Chris Colley: 0:12

Excellent, all right. Hey, welcome back everyone. We're back with another episode of Shift Ed Podcast. Today I'm staying local. I love when I can gather in some local experts. I have two amazing educators from Lester B Pearson School Board, devin Warnock and Jennifer Mercer, and today we're going to really talk about differentiation inclusivity. They are both let me get this right consultants. Inlusive Education those are your titles, correct, guys?

Devon Warnock: 0:46

You got it I love it.

Chris Colley: 0:49

I came across that acronym CIE, and I was like CIE, cie, cie, I couldn't. And then I found it and I was like, ah, yes, of course. So before we start delving into our topic today, I'd love to kind of just set the stage a little bit. And, jennifer, why don't we start with you? How did you get to this stage in your career? I tend to ask, like were there moments that you recall that brought you to where you are today, that were very transformational in getting you to this spot in your career?

Jennifer Mercer: 1:19

Wow, that's a that's a deep question, chris. I haven't thought too much about this, but I can tell you that I spent the majority of my career at a school in the east of our school board. I got hired at Diverdan Elementary School right out of university. It was my first experience working in a school and it turns out that at that school there were a lot of needs at the time but, of course, not having much to compare it to, I didn't really know any different. I did know that I loved the students I knew, I loved the team that I worked with, and that's sort of what kept me going back there year after year. And I actually spent my entire career before becoming a consultant at that school, which is sort of rare.

Jennifer Mercer: 2:07

A lot of people bounce around but I was lucky enough to be able to get hired after a few you know a few rounds on the priority list, but not too many and I got hired there and there were diverse learning profiles in every single class there and, um, we just sort of adapted without even knowing any better at the time.

Jennifer Mercer: 2:30

We just sort of did what we had to do and it wasn't until um, you know, until I I've now become. You know now I've started working with a lot of different teachers in this new role. Um, I realized that not all schools have that situation right. There's still. Needs are changing throughout the system. There's definitely more diverse profiles in all of our schools now than what there were. But I'm realizing that the reality of teachers was not necessarily my reality and in our school board typically consultants for inclusive education were resource teachers that have become consultants. But in my situation I was a classroom teacher but because I had so many diverse profiles and lots of IEPs, it wasn't too difficult of a transition for me to move over to this role because I was familiar with those things.

Chris Colley: 3:26

I'm sure that lived experience, too, brings a plethora of wealth to the team as well, of having experienced the classroom and the firsthand connections with the students that way.

Jennifer Mercer: 3:38

For sure. I think at the beginning, when I first moved into this role, that was definitely a plus for me. I did have that classroom experience. So when I was building my relationships with my teachers that I was working with, I think you know that helped me relate to them a little bit better than maybe if I was coming from a different role. But I've been now a consultant for the past four and a half years and you know, learning every day and I just love it.

Chris Colley: 4:06

Amazing, Awesome and Devin. What about you? Where it all began for you? What were some of those tipping points in your career so far?

Devon Warnock: 4:15

So it's funny because we often joke in our team. So both Jen and I worked in Verdun together and our director, sandra Luther, was our resource teacher when we were there and she's now our director of student services. So all of the greats maybe come from Verdun because of the amount of kids that we had in front of us who required a significant amount of support and, like Jen said, we didn't even know it was not normal, like we were just doing what we had to do to ensure that those kids felt successful and felt engaged and that they weren't isolated. And so, you know, back in the day, I remember I was teaching grade six and a tipping point, I think, for me is I was creating, you know, adapted version one, adapted version two, modified version A, modified version B, and Sandra was running in my room taking half my kids out because there wasn't class sizes at the time. I had 28 kids and you know I had 17 IEPs, and so we were just, you know, running rampant and just that complete, overwhelming sense of this is too hard. And so we had started to shift our practice back then, really looking through a trauma lens and then looking at through a kid-centered approach, like what if we did stations, what if we did centers, what if we did daily five? And that really changed our way of looking at how we adapted our environment to the kids in front of us. So that was kind of my first little tipping point.

