Redefining Inclusion in Schools: A Deep Dive with Daniel Sobel

Get ready to be truly inspired as we sit down with the globally acclaimed advocate for inclusive education, Daniel Sobel. From his personal struggles in school to his significant contributions to the field of inclusive education, Daniel's journey is nothing short of remarkable. We delve into the fascinating world of inclusive classrooms, discussing how to meet each student's unique needs and foster a sense of belonging and the role of equity in education.

 Our conversation takes us down the path of effective communication techniques in teaching, with Daniel providing valuable insights into sandwiching negative feedback and scaffolding instructions. We explore redefining inclusion, recognising the potential in students with special education needs, and how to create meaningful learning experiences.

 Don't miss this episode filled with insights, tips, and a fresh perspective on inclusive education.

Bio: Daniel Sobel is the founder and lead consultant for Inclusion Expert - a training and support company working in education. With a background in educational psychology and psychotherapy and as an assistant headteacher, he has experience across the whole spectrum of inclusion.

Connect with Daniel here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-sobel-uk/

Teach Middle East Magazine is the premier platform for educators and the entire education sector in the Middle East and beyond. Our vision is to equip educators with the materials and tools they need to function optimally in and out of the classroom. We provide a space for educators to connect and find inspiration, resources, and forums to enhance their teaching techniques, methodologies, and personal development. We connect education suppliers and service providers to the people who make the buying decisions in schools.

Visit our website:https://linktr.ee/teachmiddleeast

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Hosted by Leisa Grace Wilson

Connect with Leisa Grace:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/leisagrace

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leisagrace/

Teach Middle East Magazine is the premier platform for educators and the entire education sector in the Middle East and beyond. Our vision is to equip educators with the materials and tools they need, to function optimally in and out of the classroom. We provide a space for educators to connect and find inspiration, resources, and forums to enhance their teaching techniques, methodologies, and personal development. We connect education suppliers and service providers to the people who make the buying decisions in schools.

Visit our website https://linktr.ee/teachmiddleeast.

Tweet us: https://twitter.com/teachmiddleeast

Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/teachmiddleeast/.

Hosted by Leisa Grace Wilson

Connect with Leisa Grace:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/leisagrace

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leisagrace/

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:27

Hi everyone, welcome to the Teach Middle East podcast. My name is Lisa Grace and today I have the pleasure of talking to Daniel Sobel. Now let's set this straight If you are into inclusion, if you are on the education scene for any time, if you're on LinkedIn and you don't know who Daniel Sobel is, then where have you been people? He is one of the top voices for inclusion globally and we're going to be talking about his work, his books, but also practically about how we can effectively ensure that inclusion is at the heart of everything we do in our schools.

Speaker 2: 1:16

You are listening to the Teach Middle East podcast connecting, developing and empowering educators.

Speaker 1: 1:27

Welcome, daniel.

Speaker 3: 1:28

Thank you, what a lovely introduction. I appreciate that.

Speaker 1: 1:32

It's a true introduction. Okay, point of fact, my listeners, I've known Daniel for over a decade, known him back in London back in the day, and so it is really a pleasure to be chatting to him on the podcast. It's funny because I've interviewed so many people and I've not gotten around to interviewing Daniel Now and it just dawned on me. I'm like this is what happens when you have value right in front of you and you don't pay attention. So now I've brought you the value. I'd love Daniel to introduce himself just a bit to you.

Speaker 3: 2:10

Thank you. My background, well, the most important thing in my career was meeting you about 10, 11 years ago. You know, you and I were at this very important shift in our careers when we've both been senior leaders in schools, right, and we're about to embark on a new career and we've sort of got a brand new family. I don't know if our children were born yet. Actually I can't even remember. I know that we have children of a similar age.

Speaker 1: 2:36

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 2:36

I'm trying to think, I can't remember Anyway, but it was around that time right, and with it and subsequently you must have spoken to loads of people who've been senior leaders and sort of thinking about maybe making a move out into education, sort of support or outside of education, wondering if, even if it's possible, but in some ways we've both been quite successful in our own sort of ways. Don't you think Like and I always think about other people doing it, thinking oh no, I wouldn't do it. I don't know if you could be successful at it, and I don't mean it about them, I just wondered if I could possibly do it and I realized, actually I have done it. Yes, you have. So anyway, something personal is that I didn't do well at school. That's quite important. I was bright but I didn't do well at school, so I didn't get any A levels.

