Karten's Inclusion Conversations Podcast

KIC S1E7 Inclusion for All: The Importance of ABA in Supporting Students with Behavioral Challenges Featuring Scott Rossig

• Toby Karten • Season 1 • Episode 7

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Karten's Inclusion Conversations S1E7 Featuring Scott Rossig
Toby and Scott's conversation revolved around several themes, including the significance of inclusion for all students, regardless of their abilities, and the use of applied behavior analysis (ABA) to help students with behavioral challenges succeed in school. They emphasized the importance of collaboration between parents, teachers, and other professionals to support students with special needs, acknowledging the challenges such students face in school and the importance of providing them with the necessary supports to succeed. Overall, the conversation emphasized the need to prioritize the success and well-being of all students, regardless of their individual needs and abilities.

Websites mentioned in the podcast:

#TobyKarten #ScottRossig #Karten’sInclusionConversations #KIC #Inclusion #InclusiveEducation #SpecialNeedsEducation #EducationForAll #DisabilityInclusion #CollaborationInEducation #EmpowerSpecialNeeds #InclusionMatters #DiversityInEducation #InclusiveSchools #BuildingConnections #InclusiveClassroom #SupportingStudents #InclusiveCommunity #EducationAdvocacy #InclusiveLearning #ABA #IDEA #NCLD #NAA #ABIA



For more information please visit https://inclusionworkshops.com/

Welcome to Karten's Inclusive Conversations podcast. Hi everybody. Welcome back to Karten's Inclusion Conversations. And I have the honor of speaking with someone that I have known for several years, and it's Scott Rossig. And he is a very well-versed person in the field of special education, especially with something with the initials of ABA, Applied Behavioral Analysis. But I am going to ask Mr. Scott Rossig to tell us a little bit about himself. So welcome, Scott, to Carton's Inclusion Conversations. Oh, thanks. It's so great to be here. And the honor is mine. Is that Napoleon Orosi, your two little pops? There he is, yep. Sorry about that. Of course, right? No, that's part of our days. I have Maggie, I understand. Okay. So hopefully you can hear me over these guys. I do work in the field of ABA. I'm a board-certified behavior analyst. I've been working in schools for a long time, about 29, 30 years, in all different areas of the school. So as a teacher, as a behaviorist, and for the last about 17, 18 years as a school principal. The other great perspective that I have is I've done a lot of work in homes with families. And to me, that's one of the greatest things I've done in my career. One, because I just absolutely love it, being able to help families directly, but also it gives me that very broad perspective of understanding what families have to work through and deal with at home in regards to their children with some significant special needs. I've also worked in, currently I'm in more of a self-contained type of a setting, but I have worked in public school and have lots of experience in setting up and providing inclusive experiences for the students that I've worked with. I love that word that you said, inclusive experiences. And sometimes people have a very broad definition of that word, inclusion. You're with the South Bergen Joint Share Commission as a principal, and you do a lot of services to them in a lot of different types of programs. And one of them is called the Shared Time Program. I love the sound of that name because in my mind, it's talking about some kind of combination or something, but Scott, could you tell us a little bit more, our audience, about that? Sure, sure, and you're right. It is a combination in a sense. So Joint Share Commissions have been established in the state of New Jersey for many, many years. And essentially what we are is we're a receiving special education school district. So we have students that come to our programs from probably 30, 35 different school districts. Now, when I started working in the district about 18 years ago, they did have some inclusive programs set up as part of our program, which I thought was fantastic. And those were in the form of classrooms that were set up in some local school districts that we would contract with that district to access that space, that empty classroom. So we could run our program within their public school and therefore provide some inclusive opportunities for the students. Scott, what type of students would you say would be best served with such a program? Because I know you have outside things you do also with the same population of students. Yeah, great question. So, well, within our district, the three primary populations of students that we serve are those on the autism spectrum, those classified as having multiple disabilities, and then also the, well, formerly known as BD or ED, but currently known as the ERI population. Yeah, just special ed we've established has tons of jargon with initials. So could you clarify? Yeah, ERI being emotional regulation impairment, which frankly, I love that term as compared to emotionally disturbed, which I never liked. I always said emotionally different, emotional difference, never a disability, correct? It's semantics, but it's more than that, right? Absolutely. So those three populations are primary within our district. And I'll probably come back to the idea that in my experiences, and I'll say just that, my experiences, the ERI population of students has been amongst some of the most challenging to find inclusive experiences for. And that's primarily based on the idea that some of the behaviors that these guys are challenged with can be pretty significant when demonstrated in, let's say, a real less restrictive setting or in a typical public school setting. But I have to say that because of that, it's really been a personal mission