Devon Warnock: 5:40

And then, unlike Jen, I was on the priority list so I hopped around from school to school and I saw, like Jen said, some of these schools had one kid who was, you know, a bit different and it was really hard for those schools to adapt their teaching practices. It was like, well, this kid doesn't learn the way I teach and it's like, okay, but maybe we can just try it differently or they can show you a different way of how they learn. And it was really, really hard for those teachers to take that leap, to change or to see that kid is a little bit, you know, different. So I think that that kind of really prompted me to start thinking about how I can help other teachers to see those kids in different ways or to offer them different pathways to how they can learn.

Devon Warnock: 6:26

And when I came back from my mat leave, this post popped up and actually I had reached out to Jen to say, hey, this post popped up and you know I had been a resource teacher, I had been a classroom teacher and she was the one who really encouraged me to apply and it's just been great. I mean, you know, the first year of consulting was getting the lay of the land, getting to know my schools, my building those relationships, just like you would do within a classroom. But now it's, you know, really building those relationships and seeing that what teachers need and how we can help, because I remember feeling the frustration of a classroom teacher like nobody's helping me. I need help.

Devon Warnock: 7:04

So it's it's kind of, it's allowed us to to kind of branch out and to help develop others, Cause that's really where we see the biggest benefit is that building capacity.

Chris Colley: 7:14

Absolutely, and I love the community too. I mean not just within Leicester Bee, but across our province. There's such, it seems like, a great team of people coming together with this purpose of making sure that all kids have access in classrooms and it's not just those that you know can or can't, or it's like really everyone has a fair shot at it. And it kind of brings me to this question how long is have we had inclusive classrooms here in Quebec? Has that been something that has been around for a long time or is it something relatively, you know, within the last decade that's happened?

Jennifer Mercer: 7:57

I think it all depends on the school board that you're working for. Lester B has been inclusive since about 2003, 2004,. If I recall my very first year at Woodland School, which then became Verdun Elementary, we had that was the very last year that they had closed special education classes. We had merged, the English school boards had merged and then it was decided that Lester B would become an inclusive school board, so they phased out the special education classes shortly after. Some school boards still offer special education classes at certain levels, perhaps for different types of disabilities. But I think most of the English school boards do show an inclusive model to a certain extent and the French system, I believe, still has many closed classrooms.

Chris Colley: 8:55

Right, right and Devin. What's the thinking behind that? Like, why have inclusive classrooms? Like, what are the benefits for it? For the students themselves?

Devon Warnock: 9:08

You know, I think that's a question that a lot of teachers have been asking themselves recently, because we've seen an influx of kids coming in with higher needs than ever before and it's really become a question of like reminding ourselves of why we do this. And I always think back to Dr Shelley Moore. She's a Canadian advocate for kids with exceptionalities and she always brings it back to you know, back in the day, if you had any exceptionality, if you had any disability, not only were you not allowed in the school, you were sent to a completely different region. So siblings were sent to different schools based on their abilities.

Devon Warnock: 9:46

And it was only when parents really started to say like, hey, wait a minute, why can't my kids go to school together? And they started to advocate for their children and I think that's what we've seen in Quebec as well is that we have these parents who are saying, hey, wait a sec, my kid deserves to go to school with his or her siblings. And they need to, you know, be not only integrated but celebrated and have that real deep sense of belonging. And I think there's so many benefits to having inclusive classrooms and to having students working together, learning from each other, because it really sets the tone for human nature in general. Like when our kids are on field trips and they see people who may act differently or have reduced mobility, they're not surprised by that because they're going to schools with kiddos that looked and lacked differently than them, and that's okay, we celebrate it.

Devon Warnock: 10:42

And it's not just about tolerance, it's about acceptance, and I think that that makes a big difference. And I think the biggest benefit that you can see is when you walk into our classrooms and see our kids, you know, working together and not really seeing those differences but really focusing on the similarities that they share. So I mean, I know it comes with its struggles. We are definitely not in a perfect situation, but at the end of the day it's. I think it's the best environment for our kids to learn in.

