KIC S3E4 "Inclusive Education: Insights from a Superintendent" Featuring Dr. Christopher Kinney

In Toby’s conversation with Dr. Christopher Kinney, the discussion centers around the integration of special education strategies into general education, highlighting the importance of collaboration between general and special education teachers. Dr. Kinney emphasizes the value of learning from each other's expertise and the necessity for teachers to be adaptable and inquisitive. He shares his experiences of starting in special education without adequate preparation and underscores the importance of ongoing professional development and support for teachers. The conversation also touches on the significance of individualized education plans (IEPs) that are tailored to the specific needs of students, rather than being overly generalized. Dr. Kinney advocates for a balanced approach to providing support to students, ensuring they are empowered rather than overly dependent. The role of parents in the educational process and the need for their collaboration with teachers is also discussed. Finally, the conversation addresses the broader goal of preparing students for life beyond school, focusing on both academic and social-emotional skills.

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Transcript

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Welcome, everyone, to Karten's Inclusion Conversations. And I have the honor today of speaking with Dr. Christopher Kinney, who is currently the superintendent of Garwood Public School District in New Jersey. Our story kind of began, oh, gee, let's date ourselves, minimum of a decade ago, perhaps? Probably, yeah. Probably. Right? And you were then the director of special services at Cedar Grove Schools in New Jersey. And I just love that your expertise in special ed is being shared with the general education teachers, students, families, and special ed, so you're kind of melding the two. So welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having me. Thank you. My pleasure. Is there something you'd want listeners to know? Just a little bit about my background. I've been in education for over 25 years, started off as a special education teacher, was thrown in right away into a behavioral disabilities class my first year teaching with really no guidance, which was interesting. It was kind of like trial by fire, and then went on to do, you know, multiple different settings of inclusion, pull out resource room, various different subject areas, too. And, you know, that kind of led me to wanting to affect the education of more individuals, so therefore leading into administration. And that's kind of like the, always the path that I took as I progressed in my career is to try to positively affect more and more students in a different role. Yeah. And the one thing, you know, I meet a lot of people, and so do you. And you can always tell when someone has a passion for what they do. And that is so evidence in the planning of different things that you have set up for your staff. And when you said that, you kind of amused me because I've been in that situation, and I'm sure some of our listeners, too, kind of thrown into a situation without prep. How could we kind of try to change that maybe and make it more proactive, right? Well, I think one of the things that you have to understand is where that was was a bigger school district, you know, in that case. So I think it really depends on the support personnel that you do have in a school district that would bring on somebody. And the timing as well, I mean, you're getting hired in August for a position. It might not be, you know, the best timing for the administration to kind of catch up to speed as opposed to being hired in the spring when most people find those jobs and then they have the summer to prepare. So that was kind of where I was, where it was August, I got the job in a larger district where there really wasn't a, so to say, a setup for a special education teacher. There was a new teacher orientation, but not so much for special education. You really learn on the job in that case. And that's all I can say is don't be afraid to ask questions, refer to colleagues. There are a lot of people out there willing to help. So you know, for those that are just starting out in their careers, really the biggest takeaway as far as being a special education teacher is you don't know it all. You weren't taught everything in college. You learn on the job, but you also have to ask questions and find out more. Thank you. And that inquiry we say goes for kids with IEPs and it goes for the teachers who are teaching the kids with the IEPs, right? Right. Right. But you said something else was so important, that collaboration and knowing what you don't know and maybe that there's other ways to do things that warrant in your pre-service and thinking how maybe that person doesn't have all the answers and I'll have a conversation like we're having now and it'll take us someplace even better than where our starting point was. The experiences that I've had over, you know, the X amount of years of teaching as well as administrations, you'd be surprised how many general education teachers can teach you something about a special education strategy that they didn't even know they were doing. That really was a strategy for all students, not just general ed, but really very, very much benefit a special education student. So you're saying special ed isn't so special? I mean, you know, or teaching? Well, it's got to be that it's got to be that give and take, particularly in an inclusion setting. I've had experiences where I was the in the beginning of my career, the guide on the side, so to say, where I wasn't the content teacher. It was their classroom that you had somebody who was a veteran, say, math or science teacher that didn't feel that not that you weren't worthy, but you didn't have enough experience to teach a math or science. And to be quite honest, the content, you could make that case for. But being a teacher, you intrinsically