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-: Welcome to the Accessible Learning Experience
where we help you turn learning barriers
into learning opportunities.
On this episode, we'll focus on the work of CITES,
the Center on Inclusive Technology and Education Systems.
at CAST. The mission of CITES is to empower school districts
to create and sustain inclusive technology systems
that serve all students,
including students with disabilities
who require assistive technology
or accessible educational materials.
After a brief introduction to the CITES framework,
which includes family engagement
as one of its inclusive practices,
we'll hear from this month's guest, Yokasta Urena.
Yokasta will share her perspectives on family engagement
as both the parent of a student with a disability
and as a professional in the field of education.
The CITES framework includes practices
to support inclusive technology systems,
including practices focused on leadership,
infrastructure, teaching, learning,
assessment, and family engagement.
Why family engagement?
The research is clear.
Implementing strong authentic family engagement practices
has a positive impact across the board for educators,
families, and learners themselves.
Because of the demonstrated impacts
and benefits of implementing family engagement practices,
our federal partners encourage their use in law.
ESSA, the Every Student Succeeds Act,
requires schools to meaningfully engage
the parents of all students
and ensure they're giving input and influence
in decision making.
Taking that commitment a step further,
the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act,
or IDEA, requires that parents of students with disabilities
are full and equal participants
in their child's individualized education program.
But special educators or even classroom educators in general
aren't the only district services
interfacing with families these days.
Barriers for families and learners who use technology,
particular students with disabilities and their families,
arise at every level of this system.
Direct service providers, paraprofessionals,
classroom volunteers, teacher librarians,
instructional coaches, and help desk folks
can all be part of designing and delivering technology
to students and families to access learning.
It is with this concept in mind
that the CITES family engagement practices
elevate this critical piece
of district technology implementation across the five areas
of the CITES framework: leadership, infrastructure
teaching, learning, and assessment.
Unearthing these practices started with a literature review,
then a landscape analysis serving over 300 family members
of students with disabilities.
And finally, focus groups with families and interviews
with district teams that focus on quality family engagement.
We invite you to learn more about the work of CITES
on family engagement through the links in the show notes
for this episode or by visiting the CITES website
at CITES, C-I-T-E-S .cast.org.
With this introduction to the work
of CITES on family engagement, let's now hear from Yokasta
as she shares her perspective on this topic.
Hi, Yokasta.
It's so great to have you
on the Accessible Learning Experience.
Let's get started by having you introduce yourself
and tell us, what is your accessibility story?
-: Hi, everyone.
My name is Yokasta Urena.
I am the daughter of immigrant parents
from the Dominican Republic.
I was born in New York, but I was raised
between Dominican Republic and New York City.
My accessibility journey has been a very interesting one.
For my early years and into junior high school
and high school, I had no accessibility during my schooling.
Basically, my accommodations for my visual impairment
consisted of a monocular,
which is basically like a binocular, but for one eye,
and carbon paper.
So I had a note taker who would take notes
and give me a copy of the notes.
If my note taker was out, guess what?
I was outta luck.
So I wanna go back for a second
and just speak a little bit about my visual impairment.
So I have a condition called Leber's congenital amaurosis,
and this condition basically affects the rods
and the cones in the retina.
Their main function is to capture light, perceive light,
and transmit that to the brain.
I'm very photophobic.
I use sunglasses outside
because I'm very sensitive to light.
And I'm also near sighted.
I use a cane in certain circumstances.
I don't use it all the time.
I use it to travel,
mainly when I'm traveling internationally
because I don't know the layout and the landscape.
-: And I understand you also use a number
of accessibility features in your technology.
Tell us about that.
-: I also use technology functions,
such as Zoom, VoiceOver, inverted contrast.
VoiceOver is a technology that allows you to,
allows someone with visual impairment
to listen to the information that's on the screen.
But what becomes challenging for someone with low vision
such as myself is that not every webpage
has the function available for us to use VoiceOver.
So for example, if the webpage is not coded
to allow VoiceOver, VoiceOver will not work,
and I will not be able to access that page.
It's really important for content creators,
businesses and organizations
that are putting out information, to make sure
that their web page allows for VoiceOver,
because if it doesn't allow for VoiceOver,
then I will just move on to another page
and use that information that is accessible to me.
-: Thank you so much, Yokasta, for that introduction
and for highlighting the need for accessibility.
And of course, on the AEM Center website,
which we can share in the show notes,
we have lots of information on how you can improve
the accessibility of the content you create
so that it works with VoiceOver.
