Help Teach

Help Teach: Episode 20 - Hand in Hand

Mihai Covaser: [00:00:00]  Welcome, learners and learned alike, to Help Teach!

Mihai Covaser: [00:00:09] Hello, and welcome to our community audio project. I am your host, editor, producer, and project co-lead, Mihai Covaser. I'm also a youth living with a physical disability. My most formative experiences living with a disability have come in the Canadian public education system. Many students like me with physical, emotional, or mental challenges go through their years of schooling lacking the supports and accommodations they need to partake of the same opportunities offered to their peers. The vision of this project is to provide educators in Canadian classrooms, students with disabilities, and members of the general public with the tools and knowledge that they need to make our institutions more accessible and inclusive for all. Join me and a diverse cast of guests as we explore perspectives on disabilities in education in this podcast series. One last message for you teachers tuning in, listen in each episode for our key takeaway that you can implement in your classroom today to help us further this vision.

Mihai Covaser: [00:01:09] Hello and welcome back to Help Teach! I'm so glad to be back on our regular schedule here after some riveting delays over the past couple of months. And today, I'm very happy to introduce a very special guest here to the show. I have had the pleasure to study debate and speech with this person, and that's part of the reason I'm here capable to speak to you today, and have the skills that I do, so it is with great pleasure that I introduce to the show today, Miss Kyla Bresch. Miss Bresch, welcome to the show!

Kyla Bresch: [00:01:40] Thank you!

Mihai Covaser: [00:01:42] As I mentioned, we have a great history together in debate at Kelowna Secondary. It was really some great memories we made in that class. Before we get into the main themes of the episode here today, talking about your view on accessible education, and especially collaborative inclusion, as you called it, I'd love for you to just introduce yourself a little bit. Tell us a little bit about you!

Kyla Bresch: [00:02:03] Sounds good, well, as you mentioned, hi, I’m Kyla Bresch. I teach at Kelowna Senior Secondary, and I've been teaching now for about seventeen years. Over the course of my career, my job has diversified a fair bit. So I currently do teach speech and debate, and I love teaching speech and debate. This year I'm teaching a wellness course at KSS, which is wellness grade 10 to 12.

Kyla Bresch: [00:02:24] I also have the honour and unique opportunity to teach a young parent program. Where I work with teen mums in the district, and I often work with their babies as well, in a class that helps support their social and emotional development. And lastly, I run a pre-employment program at KSS that is also very close to my heart, and it's really sort of been catalytic for my journey with inclusion.

Mihai Covaser: [00:02:47] Awesome. Yeah, that's really great to hear a great diverse sort of portfolio of experiences and contributes to being able to talk on subjects like these. Speaking of which, I did want to dive a little bit into one of these programs that you support. It's a program that supports students who maybe have different goals in their education journey and a different kind of track that they want to follow. Would you tell us a bit more about that program?

Kyla Bresch: [00:03:10] Absolutely! So that's the pre-employment program at KSS. And what that looks like is it's a group of students that arrive in my class and we work together in an adapted English class for about 10 weeks. They also at that time will take an adapted math class. And then for 10 weeks after that, they'll go into the community to do different kinds of work placement.

Kyla Bresch: [00:03:31] But just to back that up a little bit, students will arrive in that space if they have a diagnosis, and they are on something called an Evergreen Track. So an Evergreen Track, it's a certificate of completion for high school, which is different than a Dogwood Diploma.

Kyla Bresch: [00:03:46] So a Dogwood Diploma is certain credits and certain requirements that you must take in order to graduate, whereas the Evergreen is about the students' learning experience while they're at the school, and that allows them to take many different kinds of classes without the pressure of having to complete certain credits or also take certain core subjects.

Kyla Bresch: [00:04:04] Now, in the work placement program, they will come into this program if they are also looking for an alternative kind of learning experience and that work experience that they get in the community builds their job readiness skills so that perhaps when they leave high school, they can develop a trade that they're interested in exploring or they can find a niche.

