Transcript
Lori Boll; Hello, Laura, and welcome to the podcast.
Laura Austin: Hi, Lori. Thank you for having me.
Lori Boll: Well, I’m really excited to have you here. You’re part of our new Spotlight series—Inclusion Spotlight series. And so the way we’re doing this series, you know, we’re interviewing people from our SENIA member schools worldwide, from a large spectrum. Basically some small schools, medium schools, and large schools. And you are one of our small schools. Not small in heart, of course, but small in size. So for SENIA, a small school is any school under 500 students. Correct? So how many students do you have at your school? Just tell us about your school community.
Laura Austin: Okay, we have about 300 students. So we are preschool through grade 12, fully IB school. So we have PYP, MYP, and DP. To make up that 300 students, we have in the early years up to 15. And then for elementary on up, we have one class each of up to 25 students maximum. We’re trying to grow. But we are in the middle of Osaka, Japan, which makes commuting here super convenient for our students, which is nice.
Lori Boll: Yeah, it sounds like such a nice size of school. I’m sure it really makes it so every teacher there knows every student basically.
Laura Austin: Up to a point, because we are on two different campuses.
Lori Boll: Oh, okay.
Laura Austin: Very small in numbers. We have our younger students—early child up to grade eight—on one campus, which is actually in an old converted Japanese school. I think that really adds to the character and makes it feel a lot more like Japan. You know, they’re experiencing what a Japanese school would feel like. And then our older students are in the YMCA building in Osaka city.
Lori Boll: Interesting. Okay, so how does your host country culture influence the way students and families experience your school?
Laura Austin: As I said, one large way is that our younger students are in a converted Japanese school. It very much feels like an old Japanese school. When you come in the summer, you can still smell the mosquito repellent punks. We have mosquito spray. We have our front office right there at the front, as many Japanese schools do. The students in that campus change to indoor shoes as they would in a Japanese school. Here in Japan, the majority of the students walk or bicycle to school, especially our older students. We do have some students coming from further away, and then parents will drive them. And we do have a bus that picks up some of our students. So that’s a little bit different from the local culture. But the walking, commuting to school is very much like a local school culture.
They eat lunch together in the classrooms, which is like a local school culture. So they don’t go to a big cafeteria and eat lunch all together there. That is much more like a Japanese school.
Lori Boll: Oh, wow, that sounds really special.
Laura Austin: Yeah, I think it is. There are things I like about both campuses, but I like the feeling of that Japanese school. It just feels right.
Lori Boll: Yeah. Oh, how nice. Well, tell us a little bit about you, Laura. What is your role at the school?
Laura Austin: So I am the head of inclusion from early childhood all the way to grade 12. And when I came to the school, it was a new position, so I got to define what it is. I was just asked to bring inclusion to the school.
Lori Boll: Okay.
Laura Austin: It’s really a central theme which I so much appreciate about the school. Despite being small, they decided that inclusion was going to be a really important part, kind of the core of the school. And so that’s what I do. I try to put systems in place that make us a more inclusive school and guide us in that direction.
Lori Boll: Awesome. So what does inclusion look like and what does it feel like in your school and how does it connect to the values of your community?
Laura Austin: Great question. Inclusion in our school really looks inclusive. We don’t have separate classrooms. We do not ask students to be identified in any way. At some point we may ask them for evaluations, but we are really an inclusive school. To us, it means all students having access to the same content, the same expectations.
Japanese culture really believes in sameness, uniformity, and that fits in here. They don’t like when things stand out as being different, which is interesting. That’s the way most of society works here. But then they also really do at the same time value people being able to express themselves. That fits with our school too. We want people to be able to express themselves and be themselves, but also be exposed to the same content.
And that’s how inclusion looks at our school. We have them all in the same classroom and then our inclusion teachers go into the classrooms and provide support that way.
Lori Boll: Okay, so that’s your inclusion teachers. Is that what their title is at your school?
Laura Austin: Yes, inclusion teachers.
Lori Boll: Okay. And how else is your student support system set up?
Laura Austin: We are very much growing. We have two people who are designated inclusion teachers in our PYP programs from early child up to grade six and their title is inclusion teacher. They are assigned to year groups—say grade one, grade three, and grade five. They focus on that group. But they don’t pull students out of the class and have separate pull-out classes. They work more in a collaborative coaching role where they go into the classroom, ensure that all students are getting support and getting access to high quality content. At the same time, they have collaborative meetings with the teachers to help them design ways that all students can get access, and make sure that the students who are getting tiered support are getting the supports they need.
Lori Boll: Oh, okay. Wow, that sounds pretty impressive. So how have you approached a multi-tiered system of support at your school?