Chris Colley: 11:14

Right, absolutely so. I mean, then, in walks, differentiation, right, like having inclusive classrooms, means that the teacher has to be aware of all the different varieties of kids they have and then making sure they have access to the learning that's going on. How do you guys, do you find that across the province of Quebec, that the differentiation documentation that's been put out by the MEQ, that that's understood and followed, or does every board kind of have its own flavor and reinterpretation? Like, are the nine boards all kind of in isolation in their differentiation and it's not something that's global across the province? I think?

Jennifer Mercer: 11:59

yeah, I was just gonna say you know, I think it's hard for us to speak about different boards, right, because we've both been with Lesterby for a long time.

Jennifer Mercer: 12:06

But what I do know is that you know teachers when they first get out of university, we study the curriculum, we study all the documents from the MEQ and then, as we get more and more comfortable with our curriculum, we get into habits, we get into routines and we start to do things.

Jennifer Mercer: 12:24

You know, sometimes the way we've always done things the year before. Sometimes we make some tweaks and what I have noticed is that there are some really great documents put out by the MEQ and I'm not so sure teachers are remembering to look at them, or also they're just so busy, right. So it's hard to sit down at the end of the day and spark up your computer and go see what the MEQ has to say, because you're putting out 10 fires every five minutes. So I think part of our job for Devin and I is to remind teachers also to go consult those documents. There's some great documents on flexible pedagogy and adaptations modifications, as well as the curriculum documents as well when you're talking about evaluation. So I do think we get into old habits. We forget to look at those things, but they're really great resources.

Devon Warnock: 13:14

And I think that that's kind of why we did this, or why I thought to do this project, and then it bloomed into something a lot bigger.

Devon Warnock: 13:22

But there's a real misunderstanding of what's the difference between flexible pedagogy, differentiation, adaptation, modification. And we had teachers who were, you know, 15 years into their like not early career teachers, but 15 years in who were unsure of what to do when they had a kid who was learning differently. And it's like, wait a minute, you've been doing this for 15 years and you still struggle, so something is not clear. So how about we kind of clarify certain things to help those teachers feel confident? Because that's the hardest part, and I think that that's one of the struggles that we see the minute that we don't feel confident, we don't really want to do it. You get in that gray area and you want to stick to what you know, and it's hard when we don't have the strategies or the confidence to be able to teach the kids that are sitting in front of us. And so referring to those documents are important, but, like any good political ministry document, they're often vague, right?

Devon Warnock: 14:24

So they can be interpreted in many different ways. So I think that the beauty of those documents is that our teachers do have a lot of autonomy in what they do, but when it gets down to the nitty gritty of it and helping our kids, who are diverse, we need to ensure that we're giving them the best practices that we can to make sure that they're successful.

Chris Colley: 14:44

Absolutely. Yeah, it's. It's getting into the nuts and bolts of it. All Right, like I've had many discussions with many a teacher about the understanding of what differentiation is and pedagogical flexibility. But when it gets to the brass tacks of it all, it's like all right, where do I start? What do I do? Do I have to make a lesson for every kid? And you know, like it's it's, it's that surface understanding. So I understand, devin, that you, um, you applied for a PDIG.

Chris Colley: 15:11

Oh, yeah, remember teacher PDIGs are opening up now so you can apply for them for next year and your PDIG was around an inclusive toolkit. Is that correct?

Devon Warnock: 15:20

Yeah, so we actually. It was funny. So I had gone to a presentation and one of the consultants from Soul World for Laurier had done a similar project, and so I was like, oh my gosh, we need to do this and add our board, because we have so many amazing teachers and I think we need to kind of sit down and figure this out all together. And so I applied for a PDIG. We got it. It was amazing.

Devon Warnock: 15:46

We sat down with a boatload of teachers and we sent a survey out and we originally called our toolkit the Modification Toolkit, and the aim was to make modifications more meaningful.

