Show #125 SENIA’s Disability Inclusion Standards

Transcript

Lori Boll / Executive Director (00:19)

Hello everyone. Today I’m speaking with April Renfrey, who is Senia’s director of standards. Standards, you say? Well, yes. SENA International has just released our standards. Excuse me. And April is here to share all about them. Welcome, April.

April Remfrey, she/her (00:40)

Hi, thanks for having me.

Lori Boll / Executive Director (00:42)

So happy to have you here. You have been our kind of head of this since you well you came up with the idea many years ago. So let’s begin with the why. Why did you see a need for this? Why did Senia decide that schools needed these disability inclusion standards?

April Remfrey, she/her (01:05)

Well, that’s kind of why we do everything, right? Is it’s there’s gotta be a reason, there’s gotta be a why. And Senia’s always had this big five, right? The five things that they’re really focusing on. And it’s been around providing learning opportunities for professionals and families, and then the global network that is Senia, which is, you know, thousands and thousands of

people at this point and and it became really obvious that we were having a hard time communicating with each other. Because so

Lori Boll / Executive Director (01:40)

Mm.

April Remfrey, she/her (01:40)

someone was talking about one thing and using one word for it. And another person was thought they were talking about the same thing and using a different word for it. And wires were getting crossed all over the place. And that was one of the places where it started was the language wasn’t the same. It wasn’t consistent.

And then we started seeing the research about, especially from like international schools research, talking about the fact that there are over 15,000 international schools now, which serves over 7.1 million students. And what that was meant was we were trying to support as a organization a lot of different people in a lot of different places. And we needed a collective language. And that was kind of like the first spark.

Which helped us realize we can’t do this unless we have a common language. And then it just kind of started to evolve from there. Common language led to common structures, common ways that we go about doing things, the way that we expect things to be happening in our schools. And one of the things that Senia is filled the gap in is everybody is no longer on an o their own island in their school.

Right. Did you ever

Lori Boll / Executive Director (03:03)

Yeah.

April Remfrey, she/her (03:03)

feel like that when you were when you were in a school that you were all alone?

Lori Boll / Executive Director (03:08)

my gosh. Yes. I mean, that’s the whole reason that Sunya began back in two thousand two, right? Is that small group of international school teachers who just felt isolated and alone. And and it and you c

April Remfrey, she/her (03:21)

Exactly. Exactly.

Lori Boll / Executive Director (03:23)

we continue. yeah, I think it’s so important. just for kicks, give us an example of one of those terms that you’ve seen get misconstrued at different

Or different definitions, I guess, at different schools.

April Remfrey, she/her (03:42)

Well, the one of them is inclusion, right?

Lori Boll / Executive Director (03:44)

Yeah.

April Remfrey, she/her (03:46)

Right? I mean, we could sit in a room with a hundred people and ask each person to write down their own definition for inclusion. And we

Lori Boll / Executive Director (03:52)

Mm.

April Remfrey, she/her (03:53)

might have 99 different definitions.

Lori Boll / Executive Director (03:57)

True. Yeah.

April Remfrey, she/her (03:58)

so it’s a big issue when the whole thing we’re talking about may not have a collective definition. and

Lori Boll / Executive Director (04:06)

Yeah.

April Remfrey, she/her (04:07)

and and it’s good that we all ha come with different perspectives.

We come from different places, we come from different educational backgrounds, but we have to be able to come together on what some of these things are. And so we heard from parents, especially when they’re looking for schools, they thought, we can’t look at that school because their website is calling that program that we were at in another school something completely different. And

Lori Boll / Executive Director (04:33)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

April Remfrey, she/her (04:35)

it could have been that it was the exact same program.

Or teachers looking for a job at a new school, and they thought, no, they don’t have the life-centered education program that I used to teach at, therefore I can’t apply for that job. Even though in reality they might have been the same thing. Right? So

Lori Boll / Executive Director (04:51)

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Mm-hmm.

April Remfrey, she/her (04:54)

it we’re talking about the the micro and the macro of of language wasn’t the same. And then when we start talking about systems and structures.

then it gets even deeper and it started to get hairier and we started to realize there needs to be some kind of international standard that schools that feel like we need a kind of a North Star. This is

Lori Boll / Executive Director (05:19)

Mm-hmm.

