WEBVTT 00:00:03.235 --> 00:00:04.815 Imagine a world 00:00:04.815 --> 00:00:09.455 in which children of all abilities learn, play, and grow together, 00:00:09.815 --> 00:00:15.195 a world in which ability does not stand in a way of making friends 00:00:15.518 --> 00:00:18.688 or dictate where you get to go to school 00:00:18.688 --> 00:00:20.615 or who you get to study with. 00:00:20.615 --> 00:00:22.595 That's what I do every day. 00:00:22.595 --> 00:00:27.465 I try to think about how we make this become a reality, 00:00:28.035 --> 00:00:32.425 how we try to understand and appreciate 00:00:32.425 --> 00:00:35.815 the power and the promise of inclusive education. 00:00:35.833 --> 00:00:37.943 So, what is inclusion? 00:00:37.943 --> 00:00:41.343 Inclusion's not a strategy, an instructional strategy. 00:00:41.933 --> 00:00:44.551 Inclusion isn't a placement option. 00:00:44.551 --> 00:00:46.701 Inclusion is about belonging. 00:00:46.701 --> 00:00:49.209 It's about belonging to a community, 00:00:49.209 --> 00:00:53.279 a group of friends, a school, or a community. 00:00:53.303 --> 00:00:55.683 But it's also important to remember 00:00:55.683 --> 00:00:59.263 that inclusion is not just about being there. 00:00:59.863 --> 00:01:03.063 We've all probably had the experience 00:01:03.063 --> 00:01:06.533 where you walk into a room full of people 00:01:07.066 --> 00:01:10.316 and you don't belong, you're not a member. 00:01:10.420 --> 00:01:12.424 That doesn't feel very good. 00:01:12.704 --> 00:01:14.734 So how do we fix that 00:01:14.734 --> 00:01:18.454 to make sure that the children that we are working with 00:01:18.454 --> 00:01:22.454 don't experience this idea of not belonging? 00:01:22.794 --> 00:01:25.154 Well, we do that through instruction. 00:01:25.184 --> 00:01:27.224 We do that through teaching. 00:01:27.470 --> 00:01:31.570 What we want to learn and what we've learned 00:01:31.570 --> 00:01:33.351 is that teaching works, 00:01:33.351 --> 00:01:35.015 instruction is important. 00:01:35.935 --> 00:01:40.595 But it is also important to realize that instruction doesn't just happen. 00:01:41.005 --> 00:01:43.445 Instruction is intentional. 00:01:43.979 --> 00:01:46.509 Instruction is planned. 00:01:46.884 --> 00:01:51.636 Instruction helps all of us be more successful. 00:01:52.355 --> 00:01:57.575 Whether you're a child learning how to negotiate their environment 00:01:57.631 --> 00:02:03.071 or a little boy with disabilities who's learning how to use language 00:02:03.443 --> 00:02:09.013 or a child in elementary school trying to tackle two-digit addition 00:02:09.013 --> 00:02:11.023 or trying to learn how to ride a bike 00:02:11.069 --> 00:02:14.589 or you're a 50 plus something non-digital native 00:02:14.589 --> 00:02:17.819 who's trying to figure out how to use her new iPad, 00:02:18.456 --> 00:02:20.026 instruction works. 00:02:20.288 --> 00:02:24.008 And we all benefit from good instruction. 00:02:24.425 --> 00:02:30.835 Now, we sometimes as adults forget how important good instruction is 00:02:30.900 --> 00:02:35.950 because we don't venture very far out of our comfort zone 00:02:35.950 --> 00:02:38.141 and try and learn new things. 00:02:38.145 --> 00:02:40.695 So, one of the things I do every year 00:02:40.695 --> 00:02:44.785 is encourage my graduate students to try to learn a new thing. 00:02:45.437 --> 00:02:49.347 And they all look at me with a perplexed look and say, 00:02:49.347 --> 00:02:50.585 "We're in graduate school. 00:02:50.585 --> 00:02:53.105 We're learning new things every day." 00:02:53.105 --> 00:02:56.796 And I say, "Yeah, but by the time you get into graduate school, 00:02:56.796 --> 00:02:59.146 you know how to do school. 