Speaker 1 0:03

Welcome to the podcast. Let's talk sped law, a podcast dedicated to discussing special education rights of children with disabilities. I'm your host and special education attorney. Jeff forte. Now let's talk sped law on attorney Jeff forte from let's talk sped law. In this episode, we're talking about inclusion and our guest speaker is attorney Ashley Myer Barlow from the law firm of Meyer and Barlow in Fort Thomas Kentucky. Attorney Barlow is a special education lawyer that zealously advocates for the rights of her families and the children that she represents for inclusion of special education services within the mainstream public classrooms. She is a former teacher herself and a graduate of chase college of law. Ashley is also the president of the board of directors for the downs syndrome association for greater Cincinnati, where she avidly volunteers at her son's school as well. And she is also involved with the national down syndrome Congress and speaks around the country for rights for children with down syndrome. Ashley also recently started a new podcast venture, and I am so proud to have to know her as well as to be supporting her podcast, which is located@ashleybarlowco.com on her podcast and on her website. She also has resources and information for parents to more fully prepare their child's IEP for inclusion. In this episode, we talk about what inclusion is. We talk about what least restrictive environment means. We talk about the steps to get your school team, to communicate effectively, to have push in services within the mainstream classroom for your child on an IEP. And we also talk about what an IEP matrix is. So check it out without further ado. Let's get into it.

Speaker 2 2:19

Hey, Ashley, how you doing? I'm great. How are you? Um , I'm doing well. I'm so happy to have you on the show to talk about inclusion. Uh , it's , uh , it's a such an important topic and you know, my podcast hasn't addressed inclusion at all yet. And it's one of the things that I think is one of my most favorite things to talk about, which is so , uh , apropos that we, that we have you on the show to talk about it. You know, when I talk about inclusion to the families that I represent, it's so important that they , uh , what it actually means and how it's actually implemented within a public school setting. So for, for, you know, simplistic terms, right, for all the audience across the nation, let's, let's get into what inclusion is defined as what it is not. And how you with your clients in Kentucky, how you successfully build IDPs for your clients , um, in an effort to have them , uh, given inclusion opportunities throughout the day.

Speaker 3 3:34

Well, sure. That's awesome. You know, Jeff, this is , um, the kind of the bread and butter of my special education practice. I certainly do a lot of other things, but still the majority of the cases that I do are least restrictive environment, placement, inclusive , um, cases for the most part. And I think a lot of it is because I have a little boy that he has down syndrome and I'm really ingrained in the down syndrome community here in greater Cincinnati. Um, and so I think that's probably it. Um, so yes, it's an honor to talk about it. It's really my passion. It's , um, you know, kind of what I feel the most excited about. So how do I go about inclusion? I think, you know, I always tell my clients that I advise them under the shadow of the law. And by that, I mean that , um, you know, I always explain that judges make decisions within parameters. So , um, if there was a definitive answer to every legal question, attorneys wouldn't have jobs, it's never that black and white. And so I think if you look at kind of the boundaries of where a judge is going to make a decision, you know, somewhere between here and here, then I can advise my clients within that legal framework. And so inclusion, maybe it's just time out of the general education classroom, or maybe it is , um, how many peers they're with during the day or something like that. Um, and sometimes it's something that's not as easily defined most of the time. It is something that isn't as easily defined, but I started in the legal framework. So , um, if you look at the legal framework, the inclusive part of idea, the federal law is 20 USC, 14, 12, and I think it's important to read it. It's pretty powerful and it's, and it's not very long. So it says that to the maximum extent, appropriate children with disabilities, including children in public or private institutions or other care facilities, should be educated with children who are not disabled and special classes, separate schooling or other removal of children with disabilities from the regular educational environment should occur only when the nature or the severity of the disability of the child is such that education and regular classes with the use of supplementary AIDS and services cannot be achieved satisfactorily. And so that, that is, you know, it's a lot of stuff, but it's really nice and compact and tidy. Um, and so what that law does is it provides us with a lot of different tidbits that then the regulations spell out. So , um, I think I've listened to all of your podcasts , Jeff, and I don't think that we've kind of gotten into like how regulations tease out laws. Have you done that yet?