Speaker 3: 3:22

I jumped into a master's in education psychology actually about 10 years later, and then I did a master's in psychotherapy and was doing a doctorate in education and I ran out of money. So I started teaching and eventually it became a Senko and with my sort of ADHD I just couldn't be bothered with a lot of the meetings and the paperwork and it was like nuts. It was a crazy sort of role that a lot of it I didn't like. So just with my ADHD, nus tried to sort of come up with different ways of doing it and that actually people thought quite highly of it. Even Afsted thought I should be helping other schools in the local authority. So I got some awards. And then I was writing a series for the Guardian, which is the second best newspaper after Teach Me the Least I don't know if you've heard of it. And then I was supporting the Department of Education in England not that they really listened to what I had to say and doing a bit of work with the Institute of Education in London as well. And then I thought you know, I saw this, I'm going to do this full time. And that was exactly when we met actually.

Speaker 3: 4:21

And then, through just good fortune and through word of mouth, things grew to about working with about 10,000 schools and we were supporting them with predominantly special educational needs and pastoral stuff and social, emotional, mental health stuff and so on, and that was cool and we had a master's in inclusive educational leadership, which we had a few hundred teachers do. And then, during lockdown, I reached out to my international connections from LinkedIn and formed the International Forum of Inclusion Practitioners, and we're now in 126 countries. Somewhere we had like an event in Uruguay recently. It was like 500 people, but we've got like one person in Kyrgyzstan. So it's not quite equal in every country, but there are some places where we've got very little going on but we're very proud to be there, such as Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, like that's cool, you know.

Speaker 3: 5:16

And then we partnered with the European Union and also with UNESCO and we're hosting the sort of global inclusive school summit in Paris and the Global Inclusion Awards also in Paris, and I'm helping or support the development of the Salamanca celebrations for 30 years and be part of that and I'm rather hoping that Teach Me the Least in Yourself will be their leisure grace and I have to know. That's it. I'll stop rambling. I wrote some books and you're going to ask me about one of them. Yes, I haven't wrote for years, so you know what do I know? But let's give it a go. It feels like a quiz.

Speaker 1: 5:50

No, it's not a quiz. You know what? I listened to your introduction and I go very understated. Guys listen, my listeners know I'm not going to bull them around. He is very, very known for what he does because he is brilliant at what he does. Very, very much unconventional, does not go the straight line, and sometimes we definitely don't need that. When it comes to inclusion, we have to be radical and passionate. And so Daniel wrote a book about the inclusive classroom, one we're going to talk about today because, you know, we're back from the summer, we have our students, we have our schools and we need to make sure that we're making provisions for all of them. So we are in the classroom. Daniel, take me on this journey. How can teachers effectively differentiate their teaching methods? So we're going very grassroots. How can they effectively differentiate their teaching methods without being overwhelmed? So we've left overwhelmed in last academic year, but we still want to make sure that that D word, which you know I really have a. I get a tick when I say differentiate. But how can teachers effectively differentiate?

Speaker 3: 7:04

So I'm on a bit of a mission to reshape or rethink what this means, right? Right, because up until now the arc, the journey arc, has been not really understanding children. So we send them out to okay, now we kind of get what dyslexia is and eventually people eventually sort of clocked on to what autism is and ADHD and a few other sorts of things. And now teachers are being asked to sort of differentiate, and by that they mean to do extra this and extra that and to write extra questions and to make extra things. And I think that when you ask arguably one of the busiest professions in the world, you ask people who are already super busy and super stressed out to do yet more than the answer is going to be not loudly but quietly said no. And I don't think it's the way forward.

Speaker 3: 7:56

And I've always thought this that the biggest barriers to inclusion, apart from ignorance and perception, which, again, I think that within our lifetimes things have changed hugely. You know I was ADHD but I always thought of as being very naughty and thick and lazy or something. So within my lifetime things have shifted hugely to sort of understanding and the sense of, you know, awareness, I suppose. So I hope, within our professional lifetimes, we will shift from thinking about the implications of that. So let me just perhaps describe that a little bit. So I think the conditions for inclusion to sort of to win against the battles of where the big fault lines are, where the big challenges are, is that it has to be easier to do than not do, it has to be less stressful than more stressful and it has to be, let's say, for example, for senior leaders. You'd say it has to be cheaper than not, because if it's going to cost more time or more stress or more money, then the answer is going to be no, and that cannot be the solution. And so most of my work is about how to make inclusion much, much easier to be inclusive than harder.