Kyla Bresch: [00:04:22] So recently, for example, I had a student leave the pre-employment program and is now working in a flower shop as a florist. Yeah. So really tons of success stories in there as well. I've had students come through in grade 10 with a diagnosis of dyslexia and be really, really struggling in the system itself—in the educational system—and then decide that they love sheet metal and transition from school into a sheet metal apprenticeship.

Mihai Covaser: [00:04:48] That's awesome! Do you think that having that track like that has helped you to practice, let's say, integrating accessible measures in the classroom that you might not get the chance to do otherwise? Or how has that experience been for you in terms of building accessibility for your students?

Kyla Bresch: [00:05:06] Yeah, that's a great question! I like to think of that space sort of like a beautiful living puzzle and all of these students come into that space and everyone has an IEP and I honour the IEPs and adaptations are so important. I think we'll be talking more about those in a bit. But I truly think that sometimes, like a piece of paper, cannot capture the complexity of a person.

Kyla Bresch: [00:05:26] I think when I reference it as a puzzle, I get to know each of them so well. Learning their strengths, learning their stretches, learning their interests. They all show up so uniquely with their own set of challenges. I think it's allowed me to stretch my own thinking around diversity and inclusion, and also to figure out ways, how to be inclusive and to be inclusive in a community while honouring our diversity at the same time.

Mihai Covaser: [00:05:53] Right, right. Yeah, we will get into some of those subjects in a little greater depth, but I appreciate you clarifying that. I know that you also have a couple of beautiful daughters at home that benefit from some additional access to resources for diverse abilities in the classroom. I was just wondering if you could tell us a little bit about them and how your experience in the system has been with them.

Kyla Bresch: [00:06:15] Okay, absolutely. So I'll start with my daughter, who's nine. Her name is Jewel, and she has Trisomy 21, which is also known as Down syndrome. She has a diagnosis of apraxia anesthesia, meaning that she's nonverbal. So one of the challenges with being nonverbal is that sometimes your input is higher than your output.

And I think the challenge in the system, in terms of her educational journey, has been the educators that are working with her figuring out what her input is and how to explore modalities that she can express output in. So, you know, if the written output doesn't work and sound output doesn't work, how do you learn with Jewel? And I think that's been the journey that I've been trying to advocate for her in the classroom. And I think, you know, it requires a lot of advocating as a parent has been my experience. A lot of advocating. So, and I think, you know, when, when I talk about that collaborative inclusion, I think the onus seems to be on the parent to rally a team. So, and unify the team. So, as the parent connecting with the resource teacher, as the parent connecting with the teacher, connecting with the CEA support when possible, and also connecting with the speech in the school and trying to, you know, include everyone in these conversations on how to best support Jewel in the room.

Kyla Bresch: [00:07:31] And also, you know, asking questions as a parent. What are you working on right now? How can I send something from home that will help support Jewel? So over this past summer, I went so far as to build a Google Classroom for her, uh, because I had a bit of time. I just thought maybe that would help, you know, because I had the time and I know her so well, maybe this would be helpful to gather these resources for them. And I'm not an elementary teacher, so I'm definitely speaking as a parent in this regard, but it seems to me like they're a little bit stretched in the classroom to support that level of diversity with a particular student.

Mihai Covaser: [00:08:07] Right. So that being said, I mean, I know you mentioned a couple of things, a lot of your own efforts, but what has helped you most in this experience? You know, what, what supports have you received or have you found, have you explored that have best supported you aside from, you know, your own skills on Google classroom, for example?

Kyla Bresch: [00:08:27] I think building a strong relationship with the resource teacher and the parent reaching out and just sharing with the resource teacher as much as possible to kind of help accelerate that sense of connection and relationship with Jewel and the resource teacher because really the resource teacher is going to be doing a lot of that strong advocate work in the classroom because as a parent, you're not there in the classroom.

Mihai Covaser: [00:08:49] Right. Right.

Kyla Bresch: [00:08:51] In addition to building that team, you definitely need to find, like, your focal point person and just share as much as you can with them. And also to celebrate the successes and, and, you know, let the teachers know when, when something is going really well.

