Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Episode Transcript

Transcript edited by Miranda Stalions

Opening Disclaimer

Kylo: You’re listening to Let’s Talk! Let’s Talk! is a digital space for students at PCC experiencing disabilities to share their perspectives, ideas, and worldviews in an inclusive and accessible environment. The views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or positions of Portland Community College, PCC Foundation, or our community partners. We broadcast on our home website, pcc.edu/DCA, on Spotify, on XRay 91.1 FM and 107.1 FM, and KBOO Community Radio, 90.7 FM.

Episode Intro

Miri: Teachers have to work inside a system based on limitations. Whether financial, political, social, or temporal, every education professional makes the best they can from what they have. Many teachers are frustrated by the limitations surrounding accommodating students with specific disabilities and needs; even the most compassionate, gifted, and educated teachers can only do so much when their supports are nonexistent. In today’s episode, I’m talking to three professional educators, whose combined teaching experience equals almost a half a century, about their experiences with learning how to accommodate students’ needs with the tools they’re given.

Introducing the Guests

Miri: Thank you guys very much for agreeing to talk to me today, about accessibility in education from the perspective of the educator. I am a producer at Let’s Talk, which is a podcast produced by the Portland Community College Disability Resource Department. And we have many, many episodes about accessibility from a student’s perspective, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to look at it from the instructor’s perspective and see what kind of thing gets in the way of being able to provide accommodations for students. Would you care to introduce yourselves? 

Julie

Julie: Hi. Thank you very much for inviting me to be part of this conversation. I am Julie Schardt. I currently live in Maryland, but I taught for 26 years in Stockton, in a public school, as a general education teacher, mostly first through sixth grade. I got my start because I substitute taught for a year in the school system there, and then in August, one of the schools where I had taught, the principal needed a teacher for the next year, and so she contacted me because I’d been a substitute there. And it’s just kind of a reflection of how difficult it’s sometimes to find somebody to fill a classroom position. But I was really glad that she was desperate enough to hire me.

Miri: And uh, what, what year was that? 

Julie: Oh my gosh. That was 1986. It was before your grandparents were born! Probably, yes. Yeah. But, it was a good place for me because I felt I had a really good administrator, which I think is key no matter what you’re talking about with education. And she was very supportive of making resources available to me, including giving me a day for a special class and things like that. So I’ve been retired for quite a while, but I’m still interested in what’s going on with kids. 

Miri: Thank you so much! Sticking in the public school realm, Kahlia, would you like to introduce yourself? 

Kahlia

Kahlia: Sure. My name is Kahlia Stalions. I’m a secondary science educator. I got my start as a early childhood educator. I did that for three years. I spent two years after that working in elementary after school programming as a program coordinator. I did a little stint in middle school before doing what I’m doing now with high school, and I’ve taught a couple of higher education classes as well. 

Miri: Awesome. Thank you so much. And now last but not least, Jesse. 

Jesse

Jesse: Hi, I’m Jesse Mejia. I have been teaching at PCC for, oh, I guess like seven years now? Maybe this is my seventh year, something like that. I’m co department Chair of Music and Sonic Arts and I started the creative coding program here. I did a little bit of teaching before PCC: I was an adjunct at PNCA as well as PCC, before being full-time here. And lots of community workshops and things like that, but I didn’t come up through any other education channels other than my own education channels of being in school. 

Miri: Well, thank you so much. I’m looking forward to hearing from the three of you. We have a very diverse set of backgrounds, so I think that’ll be a cool way to look at everything. 

Current Accommodation Standards

Miri: Okay! So, for the two current educators, what are the current standards that are expected of you for accessibility within the classrooms? Especially since one of you works in, post-secondary education, and the other one works within the Portland public school system? 

Kahlia: So for the public school system and general education before higher ed, the main things that we’re required to adhere to is IEPs and 504s. For an IEP, that’s an individualized education plan, that’s a legal document that stipulates what the student can get in terms of accommodations in their education, and can vary from student to student depending on their needs and what was negotiated between the school system and the parents. 504s are a little less formal, and aren’t a legal document, but are still our attempts to adhere to students’ needs in the classroom.

Miri: What would be a way that those express themselves materially in a classroom? 

Kahlia: I would say that the most common one that I see on an IEP or 504 is additional time for assignment completion and testing. Those are ones that are asked for a lot. Some students also request additional materials such as access to teacher slides outside of class. I’ve never had a student ask to record my class for notes purposes, but I know that’s something that other teachers have been asked in the past, although that one at the level that I teach is quite rare. 

Miri: Okay, cool. Thank you. And Jesse, what about at the community college level, or from PCC specifically?

Jesse: Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting to think about because, I feel like PCC in general is much more focused on… Yeah, sort of a similar process, on approved accommodations as opposed to sort of universal tools and universal accessibility standards. I find it challenging to get support that doesn’t go through those sort of approved accommodation channels that are, you know, specifically a student has worked with the accommodations team. And so then yeah, I get a message, stating what the approved accommodations are, and often it is things like more time for tests, or alternate ways of turning in assignments. Sometimes it’s about access to class notes. I would love to know more and so I usually talk to the students about that, but generally like the only things that I am aware of in terms of, like, institutional support, which really, I guess I’m talking about funding, is those things through those approved accommodations.

Miri: Yeah. And you teach through Zoom and online platforms still, right? Or do you? 

Jesse: I don’t anymore. I was. I was teaching on Zoom for several years, starting in 2020. at this point we’re completely in person once again. And then it was sort of hybrid for a while, which was, which was especially challenging.

Miri: Yeah, I can imagine so. 

The Effects of No Child Left Behind

Miri: And Julia, you were, in education when, some controversial legislature of the mid two thousands passed. Would you care to enlighten us on how that affected your day-to-day classroom experience, and how you feel like it affected the education of your pupils?

Julie: You are talking about No Child Left Behind, are you not?