Devon Warnock: 15:58

And what we quickly realized is that, by pegging it as a modification toolkit, that some teachers who didn't necessarily have kids who were modified in their class were like, oh, I don't need this, and so they weren't necessarily being engaged in our, in our, in our professional development or our workshops. And I was like, wait a minute, like these are the teachers who need to hear this, because these are the kids who who are going to benefit from this, even if they're not modified. So we switched it up and we called it our inclusion toolkit, because really it's how to you know how to do everything you need to do in an inclusive classroom and that PDIG opportunity, I mean man sitting with those teachers. And one thing I think Jen and I have both learned very quickly in the role of consultant is that teachers will listen to teachers a heck of a lot faster than they will to a consultant because even though we were teachers, we know how they felt.

Devon Warnock: 16:52

We are no longer teachers, we are now at the board level and there's that shift in like oh, yeah, okay, but when it comes from their colleagues, man, what a difference it makes. So hearing from them and really working closely with those teachers, it made it so much more meaningful for us.

Chris Colley: 17:10

Interesting and, jen, can you elaborate on some of the like through work with the toolkit and where I guess it's more explicit and more strategy based and practice? And like what were some of your surprises that you saw teachers wanting to adapt that they hadn't before?

Jennifer Mercer: 17:43

Well, I think the beauty of this toolkit that you know was led by Devin and a colleague of ours, jessica worked on by a bunch of teachers. I think the beauty of this kit is that it's really a one-stop shop for teachers for planning for their classrooms. You know, there are forms that they can use to fill out student profiles. They can have access to ministry documents, they can have access to some frequently asked questions, which is a section that I love in that toolkit because it really does. It really does clarify the role of the teacher, the. You know the purpose of this toolkit, so there's a lot of really great things included and I think it just really helps teachers to plan for their class, plan for all of the needs of all of their students in a one-stop shop. It's not retrofitting for kids that learn a little bit different. It really is planning with everybody in mind. So I think that's the beautiful part of that toolkit.

Chris Colley: 18:34

Amazing Devin. Do you have anything to add to that, Because I knew that you were behind it? A lot of the toolkit. Were there any surprises for you that came out of that PIDG and working with teachers directly?

Devon Warnock: 18:46

So I think what was fun about working with that gang was they weren't afraid to speak up and speak out. They had, you know, they asked some really hard questions. We sent a survey to our teachers. We got about 250-ish responses back and what we found right away is, you know, teachers were really struggling with aligning modified activities with cycle expectations. Teachers were struggling with developing learning activities and then creating and reporting on IEP objectives, which you know some of these teachers had been in schools for 15 to 20 years and they were still struggling with those three things. So it made us kind of look at our project, as you know, bigger than we had originally thought, which was great, because traditionally modification is really seen as other right it's seen as something different.

Devon Warnock: 19:45

It focuses on what kids can't do, and so we really wanted it to stop being a reactive approach for teachers.

Devon Warnock: 19:51

We wanted it to be something well like how about we focus on what your kids can do and shift them towards bridging the gap in their learning, wherever they are in their learning, and as opposed to what I did back in the day, you know, of creating completely different materials and different assignments it's how can you do this for all your kids, so that you're not completely overwhelmed by who's sitting in front of you? And you know it is really just inviting, I think, teachers to think about all of their students when they're planning, as opposed to the kid who's easy to teach to. So I think that's what we did, and you know it's still a journey. There's still some bumps along the way to go, but really that was the surprising thing. We had teachers asking really hard questions and really being vulnerable in what they didn't know, and it was like, wow, okay, so then, if this many people need this much information, like, let's see what we can do with this so that was really the beauty of it, I think.

Chris Colley: 21:01

That's cool. That's cool. I really love that um, and I've also seen that you guys are starting to um start the journey at the pre-service teacher level and I've seen a couple of your your presentations to pre-service teachers to get them ready, because I've been doing work with them as well.

Chris Colley: 21:21

And there's a long way to go, so that after 15 years of practice, I'm only just starting like we want to avoid that right, Exactly. So what are the things that you guys recommend for those pre-service teachers that they should become aware of or read over or you know, like, how do you, how do you motivate them to be aware of inclusivity in our classrooms so that they're aware of it and react to it?

