KICS2E10 "From Special Education Teacher to Administrator: A Journey of Inclusion" Featuring Mike Reinknecht

The conversation between Toby and Mike Reinknecht centers on themes of inclusive education, diverse career paths, and the importance of professional development in the field of education. Mike shares his journey from special education teacher to administrator, drawing parallels between his experiences in education and nursing, emphasizing the need for triage and prioritization in addressing student needs. They discuss the philosophy of inclusion, advocating for keeping students in general education settings with appropriate supports. The conversation also touches on cultural awareness, respect, and collaboration among educators, highlighting the impact of teachers as champions and the foundation of society. Overall, they underscore the significance of continuous learning and support in fostering inclusive practices and meeting the diverse needs of students.

Links from the podcast:
TED Talk by Rita Pearson “Everone Needs a Champion

#TobyKarten #MikeReinhecht #Karten’sInclusionConversations #KIC #Inclusion #InclusiveEducation #SpecialEducation #EducationLeadership #TeacherAppreciation #ProfessionalDevelopment #InclusionMatters #DiverseCareers #CulturalAwareness #SupportingStudents #EmpoweringTeachers

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

Transcript

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Hi everybody, welcome to Kick Cartons Inclusion Conversations, and I'm honored to reconnect with someone that I work with for several years back in the day, Mike Reinach, and he's currently the Director of Special Services of Special Education at West Morris Regional High School District, and Mike has led several different roles in his field of special and general education, and when I first met Mike, he shared with me that he worked in several areas, including, Mike, correct me if I'm wrong, you started out as a paraprofessional, is that correct? No, I started out as a special ed teacher, and then I went to school for nursing, I did ICU nursing for a couple years, then came back to teaching, and then I crossed over to the dark side of administration. Okay, so it's a little bit of a circuitous route that you had here, and I remember a quote, I remember brilliant things from people in the field, and one of them was from you, when you said that it's kind of like you compared it to the nursing, that it was kind of like triage. Everything is triage, everything is triage. Right, and you want to elaborate on that a little bit, Mike? Yeah, sure, so whether you're a veteran administrator or a brand new administrator, you have to learn, you have to adapt pretty quickly to what's important, what's urgent, what's emergent, and what can't wait. So you know, student safety, certainly, you know, or you know, school safety, that's emergent. A screaming parent on the phone that's upset about something, that's something that might be more urgent, but it's certainly not emergent. Having worked in ICU, I say all the time, if it's not affecting your breathing, it's not that important. Everything is triage, like every day is triage. I come in to work every day with my plan of what I'm supposed to be getting done during the day, and then I walk into whatever I walk into, and then I have to quickly triage, like the hottest fire gets the hose. Yeah, and I think that you'll agree with this statement that you have a philosophy that you want safety for your students, but you also want your students to be smiling when they're learning and to feel confident and to grow up, especially in the upper elementary and the secondary level, independence with our co-regulation. And you are a strong proponent, I know, about giving students what they need, and you also have many roles aside from your role as the special ed director. You also are 504 coordinator, you're a leader to leader, you work with several universities here in New Jersey, including Kean, Centenary, Montclair. You have a wealth of experience, and you believe in doing what students need. You have a couple of questions that you put out there, and you flip the question to something like, why would a student not be a candidate for inclusive education, and what would be the reasoning? Yeah, when I was an adjunct professor at William Patterson, and I used to hear about self-contained kindergarten, how disabled does a kid need to be that they have to be segregated at age five from their typical peers? Now that's like reality is reality. There may come a point in time where the disability is such that the student may require a different setting than general education, but why not keep kids in the general ed setting for as long as we can, give them as many supports as we can. Peer modeling is so important in terms of behavior, in terms of normal development, in terms of learning. I saw it for myself when I was a special education teacher. I taught at the elementary level, and I had a self-contained LLD class, fifth grade, fourth and fifth grade. No, it was fifth grade at this particular group. And I had six or seven kids at that point, and they were self-contained. And I worked with a great, great woman, Rosemary Bell, who has since passed. This was back probably in 2005, when while the school district that I worked for allowed me to pilot inclusion. Yes. 2005, you were piloting. I got to