Episode 36: A Conversation About The New Jersey Inclusion Project

The Inclusion Think Tank Podcast is back with a brand new episode. Today, Arthur is joined by his guests Brittany Seeley and Dr. Kelli Petrone. Brittany and Kelli discuss the New Jersey Inclusion Project (NJIP) grant. If you are a school administrator in New Jersey, you can sign up for NJCIE’s Community of Practice meeting, training, and discussion session here:   https://www.njcie.org/cop

Transcript

Arthur: This is the Inclusion Think Tank podcast brought to you by the 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, I welcome, I guess, Dr. Kelli Petrone and Brittany Seeley.

Join our conversation as we discuss the New Jersey Inclusion Project, NJIP, a program collaboration between the New Jersey Department of Education and the New Jersey Coalition for Inclusive Education, that offers free technical assistance, long-term systemic change projects, leadership development events and additional materials and resources to support inclusive education.

Arthur: I would like to 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 I am happy to welcome my two guests on the podcast today, Brittany Seeley and Dr. Kelli Petrone. So thank you both for joining me for this conversation today.

Kelli: Thanks for having us.

Arthur: Yes. So to start off, can you each share a little bit about yourself, who you are, what your titles and responsibilities are working with NJCIE, and also something or some things that you'd like to do in your free time if you have any. And we can start with KellI and then Brittany, You can follow.

Kelli: Sure. So I am Kelli Petrone. I am a Program Director at NJCIE. I primarily do I work with systemic change in schools. And then I also work with a few other grants as well as we work with individuals on different needs that they have that they may contract with us for. In terms of what I like to do, possibly in my free time, my family and I like to go hiking and I also go to a ton of pro sporting events.

So that seems to be what occupies most of our time.

Brittany: And hello, I’m Brittany Seeley I am also one of the Program Directors at NJCIE. And kind of following what Kelly had said, we both oversee the New Jersey Inclusion Project grant work, which is throughout the state of New Jersey. We are making sure deliverables are met, and data is collected, and we are supporting the work around inclusion across the state and, supporting our amazing inclusion facilitators who are regionally based.

Something I guess I enjoy doing when I'm not working is traveling or in the summers being up on the lake where I grew up and being out in the boat as much as I can be with family and friends.

Arthur: Awesome. I love both of your answers for what you like to do in your free time.

Being on a boat is one of my favorite things. I don't get to do it too often, but I definitely enjoy it, and being anywhere outdoors is always fun and sporting events. I have definitely become more interested in those and have attended more of those in more recent years with some friends and family.

So it's always a good time to take a break, like you said when you're not working If you have any free time to spend time with family and friends.

Arthur: So this conversation will center around the New Jersey Inclusion Project, also known as NJIP, which is a collaboration between the New Jersey Department of Education and the New Jersey Coalition for Inclusive Education. This project is described as a program that offers free technical assistance longer-term systemic change projects, leadership development events, and additional materials and resources to support inclusive education.

So can you share with us why it was important to create this project and some of the goals that have been created for the project store?

Kelli: So according to a report published by the Law Center. New Jersey is currently the least inclusive state in the country, with an inclusion rate defined as students with disabilities, included with general education peers, 80% or more of the day with the inclusion rate of 45.2%.

So that means that of the 225,447 students with this service in the state, currently 101,902 students are included 80% or more of the day. And I know that's a lot of numbers, but it's a pretty low rate. So if if New Jersey included students at the national rate of 66.2%, 149,246 students would be included. So this means that there are about 47,000 students currently excluded who could otherwise be serviced in their general education classrooms along with their peers, which yields many benefits not just for students with disabilities, but for all students.

So NJCIE’s inclusion facilitators will provide strategic and targeted support to educators and school leaders serving students with disabilities and grades. Kindergarten through Grade 12. So support will be provided to schools from districts demonstrating a need through the New Jersey Department of Education, least restrictive environment data, and will include technical assistance for 15 sites every year and systemic change facilitation for 48 sites throughout this entire project.

Kelli: So support will also include leadership development through conferences and community practice activities and the development and dissemination of universal resources and guidance. So the wide array of support that will be provided will help administrators and staff members acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to meet the needs of all learners.

Arthur:  I shared with both of you before we started recording that, and I've been doing this for two years with NJCIE already, which is wild to believe.

We use a lot of acronyms and sometimes I myself have to ask what they mean. So I've been familiar with this, the NJIP. And what you all are doing, But I wanted to make sure that we took some time out for an episode that was dedicated just to this to share the important information. Just because it is important to the work that you all are doing to help increase the inclusion rate here in New Jersey, as you mentioned, it is at the lowest in the country.

So, having something like this getting started is really important to help with t raising that inclusion rate.

Arthur: So for someone who might be listening to the podcast and may be interested in possibly having these services for their own school district, can you provide some information about what NJIP and each of the areas of programming provides?

Brittany: Absolutely. So there's a lot, as Kelly mentioned before. So this grant, it's a multifaceted plan, really intended to support and facilitate and enhance already in place current initiatives through the Department of Education in New Jersey, such as the NJTSS, which is the New Jersey tiered system of supports as well as the PBSIS The Positive Behavior Supports in New Jersey Public Schools.

And we're really looking to develop, expand, and improve inclusive practices within all of the schools in New Jersey. The vision and the collaboration is an effort between NJCIE as well as the New Jersey Department of Education, Office of Special Education. And the goal together is really to increase the number of students who attend the school they would attend if they did not have the support needs. If they weren't assigned to age-appropriate gen-ed grades and classes and instructed with this core curriculum, based on research and principles of universal design for learning, really that is furthering the differentiation for diverse learners in each classroom.