00:02:59.425 --> 00:03:01.466 So, try to learn something else. 00:03:01.466 --> 00:03:04.981 Try to learn something in a domain that you aren't very good at." 00:03:04.981 --> 00:03:06.981 And I follow my own advice. 00:03:06.981 --> 00:03:10.142 So, once every so often, I try to learn a skill 00:03:10.142 --> 00:03:14.742 or achieve something in an area that I am not very good at - 00:03:14.742 --> 00:03:18.742 and that's how I ended up doing a triathlon for my 50th birthday - 00:03:18.831 --> 00:03:19.850 and understand - 00:03:19.850 --> 00:03:20.850 (Applause) 00:03:20.850 --> 00:03:21.845 Thank you. 00:03:21.845 --> 00:03:22.845 (Laughs) 00:03:23.585 --> 00:03:27.665 And understand the importance of instruction. 00:03:28.905 --> 00:03:34.395 Now, when we think about instruction, it's important that we think about 00:03:34.473 --> 00:03:39.193 what instruction does to both the learner and the teacher. 00:03:39.691 --> 00:03:43.591 One of the things that instruction does for the learner is 00:03:43.591 --> 00:03:49.071 it helps them be more confident and more competent, okay? 00:03:49.111 --> 00:03:51.161 When we have good instruction, 00:03:51.161 --> 00:03:57.695 the learner, the children, become better at what you're teaching them how to do. 00:03:58.135 --> 00:04:02.035 The teacher becomes more confident as well. 00:04:02.578 --> 00:04:05.048 Because there's nothing more reinforcing 00:04:05.075 --> 00:04:08.785 than a teacher then seeing their students achieve. 00:04:09.253 --> 00:04:11.183 And really, there's nothing - 00:04:11.183 --> 00:04:16.143 there's no way to make a child feel better about him or herself 00:04:16.153 --> 00:04:20.293 than to help them be successful in their learning. 00:04:20.383 --> 00:04:21.773 If you want to teach someone, 00:04:21.773 --> 00:04:23.923 if you want to increase someone's self-esteem, 00:04:23.923 --> 00:04:25.114 teach them how to read. 00:04:25.114 --> 00:04:26.634 That's how you do it. 00:04:27.303 --> 00:04:31.063 Now, the thing about instruction, though, is 00:04:31.063 --> 00:04:35.578 that it's important to think about what you're teaching. 00:04:35.651 --> 00:04:38.111 Often when people come to see 00:04:38.111 --> 00:04:42.091 the inclusive preschools that we run at the University of Washington, 00:04:42.091 --> 00:04:44.819 they'll say to me, "Isn't that great? 00:04:45.219 --> 00:04:48.489 I can't tell who has a disability and who doesn't have a disability." 00:04:48.489 --> 00:04:50.119 That always makes me happy. 00:04:50.157 --> 00:04:54.157 But isn't it great the way children just naturally interact together? 00:04:54.157 --> 00:04:58.067 And you know, we have about 50 years of data that tell us 00:04:58.067 --> 00:05:01.217 that if you have children with and without disabilities 00:05:01.217 --> 00:05:03.488 and you don't do anything special, 00:05:03.488 --> 00:05:04.508 what you'll have is 00:05:04.508 --> 00:05:06.843 you'll have children with and without disabilities 00:05:06.843 --> 00:05:08.813 in a room together not interacting. 00:05:09.153 --> 00:05:13.803 So, if we want them to interact together, we need to teach it. 00:05:14.274 --> 00:05:18.676 If we want children to be helpful towards each other, 00:05:18.676 --> 00:05:22.026 to interact and be friendly towards each other, 00:05:22.160 --> 00:05:23.650 we need to teach it. 00:05:23.666 --> 00:05:29.516 If we want children to care about other people in their classroom, 00:05:29.516 --> 00:05:31.096 we need to teach it. 00:05:31.096 --> 00:05:33.646 And that teaching is intentional. 00:05:34.476 --> 00:05:38.476 The other thing about that teaching is that it's data-based. 00:05:38.865 --> 00:05:45.777 What I mean by that is that good instruction yields good outcomes. 00:05:46.130 --> 00:05:47.880 In fact, we like to think about it 00:05:47.880 --> 00:05:52.150 as saying that student failure is instructional failure. 