pilot inclusion, yes. The first special ed teacher in the district, yes. So anyway, I worked with the teachers, with the parents. We wrote the, in the case managers, we wrote the IEPs in such a way that the students were going to be fully included during the entire day. And I would be in the classroom with them. It was the most wonderful experience ever. I was a different teacher, not necessarily better, but different, and then I'd say probably better teacher too. The kids learned more and at a faster pace, their behavior was more typical, you know, as we say, you know, less special ed-y. All of neuro spaghetti, right? Yeah. Mm-hmm. It was the most beneficial experience ever. I know I couldn't agree with you more. I started my career as well. And in a place called Brooklyn, if you hear an accent there, Brooklyn, yeah, the Brooklyn girl here, I don't do that third street, right? But these were kids that the New York City public schools said don't belong in the regular education system, regular, I-D-E-A uses the word regular, but I consider it to be general education. Like you said, side by side, because it kind of infers that special ed is irregular and you use such a, some, some soap, such good words, such as the word support is that students cannot function in a classroom without the support because that in a way I think goes back to the answer. What would be disabling for a kindergarten student if they were in that inclusion class and not given the supports that he or she needs to be successful? And that goes, I believe, Mike, and I think you'll agree under that umbrella called proactive. Correct. Correct. Correct. So again, going back to the medical model where everything is triage, when you, your discharge planning starts the minute you get admitted to the emergency room. So the emergency room is the preschool. And so you should, we should be planning for post-secondary life from the time that the kid gets into preschool. That is so funny. You said that because the universe is spinning the way it should, because I just had another podcast with someone and we strictly spoke about preschool and what we consider to be readiness skills. And basically the summation of that, and you can listen to that broadcast as well, but the summation of that was the fact that students are getting the support that they need. And it's not strictly academic supports. It has to do with how they feel about themselves. When I, when I taught self-contained back in New York and in New Jersey, as well as co-teaching inclusion, mainstreaming, what we called it through the years, it was always how the kids felt about themselves. Did they see other kids looking at them when they were pulled out of the classroom or when they weren't with their friends and that's so huge. It's the other stuff, and I think you're really good at that other stuff and thinking about what students need. And it brings back that question since the Supreme Court ruled separate but equal isn't, why is it now? New Jersey? I don't know. I don't have an answer. It defies logic. It defies logic. The first placement that a child should be in is the gen ed classroom and then you have to see... Every support. Right. So what reasons why I think fall on everyone's shoulders in terms of family communications, students, metacognition, but also I think us as professionals, Mike, and getting your role as a director, getting teachers to understand that sometimes it's a process and it's co-regulation and what the student looks like on day one of the inclusion classroom is not always going to be the same a month later, three months later at the end of the school year, because we plan for their success. Correct? Correct. And a couple of things that you just mentioned triggered a couple of thoughts. Number one, preschool parents. I think in my experience have always been the most challenging to deal with because first of all, it's their first opportunity for many of them to interact with the public education system. Number two, their perfect baby may have disabilities and may have special needs. And so it's really important for teachers and administrators to understand human development. It's a grief cycle. You know, you're grieving the child that you think you had for, and come to a place of acceptance of what you actually have and what are we going to do with, how do we maximize the skills that that child has? So that's number one. Number two, when I was an inclusion teacher at grade five, I had a young lady in my class who had mosaic down syndrome and she had a one-on-one aid. She had the same exact curriculum as everybody else in the classroom. It was modified to her ability level. It's really, really important. And it's really not all that hard to meet kids at their level where wherever they are, you meet them at that level and then you bring them up like you do with that every other kid. I love that. And the process for making that happen, a lot of teachers get overwhelmed when they focus on the content exclusively without taking it apart and doing a discrete task analysis. So maybe the child isn't at mastery, but what steps are needed to get the student to mastery? What could we do? Yeah. And I think also that, and that's not just on teachers, I think a large part of that responsibility falls on the shoulders of administration because teachers don't want to get in trouble. They want to do what