Speaker 2 6:36

I have not. We have not. And you know, when I, when I think about inclusion and what the Ida provides with it, you know, there's a lot of moving parts in the sense that are you looking to have full mainstream supports with a push in paraprofessional or push in team, perhaps a teacher's aides within a general classroom setting, versus are you looking at a pull out services instead of pushing services? Are you looking at a certain courses that are going to be required in a one-to-one setting? Um, so there's so many different ways for parents to think collaboratively and uniquely about how to most appropriately include their child in, in the public school setting. And, you know, you , you mentioned , uh , a personal aspect that you and I talk about, you know, cause we both have kids on IEP about how , uh, your son is on an IEP and has down syndrome. And, you know, it's important for parents to know that, you know , not only are you doing this as a lawyer for your clients, but you're doing it as a mom, we're doing it as a parent you're you're living and breathing inclusion every day.

Speaker 3 7:51

Yeah, well, yeah, I am. And I, and I am, I'm struggling with it myself also, right? I mean, there are definitely inclusive things that we've done as families that haven't worked. Um, and there are some things that are segregated for my child that are the most inclusive things that he gets, which is really bizarre, you know, one of my kids. Um , so my son that he has down syndrome, his name is Jack and he is 10 he's in the fourth grade right now in 2020. Um, and so one of the things that Jack has done that has been the best for him in , in the world is he has danced in a ballet program for children. It used to be for only for children with down syndrome. Now there are children with other disabilities, specifically CP and some other disabilities as well. Um, and he has done that since he was four years old. He was actually in the Nutcracker with the Cincinnati ballet, the first person with down syndrome to be in , uh , it was awesome and a major ballet production. And , um, that program, while it is specifically for children with disabilities is crazy inclusive because they have brought in typical peers , um, to like they'll have a day where , um, the, the children, the dancers get to bring in a friend from school or something like that. Um, they have PT students, OT students, actual PTs from children's hospital and from university of Cincinnati and Xavier university that come in and do the support for them. So they get one-on-one support throughout the lessons and it's got a real PT base to it. And so it's crazy that it's for kids with disabilities, but it's really inclusive. And we've had that experience actually with special Olympics as well. Um, and then to the contrary, my son does his school basketball league. He does his summer swim club's swim team. Um, you know, he does a lot of other inclusive things with his friends in the neighborhood and his friends from school, et cetera that have been successful, but there've been plenty of things that have not been successful also . Um, so it is, it's something that we live, eat and breathe forever.

Speaker 2 10:07

It's interesting that you mentioned the opportunities that you've built for your son , um, in an inclusive setting. I could tell you that my oldest son, who's 11 , um, he's in middle school. His name is Luca. Uh, sometimes the school psychologist will come into, well, this was pre COVID of course, but the school psychologist will come into his classroom and say, all right, does anybody want to volunteer to be part of , uh , uh , social skills, lunch bunch today? And he raised his hand and as he's walking down the hallway with the school psychologist, he literally says, Oh yes, I would love to have an inclusion opportunity to build social skills, 11 years old. And the school psychologist would tell him to , obviously my son knows what I do, but it's so important to build these. So how do you build them? How do you build inclusion opportunities within an IEP? You know, you're a parent, you're at an IEP meeting and let's say the team is indicating that their child is not being able to successfully navigate in the quote unquote, you know , mainstream neuro-typical classroom, but at the same time, they're not offering any supports within that classroom. How would you walk about building in inclusion into that IEP?

