Episode 16: A Strategic and Collaborative Approach to Inclusive Education

On this episode of The Inclusion Think Tank Podcast, I welcome my guest Michele Gardner. We discuss the importance of having a strategic plan and collaboration when creating an inclusive school environment.

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, Michele Gardner.

Michele is the director of special education in the Berkeley Heights School District in New Jersey. During our conversation today, we will discuss the importance of strategic planning and collaboration as they relate to inclusive education.

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

I'm your host, Arthur Aston, and on today's episode, I welcome my guest, Michele Gardner. Welcome to the podcast, Michele. This season we are focusing on school leadership and the role they have in making schools inclusive for all students.

And you are the director of special education in Berkeley Heights School District in New Jersey, and you're also the recipient of the 2020 NJCIE Honor Honoree Award. So I'm very happy to have you join us for this conversation today. Thank you.

Michele: Thank you so much for inviting me to join you, Arthur. I'm very happy to be here and very happy to continue my work with NJCIE.

Arthur: And we are also joined by Fred for this conversation. So Fred, thank you for joining us today as well.

Fred: My pleasure, happy to be here.

Arthur: So to get started, can you just share with the audience a little bit about yourself? And this wasn't a part of the original question, but can you also share a fun fact about yourself?

Michele: Of course. So personally, I lived in New Jersey, much of my life, just moved here and there as a young child. But, I've gone to the New Jersey public schools almost my whole life. My husband and I raised both of our daughters, Emily and Grace, in Hunterdon County.

Our girls went through the public school system. They're both now very successful adults. I also have a wonderful son-in-law, Michael, and a grandson, Harrison, who's turning one who is the absolute light of our lives. Professionally, I have worked in the public school system throughout the 25 years of my career as an educator.

I graduated from The College of New Jersey with a degree in teaching special education many, many moons ago, and immediately took a position as a paraprofessional in a program for students with autism in a public elementary school. After about a year, I accepted my first special education teaching position in that same program and spent almost ten years teaching and supporting students with more complex support needs.

After completing my master's program, I became an LDT-C on a child study team, and I eventually completed my administrative certifications. I joined the administrative team in Berkeley Heights in 2009 as the supervisor of special education.

After several years, I joined our middle school as the assistant principal, and then I was appointed the Director of Special Services ten years ago, which is where I serve currently. I've also been an adjunct instructor with the College of New Jersey for 15 years, and I find great joy in working with both undergraduate and graduate students in the School of Education there.

My passion, I can say confidently throughout my career as an educator, has been to improve the inclusive experiences and opportunities for students with disabilities. Whether I was a teacher, a child study team, or an administrator, and I suppose being an administrator has allowed me to sort of drive the bus on inclusive practices and initiatives, and I take that responsibility very seriously.

Arthur: So impressive. Wow. And can you also share something fun about yourself with us?

Michele: Sure, something fun? We are Disney World addicts in my household. And actually, we quickly got my son-in-law to become a Disney World addict.

So probably our dream, if we won the lottery, would be to move to Disney World and to live in the Magic 24/7. So that's probably a really good fact about me.

Arthur: That’s a really great fact. I love it. I went back to Disney for the first time in over 20 years last year, and it was a lot of fun.

Michele: Yes, probably a very different experience.

Arthur: Yes, definitely.

Michele: Going after a pandemic.

Fred: I feel like I want to flesh some things out first before we get into that question.

So Michele was kind enough to give a give us a brief overview of her history, but she left out some of the impact, she’s had, and some of the moves that she's made along the way. So during her last strategic plan, she set a goal for Berkeley Heights.

This was a five year plan. She set a goal for Berkeley Heights to be including 80% of their kids with disabilities, 80% of the day or more. And at the conclusion of that strategic plan, which I believe was a year or two ago, they had hit 81% of students, included 80% or more.