they're supposed to be doing. And so they need the permission to be professionals and do what's good for kids. Okay. So if it's not in a kid's five, if the kid doesn't have a 504 or an IEP or an iron arrest plan, but you need to like read and repeat instructions or have them go back and correct mistakes or whatever, it's just good teaching. Just do it. It's fine. But teachers, they're always afraid that they're going to get in trouble because it's not written down somewhere. Yeah. So teachers are rule followers, you know, and we want to make sure, and we have things called evaluations and there's a lot of stress in the education field for administrators, for teachers, for students, for families, and a lot of anxiety, like you said about, I have to dot my I's and cross my T's or bing, bing, bing. And if a student is not learning, is the teacher held responsible or is the teacher having data that says, here's what we did. And it's a process. And you know, on my website, I like sunflowers because we grow, we propagate growth, but also butterflies. I have a blog butterflies because students come in stages. They don't, they don't start out as butterflies, but in preschool they might be little caterpillars and we have to give them the experiences, whether it's related service providers, such as a speech and language occupational therapy, but we give the services with the belief that the students will succeed. But sometimes I think, like you said, a lot of teachers want to see that progress and it's not on the calendar in the lesson planning unit and it won't be right. Right. And it's okay. Like you don't have to stick to the black and white. Exactly. I know our students, a lot of our students, and I think what you mentioned too, is that, you know, they're just good teaching practices and some of, some of my inclusion principles I have on my website, like are a step by step. And I just want to share a wonderful story I remember, cause I remember the good stuff in the field and my contacts with professionals. And I watched you with a student that was going on a job interview and he was going to be, it was like community-based instruction he was going for and he had a tie, a tie, and you sat with him and we played a video and it was a step by step, stop the video, play it. And it was something called co-regulation before the student was able to do it himself. And you provided visual supports. You provided the collaboration of a caring adult and it was the pacing as well. Right. You know, I know I'm just talking about tying a tie, but I think that refers to identifying V-deshi syllables or identifying, you know, the, the theme of, of a novel. You know, I think that a lot of what teachers are looking at in terms of success, am I right or wrong, might be redefined by making it an individualized progress for this student. Right. Exactly. And then there are other things that are not silly. You know, a student that's going out for like pre-vocational, you know, training or going out for their first job. A firm handshake is important and it's something that has to be explicitly taught. No, no, no. Squeeze my hand when you shake my hand and you do that anytime that you meet somebody. You're not trying to crush their hand, but it has to be firm. You know, looking in the eyes, that might be quite a practice. Yep. That's right. I think that this awareness is that yes, they're making progress, but it's not at the point that or as quickly as we'd like, you know, I'll compare it to, I want to lose five pounds this week. Right. I was good yesterday. I didn't, I lose the weight, you know, it's especially metabolism at certain ages it changes, but there are other factors. I don't mean to oversimplify, but I think we need to embrace as a profession, Mike, if you could agree with me or not and say how it is with your staff, like some of the evidence-based practices, like differentiated instruction, giving students different ways to show what they know, whether it's creating a song on meiosis or mitosis, or maybe, you know, creating a poem if we like literature or, or a dance if we like movement, is it okay for students to do things in different ways to, to absorb the knowledge and to demonstrate their knowledge? What are your thoughts on that with staff and getting them to buy in? Well, first of all, learning is not linear. It's kind of like growth. When your kids were, when your son was young, you like, you would put them to bed at night and in the morning he wakes up and you're like, Oh my God, you look taller. You look like you grew overnight and he did because they do it because growth is not linear either. It's, it's, it's sporadic. It's inspired and learning is very much the same way. I am very fortunate. I love, love, love the district that I work in. This is my seventh year here. This is the first time West Morris regional high school, West Morris regional high school district. It is a fantastic district. It's the first time that I've had tenure as an administrator since 2011, because I've moved around to a couple of different districts by choice. I'm going to hopefully please God retire from here. I have really, really dedicated teachers who they do whatever kids need. If they need to read something aloud, if there are presentations and kids have anxiety about, you know, like social phobias or whatever, then they can do it privately. They can have it