Speaker 3 11:29

Well, so there's lots of ways. Um, and I actually have kind of a step by step that I can go through with you if you went for me too , but kind of before. Well, so let me, I want to answer it kind of like generally first, and then I would love to share that step-by-step with your listeners. Um , but generally the answer to that, Jeff is really in the continuum of placements. And so I think it's really important to understand that the regulations tease out that big federal law that I read before do , um , what they do is they provide that there is this continuum of placements that starts in gen ed. And then in , in gen ed, as you indicated, we can have push-in services, we can have pull-out services, that's still a gen ed placement. And then we go to a special class and then we go to other school and we go all the way down to home-bound hospitalization, institutionalism, and every step along that continuum of placements , we layer on supplementary AIDS and services. And so if we can add things in the classroom for the child that would allow the child to be educated in that least restrictive environment in the general ed in that whatever environment we're talking about before. So we start in gen ed, we layer on SAS, the supplementary AIDS and services, and we say, okay, what could we do to see if the child could, could succeed in the gen ed environment? Um, and maybe we consider some pullout or some push in or something like that. Um, and so that's kind of like the , the gist of it is stopping at every place along that continuum and saying, you know, could we layer something else on the big , um, you know, big kickers and, or the big players in supplementary AIDS and services are additional adult support, I oftentimes say as needed. Um, so that schools don't feel like they have to hire an , an aid like a one-on-one aid or something. Um, you know, and I also actually in most cases, and of course there's exceptions to everything, but relative to a one-on-one aid , I actually like it when schools will rotate and a couple of different people. So that children aren't really dependent on that child on the aid and vice versa so that the other students don't say, Oh, well, mrs. Jones takes care of Jack. And so I don't need to hang out with Jack because it's always Jack and mrs. Jones, you know,

Speaker 2 13:58

Let me ask you this from a tactical decision, right? Um, for the parents that are listening, we're not necessarily talking about parents that are seeking out placement or a specialized school or residential. We're talking about to be clear parents, we're talking with Ashley about including your child in as much mainstream opportunities as possible. And one thing that I wanted to ask you is , um, for parents that are getting resistance was saying, no, you know, we, it's just easier to place your kid in a self-contained classroom for half the day, or , um, to give him an area that's sectioned off within the classroom with a para with wrap around all services. One thing that I have found is if you start to strategically threaten, well, look, if we cannot get more push in services, we may need to look at a more restrictive level of continuum, which includes an outplacement. So you actually ask for the exact opposite of what you're hoping for, because it's going to raise a red flag that now you're looking for outplacement, and by default, it might build a better in district IEP, right?

Speaker 3 15:25

Yeah. Well, I think there's, there are alternate placements that are more inclusive. So , um, there is, there are lots of federal cases on that. So , um, there is a case, Oh gosh, I'm not going to be able to find it quickly. But , um, there's a kind of a Seminole case on that, where there was a, an autistic preschooler and as she was entering preschool, the court wanted to , um, or the school wanted to put her in a segregated classroom and the parents wanted her an inclusive environment. And so they sent a 10 day notice letter and said, we don't feel as though you can meet my child's needs effectively in the setting that you're recommending. And so we're going to place our child in an inclusive, private preschool. And if our child makes progress, then we will expect for you to pay for it. And they were successful in doing that. Um, and there's lots of those and lots of different circuits. So yeah, I mean, out placement for an inclusive reason, not for , um , the reason that the school can't meet the needs from, you know, that we need a segregated setting. It's interesting.

Speaker 2 16:34

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So, you know, you were talking about that you and your practice and within your podcast to , uh, have , uh , kind of tools and roadmap in which to seek more inclusion opportunities. Um, and I think you were gonna , you were going to jump into some of those.

Speaker 3 16:56

Yeah. So the first thing that I do is I look at those supplementary AIDS and services. So could we add adult assistance? Um , could we add some peer support? Could we add , um, extra time to take tests, accommodations, modifications for a lot of children? Um, there are just simply some like reorganizational movement breaks that we could add. And , um, and so, you know, and those are things that could help the entire class. Um, then the, the department of education guidance says another factor that we want to bring in is kind of a number two is potential harmful effects on the child , um, that is that we're talking about and then the rest of the class. And then we also want to look at the benefits to the child on the IEP and to the rest of the class. And so I usually kind of break those off into social, emotional , um, effect on the parents effect on the teacher and the timing. And so I kind of look at like pros and cons of both. And of course, if I'm trying to build an inclusive , um , argument, then I'll make it more positive. Um, there's plenty of research of the benefits of inclusion on the child. That's on the IEP as well as research on , on the benefits to the rest of the class. So that would be number two and feel free to interrupt me at any point along this job .