And at the same time and we had had this conversation, I'm sorry, for running on and singing praises, but at the same time. When looking at postsecondary outcomes, the results were incredible. 95% of students with disabilities who attend Berkeley Heights schools go on to postsecondary education or training.

And when I was doing some comparisons of Berkeley Heights to other districts, I noted that even though there might be similar districts socioeconomically, the percentage of students who were included was much lower. And the percentage of students with disabilities moving on to postsecondary education or training programs was also much lower.

And of course, when I brought this to Michele's attention, she responded by saying, Well, that's nice, but it's not good enough. We're still missing 5%. And I think that that kind of dogged dedication to continual improvement has been a highlight of Michele's administrative career so far.

And I just wanted to mention that just to flesh things out a little bit more. So everybody knows where Michele is, what Michelle has done and where she's where she set it down.

Fred: What is your goal for the strategic plan you're developing now?

Michele: We for our strategic plan, we're now focused on preschool and what we're doing in our preschool and our self-contained programs. So, yes, we have a lot of inclusive practices in the district, but those inclusive practices need to extend to students who are in really specialized programs, programs for students with autism, programs for students with learning and language disabilities, because we still have some of those self-contained classes in the district.

And while those students do spend time out in general education classrooms, as you noted, Fred, it's never enough. And so we're constantly looking to improve and enhance the things that we're doing to make things more inclusive for students with disabilities.

And I think now our focus is on students with more significant support needs.

Arthur: So can you share with us some ways that you have been able to work collaboratively with your school district to assure that your schools are an inclusive education setting?

Michele: So, you know, we and I say we because this is hard work that's just not mine. It's the result of many child study team members, teachers, paraprofessionals, administrative colleagues, parents, students, and organizations like NJCIE. We've had our nose to the grindstone for a decade, slowly building the inclusive practices and mindset that are necessary to hopefully someday be a model district for inclusive practices for people with disabilities. And so that hard work takes many forms.

First, being included in the district's strategic plan is really important. This involves working together with the Superintendent and Central Office Administration, as well as the Board of Education to ensure that people understand our vision and why we are doing the things we're doing.

Next to engaging in ongoing, sustained professional development and discussions is so incredibly important. When we are approached with a barrier, we don't give up. We try very hard to understand why the barrier exists and then to provide support, conversation, training, whatever is needed in order to overcome that barrier and to do it successfully.

This year, for example, we are tackling some of the feedback we received in a survey we conducted of our 6-12 parents, students, staff. There were some comments in the survey about students feeling more comfortable in a segregated setting.

So rather than accepting this as an indication that segregated settings are just, we have been tackling this, and we will be tackling this via staff focus groups this year. Why do students feel this way and how do we change this?

How do we ensure that students feel safe, comfortable, and ready to learn in a general education setting? And it's probably going to be a tough conversation. We do so much of our professional development ourselves. We tap into the expertize of our psychologists and social workers, speech therapists and myself.

And these keep costs down but maximize on learning opportunities for staff and administration. Next. So we've worked with our child study team to support them and how the IEP process should unfold. They first look at the present levels of a student and the goals, accommodations, and strategies that are needed prior to making placement or program decisions.

If something isn't working, we delve into what part of that program isn't working and we begin problem-solving discussions. For ten years, we've been looking at ways that we can redesign the delivery of special education services, and we're now attempting to more clearly define the role and responsibilities of a special educator.

I think there's some gray area there that needs to be cleaned up. This brings everyone to the same understanding so that our expectations of our teachers don't go unfulfilled or don't become frustrating for them.

Michele: And finally, the administrative team here works very closely in our district, supporting one another, trying hard to make time for and listen to one another. Mutual respect and care for each other really leads to a naturally collaborative and open-minded atmosphere. And while my colleagues, or even our teachers or team members may not always agree with some of our decisions, we will always listen, and we will always take their perspective into account.

Arthur: I love that you started off by using the word we. I thought that was really. I really, really appreciated that because it is a that is collaborative effort and everyone working together is what makes it successful and what makes everything work.