Miri: I – Potentially, yes. 

Julie: Yes. And it, you know, it, it really, impacted us in general education, in the school system, because these edicts came down and it was expected that we would teach certain things a certain way. I am a supporter of content standards, ’cause there needs to be some continuity of education, throughout the system, whether it’s, federal or, statewide. But, what it did was it took some autonomy away from educators. One of my administrators, one of my principals said, “You know where your kids are, you know where they’re supposed to be by the end of the year. Do what you need to do.” But that didn’t always happen. And then it got to the point where we actually had to put formal copies of the content standards of whatever we were teaching on the bulletin boards! Which, you know, if you’ve ever– well you might remember elementary education, how much fun it could be to see your work, your artwork up on the bulletin boards. Have interactive bulletin boards where kids could take part. But that was pretty much taken away. What No Child Left Behind was supposed to do was leave No Child Behind. But what it did in reality was it put so much focus on reading and writing standards, so much focus on math, that it took away time for history, science and some of the other things that were also important to teach. Now, for me personally, I like teaching science. So I found that there were a lot of ways I could reach kids through science that I couldn’t reach otherwise. Oh, you want us to do this? And then the conversation would happen and they’d be willing to do the work. So the flexibility to teach things was pretty much taken away. And it also didn’t really seem to have a positive impact, because, what it was for was to make sure that kids would take that test, that standardized test at the end of the year. And then over time you would see improvement, either closer approximation to grade level or approaching grade level. And that in reality is not what happened. I think it was well intentioned and well-meaning, but I also wonder how many people who do the work of teaching were actually brought into the process. 

Teaching Students of Different Languages and Cultures

Miri: You taught in Stockton, California,

Julie: I did.

Miri: Which has a very high population of non-primary English speakers, right?

Julie: Yes. Well, and especially at the time when I started teaching, at Cleveland Elementary School, most of our school population were, Southeast Asian students. almost exclusively, from Cambodia, and from Vietnam. And the first year I taught, I would say about 75% or 80% of my students had been born in the refugee camps in Thailand and the Philippines. So when they came, they came into a system that was completely different for them. They hadn’t really been in school, in the refugee camps, maybe just a little bit here and there, but they came into a classroom situation not speaking the language, and their parents not speaking the language, not understanding our system of education, but they also came traumatized because, you know, with the war torn areas of, Southeast Asia, especially Cambodia. So the families who came to our school, there was one family specifically, they had lost all four of their children in the war. And then they came here, they came to California, and then they had a new family, and then they were traumatized again a few years later. But, um, I also, um, I think about what it was like for Stockton in general, with this new influx of people. And I, I remember being in a grocery store and having people look at Southeast Asian families like they were exotic and different. And there was some racism involved as well. But then, when I visited more recently and over time, it just came to be accepted that we had this addition to our community. It wasn’t just Southeast Asians, it was a richness that was added to the community. So you’d see all kinds of people at the cultural celebrations and things. So I was able to see that change. But there were a lot of challenges that came with having that diverse population for sure. 

Miri: Mm-hmm. And I assume that there was not a whole lot of extra funding and material provided to help, uh, integrate. 

Julie: There wasn’t a lot, but there was some, because there were grants available and, you know, when the federal government saw what was happening, not just in Stockton, but in like Minneapolis, Minnesota, those places where Southeast Asians came, they wanted to make sure, because it used to be a given that every child has a right to an education, a good education.

Miri: Mm-hmm. 

Julie: And so there was money provided, but there were also classes for us who were teaching Southeast Asians, Cambodian American students, not speaking the language. So every year we had to take so many hours of the language, not expecting that we would become completely fluent or anything, but just giving a sense of what it was like and some lessons in culture. So we realized pretty early that, when it was Thanksgiving and you were – this is, I’m embarrassed to say this – you would always put up a teepee, which you made as a reading room. I mean, it was wrong on many levels, but to do that to Southeast Asian kids, who didn’t have any kind of scaffolding to hang that kind of thing on.

Miri: Mm-hmm. No cultural background knowledge of that. 

Julie: No, not cultural background. But we learned at the same time the students were learning uhhuh and, if we enriched their lives, I feel that they really enriched the lives of, of us as teachers a lot more. 

Miri: Thank you. So I know that Kahlia has taught multiple classes specifically to non-primary English speakers, but what about, you, Jesse? Have you ever had students who have English as a secondary, or even tertiary language, and how has that dealt with through your system? 

Jesse: Yeah, I mean, not, not a whole lot, but it, is pretty common for me to have maybe one student per year or two students per year who, English is not their first language. And I would say that, well, you mentioned through the system. I’m not really aware of much systemic support. I sort of guess, I guess. I’m not sure that I have one or two students. I could have more that I’m not, you know, I, I, I don’t know. So, it’s certainly something I think about. And, in terms of my approach, I tend to try to make sure I’m writing things down as well as speaking them and things like that. And checking in with students who I have questions about whether or not, something could have been lost in translation, or harder to understand. I’m not aware of any systemic support systems for that, and I also don’t know if there’s any sort of onboarding that happens for students. The size of the institution means that I don’t actually know what the student experience is like, when speaking to an accommodations office, or when onboarding through registration, or if there’s questions like that, that flag, additional support. It’s the sort of stuff that I wouldn’t be informed about. for privacy reasons, it makes sense, but, so that means I’m not sure. 

Miri: Thank you. and Kahlia, what about your experiences teaching… So the term at PCC is ESOL, English for Speakers of Other Languages, and I know Portland Public School has a different term for it and I can’t remember it. 

