Did We Learn Anything?
Did We Learn Anything?
The Power of Belonging with Dr. David Rose
In this heartfelt episode, Nicole Tucker-Smith welcomes Dr. David Rose, founder of Universal Design for Learning and CAST. Dr. Rose reflects on his journey as a lifelong educator, the transformative power of inclusion, and pivotal moments that shaped his path—from nearly dropping out of Harvard to finding life-changing mentorship. With vulnerability and wisdom, he shares how recognizing human potential—especially in those who feel like they don’t belong—can change everything.
Interested in learning more about how UDL supports every learner, consider the Engaging Every Learner Institute where Dr. Rose will be guest speaking along with Nicole Tucker-Smith and Dr. Sylvia Rodriguez Douglass.
Thanks for listening, and please join our community! Follow us on Instagram @didwelearnanything_podcast.
00;00;04;04 - 00;00;37;07
Nicole Tucker-Smith
Hi there. I'm Nicole Tucker Smith, and this is. Did we learn anything? A podcast committed to opening a dialog intended to make room for diverse perspectives and humanity. All right. Today, I am so excited for our special guest, doctor David Rose, who is the founder of Universal Design for learning. And the organization, cast. And I'm going to without further ado, let him introduce himself.
00;00;37;10 - 00;00;41;03
Nicole Tucker-Smith
And then we'll get started with the conversation. How are you, David?
00;00;41;06 - 00;01;12;20
Dr. David Rose
Hi, Nicole. Nice to see you. Indeed. So it's a little hard to start talking about yourself. I'm a lifelong educator. I like to say. And along the way, I've picked up a neuroscience background. And I'm mostly interested in that intersection of what we can do as educators when we know as much as we can about how the brain really works, and what differences there are among people in the way that they use their brains and all of that.
00;01;12;23 - 00;01;41;25
Dr. David Rose
So my background is that intersection, and I guess I want to brag to say that increasingly, I like to identify as an educator rather than a neuropsychologist, because I feel my life's interest in work has been in education, you know, rather than neuroscience, neurosciences and support of being a better educator, not the other way around. So I like to brag that I've taught at almost every level of education.
00;01;41;25 - 00;02;09;00
Dr. David Rose
I've been a head start teacher. I've taught first grade, I've taught. I missed middle school. I don't know why, but I've taught high school. I've taught college and I've taught university. Oh, and recently I've been teaching old people like me. So I once in a while get called as an expert witness or something, and, and I love it when they say some question about whether I really know education.
00;02;09;02 - 00;02;24;01
Dr. David Rose
And I bore them with, yes, I actually do know education. I'm not a neuroscience nerd. So anyway, that's who I am. And, I love being entitled as an educator.
00;02;24;04 - 00;02;33;03
Nicole Tucker-Smith
Yeah. Oh, I love that. Can you tell us a little bit more about your life and what's most important to you when you think about your life's purpose?
00;02;33;05 - 00;03;05;08
Dr. David Rose
Well, I came into the world with a lot of advantages. I had a, wonderfully strong and supportive family. They were well regarded in the community. We were definitely not well-to-do or anything, but, I started with benefits, for sure. And, my mother was a first grade teacher, and she was really good about being, you know, the home teacher when I wasn't at school and obviously made me care about schooling.
00;03;05;13 - 00;03;27;08
Dr. David Rose
So I did I did good in school because I had all these advantages, but we moved a lot. So I saw the schools of all different kinds. I was in poor schools. I was in relatively good schools, rural schools, urban schools, because my father was a minister and we moved all the time and had, different places. So I'd seen a lot of schooling.
00;03;27;10 - 00;03;53;15
Dr. David Rose
And my last school was a rural school, which was very what should I say? Was not preparatory for college. Very few kids went to college. Most people were going to be farmers. But I had a principal who really was an educator, and he cared about each of us. And he saw that I was probably going to go to college.
00;03;53;18 - 00;04;22;04
Dr. David Rose
And he went out of his way, literally taking me on trips to see colleges to go to Washington, DC and New York City and things like that, to bring me into a broader world than a small town in Maine that we were living in. So I saw what a good educator looks like. I'm not sure I've ever told you this story, Nicole, but, act as if you're interested.
00;04;22;06 - 00;04;47;21
Dr. David Rose
I have, but when I did get to college, I went to Harvard College, and it was really over my head. I really didn't have preparation for a demanding, place like that. And so at the middle of the first semester and freshman year, I had flunked everything that I was given papers, exams. And so I completely felt like I did not belong in this place.