Speaker 2 18:22

You're doing great. Yeah. I want to , I want to give your takeaways and your, you know , kind of step-by-steps um, uh, so, you know, w let me ask you a question about , um, with your second , uh , recommendation there , you know, parallel teacher , right. Um, you know, what is , what is parallel teaching? Um, how can we successfully be requesting it within the general ed classroom for children, for a child that might need an additional teacher , um, and what happens if it's denied

Speaker 3 18:59

Well? So I think there's a couple of different , um , ways to teach collaboratively. So I think, you know, traditionally in Jeff , my teaching certificate, I was a teacher before I went to law school and it's in German K to 12. So I am by no means an expert on this, but I think collaborative teaching actually means that the especial educator and general education teacher are teaching all day long or the entire class period, if it's an upper grade together. And that , um, you know, the special educator is teaching parts of the lesson. That's also getting pushed out to the general education population. Um, and I think for that to really succeed, it has to follow the model pretty specifically, because if you try to use like bits and pieces of it, it's probably not gonna work. Um, and that's, it's also called parallel teaching, but there are also pushing services that can happen where an intervention specialist, resource teacher, special educator, whatever your state calls them , um, where that person comes in and provides push-in services mainly to the children on their caseload. So there might be one, there might be five children that received services from a special educator who comes into the classroom and will help to either provide that specially designed instruction that they get as a part of their IEP and, or provide the accommodations and modifications so that the child can reach gen ed. So my favorite example of that , I think, is super important in an inclusion discussion. I call it the primary learning goal. So if a child let's take a child that's in first or second grade, cause these discussions usually come up towards the beginning of education. So maybe we're looking at something, we have to find the word, go on a green piece of grass. And it's a piece of paper where , um, you know, maybe there's like Lily pads or some kind of flower or something, and it's a really busy paper and then there's sight words on it. And so we're looking for go, go, go, go, go. And the whole thing is go green grass. You know, like that's all confusing. Anyway, the primary learning goal is define the word go. Now the gen ed students have to find the word go. They have to cut out the flour . They have to color the whole thing and they have to paste it onto something else. Well, if we're talking about my child, Jack, who has a fine motor delay, and doesn't really love to color or cut or paste and has a difficult time with visual perception on a busy piece of paper, just identifying the word go is going to be difficult. And so what I like to do is I like to say, okay, what's he supposed to do? Well, all I care about is whether or not he sees go. And so he could sit with an adult and say, go, go, go, go, go, okay. That's great. That took 10 seconds. You did well on this paper. Anything else he does his gravy. And I think that's a real big tenet to inclusion is understanding that parents that want their child included don't want them to have to do everything that everybody else does. They simply want that opportunity to be in the classroom and succeed at their own pace and with their own content.

Speaker 2 22:14

You know, th there's a book out there , um, that I'd encourage our listeners to purchase. In addition to your , um, your work, your worksheet , um, and it's called , uh , inclusion in action , uh, practical strategies to modify your curriculum by , uh, by a young lady out of California, Nicole addicts . And it talks about how best to include your child in the general curriculum with accommodations and modifications and all of the, all of the excellent recommendations that you're suggesting. But it leads me to a question right, under the idea you have evaluations, okay. And you have district evaluations. And if you disagree with those, you can go through the labyrinth of [inaudible] , which is a whole nother podcast, but can you ask for an inclusion evaluation if you're at a crossroads and the district is not fully developing an inclusion IEP and there's there's discrepancy and disagreement, can a parent ask that the district in a collaborative fashion seek the expertise of an inclusion expert to come in and evaluate the program?

Speaker 3 23:34

So I don't know that , um, an inclusion evaluation is necessary because that kind of , um , yields that

Speaker 4 23:46

The ascertation that in evaluation

Speaker 3 23:52

Could determine placement. And actually there's department of ed guidance that specifically debunks that myth. So a lot of schools will say, well, if your child has this particular disability, then your child goes in a self-contained room. Or if your child has like the autism unit, or if your child has this specific disability category, like in Kentucky, we have mild mental disability or functional mental disability, and a big factor in differentiating between those two disability categories is your cognitive score, your full-scale IQ score. And so they'll say if you have a functional mental disability, then you go to a self-contained classroom. And I do have some insight on that too. Cause I think I know how to debunk that myth as well. Um, and it has to do with highly qualified teacher under a no child left behind act. Um, but I, I wouldn't make that argument of, we need an inclusion evaluation. I think evaluation's the wrong word. However, as attorneys Jeff, you and I are always thinking about how would I present this in a due process case or in a court case. And of course we would use experts. And so I think it's really smart to bring an expert or at least a report from experts into an inclusive discussion about inclusion. So whether that's outside therapist or tutors or coaches , um, and that kind of leads to another trick that I use a lot. And I talk a lot about parent communication. I've got lots of strategies that I don't think a whole lot of attorneys or advocates suggest, and those are all on my website. But , um , one thing that I really encourage parents to do is to communicate,

Speaker 4 25:34

Communicate, communicate.

