March 3, 2021
Stereotype Threat During my conversation with Andretesha Fitzgerald, she told a powerful story about her learners’ growth in leadership. It all stemmed from a newspaper article about the city in which they live, East Cleveland. Within the podcast, Antretesha quotes the phrase “three miles of misery” from that article. From there, she tells a wonderful […]
February 17, 2021
Falling in (Radical) Love with the Checkpoints During my interview with Lizzie, she shared how she dug into two of the checkpoints within the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) guidelines. She shared her deeply felt reasons for why she dug into those checkpoints, but that digging-in really needs to happen with all of the checkpoints. […]
January 20, 2021
During this episode of UDL in 15 Minutes, Jess Lombardi describes how she sets her students up to successfully lead their own conferences. There is no need to present an argument for this kind of design because there is no downside. We need to empower all of our students to identify goals based on data, […]
October 21, 2020
Are you still using a typewriter? During this episode, Blake shared her passion for reflective teaching and her passion for helping students become reflective learners. In the process of talking through those big ideas, she shared a story that made me remember an attitude I once had. That attitude stated, “You made your choice. Now, […]
October 7, 2020
The Power of Backward Planning In this episode of UDL in 15 Minutes, I interview Carla-Ann Brown about her combined use of backward planning and UDL to help design inclusive and culturally sustaining environments and lessons. For this blog, I’m going to spend a little time with backward design which is what Wiggins & McTighe […]
August 26, 2020
Choice is not a Reward Choice is one of the cornerstones of Universal Design for Learning (UDL). Not only is it part of the guidelines (see optimize individual choice and autonomy under the Guideline of Recruiting Interest), it is embedded throughout the Guidelines. Every guideline begins with the phrase “provide options for…” That phrase spurs […]
July 15, 2020
The Right Tool in the Right Environment In this episode, Brandy and Lauren share their use of a HyperDoc doc to inspire and educate their freshmen about the research process. As Lauren stated, that’s a hard topic to teach because it’s so overwhelming and it can be dry. They were really excited about the outcomes […]
June 24, 2020
Not So Fast: When Quick Thinking Doesn’t Belong During this week’s episode, high school math teacher Lauren Helberg tells a great story of how she personally connected with Universal Design for Learning (UDL). You’ll want to hear the whole story, but the tale reminds us that speed does not equal capability or, for that matter, […]
June 10, 2020
Practice Profiles: Part of the Package This week’s episode was recorded live during the UDL-IRN 2020 Summit on Demand for their Network and Learn Live Series. The video chat included an interview with me about UDL in 15 Minutes (how I got started with UDL and my intentional design of the podcast), the interview with […]
May 20, 2020
Sometimes, simple is most effective We all love and crave simple solutions. They just feel good. I think that’s why the mantras around this issue flow freely. One end of the continuum asserts that complex problems require complex solutions. The other end of the continuum asserts that complex problems are best solved via simple solutions. […]