Laura Austin: Good question. This is also a very much growing area. I introduced the multi-tiered systems of support and we’ve really been moving forward with the idea that students don’t need to be identified first. We’re doing universal screening to the extent we can, identifying students that might have more needs and working to support those students with interventions as soon as possible as we see the need. There’s a lot less waiting for that support.
We’re still working on the systems of how to do the progress monitoring most effectively, especially in the MYP and the DP for the older students. We’re trying to work out how best to do progress monitoring with that.
We follow the three-tiered systems of support. At tier two we’re primarily doing small groups, still collaborating with teachers, saying “these are the things that would work best for these students.” Try to introduce some of these things like maybe more breaks, more detailed graphic organizers or task breakdowns, or maybe small groups that focus on this.
So really working on the progress monitoring, and then if we see that the tier two supports aren’t quite enough, introducing more intensified supports. Our inclusion teachers might be in the classroom more often or for longer periods of time. In that case we have a very few students where we do a few pull-out sessions—really intensive support in the area that they need it.
Lori Boll: I see. Okay, so you do create that opportunity for those pullouts if that is really what a student needs.
Laura Austin: Yes, yes. And that is still very much in collaboration with the homeroom teacher. Our inclusion teacher will work with that teacher to make sure the student is missing the least content but getting the intensive support they need.
Lori Boll: Right? Yeah. And I imagine you mentioned that generally your school is truly inclusive, so kids are in the classrooms most of the time. So you must be using Universal Design for Learning at your school, right?
Laura Austin: Absolutely, yes. I mean it’s taking place—the teachers were already using it without knowing it’s called Universal Design for Learning. But I’m just thrilled that both of our principals have really bought into UDL. They really embrace it. We’re tying in our professional growth goals with UDL to help the teachers really understand what UDL is and just live UDL.
So our professional growth this year is based on the UDL framework. We’re having the teachers really look at UDL. We’re starting with the engagement strand and we’ve broken it down for teachers to know what would UDL look like to a high quality teacher? What would it look like in the classroom? And having the teachers look at: am I doing those things? What is the area that I’d like to improve in the strand of engagement this year?
They’ve been introduced to all of it and are really focusing in on engagement this year. Yes, we use UDL.
Lori Boll: And do you feel like you have pretty good buy-in from your faculty?
Laura Austin: For most of them, yes. And I think with this professional growth focus on UDL, it’s growing. They’re really understanding we’re not asking them to do a different curriculum, we’re not asking them to do extra work. It’s just different work—viewing things differently.
Really focusing on providing access to all of the students. That’s what we’re in this for—it’s for the students. Helping them realize that this is for the best of all students and it’s really making their work more efficient, more effective. That’s helped with the buy-in.
Lori Boll: Right. Yeah. Great. Well, can you think of a story, maybe a moment that stands out to you as a point of pride for inclusion at your school?
Laura Austin: Yes. I mean there are a lot that really show me what inclusion is all about. I’ll share two different spectrums of the story.
We’ve had two students who are more intensive-needs students and who were not really part of the school community in their first years here. But we’ve really built our inclusivity so that they are in their classrooms accessing all the content that the other students are for 90-something percent of the time. There are times when each of those students does need to come out for their breaks away from the whole emotions and noise of the classroom. But really being part of the classroom rather than just bodies in the school is a huge point for me.
The other one involves the other end, our DP students. We are a very new diploma program school. Last year was only our third graduating class and we had up to seven students that qualified for testing accommodations. Our first student that qualified—we actually nominated him for the senior student award because he was such an amazing student. He was a student who all teachers thought, “Oh, he’s a high achiever, he has no extra needs. Why is he getting accommodations?”
We said, well, you know, a student who’s getting a five out of seven—that doesn’t mean that they’re achieving all they can. Imagine what he could be doing with accommodations. So once he got his testing accommodations, he was such an advocate not only for himself but for his peers. He was like, look at the supports you can use, look at what the school provides when you need some extra support in this area or when you need this testing accommodation.
Through him, at least three other students in his grade got the testing accommodations and started receiving support from us. And now we’ve just introduced another student whose family spoke to that family and went and had an evaluation. We had no idea that this student had needs, but through his advocating for her, she’s come forward and is now advocating for herself. And I think that is what we’re about—successes of every student and leading them to advocate for themselves and for others.
Lori Boll: Yes. Oh, I love those stories. They’re just beautiful. And congratulations on both of them. And just the entire understanding at your school of inclusivity—that’s down to the students. So it is all faculty, right, and students and families, it sounds like, which can be a difficult one. That’s fantastic.
Laura Austin: I just love that it is very student-centered.
Lori Boll: Yeah. Would you say, going back to your first story, would you say that small schools are uniquely positioned to include students with higher support needs? I only ask that because when we think of schools that support high-support-needs students, we generally think of the larger schools. What are your thoughts on that?
