Partnering with Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Families in Special Education with Kristin Vogel-Campbell
Ross Romano: [00:00:00] Welcome everybody. You are listening once again to the Authority Podcast on the BE Podcast Network. Thanks as always for being here with us. This is going to be a great conversation about a variety of really important topics for educators.
So my guest today is Dr. Kristen Vogel-Campbell. Kristen has 20 years of experience in special education. She is currently a coordinator of special education for the San Mateo Foster City School District in California. Her research centers the perspectives of parents and families from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and her book, her first book, is Partnering with Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Families in Special Education.
It's published by Rowman and Littlefield and it is out now. Kristen, welcome to the Authority.
Kristin Vogel-Campbell: Thank you so much, Ross. I'm really glad that we are getting to chat today. Thanks for having me on the show.
Ross Romano: [00:01:00] Totally. And we're going to jump right into obviously the most important topic, which is that in your spare time, you're an internationally ranked pinball player. So my two questions about that are one, how does one attain that status? And two, do you have a favorite pinball table?
Kristin Vogel-Campbell: Yeah, well, it's really easy to attain international status. It depends on how good you are. Not really. But you know, just register with the International Pinball Federation and you get yourself a number. And as you play in recognized tournaments, you move up and down the ranks. So I think that's it.
Just played a tournament the other day. I am somewhere in like the 9, 000 or 10, 000 range, so there are a lot of people better than I am, but I believe the rankings go into like the 35, 000. It's not too shabby, but you know, I'm not winning tournaments. And my favorite machine right now [00:02:00] there's a brand new Elton John pinball table that is absolutely fantastic.
So that's probably my favorite as of now.
Ross Romano: Listeners, check that out if you get a chance and look we're accumulating all kinds of sporting credentials here. If you heard our episode over the summer with Dave Fleming and his participation in the national or international musical chairs championship as part of an article he was writing for ESPN.
Now we have an internationally ranked pinball player. So. If anybody else has any hidden talents, make sure to come on the show as well. Just write a book first. So let's move to the next topic at hand. You know, there's a variety of convergence or , of different focus points in this book.
But let's start around the special education piece. So what you've been. Working in special education, as I said, for 20 plus years in a variety of different roles. What kind, what has motivated you to spend your career in special education?[00:03:00]
Kristin Vogel-Campbell: Yeah so I came into special education for very personal reasons. Shortly after I finished my undergrad in New York City my nephew was diagnosed on the autism spectrum. and just seeing the challenges. that my brother and his then wife went through. But then also eventually seeing the benefits that my nephew you know, received all of the services that he received in school.
But going back to the challenges , my he's a white student, and English is spoken in the home, so they carry a certain amount of privilege and growing up in New York City, going to diverse public high schools myself , not necessarily, using the label of privilege, but I always knew that I had an advantage over other folks.
So when it was time to kind of go into grad school and consider like what path I was [00:04:00] taking, it was either social work or education. So very much in the same kind of vein of service and helping others. But that personal experience led me to go into education, get my teaching credentials in the state of New York, and then when I moved out to California finding a home in the San Francisco Bay Area, and kind of just dedicating my life to , classroom you know, working as a district teacher on special assignment, and then moving into an administrative role.
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Ross Romano: Central, of course, to providing special education services to students is the IEP document and the IEP process. So I want to take a moment to talk through that. And. You know, most of our listeners probably have been involved as part of an IEP team in some role, whether general [00:05:00] education or as an administrator, some may not have or some may be a little rusty.
So I think it's worth one , a little bit of a reminder of what that team should be, what that should look like when things are operating at a high level. And then if you have observed some. I guess shortcomings in the way that, that those that is conducted systemically, right? Not necessarily in any particular school, but just things that might be missing from the way that process is typically structured.
Kristin Vogel-Campbell: Yeah, so the IEP which is an acronym that stands for Individualized Education Plan. So, special education folks, we love our acronyms. And Sometimes we need to very explicitly spell them out to make them available to lay folk. So it is a federally protected process for parents and students who are eligible for special education.