have it. So it's just a matter of prepping for that lesson. That's all I would say is be prepared as a special education teacher to face those moments with those teachers that are going to question your abilities to do certain things in a content area. You have to then have that discussion, maybe work it out with them, allowing yourself to kind of work in to those lessons more and more. And don't be afraid to try to work into them. Some special ed teachers are very silent in their classrooms, from what I've seen over the years, not many, some of them. Others have that intrinsic inquisitiveness to know, you know, hey, if I don't know this, more than likely my special education student or for that matter, general education students sitting there probably doesn't know it. So let me ask, let me prompt, let me kind of direct the general ed teacher where they need to go. Maybe they don't see it. I think that that's such a great way of looking at it because when there were more people in the room, you get different perspectives. You have your eyes on not only the content, but this, I think the special educator brings to the mix. Not that the gen ed teacher doesn't as well, the perspective of a student who doesn't do it the same way. And not that, you know, I'm a firm believer and, and we just did a professional development on your campus, but I'm a firm believer. You don't take away or dilute the content. You just do it in a different way that they could respond to it. Right? Right. Right. Just the experiences of seeing different ways of teaching, whether it was through administratively observing somebody or being a special education teacher. In an inclusion class, there were a lot of times where there was that, that light bulb that went off that there were so many times where I've told teachers, I'm like, you have to share this with others, the way you do something, right? This is great. You have to share it. And sometimes they do. And sometimes they don't just because of who they are and that's fine, but you do make it a case to point out whether it's a behavior management system that they do, whether it's a small group of instruction, particularly it's the, the setup of a particular lesson of a classroom, like really knowing how to utilize your classroom space the right way. There are some teachers that are phenomenal in the layout of the way they mobilize the classroom when they need to. It allows them to do things where if you just had that straight row class, you weren't able to do certain things. So really it's going into observe and pointing out to people the great things that they're doing. It's a, it's a good perk to the job, so to say. It's a great perk. I'm not, I'm not putting down other professions, but there's nothing. We save electricity here. Oh, that's interesting. You have to move and get the wave motion, right? But you said some really great things here. And one of the things that I picked up on is strength paradigm, not only the strengths of the students, but the strengths of your staff and the feedback that you give them. And you know, how we give that feedback to students and maybe how we give as an administrator that feedback to staff who sometimes want to be able to, like you said, share the strategy with someone else. And sometimes they're at different levels of their own career and they're just not comfortable doing that. So with that part of it, it's kind of like, I always say, do the learner profile on the student, but maybe we have to do kind of like profiles on staff and capitalize on what they like, on what they're good at, at what makes them smile, right? The interesting conversations that I have after the evaluations in the post conferences, where I'm able to offer suggestions from a standpoint, not as an administrator, but a previous special education teacher, which I think is more a very valuable asset that I have with a teacher that may have a kid that is not classified, but maybe they're in the INRS MTSS or whatever they want to call it system, the tiered system of supports and sitting there and saying, listen, I've tried this. I've had a student like this and I've tried it this way, having those conversations. But sometimes you got to come across as, you know, I've been in your shoes and it's easier, I think, from a special ed standpoint to say, I was a special education teacher. I dealt with these types of kids as opposed to some other administrators, whether they came from just a set content approach and they were just an English teacher in a high school, they were just a whatever teacher, they don't have that wide lens that they could come and say to a teacher, I've been there, I've done that because they themselves have only been in one direction. I think that's a very valid point. And it's also having respect not only for your students, but for others and yourself as a learner and what you're saying. And you yourself have a vast amount of experience in the field of special education that I think that other teachers do respect that because they can embrace what you were doing. You know, and I feel the same way when I facilitate sessions. I say I facilitate, I coach, I don't supervise. I offer ideas that teachers, they're not my ideas, right? They have to be yours in your classroom, how you're using it, whether it's that thing called VAKT, visual auditory kinesthetic tactile, or like you said, the MTSS, which changes names, but the students don't change. The students need help on different levels of success. Yeah. Going in and doing like, what do you know? What do you want to know? What do you want? What did you learn? The KAWL chart. Yes. And making suggestions to a teacher. It's really about how they're going to embrace that and see how that fits. You're going to go into a post-observation conference and you're going to make suggestions and that teacher is going to feel it out. Maybe they'll try it and maybe it's just not for them and that's okay, but they have to figure out what works for them. They have to be comfortable in what their, the content and the instruction