OCALI’s Inspiring Change

We Know What Works: Jim Taylor on Learning Styles, Community, Football, and 45+ Years in the Field of Autism

• Simon Buehrer • Episode 30

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In this episode of Connecting the Dots from the Autism Center at OCALI, hosts Megan Trowbridge and Simon Buehrer sit down with long-time friend and autism expert Jim Taylor from Stirling, Scotland. With over 45 years of experience in the field of autism, Jim shares his insights on learning, reflection, and fostering community. A regular attendee of OCALICON since 2007, Jim explains how Columbus, Ohio, has become his second home—highlighting the importance of place in cultivating his professional growth and personal connections. Jim leaves listeners with the inspiring message that change happens when we reflect, engage, and rethink.

 Resources:

 OCALI | Podcast – Episode 30 “We KnowWhat Works” 

A Conversation with Jim Taylor 

AI-GENERATED MALE VOICE: Hey everyone, and welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today, we're going to be tackling a topic that's so important for creating a world where everyone feels like they belong. That's the idea of building community, and we're looking at it through a unique lens today, right? 

AI-GENERATED FEMALE VOICE: We are. 

AI-GENERATED MALE VOICE: This idea of a simple equation, A + B = C. 

AI-GENERATED FEMALE VOICE: It's interesting how something that sounds like it belongs on an elementary school chalkboard can actually reveal so much about building these inclusive communities. 

AI-GENERATED MALE VOICE: Absolutely. That's what we're diving into today. What is the story behind A + B = C? 

AI-GENERATED FEMALE VOICE: When we break it down, it really boils down to two fundamental elements, and that's access and belonging. 

SIMON BUEHRER: Okay, wait a minute! Timeout. 

MEGAN TROWBRIDGE: Hey, Simon. 

SIMON BUEHRER: Hey, Megan, what's going on here? I thought you and I were hosting this podcast episode. Who are these people? 

MEGAN TROWBRIDGE: I have no idea who they are. [LAUGHTER] This was created through NotebookLM, and it's an AI tool through Google for virtual note taking. You can give NotebookLM your notes. In my case, I just copied a bunch of stu from the OCALI website, literally just copy and pasted it, and then it finds relevant information, and you can convert it into a podcast. What was really interesting was our two keynotes from OCALICON this year were all about how to incorporate AI into education. 

SIMON BUEHRER: You just typed something in and then it spit out, like, this AI Megan and this AI Simon? 

MEGAN TROWBRIDGE: Yep. Yep. I was baled. 

SIMON BUEHRER: What are we even doing here? I guess we're done. We don't need to host this.

MEGAN TROWBRIDGE: No, we do not. [LAUGHTER] 

SIMON BUEHRER: Well, it was good talking to you. 

MEGAN TROWBRIDGE: Don't go yet! Don't go yet. I think it was a really fun experiment. But like anything with AI, you have to take it with a grain of salt. They couldn't even get our name right for OCALI. 

AI-GENERATED FEMALE VOICE: Now, it's interesting because we have an organization called Oh-She-a-Lie ... 

SIMON BUEHRER: O-C-L-I. Yep. You're right. AI always has a problem with “OCALI.”We do a lot of auto-generated captions. Almost always, it's Oak Alley, O-A-K-A-L-L-E-Y. We usually have to go in and correct those transcripts when we do that. So ... AI ... pretty good, but it misses a lot of things. 

MEGAN TROWBRIDGE: Yeah, I would agree. Just for kicks, we thought we'd give it one more shot with the introduction of this episode's guest. 

AI-GENERATED MALE VOICE: Hey, everyone. Welcome back. We're diving into the life and work of JimTaylor today. 

AI-GENERATED FEMALE VOICE: All right. Sounds good. 

AI-GENERATED MALE VOICE: Should be pretty fascinating, especially given the stu we found in an excerpt from his biography. 

AI-GENERATED FEMALE VOICE: I know. It's amazing, right? Just to kick things o, thinking about how his journey began, we're talking 1978, way back when, volunteering at a school for autistic students. Most people weren't even really talking about autism back then, and he's already dedicating his time, over 40 years in the field now. That's dedication. 

AI-GENERATED MALE VOICE: That is so wild. That experience, just starting there has to have shaped everything, right? 