of mine to try to foster those experiences. Now, of course, that's done through collaboration. So you asked about the shared time model, and I spoke a little bit about how historically in our district, we've accessed classrooms in regular districts, and we run some of our programs there. That model has evolved a little bit, and we now call it, just for lack of having a term, we call it our PODs, and we still operate these PODs. We still go to the local districts. We try to acquire space. We run our classes there. The shared time model kind of branched off of the POD model, and it's primarily for our students classified with emotional regulation impairment. And so what we've done is we go to their actual local sending district, and we say, listen, Johnny or Susie, they've been doing exceptionally well in our self-contained program. Occurrence of behaviors has decreased. Socialization is going really well. Scott, if you could just clarify a moment, and I need to stop you. When you say occurrence of behaviors has decreased, what type of behaviors would you be looking for to decrease? I'm gonna say primarily what we're talking about is some oppositional type behaviors, right? Because for the most part, we're talking about a group of students who really are very, very capable, academically, socially, et cetera. So they understand the expectations, but with the opposition, sometimes it's just a kind of a pushback. Gotcha, gotcha. And then we absolutely work with some students that exhibit good deal of verbal aggression, physical aggression. So when we can work intensively in a self-contained setting and really bring those behaviors under control, give the students the tools that they need to do more self-regulation, now we're at a point where we love to have the opportunity to go back to their local district and start a conversation with the district and their family about, hey, can we look at having this student begin to spend some time back in their home district and their home school? And so we started this probably about 12 years ago at the elementary level. And now for the past three years, I've been the principal of our middle high school campus, and we're really trying to beef up the shared time model there as well. And so like this particular school year, for example, we have six students who are spending varying portions of their day back in their home school district. And there's always a goal of getting them back there full-time. I love that word, that G word. It goes in sports, it goes in education, it goes in any aspect of life, setting goals regardless of what's perceived as a difference or a disability, but not a deficiency, which what you're doing, it sounds like it's kind of scripted, it's a step-by-step approach, and it's giving the supports to the families, the students, the professionals, and it's onward and upward. People think, and this is Carton's inclusion conversations, but I'm not gonna say that every single student like you, I think would agree, belongs in quote unquote, the gen ed classroom, if that is a restrictive environment for them, even though it's considered to be the least restrictive on the, what we call the LRE continuum, right? And only special ed people will get half of these jargons, but I think that the general population is hearing it so much too, but it sounds like this is something that you're setting up everyone for success. And you mentioned ABA, and if you could, maybe there are some people who are newer to the field, and even our veterans, there's always something else. What do you think are important points about ABA for students like with ODD, oppositional defiant disorder, or that thing, even I'm sure, would you agree, some of your students also have comorbidity, so they might have ODD, they could also have autism, ASD, be on the autism spectrum disorder, or any vegetable soup of combination of things that sometimes people think, because you have a certain label, this is your capability. So somewhere in there is my question, but just the basics, ABA, how does it help whom? And you could put that audience to whomever you'd like. Well, I got your question loud and clear out of that. Love it. And actually, so you're now giving me an opportunity to talk about something that I really love to talk about and I think is critically important. That's why we're here, Scott, that's why we're here. So ABA, applied behavior analysis, right? I'm trained as a behavior analyst, a board certified behavior analyst. And the thing with ABA, and I've kind of made it a personal mission for myself to dispel a myth. And the myth is that ABA and the application of the principles of ABA really only applies to working with individuals on the autism spectrum. And that's absolutely not true. Thank you. So these core behavioral principles are incredibly universal. In fact, they apply to all living beings. So a big part of my work has been to try to apply those principles to all the students that I work with, including those with multiple disabilities, those with behavioral disabilities. You know, when we tie this into like, let's say the shared time model, or how do we determine when a student may be ready for those less restrictive experiences or going into a mainstream or inclusive setting, one of the best ways to make those decisions is through concrete data. And when we're talking about behavior, we're able to, like a lot of our students, for example, in my district will have an individualized behavior plan. And so through that plan, we're targeting specific behaviors and we can track through data collection and analysis, are those behaviors increasing, decreasing, et cetera. And it absolutely plays into our decision about is a student ready for those experiences back in a general education setting. I have these meetings on a regular basis with my staff. We say- And there's the collaborative part that you mentioned earlier. Absolutely. It's