Michele: Absolutely. And I could never do any of this in a vacuum. It is really it's a lot of people doing a lot of different things and a lot of places.

Fred: I think one of one of the things I just want to get that from here is that, you know, as you mentioned before, you've been in the district for a significant amount of time. So those relationships have had a chance to grow, to gel. It isn't as if you're trying all this in your third year, the second or third year in the district.

You've been here both as LDTC side, and on the Gen-Ed side, as an assistant principal. Right. See, you've got that political capital and those relationships so that when you're when you're launching these things, you can actually support them.

Michele: Those relationships are huge. They really are. And those relationships of my staff and my team having with parents and students and their colleagues is incredibly important. And I'm very blessed to have, you know, the staff that I have working for our department.

Arthur: When making change, a lot of things happen, and a lot of times that comes with challenges. Can you share with us some of the challenges that districts face when wanting to become more inclusive?

Michele: This is a big question, so bear with me.

Inclusive practices are complicated, especially in New Jersey, where segregating students with disabilities is really prolific and the norm. We start with laws that literally allow schools to segregate students with disabilities. So while IDEA is something beautiful and it certainly changed the landscape for children with disabilities to be educated in public schools, it continues to provide the option of segregating a student with a disability.

Including students with disabilities is really hard work. I am fully transparent on that fact. However, I imagine if we attempted to segregate any other group of people based on a characteristic of who they are, the way that we do now for students with disabilities in New Jersey, I'm quite sure there would be a lot more noise around that.

Our country eventually won the battle against the separate but equal doctrine during the civil rights movement. Yet, interestingly enough, there is not only a separate but equal standard in special education

In New Jersey, there is a separate but better belief that segregating students into separate classrooms, schools, etc. is not only acceptable. Some believe it's actually better. A belief that is disproven by decades of research. I think this is really the most important and significant barrier that lies ahead for New Jersey educators.

What do we know about inclusive practices? That they are better for everyone, everywhere. Yet here we are in 2022, with so many students still pulled out of general education classrooms because one, the law allows us to do so, and two, there is a longstanding, very misinformed belief that it is better over there for students with disabilities.

Michele: The reality is it's easier to educate a less diverse population of students in a classroom. And by easier, I mean it is reasonable to assume that the less a classroom curriculum standard lesson needs to be differentiated, the more a teacher can focus on the pace and rigor standard to which they are held.

So throughout our public school system, we see students being segregated in an effort to understand our classrooms for ease of instruction so that students can pass standardized tests. Which in turn, promotes teacher evaluation scores.

It's really a kind of a political machine that drives the decision-making surrounding education policy. And I think really somehow more people with disabilities need to get to that table where the decision-making process is conducted.

So what do my colleagues in special education face every day when they walk into their own school districts? They face a misinformed, misunderstood mindset about segregating students. They also face barriers in Gen ed, where success is sometimes almost impossible for children who think, learn and function differently than their peers.

General educators, we know, are strapped with never-ending lists of assessments to conduct curriculum to get through changing materials and standards, and quite possibly answering to administrators who hold some of these longstanding beliefs about separate but better. And with regard to school administrators, honestly, this is a group of educators who have taken on more and more responsibilities over time and who have very little time for their own professional development.

Michele: So for our school leaders, it's crucial that each and every one of them understands neurodiversity, inclusion, and how they can affect change, even if its and in the slightest steps to an end goal.

Arthur: I guess on the flip side of the challenges. Can you share with us some of the strategies that helped you to remain focused through this process of achieving your goal of inclusion?

Michele: First and foremost, I can say I believe in inclusion in my soul and in my bones.

And so, you know, my colleagues, employees, my children, my husband will likely tell you the same. And I think that when you believe in something that strongly and when you believe that there is a great injustice occurring in our public schools daily for students with disability, it's truly impossible to lose focus.