recorded. Like our teachers do that all the time. I can tell you, I could probably count on one hand in seven years, the number of phone calls or emails that I've gotten from parents stating that their child's IEP or 504 accommodations slash modifications have not been followed. And that is in contrast in two high schools. Wow. Wow. And that's, that's not something I think I would hear echoed by many high school administrators. We have fabulous teachers, fabulous child study team members. The administration is philosophically aligned, which is also very helpful. And our school counselors are fantastic too. So our kids are really well supported. I think with that support, there's another ingredient in play here, and that's called planning and collaboration. And it takes, we've said this several times, it does take a whole village to make something happen in a positive direction. And I don't have to agree with you as a teacher, if I'm working, let's say with a co-teacher, but we have to agree to disagree and agree that we both are going to chisel the lesson and make it differentiated. So it reaches this child and that doesn't mean making 25 different lessons for 25 students. Yeah. And my, my favorite and least favorite word at the F word fair. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's something with you. You know why? It's not fair. If this, like, I never hear that from my teachers here. It's not fair if I do this for him, but I don't do it for the rest of the kids. Okay. So then if it's an option, make it an option for everybody. It's universal design. Oh, so would that be fair? Yes. That would be fair. Yeah. So God forbid they have choice in demonstrating how they know what they know. You know, it's so funny when in some of my presentations, I'll show a slide and say, can you define fair? And people will give the definitions, you know, getting what you need. And then I show a picture of a country fair and say, a fair is a place where you go on rides and eat cotton candy. And I show that to the students, if they say, he's getting that, she's getting that. Any questions about fair and, and so what they learn the meaning of multiple words, you know, word with multiple meanings, you know, too funny. So I know you work also at the college and university level and there there's different staff there. I've worked on the college and university level as well, online and in person. And we need good teachers in the field. We need good pre-service programs. I know my background, I told you I, I was born in Brooklyn, right. And it was actually undergraduate work at Brooklyn college and several semesters working in different settings from what they called at the time, I believe dating myself 600 schools that just house students with emotional difference, places comparable to developmental centers, which have since been closed down. I mean, it was the other side of that, that spectrum of the LRE, it was more restrictive environments. I found that awareness is essential and that we have to keep ourselves fresh on what's going on in the field to prepare our learners. We're, we're suffering a substitute crisis in education, getting qualified people to come into the field. And you know, I'm not demeaning other professions, but I love teaching and there's nothing more rewarding when a student connects with me on LinkedIn, you know, and that we've done what we need to do. Like a lot of the pre-service are not getting what they need. I remember even during the pandemic, I had a coach, a teacher who never stepped foot in the classroom because all of her student teaching the schools were closed during those that semesters where, where she would have had it, you know, but, but how do we as teachers who might be professors on the college level, how do we make certain that we are preparing our future teachers to handle some of the demands of general and special ed and just education in general? So I'm sure this is not going to be a popular answer. First of all, we need to get rid of the dinosaur professors at the university level that have not stepped foot in the classroom in 20 years and are not up to the educational practices that are current. And I've seen it for myself at one particular university that I worked in the department of special education for a long, long time. Every semester I would have to rewrite the syllabus because it just was completely incoherent and it made no sense whatsoever. One particular class which was a capstone class, the student had to write an IEP for a student with a specified disability, whatever, and they had not even been required to take their psych, psychological, educational, and psych and ed testing course yet at the graduate level. How do you write an IEP as a case manager if you have never seen a Woodcock-Johnson or any other kind of educational testing, let alone learn how to interpret it and understand it and the implications for teaching? Yeah, I quickly became, well, not quickly. It took a number of years, probably about 10 years, pretty much persona non grata because I kept on raising these issues to the department chair and just didn't want to hear it. That's something that we need to consider from preschool to college, graduate level. It just doesn't stop at one point of a child's education, nor does it stop at a professional's education. I work with a lot of school districts with PD, professional