Kahlia: So we also have ESOL, but the terminology in public school settings has changed so much over the years, that it has varied from a variety of differen, acronyms. The current one, I think that’s the main one we use is English language learners or multilingual learners, ELL or MLL. . These are their attempts to modernize and personify these students who experience interactions with our language and education in a different way. They’re always trying to develop new terminology that really centers the student, but it’s challenging, and that’s why they keep changing it. In terms of talking about this, I wanna reach back to what Julie said a little bit and pull on a couple of threads. One of the fascinating things that Julie mentioned was having the opportunity to take these language courses and these culture courses. I don’t know anyone who’s been offered that in the time that I’ve been teaching, I had an entire class of students whose primary language was a native South American language, which is not something that I knew how to even access lessons on that. It’s certainly not on Duolingo. And these students also had a mild disadvantage of being a mix of different grades, which is abnormal for a science course. This was a freshman physics course. I suppose the entire class wasn’t these ELL students, it was about 50% of them. I had about, eight to fifteen students in that class that spoke primarily a language that was not English. These students ranged from sophomores to seniors. I had a couple from each of those grades, so none of them were of the grade of the class that I was teaching. So, one, they were older than all of the other students in the classroom. Two, they didn’t really have a language that they shared with a lot of these students because many of them were still developing their English skills. 

Miri: Which I imagine is especially hard in something as intense as a physics class. 

Kahlia: Yeah, I mean, it’s really challenging ’cause, one, you’re trying to develop those mathematical skills and you’re trying to apply it to a science, and my Spanish is absolutely horrendous. I simply do not have enough Spanish to teach these students really anything functional. I couldn’t even teach them just math. I couldn’t teach them addition. And so, to draw from what Julie was saying about the implications of No Child Left Behind, the intention behind that was to bring struggling students into a classroom setting where they’d be uplifted by their peers and have an opportunity to socially grow all in the same space. What that functionally meant was a dismantling of the support systems that those students had prior that was allowing them to excel. And so now you’re bringing in students that have low language skills, have, you know, a variety of disabilities that prevent them from progressing at the same rate as other students have other challenges outside of the classroom. And you’re sending them into a space where they’re with students that they haven’t worked with in the past. They aren’t, emotionally, academically, or. physically ready to be in that space. And then you’re taking away all those supports I’ve been trained a little bit on how to work with students that have, additional education needs. Like, I know what I’m supposed to be looking for, but I am not trained as a special education teacher. And so asking me to take on these students who have these additional needs without additional training means that it’s, a disadvantage to everyone involved. It’s a disadvantage to the teacher. It’s a disadvantage to the student who has those additional needs, and it’s a disadvantage to the students who don’t, because it means that I’m having to spend additional time working with these students who need additional help, instead of working with the general class. And, you know, moving forward from a topic that they’re may be done with, or developing deeper lessons that I don’t have to differentiate from multiple different students with multiple different needs. Which isn’t to say I don’t want those students there, because I want them to get the same education, but it means that with so many students that need different things from my lessons, I am limited in what I can actually offer in terms of the education I want to give them.

Specific Accommodations, Desired by Teachers

Miri: That leads well into my next question, which is what would all of you like to be able to provide to your students? Either on an overarching level, or on a more individual level? 

Julie: May I respond to that? 

Miri: Yes, of course. 

Julie: Kahlia, as you were talking, I was thinking, specifically of a student I had, probably four or five years before I retired. And I think most school districts are well-meaning, wanting to either mainstream students or bring them into a regular classroom so they can get what they need. I had a student, I was teaching fourth grade at the time, and I had a student who was officially in fifth grade, but was brought to my class, probably because of numbers and also because I had a few other Cambodian speaking students in the class. But he was, I think the official term is visually impaired. He was pretty much almost totally blind. And so, the official job of th, person who brought him into my class and gave me about an hour of her time, and showed me how to use large print books with him. But that was only a small part of it. He was only in my classroom for maybe an hour a day, but I was expected to bring him up to another level, but I didn’t have the training. and I didn’t have the support. She was only with me for about an hour. And it wasn’t through any fault of her own, it was because so many other students and, and not just in our school. It was throughout the district, and so she was having to go around to different classrooms for this, 

Miri: She was with you an hour per day or an hour total? 

Julie: No, an hour to start with. 

Miri: Oh!

Julie: And then we had a couple of telephone conversations. So I only had him in my classroom for maybe a quarter of the year. And he was, he was wonderful. He was obviously bright, but I didn’t feel I was meeting his needs because it, it wasn’t just a matter of an enlarged print. There are other strategies that you use with a visually impaired student. It just made clear to me that we need to have so much more because there’s so many challenges in teaching in the regular school day. And then when you think of the individual needs of the students in the classroom. I believe that anybody who’s in teaching goes into it really wanting to teach kids. You go in with your heart there and with everything, you know, but it’s exhausting to try to do a good job when you don’t get the support that you need. But I also feel that those people who make the decisions, wherever the standards come from on high in California, the state content standards would change, what, every seven years or so. But a lot of the people who were up there defining those standards were people from the business community.

Miri: Yeah. Not educators. 

Julie: They were looking at a product. That was gonna be the end result for them. And it didn’t matter whether you were elementary, primary, middle, or high school. You were looking at the whole student, wanting to make sure they succeeded as people, and go in whatever direction maybe they had a talent for. So I think there’s a disparity between those people who say these are the things we want and then these are the way we’re gonna get those things, and the way that it’s implemented on a practical level in the classroom. 

Miri: I see Jesse nodding along, especially to that last bit. Do you have opinions on something?