Mihai Covaser: [00:09:03] Right. Absolutely.

Kyla Bresch: [00:09:04] And trying to really foster those connections to build strong relationships.

Mihai Covaser: [00:09:08] Right, right. Yeah, I definitely see the importance of that. I mean, you know, there are some people that are just key to the accessibility journey, I think, and I've had that experience too, where it's really a couple of people over the course of my journey that have really supported me in that or made the experience as best as possible for me and so finding those people for you is really key.

Mihai Covaser: [00:09:29] We'll actually be talking a little bit more about that coming up here about them. What collaborative inclusion looks like and how you can integrate these kinds of relationships to really make the experience as best as possible for you, for your children, and for your students.

Mihai Covaser: [00:09:44] Just before we get into that though, we're going to take a brief break. Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back!

Mihai Covaser: [00:09:56] Welcome back to Help Teach! Today I'm here talking to Kyla Bresch on the subjects of collaborative inclusion in particular and building strong relationships that can really foster that accessible journey for students. So to get back into that, I did just want to start by asking, in the more typical classroom arrangement, because we've just been discussing, you know, the alternative track and some ways in which that can be helpful for students. But in a more typical classroom arrangement, how do you do your best to honour student and parent requests? I know this is something that is a heated discussion in the education. A lot of the time you mentioned IEPs. I know from personal experience that our students, myself included, that bristle at the term because they don't often capture, as you say, the complexity of a student’s needs or are often just discarded or ignored in certain cases. Luckily, that hasn't been my personal experience, but it does happen. So, you know, as someone who has to manage an entire classroom of different needs, how do you do your best to honour those requests made by students and their parents?

Kyla Bresch: [00:11:05] So it's interesting to hear you say that you bristle at the IEP, the language of that. That's interesting to me. I've always thought of the IEP as armour, in a sense, in that it's a legal document, and that it is a human right to have your needs met in that learning space. So, even though I think it doesn't encapsulate, you know, the entire complexity of a person and what they need, I think it's a great talking point for teachers to say that this is where we begin, this is the foundational piece of a human right in the classroom. So that being said, I definitely get to know the IEPs, but I also get to know the students. And one way I like to do that at the start is by connecting with home. And that is either by phone call or by email.

Kyla Bresch: [00:11:48] So if there's students that are on that particular learning journey with an IEP, I will reach out and introduce myself. I'll introduce the learning space and I'm not necessarily at that point saying, you know, what do we need in this moment? Because I think that relationships take time and I think that sometimes parents also it takes a little bit of time to get, to get kind of warmed up and open to the idea of sharing because some learning journeys are very private as well.

Kyla Bresch: [00:12:11] You know, I think of my own daughter with her ASD diagnosis. She's a very private person and what she wants shared in the classroom is very limited. So I think it's really a twofold experience in that it's a connecting to the parents to learn a little bit and what the parents would like to share in that conversation. But also it's about getting to know the students individually and getting to know their interests, their strengths, their personalities, and perhaps what they need to flourish best in that space. Sometimes that's a direct question. If we feel very comfortable, some students are very open from the very beginning.

Kyla Bresch: [00:12:46] And, I just sort of try to read the room, you know, and go from there and start to build rapport and build connection. I think that, you know, that part of that role comes from being a parent because when you're also a parent, you're observing many things at the same time, you know, mix in 17 years of teaching and having sort of eyes in the room all the time, but, you know, trying to watch for what's not said and honour what is said—trying to infer all of those things to build the most inclusive experience possible.

Mihai Covaser: [00:13:15] Yeah, that is the difficulty is that, you know, I mean, for me, you know me very well, and you know that I have no trouble telling you exactly what I want and when I want… sometimes to a fault, I will admit. But, that's not everyone's experience, and I've said that often on this show, and it's not a message I mind repeating, which is that not everyone has the capacity or the desire to do that kind of direct, outspoken advocacy that some of us choose to do, and I think a goal that I really like to stress is that they shouldn't have to if we build our systems appropriately, in the sense that, of course, you can't Do things for someone without any kind of information about them, but the higher the baseline standard for accessibility becomes, the less pressure on the student to be outspoken in this way if that's not comfortable to them, and the better their results in the classroom regardless, you know?