that they're putting out. Excuse me. Yeah. No. Agreed. Agreed. They grow too much jargon at teachers. They are not embracing a vast number of vegetable soup of initials that special ed has. However, they are a lot of them, evidence-based practices that are based on neuroscience and on how people learn and kids with, with poor working memories, you know, or executive function issues or ADHD, they're not feigning it. We can't just see, why don't you just organize yourself the right way already? I showed you yesterday how to do it. Why aren't you doing it today? That fidelity to a program and we need to think kind of package that better. What do you think, Chris? I think it really needs to start and I wish holistically the universities, the teacher training grounds can work with teachers a little bit more. I am a little bit removed from that aspect. So I don't know, you know, what type of training is done, but almost a, a simple mandate for all universities to do this for teachers. If that's even possible to make sure that they have a class of understanding differences and how to deal with that. Difference is the norm, you know. And you know, nowadays I want to mention the C word, but with that COVID impact, I think feel for a number of years, I think you're going to have more differences in abilities than you saw in many years past. Yeah. And the impact it has, and I kept hearing the gaps that students have, and it's not going to happen with that magic inclusion wand, but within a classroom learning side by side with peers in the same content, that grade level is important. You might not master 80% of it, but you're exposed to it and you can improve in percentage wise for a student who is constantly pulled out and saying, no, we don't have to teach this student how to do math word problems, but that's lethal in my mind is, is the exclusion. I think you mentioned something very important, and I've spoken to other people as well at the university level, and I taught at a few campuses here in New Jersey as well, and online courses and face-to-face and, and the students who are taking the education courses are hungry for what they don't know. And the exposure has to be realistic with that sense of it. I remember a couple of moons ago when I did my pre-service at a place in Brooklyn, if you hear any accent, right, there were five terms. We had to go to different settings. There were residential settings. There were students with emotional differences that you just explained that were all housed in one school, right? It was the kids that maybe the New York City board of ed said, no, they can't learn in the regular classroom, but, but we have something called life and, and that's the bigger picture of inclusion. It just doesn't occur on your school campus in Garwood, right? It encodes, you're, you're preparing them for successful post-secondary decisions, whether that's college or trade or meaningfully being independent, right? I think the hardest part about trying to get that fidelity of instruction, fidelity of programming is really making parents aware on their end as well about raising that bar, but being able to utilize the avenues of assistance as I would call them for that student. You could, you could take that one. We can take it, the pronoun is we. To have those conversations and let them know that little Johnny, he can do the particular level of instruction. However, he needs these types of avenues of assistance to get there, whether it's modifications, whether it's accommodations, whether it's a piece of technology, sometimes you'd be surprised just how little a student does need. And sometimes we have the tendency to overcompensate with avenues of assistance, which actually is a disservice to a student. There's many times I've had conversations with both teachers and parents talk about the disservice that we may be doing to students and not allowing them to utilize less avenues of assistance because they can do it with less. Because honestly, as we get out to that work field and that college or post-secondary environment, there may not be any evidence of assistance. And what you just said is crucial that we want to empower, not enable and help is sometimes better when you said that Goldilocks approach, not too much. We don't want to spoon feed and we want to teach them. That proverb goes about, I could give you a fish dinner, I could teach you how to fish. And that's the strategy that we want to be there. And you mentioned something else that's crucial. That collaboration just doesn't occur within the school setting, but so much more if it could be repeated and the routines and the expectations are embraced in the home environment. But because parents go through so much of a child with special needs in terms of emotions, in terms of differences and how other people view their child and how they view their child in terms of potential. And there's a wonderful thing out there. It was from maps from Canada where it spoke about what are your goals? What do you envision for your son or daughter or child within the next 10 years? And then kind of like UBD, understanding by design, we work backwards to kind of make that happen, but listening to each other and that respect and families are not opponents at any time with teachers. And if ever that situation happens, I would be the first and I think you are too to diffuse it. Would you agree with that? Definitely. I often have conversations with parents and I talk about the IEP process or the annual review process and development of this document that sometimes you have to look at and you would get an IEP that's very thick. And sometimes parents are like, oh, that's great. It's got a lot in it. And I'm like, no, that means that this is generalized. There's just stuff thrown in. It's really not an individualized, I'd rather have an IEP that's this thin and so defined and succinct to the students' needs, goals and objectives, even if it's just four to five pages as opposed to 30. Sometimes you find you got an IEP and it's just so thick and you look at these goals