[00:00:00] Bonni Stachowiak: Today on episode number 435 of the Teaching in Higher Ed Podcast, Disability Inclusion in Higher Education with Katie Bonawitz.

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Welcome to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. I’m Bonni Stachowiak, and this is the space where we explore the art and science of being more effective at facilitating learning. We also share ways to improve our productivity approaches so we can have more peace in our lives and be even more present for our students.

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One in four adults in the United States have a disability. Sometimes these disabilities can be seen, while other times, the disability is invisible. My guest today has spent her career teaching educators in public schools and now in higher education, how to create a more inclusive classroom environment for students with disabilities. Katie Bonawitz oversees the master’s degree in special education at Bethel University in Arden Hills, Minnesota, and is also assistant dean of the Center for Access and Integration at the school. Most recently, she has received a Fullbright Teaching Grant. Katie, welcome to Teaching in Higher Ed.

[00:01:28] Katie Bonawitz: Thank you. It is so great to be with you today.

[00:01:31] Bonni: You and I share something in common and that is that I think our jobs may be a little bit hard to describe to people, in that you do have a number of different roles. I’m really fascinated by what you do and I know I just read your bio, but would you just break down some of the main components of the role that you play, or I should say the roles that you play. [laughs]

[00:01:52] Katie: Absolutely. Part of my role at Bethel University is that I’m the program director for the graduate program and special education, and that is where we prepare teachers to become special educators. In that role, I’ve had the opportunity to design and develop four different licensure tracks for teachers in Minnesota to get a license in multitude of areas. Then the other part of my role is that I’m a professor. I also teach within the special education program. The most recent role within the last four years is that I’m the assistant dean for our Center for Access and Integration.

That role is really unique in that this center is new at Bethel and it houses our BUILD Program, which is a two year university program for students with intellectual disabilities where they get to live and take part in a university campus and they take courses with their peers who are focusing on psychology or whatever it may be. They get to live and learn in a university setting, which is really unique at this time in the state of Minnesota. Additionally, it houses our Office of Accessibility and Resources for students with mild disabilities who will be taking traditional college classes.

[00:03:06] Bonni: Oh, that is fascinating. There’s so many places we could go. I’m going to, since you just mentioned the BUILD Program, I’m just going to ask you a little bit about that, but I also want to hear more about your teaching as well. I guess how did it come about that this got established and what were some of the challenges and opportunities that emerged?

[00:03:26] Katie: Well, challenges and opportunities, I think that’s a great way to talk about it because the opportunity was really there because one of our board of trustees has a daughter with Down Syndrome and her daughter had an amazing experience in Illinois in a program that was very similar to what we now call as BUILD.

Her daughter came home and said, “Mom, I want to be able to go to a Christian university. How come I can’t go to a Christian University?” Because that was a really important part of her life. With that question came the beginning conversations of that person reaching out to me, reaching out to our president at that time, saying, “Can Bethel do this?” It really turned into such an exciting opportunity to build something at a four year university where students can come for a two year program, live on campus, live in the dorms, take college classes, take some courses that are specific to them like independent living and jobs and internships and things like that.

They have mentors around campus, other students who want to be their housing mentor, for example. It’s just been incredible. We just launched our eighth cohort and it’s been a great success. Many challenges, of course, as well because our population of individuals with intellectual disabilities, they’re vulnerable to different things.

You think about a university campus and that can be a big and scary place. I think at Bethel, we’ve been able to make it into an incredibly welcoming place. Not only is it an amazing experience for these students and BUILD, but our entire campus is positively impacted by this program. I have a colleague who’s doing a research study on that exact topic right now.

[00:05:13] Bonni: Oh, wow. I’m sure that even though you have these different buckets that are part of your roles, they probably intersect a lot. I’d love to hear you share a little bit more. What is it like to teach people, to equip them to go out and teach in a similar context? Or maybe it’s not a similar context, but I’m just wrong about that. What’s that experience been like for you?

[00:05:35] Katie: I think as when I wear my professor hat and I’m preparing these future special educators although I’m meeting state standards and making sure that they have all the tools they need to be in the K-12 classroom with students, I think what’s really exciting is that intersection with our BUILD Program and our programs that prepare future special educators, they can see it at a very early stage in their teacher preparation that I can have high expectations for my students in the K-12 schools because I now know that university is an option for them.

