BONUS: Unlocking the Power of Students Who Learn Differently

In this bonus episode I break down the groundbreaking "Forward Together" report from the National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD) shared by Sarah Sandelius and Kristen N. Briggs during their S4E27 Episode: How The Ability Challenge is Transforming Special Education. Discover the three essential mindsets and eight key practices that benefit not just the one in five students with learning differences, but ALL learners. 

I share practical strategies for:

➡️explicit instruction, 

➡️Universal Design for Learning, 

➡️strategy instruction, 

➡️flexible grouping, 

➡️positive behavior strategies, 

➡️collaboration, 

➡️culturally responsive teaching, 

➡️and evidence-based content instruction. 

Learn how to create equitable learning environments where every student can thrive despite political pushback against inclusive education initiatives. 

Episode Mentions:

• ✨NCLD Report: FORWARD TOGETHER: Helping Educators Unlock the Power of Students Who Learn Differently
• ✨Stiggins's 7 Strategies of Assessment FOR Learning
• ✨S3 E31: Your AI-Powered UDL Thought Partner: LUDIA with Beth Stark and Jérémie Rostan
• ✨S4E19: Educational Teams Bridging School & Family Communication w/ Leah Mermelstein & Dr. Jen Gioia
• ✨Kalyn Belsha of Chalkbeat

Perfect for educators, administrators, and caregivers committed to supporting diverse learners.

00:00 - Introduction and Episode Overview 

01:00 - About the Forward Together Report 

03:00 - Understanding the "One in Five" Students 

05:00 - Three Essential Mindsets for Effective Teaching 

06:00 - Self-Efficacy: Believing in Your Ability to Teach All Students 

08:00 - Positive Orientation Toward Inclusion and Belonging 

09:00 - Growth Mindset for Teachers and Students 

10:00 - Eight Key Practices That Benefit All Learners 

11:00 - Explicit Targeted Instruction and Universal Design for Learning 

12:00 - Strategy Instruction for Independent Learning 

14:00 - Positive Behavior Strategies and PBIS 

15:00 - Flexible vs. Fixed Grouping Approaches 

16:00 - Collaboration Between Educators and Caregivers 

17:00 - Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Pedagogy 

19:00 - Evidence-Based Content Instruction 

20:00 - What Science Says About Neurodiversity in Learning 

22:00 - Moving Forward Together and Finding Purpose 

23:00 - Closing Thoughts and Next Episode Preview

#TheAbilityChallenge #SpecialEducation #InclusiveTeaching #LearningDifferences #EquitableEducation #TeachingStrategies #EducatorResources #NCLD #UniversalDesignForLearning #CulturallyResponsiveTeaching #EducationPodcast

When coaches, teachers, administrators, and families work hand in hand, it fosters a school atmosphere where everyone is inspired and every student is fully engaged in their learning journey.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Hi there, I'm so glad you're here. Your time is precious and because of that I want to let you know right away what you'll gain by listening to the very last second of this bonus episode. My conversation with Sarah Sandelius and Kristen N. Briggs focused on how The Ability Challenge supports organizations in designing intentional support systems for effective special education.

In this bonus episode, I offer my insights about the Forward Together study. It's the NCLD report. It came out in 2019. Focusing on how we can achieve equitable education and that it requires educators to adopt specific mindsets and evidence-based practices that support both the 1 in 5 students with learning differences and all learners collectively, by listening to this episode, you'll learn three essential mindsets for effective teaching eight key practices that benefit all students; and [00:01:00] why culturally and linguistically responsive teaching remains crucial despite political pushback against DEI initiatives. 

Stay with me. I'm so happy to have you as a listener today. This is Schoolutions: Coaching and Teaching Strategies, the podcast that extends education beyond the classroom, a show that offers educators and caregivers strategies to try right away and ensure every student receives the inspiration and support they need to thrive.

I am Olivia Wahl, and this is a bonus episode. It's an accompaniment to my conversation with Sarah Sandelius and Kristen N. Briggs, Season 4, Episode 27. When we first began our conversation, Sarah introduced a couple of pieces of research that I find critical to how we move forward with our work in education, in this [00:02:00] country, in the world.

Especially because they offer hope. And these days I need to find myself walking in my purpose. It's a saying that I'm hearing more and more. And as educators, it feels really dark right now. And the report I'm going to lean on was released in 2019. It's from the National Center for Learning Disabilities or NCLD and Understood.org. It's the Forward Together report, helping educators unlock the power of students who learn differently. This report is an amazing 40 pages of goodness, but it illuminates all different findings, perspectives, and research from teachers. It also highlights three mindsets and eight key practices. And these practices don't just benefit the 1 in 5 people who have learning and attention issues, they benefit all learners. 