Speaker 3 25:36

So if I can just give your audience one tip to help with that kind of inclusive , um, discussion, I'll give them this one, I call it the Sunday email. So , um, I email my client, my client, my students , my son's IEP team, every single Sunday at nine o'clock, it's on my calendar to remind me. And I send a few pictures from the week and then I communicate about anything. So, you know, if I take progress monitoring data at home, so I talked about it as data, I talk about work, that's come home, I ask any questions, et cetera . And then I take pictures because he's much more verbal now, but he used to not be super verbal. And so when you take pictures and I send them four or five pictures just about, you know , success at a basketball game or whatever. And I really started at Jeff because we got a dog and , um, I, he was not going to have the experience that other children had of going into school and saying, we got a dog because he couldn't say it. Right. Um , and so I really did it to be his voice. In addition to that, though, I did it because it has this kind of inclusive undertone of this is what we do in this family. And this is how we support him in the community, which is part of the purpose of idea, you know, there's functional goals and there's community goals and idea. And so it has this inclusive undertone as well as the functional skill of communicating. Um , and it's been really, really effective. The other thing that it does kind of as a secondary goal is it really helps to communicate interests throughout the year. You know, this is what we're interested in. This is how we feel. I do a lot of celebrating and ours . Um, so I think that's a really helpful tip in that discussion,

Speaker 2 27:26

Right? So you're, you're, you're suggesting that we have , uh, open lines of communication really on it , which, which is, should really be in every IEP, but to really make inclusion work, you really have to have a vision with your school team, right. A vision with your school team and constant communication about the, you know, the day to day wins and the day-to-day victories that are recurring . Um, so that those, that information can become part of your child's day within the, within the regular classroom.

Speaker 3 28:05

Yes. And does Connecticut have parent interest statements or future interest statements or something like that and their IEP?

Speaker 2 28:14

Uh, we have , well, we have , uh , we have a parental input page.

Speaker 3 28:18

Okay, good. So in Kentucky, we do not in Ohio. There is one , um, and I'm licensed in Kentucky and Ohio. So I have all of my clients, do I call it a future planning statement in every single IEP and I've got a form, actually, I have a downloadable form on my website. There's a free one and a paid one, I think. Um, but I have my clients start at adulthood and I talk about these five pillars of adult life. And then I backed that down to the various age groups. So these are my goals. And now this is what high school might need to look like in order for my child to achieve as adult goals. And then this is what middle school might need to look like in order to get my child to reach those high school goals, which lead to the adult goals. I back it down to today. And then we take some time at the last paragraph to talk about specific things for that particular IEP meeting. Um, and I think that's the key is exactly what you just said so that everybody understands what the interests are, because I don't want a school to think that I think that my kid is going to be a rocket scientist or is going to work for an accounting firm is an accountant. Right. But I do want for my child to have the opportunity to work a t an accounting firm and to know how to interact with accountants, if he works in the mail room, or if he delivers s omething, you know, he's a career for them. And so, you know, t hat those are the concepts that I think we have to be very objective about and we have to articulate specifically, so that everybody's on the same page.

Speaker 2 29:59

You know , it's , it's, it's great feedback that you're giving right now. Ashley. Um, I , I often tell families there's , you know, once you kind of get like the, the birth to three diagnoses down with your pediatrician at a very young elementary adolescent age, you have to think of your child's education, really in kind of three steps, elementary, middle, and high school. And , um, what you're even suggesting, which is spot on is post high school, post-secondary transition planning. And regardless of your child's age, now think about where you want your child to be as a productive member of the community, define what that community is , um, by way of, you know , uh, uh, where they're going to live, what they may be able to do based on their capabilities, based on their level of full-scale IQ score based on their physical abilities. And then start to work back. That is, that is brilliant. That is brilliant. And it's great that you're giving this information now to parents, because it's gonna make a difference in the IEP that they're developing today, right?

