Transformative Principal

Joel Lavin
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[00:00:00]

Welcome to the Transformative Principal Podcast. I am Jethro Jones, your host, and I'm very excited to have on the program today, Joel Levin. He is in his 15th year as an administrator and 25th year as a public educator.

He's currently an equity and inclusion administrator for high schools in Eugene School District for J in Eugene, Oregon. His job is focused on removing barriers for students in high school through age 21 who experienced disabilities [00:01:00] and autism. Joel has worked with students pre-kindergarten through age 21, his career.

He started teaching as a middle school science teacher and branched out to administration in 2009. Joel has two children who are each about three years apart. They're currently in high school and college, and his hobbies include camping with his family, gardening, running, cooking, and martial arts. His passions include inclusive education, transition services, restorative justice, bilingual education, educational equity.

He's been a facilitator for the CFEE Collaborative for 15 years. That is Coaching for Equity and education. Joel, welcome to Transformative Principal. Uh, yes, always great to talk to you and, uh. We're gonna talk, uh, mostly about

Great to talk to you.

today. Uh, but tell me what was most valuable from our conversation for you.

What I think is most valuable, thank you.

Uh, about what we talked about today is that [00:02:00] teachers, principals. Students all are involved

in the transition services process and it's really about making sure that

students feel heard and feel like they're a part of

something, that they're developing their future as a

student. That could be in a CTE

classroom, or it could be, uh,

working on independent

living, but that they feel

like they are a part of something and that they are steering themselves towards a future with

success.

Very good. I, for me, I think the big takeaway is the, uh. Even if we're talking about lots of different kids, every child has a unique and individual perspective that they go through as they go through school, and it's so important for that to be unique and tailored to what they specifically need. Uh, so lots of really good stuff.

Joel has been on the podcast before. If you go to [00:03:00] episodes 2 58 and 2 59, boy, Joel, that was 300 episodes ago, which is just crazy. Uh, you've been, I. I've known you for so long and so grateful for your friendship and your, uh, tireless efforts to always do great things for kids. So, links to those previous episodes will be in the show notes, and we'll get to my interview with Joel here in just a moment.​So Joel, why don't you start by telling us about your, uh, work and what you do, uh, in your current role.

Sure. Jethro. Yeah, so currently I work for Eugene School District four J in Eugene, Oregon as an equity and inclusion administrator. And, uh, I serve mostly students that are in high school as well as students that are 18 to 21 years old that receive transition services. And mostly what I do is serve students that are on an IEP or students that are on a 5 0 4 plan [00:04:00] and need support in the classroom.

The district wants me to work more closely with principals and general education teachers, as well as special education teachers and specialists to help everyone work more closely together to make inclusion happen in a more, uh, inclusive way, in a more effective way.

Yeah, so one of the things that I'm really excited about talking with you about is transition services and, uh. Which is for students with disabilities who are going from high school to whatever their chosen, uh, pathway is. Can you talk a little bit about the transition services piece first to make sure that people understand it

because high school leaders understand it for the most part, but it can be challenging for people who are, uh, not high school principals.

Uh, tell us about what transition

services typically look like.

Sure. Well, as you and, um, some of [00:05:00] the, uh, listeners may or may not know, um, IDEA

is the law that governs special education for the students that are in our schools in the United States and part of IDEA states that we're responsible to help students become. Independent, successful citizens in our country.

And so one of the big pieces to that is that we have to help students plan that out. And especially students that are in high school, and even students that are in eighth grade or that are about 14 years old, need to begin planning what that transition service is like for them. They have. Preferences and interests and strengths that all teachers that work with that student know about, and it's our job to help them shape that plan and design that future for them and help them become a successful, uh, person out there in the world.

Yeah. Okay. Can you hear, hear me well still?

I can, yeah.

My [00:06:00] microphone died while you were talking, so we'll just cut this part out. That's okay. Um, these things happen, uh.

Do I need to say, okay,

I, I got your stuff just fine. Um, so what, what I want to talk to you about specifically is this, uh, transition vision project. And tell me about what you are thinking for how you do transition differently than others might do it.