Mihai Covaser: [00:14:11] I think the only reason that I say that I bristle at the sound of an IEP is because not all classrooms are as conducive to honouring those kinds of agreements as others. So yes, they are legal documents, and yes, there is an obligation to honour them, which absolutely is fantastic that students can have that protection. But it's the difference between honouring it... as minimally as possible as written on the page and going above and beyond to build those connections and build that rapport. So that's why I think that holistic understanding of the student is so important, you know, and I'm glad that you're talking about that.

Kyla Bresch: [00:14:49] The thing for me is it also comes back to the question, what are we doing here? This community in this learning space, what are the goals? You know, we're all there together in this space. So there must be something more than an individualistic goal, because if there is something… right? We're all there together, and I don't think that means that we're all unified on the same page. Certainly not. I mean, I think we're very diverse individuals in a common space. I think part of getting to know each individual is finding out like what are their strengths and what are they bringing into this space together to further a learning goal, to further human flourishing. So I think really like at the foundation of inclusion is an ethic of care. And I think that's where we have to start. And that care for each other, but also care for the purpose of the community. Or for the learning outcomes that we're working on together.

Mihai Covaser: [00:15:40] That's interesting. I really did find that term interesting. I think of care as a, as a strong standard, and not one that I'm opposed to at all, thinking of it that way. Because, again, I think I've mentioned this before on the show, but you are responsible. You're caring for your students as a teacher, and yes, you're teaching them, but you're also, I mean, there's a reason I say in my introduction that my most formative experiences as a person with a disability have been in education, because you spend so much of your time there as a young person, and it builds you as a social being and as a member of your society, and there are relationships there and experiences there that will mark you, right, for life, so absolutely.

Mihai Covaser: [00:16:23] I think the stronger the standard of respect and of authenticity and intention that we put on ourselves to treat other people that way in education, I think the better the result.

Kyla Bresch: [00:16:36] Yeah, I think so too.

Mihai Covaser: [00:16:38] Speaking, you know, going from more the abstract to the more practical, perhaps, how do you do that? How do you go about doing that? And what helps you most when you're trying to adapt and make the classroom more inclusive? Because I know you mentioned things like your experience of keeping eyes on the place and maybe that integrating experiences as a parent with experiences as a teacher, but maybe in a more, I don't know, more concise or practical sense, what, what do you do to make that happen for your students?

Kyla Bresch: [00:17:08] One thing I do is try to maintain a measure of flexibility in my plan for the day, and also in my, in my praxis in general. So, for example, in my speech and debate class, I have a student who's very sensitive based on a physical condition to temperature, so even though we would spend more time outside, and I set up the year to do quite a bit outside as sort of warmups, and I just, I just pivoted, I thought, you know what, that's really not going to work for this one person, the rest of us are comfortable inside, so it's about finding that middle ground, and also being able to pivot as a professional.

Kyla Bresch: [00:17:42] I think it's also, you know, in terms of the practicality, it's about talking with the CEA's in the room if there are CEA's and if there's not, you can always find, you know, CEA's in the school that are willing to talk and willing to share their experiences and their insights. I mean, CEA's work very closely with students to support them and sometimes the perspective is different than the perspective of an educator because an educator is, you know, working with so many at once. CEA's have that really rich wealth of experience with one on one support. So sometimes seeking counsel from those who have lots of experience is a really great strategy that I will use.

Kyla Bresch: [00:18:17] I have also received counsel without me seeking it… and I’m really grateful for it! And I think sometimes we have to be humbled as educators when we miss something, because we're also human. And we cannot hold everything simultaneously at once. You know, when I say it's collaborative, I think there are other people in the building that have incredible insight and experience and drawing from each other's experience to benefit a student in the room, I think, is really the way to go.