00;04;47;23 - 00;05;22;11
Dr. David Rose
And by chance, my advisor, freshman advisor, was the dean of Harvard College, Dean John Monroe, an incredible figure. I didn't know it at the time. So I went to him literally before Thanksgiving to say to him that I obviously don't belong here, and that I wanted to save face, at least and go home for Thanksgiving, stay till Thanksgiving, go home at Thanksgiving, and just not come back because I didn't want to have to explain to everybody, roommates and all that.
00;05;22;13 - 00;05;51;28
Dr. David Rose
You know, why I was that I was abandoning all this. And so I said that to him. I just thank you. And I just want to say goodbye. And he just. And I kind of get emotional even when I think about it. And I literally said, I just don't belong here. And he said, literally, almost exactly this. He said, David, I'm the dean of Harvard College.
00;05;52;00 - 00;06;22;08
Dr. David Rose
I'm also the head of the admissions committee. If anyone knows who belongs at Harvard, it's me. I think you belong here. We admitted you because we want you here, and now we need to do our job. And then he literally said, okay, who? Whose exam did you just flunk? And he, explained it. Said who it was. And he literally called him right in front of me, and he said, Doctor Jeffries, I have one of your students here.
00;06;22;10 - 00;06;52;01
Dr. David Rose
I just flunked the hour exam, and I'm sorry. I'll tear up. But he said he's important to me. And when he said that, I just melt it and still do. Because this is the dean of Harvard blasting College, calling a professor to say this little kid from Turner, Maine is important to him. And then he just said, I hope I can count on you to make sure he gets an education here.
00;06;52;04 - 00;07;18;06
Dr. David Rose
Was unbelievable. And I left, and I knew immediately that everything had changed. Is, support. I knew somehow it was going to work out, and it did. And there was this thing I went on to graduate and all that and and taught at Harvard for 35 years. So it was a great success story, but it was really an educator story.
00;07;18;08 - 00;07;52;22
Dr. David Rose
This was Dean John Monroe, who, by the way, more than any other person in Harvard's history, cared about diversity and made Harvard expand from being a prep school place to looking for students who had, come from less strong backgrounds or not already prepared and were not already wealthy and all of that. And he thought Harvard should be a teaching institution, not just a, sorting institution.
00;07;52;25 - 00;08;17;18
Dr. David Rose
And I realized only late that I was a diversity at MIT, at Harvard, and I had never thought about it till, I don't know, when I was 60 years old, that I was admitted because they thought I had promise, but that I would need a good education. And they were. Dean Monroe was going to give it to me was a crime story.
00;08;17;21 - 00;08;40;09
Nicole Tucker-Smith
So, David, I know from your background that you're being a little bit humble. And that you have really worked in ways that have transformed education across the globe. So folks might not know this, but I consider you a mentor, a friend, and we've worked together, especially over the last few years. And no, I have never heard that story.
00;08;40;11 - 00;09;00;19
Nicole Tucker-Smith
I am tearing up as well because you really, just through me, showed the power of belonging, that sense of belonging. You felt like you didn't belong. And here someone who's important to the institution said that you are important, too.
00;09;00;21 - 00;09;01;15
Dr. David Rose
Yeah.
00;09;01;17 - 00;09;06;04
Nicole Tucker-Smith
And then said, what do we need to do as an institution to support you?
00;09;06;07 - 00;09;08;14
Dr. David Rose
You know.
00;09;08;17 - 00;09;18;26
Nicole Tucker-Smith
Maybe you've changed the world. And what a difference that conversation made. So tell us, like how?
00;09;18;29 - 00;09;43;12
Dr. David Rose
Well, I'm sort of glad that I can't tell that story without tearing up, truthfully, because it shows I'm not dead yet. And, when I go through Harvard Yard, I see his office, and I just realize how pivotal that was. And it was, as you said, it was about belonging. He and he made sure that I belonged.
00;09;43;14 - 00;10;06;02
Dr. David Rose
And, you can imagine he got the teaching fellow that actually given me the bad grade and you can imagine that fellow jumped out of his chair to have the dean of Harvard College call him and say, you have one of my, one of my I don't know what he called me, but Allegheny Wood is he did say he's someone important to me.
00;10;06;02 - 00;10;13;05
Dr. David Rose
And I want to know that you're going to meet with him. Think. Imagine this teaching fellow goes. I'll meet with him. I'll meet with him.