April Remfrey, she/her (05:20)

we need to have somewhere we can go to and at this before now there wasn’t one.

Lori Boll / Executive Director (05:26)

Yeah. And speaking of the language and definitions, I think one r really cool part of the standards is the glossary. So can you just

April Remfrey, she/her (05:35)

Yeah.

Lori Boll / Executive Director (05:36)

share a bit about that?

April Remfrey, she/her (05:38)

Yeah, the glossary was one of the most difficult things to come to an agreement upon, right? And and so

Lori Boll / Executive Director (05:45)

Mm-hmm.

April Remfrey, she/her (05:45)

we’ve had committee after committee after committee go through the standards and especially the glossary to get everybody’s eyes on it and make sure we have hundreds of different perspectives coming together. And in all reality,

The language that we use in this field evolves constantly. So that’s going to be one of our biggest jobs in keeping these standards alive. And it’s not a a document that just sits and it never changes. It’s going to have to evolve consistently. And so that’s going to be another committee role is to figure out what is the disability community asking us to use in language

Lori Boll / Executive Director (06:31)

Mm.

April Remfrey, she/her (06:31)

and making sure that we’re

We’re mirroring that.

Lori Boll / Executive Director (06:36)

Yeah. Well, you mentioned committees. You mentioned

April Remfrey, she/her (06:40)

Yeah.

Lori Boll / Executive Director (06:40)

hundreds of people. So let’s give a shout out now to all of the people that helped us. And can you just share kind of how that all came together and how that worked?

April Remfrey, she/her (06:53)

It’s still working, right? And so the

Lori Boll / Executive Director (06:55)

Mm-hmm.

April Remfrey, she/her (06:56)

standards were you know, created at first a very small version in this little office here in my house in Switzerland. and then we just started pulling people in that are experts within SENIA from so many different parts of the globe, with different expertise. and so those committees worked on multiple different iterations.

of those standards. And like I like I said, it’s going to continue iterating. we’ll have those committees come back together annually to review them and say, has something changed? Are we using different language? What what are you seeing in your region of the world just to make sure that this is a living a living document. But at the same time, this living document from these these committees with everyone’s help is now open source.

And so we wanted to make sure that this wasn’t something that was behind a paywall because that is against the completely against the mission of Senia, right? We wanted everybody to have access to this and really wanted it to be a roadmap that anybody at any school could access and say, we’re working on this. What is the standard that Senia’s put out there say?

Where do we compare to that? So the committees even went through the standards and said, where’s my school

Lori Boll / Executive Director (08:29)

Mm-hmm.

April Remfrey, she/her (08:30)

in comparison to these standards? and there were times where some people on committees said, that’s completely unrealistic. That’ll never be able to happen in an international school. And we

Lori Boll / Executive Director (08:40)

Mm.

April Remfrey, she/her (08:41)

would have conversations about it. Why? What is it, does it have to do with your location? Does it have to do with the kind of curriculum your school uses?

Does it have to do with the people that you serve? There were so many different pieces to the equation. and so it’s been hundreds and hundreds of hours of conversation to get them to where they are.

Lori Boll / Executive Director (09:04)

And

they came together covering five different domains from leadership and teaching to case management. So tell us about the the s the domains and how we determined what belonged in the framework.

April Remfrey, she/her (09:21)

Yeah, so at first there were nine domains. And then we started realizing there were some things that really overlapped and came together in one section. And it it has been boiled down to five really cohesive domains. So leadership management and facilities is number one. Supplemental curriculum, you know, what are those things that we’re using as interventions when there’s pull out things going on?

and an assessment, those things all go together. Number three is faculty. What are we expecting for the people that are working in student support services in terms of their their training? also teaching assistance. What are we what are we expecting teaching assistants to do in roles and responsibilities? And then we’ve got professional growth and development in there as well.

And then number four, we’ve got identification and case management, which is very particular to specifically learning support, multilingual learners when we’re talking about English as another language support. And then number five, this is the one that just doesn’t get talked about enough in international schools, is post-secondary pathways. How are we

Lori Boll / Executive Director (10:41)

Yeah.