[00:06:00] Special Education Services under the IDEA, which is the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and there are 13 eligible categories that students can be eligible for special education services in schools ages 3 all the way up until the age of 22. And that process, parents are and should be the most central and important member of that team.
Parents, families expanding our understanding of who a parent or a family member can be is key and I think is part of our limitations. A school administrator, so either a principal, assistant principal, a school counselor, or a district representative, a teacher that has a general education teaching credential, and then a special education teacher, as well as any other service providers that the student receives services under.
So speech [00:07:00] pathologist, occupational therapist, there's a variety of services. Systemic issues in the IEP process. are that it is an extremely school based team member driven function. Meetings are generally held during the school day and as a result, parents need to take off of work. Some parents have the ability to flex time.
Other parents need to take the day off and as a result, lose wages. And then additionally, we have a large number of families in public education who speak a language other than English at home. And part of their protected rights is that the school is obligated to provide translators so that they can effectively participate in meetings. End. The dominant language, I think the most common translator that we and the school team [00:08:00] receive requests for is Spanish, but we know that , America is a super diverse country, and when we receive requests for interpreters in Nepalese, folks from Nepal, or a lot of Indigenous Central and South American languages, which we're seeing a lot of immigrants from those countries in California, and in my district in particular, it makes it really difficult.
So there is a need for interpreters, and sometimes the number of qualified folks that are in the pool don't have the specific qualifications. So that makes it really difficult for parents to understand. And then I think just in general that the range of services that students need, making sure that we commit to providing those in the student's community school In my district, and I think in across the country, sometimes if a specific program isn't [00:09:00] available at a kid's home school, they need to take a bus. Sometimes that bus ride isn't very long, but sometimes it can be , 30, 35 minutes, and that removes the student from their natural social group. So making sure that we provide services as close to home and in the least restrictive environment. So that's another acronym LRE. So there, there's a variety of issues.
And again, I think some families, have more cultural capital that's recognized by the school system to access those things. Whereas families who are undocumented, families who speak a language other than English, families that there's a single parent household, families where the main caregiver isn't the biological parent, they run into a lot of obstacles that make this process really difficult [00:10:00] for them.
Ross Romano: Yeah. Are there barriers that are, cultural independent from being linguistic.
Kristin Vogel-Campbell: Yeah. I talk about this with my school teams a lot of the time, where you know when I grew up in the schools that I went to, and I think this is reflective a lot of the educators that are teaching today. We were told that , as a sign of respect, you make eye contact with the teacher, or you make eye contact with someone looking at you.
In a lot of cultures. Eye contact to a superior is seen as disrespectful, but folks that are ingrained that it's a sign of respect see that and their initial perception may be, well, they're not listening to me or they don't care about this because they're not looking me in the eye. So it's the nonverbal cues even simple as some [00:11:00] cultures, they will nod their head when they mean no.
And of course, in American, in, in white culture in general, when we nod our head, it's perceived as a sign of agreement. So just teeny tiny little things like that, in addition to just spoken language.
Ross Romano: Yeah, those are are good ones. The, some of those ideas certainly around, I think, eye contact piece and certain other just behaviors, whether they're culturally based or just variable based on individuals has come up recently in some conversations here around , the necessity of teacher to learn to not.
First of all, not take it personal, right? Secondly , if in particular, if there may be some cultural basis for it, to try to learn about that and just understand that. But first and foremost, that starts with, I think, not jumping to conclusions or assumptions or because I also believe , one of the [00:12:00] things to talk about here is, What does full participation look like for families, right?
If you were to define, okay, here's the ideal participation level that families would have as part of, as the most important part of that IEP team. Stakeholders in their child's education. One , being able to identify that, define that, set that as a goal and work toward it. But two, also, how do you go about informing and inviting the families into the process and encouraging them without Like making it a job for them, right?