and objectives and they're just generalized. It doesn't dawn on parents. They think the more the better sometimes, but in certain cases, the less the better because it's more individualized in that case. Exactly. And the individual goals in a student's IEP, people have to realize that that's kind of what inclusion is about as well. It's not just the academic skills. It's social, emotional, behavioral, functional skills, following routines, being able to do transitions without meltdowns. This is progress for some students and being in an inclusion classroom offers opportunities to hear inquiry, which might not be present in others. We never want to frustrate. And I know that some teachers who are afraid that they're teaching and the students aren't getting every single iota of information. Well, do they need every single iota of information? These are questions that we need to collaboratively decide in our units of study, particularly in content areas. You have a middle school social studies class that's learning about the Roman aqueduct system. Is that truly the student's goal to learn and memorize how the Romans built the aqueduct system or is it just being able to understand the culture, the need and to dissect information, be able to utilize it in a different way? One of the times that's kind of lost in translation when it comes time for the special ed discussion, placement programming. And go back to your little aqueducts. What if they did a compare and contrast systems today compared to them and they're bringing history into their world? That's part of those inclusion principles that we talk about. How does it relate to their lives? I love and hate the question. Is this going to be on the test? Why do we need to know this? And my response, yes, it's on the test of life. And they look at me like, huh? But the same way that we want to advance levels, we want to advance attitudes. I just want to spend a little time on that if that's okay about positivity and attitudes and how sometimes in my opinion, I think, and research has supported that attitude is the biggest piece of the pie that might trip up inclusion. If a teacher says that child doesn't belong there, if the child says, I'm stupid, I'll never learn this. If a parent says the school's not doing enough or whose shoulders is this on? And that attitude can thwart it. Have you any recommendations maybe to our listeners how to promote a positive attitude toward inclusion? The best piece of advice or suggestion that I could give is truly accentuate the positive in every single case. There are times when you have to be upfront, frank, and honest with parents. It's probably in that annual review where you're reviewing the levels and periodically meeting with them. But the sense of positivity goes a long way in both the parental relationship with a teacher as well as that relationship with the student. So anytime there could be an accentuation of that positivity in a student's learning, there's those teachable moments that I consider a teachable moment as well. Like for a teacher almost, it's a teachable moment for a teacher. You have to understand, and that's something that you might've pointed out in an observation that you saw. Like, hey, it was great that you gave praise to a student. However, you kind of missed the mark on, you didn't see the other kid that was trying. And sometimes that needs to be pointed out. But realistically, it's that constant, you know, you go back to behavioral reinforcement. If you see something positive, it's got to be accentuated and recognized for it to continue. If not, it's just going to seem unimportant or almost negative. I couldn't agree with you more. What you, I would put under that umbrella of collaboration, relationships, and communication. And sometimes we have difficult conversations with families or with colleagues, but if our end goal is to advance each other in this process, it's okay. Nobody says going up that mountain, you're not going to need certain equipment. Everything we do. I love when I watch teachers who seamlessly, they spin challenges into solutions because of what you just said, their positivity, their attitude. They could see a good end result and then they figure out how to make that happen and who's going to be with them on that journey. And families need to come with us on that journey. You have many different things that you do. I looked on your website as superintendent. I love some of the things I saw on Garwood site, the coffee talks, the special ed meetings. You implemented a lot of new things in your short time at Garwood. It was something new. A lot of times people don't embrace new, whether it's a flat panel and new technology or new sounds that you mentioned, your innovation is allowing your district to go forward in a positive way together. I'm sure you might've received some pushback on a few things, right? Yeah. But you know what? That was expected and you have to know that going in and anytime changes, change is not easy for people. Agreed. Change is growth. I don't know. I love that. There's that syndrome. I think I did it in RPD. That's the way we always did it syndrome. The teacher who says, no, I've never done that. We do that, but we call it something different. That's my favorite. Ah, gotcha. Well, we call that progress and thank you so much, Dr. Kinney, for giving us your expertise and your passion and your background. You chose the right career and you're continuing with it. So I thank you. I value our collaboration. Definitely. And thank you for all that you do for our kids too, as well as, you know, enriching our teachers' lives. Thank you very much. You have a great rest of the day. Bye. Have a great day. Bye-bye. And he can feel the stairs and hear the words unspoken, not so unaware of a world that thinks he's broken and who never even knew a kid with a different point of view. No, they never really knew a kid with a different point of view. Copyright 2024, Karten's Inclusive Conversations. Thank you for listening. Check out other episodes on all major platforms.