all about collaboration. So we come together every other week. We have these staffing meetings, and this is an opportunity for us to review student data, whether it's behavioral or academic, and can very concretely make decisions about whether or not we feel they're ready for these opportunities. So yeah, it's really helpful to approach it that way. I'm not going to say it's our process is definitely a work in progress, that's for sure. We have some tweaking to do, it's not a 100% fail safe, but when you rely on data, you're going to be able to make some much better decisions on behalf of students. I love that on behalf of students. And it's that throwing in three more initiatives, all right. FBA, you want to tell more? You want me to? We roll the dice, who does? I don't know. You go for it, Scott. I'll sum it up. So FBA, functional behavior assessment. I mean, with any behavior, we need to understand what's at the root of that behavior. So in my field as a behavior analyst, we call that the function of the behavior. So when we do a functional behavior assessment, we're observing, we're reviewing records, we are interviewing key people, we're collecting data on specific behaviors, and we are hypothesizing to the best of our ability, what's the function of that behavior. You know, one of the interesting things about functional behavior is the gurus in the field tend to boil those functions down to just four, four primary reasons for the occurrence of the vast majority of behavior. And of course it's arguable, but it does tend to be a very reliable process. And those four functions are one, to get attention or a reaction from somebody. Two would be to get access to something that you want. Three would be to exhibit behavior, to escape or avoid something you don't want to do. And the fourth would be a sensory-based reason for the behavior. So you might exhibit the behavior because it either physically feels good, or maybe it alleviates some anxiety or some pain. So we kind of boil it all down to those four main functions of behavior. And of course, when you're looking at the behaviors of an individual student, one or more of those functions can come into play. And once you do your due diligence to hypothesize which of those come into play, now you can really target your interventions to try to reduce any problem behaviors, we call them, and then work to increase the behaviors we'd like to see more of, where that will benefit that student, or replace any of the problem behaviors. From what some of the things that you're seeing here, it's all about positivity, rewarding positive behavior once we find the function and replace it with situations. I know from what you said, the gen ed classroom, I have personally witnessed a lot of students who might be overwhelmed by the large class size or the bells ringing. Those are the kids that would be maybe walking in the hallway when there is less noise, less students to try to adjust the environment. And it sounds like what you're doing and with South Bergen and Jointship Commission is you're easing them in into a point. I always look at it like I'm thinking of it, talking to you now, like kind of like you wouldn't go straight into the deep water. You might need swimmies first. The shallow water would become deeper waters when the students are prepared for that and you're giving them the tools to transition to adulthood. And I know how passionate you are about this. And I know you're also involved in something else and I'm not sure where you find time in the day. And okay, don't you say right back at you, Toby, yet. We'll get to that point in a minute. But you also run something called Best Behaved Kids, which is a behavioral consulting service for children and families. How long have you been doing that, Scott? Oh boy, that's been going on for a long time. I would say probably at this point, about 22 years, I've been doing the in-home work with Best Behaved Kids. I love that work. I mean, one of the greatest things about it is the perspective that I've gained over the years. You know, it's one thing to work within a school setting. And I've been in all different school settings from self-contained schools and self-contained special needs classrooms to typical public school settings. But the in-home work has just provided such a broad perspective, you know, to really come to understand the lives of these children and their families, the challenges and the joys that they experience on a daily basis has been eye-opening for me. So I love the work. You know, the niche that I've created with that work really is what I do is I go in, you know, I connect with a family, I go into the home, and we kind of assess any of the behaviors that are interfering with the child's functioning at home and in the local community. When you say behaviors interfering, it doesn't have to be something major, does it, right? It doesn't, it doesn't. It can be anything really that interferes with their independence. So for example, with some of the really young guys, you know, we might be working on toilet training at a young age, or we might be working on fostering greater independence, self-help, et cetera. There are definitely situations where some of the behaviors are more significant, some acting out behaviors and noncompliance and some forms of aggression. But really, and you know, I almost laughed before because you threw out one of my favorite words. Which one? Positivity. Thank you. And really, it's funny because when I first go in to work with a family in the home, one of the things we do is we take time to sit down together and I provide them a little bit of education about the principles of behavior analysis, et cetera. So you educate families, correct. It's critical. And in one of the slides that I always share with the families, that word is in bold print. You know, I say, listen, we need to understand starting out that a primary goal of