Speaker 3: 9:05

So you're going to ask me, I suppose well, what does that look like, right, yeah, so let me try and give some examples. I'm very much speak of them ahead, and I made the HDM distracted literally by everything. So I mean, let me just anchor this in a sort of few examples. So I'm going to suggest something which is, instead of thinking about the cognitive processes, the way that the brain is going to compute specific tasks, what I'm interested is in creating an environment where the child's brain is most able to flourish. Okay, so there's a very different approach, okay, and I think that for the vast majority of children I'm talking about the vast majority, and you're going to throw at me exceptions and I'd say, yeah, there are exceptions, because I think there are exceptions right, but for the vast majority and I'm talking around 95 percent of children with some kind of inclusion needs what we're looking for is to creating the right conditions for learning, and I believe that the conditions for learning can be done very easily, where it doesn't take much time, much money or much stress.

Speaker 3: 10:12

So I've got a little checklist. Let me have a tiny little look at it and see if any of these cost particular amounts of time or money. Right, so is the child sat in the right place for them? Some need to sit at the front, right, some need to be sat at the back. Some need to be sat away from the window. Is the student comfortable so they can focus? Lighting, line of sight, line of sound. Are they ready with the right equipment? Now, a lot of children with SEN struggle with the equipment. Are they thirsty or hungry? Right, are breaks a movement planned for? So, instead of them disrupting the lesson, maybe they can have a moment to get up and go somewhere. Do they have a role in the class? Can they hand something out? There's an excuse for the teacher to say well done to them. So that's the first. Is there anything in there that feels particularly time or time sapping, or stressful, or takes too much money or anything?

Speaker 1: 11:11

No, no, not at all, and you know what I like, though they're not things that we can't do immediately. We can do immediately.

Speaker 3: 11:20

Right, let me mention a few more Gats. You'll have gone. So are they welcomed and greeted with a warm smile? Have we conveyed to them that I like them? That can go a long way, especially with kids who end up being quite disruptive. Do they feel like they belong and are the student successes, however big or small, celebrated regularly with praise? That can go so far for most children, most adults and, by the way, lisa Grosso, what a great interviewer you are. You know what I mean. Praise can go a long way, right? Yes, that's a good point In the sense of student interest or enthusiasm, positivity or joy. Can we see them engaging and participating? And for me this is a major departure point for what I think.

Speaker 3: 12:06

The word special educational needs is very last century and what I'm interested in there's nothing to do with special educational needs, but I'm interested in the two key words, which is about engagement and participation. So a very specific example I'm doing an ADHD exam, I'm departing from my list and I'm going on to something separate and I'll come back to the list in a second. So, as a good example, most schools which are listening to this, they will rightly say and I don't think you should throw the baby out with the bath water. They will measure reading age, let's say of reading age seven to reading age of eight, because they did some kind of booster program. But I'd say to you that's not really going to tell you much about their learning life and their attitudes towards learning, whereas whether a child has read at home for the first time or read a book for the first time or read in front of peers in the classroom, that will tell you a lot more about how they're getting on in terms of their engagement and their participation. And engagement and participation, I think, are the much better indicators about how they're doing, whereas actually thinking of them as SEM doesn't help you. What helps is knowing whether they're going on. Actually, plenty of kids with SEM engage and participate really well and there are plenty of kids without SEM who don't and therefore I'm suggesting it's a false category.

Speaker 3: 13:27

And on top of that I've got further and say the diagnoses and labels don't help children either. You can have three children with autism in your classroom that all present very differently. One's very loud and gregarious, one is very quiet and satient, one is very studious but doesn't like speaking to anybody. There's a range, so much so that actually the label doesn't help teach. By all means. Psychologists and neurologists and psychiatrists could knock themselves out and diagnose at the wazoo, but our classroom teachers don't need the diagnosis. Well, they need to know. They need to know the child, but more importantly, they need to know what does that child need to feel safe and for their brain to be alive in the classroom? I mentioned a couple of other points. If that's OK, I'm going back and forth. This is me.

Speaker 1: 14:14

Go on, go on, take it where you want to take it.

Speaker 3: 14:17

So does the child leave the classroom with a positive frame of mind? Have they been praised and encouraged Is what I'd ask the question about. Are they spoken with about their challenging behaviors? Calmly and without negative or disparaging comments about the student themselves, just really calmly? Does the student have positive interactions with peers and, where appropriate, was the student asked to share their views? And does the student actually know what this lesson is about, the concept and the purpose of the tasks?