However, one of the ways that I stay focused is to attend professional development activities and conferences where I can be regularly inspired to keep going. Whether it's a keynote by Norman Coons or Shelley Moore or LeDerrick Horne that fires me up, or it's simply a one-hour virtual session affirming my beliefs through a review of the research.

I think that being away from the daily grind of the office or the classroom and surrounding oneself with people who have the same understanding and belief system is so important. I remember the first time I heard Fred Buglione speak at an administrator group meeting.

I thought, Yes, yes, yes. I then worked with various inclusion facilitators who provided some professional development for our teachers, and when discussing how grateful I was to find NJCIE. One of them said to me, It's like finding the mothership.

And he was absolutely right. It is so easy to get caught up in, especially as a director, the legal matters, the staffing needs, and the ongoing daily responsibilities of observations and paperwork, that it is really so important to receive professional development as an administrator and as a seasoned veteran educator throughout the year, and be in the

room with really smart, dedicated people. Now and again.

Michele: Another strategy that has worked for us that I mentioned before is to be a part of the strategic plan. We first introduced a strategic plan goal back in 2016 that focused on increasing opportunities for students with disabilities in general education classrooms.

This has allowed us to make changes and be part of the district conversation rather than us being the department that's kind of over there and separate from all the other work of the district. When we want to make changes or we want to spend money, it's much easier to justify those decisions when you can refer back to the strategic plan.

We share our vision with all new staff, administrators, and honestly, anyone that will listen to me. All the work that we do, all the initiatives that we introduce, all the professional development that we provide, always comes back to our department's vision.

I also work very closely with my colleagues on the administrative team. Many of us care very deeply about one another, and that means something. If we need to take a leap of faith, it's much easier to do that with or for someone that you care about and trust.

Maybe we don't agree all the time. Maybe we even get frustrated and annoyed with one another. I'm quite sure I have annoyed a few people a few times, but we certainly respect each other's work and expertise.

Michele: Finally, we don't stop. We don't let off the gas. We are on this ride indefinitely, because I'm not sure that the work will ever be complete. Definitely not in the years left in my career in public education. But there's no time to waste.

We have one of the things that we have done is encouraged our high school students to be a part of the conversation. To be part of the diversity committee at the high school. We have an elective course for any high school student to take where we teach them about disability history, disability rights, disability law, advocacy, careers, in disability education.

And what I have learned is that adolescents are very opinionated in a good way and they speak their minds freely. So I've really enlisted them in this journey toward more inclusive school settings. This work on behalf of people with disabilities that I am so honored to be a part of is indeed pushing a large boulder up a mountain. Where the top of the mountain is beyond sight, somewhere in the clouds. But the more people that we have to carry some of that weight of that boulder, the easier it is to push and the faster it rolls uphill.

And I have found that engaging our students is another key in expanding that inclusive mindset.

Fred: As you were talking about that, a question occurred to me that I think people might or I've heard people say in the past, and that’s about money.

From your perspective, are you spending more money than you would typically spend to include students?

Michele: No. I would say that we are just reallocating or shifting resources in a different way. Have we had to hire a couple of new teachers over the last ten years so that we can keep up this momentum and these initiatives?

Yes, but the reality is, if we're really engaged in this movement, all of those dollars are very well spent because we have students who are becoming more and more independent as they get older and then they leave us post-high school. And they are successful adults in whatever way success is defined for them as a person.

Fred: So from a statewide perspective, the classification rate in New Jersey has been inching up year over year. So I doubt that there is a director in the state who hasn't hired a staff member in the last couple of years to keep up with the ever-increasing percentage of students classified for special education.

Michele: Yes, and our classification rates have gone up in our district. And some of the ways to deal with that are to have better programs, better interventions, multi-tiered system of support.

Doing all of those things with fidelity can reduce the number of students who need an IEP to get help. Which is how it's been sometimes.

Arthur: Yeah, I loved what you said, your passion for this work and also at the same time not being afraid to learn more and to be surrounded by people who are also as highly passionate about this work and what you can learn from them and gaining more knowledge around the whole topic of inclusion. I really love that part of what you said in the very beginning there.