00;10;13;08 - 00;10;31;00
Nicole Tucker-Smith
Yeah. And then I love the idea of, what you said. You know, thinking about the school as a teaching institution, not a sorting institution. And we think about standardization and standardized tests and grading on a curve. And all those things are really ideas about sorting.
00;10;31;02 - 00;10;31;22
Dr. David Rose
Yeah.
00;10;31;24 - 00;10;41;11
Nicole Tucker-Smith
Rather than saying who belongs here and now, I've also never heard you describe yourself as a diversity hire, which I love. I not higher, but diversity admit.
00;10;41;13 - 00;10;43;27
Dr. David Rose
But probably too embarrassed to say that in your company.
00;10;43;27 - 00;11;18;07
Nicole Tucker-Smith
But but it's because you also talk about, you know, your your high school experience and, you know, the principal who recognized your diversity in that setting. Yeah, right. And said, okay, we have to give our students options that align to where they aspire to go. Yeah, right. And in in creating spaces for you find your paths. And and so I just, you know, I heard things about diversity and belonging and there's a quote that you have, you know, teaching is emotional work.
00;11;18;09 - 00;11;39;19
Nicole Tucker-Smith
And also, given your background as a neuroscientist, some folks might say, well, what does belonging have to do with the brain? Right. Where does this idea of, you know, thinking about barriers related to bias? What does that have to do with the brain? Like how did the two even work together? What do you say to that?
00;11;39;21 - 00;12;00;02
Dr. David Rose
Well, as you know, much to much for the time we have, but it's important to realize why our brains are so big compared to other animals. When you see like a bird who can fly and, you know, travel to Florida for vacation and things like that with a brain that's, you know, less bird.
00;12;00;03 - 00;12;01;04
Nicole Tucker-Smith
Brain.
00;12;01;07 - 00;12;29;14
Dr. David Rose
Yeah. I mean, they're tiny. So you have to go, oh, what is all that extra cortex we have for if birds can do all of those things? It just seem what is it all there for? And now also not at the beginning. Neuroscientists really understand that largely it's to, to do the things that allow us to be social.
00;12;29;16 - 00;12;54;15
Dr. David Rose
Because that is incredibly complex, knowing, and being able to predict what your friends are likely to do and to want and to care about, and all of that is essential to your social relationships. And that means your parents, your friends, your teachers, your enemies, whatever. And that is an incredible, complex thing because it's changing all the time.
00;12;54;15 - 00;13;23;06
Dr. David Rose
And you have to know about context and go, oh, Billy just came out from flunking an exam. He probably doesn't feel good. So I'm not going to talk about how great I am right now or whatever, that this is much harder kind of, intelligence unquote, than, you know, calculating things or knowing where you've, left your baseball bat.
00;13;23;09 - 00;14;01;16
Dr. David Rose
So for me, the it's important to think of the enormous expansion as there to allow us to benefit from social relations. And that means belonging. And a large part of our brain is devoted to knowing at this moment I belong here. And that means I know what to do here. And I belong with these people, and I know what to do with them, and how to listen to them, and how to understand what this means in terms of their context.
00;14;01;19 - 00;14;31;06
Dr. David Rose
And histories and all of that. And that's incredibly deep, rich stuff. But that's what has allowed us as a species, to dominate for good and bad, our world, because we do it in groups, we do it with other people, not by ourselves. And we teach and we learn and we hunt and we gather and all of those things in reciprocal relationships with other people.
00;14;31;08 - 00;14;58;19
Dr. David Rose
And that that's our strength and that. And we didn't used to think enough of it. That takes enormous amounts of what we call cortex, the new parts of our brain. And that's what made our brains big. It's not running fast or, seeing a father of ten other animals or anything like that. It's being able to live in a social world and benefit from it and contribute to it.
00;14;58;22 - 00;15;25;26
Dr. David Rose
So that was a change for me, I have to say, much later in life than when I was studying as an undergrad or something, because you think of intellect as sort of what it's all about. And I no longer think that. I think what we typically call intellect is sort of easier for the brain handling who I belong with and who I care about and what I'm going to do five years from now with with whom.
00;15;25;28 - 00;15;32;20
Dr. David Rose
Those are the really hard calculations. And our brains have evolved to do that.
00;15;32;22 - 00;15;57;18
Nicole Tucker-Smith
Wow. Like I never, again. I can't believe all the times I've talked to you and I had these conversations about, you know, why our brains are bigger. And it's interesting, especially to hear you describe this, because we often think about or I guess some societies often think about learning as individualistic. Right. In as in, in, in, in our schools, we assign individual grades.