As you already mentioned, sometimes there's barriers around schedule where in order to be at a meeting, a parent's going to have to take off from work, and that might be a significant you know, concession that they have to make, or even if it's not. doesn't come down to lost wages, even if they're in a job where that's not the case.
Still, [00:13:00] it's a significant commitment, right, to be able to adjust their schedule and be present, do all that. And even parents who are very much invested in their child's well being and education there might come a certain point where they are exhausted by that and they feel like, can you, maybe you guys can handle this without me, right?
That it's not you know, that, Drawing conclusions from it is unproductive either thinking that it means they don't care or it means that it's something personal that they don't want to engage with you and trying to figure out, okay, how do we continue to make this a compelling and welcoming invitation and try to, and understand that it really does require a level of involvement.
to optimize the way that we can serve this student, but yet, we don't want to just make it where it feels like it's a bunch of homework and demands and things like that, [00:14:00] because that's not you know, that's not the most encouraging for anyone.
Kristin Vogel-Campbell: Yeah. Think when we're talking about ideals I never want to put more onus or responsibility on families than we already do. I think that moving towards. A model where parent engagement is core to any type of process at school, either in special education or not, requires educators to be both proactive And to be flexible. When I talk about proactive communication, it's really simple. When I engage with families, I'm usually coming in at the point where there's already something that happened that caused a level of distrust. either family to school or school to family. So what I like to [00:15:00] do in establishing relationships with families is before I go in and read a student's file, I like to reach out to the family.
and kind of do a cold call. At this point they know that I'm already involved in the process but I make it super clear and transparent that , I wanted to get a chance to talk to you and I wanted to hear about your journey with this process and tell me from your perspective at what point. did something go off? Then it's a matter of talking to the school team, reading the official formal documents, and you know, just making my judgment from there. There's always a little bit of truth in both sides, and that's really helpful when it comes to , to the mediation process. But even as a classroom teacher one of the things, same practice, calling parents at the [00:16:00] beginning of the year.
If I needed translation, I would make sure that there was translation set up so that I could speak with the families. Making sure that we're sending emails and especially the consistent communication of just reaching out to families when something negative or bad happens. If a student has a challenging day and is exhibiting behaviors or isn't doing their homework.
You know, again, like what you said before, not making assumptions, but just going, Hey, like, is there anything going on at home? This is what we're seeing. Behavior is a form of communication. And young students, even students in high school, even adults, like, if we don't have the words for something, it'll manifest in some type of behavior.
So that's what I always try to bring it back to my school teams about. And then, emailing or calling when something fantastic [00:17:00] happens so that we're not establishing this relationship just on punitive or negativity or, okay, I see the school is calling me, what happened now? Like so many parents that I speak to, like they dread seeing the school's phone number show up on their cell phone and that's really unfortunate.
But I think that is a reflection of what educators can do better more so than You know what parents can do better. And then in terms of flexibility you know, I know some schools in our district and in other districts holding parent teacher conferences in the evening as in addition to during school hours, compensating educators for their time outside of their schedule, which is super important and key, but giving parents who aren't able to make it during the school day an opportunity to come.
Ross Romano: Right. Yeah. I think as much as possible, right. [00:18:00] Eliminating the need to make hard decisions between two things that are both important for parents. Yes. I understand it's important. I want to be here for this conference, but it's also important for me to go to work and I guess I kind of need that , need that money.
Right. And as much as possible, if there's not really A reason for it to be other than, well, this is just what fits within our schedule is what we typically do. Going that little extra step to say, well, we have to serve them as best we can. And one of the , really important things that you said around the communication piece, and this is definitely something we talk about a lot in a lot of conversations here, whether it's at the classroom , teacher to parent level around student learning or whether it's at the school or even district level around broader initiatives and news and events, things that are happening, being proactive, being consistent [00:19:00] and communicating about all the good things that are happening, not just the bad things.
And it's just too frequent and too often that there's not enough emphasis put on making sure to share the good news or just be informative about. all kinds of things that are happening. And then it only happens when there's some type of crisis or where there's , a an issue that's happening with a student.