Speaker 3: 14:48

Arguably one of the things which I put in this book, this latest book, was five key points, five moments in a lesson. That's very easy to lose a child and if you lose them you will probably see it manifest in some kind of behavior, either distracting behavior, distracting others or themselves being they're lost somewhere else. And those five simple things. If you get those five things right, you will be maximizing inclusion at those five moments and if you do some of the kind of things I was just saying about being aware about how they're feeling in the classroom, because actually how they feel has much more relevance to you as a teacher and their ability to process cognitively. So those five things how they walk into the classroom, how they understand or let's say, don't understand an instruction that has been given, how they get on as an individual working quietly as an individual, how they may participate or not participate in a group work. And then, finally, the last one is about leaving the classroom and how they are feeling as they exit the classroom. Those five things will significantly influence child's participation and engagement. If they don't feel comfortable at the beginning of the lesson, you'll see that emerge. If they don't understand the instruction, you'll see that emerge. If they can't get on with the individual work, you'll see that emerge in some kind of distracting behavior, if you can't see them participating in a group and so on.

Speaker 3: 16:22

So you asked me a question about differentiation and I've reshaped what I think it means, which is about creating this feeling or this sense we as adults experiences. By the way we have this, there are times where I'm really on it. I'm in the zone I can really learn really well, and that hasn't got to do with how clear the instruction I'm reading is. It really very rarely has to do with that. When I say clarity or how well differentiated the question is. For me personally, that doesn't determine how engaged I'm gonna be in this moment, because I've got some work to do. It has a lot to do with my conditions If it's too distracting over here there's some sort of noise going on over there, all of those sorts of things. We know that as adults. That is where I'm at when it comes to thinking about differentiation, and there's a very, very different place from what the usual sort of traditional way of thinking about it Sienna's. What special educational needs is.

Speaker 1: 17:19

Yeah, I like how it's refrained, because it really gets to the core of making sure that the student is at the center. One thing you said that struck me you talked about the fact that if you miss these five points where a student enters the class or they're working quietly, how they participate or not participate, how they work by themselves, all those things that you mentioned are things that sometimes, in the business of trying to do the other things that we were traditionally taught as differentiation, we miss the key things. Because if I'm in a classroom, daniel, and I'm faffing around with paper, ensuring the whiteboard is ready, getting the computer going, da, da, da da, I rarely have time to look at how my students are entering and I wanna see if little John is sad today or walked in with his head down, shoulders slumped, which is such a key indicator of what kind of lesson he's going to have. And I think this is such a reminder that we really just need to reframe what we think differentiation is and look, look for the science, look for the clues.

Speaker 3: 18:35

Yeah, I think you're so right.

Speaker 3: 18:37

We do create these levels of paperwork and instructions for teachers to get so weighed down by things which are really far, far less important and the important stuff therefore goes out of the window.

Speaker 3: 18:50

But I think I've got something rather radical I mean, I like to say radical things, but I'm a lot of the radical to say which is that I think the very highest level of education that we humans have evolved is in the early years, and you'll see in the early years this relationship between how a child is feeling and what we're asking them to do, right.

Speaker 3: 19:11

So there's a relationship between their feelings, the social, the learning, their interactions, and we're all about creating this environment around the child to be able to engage and participate, and what we hope to see in an early years environment is the child engaging and participating. So in some ways, I think that is the very highest level of education and, aside from coming to a training that I give or that you give, leisha, the very best type of training I think you can give, especially to secondary school teachers right, is to go and spend a day in an early years environment. It's really eye-opening and brilliant and as well as being fun and lovely and as a teacher you're allowed to say I feel this about this experience. It's lovely, you know you feel it because it is. It acknowledges those feelings.

Speaker 1: 20:05

It's interesting that you know, in the early years we create the environment that ensures that the child gets the maximum out of it, and we put the play areas, we put the soft play, the sand, the, the, the, all the discovery stuff. And then the older they get because I'm seeing it with my boys the older they get we start to sort of make them conform more to their environment. Because now my boys are in that transition between primary and secondary and they're so like going oh well, now, mom, it's big school stuff and we have to be really serious, and I'm like, is that?

Speaker 1: 20:41

what they're telling you in transitions week Like they should be, you know telling you how great a time you are going to have. But I think teachers who are listening to this podcast will get a different perspective on what it is to differentiate. All right, we're going to dive into something a little bit different, because you talk a lot about equity and equality in your book. What is the difference between equity and equality in your sort of estimation, and why? Why is equity more beneficial?