Jesse: I totally agree with all of that, and it is frustrating. For me it — there’s two pieces that are especially frustrating. One is getting official accommodation requests that are then not able to be met due to lack of resources. And then, and I’ll, I’ll talk about that, but separate from that, it’s also really frustrating how much accommodation I think is needed that doesn’t show up at all, because it hasn’t been approved. Whether the students have applied for it or not, I don’t, I don’t know. But, I do know that the amount of approved accommodations I get is not commensurate with the amount of need that I experience OR that I observe in the classroom. I mean, sometimes it’s something as simple as a student needing a note taker. There’s lots of reasons students in all sorts of situations might do better with some notes available. There was a time when my department had some extra budget to hire. students who had taken the class before to be sort of lab techs, both in person and on Zoom. One of the roles they would often do is take notes and then post them for students to review. And that was great for everybody. But I did see some approved accommodations come through for note takers. And then ultimately, there was some lack of resources institutionally. I mean, it wasn’t something that I could do and it’s not something I was being asked to do. But it was something that ended up falling on like Zoom transcription, which is not, not really an appropriate way to, it’s not, those aren’t class notes. They’re like, 

Miri: It’s a direct transcript, not a–

Jesse: Like a poor, a poor transcription of what you said. 

Miri: It’s, it’s a, it’s a transcript estimation. 

Jesse: Right. So it’s frustrating when I feel, you know, like I’ve had conversations with students who say they’ve asked for certain things that then got approved, but then they weren’t able to get follow through from the institution on. And when there are things that I can’t really help with, it’s especially frustrating. One thing that I think would be kind of simple, but again, it comes down to budget would be, just recording systems in every classroom. Like a way to have audio and video recordings. If we could get a bunch of money to install systems that were easy to use, like I’ve tried to do it on my own, like with Zoom, but it’s just kind of too much for me to manage on the same laptop that I’m presenting from. And it’s like, then if I promise it and then forget to record it, it’s almost worse. 

Miri: Yeah. Especially when you have to deal with, you know, an entire classroom of 15 to 20 plus students all asking you questions, making sure they’re getting clear instructions. I am a professional, uh, sound person, and that in itself is a full-time job, let alone trying to teach through it. 

Jesse: Yeah. But if there was just like, a camera that was set up on a standalone system, that I’d be happy to start it and stop it, or put it on a schedule or something. I mean, certainly like, it would be a dream to have note takers that were aware of accommodations and could notice when certain students are sort of being left behind Due to, um, lack of distilled information or  clear information that you know, is delivered in a way that works for them.

Miri: Yeah. And through the AEDR office, I’ve seen emails that are just like general requests, “Hey, have you taken this class before? Could you come back to this class and take notes for this student who needs accommodation?” But I mean, it pays, but not a lot. And often not enough to be worth taking time, especially taking time out of a workday to go and get paid less for a short amount of time. 

Jesse: Yeah. I mean, it – I think this focus on approved accommodations instead of sort of like more of a focus on universal systemic accessibility. ends up pushing us into even more challenging budgetary problems. I have a Deaf student right now in most of my classes, and that means there’s two or three ASL translators in every class. It would be great if we had ASL across the board, but I know that the reality is, is that, like, it’s something that is hitting a budget line in a pretty intense way that wouldn’t be sustainable as like a standard thing in classrooms. 

Miri: Yeah. I mean, each of those are probably $30 an hour each, so probably a standard two hour class, that’s already $200, or nearly $200. 

Jesse: Mm-hmm. But I do think that that’s the, like, they’re willing to do that when it’s an obvious need. And when it’s an improved accommodation. But realistically, there’s lots of students that need support that probably would cost a similar amount, just different types of support. And, it’s a tough situation. 

Challenges of Invisible Disabilities

Miri: Yeah. And a big thing that we’ve been talking about the last couple episodes are, invisible disabilities. And it’s pretty well known that those are substantially harder to get approval for. Cause if someone is Deaf, profoundly Deaf, they are very obviously Deaf. If someone is in a wheelchair, they’re very obviously in a wheelchair. But if someone has attention deficit disorder or various social sensitivities, that is substantially harder To quote unquote “prove” on the one hand, and also harder to manifest in a way that is unfortunately suitable for what a lot of accommodation specialists are looking for. Because if your disability is, “Oh, I am cripplingly afraid of going outside,” then a lot of people’s responses are gonna be, “well… just go outside.” But while it is considered very rude to say, “Well, just stand up and walk” to someone in a wheelchair, or “Just listen better” to someone who’s profoundly Deaf. So I want to know about how often students have ever come up to you and asked you, directly, about some sort of invisible accommodation need.

Jesse: Definitely the note taking example I was talking about falls into that category. Yes. And I think very likely that this particular student who had that approved accommodation that wasn’t able to be met by the institution.I don’t think they were as set back as, like, a completely Deaf student with no ASL interpreters. But I do think it’s like closer to that end of the spectrum than is probably realized by the– whoever’s making those budgetary decisions, that there can’t be a paid note taker in that class for some specific invisible, disability.

Miri: Mm-hmm. Because I know a lot of students, oh, sorry, Kahlia,, go ahead. 

Kahlia: I was just gonna follow that up and say; At the high school level, you don’t get a lot of students necessarily knowing what they need. 

Miri: Mm-hmm. 

Kahlia: So they don’t walk up and say, “I want a note taker.” The closest analogy I could make is I’ve had students who say, “Hey, I wear glasses. Can I sit near the front?” Like, that’s the most explicit they get. But I’ve had lots and lots of students come up and say, you know, ” Oh, I just got diagnosed with ADHD and I don’t know what to do,” knowing that will help me in my classroom setting. Or, ” Oh, I’ve been having trouble with this kind of feeling,” or, ” I’ve been feeling a lot of anxiety.” And having students come to you and talk about, like, the frustrations that they’ve had in the educational system. And having to interpret their needs is a lot of what I’ve had to do in the past.

Miri: Mm-hmm. Because I know it’s very easy for a lot of, especially younger and younger and younger children with invisible disabilities, to just be labeled as bad kids. 

Kahlia: Or silly, or the class clown or unable to sit still, lazy, not paying attention, whatever. They all get these labels and that kind of follows them. And then some of them believe it and they keep acting that way. And some of them don’t believe it, but don’t know how to prove that that’s not what’s happening. they don’t realize that it’s not them necessarily failing. I mean, sometimes it is, but most of the time it’s not. Most of the time it’s not the student failing. It’s a problem of the system. 