So I'm really excited for this conversation
because you and I share a lot in common.
You're the child of Dominican immigrants,
I am a Dominican immigrant,
and I also have a visual impairment
that's very similar to yours in that it affects the retina
and it affects the ability to capture light.
But you know, both of us have been able to find success
in school and in the workplace.
So tell me a little bit about what you're doing now
in terms of your career and some of your achievements.
-: So when I came back from Dominican Republic,
on one of my many trips back and forth,
my year of college was not accepted in the United States.
So I had to go back to school and get a GED.
There's nothing wrong with getting a GED
if that's where you are in your life,
but it was very difficult for me
because I saw myself going into a four year college.
That was not possible.
I had to get a GED and get an Associate's degree,
and get my Bachelor's in psychology, Master's in education,
a few post-graduate degrees in the field of education
early childhood special ed,
teacher for the blind and visually impaired,
and now I'm in an ED Doctorate program
at New England College.
My journey in education has been a long journey,
and it's been arduous with a lot of hiccups
in terms of accessibility.
But with every step I've taken,
I've just become more determined
to be at the leadership level.
I want to see more change in the area
of special needs and accessibility.
And I feel that the only way I can do that
is if I'm at the table making decisions, helping districts,
helping organizations to really understand
that accessibility helps us all.
So right now, in terms of work,
I'm working on the ED Doctorate.
I'm also an early intervention service provider.
So I work with children zero to three years old
providing direct intervention,
and also as a teacher for the blind and visually impaired.
-: Well, I would say your experiences
give you a very rich experience and background to draw upon
for your work that you do, and we really appreciate it.
And there's another wrinkle to your experience
in that you are the parent of a child
that has a disability as well.
Can you tell us a little bit about that,
and then we'll move into the topic for this episode,
which is really the importance of family engagement.
-: Yes.
So Liam, I can blame him for going into special education.
I was actually a psychology major.
I wanted to be a clinical psychologist
and possibly open my own practice.
But when my son was born also with Leber's,
it completely changed my career track.
I saw how difficult it was to navigate
the system as a parent.
I saw the way that sometimes professionals spoke to me
as a young mother with a disability,
with a child with a disability,
and I felt that I wanted to become his advocate
and that I wanted to feel more,
feel a sense of power.
So I went into education
and received my master's in education
mainly to support him and his journey
as a student with a disability,
and also as a Latino in the United States.
-: Well, I would say thank you, Liam,
for inspiring you to continue your work as an educator.
And I'm sure that many other children
over the time that you've worked in education
definitely are grateful for that career move.
So we wanna get into the family engagement piece.
As you said, your work is inspired by the fact
that you yourself are a parent of a child with a disability.
So why is family engagement so critical
for students and teachers?
-: Well, family engagement really breeds collaboration.
I think that very few teachers would disagree with me
when I say that having parents involved
and engaged in classroom life
and in understanding what teachers are doing
in the classroom only helps the teachers
and the administrators run their classrooms
and their schools smoothly.
Because when there's buy-in
from the family, there's collaboration.
Parents feel that everyone is on the same team,
and that the main goal of the educators
in their children's lives are to really help the student
reach their fullest potential.
-: If you had to share two or three tips
that you could say to a teacher or a fellow educator
that would promote family engagement,
what would be those top three tips?
-: My first tip when it comes to family engagement
is keep yourself in check.
And I do this myself, right?
Keep your ego in check.
I try to keep my ego in check as much as possible,
because no matter how many degrees or certifications I have,
I am not that child's parent.
And we as human beings have the mama bear
and the papa bear syndrome in us.
When we feel attacked or we feel that our child
is being attacked, we are going to react.
So when you speak to a parent of a child
that is struggling in your classroom,
be very mindful of your tone, your body language,
the volume of your voice.
When a parent feels attacked, they shut down.
And sometimes it's not our intention as teachers.
Teachers are multitasking.
We have a lot of things on our minds,
lot of things on our plate.
So sometimes we're not aware
of how we're interacting with a family.
Many times, we're interacting with a family
at the end of the school day and we're stressed,
and you know, all of these things,
people have called out and we're short staffed.
But please keep in mind that that parent
is there to support their child.
And if they mistake your tone
for anything less than cooperative and collaborative,
they will shut down.
So keep your ego in check is number one.
Number two, have an open door policy as much as possible.
I've found over the years
that having an open door policy actually helps me.
It makes my job easier.
When parents tell me what's happening with their child,
I don't have to guess.
So it really eliminates all the guesswork
when I have open communication with parents.