Mihai Covaser: [00:18:43] Right, right. It makes me think of when you're a young student in, let's say, elementary school and you first see your teacher in a supermarket for the first time or something like that. You're like, “whoa, they don't live at school? Like, their identity is not just Miss Bresch in the classroom? Like, they exist and have lives?” No, but it's funny, but in a real sense, being able to take people as people, both when you're interacting with your teachers, your CEAs, because there's this building frustration, I think, that some students have when thing after thing after thing goes wrong for them in education, no matter what the reason for that, and that can start to reflect or be attached to the people around them.

Mihai Covaser: [00:19:30] And so in that sense, you know, you dislike your CA or dislike your teacher or whatever… but being able to see people as people, not just from the perspective of teachers, seeing their students as holistic people, which of course is necessary to give them what they need in the classroom. But I think going the other way and giving people the time of day, so to speak, I think that really, that really helped.

Mihai Covaser: [00:19:50] And that's what I think collaboration is about, to me, is treating people like people and based on the experience and the context in which they're living, you know?

Kyla Bresch: [00:20:01] I also like to have these shoulder conversations. I call them shoulder conversations with students where I'll kind of shoulder up beside them, same level that they're at, you know, whether we're sitting or if I'm kind of like, squatting or kneeling, and we're just kind of shouldering up. And I might say like, “What's going to work for you the best in this moment right now?” You know, “do we want to try this? Would you rather try this?” Giving them a little bit of voice and choice, you know, depending on the adaptation needed sometimes, you know, it might be a student who has a physical adaptation and a particular group positioning is challenging for them, you know, depending on what the group is doing. So, you know, perhaps the most important goal in that moment is for them to feel connected. Or perhaps they would rather focus on the learning task in an alternate format. So having those conversations with students, once you feel comfortable to let them, you know, decide, because, you know, part of that is building their own self advocacy work and helping them, you know, ask and define what they need best in that moment too.

Mihai Covaser: [00:20:59] Yeah, absolutely! I mean, I will harp on about that endlessly. There's a motto, I think in the accessibility community, you've probably heard of it: “nothing about us without us.” And it's very much this idea that if it's a discussion between two parties, it should be a discussion between those parties and, you know, middlemen or representing students without actually asking the students or representing parents wishes without asking the parents—that just leads to more problems than it's worth, I think, a lot of the time.

Mihai Covaser: [00:21:30] Which takes us very nicely into sort of the wrapping up points of this episode. I was hoping you talk to us a little bit about that experience of yours, connecting with parents. What would you recommend teachers do? And what is the role of everyone in this collaborative initiative or vision, let's say, for the classroom?

Kyla Bresch: [00:21:54] So I'll start with a pre-employment program, because that's probably where I spend the most time connecting with parents. And then maybe I can just give an example also from, maybe a more general classroom mainstream.

Mihai Covaser: [00:22:04] Sure, absolutely!

Kyla Bresch: [00:22:05] But in the pre-employment program, um, I often reach out to parents by having sort of like a general Zoom call. So I'll, I'll send a Zoom call in the beginning and just introduce myself and we'll have sort of a meet and greet over Zoom. But when I call one on one, lots of times I'll open the conversation on the phone first of all, by setting up a time to call. Phone calls don't really seem to work for anyone in this day and age. So, I might do a call saying, “I'd love to talk with you, could we set up a time to call?” I might do that by email. But in that call, I would open with something that really honours their child. And I might say that I'm really enjoying working with, you know, your child so far and the reason for this call is to help build their success in this learning journey. And, you know, so that's my goal. And I'm wondering, you know, if there's anything you'd like to share with me about your child to help me foster that goal specifically. I really think that parents do know their children best. And some parents might say, well, you know, it's all executive functioning, or they might need help with these sorts of things.