AI-GENERATED FEMALE VOICE: Absolutely. You can see that in how his career developed, too. 

AI-GENERATED MALE VOICE: Totally. He started as a teacher, then becomes head, set all the way up to Director of Education ... 

SIMON BUEHRER: Okay, all right, all right. Thank you, AI. But I think we're going to jump back in here. Megan, I think you and I should take over for the rest of this episode. 

MEGAN TROWBRIDGE: I agree.

SIMON BUEHRER: That sounds good.We did recently sit down with our good friend Jim Taylor. 

You want to get started? 

JIM TAYLOR: Yes. 

SIMON BUEHRER: Wonderful. Thanks for being here. 

JIM TAYLOR: It'smy pleasure. 

SIMON BUEHRER: I can tell fromthe sound of your voice, you're not fromaround here. 

JIM TAYLOR: I'm not from around here. I'm from downtown Columbus. 

[LAUGHTER] 

SIMON BUEHRER: He did come right up ... at least for the next few days or so. 

JIM TAYLOR: No, I'm from Glasgow in Scotland. Finest city in the universe. 

SIMON BUEHRER: It's the finest city …? 

JIM TAYLOR: The finest city in the universe. 

SIMON BUEHRER: I've never been there. Sell me on it. 

JIM TAYLOR: Tell you about Glasgow. Glasgow did a very clever thing historically. They invented something called Edinburgh. Which filtered all the tourists into Edinburgh and left us alone … 

SIMON BUEHRER: Jim Taylor, he has a lot of experience in the field of autism, and he has either attended or presented at our annual conference going back to 2007. The past two years, he has come back to Columbus to join us for a virtual conference. 

Let's start there, why are you here this week? 

JIM TAYLOR: Why am I here this week? I was approached … I was doing World Autism Conference in South Africa in 2006. 

SIMON BUEHRER: In 2006? 

JIM TAYLOR: 2006. 

SIMON BUEHRER: Almost 20 years ago.

JIM TAYLOR: Almost 20 years ago. I was approached by a very pleasant young woman called Jill Hudson, who said, “That was lovely, would you like to do that in America next year?” I thought she was a scam artist. 

So I said, “Yes, of course, I'll come to America.” We came out in 2007. At that point, I had been a bit frustrated with large conferences. Partly to do with the language across Europe and partly to do with the level of thinking. 

When I came to OCALI, I was blown away by not just the thinking, but how it was presented. I felt that I learned a great deal from that. 

SIMON BUEHRER: You came to our very first conference in 2007. 

JIM TAYLOR: I decided then to return. Apart from missing a couple of years 2011 and '12, I think, I've been at every one. 

The question was, why am I here? When OCALI went online ... 

SIMON BUEHRER: 2020 we went online. 

JIM TAYLOR: When was it, sorry? 

SIMON BUEHRER: 2020. Pandemic. 

JIM TAYLOR: I changed my time zone back home in Glasgow, and that worked really well. Apart from, no one told the sun that it had to rise and fall. 

SIMON BUEHRER: Wait, you have sun? 

JIM TAYLOR: I enjoyed that. In 2021, I found myself programming other things, so I wasn't getting as much out of it. In 2022, I found myself doing a full day's work and then sitting through the conference. I realized that, frommy style of learning, being somewhere, and OCALI was always where I came to learn and think and interact and communicate with no outside interferences. I decided last year that I made the incredible decision just to travel to a conference that didn't exist. 

[LAUGHTER] 

SIMON BUEHRER: A virtual conference, yes. 

JIM TAYLOR: You people were very kind to me. None of you laughed—in front of me. But I found last year that I was reading more, I was watching more, I was thinking more, I was talking to people, and OCALI had always been for me the end of a period, and it gave me new thinking to go on to the next year.

There's usually an OCALI moment when I think, oh, I'll do a presentation on that next year. I think it's just about learning style. 

MEGAN TROWBRIDGE: Jim Taylor is talking about learning styles, and it's something we talk a lot about here at OCALI. Within our center, we talk about learning styles all the time. We do so much professional development and training that we are just really hyper focused on it. What are those best strategies and practices for adult learners? 

For Jim, he understands that he learns best when he is in this environment. When he is in Columbus, for OCALICON, again, he's from Scotland. He comes to Columbus for OCALICON. 

SIMON BUEHRER: We don't pay him for this. This is all out of pocket. He's doing this on his own. 

MEGAN TROWBRIDGE: It's a virtual conference, and you can literally attend and participate anywhere in the world, and people do. But he is more engaged in the conference. He's more reflective, and he chooses to be in Columbus, again, from Scotland. 

SIMON BUEHRER: It's a really interesting story. I should take a step back and clarify that for many years, we were an in-person conference. With the pandemic, we switched to a virtual format, and we've stuck with it since then. But Columbus continues to be our home city. Our main oices are here in Columbus, even though we do a lot of work online, we have people all over the state. We have colleagues out of state who work for OCALI, but our main oices are here. 

Jim came here for many years for that in-person conference. He wasn't just participating in the conference itself, but he was actually becoming part of the broader Columbus community. 

You've really found community here as well. 

JIM TAYLOR: Absolutely. I think that's the part of it. That's what I was missing. There was a real community here. Speaking to Megan earlier about meeting people over a coee and meeting families and the range of professors and academics, 12-year-old kids walking around and so on. I just love that whole thing about walking around the hall and speaking to people and sharing. I like Columbus, and I like being here and learning. 

After last year, I decided to do it again, and here I am. I think, culturally ... this is probably a dreadful thing to say or an incorrect thing to say, but culturally, that openness to collaborate and share views is something I always found in OCALI that I tended not to find anywhere else. When I've collaborated in other places which shall remain nameless, it's been a bit of an ego tussle in many ways, but people have an openness. But I was always taken with them, Shawn saying, “Conversation is the currency of change.”

SIMON BUEHRER: Shawn Henry, our director. 

JIM TAYLOR: Shawn Henry. That was an OCALI moment for me, and I thought that's where it happens. That's where change happens. 

SIMON BUEHRER: That's where change happens. Jim Taylor, 40-plus year career, if there's anyone who can speak about change in our knowledge in autism, in the strategies and supports that we're using. Megan, you had a chance to ask him to reflect on that. 

MEGAN TROWBRIDGE: Absolutely. Why wouldn't I with that much history? I'm just curious, because I'm 20 years into the field, and you're 40 years into the field. 

JIM TAYLOR: I wouldn't correct you and say 45, actually, but that's another ... 

MEGAN TROWBRIDGE: Longer! 

[LAUGHTER] 

JIM TAYLOR: I'm counting, yeah. 

MEGAN TROWBRIDGE: I've seen a lot of change just in 20 years. What's the biggest change you've seen in 45? 

JIM TAYLOR: That's a really good question, because it struck me recently that when I started teaching children with autism, I was a primary school teacher. I was invited to go and work in a school specifically for children with autism. A good friend of mine, Adam Feinstein, who wrote a book called the History of Autism, tells me it was the third school in the world for children with autism. 

In those days, 1979, children did not have a legal right to education. There was an act passed in 1981 that said, all children can be educated. It floors me to think that when I started teaching, there were some children deemed to be ineducable, that's unimaginable just now. 

But I think the other thing that's changed was that when I started teaching,my proud boast was at one point, I had read every book that had ever been written in autism—all one of them. We didn't know what we were doing. Most of the children were coming from hospital placement, which, again, is unimaginable. But the children coming to our school were coming from hospital placements, and at that point, I was going to meet and assess children who were in large wards in hospitals. But I think we got to that stage where we started to see what worked, and we started to see that these were not just children with delayed development and whatever. 

I think we know what works, and I think we know the answers. I think the problem is quite often getting the resources. I remember discussions about buildings not being ... people couldn't get permission to build a building without wheelchair access, which is 

unthinkable. No one argues about ramps and lifts and whatever. I don't think we've made the argument what's needed for children. I think what's changed is the understanding and the knowledge. We know what works. In fact, we're pretty certain we know what works. 

I liken it to soccer. I'll say football. It's almost like we know how to win every game, but we don't have the players or the quality of players to win it. 

One OCALI moment I had was that, I paid all this money and spent all this time to come over here, and I had my OCALI moment in the first sentence that he said in the introduction to the conference! He said, “What is it that we need to rethink?” 

I thought that encapsulated ... I don't think there's anything I need to rethink, but I'm here to see if there’s anything I need to rethink. 

MEGAN TROWBRIDGE: Oh, I love that. Forty-five plus year career, and he still has the curiosity, the humility, and the openness to ask, What do I need to rethink? 

SIMON BUEHRER: Oh, I so agree, Megan. And Jim always talks about that OCALICON moment where he takes a step back and he looks at things, even after 40 plus years. But he looks at things with a fresh or dierent perspective, and I think that's a good strategy for any of us, no matter what our field or profession is. It doesn't matter if you're just starting out or if you've been in the game for a long time. It's an incredibly humbling and empowering question. What do I need to rethink? 

Speaking of games, I'mreally glad that Jim mentioned soccer or football there because we rounded out our time with him and talking about how this A+B=C ethos is extant in some of the clubs that Jim has worked with in the UK and how they continue to grow and strengthen their communities by building a more inclusive experience. 

JIM TAYLOR: I've been involved with Glasgow Celtic Football Club, and I think what they do… 

SIMON BUEHRER: What do they do? Do they have designated areas or quiet zones? 

JIM TAYLOR: They do a number of dierent things, Simon. The interesting thing, the club was formed in 1888, which was just after you were born ... 

[LAUGHTER] 

SIMON BUEHRER: It was, yeah! 

JIM TAYLOR: 1888 was a number before 1979, Megan. 

MEGAN TROWBRIDGE: Yes, I'm aware. 

JIM TAYLOR: I'll send you a calculator over.

[LAUGHTER] 

The statement was made that a football club will be created in the East end of Glasgow to address inequality and poverty and to put food on the tables of families and so on. They have this statement that says, “Celtic Football Club is a club for all.” That's not necessarily the case with every football club. They attempt to bring everything in. I became involved when they realized a number of autistic supporters and their families weren't able to get in. They do a variety of dierent things. They have a sensory room where kids can go in and watch the whole thing. 

I worked with a young man who now goes to the match on his own, and he had been taught to arrive first and have a seat at the very back of the stadium so he could watch people coming in. He could grow with ... as the noise grew. They had a social story for what might happen in a match, and the definites and the variables and all sorts of dierent things. 

SIMON BUEHRER: I love that. 

JIM TAYLOR: They have the most incredible team of coaches who just accept: This young man wants to go to a football match. There are 65-70,000 people here, what will it take to get him in there? That whole philosophy of making it accessible to people and dealing with inequality, I believe a club called Oldham do it, in England, Carlisle United, I'mjust learning about.Wrexham have promoted what they've done because of Ryan and whatever. 

SIMON BUEHRER: Rob, yeah. 

JIM TAYLOR: The superstar striker, goal scorer, has a child with autism, I believe ... 

SIMON BUEHRER: Paul Mullin. 

JIM TAYLOR: ... and they're doing incredibly well.Wrexham is a relatively smallish city in Wales, but I think that development of a community is really important, so the football club becomes integral to the whole society. Thinking about OCALI's A+B=C, the whole community thing. There are examples out there of where they're doing it exceptionally well. 

[MUSIC] 

MEGAN TROWBRIDGE: That was Jim Taylor, OCALI's good friend and partner, chatting with Simon and I while he was actually in town for our last OCALICON. Just cannot believe that he comes in person. 

[LAUGHTER]

You can learn about him at jimtaylorknowsautism.com. He has a great website. He did mention his work with Celtic FC. You can read all about their eorts to make live football or soccer experience as inclusive and accessible as possible for all fans. 

SIMON BUEHRER: We'll post that. It's a lengthy URL, but we'll post that link where they really list all the dierent ways that they're making a more accessible experience for their fan base. It's really great to see more and more teams and clubs and facilities being thoughtful and intentional in the ways that they reach out to their broader community and really make sure that they're involving everyone in the community, giving everyone a chance to participate. 

We do want to just say thanks again to Jim Taylor for helping us to connect the dots on this topic, and so many others, it was, as always, a delight and a treat. Thank you, Jim. We hope to see you again soon. 

MEGAN TROWBRIDGE: You've been listening to Connecting the Dots Podcast series from the Autism Center at OCALI. You can find all of OCALI's podcast episodes at OCALI.org or wherever you get your podcasts. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss a single episode, and you can learn more about the Autism Center at OCALI at ocali.org/center/autism. 

I'm Megan Trowbridge. 

SIMON BUEHRER: And I'm Simon Buehrer. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you soon.