Miri: It’s the student being failed. 

Kahlia: Yeah. Well, and then that also comes into the question of like, how much of that is personal pedagogy of the teacher, how much of that is systemic? 

Miri: Mm-hmm. 

Universal Design and the Individuality of Students

Kahlia: And so in terms of, like, pedagogy; every teacher can improve. That’s just how teaching works. That’s why we have continual education as part of a requirement of being a teacher. You gotta take classes every year talking about pedagogy. And the main thing that comes up in terms of pedagogy is universal design, which is a wonderful concept surrounding, you know, designing your coursework in a way that it can be accessible to every student that would walk into your classroom, no matter what their needs are, which is a wonderful, utopian ideal. But that doesn’t work when you have, you know, 30 plus students in your classroom, which is what a lot of our classrooms in the Portland public school system have. I know at higher ed it’s a little more variable and it’s designed in such a way that that makes a little bit more sense. But in my classroom, that sweet spot, 15 to 20, that’s where you can really get down into the work hands deep with all of your students. And you know, individually adjust your curriculum. You can say, alright, this first period class, they’re really, really into art and pictures, just coincidentally, so I’m going to modify my entire lesson to universally design for their artistic preferences. We’re gonna talk about photosynthesis, and we’re gonna use a lot of diagrams. But my third period, they don’t get pictures. That’s not gonna work for them. So they want a little bit more of like a pure lecture. And my eighth period really loves getting their hands dirty, so we’re gonna plant mustard seeds. That’s something you can do when you have small classes of, you know, 15, maybe 20. Because you can look at what the individual students need, what the trends are between your classes. You can take the lessons that you wrote last year and modify them for the existing students. But when you have more than 20 in any given class, you’re kind of stuck because you’re spending the entire class catching up with each individual student. Okay. How much of the worksheet did you finish? How much of the worksheet did you finish? I can’t stand up at the front and lecture, because I’m gonna leave one of my students behind. 

Miri: Mm-hmm. There’s a, there’s a sort of regression to the mean where by making something for everybody, you make it for nobody.

Kahlia: Exactly. 

Miri: Julia, it looked like you had some thoughts on part of that earlier. 

Julie: I do. I, you know, I have to say, I’m, I’m almost ready to go back into the classroom again, ’cause you’re reminding me about, I mean, there, there so many challenges, but also I’m, I’m thinking about the individual kid. You keep talking about invisible disabilities. A child does not necessarily know how to verbalize, I think you brought that up, what the problem is, and I think about trauma informed schools and how that was meant to address those kinds of things, so that those of us who are teaching or supporting teachers in the classroom would understand all the different ways that kids bring issues to school, which might interfere with their learning, either their behavior, their checking out, or whatever it is. 

Systemic Recognition of Students’ Needs

Julie: And I think, some schools are still pretty good at that, but we, um, I live in Calvert County, which is a very. It’s a very, um, I can say this, can’t I? It’s a very red county. 

Miri: Yes. 

[Laughter]

Julie: Um, in Maryland, we have three new members of a school board of five, but the three new school board members, with the two who are already there, are very conservative in the way that they see things as far as the needs for kids and things like that. And I fear that how they see what a trauma-informed school should be is not really the way it should be for kids. I also wanted to bring up money. And I’m thinking about a specific, uh, student who I know, she’s in high school right now, but her parents, because she’s obviously bright, but,– I don’t know if a messy backpack means anything to you, but usually when your brain is scattered, that doesn’t mean that you are not bright, but it just means you have trouble organizing things. So, what her parents did was, they had to take her for testing. She’s in a public school, but they, based on the recommendation of a counselor at school, they said, “Why don’t you take her for testing? Let’s find out what’s going on.” So they spent quite a bit of money for ADHD tests. And so it was helpful for her, because they recommended things like longer period of time to do a test and other ways to make the lessons accessible for her. But the fact is her parents could afford that kind of money. And she is in a school where the counselor said, “I think we need to know more about this child.” But what about those other kids, in that same city, who don’t have that kind of support. The parents don’t have that kind of finance and things like that. So, I wanna talk about some of the good things that are happening, but we really do have a lot of challenges for our kids, whether they are in the first grade or in a community college. 

A Cheeky Scenario About Money

Miri: Mm-hmm. Yeah, definitely. Okay. I’ll give you a scenario. If your current institution, or school board, or department, or whatever, was given triple the budget for next year: what are the direct ways that could help each classroom with the extra support and funding? 

Kahlia: I mean, of course starting off with just hiring more teachers, and having smaller class sizes, is a massive help just to start with. Because, from my experience – and I won’t speak for all teachers, because I’m obviously not all teachers – but from my experience, teachers generally want to implement better supports for their students. Shrink class sizes, and then hire more EAs, educational assistants, other support staff inside the building. Make sure that there are counselors who are able to keep up. The school I’m at has two counselors for the entire student body, which is not enough. It’s just not enough. I mean, they’re writing schedules and they’re supporting students emotionally. They’re helping them find jobs and other opportunities. That’s not enough. And that’s just the counselors, much less like additional support staff, whether it’s ELL staff that are supporting students with their language acquisition, and other, you know, literally just hiring more staff is going to be such a massive help, that I’d almost say that that’s where all of the money should go. If I had to pick a secondary thing that the money would go to, I would say making sure that your teachers are getting access to language and culture classes, like Julie mentioned, and universal design, continuing education, having teachers take classes on how to connect their primary content to another core content, area or even an elective content area so that they can draw those parallels for students. Long story short, I’d say hire more staff in every department, and continuing education that allows teachers to offer more universal design and supports. 