Speaker 3: 21:14

So the line that I've remembered, or the one I should remember, is that equity is the quality of being fair and impartial, whereas equality is all about being equal in quantity, degree or value. So the problem is that we humans let's see on the side for a second we humans are all very different and our brains are wired differently. And I mean I'm sure this is true of you as well as me is that I've got things which I'm really good at and things I'm really awful at, and that's true of most humans, right, and some humans may experience relative to others. If it's been compared and I'm not sure the comparison is particularly fair, but let's just say you were to be comparing you have different levels of awful, so you and I might be here, but other people are sort of here, but what we all share in common is our aspiration to learn and participate as humans, right? So if you just deliver a well, here, it is everybody, this is it, this is the main meal. Everybody. Help yourself. But you don't like sprouts, right, and I don't like aubergine, right, and this one's a vegetarian, this one's a vegan, and you find those different flavors and tastes for different people. So what you're really doing is you're hitting the 50% who are all like got just about enough, and you've got a whole bunch of people could be 50% to be 30% who just weren't satiated from that meal and it really wasn't good enough and they certainly wouldn't pay for it, and that really is the sort of equality approach. Well, this is how we do things here. This is the menu, this is not a buffet, and actually I think until we discovered that teaching was more interesting and more valuable if you look at it from the perspective of what children are learning rather than how the teacher is performing then we were very, very stuck on this equality piece.

Speaker 3: 23:23

And actually for me, that debate is sort of it's been and had back in the 1990s. You know it kind of 30 years old already, and actually where we are now is sort of deep in the mud of the equity piece, and the question is not equity or equality anymore. The issue is about how to do equity, and so equity has been like well, everybody gets the meal that they need, right, but how do we do that without going mad? So we don't have 20 different chefs and we haven't got a supermarket bill, which is unmanageable, and so on and so forth. So that's the question of equity. And so if you look at it from the perspective of you've got 30 different learners in your classroom, then as long as you set up slightly differently the classroom being about a place where children can take and they can learn and they can digest themselves then you personally are responsible about saying the same thing in 30 different ways, or setting this test and this opportunity, and then setting this and setting that there are different ways of doing it. There's a setting up the classroom in a way that it's very easy to be a facilitator of learning experiences rather than the teacher of all. It's really hard to be the teacher of all unless you're doing edutainment. And the problem is what I do for a living, which is you stand in front of a group of teachers and you entertain them with educational ideas. So that's kind of my shtick, but entertainment gets boring very quickly. So what we need to do is to sort of get out the way as a teacher, remove ourselves and create learning opportunities.

Speaker 3: 25:01

I'll say something which I don't know if you think this is to be true, but for sure you will have taken your children to the Science Museum in London Right now. I think the Science Museum in London has a lot of potential. Okay, that's been nice, but I think it's a huge waste of money and a hugely rubbish. The reason is because I'll tell you why. This isn't me, please, science Museum. I don't want to hear from you, unless you want to speak to me about how I think you could do better.

Speaker 3: 25:31

But the reason why I'm criticizing it is because it's a lot of see this and read this, see this and read this, see this and read this, whereas if you go to the Science Museum in Copenhagen, I literally let my children go and they touch things, they have to move things, they have to pull things and everything is entirely about engagement with this patient and off you go and they'll learn more science there in five minutes and they will learn in half an hour in the Science Museum in London and we ended up spending a day and a half in that Science Museum in Copenhagen because you just basically let the kids go and you just know that they're busy being scientists and it's beautiful to see, it's amazing.

Speaker 3: 26:10

And similarly, if you try to lead a class which is all about see this and read this, then you're going to struggle. You really are going to struggle and I don't think the issue is about SEN or differentiation or whatever. I don't think that's a fair critique. But if you can set up your class like you're the Science Museum in Copenhagen, then every lesson is going to be rocket and rolling. And so for me I very much push on this whole equity thing, and maybe you should use the language of it Do. I use it in the book a lot.

Speaker 1: 26:39

Not a lot, but she did mention it in one of the chapters, talking about why equity is more important than equality. I think a lot of times we hear a lot about equality, equality but of what value is it if everyone gets the same thing and for some people it's of no use? Are you really helping them? So I love the point and now I'm thinking I should take my kids to the Science Museum in Copenhagen one year before they're too old and not interested anymore. But yeah, I agree with you when it comes to teachers implementing sort of like individualized teaching methods. A lot of teachers really think that they have to go and become miracle workers or magicians, but what would you encourage teachers when it comes on to making sure and I think you've touched on some of this already in terms of making sure that each individual in the classroom is catered for?