Sure. Well, um, some of the aspects of transition that are important are that we need to make sure that students get the education and training that they need when they're in high school or when they're outside of high school. We need to help them. Become employable. So we teach them, uh, pre-employment skills and we also need to help them foster their own independence and self-advocacy skills.

And in order to do that, they need to build, you know, their own self-determination and they have to also work on communication skills, et cetera. They [00:07:00] have to plan for their future, but in order to do that, they need to have a team and they need to have programs that support that. Well. So one of the things that we.

Have done in our district for a long time fairly well, is we've provided a lot of these transition services to our students in specialized programs that are separate from other students. I. This has been successful for a number of students in some ways. Uh, they learn, you know, for example, how to take care of an apartment because we have a program that actually is supportive of students learning how to do those independent living skills in an apartment like doing laundry and, um, taking care of a kitchen and cooking different meals that they learn.

Um, but we also. Um, try and get students to job sites. And those job sites are really key and important in helping students develop those pre-employment skills as well as communication skills. Uh, we have two separate [00:08:00] programs in our district and one of the programs serves students who sometimes already have a job.

And then the other one is serving students who may be more impacted by their disability and don't have a job yet, and. When I saw that we had these two separate programs, when I started this, this position three years ago, I made the decision that we need to unify those, uh, two different programs. And I worked hard on that and brought in a lot of different people to become, become like more involved and create a, a unified vision on how to include more students together, uh, in and not have separate programs.

But in addition to that. To really come up with a set of values that we have in our community, uh, and a and a program that has a set of values that drives the transition programs in our community. So I brought folks together in the fall to talk about what our values are [00:09:00] and to create a pathway process.

So, a pathway process is kind of a, a, a way of visioning programming, um, for. Uh, set of students and it's been used in some of, um, our other districts in our state. Um, one of the cool things about transition is that there's lots of people in our state that support transition services in Oregon. There's um.

Uh, something that's called Thetan Network. And I can't remember what all of the, uh, letters stand for in that, but there's definitely transition in there and there's definitely network in there. Uh, and, uh, thetan Network, um, has a, a. A series of, um, trainings that they do for staff and they also have, uh, transition network facilitators and we had a transition network facilitator come and do work with us.

This person directly serve students in schools as well as helping to do visioning and other projects. And I brought up, [00:10:00] uh, this gentleman who works in our county to support us in that visioning process. And he walked us through this process to help our. Staff. Think about first of all, what are our values and what are our North Star, um, things that we're trying to accomplish?

What is it that we wanna see, uh, for our students that live in our community, uh, to become more successful? And then what's possible for our students? What are the things that we need? And who do we need to be involved in those, uh, building up of those proc practices and projects that we're, we're working on to unify these students and what do we wanna see at the end once we're stronger, once we've built a unified program.

So he helped us through that process and helped us really design, um, our first stages of, of this, um, pretty exciting vision.

Yeah, I, I think that it's pretty cool and I, I'm glad that you're doing something like this. The thing that [00:11:00] is, is so challenging is that this is a very small. Percentage in most districts, less than 10% of their students. That requires a lot of time and energy to create and provide these types of services.

Um, and, and so a lot of people would say, well, you know, there's. not that many kids, so maybe it's not as necessary, but these kids have a future and a life as well, so, so it's definitely worth it. But what, what else is there that's driving you to, to make these changes?

Sure. Well, one of the things that I think is so exciting about, um, this project is that. We try to include a lot of general education staff as well as special education staff when we did this visioning. So that includes, uh, folks that are part of the CTE community or career technical education. And one of the big drivers in our state, [00:12:00] uh, in transition these days is to try and do more work to get students involved in CTE that are impacted by disabilities at an earlier age.

As you or some of your listeners may know, a lot of times students that are in CTE programs are maybe not traditionally students going to college, or they're focused on a career instead of a college readiness, uh, type pathway. Uh, but they often keep students out that may or may not be able to achieve, uh, at high school.