Jesse: I completely agree. I think hiring more staff, especially EAs of some sort, some dedicated staff who are able to spend all of their time focusing on, you know, identifying what needs aren’t being met and who might be being left behind. Not to keep using a term for a failed program. I mean unfortunately it’s probably more than triple our budget to do, to do that. Right. Yeah, I mean, I, I would really like, recording tech in every classroom, and transcriptions available. I do think that wouldn’t be nearly as good as having additional staff. If we were deciding between one or the other, then I would always opt for staff, I think. although, I guess equipment’s cheaper than staff. But yeah, I completely agree that I think that like most students, or sorry, most teachers, are really passionate about, Like, I think even the word accommodation is, too separate from just like what teaching is. Like it’s more separate than it should be. Like, accommodation; yes, I love that there’s accommodations that are approved, but like, we’re actually just talking about teaching support and so many students need support in various ways. And I think that most teachers, at least teachers who, who care about teaching, teachers who, who like their jobs, are, I think, passionate about that. And it’s just comes down to a lack of resources and it’s mostly a lack of time. Like we all have too much on our plate to do all of the things that we know would make, higher rates of success for everyone. 

Miri: Thank you.

Julie: May I add one thing to that? To all of those? 

Miri: No. Yes, go ahead. 

Julie: I would like to ask you to quadruple the budget, because I would like to see teachers get more pay. I think, I don’t know, Kahlia, maybe you can address this, but it seems to me that a lot of teachers don’t stay beyond five years because it’s, it’s too difficult. The amount of time you put in, the amount of heart, and the amount of energy, and all those other things that go into it. I think being able to pay teachers more would be helpful. I also wanna mention that– this is not really good news, but in a way it could be, that with, the extreme cutbacks to the federal government and all the people who are losing their jobs, our governor, Wes Moore, Maryland is gonna be hard hit by that, especially this area of Maryland. But we need, in Maryland, at least a thousand teachers, and he is proposing that those people who lose their jobs be funneled into the classroom to become teachers, and all the support that that means to get them ready to teach. So Even in, considering the negativity and the burden of what’s gonna happen, there might be something come out of it that would be a positive for schools and for kids. 

Teaching Subjects Through Different Lenses

Miri: Mm-hmm. A lot of educational legislature has focused on making sure that students have consistent reinforcement of what are considered the basics, which is reading, writing, math, some science, some history. What do you all think about the ability for students to express themselves through education of other things? ’cause Jesse’s program, it’s excellent and very niche, of creative coding for interactive media pieces and immersive media. But that’s something that PCC has and almost nowhere else has. So what do you all think about switching gears of focusing on just the basics and expanding into more niche subjects. 

Kahlia: To clarify, are you getting kind of at, shifting away from standardized testing and standardized education of that sort? 

Miri: Is it still called Common Core? Is that still a thing? 

Kahlia: Common Core. Common Core, yeah. So, here’s the rub of that: The advantages of Common Core is that, when you get to a place where you’re in college and you’re able to choose your path, you have a basic, a theoretical, basic understanding of generalized topics. We expect that someone who has graduated high school in the United States should have This Knowledge. This is the knowledge that they have. This is what you can engage with on a political, a journalistic, any setting. This is the base level that we should expect everyone in the country to be able to comprehend and interact with in a functional and meaningful way. 

Miri: Mm-hmm. 

Kahlia: In practice, that’s not really what we see, but that’s the idea behind it. And there are advantages and disadvantages to that decision, 

Miri: I suppose. I suppose what I’d really like to ask is, do you think students get more benefit from Common Core? Or would they get more benefit from being able to learn things more nichely.

Jesse: Wonder if it’s– So, yes, I teach a bunch of weird stuff but I wonder if the, or I, maybe I should say, I feel like one of the things that I’m doing is teaching Common Core stuff, but kind of like wrapped in, some, really different application or a really specific application. 

Miri: Yes, very much so. 

Jesse: I regularly have students who felt miserable in their math classes, and now are suddenly figuring out something that they’re passionate about involving math. So they’re, they’re learning some common core stuff by applying it in a way that they’re interested in. So I wonder if some of this is less about, like, shifting from one topic to another and more about kind of wrapping applications around these common core concepts, 

Miri: Because you teach a Math In the Arts class, right?

Jesse: I do, yeah. And there’s no, no standardized test at the end of it. And I don’t have, like, benchmarks that I’m going for. That class is really just sort of like a, it’s an art class that’s exploring math. But when I think about some of my creative coding classes, I am teaching trigonometry sort of inadvertently. And it’s not that I’m not teaching trigonometry, it’s that I’m teaching it for a, like, means to an end that hadn’t been considered in like high school trigonometry. Um, which was my experience, certainly, in high school. I, I didn’t, feel like I understood the point of math. And then later in my life, when I started applying it to things, I like went back and was like, oh, this is stuff that I actually care about now. So, so some of it’s just, like, application for motivation or application that, that leads to motivation. 

Miri: Mm-hmm. 

Jesse: But in general, I do think that like… The abstract learning of concepts works really well for some people, and doesn’t work for other people, and applying concepts to something really concrete that they might be interested in, can be a really powerful tool. So yeah, I don’t know. Maybe it’s like a math class that has a bunch of applied examples, or things that are coming from different industries, or, I don’t know, 

Miri: Because Julie mentioned, near the start of the interview, how, before No Child Left Behind, she had a class that was very receptive to learning things through science. Science is a great way to learn all sorts of things that aren’t considered hard science. Like you can learn geography through science. You can learn definitely math through science. 