us working together is to just foster greater positivity. And that kind of guides us through all of our work. I love that. I love that. But yeah, that in-home work, listen, I still do it. You know, I work during the day as a principal but I spend three to four evenings a week. Wait a second. Last time I heard there were only 24 hours in a day. How do you take care of that person in the mirror as well? I know myself, sometimes I run a little ragged and I need to remind myself. And this morning I'm admitting this to the audience and I'm proud of it. I found myself doing something mindful before I had to go to the orthopedist as I shared with you earlier with my broken finger coming home from a delayed flight last night from Cleveland. That's more than our listening audience probably needs to know, but that's only one third of my week. But before I did that, I watched Emily in Paris and that made me happy because I stepped away from it. I have a lot of reports I'm writing. I have a lot of presentations coming up next week. I'm traveling again, but I needed to step away and take care of that lady in the mirror and shut it down for a minute. So I'm not asking you if you watch Emily in Paris, but how does Scott Ross take care of himself when he's giving everyone else, your own company is called Best, right? Has the word best in it. You're giving the best services at the joint commission. What do you do that's best for that person in the mirror? Oh boy, that's a loaded question. I will admit I have watched some Emily in Paris and I've enjoyed it. Nice. But I'll say this about self-care and watching out for myself is it's a work in progress. I will say that thankfully in the last couple of years, I've come to the full realization that that needs to be more of a priority. You mentioned mindfulness and I give full credit to my beautiful wife for kind of leading me in that direction. She's a very, very mindful person. I would say that she has a pretty regular meditation practice that she participates in. And she, I'm a little thick headed. So she's kind of led me to the water. Oh, wait a minute. I think that our spouses need to have a conversation. You should have heard or been a fly in the room when Dr. Harold Tariff, and that's how we initially met through Council of Exceptional Children, when his wife Fran and my husband, Mark, we go out for dinner and that Fran and Mark would look at each other as Harold and I jabbered on and on about the kids, about this program, about that. And the two of them were like talking about, there's a nice chicken dish on the menu because that was being mindful. So maybe we need to have that conversation with your wife and my husband and the four of us could commiserate, but do continue. So you're grateful to your wife for that. I agree with her. That bounces help. She has tried to say, oh, you should kind of dabble with this meditation mindfulness. But probably more than that, she's been a great role model for me with that. And so truth be told, I've started to take steps to move in that direction. And I will say immediately recognize the value in that. But I have a long way to go. I really need to work on having a more consistent practice and definitely maintaining more of a focus on my own wellbeing. Probably the best way to start would be to be a little more consistent with my water drinking throughout the day. I tend to rely too much on coffee and adrenaline, not very healthy. But anyway, yeah, it's a great question and it's a work in progress for me, but I do realize that it's critical. Thank you for answering it because too many times, I've been working with special needs populations for decades also. And we're always with them a hundred percent, especially kids with emotional difference. It's such a tough, tough population to work with. And then when you come home to disconnect because they stay with you, they stay in your heart, they stay in your thoughts. You're always thinking of one more thing you could do to help them. And if you were a dedicated educator and the educators in the fields of special education that I have had the honor of working with, always give a thousand percent. My reason for asking that question and thank you for asking it is a reminder to our listening audience in Cartons Inclusion Conversations to make sure that they also carve time. And if you're not gonna do it because you need to take care of yourself, do it because if you don't take care of yourself, you won't be good for your family, you won't be good for your family at school. And we do become so close with the people we work with and the students become part of our everyday existence in terms of our thoughts. But at the same time, we need to just be aware of who we are, where we are, and sometimes you need to step away to be better. Right? Couldn't agree more. Okay, I'm glad we got that down pat. Now let's practice that as well. I know. So there's a lot of different principles of inclusion that I'm a firm believer in. And from what you said about the ABA, it connects to step-by-step, it connects to concentrate on the positive, it connects to communicate and collaborate. And it also connects to that word that you said about the data. Let the data drive the decisions, let the child's level of performance, the functional level of performance. Scott, you do a lot of work also with transition into the community, into jobs, for helping students with emotional difference to succeed with community integration, what they call CBI, community-based integration as well, instruction. Yeah, actually I'll say in the last few years, that's become very prominent in my work, both privately and in school. Interestingly, in my behavioral consulting work, a lot of the individuals and families that have approached me to work with them are teenagers. And a lot of individuals on the autism spectrum, many of them higher functioning. And so they're headed in that direction