Levels. Uh, and that becomes a problem for a lot of students and it doesn't feel very inclusive, uh, for those students. And if a student has expressed interest in, uh, construction or engineering or flying a drone or cooking, they may not have access to these CTE programs because they're put into a special education pathway or they're

in all of our years, she's never here [00:13:00] with,

uh, courses that most students do have

is for the first

So, yeah.

Had that opportunity because she's had to have so many extra special ed type classes to support her. And this year we, this is basically how we made it happen. We said, look, we are fine with. The, um, English language arts requirements being fulfilled within her, uh, social studies class, um, because they didn't have a special ed teacher who could teach her during the period that she would've needed had she, uh, if she was taking this foods class.

And man, she is just loving this class and it's so good for her and she's more interested in helping. Cook dinner at home and feels a great sense of accomplishment when she does that and is getting more confident just because she's participating in this and you're totally right. Because of her need for [00:14:00] special ed classes, she hasn't been able to have these other experiences that, um, you know, a lot of other kids could participate in, and it's not that they were excluding her on purpose.

The nature of her needing additional help in core areas and us prioritizing core areas over real life skills has definitely created a problem and I. What I'm seeing as a dad and what I'm hearing you explain is that you're trying to find a way to bring those real life experiences and real life job skills, uh, into their transition, transition services plan, so that they have a, a way to, to have both, and that it's not an either or Me too.

Exactly. You know, I'm kind of saddened to hear about your daughter and her experiences, but she's not alone. She's not alone. Uh, unfortunately. And, uh, you know, there's a lot of folks that are meaning well and trying to [00:15:00] make sure that students are able to meet their, uh, goals that are in their IEP. But sometimes that gets in the way of students being able to interact with their peers that are their neurotypical peers or their, uh, students that are non-disabled peers.

Uh, so that's one of the accomplishments that we're trying to achieve here in Eugene. Um, one of the things that I started to do last year was I started to work with some of our transition programs because they asked me, they said, Hey, we've heard about this really. Cool program that you guys have in CTE in the district.

It's called Future Build. Future Build is a program where students, um, were able to build a house for a community member in our community. They, uh, actually went out, uh, the district purchased a piece of land. They built a house. It's a pretty awesome program. Uh, this future build program, uh, is a centralized program that allows, um, students from across the district.

'cause we [00:16:00] have four comprehensive high schools in our district, and any student that is interested in construction and is interested in being involved in that career area is able to join this future build program. Uh, of course enrollment is limited, but you know. It's very popular. And, um, the students go to a site and they help, first of all build a house, uh, for a family.

And that house was given away. Um, in addition, they've been building sheds to help, um, our unhoused community, um, have more stable housing. And so they've been building a, a series of sheds that are, um, kind of like what you might have heard of, like Conestoga huts or these, these house, um. House, uh, environments that are dry and warm and able to, to serve someone who is unhoused.

So our school district is doing this in a centralized way, and they are. I'm interested in working with more of the students that are in our transition programs. [00:17:00] So I was able to have conversations with the administrators that run that future build program, as well as the teachers that work in our transition programs and the administrators that work in the district office that help organize, uh, some of these projects.

And they allowed some of our students that are in transition. Uh, services to access these programs even though they are out of high school. So we had students that were 18 to 21 that, um, started school this fall, uh, working on a job site that is this school site, which is just amazing. And the students.

Really enjoy it. Um, they're as kind of like what you're talking about, about your, your daughter. Um, they were excited. They're building confidence, they're interacting with peers. Uh, they're building relationships. They're building skills that will help them. I. Uh, be employable in, uh, a job area that's similar to construction, if not construction itself.

Um, and [00:18:00] they just have gleaming confidence. Uh, so much so that some of the students were invited to a statewide transition conference to speak

say confidence, and I mentioned that earlier and that is something that, um, we just as a side note, we in education have also, uh, made students not confident by doing so much for them, especially kids with disabilities and how, you know, my daughter can do a lot of things, and I've seen this with a lot of other students also.