Speaker 3: 27:40

So what do we need to do to make sure that each individual is catered for? Well, I think the most important thing there are a few things I've already said, which is about conditions for learning, which is, I think, probably the most important thing, rather than an afterthought, so that's a primary thought and also probably the most important thing is to get to know the child. That can be hard sometimes. You'll know the children that you need to know because they're the ones that annoy you the most. So those are the ones to get to know.

Speaker 3: 28:08

I remember and I think I might have put this in the book, I can't remember, but I've done a lot of failures in my life which I try to capture in my books and show the things that I learned from it. Or I learned quite by accident, but there was this towards the beginning of my career, I was teaching music actually, which isn't my main subject, but I happen to do music, so I know about music. So I was teaching music and there was this boy in the class who was the most frustrating, annoying, so it was like he had a vendetta against me or something. That's what it felt like. But I definitely spent the rest of the week thinking about how much I hated this child and you know, having this sort of very human, I felt quite vulnerable. Actually, it just really made me think I don't know if I want to do teaching, and I know what I'm describing is quite common with all teachers and it'd be weird. If you like, you've only ever taught perfect lessons where there wasn't something going wrong. That would be weird, but maybe there is the odd one person every so often. But anyway, I don't listen to this podcast, right?

Speaker 3: 29:04

But I mean, I think actually one of the things just as an aside, let me do a little ADHD moment here as an essential to my master's programme, inclusive educational leadership, I've sort of emphasised something which is like the power and the importance of being vulnerable and also being a failure, because out of those two things you open the door to humanity and out of humanity comes a very different view of what education is. When you're seeing this as a relationship between human beings and human beings. The relationships are not perfect, they are just humans being humans, and it's a very different way of thinking about. You know, all of the questions around equity and equality and so on. The reason why I sort of anchor it in the master's thing is because then it sounds like, oh, it must be true, but actually people who have to do the master's programme, they tend to be slightly more questioning. But the point being is that may just sound a little bit wishy-washy, and you know, this is a profession and we have standards and we need to do things in a certain way, and I wouldn't take away any of that. But I'm just saying that there is a sort of almost like a philosophical difference between how we view what's going on, and it's easy for me to say as someone who isn't doing it full time at this moment. And so, yes, I think it's quite hard to be a human being teaching other humans.

Speaker 3: 30:17

But give me an example. I had this kid going back to the story now, this kid who just made my life really quite hellish, and I was spending time outside of the class thinking about how much I don't like this kid and how much I want to be edited from the classroom. I want him out of the classroom or I want to leave the classroom. So I decided to. I don't know how to do it without swearing it's called sandwich. Basically, I'd rehearsed in my mind this is what I was going to do? I was going to speak to him at break time. I'm going to go and speak to this kid who's knowing the hell out of me and I'm going to say something positive, and then I'm going to tell him something really negative about what's happening and how it's got to stop, and then I'm going to finish it with something positive again. So this is how far I got. I went over to him and I said to him at break time listen, I just want to say to you that I think you're a good kid and I like what you have to say. I'm interested in you and I really want to hear more about what you have to say and I really like it when you put up your hand rather than just shout out.

Speaker 3: 31:10

So, anyway, this is the point where I now need to introduce some of the negative stuff, like stop doing this and stop doing that and stuff, all that sort of stuff. This is where I worked out my head, but basically I chickened out. So at this point I sort of went okay and then I walked off, thinking I'm such a fade, I'm such an idiot and I'm a chicken. Basically, right, I was complete chicken. What I did was I just told him the positive stuff. Anyway, next lesson, this kid was as good as gold, right, he was the best behaved kid I'd ever taught. I mean, I don't know if that's true, but I mean, you know, something like that. He was so enthusiastic and highly participating in everything, fully engaged in the lesson. And of course, I discovered something that no one ever told this kid that they liked them, no one ever told this kid that they're interested in them, you know.

Speaker 3: 32:00

And so you asked me a question about what's important, about differentiating, right? So I've said, firstly, we create the conditions for learning, and then the second thing which I've said is about the relationship between the teacher and the child, and without the relationship, I don't think you will be doing differentiation. I think that you might be trying to do differentiation. So I think that real differentiation lives in the space of where the child is really aware. That you were aware of the child, right? So now you might want to talk about scaffolding, but you know, I don't need to talk about scaffolding because it's quite a simple thing to do Instead of having an instruction which is a paragraph long, you just break it down into three bullet points.