Oh, well, your child is on track to fail this class or there was a behavioral issue or whatever the case may be. And then once, right, parents get used to that as the routine number one, they're based on the context, their perspective is that. There's just always bad things happening because that's all they're ever hearing about.
And two, the only thing they're certainly going to hear about is when it's bad. So again, even a parent who has no conscious negative impressions toward educators or schools and the [00:20:00] parent who believes that the schools are there to do the right things for the right reasons. They can't help. But when they see that number show up on the phone, feel like, Oh, I don't want to deal with this.
I don't want to talk to this person. They're just going to tell me something , that I don't want to hear. Even if I know that It's probably true and it's something that I want to be able to deal with. Nobody's ever in the mood to hear bad news, right? And so if that's all I ever hear then I'm just not eager.
And also I'm wondering, too , when This is certainly the case in many environments and I would think particularly if we're talking about the diverse cultures and dispositions and understandings about norms toward advocacy and communication , that being proactive in communicating with families, giving them more opportunities to communicate things that they're thinking [00:21:00] about or feeling that would surface.
a lot more questions, input, information than otherwise, because there may be, again, whether , It could be cultural in many cases, in other cases it might be individual, but certain parents who don't feel comfortable for whatever reason being proactive in communicating to the school are saying, well, I think this is happening with my child.
Have you looked into it? Or can you do this? Or , where it may be a thing where they don't feel like that's appropriate, or they're just busy and they haven't been able to find the time to do it, or whatever the case may be but the school making the effort to reach out and talk about what's happening and then give an opportunity to say, do you have any questions or anything?
They may be more encouraged to ask that question that's been on their mind that they haven't asked before.[00:22:00]
Kristin Vogel-Campbell: 100%. And I think you, you alluded to that where , parents may not feel comfortable or they , think it may not be appropriate to, to question or to ask. They may not feel like they have the agency. You know, where we live in a very individualistic society where everybody feels that You know, we have the agency to ask and to prod and to challenge.
And that's not the case for , folks that are coming from other countries and have different cultural norms. You know, some folks may view teachers and school staff as kind of the be all end all and asking a question. They may feel that is out of line since they don't have the proper credentials or the education or the training.
And , one of the things that , kind of, I it kind of gives me the heebie jeebies sometimes is [00:23:00] when school based folks use the word, well, we're the experts. We're the experts. At the end of the day, parents are the experts at their child. And they know their child best. They see them , in unstructured times.
And I believe that it's mostly, for the most part, unintentional. But when we weaponize the word expert, we're almost unintentional. Making that divide between parents and school based of the team that we're just making it much more wide and much more difficult to traverse.
Ross Romano: Yeah I think there's a variety of reasons why that happens. I mean, one might just be the broader societal diminishment of expertise, but , of course when educators are feeling like they're under attack or being questioned or not being respected as experts in their role, they feel like the need to [00:24:00] advocate for that, but ultimately you have to show, don't tell, right?
And saying that I know this or I'm an expert has never influenced anybody. You just have to do your best to kind of set that aside and demonstrate your knowledge of a situation and your handling of it by the way you conduct it. And also understand that, yes, While there are great opportunities often, particularly for those who are really tuned in I think a lot of times for a teacher maybe to be able to observe or see certain things that a student's doing that might be obscured from their parent because of the different environments and the, at the end of the day, yes, like when it comes down to who's an expert in their child certainly we have to.
Respect parents expertise in that regard and and really show that, right? The acknowledgement and respect for that. And that's going to make them feel really good about [00:25:00] engaging in the process when they feel as though they're. a member in, yes, the most important member of the team, but a member on equal footing with everybody, right?
That everybody is a stakeholder in this in a way that it's not, there's not a difference in the contributions that everybody's making to that process between, well, these people are paid to be here and you're here. You know, and how is that, Illustrated and demonstrated through actions, through the way we treat each other, through the humility and deference that we can give to one another.