And one way I am [00:03:00] walking in my purpose is, again, to ensure that all learners have access to grade level content, to high expectations, to love, to being seen, heard, cared for. And when I say learners, I also mean our teachers, our educators. So I'm going to jump in because this report speaks to the 1 in 5.

And it's important that you know who the 1 in 5 are. On page eight, the report quotes, “In the United States, 1 in 5 people have learning and attention issues. Contrary to popular myths, learning and attention issues are not the result of low intelligence, poor vision or hearing, or a lack of motivation. We know that students with learning disabilities and ADHD have brain based difficulties in specific areas: reading, writing, math, organization, attention, listening comprehension, social skills, [00:04:00] motor skills or often a combination unique to the person.”

And the report goes on to say, “The 1 in 5 have abilities and skills that are vital to our society and economy. Yet too often their disabilities are not identified and their potential goes untapped, with significant individual and societal consequences.”

It's important that you understand, as well, what's more, “When disability is combined with other intersectional characteristics that our education system has been known to marginalize or underserve, like race and class, we see a compounding effect on the failure to recognize and meet an individual's unique needs.”

I've shared often how important it is for me as an educator, but for all of us to know what we need to know and what we believe. And these mindsets offer hope, and that, again, is where I think we need to focus.

None of these are rocket science. None of these are impossible to [00:05:00] achieve. And that's where I'm focusing my energy because this current administration is not focused on lifting teachers. It's not focused on lifting children and meeting children's needs. And so, we've got to do it. And that's where we are continuing to show up every day.

These three mindsets focus on a strong sense of self efficacy. I'll speak more to that. Positive orientation toward inclusion and personal responsibility for all students, and a growth mindset. These are three mindsets we've heard over and over and over again. So let's break them down and make sure that we're all in it to win it together.

The strong sense of self efficacy - it's the belief in our own ability to teach all students successfully. Is that easy? No, of course it's not. But if we band together through collective efficacy, through tapping into our professional capital, which breaks down our human, our social and decisional. [00:06:00] Human: What are our skills? What are our talents? What's our knowledge base? Social: What are our relationships with teachers we're working with? What are our relationships with the students we're working with? And decisional: How as an organization are we harnessing our human and social capital to best benefit everyone in the community?

The report speaks to why self efficacy is important: “When teachers have a strong sense of self efficacy, they are more likely to have a positive orientation toward inclusion and take responsibility for providing the conditions and delivering instruction that allows all of their students to achieve. Importantly, they're also less likely to be influenced by non-academic factors, like socioeconomic status or student behavior, when placing students and are less likely to refer difficult students for special education when those students are not exhibiting other indicators of learning and attention [00:07:00] issues.”

What I also love about this report, it breaks down what this looks like in the classroom so you can immediately apply it. And a strong self efficacy looks like teachers creating mastery experiences for students. It shows them what success on a task looks like and we help them build toward that for their own achievement.

So then let's talk about positive orientation toward inclusion and personal responsibility for all students. I do not see this as we have to save all students. I think teachers have that savior complex put upon them, through media, and it's totally unrealistic - there has to be a life balance. But this is why that idea of positive orientation is important.

“Teachers with a positive orientation toward inclusion are more likely to believe the 1 in 5 can succeed. They create a classroom environment and culture where the 1 in 5 and all students develop a feeling of belonging, [00:08:00] which is an important prerequisite for student engagement, motivation, and achievement.”

Let's face it - it's also an important prerequisite for adult engagement, motivation and achievement. We all want to be understood. We want to belong. And that is in my heart, what I see our current administration trying to break apart that sense of belonging, that sense of community. And we have to fight against that.

Another mindset focuses on the growth mindset. Growth mindset is a term we hear all the time in education, and that represents teachers beliefs that “they can improve as teaching professionals, and that all students can learn through practice and hard work.”

It also begs of us to “move beyond the belief about the nature of intelligence to educators understanding of how persistence, hard work, self regulation, and effort relate to learning and outcomes at school or work.”

And then I will [00:09:00] shift to the eight key practices that this report highlights. On page 17, I quote, ”These practices are most effective when educators implement them within, rather than in place of, system wide structures and processes that support identification, intervention, and differentiation. An example is a multi-tier system of supports, or MTSS, a school wide system for early intervention and targeted supports for the whole child.

MTSS provides different levels of intensity of intervention, and a range of student versus teacher led instruction specific to that child's needs.”

So here are the eight practices: explicit targeted instruction, universal design for learning or UDL, strategy instruction, flexible grouping, positive behavior strategies, collaboration, culturally and linguistically responsive pedagogy, and evidence based [00:10:00] content instruction.