Kahlia: Art, and physics, history, music. Everything is in science. I mean, I’m a little biased, ’cause that’s my subject area, but I mean, every subject has every subject, and I think there is an advantage to subjects in secondary school being separated, but I think there’s a disadvantage to treating them like they’re not related to each other. I mean, the amount of students that come to me and say, “When am I gonna ever use this? Why should I care about trigonometry? Why should I care about photosynthesis? I’m not gonna be a scientist. I’m not gonna be a mathematician.” And they don’t see – Like; Okay, so what do you want to do? “Oh, well, I wanna be in the NBA. I wanna be a footballer. I want to become a famous Twitch streamer.” And you’re like, great! Do you know what? That’s all gonna involve math and science. Here’s how it looks. I have that conversation almost every day with a different student just, explaining like, you wanna be in sports, great. You’re gonna have to figure out what your statistics look like, which means you’re gonna have to use math every day. You’re gonna need to understand how your body interacts with various kinds of chemicals, calculating the amount of calories you need to intake every day, calculating, you know, whether or not you should be drinking Gatorade, water, or something completely different to make sure your body is running at peak performance. That’s science. That’s chemistry. 

Miri: Chocolate milk is usually the correct answer, by the way. 

Kahlia: Uh, sure. Whatever. That’s why we served at school for lunches, right? But again, that runs back into like, would I love to teach through that pedagogy? Yes. But if I have a class that’s, like, 20% athletes, 20% pure academics, and 20%, you know, emo geek nerds, I can’t reach them all at the same time. I can’t cover all of those different niches, even if I wanted to, which of course I do. But, you know, I can say from personal experience, when I was a student, when I was in college, I took a pilot course on the physics of life science and medicine. And I remember how fascinating that was because I never understood physics. I struggled so much. And I went from ” physics is something I will never understand,” through this course, through the physical applications on a human body, to teaching physics at a high school level. 

Miri: Mm-hmm. 

Kahlia: And that means a lot. 

Co-Teaching and Teacher Support

Miri: It seems like there are a lot of experiences, once you get into higher education, of, oh, there’s this thing that I was always intimidated by and didn’t understand before, but now I can learn it through a different lens. I can learn math through art. I can learn physics through the human body. Is there a way to get that into the primary education system? Or is it more beneficial, in your opinions, to generalize at the lower levels, and then specify as a student gets older and more aware of their interests?

Kahlia: Absolutely. Co-teaching. 

Miri: Co-teaching? 

Kahlia: So having two teachers in a single classroom. Maybe your classroom size is a little bit bigger, but if you’re co-teaching and you have two teachers from different subjects, you can easily blend together your curriculum because one will have a specialty and a focus on the science, and the other one will have a focus and a specialty in whatever subject they’re teaching. Math, English, art. Having two teachers with different subjects that teach classes together, and maybe you’re double blocking, so you’re seeing those same teachers every day, but you’re having this blend, amalgam, of art and science, English and history, math and physical education. But team-teaching those courses, teaching, co-teaching, having someone to sit back and say, even just, “I don’t understand that,” which means the students might be missing something. So let’s work together to make this comprehensible. Let’s work together to bring in this other subject that might engage the students. I talked earlier about having smaller class sizes, and that’s assuming you’re the only person in the room, but you can maintain a classroom size of 30 to 40, as long as you have two teachers, because then you can take breaks. You can say, all right, half of you are going out to the track and we’re going to talk about this concept. Or we’re gonna split on two sides of the room. We’re gonna have a class discussion. We’re gonna have so and so we’re with Ms. S, and we’re gonna have so and so work with Mr. K and whatever. And that just gives you the advantage of not only the blending of the curriculum, the blending of the pedagogy, but also being able to be more individualized with students, being more accessible to them. ’cause you have more than one teacher. 

Miri: Mm-hmm. 

Jesse: I mean, I think this kind of ties back to what Julia was saying earlier about, like, pay teachers more.

Miri: Yes. 

Jesse: The reality is, is that like, I didn’t have teachers who were, I mean, I wasn’t interested in sports, but even if I was, I didn’t have teachers that were explaining how math could relate to that, or how I could apply, or how science could relate to that. and I think it is just like. A lot of teachers are burned out. They’re not getting paid well enough. Maybe they once were passionate and they’re not anymore. Or maybe they’re passionate, but they’re just feeling hopeless because of, like, institutional barriers. I don’t know. But I do know that it’s a common experience to like not get those even examples. Like, not that it’s like a math or a science and sports class specifically, although that – that does sound dreamy. Um, but even just like having the examples, the way you laid them out, would be, I think a huge step in the right direction. But I think we just need more resources. 

Miri: For dual teaching? 

Jesse: For dual teaching or, or for just like giving teachers. Yeah. Whether it’s through dual teaching, or lower class sizes or lower class loads. But like teachers having the time and space and capacity to like care about finding those applications or examples, or connecting with specific students who are struggling on a level that they’re excited with. It’s stuff that, again, we all, I think, want to do and then just sometimes don’t have the capacity to do because there’s not time or, yeah. 

Miri: Because you’ll have to go home. Or not even go home, you’ll have to go to your second job at the 7/11.

Jesse: Yeah.

Miri: Go ahead, Ms. Schardt. 

Julie: Thank you, Miri. Um, I think we’re leaving something really important out of the equation, and that would be the parents and/or caregivers of students, and educating them about educating their children. Now, I, I know full well that not all parents have the time or the ability, to know what’s going on in the classroom, but as much as possible when you can pull parents into it and get their support, you don’t just have the child for those five and a half or six hours a day, maybe there’s gonna be something that’s gonna be built on at home. And I’m also thinking about playing pool. One of – One of the things I liked to do when I was in high school was play pool. I always thought of pool as being, you know, these guys with cigars in a dark, smoky, bar playing pool. And then it became a thing, a family pool hall. Pool or billiards, is controlled by really applied physics and math. It’s thinking about what came up before about as far as what you said, Kahlia, about kids who wanna play football or basketball. It’s really all about the math and the physics being in the right place at the right time, and the trajectory of whatever it is that you’re trying to move around. That’s two disparate ways to address, figure out ways to meet the needs of kids. I also think that the traditional standard classroom is not necessarily the be all and the end all. I think of other programs that are not in a classroom that supports the whole student, giving the student an opportunity to, I don’t know, to read and talk about books, or write. But then maybe you write plays with a few other kids, and then maybe you work on the costumes for the plays, and then maybe you work on building the sets for the plays, and things like that. So, if only there were a way to meet the needs with all kids creatively, and be able to do all of these things. I don’t know how it’s gonna happen, ’cause we’ve got millions of kids to educate. But I think there’s a lot of ways to reach the needs of all kids, whether or not they have disabilities.