Speaker 3: 32:42

Ok, that's the scaffolding bit done. You might need to add in a little visual explainer or something like that, but that's it. You know, keep it simple, keep that bit like almost obvious. There's a brilliant example of this I saw. It's my middle son, seven. He was in his into football. He goes to football on Sunday morning. I take him for training to a club of some sort and I saw the best example. I should have recorded it on my phone the instructor giving the instruction to these. At the time six year old boys sat at his feet like 26 year old boys, all in their football kit.

Speaker 4: 33:16

So the instructor goes something like this All right, ladies, well, I want those grab the ball and take the ball to the side and do the side. Now I'm going to take this and going to take now and all you do is take the ball, throw it over there, go, dribble down, dribble down, dribble down, and then you're going to all the way run back and when you run back you're going to then swap on your marks, get set, go. And the kids were like what, what?

Speaker 3: 33:39

And his response was oh my Like. So I just want to say something, which is that it's really not rocket science, is it? You do an instruction in a way that somebody can understand it. I mean, you want to call that differentiation, or you want to call that, you know, differentiation or scaffolding fine, but I think for me that's much more like it's just common sense.

Speaker 3: 34:04

There are so many examples of that where and you even see really clear and simple examples of that you know like there was a girl who, with Down syndrome, who was supported by a teaching assistant. The teaching assistant said to her I was just watching it because she was new and she said OK, so what we're going to do is we're going to take the pads and then we're going to write down the first three words, and then we're going to do this, and then we're going to write it and then, with those, we're going to draw a picture. I might have to draw in a picture. We're going to take each of those words and put it next to the picture, and then we're going to turn over to the other page and we're going to do the next exercise, which is about it, and you could see the girl with Down syndrome is looking at going. You know that's gone completely overhead.

Speaker 1: 34:43

No, went over my head.

Speaker 3: 34:45

Yeah. So like, how about we just say, OK, we're going to write down three words, do a picture. I mean you could just pause there, couldn't you? You don't have to like, do the whole thing. And so if you think, right, that that has to be called differentiation or scaffolding or like whatever it is, fine, knock yourselves out. For me, I just think that's bloody obvious and I'm not that interested in that kind of differentiation. I do think it's kind of important, but again, I just think it's obvious.

Speaker 1: 35:20

Yeah, no, it is. And while you were talking, I kind of sort of painted a picture in my head of, you know, a teacher who really thinks of the student first, before the content, before the methods, before anything. They really think of the student. Then the other things will eventually fall into place. And what I mean by that?

Speaker 1: 35:46

If you think of the child, would the child be able to handle this big chunk of information, or do I need to break it down? Would they prefer it to be written or do they want to see a diagram, Would it? You know, if we start to and it will take time for a teacher to know these things about a child but that discovery period is when you're going to be trying different things and eventually you will settle on what really makes that child tick, and that's really what you're aiming for. And then, when you find out, you pass that information along to their other teachers so that they will also know that, listen, if you do it this way with Tom, he's going to really enjoy that and ask him if he is and if he isn't tweaked and really child first is the way to go. And that's what I've been getting from this conversation and I hope that's what the listeners are getting from this conversation. Listen, I've got one like throughout question for you, Daniel, before we wrap this up.

Speaker 1: 36:52

Nowadays, you know, thankfully SCN and inclusion is changing, but we are in the Middle East, you know, and things are taking along a little bit Slower, you know. Let's just be honest, but what are some of the things you would like to see globally vanished from this whole inclusion, scn, landscape classroom? What are some of these things that we just want to get rid of really?

Speaker 3: 37:18

What's my exclusion? Inclusion list.

Speaker 1: 37:20

Yes.