00;15;57;20 - 00;16;11;15
Nicole Tucker-Smith
Right. But the idea that we have more cortex so that we can learn together so they can be learned with one another. And that's really, I guess, kind of like our superpower. And yes, human beings.
00;16;11;18 - 00;16;47;14
Dr. David Rose
No question. Other animals are stronger, faster, can see better, smell better, all sorts of things we have achieved because we we're social, we do things together. And that's what has allowed us to dominate this world we live on. Without that, we'd be, I don't know what we'd be because we're not very fast. We can't see very far with definitely not very good at smelling, so it's our ability to work in groups that is made us who we are.
00;16;47;17 - 00;17;11;22
Nicole Tucker-Smith
Yes. And then. And so there's the ability to work in groups. There's value in that. And then I also imagine valuing that we are different. Right. Valuing the variability. And I'd also like to talk about ability and disability and how we can value our differences in a way that makes us collectively stronger.
00;17;11;24 - 00;17;37;17
Dr. David Rose
Yeah. I hadn't really thought about this before until you ask this question, but that requires a great deal of computation to other animals. Treat sort of all wolves is roughly the same. So, you know, mommy and daddy, maybe. And one of the reasons we have so much cortex devoted to it is that we recognize that Billy and Sally are different, and that we need to treat them differently.
00;17;37;17 - 00;18;00;16
Dr. David Rose
We need to, have expectations that are different for how we're going to how we would be together, how we would love together all of those things. So having a brain that's big enough to individualize as well as to allow us to work in groups, but to recognize that it doesn't mean standardizing everybody saying, well, they're all the same, you know, it's all very ten people.
00;18;00;16 - 00;18;24;16
Dr. David Rose
We're all going hunting together, but our brain is really big because it realizes, you know, Billy is different than Sally, and they're going to have different parts to play in what we're even when we're hunting, that we know we're going to allocate parts of the task to different people, depending on, their particular set of abilities.
00;18;24;16 - 00;18;45;05
Dr. David Rose
So that is part of why our brain is so big. It's that we cannot we would not be successful as a social species if we tried to treat everybody the same. That would be really stupid. And our brains are not stupid in that way. They say no. You know what? If I'm going to hunt for the bow and arrow, I want to go with Billy.
00;18;45;07 - 00;18;51;00
Dr. David Rose
On their hand. If I want to cook my dinner later. You know I'm not going to do it with Billy.
00;18;51;02 - 00;19;21;15
Nicole Tucker-Smith
Billy might not be the best, right? It's really. It's valuing that diversity. And that leads to the mutual interdependence. Of working together. And, you know, as you think about these aspects of learning, the individual, the collective. I do want to give you an opportunity to share with folks what universal Design for learning is, given how it's been such an influential approach to teaching and learning and your role in it.
00;19;21;18 - 00;19;29;22
Nicole Tucker-Smith
And so if you could just tell us just a little, because I know we only have so much time together, what is universal design for learning and what was the inspiration behind it?
00;19;29;24 - 00;19;59;23
Dr. David Rose
Well, maybe just a bit of history. So I was working as a neuropsychologist at Children's Hospital and then, became the head of neuropsychology at, a more local hospital, North Shore Children's Hospital, where we see a ton of kids who were, sent to the hospital because they were doing poorly in school for one reason or another.
00;19;59;25 - 00;20;23;24
Dr. David Rose
So we were, I think you all know that, kids would be identified and have an IEP or something like that in the school, but they needed an outside evaluator to say, this kid really does have dyslexia for this kid really has emotional problems or whatever. And so I was the head of the clinic that did that.
00;20;23;24 - 00;20;49;04
Dr. David Rose
It's called the Medical and Educational Evaluation Center. And I had a lot of really smart people that worked with me, and we would talk and over time, I asked people to go back to the schools to see how do our reports work, you know, is is the life changing for these kids? They paid $2,000 to get this about what happened.
00;20;49;04 - 00;21;15;02
Dr. David Rose
So I asked clinicians to go out to the schools and talk. What happens when they get a report. And we were incredibly depressed with the results. You know, not much. Not as much happened as we want it to happen. The kids got a label that's for sure. They had a new label. But we began to worry is that label good or bad?
