 Next presenter, there we go, is Ebony Peruse Harvey. She is a candidate in teaching and teacher education. Now Ebony could not be with us today because she recently had a child and life gets busy when you got a newborn. But in her email to me yesterday or the other day, she said, could I send a video along and present? And I said, sure, more power to you if you want to. And she sent a video. So we are now gonna watch a video of Ebony's research. And yeah, so let's stay tuned here as I share my screen here again. Hello, my name is Dr. Ebony Peruse Harvey, and I'd like to share with you how my work is focused on preparing educators to collaborate across difference, particularly differences in race and ability status. So it's really important to highlight that the crisis that's going on now in terms of COVID-19, in terms of our criminal justice system and the killings of Breonna Taylor and other black people is that they're inequities that exist. And our criminal justice system and our healthcare system that we're seeing exacerbated because of what is happening in our time. And what I'd like to share with you is that these inequities actually permeate our entire society and also our education system. And it's really important that we think about who is teaching our students, who is making decisions in the criminal justice system and the healthcare system to really start preparing them to work across difference. And so what I'm gonna focus on today is thinking about how students identify with disabilities, particularly students of color and their families are excluded in schools, right? So a part of being a student who's identified with disability and being in special education, you are part of what's called an individualized education program meeting. And the purpose of that meeting is to support you as a student, academically, socially, emotionally, physically, et cetera. This is supposed to be a space where parents, students, special educators, general educators, related service providers and all the stakeholders related to a student comes together to collaborate and really advocate for students' needs. But what research has demonstrated is that parents of color particularly feel excluded in IEP meetings. And often they feel like their ideas are not heard, that they're blamed for their child's disability, that when they do share their ideas, it's belittled, that often jargon is used so that they can't understand what's happening and that their rights are not clearly explained to them. And as school personnel, we're actually engaging by doing these things, engaging in covert practices, because we actually have institutional power that allows us to push out, not physically, but in terms of parents' participation, push them out of meetings. And this actually negatively impacts their children's access to appropriate educational programming, rigorous curriculum and resources. So then how do we change this, right? What's really important as school personnel is that we connect with families and that we contribute to supporting and advocating for students' needs. So in order to connect with families, we need to share knowledge of our students, right? Not only the areas of need, but also the areas of strength. We need to listen and that means that we should be able to re-voice what parents are saying, we need to attend to what they're saying and make what they're saying a part of the discussion. We also need to elicit asking questions, right, of our parents, clarifying, making sure that we understand all their concerns, right? And then as school personnel, we need to contribute, right? But in order to contribute really effectively, we have to demonstrate flexibility, meaning the parent may not always agree with us, right? We need to be able to collaborate that the different people around the table that we need to engage and then we need to advocate. If we know that there are resources that can really support a student, we need to provide those resources. And so this has led me to think about my dissertation research, right? I want to know how preservice teachers, teachers who are preparing to go into the classroom respond to issues of racism and ableism. I also want to know how they engage in collaboration and advocacy practices. And I also wanted to know when they are taught, right? Critical frameworks, is there a shift in how they see themselves and their role as members of the IP team, but then also do their, is there a shift in their understanding of inequity? And what I found was that it's extremely important that teachers engage in practice-based opportunities, right? And what I mean by that is engage in what I did in my dissertation study simulations where they actually get to practice, not talk about, not pontificate about practice, but actually engage in a practice they would engage in, in schools, right? What's also important that they reflect on that practice but that they use critical frameworks such as disability-critical race theory or intersectionality or critical race theory, right? To think really critically about ways that they can improve their practice and how they would change their practice when they engage with parents. What I also found was that my pre-service teachers over time became more flexible in hearing disagreement, right? And then coming up with alternatives to solving a problem. And then what I also learned through this dissertation research is that it's a combination of practice-based opportunities, engaging in critical frameworks, and reflection that is necessary to really strengthen pre-service teachers' practice around engaging across difference and engaging across ability status. So thank you so much for listening to my dissertation research, a really small part of it. What I'd like to just share with you here at the end is that I was a former special education teacher at 12 for 10 years, and I was really interested in how we were engaging parents and families in the IEP process. Because the IEP process has a ton of, the special education process has a ton of discretion, meaning that school personnel are making a lot of different decisions along the way that requires subjective judgment, it's really important that we prepare our teachers, our social workers, our psychologists, our related service providers to think really critically about how they might be perpetuating racism, perpetuating ableism in the things that they say they do, and then the decisions that they're making about families. So I think it's extremely important that when we think about creating practice-based opportunities to support folks who are dealing with the public, right? Who are dealing with folks who may not be the same race or billy status or gender or socioeconomic status as them, is that we provide opportunities for them to think critically about their practice before they actually go out into the world and cause harm. So I wanna thank you once again, my name is Ebony Bruce Harvey, and I really appreciate you taking the time to listen to my dissertation research.