Speaker 3 31:19

Yeah. And it's hard, right? It's , it's hard to think about, I remember when my little boy was a baby. I, so I did not have , um , that grieving process that a lot of people have with early diagnoses . I don't know why I didn't have it. It probably wasn't super healthy. Um , but I still had a hard time thinking about adulthood. Um, and so once you're able to wrap your head around that in a helpful manner, I think it's really important. And I have two kind of tips on that. Um, so the first one is that I always tell people I want Jack to be interested and interesting because he most likely in our family's value system right now will live with us , um, for, throughout his life. And so he is going to have, you know, of course he'll cook dinner and of course I'll have activities and that kind of thing. But Jack has some really good, authentic friends , uh , friendships with people that have typical abilities. And so I totally foresee that Jack will be in the bowling league. Once everybody moves back home after college, you know, Tuesday night bullying with the 22 year old dudes. I totally think he's going to do that. We want him to learn how to golf because that's a great social opportunity for guys. If he goes and plays basketball, like right now, baseball got too dangerous. He can't play baseball with his peers cause he's 10 and they can really hit the ball. Um, and I don't belong in the outfield anymore, but basketball, he actually can practice with them and then we run stats. So he and I sit on the bench, his dad's a coach and he and I sit on the bench and we take stats and it's good math for him because he actually hates math and he can be social. And his buddies walk up and say, Jack, how many rebounds do I have? And then Jack answers. I want those , um , friendships to stay authentic and I have to be deliberate about it. And so I want him to experience hardship 22, 23, 24 year olds stirred to experience hardship. They've had breakups, they failed classes. They have had parents get sick, et cetera. If we give Jack this really sheltered life where he lives in our, you know, he lives kind of under our sheltered roof and I cook for him and I treat him like he's 15 years old, they're going to , he's not going to have anything in common with them and they're going to go right past him. So I want him to stay interesting. I want him to address conflict and to experience conflict and hardship in a way that's beyond his disability. Um, and at the same time, I want him to be interested in his friends, like to have that curiosity of childhood so that he can ask this empathetic questions. Um, the second response to that Jeff is totally different, more legal. Um, and it is, you look at the purpose of the law. The purpose of idea is to prepare students for further education, employment, and independent living. Two thirds of that is future forward. And so we have to constantly remind clients that we are preparing for the future and we're preparing for the world, not just to school.

Speaker 2 34:26

Right? Right. And while we're, while we have our legal hats on with Ida black letter law stuff, you know, let let's, let's talk about inclusion, meaning you are actually implementing goals and objectives in a generalized setting, right? And that's the whole point after all of the idea is to instill advancement and progress in a child that may not be neuro typically advancing at an equivalent rate than others, so that these skills and these goals and objectives generalized into the community setting. And what better way to generalize in the community setting then to have your child inclusive within public mainstream classroom, you know, but for the listeners to be clear, inclusion is not practicing different skills in different areas than peers without disabilities. It's not leaving the classroom constantly for pull out services. It's not, it's not practicing skills than what the other neuro-typical students without disabilities are. Instead what it is is it's accessing what everyone else is accessing, but with accommodations and modifications and supports by ways of goals and objectives in the IEP with the professionals that we're talking about. So the child can be included in a neuro-typical setting. Right. And that, that's what you were talking about with LRE that under the law, it's mandated, it's mandated that children are educated in the least restrictive.