April Remfrey, she/her (10:42)

supporting students that are not going to be able to get a traditional

fixed diploma that schools are quite rigid about because of external organizations. So within post-secondary pathways, we’re also talking about community. How are you bringing the community in to get all the experiences possible? And one of my favorite standards is how are you holding those organizations that come into your school?

To high standards to kind of spread this inclusive bubble. So for instance, are you hiring an organization to be your catering organization that is also using inclusive practices? Right?

Lori Boll / Executive Director (11:32)

yeah. Mm-hmm.

April Remfrey, she/her (11:33)

So that’s really one of the things that I’m most proud of in this is the the hope and the dream that it’s not just a school in a bubble.

It’s being able to spread this the need for the world to be more inclusive by putting your kind of where your money where your mouth is and saying, We’re gonna be inclusive and we expect our school partners to also be inclusive.

Lori Boll / Executive Director (12:03)

It’s amazing. Well, we know that so many of our schools out there care deeply about inclusion, but they really struggle kind of to turn that commitment into consistent practice. So how do you think the standards can help schools move from those good intentions to meaningful action?

April Remfrey, she/her (12:22)

Well, this is why we created a self-assessment. because, you know, it’s almost like thinking about an individual student. We need to assess where the student is on a regular basis to be able to understand how do we change our teaching practices to help them get to the next level. So we’re setting goals for the student, right? And and and then this is their present level of performance, this is the gap, this is where we need to get to.

And having the student be part of that process. why can’t we do that with schools too? Schools should be able to say, I don’t know where I am right now. I don’t know what it is and how we’re performing because someone in the early years might have a completely different perspective of what’s going on versus someone that’s in the high school or DP or AP. So it’s really being able to say,

This is the line in the sand. This is where we are right now. This is where we would like to get to. And being able to look at the standards and say, these are, this is where we want to get to in our strategic plan three, five years from now. And then make a

Lori Boll / Executive Director (13:36)

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

April Remfrey, she/her (13:37)

plan to get there. And then slowly start keeping track, re-going back to your self-assessment and saying, where’s the progress that we’ve made? Where do we still need to?

improve and being able to do that is it’s getting down to the nitty-gritty, but it’s also looking at the big picture. So it’s being able to say this is where we want to go. And we’re really hopeful that this will help create some continuity in schools that have a lot of it’s just embedded in international schools that there’s change and there’s turnover.

But what ends

Lori Boll / Executive Director (14:16)

Right.

April Remfrey, she/her (14:17)

up happening then is someone will come in and say, I want to make my mark.

Lori Boll / Executive Director (14:21)

Mm.

April Remfrey, she/her (14:22)

And by having standards that are external, just like any school accreditation, there that the meat is staying the same. So then it it’s when a new director of student support services or a new head of school comes in, the school says, This is the framework we’re using, these are the standards we’re using. And so then it isn’t completely new things happening all the time. So it’s sustainability.

kind of built into the to the fabric.

Lori Boll / Executive Director (14:55)

Awesome. And how exactly do the

April Remfrey, she/her (14:57)

Mm.

Lori Boll / Executive Director (14:58)

self-assessments work?

April Remfrey, she/her (15:01)

they’re they’re online. So we’ve created this really cool system where all the standards along with guiding questions have been entered into a self-assessment virtual system that people can sit down in their committees and say where they are in a ranking of zero to five. zero meaning we didn’t even that’s not even on our radar.

To five, which means we think we’re innovative with what we do in this standard. And so the all five domains have their own self-assessment. The first domain for leadership is open for the public. Anyone can do that one. And then if you’re a SENIA member school, you can access domain one and two for free as part of your membership. And then the other

three self-assessments are at a very low price because we didn’t want them we didn’t want that to be a barrier to being able to get use of those self-assessments. And we already have one school that’s working on all five domains in that self-assessment. So that’s that’s really cool.

Lori Boll / Executive Director (16:20)

Yes. It’s amazing.

April Remfrey, she/her (16:22)

Yeah.

Lori Boll / Executive Director (16:23)

Well, we do these self-assessments and sometimes I would imagine that schools would be like, you know, we’re terrible. There’s no place to go. because, you know, it it’s just it’s just bad. Right?

April Remfrey, she/her (16:39)

Yeah.

Lori Boll / Executive Director (16:40)

And but the assessment itself isn’t intended to be punitive. It’s intended to be developmental. So

What’s that mean for schools?