Miri: It could be a way of looking at universal design, of not just designing a classroom environment to fit all children’s needs, but maybe realizing that the classroom inherently cannot meet all children’s needs, and expanding education to include things outside the classroom, whether it be at home, with family, on the sports field, in the theater. in the kitchen. That seems like an interesting way of looking at universal design, that I don’t think is on the front cover of the universal design pamphlets. 

Kahlia: No, that’s hardly ever talked about. And I think a lot of teachers realize and have no illusions about the fact that their classroom is not what’s going to solve this problem. They’re going to do their best, because they’re expected to and they want to. But I mean, I certainly know that I am never going to be everything for my students. I am never gonna meet all of their needs, and that’s not really what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to find a way to help them find a way to meet their own needs. Help them find a way to access what I am required to provide to them, and take that somewhere where they can expand upon it on their own. In terms of accessibility, I’ll do everything I can to make it as accessible as possible. But in some situations, it is very much a you can lead a horse to water. If a student’s not prepared to access the information that you’re giving them, at a certain point, it doesn’t matter how much you break it down, how many tools you give them. Until they’re ready to access that.

Closing Statements

Miri: Thank you very much. I wanted to say thank you all very much for taking time out of your afternoons, and your evenings, if you’re on the East coast, to come and talk to me about this. All of your opinions were really interesting and I’ve enjoyed this interview very much and I’m looking forward to being able to share it with other people who I think don’t get to see the teacher side of education very much. ’cause they remember being in high school or remember being in college, a lot of people remember how it always felt like it was student versus teacher, when a lot of it is more in line with student and teacher versus the endless limitations that are presented to everybody in real life. So, thank you for sharing your perspectives and your experience today. If there’s any closing thoughts that you want to share, you can go ahead and share them. 

Julie: I just wanna say that I’m really hopeful, being a part of this conversation and hearing what Kahlia and Jesse both had to say about education and their passion and their commitment to the profession and to the, to the kids, the young people whose needs you are meeting. 

Miri: Yeah. You guys are doing some good work. 

Kahlia: I, uh, this is not a hundred percent on topic for what we were talking about, but I wanted to make a quick comment about how inaccessible a lot of the educational buildings are, just physically. I hurt my back last year and my building is four stories and we have one rickety elevator that’s broken 90% of the time. And like I was not even unable to transverse the stairs, but it was so challenging for me who was only mildly injured to get just to my classroom, much less if I was a student having to transverse that building more than once a day. And that’s just one building. That’s one problem I can’t even imagine if I was a student who had a chronic or permanent physical disability, that prevented me from being able to get around that building.

Miri: Mm-hmm. 

Kahlia: And a lot of the buildings, even when they are being refurbished, if they’re being refurbished, are not being refurbished in a way that is more accommodating. They’re just slapping a coat of paint or fixing broken walls. They’re not putting in a new elevator. They’re not reducing the amount of floors in the building. They’re not putting in safety showers in the science classrooms. And that’s, that’s a major accessibility problem too, because, you know, what happens if a student can’t access their classroom. I mean, at my building, it meant that sometimes a student who couldn’t get to their classroom spent the entire day on the first floor, and they couldn’t go to class for most of the day. And that’s just unacceptable.

Jesse: Yeah. I also think there’s structural problems, meaning literal structure of the buildings, problems with, with a lot of our institutions with regards to hidden disabilities as well. Like, we have these buildings that largely feel like offices or prisons. I think in addition to thinking about these really visible disabilities, and providing access to multi-level buildings, there’s also things that we really could do to improve, I think, not just hidden disabilities. It’s probably like all students would be able to focus better, and have a more enriching educational experience if we didn’t have such, like, prison- like institutional buildings.

Miri: Yeah. 

Jesse: Like consider lighting and decoration and color and things like that as important design elements in a space that’s conducive to focus and learning. 

Miri: Mm-hmm.

Jesse: I really appreciate you taking the time as well, Miri to, to do this work and to bring people together and talking about these issues and, I’m, thankful that you tapped me for this, and it’s been a really cool conversation.

Miri: Yeah. Thank you very much. Um, yeah. Thank you for taking time out of your afternoon. I know after getting out of class, there’s a good chance you wanna just go and have a coffee and chill for a little while, so I appreciate you, uh, doing this instead. Um, and yeah, thank you everybody. Give yourself a, give yourself a hand for, uh, expanding accessibility knowledge with our wonderful listeners. 

Episode Outro

Miri: Thank you for listening to today’s episode of Let’s Talk! I hope you’ve learned something new about education, and the experiences of those who provide it. Whether oversized classes, unrealistic burdens of expectation, or a lack of systemic support, educators face more challenges than the day-to-day person will realize. As you’ve heard over the past fifty minutes, the support these teachers need comes in all different forms, but ultimately boils down to one thing: funding. As this country moves more and more toward a total dismantling of our education system, make sure not to turn a blind eye to the plight of the people following their passion of bettering the life of our next generations. So if you’re ever at the bar and start talking to someone, and you find out they’re a substitute teacher, buy them a drink, for all of us.

Closing Disclaimer

Kylo: Thank you for listening to Let’s Talk! – Portland Community College’s broadcast about disability culture. Find more information and resources concerning this episode and others at pcc.edu/dca. This episode was produced by the Let’s Talk! Podcast Collective as a collaborative effort between students, the Accessible Education and Disability Resources Department, and the PCC Multimedia Department. We air new episodes on our home website, our Spotify channel, X-Ray 91.1 FM and 107.1 FM, and KBOO Radio 90.7 FM.