00;21;15;05 - 00;21;44;24
Dr. David Rose
You know, does something change by getting that label that the kids benefit from? Or is it to go back to what we were talking about earlier? Just a sorting mechanism. We'll sort the kids into these piles. And we became discouraged about the value of our own reports. And we met about 30 of us in the clinic, you know, to talk about it and say, what could we do that would be more beneficial at that time?
00;21;44;27 - 00;22;17;22
Dr. David Rose
Computer personal computers were just coming into the world as back in the early 80s. And so Apple Computer came out and it was like the first time people most of your listeners will be able to imagine that, at any rate, having your own computer was striking change, and we started having the kids stay after their emails to just play with the computer so we could see, is this got any promise for all of these kids that are showing up at our clinic?
00;22;17;24 - 00;22;46;26
Dr. David Rose
And immediately it was obvious that for some kids it had dramatic capabilities. And we called our kids pioneers. So we worked with them to figure out what are the things that computers could do to, help these kids at school. And largely it was a matter of individualizing that the kids were not the same. Some had emotional difficulty, some had reading difficulty, some at math somewhere.
00;22;46;29 - 00;23;12;10
Dr. David Rose
We used to say mentally retarded, all sorts of things. We had a wide range. We saw a lot of kids every week. We learned a lot in that process. But when we went back to the schools, we still felt the problem was the same, which is that they now had new tools, but they were still being essentially sorted.
00;23;12;10 - 00;23;56;16
Dr. David Rose
They had it was called assistive technologies, but they were seen as kids with disabilities that would need to be, you know, separated in some way and, treated differently and well to get back to our word, not really belonging, even if they had a cool Apple computer and we didn't like that, we didn't feel that was, education at its best and in sort of a remarkable transition, we changed from being a clinic which looked for what's wrong with the kids, which is what people were paying us to do to what's wrong with the school that these kids are showing up here.
00;23;56;19 - 00;24;20;01
Dr. David Rose
Because we would see in the dyslexic kids, kids who had enormous talents of various kinds, but they weren't getting to display any of that in school. They were largely in remedial reading and separated and sorted into a whole nother domain of a kid with a learning disability. And some of them were incredibly bright, but they were now considered learning disabled.
00;24;20;01 - 00;24;46;04
Dr. David Rose
And we realized, well, how about you taught in a different way that didn't require just reading textbooks. And of course, schools didn't do that and schools would have one way of doing something for everybody. And it worked great for some kids and just horribly for others. So just to keep with dyslexic so they get into history class and they might love history.
00;24;46;05 - 00;25;13;03
Dr. David Rose
We one of our early pioneers was a kid like that, just loved history but couldn't read very well because of dyslexia. So the textbook was a barrier rather than an opportunity. So we transformed his textbook into a digital version, which was unknown at that time. So that the computer could help him read. And then, of course, he got to be good at history because he loved history.
00;25;13;05 - 00;25;45;20
Dr. David Rose
What we look for was what are the barriers that kids are facing, you know, and certainly blind kids and deaf kids were obvious that school were poorly designed for them. We didn't have a word for any of this. The shift was from seeing the kids as the problem. There was something broken about them to seeing. Schools aren't really very good at teaching lots of kids, and they do just essentially sort them and blame them and ostracize them.
00;25;45;23 - 00;26;10;02
Dr. David Rose
And when we made that change, we didn't have a word for it, but we still called it assistive technology. But luckily on our board was an architect, and the architect was watching us sort of changing our way of dancing and said, boy, you know, what you're doing is sort of like universal design, and we didn't know the term.
00;26;10;06 - 00;26;38;04
Dr. David Rose
And she said, yeah, you know, you can build buildings and they all have all these barriers, you know, steps to stairs, for example, to get in the building. And then you come along much later and you give the person a motorized wheelchair that will, you know, climb stairs or something costs, you know, $80,000 or stuff, you know, but it's just you can blame the individual for not being able to walk into your really good school.
00;26;38;06 - 00;27;01;18
Dr. David Rose
And instead, Ron Mace is the famous inventor of universal design. And instead you can say, well, what have we made the buildings better for a wider range of people so that in fact, there was multiple ways to get in and multiple ways to see what was going on and so on and so forth. So designing it at the beginning turned out to be cheaper and better for everybody.
00;27;01;18 - 00;27;23;14
Dr. David Rose
And as you know, once they decide, well, we can make sure that there ramps available and then it turns out that everybody uses ramps, you know, and they're they're not only for the wheelchairs, but when they're shopping and when they're got their bikes and skateboards or whatever. So everybody realizes, oh, it's better to have both stairs and ramps.