development, and the administration comes into mind saying, wait a minute, we need to know more about this. I'll give you an example. One thing is AI with differentiation. If it's used correctly, it's amazing to have the Lexile levels, different things, but if you don't know how to do it, you're not going to use it. That's right. I think that goes for professors that need maybe retraining, just like an accountant might have to take certain courses and perhaps together we could grow as a profession. I think what I love what you always do, Mike, is that thing called error analysis. You look at a situation and you say, okay, perhaps this part of it isn't the correct one that can move us forward, so let's tweak it, let's change it, and let's do that collaboratively. I see that as a way of moving the profession forward so that we have our pre-service teachers not only prepared, but passionate about teaching. That's something that I know you have a huge passion. You mentioned that word retirement, but we also spoke just a little bit about the fact that when you retire, you're going to still use your expertise to help in other ways and continuing with that. Do you want to talk about that, Mike, at all? You can't just retire and not use your knowledge. I think part of the reason, too, that we have such trouble finding such high-quality pre-service teachers is if you back up the bus a few years, like a dozen years or maybe 10 years or whatever, when they had to pass the practice for English and math and they had to get a certain score, they would have to take those remedial courses or whatever in college that were on credit bearing or whatever. I happened to be an adjunct professor at that period of time. The enrollment in the College of Education was cut in half, 50%, nearly 50% because they couldn't pass the practice, which begs the question, what are we doing at the high school level, middle school level, elementary level to prepare our kids to get there? So that's number one. Number two, I think society does not value education. They don't value educators. Educators are the enemy, and it's not that way in other countries. You look at Finland, you look at Sweden, you look at other countries overseas, you have teachers are revered. And I don't mean to like paint with a broad stroke of the brush because there are cultures within America that they do value teachers and they do value education. For example, I was fortunate to work in Montville for many years and we had a large Jewish community, we had a large Asian community, we had a large Indian community. They all valued education very, very highly, very highly. And so there's that part of it too. Yeah. And I think that you brought to mind something, the fact that it's not just educational, it's not just social, emotional, it's cultural. And a lot of times what we need more awareness of is whose culture. United States doesn't have a monopoly on culture either, and we need to respect. So sometimes if someone is not looking you in the eye and that's, or a family member is not asking questions, it's because of respect where we might think it's disrespect sometimes, you know. Or if a family member- But if it's culture, then it's disrespectful to make eye contact. Exactly. So, but if we don't know what we don't know, we can't move ahead. And I love the fact that you value the teaching profession and that education, and I do as well. And I firmly believe that teachers belong on a pedestal. We don't have halos on our head at every given moment, but we adjust our halos with the collaboration of the families, the students, and together we could all kind of figure out our next steps in a positive direction. And whatever direction you take in the field, Mike, I know that we'll be blessed to have your expertise and do you have any closing remarks for our audience? Because I might have a closing question if you care to answer it. Okay. Yeah, just a couple things. I actually last night had my incoming ninth grade special ed parent meeting for one of my two high schools. And the end of my presentation included a TED Talk by a woman named Rita Pearson. Every child, every kid deserves a hero. Unfortunately, she passed away shortly after she made the video. It is worth, it's maybe eight or nine minutes long, but it is absolutely worth the watch. I'm adding it to my watch list and we're going to put it on our list of any links to associate with the podcast. Every kid deserves a champion. So that's number one. Number two. And could that champion be someone they're looking in the mirror to? Well, I don't know about that, but. I do. They should feel good self-efficacy too. Yeah. I mean, there is no more important field than teaching. I mean, there, there are no other, there are no other professions that would exist were not for the efforts of good teachers. Pretty much says it all. We're the foundation of society. Mike, I'm going to close with that statement because I just beyond love that. And I thank you for your time. I thank you for your dedication. Thank you for the invite. It's nice to be reconnected again. I know. And that's our great way of saying we'll continue to collaborate. Yes, we will. Thank you, Mike Rennet. All right. Be well. 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 2024. Carton's Inclusive Conversations. Thank you for listening. Check out other episodes on all major platforms.