So the first portion of the grant that we have is called technical assistance, which Kelli had meant, and we are targeting 15 sites yearly through this three-year grant and NJCIE team of inclusion facilitators has developed both synchronous and asynchronous materials and resources through pamphlets and webinars and different Moodle courses to deliver support for approved topics such as inclusion in 1 to 1 or building an inclusive culture, Universal Design for Learning, Co-Teaching differentiation. Development of IEP’s, positive behavior and modifications and accommodations. And how it's structured is we have its five sessions. If you receive the grant for technical assistance, it's targeted technical assistance provided in five sessions where the first session is specific for administrators so that they can really hear and understand the content that their staff will be receiving in Session two, so that they can continue monitoring and checking and conducting walkthroughs to make sure these practices are followed through.

Brittany: The Session two is the participants. They're receiving the content and then the sessions three and four are really specific to two classrooms where there's the inclusion facilitator is coming in, observing coaching, and providing individualized feedback right in the classrooms with staff and then the follow-up session, that session five is the wrap-up session. And then we're really tracking a lot of data through a pre and a post to see the growth from sessions to all the way through session five with the main participants.

I may throw it over to Kelli to talk a little bit more about the other piece of the grant, which is the systemic change portion.

Kelli: So systemic change implementation is a science-based systemic change process for building and sustaining inclusive schools. So if you're selected to participate in this longer-term partnership and JCT is regionally based inclusion facilitators will provide three years of implementation, science-based systemic change-facilitation.

So the ultimate goal of the systemic change process is to support schools in their improvement of school-based LRE data or at least restrictive environment data and practices that support sustainable and effective inclusion inclusive school communities. So the process includes support by creating awareness and commitment to improving your LRE data, working on collaborative decision making, fostering greater awareness and curriculum and instructional adaptations, building capacity for individualized support, using like doing some trainer model, cultivating in an inclusive school community, and then allocating necessary resources and inclusive scheduling.

And it sounds like we're doing a lot because we are, but this is not done all at once. Of course, this is over the course of three years, but all of the school we work on throughout the three years. So a lot of times what we're doing is we're working with the schools on, you know, developing and allocating time and resources for the work of school-based implementation team.

Kelli: So which will include, monthly meetings, there's other activities such as we do walkthroughs, but we also do like a coaching model with some teachers working with the team on overall school staff. So looking at it as the whole school in smaller groups as well, and to gather information to the current functioning of the school building and understanding built growing knowledge and then working on best practices in an inclusive environment.

We will work collaboratively with them on gathering and interpreting a bunch of different data that we collect the data, but we work with the schools on interpreting it and understanding it. So we typically will gather their LRE data and making sure that it's specific to their school site. We survey the whole staff, but we do a lot of collection of other data pieces as well.

We create opportunities for best practices in an inclusive education to be woven into the current diversity. So again, we don't want them to like not work on other components to the change process. So we try to collaborate with whatever initiatives they're working with.

Kelli: We try to select a support as a liaison at the school site that can help build capacity so that when we're no longer there and three years after we've done all of this work together, that they can continue the efforts towards their inclusive practices. We will try to work on advocating for inclusive education within their school and then within the district by encouraging an open dialog, fostering a culture of inclusion, and then working towards removing barriers to the development of a full, inclusive school community.

A lot of times what we do is we evaluate efforts to ensure the goals of the school are continuously alined with the NJIP components and also to determine readiness for change and continued engagement and systemic change. So it's a lot of different pieces and we do these through monthly meetings.

We do this through training. We talked about we do synchronous and asynchronous training, but we also do the trainer train or model monthly, which is a great way for the trainers at each school site to work with other school sites and to learn what they're doing to make their practices work at their school sites. And Brittany, did you want to talk about leadership?

Brittany: Yeah. So the the last piece of this multifaceted grant is really the leadership development. And JCI team members are planning and facilitating various opportunities for leadership development and stakeholder engagement, which includes two regionally based leadership development conferences, one that typically in the South and one in the North. Our first one will be January 19th down in the southern region, which will give you information to find that on our website shortly, as well as community practice opportunities.

Right now we by the end of the year will have held and conducted nine community practice opportunities for leaders across the state with the topics and the regionally based. So we would have three in the north, three central and three south. The first topic is inclusive master scheduling. The second topic is inclusive hiring practices, retention and recruitment. And the third topic is mental health foundations, as well as culturally responsive teaching practices.

So these leadership development activities are really helping to support the capacity building, creating systems to ensure each child with a disability has that equitable access to all the resources needed to achieve the optimal outcomes.

Brittany: The targeted attendees of the Inclusion Leadership Conference include school administrators who are actually offered free registration, other school faculty, staff, parents, students and self-advocates.

And opportunities even include breakfast, lunch, and meet and greets. And we will be providing attendees to build these connections with other educators in their fields. Field of study and more information. And information is on our website at nicie.org/Conference. And you could actually sign up now for the Southern Conference on January 19th. Registration is available.

Arthur: Thank you both for that Great answer, and Kelli, as you said, it sounds like you're doing a lot and you are. It's you know, I felt it was really important, again, to just share what this is all about, and thank you both for providing all of that information and also the information about the upcoming conference that's taking place in January. So to wrap up our conversation, for schools and districts who are interested, how can they go about inquiring or applying for the NJIP services?

Kelli: So you can learn more on our website, you can go to www.njcie.org/njip, is a great place to start. Applications for next year will begin probably in March or April, but you can also look to apply, that’s for formal application, but you can also just see what we're doing if you just go to NJIP.

So any additional questions, please feel free to reach out to our email at Team@njcie.org.

Arthur: Thank you both so much for this great conversation. I appreciate you taking the time to talk and to share about the New Jersey Inclusion Project. And I hope you have a great rest of your day.

Brittany & Kelli: Thank you Arthur.

Arthur: 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.