Years ago, that was not an option. Similar programs exist, but I think at four-year universities, it’s still quite rare in the US and especially in Minnesota. Bethel University is the only four-year university with that residential component for these students with intellectual disabilities.

It’s so exciting when we have any, we have this annual event in the summer in June, it’s called Refresh. It’s an opportunity where we bring our alumni, our current students, friends of our alumni who need to come and be filled up.

Special education is a tough field and you can get burned out. We don’t want our teachers to get burned out. We want them to continue to thrive. At this Refresh event, all these individuals are coming together and we make sure that the BUILD Program is represented because we want to make sure these teachers know that they can connect their high school students to a university program if it’s appropriate. It is fun to have those intersections of my world come together.

[00:07:17] Bonni: You mentioned before we started recording that you have listened to podcast, but it’s not a big thing for you. Now, I’m going to talk to you about a podcast. It’s not even the one that you’re on. I have been haunted and inspired by an episode and I’ll put it in the show notes for anybody listening that would like to take a listen to it. It’s by This American Life Podcast and the journalist went and did a visit in the community in the United States that has the highest level of disability claims.

By that, I mean, people who are receiving state funds to support their lives. She interviewed a lot of different people. It was a really fascinating story. One woman, Ethel, has stayed with me ever since I heard this episode. Ethel, and again, I will never be able to do the journalism and the rich storytelling justice, but it comes about that Ethel has a dream job and her dream job is to work in Social Security, the actual disability where those checks are provided.

The journalist shares how she had these biases as to why one might find that their dream job. It sounded to the journalist, maybe she’d want to make sure no one’s cheating the system or not catch people. Then when I was listening, I thought like, “Oh, no, she wants to–” I was being very idealistic, “She just wants to help other people who are like her.”

You know what it turned out to be, Katie? It was the only job that this woman knew of where you would be allowed to sit while you worked. She was in chronic pain and the journalist was in disbelief, but she stays in that community and she’s looking around. She goes, “Well, that job you have to stand all the time. That job you have to stand all the time.”

She realizes it is quite feasible. In fact, probably accurate. This woman just doesn’t have an imagination that is expansive enough to know the universe of jobs where people are able to sit down. Why am I telling you this story? I’m fascinated by the ways in which our imaginations aren’t big enough.

I’d love to have you share a little bit, let’s start talking about faculty first. Where are faculty’s imaginations not broad enough when we’re trying feebly to meet the needs of students with disabilities? What are some themes that come to mind for you?

[00:09:46] Katie: I love that question and I think often. In my role as the assistant dean for the Center for Access and Integration, I support faculty on how to helping them know how to meet the needs of their students who happen to have disabilities. I think what can happen is, depending on someone’s own experience with someone with a disability, maybe they have no experiences, which is a little hard for me to think about today. They may have really limited experience and when you have limited experience, you don’t even know that you can tap into all of the amazing gifts these individuals have.

We’re really blessed here at Bethel University because our psych department can have students with intellectual disabilities take Psych 101, and the professor that happens to teach that class, I use his quote often when I’m working with new faculty because he says that the students with intellectual disabilities who happen to be in the BUILD program are right alongside all of his other students, and he doesn’t separate them. He includes them in small group conversations.

He says, “They’re the ones that are always so eager to share,” and that wouldn’t come about if he needed special information from me. He simply got to know the students, and he knows they have a lot to add. Maybe they didn’t read the entire 10 chapters that were required, but they have a lot to say. I think as I think about faculty, I always want them to get to know the individual, tap into who they are as a person. Once you do that, your ideas will become endless on how you might get to see how they progress in your class.

As I think about more mild disabilities and those students who will be getting a four-year degree, they may not be the best and most eloquent writer, but are they amazing with making their own video or doing a little podcast of some sort, or where can they shine on the content they’ve learned in that classroom? I think I often talk with faculty to say, really think about the outcomes in your course that what do you want your students to take away from the brilliant ideas you are sharing in your class?

Do you need them to write a paper? Are you assessing their ability to write, or can you learn from them through that video that might be made, or a slide tour, whatever it might be? I think that’s really where we get to learn about the gifts from our students who happen to have a disability. That let me shine, but I’m not going to be able to shine if you put me in this box of who you think I might be. I think those are some of the things that come to mind.

[00:12:32] Bonni: Too often, of course, some of us can then interpret what you just said as having lowered expectations. I would encourage anyone who might be having that type of thinking process going on, just my experience when we offer up these different choices for how to demonstrate learning, I actually– sometimes I’ll even prescribe it, where they need to read something, and then record a short video, a screencast of themselves talking about it.