00:05:52.769 --> 00:05:57.449 When a child doesn't learn what we want him or her to learn, 00:05:57.967 --> 00:06:01.847 it's because we haven't taught it to them in the right way. 00:06:02.643 --> 00:06:05.233 It's not because we're necessarily bad teachers. 00:06:05.233 --> 00:06:09.133 It's because maybe we haven't figured out the right way to teach it yet. 00:06:09.766 --> 00:06:12.936 Maybe we don't have control of all the elements 00:06:12.936 --> 00:06:15.266 that we need to be able to have control of. 00:06:16.004 --> 00:06:19.784 But when a student isn't making progress in an area, 00:06:19.784 --> 00:06:21.544 what that teaches us is 00:06:21.544 --> 00:06:25.214 that we need to change our instructional strategy. 00:06:26.897 --> 00:06:29.273 Well, instruction is important. 00:06:29.343 --> 00:06:31.027 It's only important 00:06:31.027 --> 00:06:36.907 if you're teaching values, skills, activities, and outcomes 00:06:37.052 --> 00:06:38.758 when we are very interested 00:06:38.758 --> 00:06:44.278 in thinking about what children learn from being in inclusive environments. 00:06:45.330 --> 00:06:49.030 Now, when we started studying inclusion, 00:06:49.052 --> 00:06:50.718 I was working with some colleagues, 00:06:50.718 --> 00:06:54.712 and we studied about 35 children for five years. 00:06:54.712 --> 00:06:57.982 And these were children ranging from preschool to high school. 00:06:59.024 --> 00:07:01.214 And they had severe disabilities, 00:07:01.214 --> 00:07:06.240 and we observed them many, many times over the course of five years. 00:07:06.240 --> 00:07:09.740 And we talked to their teachers and their parents and their peers 00:07:09.740 --> 00:07:12.330 and to them, if they were able to talk with us, 00:07:12.650 --> 00:07:17.711 because we were interested in finding out what the benefit was of inclusion. 00:07:17.711 --> 00:07:19.159 We all knew there was benefit. 00:07:19.159 --> 00:07:20.699 We saw the benefits. 00:07:20.699 --> 00:07:21.849 We heard the stories. 00:07:21.849 --> 00:07:25.049 And in fact, one of the stories we heard every year was 00:07:25.049 --> 00:07:27.739 what I like to call the birthday party story. 00:07:27.840 --> 00:07:32.710 So, imagine that you have a third-grader with severe disabilities 00:07:32.710 --> 00:07:35.400 who's always been in a segregated classroom. 00:07:35.812 --> 00:07:40.372 And this year, because their school has decided to embrace inclusion, 00:07:40.372 --> 00:07:42.732 the child is in a general education classroom 00:07:42.732 --> 00:07:44.122 with support. 00:07:44.742 --> 00:07:48.012 And about three months into the school year, 00:07:48.212 --> 00:07:51.172 Bryan, our third-grader, comes home, 00:07:51.172 --> 00:07:54.242 and in his backpack is a birthday party invitation. 00:07:54.813 --> 00:07:57.313 And his parents say this is the first time 00:07:57.313 --> 00:07:59.833 he's ever been invited to a birthday party. 00:08:00.486 --> 00:08:02.736 That's a big outcome, okay? 00:08:03.189 --> 00:08:06.335 But it's not the outcome of inclusion. 00:08:06.335 --> 00:08:09.805 The number of party invitations you get, it's not the outcome. 00:08:09.805 --> 00:08:12.435 But it's an indicator of an outcome. 00:08:12.898 --> 00:08:15.628 And what are the outcomes we're looking for? 00:08:15.628 --> 00:08:21.538 The outcomes we're looking for are membership, relationship, and skills. 00:08:22.085 --> 00:08:24.285 And membership is how we interact, 00:08:24.285 --> 00:08:30.005 how a child interacts with the group, with the school, with the classroom, 00:08:30.595 --> 00:08:32.107 with the community, 00:08:32.107 --> 00:08:34.857 what kind of accommodation are made 00:08:34.857 --> 00:08:38.077 to help that child participate in a meaningful way. 00:08:38.376 --> 00:08:42.422 Relationships are how the child interacts on a one-to-one basis 00:08:42.422 --> 00:08:46.094 with other children, students in their classroom, 00:08:46.094 --> 00:08:48.294 and we think about the range of relationships 00:08:48.294 --> 00:08:50.464 that student demonstrates. 