Speaker 3 36:18

Right. And so what I would say yes, I completely agree with that. Um, so one strategy that I use that helps with that system is I really get into the schedule. So I say to the teacher, the gen ed teacher, what's your day look like if it's elementary school, they can rattle it off lickety split, if it's middle school, then I say, okay, so what does an average student do? Which child with a 100 IQ, what's it, what's an average student seventh grade day look like. Um, and then I back away from that. So we look at, when we look at the schedule, we say, okay, well, where would the child do well , um, in the gen ed environment, maybe with very few accommodations. And then , um, we look at the places where we went and do well and we say, okay, well, what could we do in order to make that work? And then we look at the times when it's just going to go straight over their head. Now I do want to say something about that. And that is , um, I think, and different parents feel differently about this. And I say this out loud in my meetings so that they understand this, Jack is like I said, probably going to live with us. Jack is going to have to hang out because of these wonderful, organic friendships that he has and social environments where life goes too fast. It is loud. It is busy. People are drinking. People do act differently. You know, there's going to be experiences in his adult life that are going to be unfamiliar to him and are going to go too fast for him to keep up an important skill that he needs to learn is how to let life go by a little bit. My little guy has ADHD. He has sensory dysregulation. He can't go to an NFL game right now. Um , a baseball game, majorly baseball game, no problem at all. But, and I found games too loud, too busy. Um, Andy's 10 , so too much cursing, but he, so he needs to learn that skill because that's a skill. He needs an adulthood. So I really, really don't care all that much if he, if he's in an environment in school where life's going too fast for too long. Yeah. It's , you could consider that like wasted minutes. But to me, it's minutes where he might be practicing a skill he needs and adulthood. But then what I do next is I look at that time and I say, okay, well, we have this specially designed instruction that he needs to get in order to help to meet his goals. And I don't, I agree that he needs SDI in a more quiet setting. Um, and if they can make the resource room also , um, inclusive or have other peers in there and that kind of stuff, he's got another community in there. So my little guy leaves during gen ed math, for example, because he just, he hates math. He would never keep up with math and it would be nearly impossible to give him fourth grade math that could make any sense to him. So he's gone the entire time, they're doing math and then, you know, we kind of keep working that way. And then we look and say, okay, once we've worked that all out, we look at the special educator and say, is that enough time for you to do what you need to do? Um , in order to get the STI done in the correct environment for each particular goal. And that's kind of the step-by-step of how I get into the schedule,

Speaker 2 39:43

You know , um, I'm not sure what Kentucky IEP look like. Um , but I could tell you, you know, in Connecticut, it's kind of like looking like a Rubik's cube, right? I mean, if you're not familiar with the vernacular of understanding an IEP document, you have to really, you know, do it with some level of regimented to actually understand the code that it's talking. But one thing that I have often found helpful when you're, when you're looking to do inclusive strategies is to develop an IEP matrix, which is where you're, you know, you're, you're requesting the school team to look at all the goals and objectives and service hours and accommodations and modifications. And like you said, asking the gen ed teacher, what's the, what's the curriculum for the day. What is the actual periods from, from morning to, you know, end of day and how can we roll out into a visual aid for everyone on the team to roll out all the goals and objectives across my child's entire day. And that's what we often refer to as an IEP matrix, right? And inclusion and inclusion cases. It's so helpful because you get to figure out what, what at what time of day and in what subject are my child's OT goals and objectives going to be implemented or speech and language opportunities in their curriculum is going to be implemented across the entire day. So often what I'll do is in inclusion cases is demand the district for the benefit of the parent and for the teachers to develop an IEP matrix. I like

Speaker 3 41:34

That. I mean, that's basically what I do with the schedule. And I think that that's really wise. The one thing that I always advise my clients of is from a competitive standpoint , um , because Jeff forte and Ashley Barlow are both competitive. Um, I say that's all the more reason to communicate, right? Because then you get the advantage of, of the schedule that works exactly for your gen ed teacher and your resource teachers calendars. Um, however, from a reasonable objective standard resource teachers have , um, in Kentucky, a teacher with Jack's teacher's certificate can have up to 15 students, even if she only had three goals for which to provide SDI and to progress monitor on that's 45 goals that she has to teach and take data on. And then she has to do accommodations and modifications for each one of those children. And then she has to do all the paperwork that a special educator has to do. So draft IEP is and evaluation reports and in coordinating with everybody in the district and everything else. So these people have scheduling night mayors, I mean, to get all of the work done and then to figure out whom you're going to see, and when is impossible. So competitively, that's why you want to have the relationships and why you want to communicate and why you want to stay on top of things. But from a empathetic standpoint, I think it's really important to realize that like, if it's, if may have starts at 10 30 and your child has to sit in the math room until 10 50, then I'm okay with them so long as it isn't, agregious , um , doing something different than what the gen ed peers are doing in order to make sense of that 20 minutes where it just doesn't fit into the resource teachers time or the special educators time.