I actually find that sometimes that’s harder because we have to take what may have been dense reading, or dense information. We have to translate it then, and then being able to put it in our words. I would just challenge anybody who’s thinking this is making it easier, it’s possibly, making it more accessible for people to demonstrate their learning. As far as difficulty, I think we have a lot of our biases show up when we do that.

Another area I’d like to explore with you, and have you share some ideas, and themes with us is, where is our imagination not large enough when it comes to ways that we might be able to help students be able to thrive and bring all their unique gifts? As you said, you touched on some ideas there, but I suspect you have other ideas for us of ways that we just might not even realize we’re limiting people’s being able to thrive.

[00:14:01] Katie: I think about when we want to be curious about what our students in general can offer us in our classrooms. Sometimes that curious piece can come from a simple question to the student. If I’m asking you to cover this topic in political science, how would you want to express it? How would you want to tell me what you know? If that student may be a theater student, and who may be quiet in your classroom, but when they get on a stage, they just light up, and they can teach anyone anything.

I think if they had the opportunity to do that in that political science class or pick any topic. Science, astronomy, you name it, and to have them express what they’ve learned, not only is that student going to enjoy it, I have a feeling the professor is going to also really enjoy getting a different product from their original assignment expectations, as well as the other students in the class.

I had a student in our BUILD Program a few years ago who did a speech for the whole class. Well, it was the highlight of the semester [laughs] It was amazing, but we don’t do that unless we’re curious and unless we ask those questions. We may have a bunch of brilliant ideas, and creative ideas that we can use in our classroom, but I would always challenge somebody to ask, because that student probably, has a lot to say.

[00:15:28] Bonni: There are so many reasons why we as human beings can lose our sense of wonder and curiosity. Sometimes it can be fear. I’d love to have you share a little bit, what are some things that come to mind for you when you think about what are we faculty really afraid of about being curious in the ways that you described?

[00:15:50] Katie: I think the fear element typically, comes when something is unknown. If I have– and faculty are not allowed to know what a person’s disability is unless that student would disclose it. Obviously, if you have a disability like visual impairment, or being deaf or heart of hearing, you may have something that somebody immediately knows that visible disability. If we’re not used to having an ASL interpreter right next to us, for example, we might not know how to respond to that.

I always encourage faculty that if you have a student who is deaf, or hard of hearing in your classroom, continue to look at them, direct your language, and communication towards them as you would anyone else. That ASL interpreter is simply providing access to communication that that person needs. Sure, they’re going to be watching the ASL interpreter, but they’re also watching for your body language. If they have any element of hearing, they’re going to be listening for different tones.

That can mean the world to that person who was deaf or hard of hearing, to know that that faculty, that professor is looking at me as an individual. When that doesn’t happen, it can be really uncomfortable, and it can turn into a negative experience when that professor had no intent to make it negative. They just didn’t know, and that not knowing ends up becoming a barrier. That’s where I hope our office of accessibility, and that team in that office is helping those professors move beyond that.

I think about the team members in the Office of Accessibility, and they’re the ones that get to know the students really well. They’re also guiding that student to advocate for themselves if that student isn’t already doing that on their own. I think we do our best to reduce barriers in many different ways. My hope is that we’re reducing the barrier of fear so that that professor can continue to be curious, and learn, and desire to know about that individual.

[00:17:59] Bonni: Sometimes the context that we have experienced a lot of our careers in, as in higher education, when it trains us and conditions us when we don’t know something to hide that and to cover it up. What you’re really encouraging us here to do is to name those things, and be curious, and ask questions, and ask questions to people like yourself, and the offices that are at our various institutions to support us in these ways, but also directly to the students as well.

You and I are both based out of the United States. You have had an opportunity to travel and do some more intercultural work. I’d love to have you share a little bit about that experience with, or experiences with the listeners today.

[00:18:48] Katie: I feel so incredibly blessed to have had a multitude of experiences overseas, and specifically, in the field of disabilities. A year ago, I was fortunate to be in Ukraine, and to help teachers over there learn, and understand how to support their students with disabilities, because in Ukraine, it’s very young that children are allowed to be able to go to school if they have a disability. I don’t take that for granted. That was an incredibly beautiful opportunity to spend time with these amazing Ukrainian people.