Arthur: For our next question I have, I really like this question. Do you feel that it is possible for a public school district in the state of New Jersey to be entirely inclusive?

Michele: Yes, period. But I'll go on.

You know, I know I've touched on some really big issues here, butwhat I can say about it is this New Jersey has quite a bit of work to do, and so much of that work starts in general education, classrooms, administration, pre-service teacher training.

But beyond that, the mindset has to change. Educators, teacher prep programs. Parents. Doctors, lawyers. So many people must somehow move away from the separate but better mindset. I'm not completely sure how we accomplish that. It might be another podcast, but once we do, or once we start making movement in that direction,

I believe that we can move from the misinformed, separate but better mindset to diverse and differentiated classrooms for all children, all students, regardless of what label they may carry.

Michele: Moving toward a day when all special education, students, special education and special services are provided to students in the general education classroom based on individual needs of students.

I do believe it's possible, but I believe there are decades of work ahead of us as a state to get to that place.

Arthur: I love the. Yes, period. That's it. That was good.

Michele: I believe that. I really believe that.

Arthur: Yeah, and it does, like everything, it takes work. And, as our conversation has shown, it takes collaboration and a lot of work from a lot of different people and a lot of different areas. But it can be achieved. So thanks for that.

To wrap up our conversation, it goes back to something that Fred actually mentioned toward the beginning of our conversation, and that is that your district is one of the most inclusive in the state of New Jersey, and yet 95% of students with disabilities go to college or post-secondary training.

Arthur: Can you share with us some of the things that you are doing to help close that gap?

Michele: Sure. So, my department acknowledges that we are in a constant state of evolution and improvement. Status quo is never acceptable, and I’m not the only one that holds that standard. I would say that all of our child studies team and related services, everyone holds that standard that we are we're constantly evolving.

I recognize the incredible work of our staff to be where we are today, but we also recognize how much work there is yet to be done.

Our supervisor through special education, Kevin Mora, has really worked very hard for the last few years to be sure that colleges or post-secondary programs with really wonderful support systems for students with disabilities or with specialized programs for students with more complex support needs are present at our college fair and our advertising as such.

We're also in the process right now of hiring a dedicated transition coordinator, and that role has really fallen on our child study team in the past, and they've done a wonderful job with it. And and the role of this dedicated transition coordinator will initially be focused on our students with more significant support needs, ages 18 to 21.

Michele: We do envision that role expanding to include working with students with learning disabilities, mental health diagnoses, ADHD as they explore programs and support systems for post-high school. We also envision this transition coordinator to ultimately take on the task of assisting students with disabilities throughout our high school in seeking part-time employment while they are in high school.

Because this is soundly connected to adult success in both college and in career ventures after high school. So,, I think that what we're doing to close the gap is we never stopped looking at all the pieces that connect and come together for that 21-year-old student or that 18 year old student or that 19-year-old student when they receive a diploma from us and they move into adult services and adult support.

Our work in Berkeley Heights has yielded great success for many students, but there are many more students that we need to reach and build an ever more inclusive community for.

We're really hopeful that this work we are doing will someday lead to today's children and adolescents creating an inclusive world as coworkers, colleagues, employers, spouses, parents. And I really am blessed and honored to be a part of this incredibly important work and and hope to be a part of it for a very long time in a wide range of capacities.

Arthur: Michele, thank you so much for this. Thank you for this conversation. I truly enjoyed our conversation and have learned so much myself listening to you and hearing and having you share your experience with us on this episode of the podcast.

So thank you and thanks to you, Fred, also for joining us for this.

Fred: Thank you. Always a pleasure.

Michele: Yes.

Arthur: I’ll be in touch with you soon, and thank you again.

Arthur: We thank you for listening to this episode of the Inclusion Think Tank Podcast.

This podcast is brought to you by the 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.