By: Jayne Bischoff

Andratesha Fitzgerald, author of Antiracism and Universal Design for Learning: Building Expressways to Success told Wisconsin educators at our UDL Virtual Conference two weeks ago to “find your center line and get clear on your stance on racism”. She told us not to wait. She asked us if it hurt bad enough to change. We are clear and it does hurt bad enough. We have an equity pandemic in Wisconsin, and we need action that reflects the crisis. Every single person must experience learning that is accessible, usable, and beneficial…for them.

This month’s newsletter focuses on Learner Variability, which helps educators address barriers by using the UDL Guidelines to design for the full range of variability we know exist in human beings. Ira Socol asked us to love unconditionally. To ground ourselves in knowing UDL starts with culture - an unrelenting commitment for equitable educational opportunities and for learners who thrive. Where are your lesson pain points? Where are learners shutting down or tuning out? Whose goals, whose tasks, and whose voice is being elevated?

Each of us carries with us a lifetime exposure to societal biases about ability and potential based on gender, race, ethnicity, social class, disability status, and English language proficiency along with other identities and labels. Labels do not define learners or learning. Labels are barriers. Labels disregard learner variability. They threaten equity at its core: camouflaging (not very well) our implicit biases and other hidden barriers to success.

Let’s use the invitation of Universal Design for Learning to double down on our commitment to honoring the assets and strengths of our learners. Let’s learn ways to label barriers in the designed experience, and not label kids. Let’s understand and use the nine UDL Guidelines as a way to collaborate on more equitable practices. It’s ok to take baby steps…just move.

By: Cory Welke

In Todd Rose’s TEDx Talk he describes how military fighter pilots were having trouble keeping hold of their planes which led to many crashes. The U.S. Air Force placed a lot of blame on the pilots themselves. They felt that everything they had designed was set up for success, especially the cockpit, because it was designed for the “average” pilot. It wasn’t until Lt. Gilbert S. Daniels came and disrupted that theory when he showed how each pilot had their own jagged profile. Zero pilots fit the “average” cockpit that was designed because each pilot's 10 characteristics of size, weight, hand size, etc. was different. It was the design that was flawed, not the pilot.

The same is true for our learners. Each of our learners enters our learning environment with a jagged learning profile. Each has their areas of strength and areas for growth, but our current system is designed for the mythical “average”. As Todd Rose states, “We design our learning environments like textbooks...for the average student. We call it age-appropriate and we think that it’s good enough.” We are hurting our learners when we think of the “average” as the norm, when variability is actually the norm.

Our call to action is to be flexible in our design so that our varied learners can engage with learning experience in a way that is personally meaningful to them. We must provide adjustable seats and help our learners who vary, feel secure and supported...then...watch them fly!

Take the time to watch Todd Rose's Tedx Talk.

By: Jayne Bischoff

With UDL, we learn about what learner variability really means, and why that matters. Educators already know every child is different, but there’s more to it -- the particular way variability is predictable and known. Which is good news for us! When we know better, we can do better!

In short, human variances are systemic areas that are part of a person’s learning system. They are a part of the basic human act of stimuli and response. We never knew about these areas of variance before recent advances in brain imaging. Now we know, and now we can use that to design experiences that make our instruction do more work for deep learning. We’re not looking to reduce variability, rather, we are looking to identify variability in the context of the learning experience we’re exposing learners to (stimuli) so we can support each person’s learning system to learn how to learn more effectively (response).

Without knowing about the sources of variability, the danger is that we will continue to educate some students well and some students poorly. A key idea of UDL is that you can most effectively support the individual by addressing the range of systemic variability in advance rather than waiting to know each individual one by one for every particular learning scenario or context. UDL is a game changer because, in learning environments, the educator does not have to carry that load of figuring out what each learner needs each and every year in every learning environment and learning scenario- we can design for variability using the UDL Guidelines - the nine areas of known variability. Do you see how this matters for our equity work in Wisconsin?

The goal of the UDL guidelines is to develop expert learners who practice and develop skill in being purposeful & motivated, resourceful & knowledgeable, and strategic & goal-directed, regardless of the labels that society attempts to assign.

Often when we discuss barriers to success in the classroom, we hear talk of "low reading level...low focus...unmotivated...struggling writer...non-compliant" and the like. This is problematic for many reasons. It identifies learning barriers as student barriers that need to be corrected, when truly, the barriers lie in our disabling curriculum, climate, and beliefs. It disregards the pervasive status quo of deficit-based thinking,

The first step we must take is to admit that we've been wrong. We have to "unlearn" the idea that labels help us…they don’t.

Labels marginalize and effect expectations. Intentionally removing language like "my high group," or the "low math kids," takes intentional practice. Removing "advanced" and "basic" descriptors from our coursework and calling out the illegitimate practice of allowing a student's disability status to describe their learning needs and behavioral interventions will push us to better consider how learning contexts that manifest as barriers for learners who vary.

They vary, they’re not broken.

When I view UDL through the lens of the neurodiversity paradigm and apply culturally relevant pedagogy, I realize that UDL is more than just a vehicle on our road to social justice...it's our ticket to the magic equity carpet ride.