April Remfrey, she/her (16:52)

Well, it it it’s a it’s a l new lens to look at an assessment through. it it’s so it’s a growth mindset lens really. and it isn’t you’re never gonna see what another school scored on the self-assessment. That’s what the self is, right? So it isn’t

Lori Boll / Executive Director (17:11)

Mm.

April Remfrey, she/her (17:12)

us thinking about, okay, this school’s better than that one, that one’s better than that one, and then it there’s no ranking system. It’s really where are we at the moment? And

You know, we have schools that are just doing one domain at a time instead of trying to look at all of it at once. Any school can can jump in wherever they are. And that was really the purpose of it, too, was it meets everybody where they are and doesn’t say you have to meet this and this and this before you can even enter a self-assessment. Right. So

You’re right. It’s not punitive. It’s meant to just meet everybody where they are. And there may be things as standards that you’ll never, as a school, you’ll never be able to reach. you know, if you’re a school that is in an old chateau, there are probably accessibility things that you’re not be going to be able to support. And and and that’s the just the nature of your building, right? but that was the intention that everybody could.

could get into it at wherever they are in their journey.

Lori Boll / Executive Director (18:25)

Great.

So how can schools ensure that this work reflects the lived experiences of students, families, teachers, support staff, not just what’s written in the policies?

April Remfrey, she/her (18:39)

That’s the hardest part of this, isn’t it? Yeah. so we’re going to really be focusing at this point on creating different resources that schools can access. where there might be in those resources, okay, it’s well, there will be, it’s on the plan, for workshops to be held where schools and families can work together.

to be able to understand different perspectives, to understand the needs of your community. There’s a lot of great community surveys out there. And so it the the goal is that they can take those surveys to the next level and make sure that disability inclusion is is included in those conversations. I’d love to see more students be part of the self-assessment process.

Lori Boll / Executive Director (19:39)

Mm-hmm.

April Remfrey, she/her (19:39)

You know,

getting a committee together as they’re going through these the self-assessment that mirrors the people that this is actually serving rather than just leadership or just teachers, but having a mixed committee go through this self-assessment process. and so there are a lot of pieces of the the standards that are specifically talking about how to

bring the commun the whole community together around these concepts and around these needs.

Lori Boll / Executive Director (20:15)

So important. Well, I know Senia is still developing the tools and processes that will support schools, like you mentioned. What else

April Remfrey, she/her (20:25)

Mm-hmm.

Lori Boll / Executive Director (20:26)

is being built? and what do you hope the complete school journey will eventually look like? Eventually.

April Remfrey, she/her (20:36)

Eventually. Well, eventually our hope is to have as many schools as possible be able to say we have achieved a certain level at each of those different five domains. the goal is for teachers, for instance, to be able to say, when I go to the the website of a certain school, I can see

that they’ve achieved a certain level of the Senia post-secondary pathways domain or families when they’re looking for a school and they’ve got a student that that specifically gets services for their child that has dyslexia, for instance, they can see that this school has achieved a certain level in the domain of supplemental curriculum instruction and assessment because that’s very important to them.

it’s going to be an indicator around the world of who is working on these certain certain

Lori Boll / Executive Director (21:44)

Mm-hmm.

April Remfrey, she/her (21:44)

pieces of the equation. So we really want more and more schools to be able to kind of flash this around and say, yeah, we’re working really hard on at this. And quite honestly, there’s a lot of schools that have incredibly good reputations in this area.

On the other hand, there are a lot of schools that are doing really great work that don’t have

Lori Boll / Executive Director (22:08)

Yeah.

April Remfrey, she/her (22:09)

the same reputation to rely on, but still should have the same recognition. So

Lori Boll / Executive Director (22:14)

Mm-hmm.

April Remfrey, she/her (22:14)

that’s our goal to kind of level the playing field a little bit.

Lori Boll / Executive Director (22:18)

Yeah.

April Remfrey, she/her (22:19)

just because you don’t have a wonderful marketing program at your school or you don’t

Lori Boll / Executive Director (22:24)

Mm-hmm.

April Remfrey, she/her (22:24)

you haven’t been around for 150 years, like some international schools have, doesn’t mean that you don’t have great things happening at your school.

