is in our society, we often define as disability.

We tell the kid to be quiet or not to ask, or that it's rude to ask, or that it’s rude to stare. just their natural interest and curiosity is just something that shouldn't be pursued.

And so we feel pretty strongly and this is what this article is about. We also have another article that has a similar kind of outcome and a topic that's more practitioner oriented for early childhood classrooms. So in both of those articles, we kind of tackle the idea that schools tend to reinforce silence by not addressing disability openly in our K-12 classrooms, and kids learn a really strong message about disability when it's silence that it is something terrible and something that shouldn't be discussed ever. And so that reinforces negative stereotypes.

Jessica: And so and at the same time, we have our highly segregated system that also reinforces that this group of people is often not there. They're not learning together or if they are in the school. Right. We're seeing them in separate rooms, in separate spaces. And so that's another way that negative understandings of disability are being reinforced in young children.

And so our kind of proposal and these articles are that we should be directly integrating conversations about disability into our curriculum. There are a lot of ways to do this effectively at all levels of ages.

Jessica: And so and then, kind of going back to a point we were discussing earlier, And I think similar to the work that you also do outside of this podcast is that we should be learning these insights from people who live with disabilities.

It shouldn't be outsiders necessarily explaining what it means to live with a disability. Kids are going to have better role models and more nuanced understandings of disability, if they learn from the perspectives of people with disabilities. And there are a lot of ways to do that, at all

different ages. There are great children's books from first person perspectives. There's a lot of writing for older kids. You know, there's a lot of films that we've had a lot more, I think great films come out around the disability rights and civil rights movements that are appropriate, especially at the higher grade levels for kids to watch and interrogate. So, there is then there's also. Other themes around difference in diversity. So we talk about intersectional differences too, right? So what does it mean to have the experience of an LGBTQ person who has a disability at once, and how do we understand that?

Jessica: I think our schools have done a lot of work over the last. And, of course, there's like backlash to this right now. But, there's a lot of curricular work that's been done around anti-racism, for instance, and approaches and tools and techniques for teaching that to all levels.

And that would be a whole other conversation to talk about that, the national discourse on that right now. But there hasn't been a lot of work or prominence in talking about anti-ableism with kids in schools in the same way that other minority groups have gotten, you know.

You know, it's been really, really worked on to integrate these conversations into the curriculum and discussions. So that's a lot of what that work is about and also helping kids learn to be change agents at all levels.

So we talk a little bit about pedagogical techniques that there's a type of critical pedagogy is a framework kind of out of the work of Paula Ferrari that helps kids really learn about marginalization and discrimination and then also learn about how to do something about it, even at small levels within their own school.

So some of the stuff is how to integrate those kind of pedagogical techniques to learning about disability, disability history, and then maybe applying it for kids to take action and make changes within their own schools and communities.

So a little bit about that.

Arthur: Yeah, I of course, as I shared with you before we started recording how I am passionate about that type of work and educating the K through 12 grade levels about disabilities and as you said, learning from someone who has a disability, who lives that experience is very important because it it starts conversations at home. For the high school students who are planning to go to college, to major in certain areas, that will give them an insight to, okay, if I'm going to go into architecture or, you know, hotel management or whatever insert their career goals, then they can go with that in mind

to say how it is, how can I make an impact for my customers who might come in with disabilities and, you know, so it's very, very important to do that and to have these conversations.

And even at the I guess, in the corporate world, the diversity, equity and inclusion conversations that are being had, as you mentioned, a lot of times they are structured around the LGBTQ community and race, but disability is often forgotten about in these conversations.

So, you know, it's very, very important that, you know, this type of research is being done to show the importance of speaking and learning and educating others about disability. So thank you for all of the work that you're doing.

Arthur: People like us and so many others who are doing this work, we really are making a change. And that is I think that is the important thing to keep in mind. And when things get hard and the challenges that we discussed earlier and when all of those things come up, just remember that to stay focused on the change that we know that we are making through educating about inclusivity and inclusive education and just making things better for those who live with disabilities.

Jessica: And remembering that it can be a prideful identity category, too. It's not just I mean, I think that's that's where schools often get it so wrong.

Right. We're so embedded in the medical model in our schools and it's always viewed as such a deficit, and we try at least in our teacher program. And I think a lot of other teachers at programs are doing this work to to train future teachers to really be critical of the deficit medical model and look at disability and really different ways. But I think starting by talking. About disability as something that can be a prideful identity category beyond just what is wrong with you? And what can our schools do to fix you, is really important.

And it's an important piece of, you know, I know NJCIE does inclusive reform work, right? That is an important piece, in my opinion, of transforming schools. It's not just the structures of schools, but it's I think that before we can even tackle the structures, we have to talk about the ways people think about disability, the ways people, the beliefs people have about disability, and starting by shifting those beliefs towards presuming competence and understanding the limits of the categories and understanding big issues of how minority groups get overrepresented into specific categories and why these categories aren't perfect and why segregation is harmful for for kids and all of these things.

Jessica: I think those ideologies are the starting point for transforming the systems.

Arthur: So, yes. So on that note, Dr. Jessica Bacon, thank you so much for joining me for this episode, for this conversation. I truly enjoyed it and have learned so much and have been inspired to keep going with the work that I'm doing through this podcast and just getting the word out. Getting the word out I think is so important, too, because these programs like the one you have there at Montclair and the other colleges you mentioned, they exist and not everybody knows about them.

So I think, for me personally, too, I can remember growing up and not knowing certain things and how difficult it was to find information about, something like learning how to drive. I can't use my legs, but I never knew, it took me a long time to find out that hand controls exist and where I could go to get them and take driving lessons. So I think having these types of conversations and putting them out to the world at large to make people aware that programs exist and we are making changes for those who have disabilities

Arthur: I think it is so important. So thank you again for joining me for this conversation. I appreciate it.

Jessica: It was great. Thanks so much.

Arthur: Yes, thanks. And you have a great day. We 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 NJCIE. Be sure to subscribe on YouTube, Spotify or Apple Podcasts, and don't forget to follow us on social media @NJCIE. Until next time.