Laura Austin: That’s a very good question. I think that there are some attributes of a small school that could lead to us being able to meet the needs because maybe we have to be creative in the way we do things. We really want to support families and local families. And so when we see a family with students, we want to welcome them to the school.
Then when we see that they have those more intense needs, we can make adjustments to the way we do things. Some ways it could be seen as a negative that we may not have as many structures in place, but this is where the positives come out. We can make adjustments more quickly and meet the needs of those students.
Lori Boll: Yeah. Interesting. Thanks. Well, let’s talk a little bit about challenges. You’re in a small school, so there must be some challenges that maybe some of us in larger schools are not aware of. Let’s hear about those.
Laura Austin: Absolutely. I came from larger schools, so I quickly learned how different being in a smaller school can be. One thing is we do have great staff, but we have fewer staff. And because our staff have to fulfill many different roles, it’s a challenge.
When I said we have two people in our primary years who are inclusion teachers, one of them actually also works in our middle years program and in our diploma program. So we seem to be spread kind of thin. While I say that’s a challenge—trying to meet the needs that we see across the grade levels while pulling people from different areas—it also can be a great positive because we’re seeing the whole spectrum. Our teachers see what it’s like across the years so they know what’s coming up and can meet those needs as well.
Other challenges—we don’t have the resources of a bigger school. That’s been a big challenge. So just figuring out how to make things work, how to do with what we have, I guess, has been a challenge. So those both fall under the bucket of resources. Another thing that falls in that bucket is space.
It’s a good thing that we don’t have pull-out classes, because we don’t have space for pull-out classes. So just finding space to work with students, if we need to work in small groups outside of the classroom, just finding a quiet space can be a challenge.
Lori Boll: Sure. Yeah.
Laura Austin: Rewarding, though—we find those challenges.
Lori Boll: Well, I also wonder, what happens if a student needs support from an occupational therapist or a speech language pathologist?
Laura Austin: Super question. And I have an answer to that because I have a student this year who is getting both speech and occupational therapy, and he’s getting that support virtually. We do not have that kind of staff in our school, so we were able to locate a program that could provide it virtually. Actually our inclusion teacher met that program at one of the SENIA conferences.
Lori Boll: Okay, perfect. Yeah. Well, we can definitely name that service. They’re one of our SENIA sponsors, so we can put them in the notes. I’m assuming it’s Virtually Connected.
Laura Austin: Yes, it is Virtually Connected.
Lori Boll: Okay. And we have another sponsor this year that does virtual services called IDS—International Diagnostic Solutions. So I’ll add those to our show notes as well for our smaller schools out there that might need some virtual services.
Laura Austin: Yes. And it is working. Well, we wondered, how does speech therapy and occupational therapy work virtually? But it is working.
Lori Boll: Isn’t that wonderful?
Laura Austin: Yeah.
Lori Boll: Yay. That’s great. My next question was going to be, have you discovered any creative small school solutions? But that sounds like a creative small school solution. Have you found any others?
Laura Austin: That is one of the biggest. I would say really SENIA itself. Just the networking opportunities through SENIA—connecting with other small schools in our area, larger schools in Japan and outside. That’s the best solution we have: working with other people, figuring out what can work, how to make things work.
Lori Boll: Oh, that’s great. Are you part of SENIA Japan as well?
Laura Austin: Yes.
Lori Boll: Okay. Yeah. So it’s nice that there’s the local context there for you as well.
Laura Austin: Yes, it is. Very nice. We love it.
Lori Boll: Cool. Well, that was going to be another question of mine. Just how has being part of SENIA supported your school’s inclusion journey?
Laura Austin: Oh, so much. Being in Japan, they like recognition. And of course, as a small school, we want to build the connections that we have. Becoming members of SENIA has really boosted everyone’s recognition of what SENIA is, what inclusion is. The networking opportunities provided by Mighty Networks, as well as the conferences—virtual conferences—have actually been great to make connections. I’ve made really good connections with people in Indonesia, Malaysia, and also in China, who I continue to collaborate with.
Lori Boll: Oh, super.
Laura Austin: Yeah, it’s been very helpful. We talk about what we’re seeing that’s similar in our schools, how we can support each other.
Lori Boll: That’s great. So you have almost a small school network going on within.
Laura Austin: Yes. And that’s been really helpful to me as a student support leader in a new position—just being able to have other student support leaders that I can reach out to and ask questions of.
Lori Boll: Love it. Yay. Well, thank you. We are out of time for today and I’ve learned so much about your school. I’m excited about this Spotlight series so we can learn how schools work and what different schools are doing in their local context. Like you said, learning about what others are doing is incredibly helpful. Thanks for being a guest and teaching us.
Laura Austin: Thank you very much for having me. I’m excited to speak about my school, Osaka YMCA International School. Yay.