In addition to that, I have received the Fullbright Teaching Grant to Lithuania. I will be not teaching in the traditional sense, where I’m just lecturing, but I will actually have the opportunity to help this university launch a program that supports their university students who happen to have disabilities, and that’s unheard of in their university. To know that they have a specific desire to want to grow this in their university is just so incredibly exciting for me.

My husband and I will go there. We’ll live in Lithuania. I will spend time with the faculty and students at this university and really learn what are their needs and how can I help them do this really well? How can I take the challenges that we’ve had in America over the last 50 years, and grow from those challenges and have them start from today rather than from the past?

I’m just really looking forward to helping them serve those students with disabilities who maybe have never had somebody be able to support them in academic environment. I just can’t wait for this experience. [laughs]

[00:20:38] Bonni: I see it as another way that you’ll be helping people to expand their imagination and really having that reach. I also predict, and I suspect you do too, that they’re going to teach you so much as well and that experience.

[00:20:49] Katie: Oh, my goodness. Absolutely. I think one of the pieces I really appreciate when I have opportunities to be in other countries is to recognize that my American culture around disabilities is, can be completely turned upside down. For me, I love that because then it challenges me to look at things differently and to try to understand from a cultural standpoint, I need to get to that cultural standpoint in order to better understand how they like to learn it.

Learning will look different in Lithuania, and I’m excited to see that and then take their learning and their styles, and how they teach at that university and incorporate hopefully some tips and strategies that will also help them grow and learn.

[00:21:41] Bonni: Before we get to the recommendations segment, I know that you do have some tips to share and we could talk for days, I’m sure with what you have. Too many times, we make this too big. We need to have our values centered, we need to care, as you said earlier about people being able to show up in the fullness of themselves and to be given opportunities to thrive, but sometimes we make it too big from there.

That’s big, that’s important internal work to do and to do within community, but sometimes it’s not as hard as we make it in our head. What are some small things that are holding us back from being able to fulfill that? Or I guess I should even ask you, is that the right aim? It sounds like that’s really what you aim for as well, that all people would have access to that kind of an experience.

[00:22:30] Katie: I think today, we are so fortunate with the technology we have access to, and sometimes it’s literally just asking somebody the question, “Can my computer help me with this?” I think we’re in 2022, students have access to technology, so let’s utilize that technology in ways that helps them learn in really wonderful ways. The technology can remove so many barriers that we had even five years ago. We no longer have to have those barriers.

I’ll share with you, I love to learn, so I’ll share what I learned today, literally six hours ago. I learned that I have something on my Word doc that I can click a button and I’ve always seen it there, but I haven’t necessarily clicked it. It says check accessibility. By clicking that button, I can now make sure that my Word document can be read by any screen reader.

That’s one click and I can find that out, and I think that is incredible. I want to encourage people to ask the questions, we don’t all have to, I am not an expert on technology, but hopefully, I, and many people, I’m guessing your listeners are learners, and they want to continue to learn. If you don’t know all of the answers, ask, ask how can you make something more accessible? I think it’s important that we always think about the fact that all of our students are in a university setting because they’re probably trying to earn a degree of some sort, but they’re also there because they want to learn. How can we make sure we give them access to learning?

[00:24:10] Bonni: Before we get to the recommendations segment, I just wanted to take a brief moment to thank today’s sponsor, and that is Text Expander. Text Expander has been my longest running sponsor, and I appreciate that very much because it’s also one of my longest running productivity tools.

What Text Expander allows me to do is to come up with easy to remember shortcuts that I come up with myself, such as ZVU, SIG, as in the university where I work, and a signature. You can make any little snippet or code of letters that you would want to type in that expand to either things that are hard to remember, for me, my work phone number, or that would take a lot longer of time for you to type in. For example, the show notes for every episode.

What’s great is it’s really easy to get started with Text Expander and begin saving time, and then it’s up to the limits of your imagination for what’s possible. They have a whole community of people that will share the snippets that they’re coming up with with you, and you can even download an entire database or dictionary, if you will, of other people’s snippets, which you can benefit from other people’s creativity on how to use Text Expander.

I’d like to thank them for the support of the show, and encourage you to head over to text expander.com/podcast where you can learn more about Text Expander and what it can do for you and get a 20% off offer for the listeners of Teaching in Higher Ed. Please let them know that you heard about Text Expander from this podcast, Teaching in Higher Ed. Thanks once again to Text Expander for sponsoring today’s episode.