and approaching that crossroads of like, okay, school may be coming to an end and what are my next steps? So that's been really exciting to help on an individual level, to help some of these guys really pave their way. For some, obviously it's an easier process than others, but I've really enjoyed that. And then in school, because in the last few years I've been at the middle high school, we also do run an 18 to 21 year transition. So that's been much more prominent on my mind. And I very frequently tell people these days that when I first set foot in our high school campus as the principal, I felt this immediate urgency to like independence was the key concept and the key word. I've worked a lot over the years with early childhood and elementary, and you have an understanding that your goal, your overall goal is to help these children become as independent as possible, because ultimately that's gonna lead to breaking down barriers and accessing different environments in the world. But once you're exposed to that older group, it's like, oh my God, I gotta do quick work to help these guys get out there and be independent. So yeah, I really have felt that. I've been enjoying it in recent years. And I think this might be a good opportunity for me to talk a little bit specifically about how we move students in that direction of developing ability to access less restrictive settings. That would be very helpful, Scott, for our audience. Please do so. Yeah, so in our district, we have a relatively new district leader. Our superintendent began with us three, four years ago, and I would describe him really as visionary. He really takes a very bold approach with his overarching goal being helping students access less restrictive settings. When he came in, he led our district through the Middle States accreditation process, which led us to develop a really robust strategic plan for the next, well, at this stage of the game, we're in like year two, so for the next six years or so, we'll be working through this plan. And objective number one in our district strategic plan is ensuring that students have opportunities to learn in their individual least restrictive environments. So through that work, we established an in-district committee to work on that objective, and they came up with what we're calling the least restrictive continuum. And so what this is is we've kind of listed, visually it's a pyramid, and at the top of the pyramid is gonna be like your most restrictive settings, and at the bottom, it's gonna be your least restrictive. So at the top, it might be like if a student is placed in let's say a hospital setting or an out-of-home residential setting. And at the bottom, it's gonna be a general education full inclusion setting as far as the least restrictive. Our district being public school, joint your commissions or public school, but we are separate settings. So we fall kind of in the middle, maybe towards the higher top end of the pyramid, we would be considered a public special education school. So our committee developed this document that every year when a student has their annual review IEP meeting, this document has now become part of that meeting. And it's discussed between the school staff, the child study team case manager, and the family. And what we do is we identify where are they on that spectrum, that LRE spectrum. And what's included on the document are things such as, well, what school placement are they in? Are they in one of our self-contained buildings? Have they shifted to the shared time model where they go back to district? Or are they in one of our pod settings where they're in a regular, typical public school, but in a separate class? Then we also look at the student to staff ratios, because we know some students come to us and within their IEP, it calls for a one-to-one paraprofessional to be dedicated to them. Well, if we're moving in a direction where they can now function in a two-to-one setting or one staff to every three students, well, clearly they're progressing as far as LRE. And then we look at services that are provided to them, like for example, related services. Are they being done as a push-in or can the student now come out of the classroom to participate? Can the student participate in a small group rather than just individually? Because that might signify progress with LRE. And then you had asked before about CBI, community-based instruction. And that's a huge indicator to us as to whether or not a student is accessing less restrictive settings. So like under our CBI continuum, most restrictive would be a student who's not accessing the community at all. An example of that might be because whenever they go out, they exhibit some very significant behaviors that might prohibit them from successfully assimilating. But then at the less restrictive end of that spectrum with community access would be they're accessing the community on a regular basis. They can access different settings in the community. Maybe they're old enough to be working in the community. And maybe they can even travel to the job, right? Travel training is huge. Can they travel independently to the job? So this document has really been helpful. And I mean, listen, I'm not a worldly travel per se, but I'm not aware really of any other districts using something like this. And what it does is it really keeps us in tune with how each individual student is doing in regards to accessing those less restrictive settings. Yeah, and from what you're seeing, and what I see is that your district has done so much with that planning and prep and the front loading. And it just doesn't happen. You're not putting them in a setting without seeing, is this the appropriate setting for this student based on his or her functional level of academic and functional performance, their class, you know, present level. And not only their present level from what you're sharing, your vision