00;27;23;14 - 00;27;43;14
Dr. David Rose
They each have their affordances. And for some people it's critical to have one and not the other, and so on and so forth. So we had a word for the first time, and actually I met Ron with mace and showed him what we were working on, which was that time, how to make textbooks that were had more of affordances built in for kids who are blind, kids who had dyslexia and so on.
00;27;43;16 - 00;28;08;08
Dr. David Rose
And he said, yeah, so that's universal design for education. I mean, I don't know if he called it that, but remember what he called it? But he said, that's universal design. You're doing universal design inside the building, not the outside. And so we had a name and Maya came up with, let's call it universal design for learning, rather than for textbooks or something.
00;28;08;10 - 00;28;33;12
Dr. David Rose
And, and that started us, I will say the beginning was a disaster because schools were still paying us to identify what was broken about the kids, and so they'd pay us, as I said, a couple thousand dollars. And they wanted us to give a label to the kid and say, this is what you should do for this kid.
00;28;33;15 - 00;29;04;09
Dr. David Rose
And instead of reports, we're now about the school, we're saying, if you taught history in this way, Billy wouldn't have to come to our clinic. He'd be doing fine in history. And if you had your school there, then the kids with motor disabilities wouldn't have to have. You have a built in whole new ramp on your school, but also would be able to, engage with regular parts of the curriculum and so on and so forth.
00;29;04;12 - 00;29;25;29
Dr. David Rose
Well, schools at first didn't want to hear this, you know, like, you know, wait a minute. No, we're not sending people to find out what's wrong with us. You're supposed to tell us what's wrong with the kids so we can address it. And we would say back, actually, the problem is your school is not well designed, and that's creating disabilities is the way we're seeing it now.
00;29;26;02 - 00;29;55;05
Dr. David Rose
So our referrals dropped. And, most people don't know this story, but our referrals dropped. And it was like a bit of a panic for the hospital. So they sort of knew us well enough to like us. But on the other hand, we were also a money shop. And is this a good direction where people stop referring to us for a little while and we actually had to lay off some people because because we were all educators, we just couldn't do it anymore.
00;29;55;05 - 00;30;27;12
Dr. David Rose
We just couldn't blame the kids anymore. Once we had sort of, made progress along these lines. And it was a crisis. And I like to tell people that because progress is often full of crisis, and we had to make a hard decision that, no, we're actually going to do universal design for learning, and we're not going to do assistive technologies and fix the kids that are broken anymore, and we're going to have to go out for funding and so on and so forth.
00;30;27;12 - 00;31;07;09
Dr. David Rose
And we can't be just a clinic anymore. And that began the change that you're aware of, where we became supported by at first, local foundations and then the Department of Education and NSF and things like that, all of whom could see that this is the right direction. And we became well known in Washington in a while for, taking a very different approach and ultimately, I guess, won that battle where, you know, it's very common that I don't think any things come out about special education now that don't have from the Department of Education, that don't say think about universal design for learning as you plan your school.
00;31;07;13 - 00;31;08;06
Nicole Tucker-Smith
Yes.
00;31;08;09 - 00;31;12;16
Dr. David Rose
And your lesson anyway. Sorry, that was a too long answer, but that was part of bit.
00;31;12;16 - 00;31;32;17
Nicole Tucker-Smith
So great because you're talking about, you know, you shifted, right? Your team shifted in recognizing, okay, the problem isn't the kid, the problem is the school, the space. And then you have to have a shift for your client, which was the school didn't necessarily want to shift. It led to a crisis. But ultimately it was your commitment, right?
00;31;32;18 - 00;31;39;08
Nicole Tucker-Smith
Your commitment to saying, no, we're not going back to blaming the kid. This is something we believe in. We're going to make it work.
00;31;39;10 - 00;31;42;20
Dr. David Rose
So I went on too long. I think in some of these answers.
00;31;42;20 - 00;31;48;11
Nicole Tucker-Smith
But no, I was I would list what we actually our audience really appreciate the stories.
00;31;48;14 - 00;31;49;17
Dr. David Rose
Okay.
00;31;49;20 - 00;31;50;17
Nicole Tucker-Smith
Yeah.
00;31;50;19 - 00;31;52;03
Dr. David Rose
Yeah. Like real life.
00;31;52;10 - 00;31;53;21
Nicole Tucker-Smith
Exactly.
