Boston UDL Symposium

It seems like a long time since I last wrote my blog, but it has only been a week, and what a week it has been! I had the opportunity to join a colleague, Mark Thompson, this past week to spend a few days in Boston at Harvard for the CAST UDL Symposium on Empowering Learners, and we presented some of the outstanding work that teachers in Sheboygan Falls have been doing. Even better, I was able to learn from UDL leaders! It was fantastic, and I'll take this opportunity to reflect and share. This is going to be a long post because there was just so much packed into these few days, so get ready!

We arrived on Sunday around noon, and a cousin of mine who lives in Boston generously offered to pick us up at the airport and hold onto our bags until our Airbnb was ready. We had a few hours to kill, so we decided to take in many of the sights of Boston and walk the Freedom Trail. This historical path tells the story of Boston around the Revolutionary War. It was very interesting to see many of the places that I've only read or heard about sitting surrounded by modern-day Boston. We had quite the workout, including a long climb up the Bunker Hill Monument. Needless to say, my legs were not happy with me for the rest of the trip! After our long walk, I had a nice dinner with family, followed by some final preparations for our presentation.

The symposium began Monday morning with a powerful keynote from Emma Van der Klift and Norman Kunc on the importance of providing students with opportunities. Historically, opportunity has not been about ability, it was about social constructs. However, opportunity should be the precursor for ability. For ALL students to succeed, they need to be given opportunities to do so. "You wouldn't teach someone to swim by bringing them to the pool parking lot." Opportunities without support, though, are destined for failure; opportunity + support = innovation. In addition to these ideas, there were two other points that really stuck out to me: 1) The students with behavioral concerns are like canaries in a coal mine; they are the social critics who are telling us what we are doing wrong. 2) If we are going to do anything that really makes a difference for students, it is to help them learn to advocate for themselves.
Following the keynote, I attended a session on making documents more accessible for students through the use of screen reader features. I also attended a session that described what it was like for the entire state of Maryland to adopt UDL and the procedures that the Baltimore Country Public Schools used to put UDL into use. Other than the keynote, however, the biggest thing for me on this day was our presentation. The presentation was a digital poster presentation that showcased our district's use of Canvas as a professional learning tool to share exemplar's of UDL units that were created by teachers.
We talked with many people, and they seemed very intrigued by the work that was being presented!

Tuesday, as you will see, was a big learning day for me! Tuesday morning opened with another powerful keynote from Joni Degner, as we started with a reflection on the phrase "Knowledge is Power." However, as Joni then asserted, "Knowledge isn't power if you don't do something with it." As the theme for the symposium was empowering learners, Joni then went on to show empowerment is a combination of respect, inclusion, collaboration, and being given opportunities to lead. We looked at ways that the UDL Guidelines support these areas of empowerment. Joni finished the keynote with two touching stories that stress implementing UDL early into a student's educational journey.
Following the keynote, I attended a session on executive function and expert learners. I LOVED this session! It gave me a nice and much-needed refresher on executive function, which are the processes that we do everyday to manage our lives (planning, time management, organization, mindfulness, working memory, inhibitory control, mental flexibility, and more). An important part to note when it comes to education is that executive function is one of the final parts of the brain to fully develop, which can explain the struggles that students have with some of these skills and the importance of providing the students with opportunities to make connections with these skills. While sitting in this session, I couldn't help but think of one particular student from last year who struggled in many of these executive function areas and that I want to touch base with her teacher for this coming year. One important note to emphasize that came from this session: offering choice is obviously an important part of UDL; however, offering too many options can actually lead to barriers, especially with students who have difficulties with executive function.
Another great session I attended was about using the UDL progression rubric. During my district's professional learning opportunities, I can recall seeing the progression rubric, but it isn't something that I had utilized much due to the fact that I was still trying to get fairly comfortable with understanding and implementing the UDL Guidelines (that would put me in the emerging category). However, there are some great opportunities to use the progression rubric to bring that implementation to the next level. So I'm going to look for opportunities to use the rubric for self-assessment and collaboration when using the UDL Guidelines.
The last session I attended for the day was one that I was excited about since I thought it would have some good application to my new 7/8 science position--it was a session about STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math). I'll be honest, about 10-15 minutes into the session, I felt like this wasn't actually the session for me after all. It was giving an overview about a specific project that was being done by some of the CAST team in conjunction with YouthBuild, an organization that helps students who struggle with traditional educational settings learn job skills. However, about halfway through the session, I was so happy I stuck with it! We got to see and work through some samples of the specific STEM activities that were being developed for the program as well as create our own activities.  I saw an application for this type of an activity in my class when introducing the science standards, and I can't wait to try it out!

The final day began with a dual keynote from Jason Marshall and Allison Posey. I would try to describe it, but I think this visual from artist Thomas Hanicak (he was drawing visual notes throughout the symposium) does a better job.

Following the keynote, I attended a session that looked at the language of learner variability, and there were some thought-provoking quotes:

• "All learning is the interaction between the learner and the environment."
• "The curriculum disables the learner."
• "We are all on the spectrum."
• "There are not SPED kids; SPED is a service, not a person." (this would also apply to other things like ELL, enrichment, etc.)

This session also pointed out an important question to consider when learning isn't happening; do we seek out a culture of blame, either on the learners or ourselves, or do we look at what our learners are communicating to us about the learning environment? The latter leads to then establish that we need to co-design the whole learning environment with our learners. Additionally, it is important to address the real barriers, not the perceived (blaming) barriers, in order to determine solutions. An example would be shifting from a thought of "my students can't read" to one of "the text complexity is too high."

It was a tremendous honor to be asked to go on this trip and one that I will never forget. I got to learn a lot, make some professional connections, and see the city of Boston for the first time! I look forward to taking everything that I have learned and putting it to use, hopefully helping others in the process!