Kyla Bresch: [00:23:04] And lots of times parents will share openly, you know, they might say, “my child has ADHD, but that's not written down anywhere—so it's good for you to know that.” And once you know that, you know that their executive functioning is going to be a little bit harder, so organising forms, organising binders, that sort of thing… And it's a lot to keep track of for a teacher. I don't mean to suggest that it's not, but I do think it's a starting point for building those relationships. So that would be, you know, one way that I make those calls with parents. And I might say sometimes too, that I also don't have all the answers—you know, I say, “this is kind of what I'm thinking. This is what the direction I'm working in, you know, do you think that's going to work as well?” And just allowing them to be part of the conversation and also as the parent be part of it, right. That's something that I would do there.

Mihai Covaser: [00:23:50] Yeah, absolutely… send that email! Make that phone call! And I think realising that every piece of this puzzle has a place is really important, and I like that you called it a puzzle, a sort of living puzzle. And there's elements sort of fit together and it's never going to look the same one time to the next.

But realising that everyone has something to share and has valuable insights, I think can open that door to conversation as well. Because you might wonder like, oh, who knows? There might be teachers that wonder like, “If I call, will that just create more problems for me?” Or, “I don't see how this can benefit”, but realising that everyone has something to share, the students, the parents, your, you know, EAs and CAs. I think that's really valuable.

Kyla Bresch: [00:24:42] Yeah, I think it's also for the students to know, like I always tell them at the start of the year: “I love parent community. I love connection.” I said, “If I'm ever calling home, it's to support and celebrate you and to celebrate your learning journey, because I think that it takes a community.” And I tell my students that at the start of the year, I say, “I look forward to calling home.” So, you know, I think it's a reframing that too, you know, when you're younger and you get the “your teacher called home today”, you know, that sort of thing. And it does take time and I don't mean to suggest it doesn't. And I'm not always on the phone, you know, making calls or sending emails, but once you start that one conversation, it's much easier to flow something by email because I think that once you build it, it just starts to grow organically. But I do think that the voice connection in the beginning is really helpful, and just showing up as authentically as possible, with your goal to support the journey.

Mihai Covaser: [00:25:39] Yeah, yeah.

Kyla Bresch: [00:25:41] In a more conventional learning space, how I would support that… in terms of the community piece is what you're saying?

Mihai Covaser: [00:25:48] Yeah.

Kyla Bresch: [00:25:49] So sometimes if I have a student who is also more private, one thing I start to do is rally a team. So I might look up, for example, the different teachers that that student has, and I might send a group email and just say, just checking in how things are going in your learning space for this particular individual. I might loop in some behavioural support and just start a conversation. I think that all of these people care so much, but sometimes there is this bridging support that's missing, and I think in systems, bridges aren't great. And I think that's why they're called systems, because they are kind of like “here and here and here”, these systems. And I think it takes a bit of advocacy work to build the bridges, but once one person maps out the bridge, it's built!

Mihai Covaser: [00:26:34] Awesome! No, I love that. And to put it very simply, building bridges and opening doors, right? And once you have that, you can use it anytime, right? So I really appreciate you saying that. Well, I want to thank you very much for coming on and talking to me today. It was really great to speak to you again, to reconnect and to share some of this information. And I look forward to chatting with you again sometime.

Kyla Bresch: [00:26:59] Thank you so much. It was such an honour to be here. It's so great to see you!

Mihai Covaser: [00:27:09] You’ve just heard another episode of the community audio project, Help Teach. I’d like to give a huge thank you to my other co-leads on this project: Payton Given, Maggie Manning, Élise Doucet, and Alexis Holmgren, all youth leaders at the Rick Hansen Foundation, who I’d also like to thank for their continued support in this initiative and others. My name is Mihai Covaser. I am your host, editor, and producer for this podcast series! Thank you to Every Canadian Counts and their #RisingYouthInitiative for finding this project and allowing us to put out our vision for change into the community. You can now find all our transcripts, episode notes, and links to other resources on our base site helpteach.transistor.fm, or listen to us wherever you find your podcasts! If you have any questions about the show, or would like to get involved, now get in touch at helpteachpodcast@gmail.com. Tune in next time for more great conversations and key takeaways that you educators can implement in the classroom today, to make it a more accessible and inclusive place for all. Thank you for listening, and I’ll see you next time!