00;31;53;24 - 00;32;18;29
Dr. David Rose
And that's why we have you know, what I've been thinking a lot about is I'm dreaming a lot. I kind of studied the neuroscience of why I'm changing, but it's just remarkable to think about that when I'm asleep. My brain is still storytelling, you know, it doesn't have flashy lights or do sound shows. It says, no, we're going to make up stories because we're a little bored here.
00;32;19;02 - 00;32;43;28
Dr. David Rose
And I think that shows how powerful and important stories are that even when you're not conscious, your brain says, I need stories. I'm sorry. I can't just be lying around here doing nothing. Give me stories, because it could just have explosions happen. You know? It could be like July 4th in there to keep active, but it doesn't. It says, no, I want stories.
00;32;44;01 - 00;33;20;09
Dr. David Rose
As you know. But most people who would hear this don't, I've recently moved, left a home of 36 years and moved to a continuing care community retirement home. Various words for it. A very nice woman, in that it's full of teachers and academics high in that, demographic. Partly because it's between Lexington, the town I grew up in, which is a very educational community, and Cambridge, which is full of educational institutions.
00;33;20;09 - 00;33;43;08
Dr. David Rose
So a lot of people here were faculty at various colleges and universities, Harvard and MIT and so on and so forth. Or were teachers in various school systems that were very high end, aggressive school systems, and they wanted to be in a learning community. So that's what this is. Tons of classes all the time and everything. And everybody's old.
00;33;43;10 - 00;33;48;19
Dr. David Rose
I'm just so I won't be hiding it. I'm 79 years old, so I'm not a young chicken anymore.
00;33;48;19 - 00;33;50;22
Nicole Tucker-Smith
Congratulations.
00;33;50;24 - 00;34;13;23
Dr. David Rose
And I'm, And I'm at the, you know, sort of the younger side of of this particular institution. And that's. So I just wanted to tell a story that happened last night and follow up this morning. So it couldn't be more current. And I thought, Nicole, it'd be fun to tell it to you. And it has connections to things that you and I are working on for sure.
00;34;14;00 - 00;34;42;13
Dr. David Rose
So anyway, everybody here is old. You can't live here unless you're at least 65. And, most people are more likely to be in their 80s. But again, it's a very what should I say, a typical not that it's wealthy people and it is a not for profit place, but highly educated people. Definitely makes it atypical. Lots of classes and stuff going on all the time, because people feel learning is an important part of their lives.
00;34;42;13 - 00;35;08;03
Dr. David Rose
So that's why I wanted to come here and it's so far been great. I've only been here a month anyway, so last night, I had dinner that was arranged by. They have people here of just other residents who try to reach out to new people to get them integrated, to meet people. So someone set up for my wife and I to have dinner with a couple who we, you know, didn't know at all.
00;35;08;05 - 00;35;27;28
Dr. David Rose
And, and that's very common sort of dinner dates and people even call them dates. All right. Sort of a way to integrate new people into somewhere between 3 and 400 people that live here. So it's a lot of people. So we have this couple, we go and I look them up on the web, you know, so I could see who they were.
00;35;27;28 - 00;35;49;28
Dr. David Rose
And the wife is a psychotherapist, long, long psychotherapist. She's in her 80s and, went to, Harvard College and just a little bit before me. So she's a little older, but we went to the same college. So that gave some reason to, you know, have a conversation. I thought. And her husband had nothing in his bio. Nothing.
00;35;50;00 - 00;36;11;29
Dr. David Rose
So I didn't have a clue what he was. And so we go to dinner and he looks very old. He's kind of walking with a walker. He's very stooped over. We sit down at a table and he just looks like he's not really going to be there. He's big glasses and he's, you know, a stereotypical very, very old person.
00;36;12;01 - 00;36;35;07
Dr. David Rose
And she's a bit younger. And most of the conversation we have I'm having with her because I have a background in psychotherapy stuff a long time ago, and we knew some people in common. So we're having chats and I wouldn't say I was ignoring him, but I definitely had a bias. And look, all you can see where this story is going to think he's not the interesting one of the two of them.
00;36;35;09 - 00;37;10;05
Dr. David Rose
Because I don't know anything about him, and he doesn't look very smart. He looks like, you know, a really, really old person. And but then I don't remember the trigger, but, somewhere it came out. Maybe his wife said it, that he has five degrees from Harvard, which puts him in the 99.9 percentile. Okay. Where a group or a group, including an MD from Harvard, a PhD from Harvard, master's from several schools, his background is largely economics.