This has been a very inspiring conversation, but we are not done yet because this is the time in the show where we each get to share our recommendations. I wanted to share my recommendation. I’ve actually had two prior guests, Kelly Hogan and Viji Sathy have been on the show many times, and I knew that Kelly Hogan’s spouse worked at her university, but I didn’t know very much about him. His name is Brian, and I saw a post somewhere on Twitter, I believe, from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

The video is entitled A Circuitous Path, and I’ll read from their description. Brian Hogan’s journey to becoming a teaching professor in the College of Arts and Sciences Chemistry Department has been anything but a straight path, but through perseverance and an ask for help, the Tar Heel found a way to quiet the doubt that lingered in the back of his mind.

I’m going to play just a very, very brief part of the [laughs] very introduction because he made me laugh so hard, and maybe that’ll inspire some of you to actually take a listen to this. Oh, this made me laugh so hard. All right, here we go. A quick little look at this video with Brian Hogan’s journey to becoming a professor. Here we go.

[00:27:18] Brian Hogan: I got on campus, and everybody’s high school knowledge runs out at some point in college. Mine lasted about four minutes on campus, and I–

[00:27:29] Bonni: [laughs] From the very beginning, his lasted about four minutes on campus. It’s just such a beautiful look. I love two things about it. One, is just, I think we can’t emphasize enough to people, young and old, our paths are not linear. They’re just not. Whether we’re talking about grief, or career, or no matter [laughs] what it is, but our tiny brains sometimes distill, try to cling to the idea that things are much more linear than they are.

I also just appreciated his humility. I just think when we open up and we’re transparent and we admit things like that, it just invites other people to do the same and we can all feel a lot safer in our humanness. I just, I loved it. I hope people will go take … tonight. I so appreciate them making it. Katie, what do you have to recommend for us today?

[00:28:19] Katie: I would love to share a recommendation on two different things. As I think about the hats that I wear at Bethel University, one of the recommendations that I would like to share for faculty around the world is the cast.org website. That is a website that it’s a nonprofit organization that teaches about universal design for learning, and they really were the people that launched this, the UDL framework.

The Universal Design for Learning website provides tons of tips and strategies, really quick and easy ways for you to apply elements of UDL in your classroom or in your syllabus, and it’s what I use when I guide faculty. It’s what I use when I’m leading a workshop. I would highly recommend that you access that website for amazing tips and ideas that you can take and no matter what content you are teaching, and really make a difference to make learning accessible for all students.

My second recommendation is specific to our BUILD Program. What I love about this documentary is that not only does it teach the world about our BUILD Program, but it was also developed by a student in the BUILD Program. That to me is just the exclamation point on how this program gives opportunities for students with intellectual disabilities to literally learn and do what they love and to be curious. This young man, he loves everything related to media, and he got to make his own media production in a class. His was making this documentary and I really hope that you’ll enjoy it.

[00:30:05] Bonni: Oh, I cannot wait to check it out and revisit CAST because every time I go up there I learned something new. Thank you so much for these recommendations. Katie, thank you so much for being a guest today on Teaching in Higher Ed. What a delight to be connected with you. I feel like we have a lot in common in terms of the context we teach in and, I just so appreciate the ways that you’re impacting the world. Thank you so much.

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[00:30:28] Bonni: Thanks once again to Katie Bonawitz for being a guest on today’s Teaching in Higher Ed. Today’s episode was produced by me, Bonni Stachowiak, and was edited by the ever talented Andrew Kroger. Podcast production support was provided by the amazing Sierra Smith. Thanks to all of you for listening to today’s episode.

If you have yet to subscribe to the weekly update from Teaching in Higher Ed, I highly suggest it. You will get the most recent episode’s show notes in your inbox once a week, along with some other things that don’t show up on the regular episodes. Head on over to teachinginhighered.com/subscribe and you can sign up for the weekly updates. Thanks so much for listening, and I’ll see you next time.

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The transcript of this episode has been made possible through a financial contribution by the Association of College and University Educators (ACUE). ACUE is on a mission to ensure student success through quality instruction. In partnership with institutions of higher education nationwide, ACUE supports and credentials faculty members in the use of evidence-based teaching practices that drive student engagement, retention, and learning.

Teaching in Higher Ed transcripts are created using a combination of an automated transcription service and human beings. This text likely will not represent the precise, word-for-word conversation that was had. The accuracy of the transcripts will vary. The authoritative record of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcasts is contained in the audio file.