Jennifer Mercer: 21:49

You know they, that is actually one of the best parts of our job. I think Devin woulds that we just recently did with them was sort of, you know, having them practice and planning with their, with these students in mind and giving them access to the toolkit and giving them hands on experience to sort of tweak some lessons of theirs, you know, using the tools that we're introducing to them. But I have to say, you know, they have a lot of great tools already in their tool belt. They have what they have going for them, I think, is really sort of maybe a naivete, right. They don't really have a preconceived notion of what their classroom should look like, because they're just happy to pick up a 50% post that's left over right, because they're brand new.

Jennifer Mercer: 22:53

And when you look at who was in our session back in January, you know we had about, I would say, a good 30 students sorry, 30 pre-service teachers, 30 teachers, new teachers and they all were teaching bits and pieces of things 50% French grade two, 50% French grade six and and they were just happy to be there. They were overwhelmed but they were happy to be there and they were happy to work hard and meet the needs of their students. So they really do have some, some resilience and you know they were happy to be introduced to these tools. But I think I think coming in fresh like that is really a great, you know, a great, almost a protective factor, because they don't really know what things should look like, because things don't look like that anymore. Our students have changed over the years. Classrooms are diverse, so I think their open-mindedness is really a great thing.

Chris Colley: 23:51

That's cool.

Devon Warnock: 23:54

I'm actually going to McGill next week. We're presenting at a class at McGill with Sam Braseisi and we presented at Concordia a few weeks ago. That was amazing. But pre-service teachers I mean, this is my bread and butter. This is where I want to be, because I know that the reality of teaching is so different than what you experience at McGill and Concordia. Right, and I think my recent research was that I think McGill maybe offers six to nine credits that goes around somewhere. Inclusion I think Concordia does a bit more. Maybe nine to 12 credits. Bishops I think it was six credits. Those are the classes that are aimed at preparing pre-service teachers for inclusive classrooms.

Chris Colley: 24:41

It's not a lot of exposure really.

Devon Warnock: 24:44

They're not really getting that exposure, and, at the end of the day, designing for diversity is what you have to do. Designing for diversity is what you have to do. So I think that a lot of our work goes into providing them with some skills and strategies that they haven't necessarily seen before. And so then, the minute you do that.

Devon Warnock: 25:04

they sometimes see that as extra, and so, to avoid that, if we could get some coursework involved, some stuff for them to have access to before becoming a full-time teacher and seeing it as an extra, that's where we'll get the most bang for our buck. Because what we've learned, and what I learned as a teacher, is that if I can design for, you know, one lesson for all my kids, I am saving 10 hours at night. You know, going home at night and back before the internet. Well, I had the internet but I didn't have Google, so I would have to like cut things out and cut it with glue and then photocopy it this way and not that way.

Devon Warnock: 25:40

And you know you spend hours doing that stuff and we know that teachers lack that time and they lack that. You know sometimes they lack support and resources. If you're in a school, in a rural school, you may not have a full-time resource teacher at your school. In a rural school, you may not have a full-time resource teacher at your school, you may not have a consultant to come in and work with you. So if we can provide pre-service teachers and early career teachers with mentoring opportunities and opportunities to ask questions and to practice, practice, practice.

Devon Warnock: 26:05

I think that that can really service us all in the long run, because then it becomes. You know, our school boards are receiving these bright-eyed and bushy-tailed teachers and within five years we can lose them because they're overwhelmed and they're tired and they don't feel equipped to help to teach a child with autism. You know, they don't feel equipped to teach a child who has a specific learning disability in reading and writing. They've never had to do that before. So I think the more that we can prepare them, I think the higher chance that we'll keep them around.

Chris Colley: 26:38

Absolutely. I totally agree with you on that, because it is overwhelming. I mean, just remove inclusivity, which is ridiculous, but just the teaching job is so overwhelming and then having to take into account the kids in front. You can't just be up on the stage and just deliver stuff anymore um because you know you're getting half the kids. The other half are just rolling their eyes like what the heck am I?

Jennifer Mercer: 27:03

doing here.

Chris Colley: 27:04

Um, this has been really fascinating. I want to thank you guys first. Before we, I have one last question for you. What is the ideal inclusive environment in your opinion? I saw that there was an article, a post put out on um through Lester B's um news cast and it talked about that and that phrase, that sentence, really popped out at me. What, what are some of the aspects that need to be in there? I mean, ideal is a big word, but an inclusive classroom that is more inclusive, like if you're starting from very low, what are some of the things that are easy to get going to start creating that inclusion within your class Routines and rituals?