00;37;10;08 - 00;37;41;07
Dr. David Rose
So here is this giant guy sitting across the table. And I paid little attention to him. And, so I ask him, wow, how did how did that happen? You know, not too many people get that many degrees. And so then I hear this story that you and I, Nicole, delight to hear, which is that his story was really complicated because as an early school child, he could not learn.
00;37;41;09 - 00;38;10;19
Dr. David Rose
He was. Well, I don't know how to tell this story because just happened, but it right. Turns out he was very dyslexic and little ADHD too. In first grade, second grade he couldn't learn to read and so they school system approached his parents and said we need to pull him out of regular school. He is a very disabled learner, as you know, and there are programs for children with, they didn't even use the word learning.
00;38;10;20 - 00;38;32;02
Dr. David Rose
This was more severe than that kind of their sense of him, that he was really just not suitable for public school. His mother, though, I believe, was an educator, not 100% sure. The whole story. She just raised up her hands and said, no way. We're not sending him to a special school for disabled kids because there's lots of ways in which he is smart.
00;38;32;02 - 00;39;01;14
Dr. David Rose
I know he can't read and he can't write and all of that, but she just said, no, we're not doing that. And I don't know what then happens. And that's we're going to have dinner. So I can find the whole story. Okay. But somehow between being literally going to be pulled out of public school because he can't learn two being five advanced degrees from Harvard, there's an interesting educational story for you and I, Nicole, and anybody else, and I'm going to get that whole story.
00;39;01;16 - 00;39;29;03
Dr. David Rose
But then he has been listening to what I've been talking about and never heard of Universal Design for learning or anything like that, but of course, it just the reason he's looked like he was sort of passive was he was just grabbing onto this whole story about what happened to him and how he was viewed and how he was saved by his mother, not the school system and all of that for and what dyslexia really is.
00;39;29;03 - 00;39;58;16
Dr. David Rose
And all of those things were just ruminating in his brain. And then he just kind of came forward with how important it was, the work we were doing, and how he was only saved because he had a mother that was deeply embedded in the school system in some way and so on, and just wouldn't put up with it, and how different his whole life would have been, and a whole idea of universal design for learning, which you'd never heard of, you know, he just was like, oh my God.
00;39;58;16 - 00;40;19;12
Dr. David Rose
And so and we had and then we had this incredible conversation sort of about all of that. I went to exercise class this morning. Just because you can do that here. Yay! And ran into him, and he came up to me. And I had to say, because I want to talk about my bias, that member that I pay simply put him in the back row of class.
00;40;19;12 - 00;40;41;19
Dr. David Rose
When I was eating dinner with him, he just looked to old, to hunched over to glass, did to it, just didn't think there was a there there. And when I saw him at exercise class, having heard all of this stuff about who he was and he's way smarter than I am, I realized I saw him differently. He looked.
00;40;41;21 - 00;41;04;19
Dr. David Rose
He looked more physically able. He looked more charming and interesting. All of that bias I had has been wiped away. And I saw him and I went, hi, how are you? And he said, oh, great, how are you? And we had this animated conversation, which we didn't have at the dinner before until the very end. And I just thought, oh my God, there's my bias.
00;41;04;19 - 00;41;29;23
Dr. David Rose
Just seeing him, his physical state, he's really old. He's in his 90s and I just wrote him off as an interesting conversationalist or whatever. You and I know, because we're working on this topic, how those biases determine so much. And here was me years and years of UDL. And I have a bias thinking this guy can't be worth talking to that much.
00;41;29;23 - 00;41;54;28
Dr. David Rose
Let me talk to his wife. And it turns out and right, so he says, oh, I loved our conversation, can't wait to talk more. And I said, hey, how about you and I maybe we'll give a talk decreases. Oh, great. And I said, how about if you do most of the talking, I'll introduce you. And if you just tell people about how you went from being sent to a, a special school to, you know, dominating Harvard University, I think people would like to hear that story.
00;41;54;28 - 00;42;15;00
Dr. David Rose
And he says, well, okay, if you want to, but he said, I'd like to have more of what, you know, anyway, so we had that kind of conversation. So that was this morning, literally having that conversation of maybe we should work together. Yes, that's my story for today. And feeling like, okay, it's got the things you and I are really interested in.
00;42;15;00 - 00;42;42;19
Dr. David Rose
How am I bias? I almost wrote this guy off, and now I feel like, oh my God, he's a colleague and I'm going to learn from him. And and he probably some things for me, we're like, you know, