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Speaker 1

We do have to think about both those ways at once. When we're thinking about in our diversity, we need to think what are the strengths here that are untapped and what support is a student going to need?

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Speaker 2

Welcome the room to Grow. I'm Curtis Brown.

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Speaker 3

And I'm Joany Funderburk. We work together at Texas Instruments and we're glad you're here.

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Speaker 2

We're looking forward to continually improving our practice. And we understand that you are, too.

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Speaker 3

We hope that you'll find this podcast as a room for you to grow along with us as we wrestle with and explore ideas about teaching math even better. This episode of Room to Grow brought out the Fan Girl and Guy and Curtis and me. We had the pleasure of talking with Rachel Lambert, who is known for her research on the mathematics Learning of Students with disabilities.

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Speaker 3

In this conversation, Rachel shares what she has learned as a math teacher and researcher to disrupt the pervasive deficit approach to instruction for this student population that is baked into many schools and systems. And instead, she offers ideas for each and every teacher to open up their classroom practices to support more success for more students. This is a great follow up to our previous podcast on asset based teaching and learning, and we hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

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Speaker 3

So let's get going.

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Speaker 2

Well, Joanie, I'm so excited to be recording again with you today. Today we've just really got an awesome opportunity to interview one of your heroes and a new hero of mine as well. Rachel Lambert. I am very excited for this conversation this afternoon that we get to have. So journey.

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Speaker 3

I am I am super excited, Curtis And I have to say I'm just going to gush a little bit. Rachel Sorry, You're just going to have to tolerate it. But, you know, with the educators that I spend a lot of time with there in Colorado, Rachel is by far one of our favorites. And Rachel's name comes up all the time in terms of having awesome information that really helps math teachers do their jobs better.

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Speaker 3

So could not be more excited to have you as our guest today. Thank you for joining us. Let's just go ahead and kick it off by asking asking you, Rachel, to introduce yourself. And we'd love for you to do that introduction by sharing some different events and experiences in your life that have led to your current interest and passions.

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Speaker 1

Okay. Well, thank you for inviting me. This is a real honor and I'm excited to be here and have a conversation with you about teaching all kids. I love it. At I was a well, I started as a high school English teacher when I graduated from college in 1991, and then I kind of got accidentally. I kind of like moved to a really cool, really progressive school in New York City, ended up teaching fifth and sixth grade, ended up teaching math, ended up teaching in inclusion classroom, and realized that although I was like good at reading and writing and literacy and that was what I was personally really good at, I didn't like teaching it

00;03;00;15 - 00;03;20;21

Speaker 1

as much as I like teaching math. Like teaching math was like glorious, Like I love to teaching it, even though I didn't enjoy it as a student because I didn't enjoy doing problems out of the textbook and figuring out what the test was going to ask me. It just was so rote, so boring. I wasn't into it. I was into like literature and art.

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Speaker 1

So then I became a like transitioned into both an elementary mathematics specialist, which is my my focus is k like six, seven mathematics and but also for students with disabilities, because in that same school I became a teacher in an inclusive school, which included kids with a variety of different disabilities. I had in one class of 24, I had eight kids with IEPs in my class.

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Speaker 1

It was a mixed age, fifth and sixth grade classroom. It was an amazing progressive school where I had a ton of control over what I taught. And so at the same time, I was becoming really passionate about teaching math to problem solving. I was also teaching kids with a really wide range of prior knowledge, a wide range of ways to engage in mathematics.

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Speaker 1

But it didn't seem like a crisis to me or a problem. It really was an opportunity for me to do really fun things like Casino Night when she was in the night. Yeah, I like using games, having really big problems and everyone could engage. And so that's that became my passion. And then I, I did the games so interested in it.

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Speaker 1

I started looking at the research, you know, as a teacher, does I figure out what I can get access to? Not everything, right? And I start reading articles and it was so discordant with my experiences. So the research I was reading was about it was a deficit mindset about students with disabilities. So it was basically saying that they were not capable of engaging in problem solving.

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Speaker 1

And I knew that was wrong. I knew it was wrong because of the class. I knew that was wrong because of my family members with disabilities. I knew that was just wrong. And so that's when I decided I wanted to become a researcher. And I left the classroom after over ten years and got my Ph.D. And now I'm a researcher in that area of mathematics and students with disabilities.

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Speaker 2

Wow. Wow. That is just so awesome. I said, It's such a cool story. First of all, your passion for teaching Mathema Addicks coming out of your experience teaching at that progressive school and having those students that you could really kind of expand, right, and see the impact of teaching problem based or teaching mathematics from a problem based learning perspective.

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Speaker 2

That's really cool. That's really awesome.

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Speaker 3

Yeah, I, I really loved how you described finding a love for teaching mathematics because it it was a different experience than your experience learning mathematics. I think that was super interesting. And then also being able to like have your own personal experience that contradicts the research that you were finding about how students with disabilities can and might learn.

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Speaker 3

I'm I'm curious for an educator who, you know, I started teaching in 1989, so that was certainly the understanding then was like, oh, if a student has an identified disability, we're not even going to give them access to this class. They need to be in those other classes, right? And they need this other kind of instruction. So I'm curious if you could talk a little bit about what what was your instruction like?

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Speaker 3

Or I know you talked about it being progressive, but can you tell us a little more detail for a teacher who maybe is still in that mindset of like, well, they really can't they really don't have the same what I'm thinking of how we can help teachers create experiences to see for themselves. Well, students with disabilities might be capable of.

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Speaker 3

Can you reflect and elaborate on that a little bit?

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Speaker 1

Sure. I think a lot of teachers in the U.S. school system have never been given access to and really inclusive school like we were raised in schools where students with disabilities were educated separately and we were we're teaching in schools where that's the norm. There's separate classrooms, often separate schools, but there have been for a long time, really since the sixties, there have been these pockets of inclusion, innovation places where students with disabilities have been included and some of these schools are exceptional places where you can there's no segregated special education classrooms.

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Speaker 1

All the kids are included. The creative city that goes into those schools is amazing, and they're often created because of the activism of parents and kids and teachers. So they're like sites of innovation. So my school was like that. The school was called River East. It was one of the Central Park East schools. So Debbie Meyer was the founder of those schools, and she won a MacArthur grant for creating them as a teacher in East Harlem in the eighties.

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Speaker 1

So it's a it was a teacher led school. So while we had a principal, we actually made hiring and firing decisions as teachers. Wow. And we didn't include we weren't able to include all students with disabilities because we were a fifth floor walkup with no elevator in in New York City school. Oh, wow. And that was very exclusionary.

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Speaker 1

But we would basically include any student that we could in the school. And so it was seen from every the way the school worked was that you were there to serve the kids and serve the families. You were there to collaborate with them with families, particularly as much as you could. But it was a very small, very open place where a lot of students felt comfortable, where that was very different than other schools.

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Speaker 1

So does that answer your question or you want to know more about my classroom?

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Speaker 3

I really would like to hear more about your classroom. So thinking from, you know, if I were a classroom teacher that hadn't ever had that opportunity. And maybe, you know, I hear your point about a fully inclusionary school. Innovative school is not the norm right now, But certainly in my 20 years of experience in the classroom, I had students with disabilities in my, you know, sort of regular math classes.

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Speaker 3

So just thinking from that perspective of a teacher who's just sort of in a standard normal school and has a handful of students with disabilities, how what kinds of experiences might they create to really bring out the capabilities of those students that they they may kind of have this ingrained belief about?

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Speaker 1

Well, it's I mean, one of the reasons I call up at that school was different is is to remind teachers that sometimes its best systems were enmeshed and that makes things really hard. So it's not that a teacher in like an you know, a great but not super innovative school that has a few kids with disabilities in our class.

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Speaker 1

It's really not the teachers in a lack of innovation or anything. That's the problem. The problem is these systems where in most places, if you get an IEP, you're almost automatically separated from the other students. You have to earn your right to be in that classroom. So the only kids with IEPs who get to be in, say, a mainstream like middle school or high school class are those whose behavior is looks a certain way and is a certain way whose grades are a certain way.

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Speaker 1

And anybody, any kid who's outside those norms are excluded from a lot of those systems. And I've known teachers who fight to get all those kids into their into their classroom. But it's the the systems are the biggest barrier. And then secondly, probably it's the beliefs that we have so we can have some like beliefs that we hear from other teachers like, oh, no, it's best for that child to be somewhere different.

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Speaker 1

No, they can't handle that. I mean, the biggest misconception I hear is what I talked about in the beginning. It's like they can't handle problem solving. They can't handle thinking for themselves. They may need scaffolds and they certainly need you to help when they transition to thinking that way, especially if they have been in very like embedded environments where they were basically spoon fed information.

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Speaker 1

They need a minute, they need a little support in the beginning, but they think every kid can think, every kid can engage. And so you have to set it up so that you can hear their thinking so that they can communicate with you and so that you can like, you know, I want to say something pretty silly, but like, unleash their mathematical brilliance.

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Speaker 1

I think that's.

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Speaker 2

I don't think that's at all.

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Speaker 3

I think that's amazing.

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Speaker 2

I'm sitting here as a parent with a student with an IEP and thinking about some of the things that have been done to allow my student, you know, some real access in the math classroom and how his particular school has advocated for him to be in mainstream classroom as much as possible, which is fantastic. So in and to watch him be able to unleash his mathematical brilliance, I love that I'm going to turn now that we're going to put that on t shirts and make clothes.

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Speaker 2

I mean, that's fantastic. I love that. Unleash their mathematical brilliance. But I've seen that happen for him in in his classroom. And I've also seen where the way that the math classroom has been orchestrated or designed by teacher has also been kind of stifling for him. And so there are things that we can do, right, to open the door within with the students that we get.

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Speaker 2

Certainly there are systems that pull kids out of our classrooms and we may or may not have influence on those things as much as we can advocate we should. But then then what do we do when we're in our classroom, innovating and trying to think of those kids, you know, and what we can do to help? Well, and I say that let me rephrase that, because I don't like the way that sounded whenever I said it.

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Speaker 2

How we help the students with IEPs that also opens the door and really impacts all of the students that are in our classrooms. Because I think what we're doing for students with APS and and, you know, students who struggle maybe in certain ways, all the things that we do for them also helps all of the what we might call mainstream students.

00;14;03;00 - 00;14;25;14

Speaker 1

You're making me think a lot about universal design for learning about UDL. So let's like when and the way one of my favorite authors on UDL, its name is Jane Doe Marsh, and he wrote a publicly accessible free book on like academic able. The book is called. And in it he gives some metaphors for Udall and one sort of like three subsequent steps.

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Speaker 1

So the first one he talks about a steep stairs. So if you think about that, it's like somebody is using a wheelchair. They're looking up at a big government building and they can't get in. There's no access. Okay. So that's the worst case scenario where we have kids with disabilities, kids with they piece and there's they can't get into those classrooms, Right.

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Speaker 1

Stage two is called could be called like awkward accessibility. So basically it's okay. So we like we took it like a really like old ramp and we put it over those stairs. So now there's a way in. But first of all, it's like different for this kid. In fact, it might be like a ramp at the back of the building where they have to go by the trash bins.

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Speaker 1

There's a way in, but it's it's was designed not to change those stairs and not to change access into the building. It was designed just to get this one kid into this classroom and the class itself does not change. So I have people think, okay, so what's an example of that? So sometimes I call it ugly add ons or like awkward add ons.

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Speaker 1

That's when like there's like differentiation, but it's really just for that kid. And we do that in our math classroom and that's better than nothing. It's better than no access. It's a.

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Speaker 2

Step. Yeah.

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Speaker 1

It's a step. But what's the third step that you're starting to think about, which is that how do we I mean, it's hard to do it with the buildings metaphor. It really would help if we were doing this when we were designing that building. That's what Universal Design is about. So how do we design things that work for a like a wider range of bodies and minds from the beginning?

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Speaker 1

And if we can't do that, how do we really creatively figure out how to make a ramp that works for everybody, right? Instead of some ramp that's just for this one kid? So when I'm talking about you, do your math, the first thing I ask people to think about is how is math class Narrow. And I really heard that.

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Speaker 1

And what you said, like you said, rigid, right? So it's sort of like, Mm hmm. In what ways? And I'm used to using a gesture. So for those who are listening, it's like I have my hands up and I'm thinking about now the first thing to think about is how is math class narrow? And the answer can be a lot of different things.

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Speaker 1

It could be you have assessment practices that are only allow a certain kind of kid to do well. It could be the homework policy is narrow. Only a certain group of kid is doing well. It could be that the way you're teaching, I mean, if you think about a very old fashioned classroom with like a chalkboard, like when they think about a university mathematics class, think about the narrowness of that, There's no multi modality for for people.

00;17;02;00 - 00;17;22;04

Speaker 1

So how do we open that up? So that's that first thing. It's like we have to figure out the ways in which our own classes are narrow and there's so many answers to that. And I can't I don't know. You have to look at your own class and you have to be like, Hey, what is a part of my design in this class where we're only a few kids are really getting it or being successful.

00;17;22;27 - 00;17;40;19

Speaker 1

And then what I advocate for people to think about is what is the most what's the best use of my time to redesign? What's a part of my classroom that if I if I open it up, kids are really going to benefit and a wide variety of kids are going to benefit. So homework is an example that I've had when I bring these questions to teachers.

00;17;40;19 - 00;17;59;11

Speaker 1

A lot of teachers are like homework. The a lot of the problem with like what's narrow about my classroom is my homework practices. And if I could change that, if I could offer choice or flexibility in homework or different ways of getting the homework done, or if that could be opened up, then my class would be more equitable and more accessible.

00;18;00;10 - 00;18;26;13

Speaker 2

That's a really good thought. About what? How do I make my classroom more open and not so narrow? I love the narrow metaphor thinking about this, you know, this this idea of how do I open it up and create broader access, right? Or create experiences that allow broader access. I really like that.

00;18;27;17 - 00;18;55;00

Speaker 3

Yeah, I like that, too. And I like the I like the openness of that. Right? Like, it's not like, oh, here are the three things that every teacher should do to create more access. It's like, No, that is totally dependent on your unique situation. It's dependent on your style as a teacher. It's dependent on the system constraints, like you talked about Rachel, under which you're operating and you know, I often think about teachers are required in so many ways to be advocates for their students.

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Speaker 3

And but but we have so much control over what happens in our own classroom. And I just love your suggestion because no matter who the teacher is, no matter how innovative or inclusive a school they're in or aren't in, every single teacher can can create more openness in their classroom to provide more opportunity for more kinds of students.

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Speaker 3

So I think that's amazing.

00;19;16;01 - 00;19;35;00

Speaker 2

I like it that it's not overwhelming either. The question that you asked was, How is my math class narrow? And if I just if I just think about how is my math class narrow, What are what is one thing that that that makes my math class narrow and I can start there. I don't have to tackle this whole thing all at once.

00;19;35;17 - 00;19;54;12

Speaker 2

I can tackle one one thing that's making my classroom narrow. Maybe it's my homework policy, maybe it's my testing policy. Joani and I have done a couple of sessions we have talking about assessment and and how does how does my assessment maybe narrow the playing field a little bit or even just expand that.

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Speaker 3

Just grading practices in general? How are, how are migrating practices narrow and only setting up a small number of students for success?

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Speaker 2

So that's a that's a worthy homework assignment to think about that. I like that.

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Speaker 1

I like it. Everyone has homework to do now.

00;20;11;12 - 00;20;41;03

Speaker 3

That's right. That's right. You got you got to do more than just listen to this podcast. You got to act. So, you know, we our most recent podcast prior to this one was focusing on asset based teaching and learning. And I think there's so, so much strong connection between the research that you've done and the kinds of things we're talking about.

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Speaker 3

So I'm wondering if I can just ask you and sorry, Curtis, I'm jumping in on all the questions here. Yeah, okay. Yeah. I wonder if we can just have Rachel, if you would elaborate a little bit on leveraging the strengths of all students and really tapping into that and helping elaborate our thinking in our discussion from the previous month on on what asset based approaches to teaching and learning math are really all about.

00;21;08;02 - 00;21;12;08

Speaker 1

Sure. You know, it's actually neurodiversity celebration week right now.

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Speaker 3

So perfect.

00;21;14;13 - 00;21;38;07

Speaker 1

I love that. So I think one of the but one of the things that I like to do when we're talking about asset based pedagogies is be like pretty specific because I think it can be the kind of term that people use without actually giving examples. And yet there's so many examples of what students are good at and great at and excel at to help us sort of understand.

00;21;38;19 - 00;22;10;02

Speaker 1

And I think in the area of disabilities that asset based pedagogies are a huge contrast to what I would call sort of deficit based pedagogies, which are what those students are often given access to. So let's think about we can think about one study that I did with Edmund Harris, who is an amazing artist and a mathematician. He works he is a research professor at the University of Alabama, and he has an amazing website.

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Speaker 1

You guys link to websites, but we actually.

00;22;13;06 - 00;22;14;06

Speaker 3

Well, yeah.

00;22;14;07 - 00;22;23;05

Speaker 1

Yeah. His stuff is amazing. And he he's the only person in that university who is both in the art department and in the math department, that's all.

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Speaker 2

Oh, wow. What a cool thing.

00;22;25;02 - 00;22;49;03

Speaker 1

Yes, really cool. He does. He's made coloring books, mathematical coloring books for kids. He's made a lot of large scale art sculpture, sculptures. So he him and I started collaborating when I shared it and starting a slide, which was a quote from a dyslexic mathematician from the block that I found, which basically said, like up until I discovered geometry, like math was impossible for me.

00;22;49;22 - 00;23;12;20

Speaker 1

But when I discovered geometry and a mathematics of shape and narrative, you think like mathematics completely transformed. And I became on the path to becoming a mathematician. So I shared that quote about this dyslexic mathematician. And then Edmund came up to me afterwards and asked if I said I would like to talk to him because he was a dyslexic mathematician.

00;23;13;10 - 00;23;22;28

Speaker 1

So obviously we went out to lunch where I found that he actually keeps like 3D models of like mathematical shapes in his bag to explain concepts. Oh, cool.

00;23;22;29 - 00;23;25;08

Speaker 2

Oh, my gosh, that is tastic.

00;23;25;25 - 00;23;52;14

Speaker 1

He is amazing. So him and I decided that we wanted to do sort of an exploratory study. Like this is not like the definitive study about people with dyslexia who are also research mathematicians. We just wanted to learn if there were other people with his set of experiences out there. So we interviewed five dyslexic mathematicians, so they all had to be working at a university and doing mathematics, and they were all self-identified as dyslexic.

00;23;52;14 - 00;24;11;08

Speaker 1

And then we ask them questions like, How did you get into mathematics? Like what was your journey? And then sort of near the end of the interview, we would ask some questions. So do you think dyslexia matter? And in that paper which you can find access to on my website, so I always have access to all my papers on my website.

00;24;11;08 - 00;24;29;00

Speaker 1

So there's you can always access them as a teacher there it we like we looked at themes across it and we found a couple of things like one that a four at a five. These mathematicians really identified as a visual and a three dimensional thinker in mathematics.

00;24;29;01 - 00;24;29;12

Speaker 2

Yeah.

00;24;30;01 - 00;25;01;18

Speaker 1

Four out of five worked in the area in and around the area of topology. So they were thinking about three dimensional mathematics and shifting change in space. Like their specialty was this kind of visual spatial modeling that's really hard for a lot of people. But they talked about it coming intuitively to them. And so they also talked about how like mathematically they would think of think in space instead of thinking in words or equations, and then would translate that back to equations.

00;25;01;28 - 00;25;26;16

Speaker 1

Right. And they the importance of collaboration where they felt like they had a pretty specific skill set, like what they were really good at, they were really good at. And there was other parts of math, like writing about math that were challenging for them. So collaboration became super important. And so just starting there, like how do what I ask teachers when I tell them about this research is what does this make you think?

00;25;26;16 - 00;25;52;29

Speaker 1

When you think about teaching mathematics to students with dyslexia, which is the learning disabilities, is the largest group of students with disabilities in our classrooms, and of that group, the largest chunk have mainly issues in reading, which is dyslexia. So if this is the group of people with disabilities that is the most predominant in our classrooms, do we know anything about these possible strengths?

00;25;52;29 - 00;26;02;01

Speaker 1

Not every kid with dyslexia is going to have these strengths. I got to really make sure that I mention that because I don't want people going in and trying to force a kid to think different, right?

00;26;02;14 - 00;26;04;22

Speaker 3

Oh, I just likes it. You have to do this now.

00;26;04;29 - 00;26;27;07

Speaker 1

It's really important to stress that because like I have like I have met, while this is true for like a lot of people with dyslexia, I also in the last session, I did it and I had a woman like come over and she was like, I just want to tell you I'm the opposite type. I memorize my mathematics, I have trouble thinking spatially and I'm a high school math teacher, so it's different for each person.

00;26;27;07 - 00;26;37;05

Speaker 1

But however, this is a really specific group of strengths that you know is consonant with the, like emerging literature on dyslexic strengths.

00;26;37;18 - 00;26;37;27

Speaker 3

Right?

00;26;38;04 - 00;27;01;18

Speaker 1

So how does that matter in math class? Like, how do you how would you leverage that set of strengths? So I've heard teachers tell me like, yeah, okay, how do we make class really visual? How do we make class more where students are able to work with like representations, models, graphs? Yeah, like work with them, not just look at them from afar, but we don't know if that's true or not.

00;27;01;18 - 00;27;28;20

Speaker 1

But it's possible with just different technology, we can we could really create a mathematics engagement that's much more visual and enhance on in a much more intense way. So that's one way to think about leveraging mathematical strengths. I think to think about like there's limited research on the strengths of people with disabilities. As you can probably imagine, much more of our tax dollars and much more.

00;27;28;20 - 00;27;51;21

Speaker 1

Our journal issues have been about what people with dyslexia have trouble doing and the ratio is not cute at all. It is like 1000000 to 1 exaggerating. Maybe not on its deficits versus strengths. Like we need a lot more research about strengths of people with disabilities, of neurodiverse people because they absolutely exist.

00;27;51;21 - 00;27;52;07

Speaker 2

Yes.

00;27;52;22 - 00;28;11;03

Speaker 1

Yes. So then then we can leverage those into work in the classroom and make those be what teacher? What comes to teachers minds? What if you have a student with dyslexia come into your classroom and you think, Hey, this can be amazing? Instead of, Oh no, this is a crisis. It's not a.

00;28;11;03 - 00;28;15;26

Speaker 2

Crisis. You're giving me chill bumps here as you're talking about how we're.

00;28;15;29 - 00;28;16;18

Speaker 3

Not going to a.

00;28;17;01 - 00;28;50;09

Speaker 2

I'm I'm not joking. I'm literally over here with Goose bumps as we think about what can be the reaction when I ask in particular now the dyslexia piece, right. Because that does strike a very close chord to home for me. So and I notice the things about my son and the strengths that he has, particularly in and dimension three dimensional thinking and just his spatial awareness is absurd, really.

00;28;50;09 - 00;29;14;09

Speaker 2

And I could tell you, maybe I already did tell you stories about some of the things that he does. It's just it's crazy. So how do we as math teachers think about, Oh, yes, this student just came into my classroom. I see that they're that they've got they've they've been labeled with this this dyslexia. And now they've got that that thing that's with them and all these strengths that come with it.

00;29;14;09 - 00;29;38;10

Speaker 2

How exciting that could be, if that's the way we approached. Hey, this is a diverse thinker like, hey, this is how this person's going to contribute to my classroom. Because now when I do this particular modeling experience or this particular focus on the area model of multiplication or whatever it is that we do, that's that's maybe emphasizes those strengths.

00;29;38;10 - 00;29;56;06

Speaker 2

Now, I can rely on that student to come up with these cool things. I don't have to spoon feed the rest of the classroom. They can be the one to say these cool things and try to provide those opportunities for that student to excel and explode, right it right there in front of it. I'm so excited. Not just like.

00;29;56;28 - 00;30;13;19

Speaker 1

I read maybe one when I was a seventh grade social studies and literacy teacher. In the beginning of my career, I had a student with dyslexia and we're about to study Europe. And he said, Would you like me to draw a map on the board? And I'm like, okay. And so he got up and with a whiteboard marker, he drew it.

00;30;13;19 - 00;30;32;19

Speaker 1

Exact a giant map of Europe with every country with perfect, perfect borders. And the everybody in this whole seventh grade class, like, are their mouths were just hanging open. And I was like, you know, thanks for drawing us a perfect map from like.

00;30;32;29 - 00;30;33;08

Speaker 2

Yeah.

00;30;33;18 - 00;31;03;24

Speaker 1

Yeah. So it's pretty simple. I think another thing to think about, it's when we're thinking about neurodiversity as a concept, which is a concept that was created by autistic self advocates and now has spread to be about dyslexia. But it's really the idea of neurodiversity. Yes, not my idea. It's the idea of people with disabilities, disabled people, as they often like to be called, who are like thinking about their cognitive differences in really rich ways.

00;31;03;24 - 00;31;27;08

Speaker 1

And I encourage everybody, if you want to learn more about any particular disability, you can go on Twitter, you can get memoirs because to really learn, you want to turn to the expertise of adults and kids and you can ask your kids, but the adults with that same disability have a ton to teach you about, about what that feels like, what that experience is like, and how to support those kids.

00;31;27;08 - 00;31;27;17

Speaker 2

Yeah.

00;31;28;07 - 00;31;52;05

Speaker 1

And what the the idea of neurodiversity is not just strikes. It's it's the idea that with autism, for example, I am not a person with autism would say I'm not just a set of deficits. I am strengths and I am challenges. It's both of those ideas. And so for teachers, I think that's super useful because we do have to think about both those ways at once.

00;31;52;05 - 00;32;09;01

Speaker 1

When we're thinking about neurodiversity, we need to think what are the strengths here that are untapped and what support is a student going to need? So it's not just deficits, it's not just strengths. It's that neurodiversity has both things together. Does that make sense.

00;32;09;01 - 00;32;09;14

Speaker 2

That don't.

00;32;09;14 - 00;32;10;18

Speaker 3

Make so much size.

00;32;10;18 - 00;32;55;01

Speaker 2

And you're leading right into what I was thinking about, what our last kind of conversation might be around. What are some of the things, the couple of things that math teachers can do to kind of I mean, ensure deep learning for math students, But in particular, think about the balance between we've been talking about strengths, we've been talking about, hey, let's let's change our mentality when we when we start to think about, you know, students with disabilities that come into our classrooms and how they're going to be able to contribute.

00;32;55;05 - 00;33;07;18

Speaker 2

But how do we strike the balance between emphasizing their strengths but also providing the support that that student or those students might need as well?

00;33;08;05 - 00;33;37;28

Speaker 1

So those two gestures that I talked about from Udall so so far, like math classes narrow and we need to open it up. So I a hands together narrow and hands open. There's actually a third one, which I was like, I don't know if I should mention that now. Okay, I'll mention it now. So we open up that aspect of our classroom, but then we also and now I make a support gesture, provides support because sometimes I think people think of UDL as just like everything is open and there's so many options and now it just becomes a party where we're going to make our choices.

00;33;38;09 - 00;34;03;16

Speaker 1

That's going to be better than a narrow classroom that has a really rigid expectations, but it's not going to provide enough structure or support for students. So it's the same process. Like, again, I can't necessarily tell people what to do because first of all, their classrooms are unique, right? And students with disabilities are kind of uniquely unique. You need to get to know every student that comes into your classroom with an IEP.

00;34;03;29 - 00;34;22;02

Speaker 1

You need to build a relationship with that student. You need to understand what makes that student tick. You need to know what makes us feel comfortable or not comfortable. There is no book that I could write or anybody else could write that's going to help you with that. That is step one. Know your students, understand how they think about their learning.

00;34;22;02 - 00;34;41;12

Speaker 1

So that's not just like knowing that they like, enjoy whatever they enjoy. How do they think about their own processing? Because they're often very aware or they need to be more aware of their metacognition than other students because they have more challenges in that area. So they they often have like unique perspectives on their own learning that you, number one, need to do.

00;34;41;13 - 00;34;59;20

Speaker 1

Okay. But after that, then you if you think about the ways your math classes narrow, not just for that kid, but for multiple kids, how you're going to open it up. You're also going to need to think at the same time about it's almost like a tension between the opening up and the support. Right? So you talked about assessment as an example or so.

00;34;59;20 - 00;35;25;17

Speaker 1

Like how would you test and grading so we could open that, make that more open by say, like providing a rubric or doing a portfolio or doing on grading where students are going to, like, reflect on their own growth. But you can't just open it up and then expect all kids to be successful or that you're going to have to provide support so that kids could be successful with that.

00;35;25;17 - 00;35;51;27

Speaker 1

Does that make sense? It's a tension. It's not it's not like a simple it's simple because it's a tension. We as teachers understand every teacher. You understand you're going to open it up, but you're also going to figure out what are the necessary supports that I got to embed in there to make sure that all that all kids can access this new innovation that I'm doing or this change my classroom or my new grading practices.

00;35;52;27 - 00;35;53;22

Speaker 1

Right? Yeah.

00;35;54;03 - 00;36;00;16

Speaker 2

Yeah, I like that. I like that. That was really that was really remarkable. That's so good.

00;36;01;22 - 00;36;07;20

Speaker 1

I'm glad you like them because I'm still trialing out these gestures and I haven't actually written about them. I've just done them with teachers.

00;36;07;20 - 00;36;38;26

Speaker 2

So no, I really like the the the the final one. And I've been I've been doing this with my hands almost like a funnel. I've been thinking about this from from a funnel perspective a little bit because there's a gradual opening up whenever there's a funnel, you know, complete openness versus this, this idea of a of a funnel and a gradual release or a gradual opening up because complete openness might be overwhelming at first.

00;36;38;26 - 00;36;46;09

Speaker 2

And so maybe there's a process or a direction. So you're confirming some things too, for me, which is great.

00;36;47;04 - 00;36;49;18

Speaker 1

I love the spatial thinking we're doing on this podcast.

00;36;49;18 - 00;37;16;17

Speaker 3

I know well this has been a fabulous conversation. The time has just absolutely flown by. Bye, Rachel. Thank you so much for all the practical tips and the meaningful I just your enthusiasm and your energy for the work that you do and for these special populations is just palpable and contagious. Thank you again for your time. And I know our listeners are going to really enjoy this conversation.

00;37;17;04 - 00;37;18;14

Speaker 1

Thank you for inviting me.

00;37;19;02 - 00;37;36;14

Speaker 3

Well, that's it for this time. Be sure to check the show notes for the resources we mentioned and others you might want to explore. We would love to hear your feedback and your suggestions for future topics. And if you're enjoying with us, consider leaving a review to help others find us and share the podcast with us. Fellow Math educator.

00;37;36;21 - 00;37;45;13

Speaker 3

See you next time.