for this student, the family's vision for this student, and maybe they're not there yet, but how will we, we, we, we get them there? And, you know, that seems to be a very, very big part of what you were describing there when you were talking about SBJC's abbreviation for South Bergen Jointed Commissions, LRE continuum. You know- Yeah, and you know, one other interesting comment, you kind of just touched on this, and going back to the theme of collaboration. Because these conversations happen at the IEP meetings and with the families, you know, it's interesting because we've identified that sometimes the things that interfere with a student accessing their less restrictive environment are not necessarily related to student ability. Sometimes it's related to the family's hesitancy or their worry that it might be too much for their child or their young adult. By coming together and talking about it as a group, number one, we might be kind of cued to whether or not that is one of the challenges. And number two, now it provides us an opportunity to have ongoing communication with that family to promote the idea that, no, you know, we think your young adult is incredibly capable and we want to give them these opportunities and help you understand that they can really, really rise to this occasion. So it's been very interesting. I love this. I'm going to sum it up that that's respect. You're respecting the family. The family is respecting you as a professional. And most of both the family and the professionals are respecting the level of the student and together they collaborate and you're facilitating that environment in both your public and private endeavors with students with special needs. And your big thing is about how are we getting them back to the community? What's the criteria for that? How is that going to happen? You know? Yeah. So it's exciting stuff. And you know, you're right. It's to everybody's benefit for us to plan and be proactive. You know, and I said earlier, we have a ways to go with this, I think. There are still- Hey, Rome wasn't built in a day either and we want to do it correctly so that the structures are standing. Well, thank you. You make me feel better. But you know, we have recognized that there's still work to do in regards to trying to better pinpoint, you know, when a student is ready for, to be pushed, let's say, to access some of these less restrictive settings. But the thing is, and don't, you know, say that there has to be that magic formula because we know there isn't because that's the I in the IEP. You know, it might be right for this student at this time and this student at that time, or let's plan and do a step-by-step so he or she is ready to access all of the benefits of the community has to offer and give the community service too. It's not just, you know, the community servicing the student, but the student functionally performing within the community at a meaningful position, whatever, you know, post-secondary option he or she chooses. But you're making them available to the students and their families. And that's beautiful. Thank you. And thank you for your passion and your desire to do that. But you didn't know this. You were now made a new role. You have a new job. You ready for it? Oh, great. Just what I need. I know. I'm putting more on your- I'm ready. I'm ready. You ready? I know you are. We've known each other. I don't know how long have we known each other? A couple of decades. And you're drinking water and I love that. Thank you. See, you're already practicing it. I'm working on it. And I have a sore throat. So cheers with my honey and the tea, right? We're quite a pair. But guess what? You are now Emperor Rawson. You are Emperor of Inclusion. You are in charge of inclusion for the country, maybe even globally. And then what things? Okay, you didn't know this. Like you didn't have enough to do. So as the Inclusion Emperor, what would be some recommendations or maybe your first course of action that you would do? Oh, wow. Yes, you didn't know this, right? Yeah, that's a big responsibility. Okay, so as the newly crowned Emperor. When we meet, I'll share that little crown with you. Okay, great. So what are some of the things I think I should do initially is the question? Yeah, what do you think if someone as such as with such experiences yourself was the Emperor of Inclusion, what do you think we could do to make it work better? Well, I'm gonna go back to the collaboration word, right? So we have to promote a collaborative approach. And frankly, through my entire career, I found that to be the secret to all successful decision-making on behalf of any of the children and the young adults that we work with. So the collaboration is critical, planning, being proactive. There's a real quick story that I'll share related to that. So I talked about our pod settings that are in public schools in the area. And at one point, our entire ERI or Behavior Disabilities Program, we were given an opportunity to move that entire program into one of the local public school districts. And I was so excited for it because I said, now we have an opportunity for every one of these kids to be in the typical public school setting and to have mainstream and inclusive experiences. We were there for two years. And unfortunately, by the middle of year two, the conversation started about us having to leave. And that's because I think we didn't do enough proactive work and planning in regards to making sure that we set things up in a way that we're gonna be supportive to our students with emotional regulation impairments, but also supportive and in educating all the other students and staff in the school building. Thank you, yes. So the proactive- That is huge for inclusion. Yes, and that was a huge lesson for me. I kind of knew it going in, but it affirmed for me that that was a critical missing piece with that endeavor. And I think that