And the third piece of that kind of goes along
with open door policy is include your families
in your classroom community.
I teach early childhood,
so I have more fun, I think, than the kids do.
I try to create events where I can invite families.
Now that we have Zoom and that we have Google Meets,
the events can also be virtual.
Try to find ways, creative ways, to include families
in your classroom life.
They can be readers, they can be guest speakers,
they can work on STEM projects with your students.
You just don't know how rich of a culture
you have in your classroom
unless you extend that invitation to parents.
-: Excellent advice.
I would encourage everyone to take those three tips,
these three excellent tips into consideration
as you think about how to better engage families.
So in addition to all the other things
that you have going on,
I understand that you worked for CAST a little bit
as an intern supporting the family engagement research
that has been done through the Center
on Inclusive Technology and Education Systems, or CITES.
So as you participated in that research, what did you learn?
What did you take away from it?
Were there any surprises that you wanna share?
-: Wow, I took a lot away from CAST.
I've been in education roughly 20 years now
in many different roles.
I've been a parent coordinator,
so I've worked very, very closely
with families over the years.
I've been an advocate for students with special needs.
I've been a classroom teacher,
an independent service provider.
So I've worn many, many hats,
but I've worked many times on the side of the families
and the students.
So I had a view of education as one big system.
I didn't really see it in terms of the CITES framework
where education is really broken up into sections,
like leadership and infrastructure.
That was my biggest wow moment, right?
That a leader in a school could have the best intentions
for your child and he or she may want to get
the accessibility technology for your child,
but they may not be connected to the infrastructure piece
or the communication between leadership,
and where the infrastructure is coming from
may be fractured.
That was something that I never really thought about.
I put a lot of the ownership on the school principal.
And through my internship with CAST,
I realized that there are many systems at play
in special education.
It is not just the principal.
The district plays a huge role in what happens
at the school level.
-: Thank you, Yokasta, for sharing that.
And we will share in the show notes a link
to the research related to family engagement from CITES.
But I just wanna follow up by asking you,
how do you think that the CITES family engagement practices
and the resources from CITES
can impact schools and districts?
-: Well, I love the resources from the CITES website.
For example, under the Family Engagement Practices,
we have the self-assessment and goal setting.
I think that this gives schools and districts
an opportunity to become increasingly more self-reflective
in terms of how they are engaging with families.
This is a great opportunity to really hone in
on what is the school doing, right,
as a community to engage families
in conversations around accessibility?
And I think it's almost like a safe space
because this self-assessment
can really be done privately as a school.
So there isn't this fear of like,
well, how are we gonna look to the district,
or how are we going to look to parents?
You can have an internal conversation with your staff
and your parents in your own school,
and then take it up a notch and engage other schools
in the district in this self assessment.
I think it's a great tool
to really think about reflectively, what are we doing right?
Where can we improve?
So it's a good way to be self-reflective
and not feel like you're under a microscope,
but really look at it from a school community,
or if you're ready, at the district level
to look at how your district is doing
in comparison to itself, really.
How were you doing last year?
How are you doing this year?
It's a great way to keep track of data
in relation to how you're engaging families.
-: And we'll go ahead and share
the family engagement literature review that CITES has done
as one of the resources in the show notes,
and we also encourage everybody to visit the CITES website.
Yokasta, you do such great work.
So how can people stay in touch?
Where can they find you?
-: Well, I'm trying to become more social media savvy.
So for now, you can find me on Instagram @Beyond20201.
So it's Beyond2020 and the number one at the end of that.
-: Great, and I encourage everyone to follow you,
and I can't wait for you to finish your doctorate
and all of the great work that you're gonna do
in promoting accessibility,
promoting greater family engagement
and just moving the conversation forward
so that the needs and the preferences of people
with disabilities like ourselves
are more part of the learning environment
and more considered when designing learning environment.
So Yokasta, thank you so much for joining us
on this episode of the Accessible Learning Experience.
It's been a lot of fun having you on it.
-: Thank you so much for having me.
-: Thanks for tuning in to this episode
of the Accessible Learning Experience,
brought to you by the National Center
on Accessible Educational Materials at CAST.
You can find us on the web at aem.cast.org.
There you'll find show notes with links
to all of the resources mentioned on each episode.
Thanks again for listening, and remember,
accessibility is everyone's responsibility.
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The contents of this podcast
were developed under a cooperative agreement
with the US Department of Education.
However, those contents do not necessarily represent
the policy of the US Department of Education,
and you should not assume endorsement
by the federal government.