Speaker 3: 37:21

That's an interesting question. Well, I think, firstly, the most important thing is that I think it's really unfair to put teachers in front of children and expect them to teach those children without them being fully trained in how to teach them. And I think that is happening all over the world and I think that's really, really unfair. That's like the equivalent of taking someone who's a petrochemical engineer and saying, ok, build that bridge over there, and you say, but I'm an engineer, I can do sort of petrochemical stuff, but I'm not an engine. And you say, no, no, you're an engineer, build a bridge. And that, for me, is, I think, really unfair on teachers. So that's number one up the training level of teachers all over the world to make sure that every teacher can teach every child. So that's the first thing. The second is that I would focus on this sense of belonging of a child, and that has been the primary conditions of how they feel, how a child feels both in the school and also in your particular class, as being a step number one, as being the goal, the step number one, but also the step number 10. Right, it's the starting point and the end point. The third is that I would get rid of labels in a school, especially the negative ones. You have the word dyslexia, dyspraxia, dysgraphia. They're all dis words, they're disabilities, they're disappointment, they're disastrous, they are negative labels that we hang on children and I would not like to be, you know, defined and thought of about what I can't do, defined and thought of about what I can't do. I would like to be thought of about what I can do. The fourth one is I would try and bust some of the perceptions of what special education needs mean. Most people think that it means what people can't do, but actually also means what people can do. So I would say that probably the vast majority of Silicon Valley are made up of people who are on the autistic spectrum and who are, you know, I'd say most of the creative industries are very dyslexic. I'd say most of the leadership world are very ADHD.

Speaker 3: 39:24

There was a friend of mine who did a piece of research in Cambridge University and found that the faculty and the students, the vast majority of the science and master departments I'm talking about vast 85% or so had some kind of special educational need. But she also found that in one of the state prisons as well. And actually special educational needs comprises much more of a K curve. The highest performers in society are not quote unquote normal right, because to create and innovate things which are so far out, you need to be far out Right. And that's also true of people who don't fit into society as well at the bottom end.

Speaker 3: 40:06

So I think there's a very big, a little bit like not the same way and not the same flavor or shape, but a similar sort of concept of busting the glass ceiling of what women can achieve in society. So it's also true of what people with different types of needs can achieve in society as well, and I think that's going to take a bit of time. Partly it requires people like myself and yourself and various others giving voice to the idea that you know, people with special educational needs or inclusion needs or whatever can achieve not just a bit, but can achieve much higher than others and usually come with significant gifts. So, okay, that's my top list. I mean I could just keep going.

Speaker 3: 40:46

I suppose I can literally just keep going for a while, but I mean I've already said in this is that I really want to reshape or rethink what inclusion means and, most importantly, probably the most important piece of discussion is not just introducing how the child is doing, because that's one of the big takeaways from today, but also how the teacher is doing.

Speaker 3: 41:09

How is the teacher feeling? I believe that that's a very important layer of how you create an organization. Where children feel like there's a sense of belonging is because you have a staff who have a sense of belonging and also you have parents who feel at home and feel safe. So there's a lot of conflict, which has been diminished. There's a lot of engagement and participation from all different layers, and that's more of a sort of futuristic idea of what schooling really looks like. I go into a school on a once a week basis. I'm committed to visiting a school weekly. Otherwise I'll sort of forget what schools are about and most of what we do is we're looking at that. It's a very different way of thinking about what inclusion is, but actually it's much more cost effective, time effective and much happier for people usually, yeah, student first.

Speaker 1: 41:52

Student first. That's what I want people to walk away from. This podcast thinking, differentiation, inclusion all of it is about student first. Student as a person, who they are, what their needs are, put them first. We're bringing the podcast home, daniel, but one people to know a little bit about what you're up to. You alluded to it at the beginning, but I'd love for you to kind of just take a couple of minutes, tell people how they can get involved with your work, how they can, you know, participate in upcoming events and things that you have going on, because I'm sure there are loads of people in this region who would benefit and who are already benefiting from some of the stuff that you're doing. So take it away.

Speaker 3: 42:35

So, firstly, I think I'm in Dubai in August, I think I'm in Qatar and Saudi in October, so come along and see me then. I think the other thought was we're running the Global Inclusive School Summit, unesco. So we have an application form on our website which is wwwifipgroup. That's I-F-I-Pgroup, so please sign up and see that. And there's one other thing which my team and I, in collaboration with a number of sort of leading people from around the world, wrote something called the Global Inclusive Teaching Initiative and all of the ideas which I talked about here in my various books and in the books of Professor Carol Tomlinson from the United States and Helena Warburg from Sweden, various others. We put the best of the best of our ideas in an online platform called the Global Inclusive Teaching Initiative. Again, that is on the ifipgroup, so go have a look at that as well.

Speaker 1: 43:34

Brilliant. Thank you so much. I finally got Daniel on the podcast. It's been brilliant talking to you and obviously it won't be the last time I'm going to make sure of it, but thank you for sharing your time with us.

Speaker 3: 43:51

Thank you so much, Lisa Grace. It's been a real pleasure. Thank you.