Kristin Vogel-Campbell: Yeah. And just a little bit more on that. I think when we look at making these systemic changes, Yes , individual classroom teachers and educators and , service related service providers, they can change what happens within the context of their meetings, but I'm really hoping that this [00:26:00] change is led by our school site leaders and our district leaders, because you definitely, like, pointed out, like, yeah, educators and teachers are under attack, and , that's Dealing , working with parents, some of whom might be difficult and may have expectations beyond our capabilities is extremely challenging and. I, I have a lot of empathy for classroom teachers. You know, and I was a classroom teacher for over a decade and the work that they do is really difficult and really critical. And I think , in order to move things forward in a very strategic way, these changes need to be school wide and district wide and statewide.
So, like, my call is not just to teachers, but more so to our leaders with greater [00:27:00] power and greater agency to do so.
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Ross Romano: Kind of along those lines say at the beginning of a new year, or whenever it happens that an individual educator is establishing change. their working relationship with new families. What's, what are some good ways to go about that, particularly if you have a feeling that the status quo has been suboptimal, that , maybe in the past, okay, these families aren't they haven't necessarily become accustomed to teachers who are putting in what I consider to be the right amount of effort to establish a great, or at my school, I can tell that my school hasn't established a great culture around this, and I want to do it differently, and I don't want to go to them and necessarily throw everybody under the bus and say, I know everybody else does [00:28:00] this wrong, but at the same time, I need to show them this is going to be different and do so in a way that they start to pay attention, right?
Because ultimately, if they're used to being frustrated by that relationship their predisposition at the beginning Might not immediately be to engage until they, it's really shown to them. But how would you recommend navigating that?
Kristin Vogel-Campbell: Yeah. Repairing trust that's already been broken is extremely difficult. I think I would absolutely , recommend to educators that , this is going to take time. And that you may not You're not going to necessarily see an immediate turnaround in interactions, and I think receiving a family who you know, has had negative interactions in the past with staff. It's re earning their trust. So I think , reaching out proactively it's almost, it's a bit of like prove, proving ourselves in a way and showing [00:29:00] what can actually happen. And I think just being consistent and doing what they normally do on a day to day basis. Not over promising, I think is really critical.
Because if you come in with any type of family, but especially a family, Had challenges in the past. And , we'll email every day or , you'll receive a phone call from me every day. The minute that there's this day that you're sick or a day that you were working with a kid until 5 PM and didn't get to it, even if you're up here serving 110%, they're going to see that, Oh, that's another broken promise.
So I would set clear guidelines for yourself, clear boundaries. And then just Give the parents a reasonable, like, expectation of how frequently , or how, like, how long it is for, like, a turnaround and a response. And responding to everything. Even if you don't have the answer, Hey I've read [00:30:00] this.
I don't have the answer. I need to reach out and see how I can get this information from you. Or someone else will be contacting you about that.
Ross Romano: What do you do if it's not working? , right? Let's say you're making every effort you can to connect with families, and there's one family that just, they're just not really communicative. They're ghosting you. They're, you're having a really hard time with it. What's your next move?
Kristin Vogel-Campbell: That you're not in it alone. And , part of reaching out to parents, it's not just a classroom teacher responsibility. So , having that conversation with , your site leader, or if you're in special education and you have a program specialist, or if you have a coordinator that you can check in with and let them know, they can support and take some of that pressure off of you by doing a little bit of outreach as well.
You know, that's why we have [00:31:00] teams. So I would say , continue to give yourself grace and reach out for support and document, absolutely document you know, phone calls and in person conversations, even just ones where , with families that everything is going great, I would just have a composition book at the side of my desk and it's like, okay today I ran into Posito's mom, like, after drop off, we talked about this, and this.
Date and time, or a phone call, just so that , if anyone were to ask that you have that documentation.