ties together, the proactive piece and the planning piece with the collaboration piece, because had we all come together as the larger school community, I think it could have worked out. But for some of our students and for some of the students that that was their home school and their home district, it was really quite the challenge. And I'm sure that even though they didn't stay the full time, benefits were derived, but you're putting very high standards as well. And you looked at the student's behavior and also the behavior of quote unquote, the Gen Ed, because inclusion can exist without having both. That makes sense, Scott, you know, both perspectives. Yeah, absolutely. Right, that's such a great story to share with our audience to get them moving forward. And will you invite me to your coronation for the Inclusion Emperor? Absolutely, well, you named me as Emperor, so you have to be there. Okay, good point, good point. You know, if I, on the note of the Emperor, if I had to throw in a third, let's say priority initiative, it would be to promote the idea that we really have to open our ears and our hearts and our minds to what the families have to offer about their child. And, you know, one quick example. So you made this point, because I said it's important to plan and prepare, and you said, well, we can't always essentially plan and prepare for everything. And one of the greatest lessons I learned in regards to less restrictive settings was I had a student in my self-contained ERI program, and he was exhibiting some pretty challenging behaviors that in my mind really, at that point in time, would preclude him from participating in a general education environment. And so we were in an IEP meeting, and the family, to my surprise, and I communicated with the family often and had a great working relationship with them, they came in really pushing for this young man to leave our school and to go back to his home school in a general ed setting. And ultimately, we all agreed or agreed to disagree that that would happen. And by all accounts, that young man went back to his home district and flourished. He did incredibly well. And it was such a great lesson for me. And I never took a firm stance with families to say yes or no. And I always felt that I kinda knew enough that this is your child and I'm gonna defer to you. But at that time, I really felt strongly it wasn't gonna work, and it worked beautifully. And from then on, I've said I'm gonna be open to anything. I really am, and as long as we can agree. So when we talk about that the key stakeholders a lot of times are gonna be the school where the student is, the home district and the child study team and the family. If we can come together and communicate and agree, even if reluctantly sometimes, then let's go for it. Let's move ahead. So it was an interesting experience. I keep the lines of communication always open. Keep an open mind. And I think what you also said, it's a lot of, from perspectives, it's probably a lot of non-judgmental. No one judges the child as this is all you're capable of. No one says the families are not in tune with their own child. And the family doesn't say that the professionals don't want what's best as well. And we need to look at the data and the desires. Maybe those two need to marry and keep the child in the forefront. All of that sounds like amazing. And your contribution to the field is special education and education. I think will help our listeners as they move forward and maybe they're on the job, maybe they're thinking of being on the job and they wanna have a conversation and hearing from a veteran and a professional such as yourself who has such vast experience in the field. And I think something else besides collaboration, I think you have this, it's called compassion. Compassion for families, for the students. And we spoke about we're gonna have more compassion for nuclear families as well and how we can all go together personally, professionally to thrive in a more inclusive society. So Scott Ross, if you have anything else you'd like to contribute or any closing remarks you'd like to say to Carton's Inclusion Conversation audience? Well, first of all, a real heartfelt thank you. It's been a pleasure to be here and to talk with you. And thank you for that last descriptor, that word compassion. Because to me, that's an ultimate compliment, especially from you to me. But I've always believed if you don't have that or if you lose that, it's time for you to check out of this field. Really, it's about having compassion and it's about also being able to hold the bar high for all of the youth that we work with and having those expectations that they can succeed in all different environments and that they can ultimately be independent, well-functioning, contributing members of society. So this has been great and I thank you so much for the opportunity. I thank you for all your expertise and you mentioned succeed. Not only are they gonna succeed, Scott, they're gonna flourish under your auspices. So, and I'm sure they have. And I know if you feel any way that I do, when I get contact from a former student, from a former teacher, a coach or someone, it just makes us smile so much to know that we've touched hearts, minds and lives in such a positive way. And that's what we're about. So Scott Ross, thank you so much for being here and speaking with us. The best behaved kids are that way because they have someone who's leading them in that direction. Scott Ross, thank you so much for all your contribution to the field. He can feel the stares and hear the words unspoken. Not so unaware of a world that thinks he's broken and who never even knew. The kid with the different point of view. No, they never really knew. The kid with the different point of view. Copyright MMXXIII Karten's Inclusive Conversations. Thank you for listening. Check out other episodes on all major platforms.