They can do a lot. But sometimes, and oftentimes it's easier to just not do the thing that we know they can do because they know somebody else is gonna take care of it for them. And, and so there's this idea of confidence, but then there's also this idea of I'll just let someone else take care of that for me, because I know that that's what they always do.

And that's a real thing. And I, I [00:19:00] love how what you're saying. Gets kids opportunities to be truly involved and do something, um, that is going to make an impact for them and also for others as well. Uh, you, I, I just think that's so important and it's such, it's such a small thing that it's so easy to overlook.

But when you know these kids and you see what they're experiencing and see how they are changing and growing and adapting, it is, it is really powerful. Do you have any other examples of, of kids who are, who are doing some cool things?

Yeah, well, I'll just tell you that, uh, there's um, some other students that are involved in, uh, like a rotation.

In fact, that is another

do you know anything

daughter's school

unified sports program that's run by the Special

uh, basketball. So, uh, will you explain what that is a little bit and then share your story.

Sure. Yeah. So Unified Sports, [00:20:00] uh, are programs that are designed to include students that are athletes, uh, that typically are students who are impacted by a disability as well as, uh, partners. Uh, and these partners work with the athletes. To help them, uh, participate in sports, uh, and they actively. Teach and support each other in a classroom environment.

That's a inclusive environment. So there might be a basketball class or there might be a volleyball class where students work together as a team. And there's a set of values that, uh, special Olympics has created to help, uh, teachers, um, understand this curriculum a little bit more. But typically there's two teachers that teach the class.

Uh, there's a general education teacher that might be a PE teacher as well as. A special education teacher and maybe an instructional assistant or two in the room. But what happens in that experience is really magical. Uh, students build really strong relationships. [00:21:00] Uh, they feel empowered, they feel, uh, excited about being on a team, like they've never been on a team before.

Um, and they actually compete in Eugene. We're gonna be having. Um, some, uh, basketball games, uh, to compete against all the comprehensive high schools in the month of February, as well as in March. And like students are just really, really excited about it. So the unified sports program is actually larger than unified sports.

So I'm kind of going off on a tangent here, but I'm trying to get back to it. So what you need to understand is that, um, there's classes that are taught that are unified. Programs. And there's also, um, competition. Sometimes schools don't have enough, uh, FTE or time to be able to actually offer courses, and so they offer offer afterschool programs.

Uh, in our district right now, we have a unified robotics team. Uh, and there's a unified robotics team that's working, uh, after school doing a number of things. In addition, one of our high schools has [00:22:00] decided to create a rotation, so they're having a unified program that includes different CTE programs, so they have.

A unified sports program. They have a unified, uh, performing arts, uh, music program. And then they have a, uh, forestry unified program, and then they have a, um, like a robotics type program. So the students are going to, on a semester cycle, rotate between these four different programs in our community. So in a six week cycle.

The students are going to join. Uh, a group of students and explore these different career areas over a semester. And boy, I'll tell you, the students are really excited about being involved and they're really excited about being with their peers and doing things that they just haven't ever had a chance to do.

So that's the kind of stuff that we're doing to increase [00:23:00] students' exposure to CTE to help them figure out more about what

Well, and, and it's so

just like every other kid.

in, in your school. So if you don't have something like unified sports set up already, definitely uh, check out the link in the show notes about that because. It is, it, it is really powerful and I, I was back east, uh, in New England, and I believe it was in Connecticut, maybe New Hampshire.

Honestly, I don't remember. I, I'm sorry about that. But they're, they do a lot with Unified, um. Sports as well, and it's a big part of, of what they do, uh, district wide over there. And, and it's pretty cool to see that kind of stuff happen. So, um, so those are other ways to, to help kids be involved. Um, and I believe, um, you, you, you have a story about a kid who started as a freshman in a [00:24:00] charter school, uh, during the pandemic.