Ross Romano: Yeah, that's, I mean, that's a great point. I have some contemporaneous notes and a clear memory of what happened and to have your , unfortunately, your side of the story, right? In the cases where it might come up that for whatever reason it's questioned and then , Maybe somebody else will say, well, I don't, we've never really heard anything, teacher, you have clear documentation [00:32:00] of your efforts and try to resolve it, of course, but you know, that's the unfortunate reality is that does happen sometimes and and , even when you're really doing your best and You know, going back to earlier in the conversation, not , don't take it personal and don't jump to conclusions, but also that , have grace with yourself.
If you know that you're doing your best and certainly try to, talk to your supervisor or refer it or get support on it as you can, don't just give up, but but also understand that you can't control everything. And if there's,
Kristin Vogel-Campbell: that's really difficult. That's a really difficult thing for a lot of us to give up a lot of that control.
Ross Romano: yeah. Absolutely. So, so we talked, that was about kind of the beginning of these relationships. So speaking of being at the beginning, something else that I thought was really important [00:33:00] here was in fact in one of the book endorsements, a line from Dr. Liz Murray, who is part of the Early Childhood Education Assembly of NCTE, the National Council of Teachers of English.
She called the book a must read for pre service and in service teachers. And so we haven't really Talking about that pre service piece but yeah, well, I mean, what even is the state of things as far as how much does pre service teacher education typically engage with these topics, particularly around parent and family relationships and How can pre service teachers get better equipped beyond , reading the book, but be equipped to at least, I guess, have a perspective on what it's going to be, right?
Of course. [00:34:00] experience can't be replaced here. You're going to learn through experience and trial and error about forming these relationships. But so that at least when teachers are new to the profession, they are aware of. that this is a critical part of their success.
Kristin Vogel-Campbell: Yeah teacher credentialing programs. I've come a really long way. I just from my experience when I was in my teacher credentialing programs, there really wasn't a lot of talk about family involvement or family engagement, which is kind of the more active verb other than what we are legally obligated to do.
It talked about , just. Checking off the box and best practices, but nothing in excess of that. And definitely nothing that really considered kind of like the needs and tendencies and everything else when considering working with diverse families and [00:35:00] families who don't speak English.
Since then you know, knowing a lot of folks in teacher ed at this point, it is part of the curriculum and part of the syllabus. Some schools have an entire class on working with families and , involving families in the process and communicating with families. I know that there are a lot of some classes in the California State University system that will bring parents in and share a little bit about their experience and pre-service teachers have a chance to ask parents questions.
Based on after they give their testimonial and that kind of firsthand account takes a little bit of that trial and error that you were talking about out of the equation, because if you don't have the tools , you're you know, building the plane as you're trying to fly it at the same time. [00:36:00] You know, not to get like too current, but , sometimes the door of the plane falls off.
And we just have to make sure that everyone is safe and stable. So I think doing as much prep work as possible with teachers who have yet to come into the classroom, teachers that are fulfilling their, like, credentials, and even teachers who are in PLCs, so, like, professional learning communities that , are earning credits or just part of, like, a professional development, I think it's critical to have the community.
These conversations but nothing can really compete with hearing it firsthand from parents. So I would urge more teacher ed folk to seek out , families who have students with IEPs so that their pre service teachers can hear those stories firsthand and at least come in with a very clear list of what not to do.
Ross Romano: Yeah. Yeah. That's, I mean, it's [00:37:00] really important because it's a whole part of the job that's going to be new and certainly new teachers. in many cases, maybe closer to the age of their students than to the student's parents, right? There's a lot to, to navigate there and prepare for and and certainly a major part of it is how the schools are providing support and mentorship and preparation in the various things they're doing with their new hires, not just relying on them to be able to execute on everything they learned in college, but.
Kristin Vogel-Campbell: exactly.
Ross Romano: Awesome. So as we're winding down here, Kristen, one thing that. What we haven't really talked about, in fact, is actually how this book is structured with the real parent stories, right? And so we've really hit on a lot of the core ideas and themes and the things that people need to know. But there's [00:38:00] all these stories in there of real life of parents and students and educators and how these interactions can play out.