So why is explicit targeted instruction critical? It makes learning processes systematic, overt, and clear. “It also reduces the cognitive demand of guessing what the expectations are so students can focus on mastering those expectations.”

When it comes to explicit instruction, we have to think about our modeling. How are we tucking in examples and non-examples like Stiggins asks us to do? How are we modeling through think alouds during problem solving? 

And what guided and independent practice are we offering while providing students with immediate affirmative and corrective feedback to help them understand how they can improve? And then I think of an amazing interview, I'll tuck it into the show notes, that I had the fortune of hosting with Beth Stark and Jérémie Rostan, they [00:11:00] created a bot called LUDIA, and it is a bot that is AI and UDL combined, hence LUDIA, but it supports the idea, the concept, the practice of Universal Design for Learning.

And what is Universal Design for Learning? For those that don't know, “it offers a framework and guidance for teachers to design differentiated learning experiences in flexible ways to meet the needs of individual learners.” 

And we have to remember that lesson plans and assessments that use UDL are grounded in three main principles: Representation. which is offering students information in more than one format, like text or audio, video, hands on. Also action and expression, so how do we give students more than one way to interact with the material and show what they've learned? And engagement, motivating students in multiple ways, such as letting students make choices and designing assignments that are relevant to them.

“UDL helps teachers [00:12:00] better meet the needs of every student because we remove barriers to learning and create equal opportunities to succeed.” 

A practice I'm really concerned that has been put on the back burner that has kind of faded out of people's minds that I'm doing a lot of coaching around is strategy instruction. How do we coach students around cognitive strategies like summarizing, question generating, clarifying, predicting? And metacognitive strategies: self-regulation, executive functioning skills, self-monitoring of academic gains, memory enhancements, so that they can learn content. We have to offer students their own learning strategies, so that they can be independent with future learning, and transfer those strategies across every content area. This has a direct impact on breaking down silos; not just with content, but also with the roles of the different folks in students lives. 

We [00:13:00] have to remember that strategy instruction “prioritizes presenting information in ways that students can identify, organize, comprehend, and recall.”

Another layer of strategy instruction that we have to consider, it's the social emotional skills that are critical to students with disabilities. Self-advocacy and self-determination. We know that when students advocate for themselves and they use specific skills they learn to identify their own rights and needs and interests, they can communicate those to teachers and others. “This self-determination, it enables students to take charge of their lives, to make choices in their self interest, and to freely pursue their goals.”

So then let's shift to positive behavior strategies, another practice. When teachers focus on applying positive behavior strategies, “they can better understand students’ behavior and what a particular student needs to do to learn. [00:14:00] This makes expectations for behavior crystal clear and consistent, and yet we can still differentiate supports and allow students to demonstrate their understanding.”

The behavior is communication. An example of this could be part of PBIS. “PBIS focuses on teaching positive behavior choices moment to moment. It involves setting and teaching observable behavioral expectations and acknowledging students for meeting these expectations. And it's important to note that PBIS can go hand in hand with academic support systems such as RTI, as well as MTSS.”

The idea of flexible grouping uses data to frequently rearrange students in the classroom according to needs and strengths for small group instruction. Flexible grouping is effective because it holds high expectations for all, while recognizing students’ needs vary by topic and skill. It ensures students have multiple [00:15:00] opportunities for practice and feedback, and it makes data accessible to educators and allows them to make individualized decisions about intervention.

Flexible grouping is just that though. It's flexible. “It's creating temporary groups based on student data. So the groups only stay together for the length of time necessary for students to develop an identified skill, or master a specific concept, or accomplish a task.”

So this is the direct juxtaposition to putting all striving students together in one class, which is a fixed grouping. Fixed groupings are what I advise against. “They're organized around general achievement rates and don't change based on student needs or acquisition of skills or knowledge.”

And I adore this quote on page 20, “Flexible grouping is based on the reality that the needs of students can change over time and that students possess strengths and weaknesses. Thus [00:16:00] reducing the stigma that's often associated with being in a particular fixed group that receives additional supports or more intensive interventions.”

And then another practice, collaboration. This report defines collaboration as “involving general educators, special educators, specialists, and paraprofessionals working as a team to review student data, do integrated lesson planning, and where applicable, collaboratively team teach.”

I appreciate that the report also notes that collaboration “can also or needs to occur between educators and caregivers to ensure a coordinated team approach to best supporting students learning and development in the two places where children spend most of their time at home and in school.”

My conversation with Leah Mermelstein and Dr. Jennifer Gioia also spoke to the need to bring psychologists or social workers into the fold alongside tutors or caregivers. [00:17:00] Basically, everyone that's on team child, they need to be around the table. 