Speaker 2 43:29

Right, right. Now, Ashley, you mentioned that you have a workbook on , uh , helping to build inclusion into your child's classroom. And I know that you've just recently launched your own amazing podcast and , um, amazing website Ashley Barlow company. Can you, can you go briefly into that , um, for the benefit of our listeners and where we can get that information and what your website is?

Speaker 3 43:55

Yes, of course. So the inclusion workshop is a three-part video series. It's about an hour and a half total. And what it does is it goes through idea and then the federal regulations that tease out idea, and then with the department of ed has said about inclusion. So there's kind of, non-binding non-binding guidance from the United States department of education by way of two different offices, the office of special education and rehabilitative services and the office of special education programs. So I've detailed what they have said and what I've done, I've actually broken it into different themes. So a theme on the continuum of services, a theme on that concept, the myth that I just talked about earlier, about how disability category doesn't drive placement and that sort of thing. Um, and then I go through, and then I go through one case that's a really good kind of real life. This is what happened to a child and here's how they got inclusion. Um, and then I go through my steps. So how do I argue a lot of them we've talked about today, but there's a ton more, how do I argue in an inclusion case and how do I do it practically for my families? Um , so it's this kind of three part video series it's on the website. Um, and it is , um, for sale , there is a small charge for that one. Um, but I have plenty of free resources on my website also. So yes, the , the company's name is Ashley Barlow co or Ashley Barlow company. The website is Ashley Barlow Cole, C o.com. And , um, what the company does is it provides tons and tons of special education supports for families, for community members and for school staff. Um, and the kind of idea behind it is to provide all of these resources. So that teams work more collaboratively. And so I've got checklists and guides and , um, step-by-step , uh , kind of , uh, let's call them guides, but like, here's how I would do first do this, then do that, then do this, how to prepare for an IEP meeting, how to write that future planning statement , um, things that should be in a functional behavior assessment. And I put them up for people just to down then I do have some paid , um , products as well. Some of those are just downloadable PDFs. Some are kind of bigger workshops like this, or I've got a behavior workshop that's coming up soon. I've got that inclusion workshop. I actually have some free webinars. I also do live webinars. Um, and then the big , uh , exciting thing Jeff is I have started an online trading course for parents, school staff and community members that want to be more educated about special education. So it's called the special education and advocacy lab. And what it is is it's a 10 week training course, you don't have to do anything live if you want. There is a subscription that comes with live coaching from me. Um, and what it does is it goes, start to finish in special ed. So the first five modules are really kind of like not beefy on the law, but they explain the law. And then the last five modules take what we've learned about the law and give you practical tips. So there's a whole module on communication, like how I recommend to communicate , um , and that sort of thing. And so , um, I just am finishing my first launch of that. My students are in week eight of 10 right now, it's going wonderfully. Um, and we will launch again in January so that people are finished during kind of traditional what we call IEP season. Like, you know, towards the middle of March ish by spring break, people will be trained and ready to roll. So , um, I'm also on Instagram. I do lots of free resources on Instagram. There's some HGTVs, I've got reels with just some really simple, like straightforward lists also. So that is , um, is that kind of handle my Instagram. I don't know what it is, but I'm at Ashley Barlow co on Instagram, I'm on Facebook, that's called Ashley Berlin company, and then I've got the podcast. So the podcast is special education advocacy with Ashley Barlow . That's great Ashley. And, you know, as it as always, it takes a village. Right. And , um, I , I welcome you to, to be a resource for all the listeners for my podcast. Hey, let's get another podcast going that , that my audience can listen to. Um, with ashleyBarlow@ashleybarlowcode.com . Thank you, Ashley, for giving us insight, not only as a lawyer , um, on tips and tricks for inclusion, but also, you know, sharing your personal story with Jack, which I always love to catch up with you on.

Speaker 1 48:57

So thank you so much for being on our show and to our listeners. Thank you again for listening. Stay tuned. As we get another episode coming out the following week, you're going to want to listen. Thanks so much.