Can you tell that story? Certainly just first

Yeah. So there's a student, um, his name I think I can share. His name is Ryan. Uh, so yeah, just first name. Yeah. Anyways. Um, so Ryan, um, was a pretty troubled student and he had a lot of difficulty interacting with peers in this charter program. It was an outdoor, uh, outdoor school type program where students were really interacting while he didn't get along with others, and he had some problems with, um, interacting with peers and he ended up having to come back to the school district out of the charter program.

So. We enrolled him in an alternative program. But the problem is, is that the alternative program didn't have enough services to really serve him, uh, in his needs with his disability. So he was challenged by that. Um, he had, um, a lot of extra tension and we were able to meet his goals, but it was a [00:25:00] strain on the alternative school.

So we made a decision to have him move to one of our high schools, uh, the same high school where this, um, this cycle explore cycle was happening with CTE. Uh, and there's a program there that we have that's called the Transition Education Network. And the 10 program, or sometimes people call it tens 'cause they don't wanna get the number and the program confused.

Uh, the 10 program, uh, provided him with a lot more focus on independence and on building his, his skills for life after high school. And he immediately, you know, blossomed. And in that process of figuring out what his preference and preferences and interests and strengths are, we discovered that he wanted to go into construction.

I. And so we enrolled him in this program and he was able to go to, uh, the future build program for half of his day, um, several days a week. Uh, and so [00:26:00] he's going up to this, uh, place where they do the future build construction, and he's, um, involved with his peers. He's interacting more. Uh, he's super excited about, um, construction itself and.

He feels this, this sense of like self-worth and confidence that you just see when he's walking down the hall, which, uh, knowing what he was like when he was, um, a sophomore when I first started working with him is just like. Night and day difference. Uh, he's found his calling, as some people say. He's just really excited about school.

He's interested in being in that environment and, um, the connections that he's made are just really valuable for him, uh, as far as his future employability, as well as just a sense of confidence and communication skills that he's been able to build that he wouldn't have had an opportunity to do if he didn't have that kind of environment to help him interact

powerful. And,

[00:27:00] Peers that are non-disabled.

I, I think when we look at these situations, it's. It's so valuable to speak about individual students and what they're able to accomplish because each path for each student is very personal and unique to them. And when we can find ways to really support them in a, in a powerful way, then it is just, it's incredible and so inspiring.

Um, Joel. I wanna thank you for being part of Transformative principle today. Um, any final words before we sign off about, uh, the work that you're doing there in Eugene?

Sure. Yeah. I think, uh, just one other point I wanted to make is that. A lot of this work wouldn't happen without real collaboration, without real interest of administrators to support this idea. Uh, and without, uh, you know, the transition network facilitators from the state without principals that are interested in making changes and trying to create more inclusive, uh, environments [00:28:00] and, and to have their teachers do more inclusive practices.

So I think inclusive practices is the key thing here. General educators as well as special educators can really make a difference when they get together. I. Because it's not just about them sharing resources or supporting each other a little bit, uh, more with, uh, figuring out how to serve one student, but there's just this sense of connection and community that's created when we do inclusive practices well, that makes a difference for students and um, it's just very valuable for community in general, not just the school, but the larger community because these students, uh.

Are part of our lives for a long time, and they're part of our community and

Uh, my final question that I asked Joel is what is one thing that a

in their community long

this week to be a Transformative leader like you? Oh, sounds like a cart was just going by. I. Yeah, that's all good. Okay.

Yeah, that's, I, that's why I didn't respond right [00:29:00] away. And he's gonna get on the elevator here in a second,

for sure.

for a bit. Um,

Yep. Well, it's been fine except for that little piece right

out? But I told you I was in an open environment, so Yeah. Alright. He got on, so he's gonna close the elevator and then I'll respond. Okay. So, um, yeah, Jethro. I think the biggest thing is to make sure that you continue to convey the message that inclusivity and inclusive practices are important for all staff to be a part of. It's a team effort to make sure that everyone feels supported and like they have a path, and in order for that to happen, general education teachers, special education teachers.

Principals all need to spend time with each other, really understanding what each other's roles are and that

beautiful. Joel, thank you so much for being part of Transformative

making sure that all of our students have a successful future.

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