And the collaboration needs to always be “grounded in leveraging adults knowledge and skills to align around what the student needs and their strengths, and ensuring shared expectations and ownership in teaching the same high level standards and content to all students.”

And when I say that our children need to be seen, heard, loved, cared for, that's where culturally and linguistically responsive pedagogy comes into play. How do we understand, respond to, incorporate, and celebrate students’ cultural references? The report offers embedded links that are very helpful. And this practice is important because it creates learning environments that are respectful and inclusive, and that can connect and build upon what students know.

When we understand the whole child, caregivers and schools can better support learning [00:18:00] together. And no matter how many times we have fear instilled in us, today, tomorrow, in the future, to stop DEI, to end DEI: diversity, equity, and inclusive education. I will always stand strongly on the side of recognizing, understanding, responding to incorporating and celebrating students’ cultural references.

I want a world where we're creating learning environments that are respectful and inclusive, that connect to and build upon what students know. All of the research shows that when we better understand the whole child, both caregivers and students can better support learning together. 

So what is culturally and linguistically responsive pedagogy? “It's responsive instruction that increases student engagement and learning and behavior outcomes, especially for [00:19:00] students who are culturally and linguistically diverse. Culturally responsive teaching also helps ensure the appropriate identification of students who are eligible for special education and provision of services for culturally and linguistically diverse students.”

And what's important to know? High quality culturally responsive instruction requires both rigor: which is a focus on critical thinking and problem solving, and relevance: making sure students regularly see themselves and their cultures reflected in the curriculum. This should not just be limited to academic instruction, but it has to be integrated into any social emotional learning approaches used within the classroom and school.

And lastly, the practice around evidence-based content instruction. “This leverages practices based on multi sensory, explicit, structured, and sequential content instruction for literacy and math.”

Here's why it [00:20:00] works. “These strategies combine the effectiveness of explicit instruction with research based on emerging science of learning.”

So I will conclude with a chart on page 22. And again, I'll link this report in the show notes. We know what works. How do we get there? And there is a breakdown of what science says and some implications. 

“So what science says, emerging research is finding significant variations in human brains, also known as neurodiversity. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses with skills occurring on a continuum. Each person does not approach all learning tasks the same way. Even the same person will approach different learning tasks in different ways.”

And so here are the implications. Every student benefits from different approaches to learning as articulated in the eight key practices. Typical learners often experience the same growth rate as students with learning and attention issues [00:21:00] when general educators use evidence-based instructional strategies that support struggling learners.”

And as teachers, we have to hold tightly to learning science showing that there's a great variability in the way we all learn. We need to start intentionally planning and teaching for these differences. We have to integrate instructional and social emotional strategies that can have a clear impact on student success. We need to ensure different pathways to teacher preparation support. that focuses on these strategies and then will allow us to reach every student. And our school and district wide professional learning plans have to focus on the gaps in that knowledge. 

We can create equitable schools where we understand who each student is when they walk through our doors. Together we can move forward. We can do this. But in order to do that, “we must build a better understanding of how disability, race, [00:22:00] class, gender, language, trauma, and other factors intersect to impact individual students and how they learn.”

And this quote on page 23 is what I'm going to leave you with: “There are shared commitments we can make and steps we can take, no matter what work we do. Of course, there's also role specific actions for leading your organization, schools, and classrooms to more effectively reaching and teaching 1 in 5 and all students.”

The report does outline shared commitments and steps, role-specific actions that you can take a look at when you dive into this on your own. I hope this offers you some inspiration and helps you find what your purpose is. Find people just like you that are continuing to do this work on behalf of children, on behalf of their caregivers.

We have to move forward together. Our children are not going [00:23:00] anywhere and we are their hope. And frankly, they are my hope. So, I look forward to seeing you on Monday. I have a conversation releasing with Kalyn Belsha. She is a senior national reporter for Chalkbeat. We recorded just a few days ago, and the news has already quickly evolved to half of the Education Department staff in the United States being fired.

And I'm sure my bonus episode next week will have many more updates. Take care out there and know that we're in this together. See you next week. 

Schoolutions: Coaching and Teaching Strategies is created, produced, and edited by me, Olivia Wahl. Thank you to my older son Benjamin who created the music playing in the background. You can follow and listen to Schoolutions wherever you get your podcasts or subscribe to never miss an episode and watch on YouTube. 

Now, I'd love to hear from you. Send me [00:24:00] an email at schoolutionspodcast@gmail.com. Let me know how your school or district or organization helps educators unlock the power of students who learn differently.

Tune in every Monday for the best research-backed coaching and teaching strategies you can apply right away to better the lives of the children in your care. And stay tuned for my bonus episodes every Friday, where I'll reflect and share connections to what I learned from the guests that week. See you then.