Lori Boll / Executive Director (22:33)

Yeah. Well, and Senia’s so about community. So I did want to just mention that I know that part of our plan is to build a resource of exemplars from schools around the world who are doing the work. So tell us a little bit about that.

April Remfrey, she/her (22:55)

Yeah, so we’ll put a graphic w in the session notes about this, but we’re gonna be building kind of we’re calling it a d a library where there will be anybody can come in and provide examples of and exemplars of what they’re doing at schools and then be able to see what other schools are doing. So the idea was really one of those those roadside little libraries.

where it’s take a book, leave a book, or when you stay at a bed and breakfast, sometimes they have that too. the idea was it doesn’t have to be perfect, but sometimes, just like our students, we need to show them an exemplar of or just some place to get started. Because oftentimes when you’re thinking about, gosh, we need to revamp our IEP or ILP. And I just want to see what other schools are doing. This is going to be a community hub where can people can do that.

And that’ll be open to everybody. the other part of it will be those resources that Senia is in the process of developing that are going to be vetted and they’re going to be built by experts in the field that have years and years and years of experience. And those will continue

Lori Boll / Executive Director (24:14)

Amazing.

April Remfrey, she/her (24:15)

to evolve.

Lori Boll / Executive Director (24:18)

Okay, well, looking further ahead, Senia’s exploring elements such as evidence review, external feedback, possible site visits. So what principles will guide that future work so it remains supportive, credible, and useful to our schools?

April Remfrey, she/her (24:39)

the research is always so important in this. And that’s one of those pieces that there will constantly be a committee saying, okay, this is the the newest research, and this is what we need to update our standards to follow the newest research. but these pieces of the equation when we’re talking about site visits, I I’m sure our listeners understand what we’re trying to say there. and so we’re going in that direction absolutely.

Because it’s all well and good when you do a self-assessment. And but we know when you have outside verification, it feels differently. And that’s what we’re we’re trying to aim for is having an unbiased group of people come to your school, verify what’s going on, and then give support. You know, sometimes schools can’t afford.

To have expensive consultants come in from halfway around the world to be able to support. And so having l people from the region that are experts come and do site visits, number one, it’s great for the school they’re visiting. Number two, it’s also great professional development for the people doing the site visits, right? And

Lori Boll / Executive Director (25:57)

Mm-hmm.

April Remfrey, she/her (25:58)

so Senia is really going to be expanding those their their wings into people that are

all over the globe that are going to be trained up to go into schools and do site visits and be able to verify how the school is progressing, support them as they mil they build a plan to and identify goals that they would like to reach, and then be able to support those schools in that journey.

Lori Boll / Executive Director (26:29)

Yeah. Well, we’re almost out of time. I’m curious what if schools are interested, what’s their first step?

April Remfrey, she/her (26:39)

Well, the first step definitely is to go and look at the standards. Go and see what they are. they’re, like we said, open source on our web page. Anybody and everybody can look at them. and then there’s no harm in doing the first self assessment. It might just be you in your backyard doing your self assessment, right? And

Lori Boll / Executive Director (27:00)

Yeah.

April Remfrey, she/her (27:02)

then the next step is taking it to your school and saying, Hey, you know what? This is really critical.

To our development as a whole school. I want to dispel the myth that this is just for learning support or this is just for student support services. This is school-wide. This is the whole school lens. So it really is gonna benefit everything a school does. And more and more research is out there that says inclusive schools are not just good for the kids that are neurodivergent or have disabilities.

It’s actually beneficial for every single student in the school. And if we’re gonna purport to create global citizens, this is how we do it.

Lori Boll / Executive Director (27:48)

Yes.

April Remfrey, she/her (27:49)

Yeah.

Lori Boll / Executive Director (27:50)

And that’s a perfect way to end this podcast. April, thanks so much for your time today and sharing about the Senia disability inclusion standards. This is really

April Remfrey, she/her (28:01)

Thank you.

Lori Boll / Executive Director (28:01)

exciting work. And thank you to everyone who has participated in creating the standards, working on the committees, reviewing the standards. It has been a true community effort, and we’re very

April Remfrey, she/her (28:17)

Yeah.

Lori Boll / Executive Director (28:17)

appreciative.

April Remfrey, she/her (28:18)

Yeah. Thank you to all of those people.