00:08:50.464 --> 00:08:53.834 So we think about the relationships where sometimes you're a peer 00:08:53.834 --> 00:08:56.874 with someone in your classroom. 00:08:56.874 --> 00:09:00.014 Sometimes you're helping someone in your classroom. 00:09:00.134 --> 00:09:03.524 Sometimes you're receiving help from someone in your classroom. 00:09:03.644 --> 00:09:08.224 And sometimes you have conflicts with someone in your classroom, 00:09:08.254 --> 00:09:12.574 and you have to learn how to settle those conflicts in an appropriate way. 00:09:13.034 --> 00:09:16.264 Now, you notice one of the kinds of relationships we don't label 00:09:16.264 --> 00:09:17.374 is friendship. 00:09:17.374 --> 00:09:22.254 Because friendship is a complex range of relationships 00:09:22.254 --> 00:09:25.674 where you sometimes are helping and sometimes receiving help, 00:09:25.674 --> 00:09:27.174 sometimes hanging out, 00:09:27.174 --> 00:09:30.344 and sometimes having conflicts and settling those conflicts. 00:09:31.334 --> 00:09:36.254 And of course, another outcome of inclusive education are skills. 00:09:36.328 --> 00:09:40.528 We don't want to ever not give enough credit 00:09:40.528 --> 00:09:43.318 to how important it is to learn skills, 00:09:43.318 --> 00:09:48.958 but skills by themselves don't help us accomplish great things. 00:09:49.238 --> 00:09:52.449 We all know people who are very good at math 00:09:52.449 --> 00:09:56.189 or very good at writing or very good at science 00:09:56.189 --> 00:09:58.559 who can't use those skills, 00:09:58.559 --> 00:10:01.103 because they can't work with other people, 00:10:01.103 --> 00:10:03.223 because they don't have good relationships, 00:10:03.223 --> 00:10:05.080 because they aren't interested in 00:10:05.080 --> 00:10:08.260 or don't have the skills to be a member of a group. 00:10:09.560 --> 00:10:14.020 So these things together are what we call inclusive education. 00:10:14.800 --> 00:10:19.180 So we've talked about what inclusion is. 00:10:19.690 --> 00:10:23.200 We've talked about how to promote inclusion. 00:10:23.780 --> 00:10:26.730 But now the question is, Why do we care, 00:10:26.730 --> 00:10:28.720 why do we care about inclusion? 00:10:28.720 --> 00:10:30.900 And I like to sum it up this way. 00:10:31.400 --> 00:10:35.460 Inclusion is the celebration of diversity put into action. 00:10:36.010 --> 00:10:38.610 If we care about diversity, 00:10:39.060 --> 00:10:44.036 then we have to do something to make this diversity come true. 00:10:44.401 --> 00:10:46.401 Just like we have 50 years of data 00:10:46.401 --> 00:10:48.941 about children with and without disabilities 00:10:48.972 --> 00:10:50.792 playing together, 00:10:50.792 --> 00:10:53.952 that if you put them in a room and you don't do anything special, 00:10:53.952 --> 00:10:58.122 you'll children with disabilities and without disabilities in a room 00:10:58.122 --> 00:10:59.662 not playing together. 00:11:00.088 --> 00:11:05.758 But we know that if we use our smart instructional practices 00:11:06.008 --> 00:11:08.468 to facilitate interaction, 00:11:09.378 --> 00:11:11.088 everyone benefits. 00:11:11.900 --> 00:11:15.400 And that's the power and the promise of inclusion: 00:11:15.400 --> 00:11:19.550 making sure everyone is supported, everyone is challenged, 00:11:19.550 --> 00:11:21.080 and everyone benefits 00:11:21.080 --> 00:11:24.410 in this great inclusive world that we have. 00:11:24.410 --> 00:11:25.670 Thank you. 00:11:25.670 --> 00:11:27.990 (Applause)