Devon Warnock: 27:53

Say again, Kevin yeah, say again. Routines and rituals. If you can get a solid routine and ritual so your kids don't have to think about how to learn, if they already know the way that you're going to teach. I know, jen, when you always refer back to the setup that you had. Your kids didn't have to think about it, they knew.

Jennifer Mercer: 28:15

Yeah, lots of you know routines, rituals. That certainly helps build the class culture. I also think that you know shifting the language a little bit, you know I I like that. You know we call ourselves consultants for inclusive education instead of. You know we call ourselves consultants for inclusive education instead of, you know, special education consultants. I do like that.

Jennifer Mercer: 28:38

But even more so if anybody follows Shelley Moore, you know she has a diagram where she's got these bubbles that represent, you know, segregation and integration and inclusion, and she sort of challenges us to think about what's beyond that, what is beyond inclusion, right, because when you look at your classroom, everybody is individual and everybody has different needs and I think that's sort of the whether it be behavioral needs, whether it be learning needs, whether it be everybody is diverse.

Jennifer Mercer: 29:10

So I think it's sort of just kind of shifting our lens to from what's normal to have in a class quote unquote to just, you know, acknowledging that everybody's unique, everybody has needs and you know, just keeping that in mind when we plan for them I think really really will help teachers sort of grasp the needs of their class and be able to plan for those kids and not just the one or two or four or five. That have, you know, learning difficulties or behavior difficulties, but just keeping everyone in mind, which is a challenge, and, um, it can be overwhelming, but hopefully, um you know, through, through pd and through listening to podcasts and all of those things, we'll get there.

Devon Warnock: 29:56

And I think, at the end of the day, a real sense of inclusion in a classroom is that it's more than just a shared space, it's more than just routine and rituals, it's it's having those relationships that are solidly built where a kid feels that they belong in your class, because the minute a kid feels they belong, you can get them to do anything so that when you have that heightened sense, then students, whether they have exceptionalities or not, they're more likely to engage, they're more likely to contribute and to form positive relationships with their peers, which then you know, promotes a stronger community in your class. And because you know the flip side is that when you have an inclusive school that don't have inclusive instructional practices, you have kids who are, you know, throwing stuff at you and walking out of the class and are like this is too hard, this is not for me, and so you have on, the flip side is you have kids who don't feel that they belong, that they don't that know, they aren't planned for. So I think when you build in those rituals, routines, and have that relationship and, you know, use an inclusive framework, you know, anyone in Quebec has access to our toolkit. They can go and check out all the templates and lesson plans that we've created and really it's just an invitation to to use a master brain of a teacher on paper, and that's kind of what we discovered.

Devon Warnock: 31:21

I think it was Arla Connell. She's a teacher for Maple Grove, she's fantastic, and she said you know, this is what excellent teachers do. But imagine we're just giving this to brand new teachers, like they're going to, they're going to have this in their minds and then it's just going to become a ritual and a routine for them, a habitual thing to be like. Okay, I'm planning this method. What's my baseline? Okay, what can all of my kids do? What could some of my kids do? And look at it that way, I like that.

Devon Warnock: 31:46

Yeah.

Chris Colley: 31:47

But you can see it as kind of a structure that you're bringing in and you're following that structure. I that you're bringing in and you're following that structure. I love the idea, too, of relationships. I mean, I think that's what educators do, is they create relationships with others and hopefully positive, the most positive relationships, because once you have those, then there's room to move and to know and sometimes you're going to get feedback from the student themselves of how they learn or what they're not getting at. So, totally, totally love that, totally love that. Well, guys, this has been really fascinating. You've made us all smarter out there, the listeners, because it is so important and it just needs to be talked about more. Like I, I love to the idea of the language, that we just need to have a common language, that we start using um to set up some of these rituals and routines, um. So thank you, guys for this. It's been really fascinating thank you, chris.