Effectively are there any in particular one or two that come to mind that really you think are illustrative of? What this could look like when it's effectively teacher led, right? An educator who , had a proactive approach and how that engaged the parents and what came out of that.
Just to give a little illustration, a little something for our listeners to visualize as they think about it and also to understand, of course, what they'll learn about if they read the book in its entirety.
Kristin Vogel-Campbell: Yeah. You know, one of the first story that came to mind is the story of Tony and his wife and their young son who I believe is now a sophomore in high school, which is tough. And I've worked with this family since they were in a [00:39:00] second or third grade and the beginning of their journey is very much finding information out for themselves, hearing from doctors and hearing from like school district psychologists that, no, there's nothing , that everything is okay with your son.
He's fine. There's nothing wrong with him, and of course, like, we're talking, so I'm air quoting wrong, because I don't view disability as something that's, like, wrong with a student that's part of their identity, but a lot of, like, through the medical profession, disability is viewed as deficits or defects.
The family eventually came to the point where they found a team after several years of turmoil and changing school districts and buying a condo in another school district so that they could move into a different school. Finding a team with a teacher who was affirming and had a really great balance of [00:40:00] kind of love and limit setting and a team that was collaborative in developing a behavior intervention plan for their student. And then kept following up with the family. Hey, we're seeing this. Is there anything that's going on? Is he not sleeping well at night? It turned out he was having a lot of trouble sleeping. He was coming into school and he was acting out because he was cranky. I think adults can deal with that by having an extra , large cup of coffee in the morning.
But , our elementary kids don't have that to deal with. End. The that was the most critical was the students transition from 5th grade to 6th grade, which in California is in middle school. The parents were so concerned about regression and finding that good fit. Fortunately , the the school and the classroom that their son was placed in, it was a [00:41:00] teacher who had a very similar mindset and a very similar style.
And in middle school, even in the middle of the pandemic , their son continued to flourish and thrive. So that's , the power of mindset and the power of intentionally bringing parents into the conversation and treating them with like the respect and the dignity that they deserve.
And also viewing the student through a humanizing lens. And if something is going on, looking at the root cause and not addressing like the manifestation. So not just dealing with the behavior, but going into the why. So yeah, I just, I think it's just, it's really impactful for educators. to read stories like this.
So they can see themselves in those stories. Oh, I've made a really similar decision like that [00:42:00] too, like, wow, like, I wonder if I've made a difference as well. And at the same time, using this as a reflection tool of, okay, I may have done something similar in the past where there may have been a disconnect with myself and my families, I may not have helped it.
What can I do better next time? How can I take different considerations into like bettering my practices and not giving up because if we want to truly be like culturally sustaining and affirming and working collaboratively with parents and, anti racist, making sure that all of our students have access. Reflection is just a critical point of that, because without reflection, we're going to continue to do the same things.
Ross Romano: Well, listeners partnering with culturally and linguistically diverse families and special education is the book. It's available on bookshop. org, Amazon, and more. We'll put the link [00:43:00] below to the link tree where you can find those various links and find the book. Kristen, if listeners are interested in learning more, connecting with you, anything like that what should they do?
Kristin Vogel-Campbell: Yeah so I do a lot of interacting with educators and other folks on LinkedIn. And, More social, but also a lot of educated related content on Instagram. So, Ross, if you want, you can also put links to those socials in the story notes as well. And I'd love to, to chat with folks about their stories, their journeys, and what they think of the book.
Ross Romano: Excellent listeners. Yeah. Check out those links below to the social media channels and to where you can find the book so you can find everything you want in the show notes there. Please do also subscribe to the authority if you're not already for more in depth author interviews like this one coming your way every week.
Or visit bpodcast. network to learn about all of our shows. Kristen, thanks so much for being here.
Kristin Vogel-Campbell: [00:44:00] Thank you. It was great.
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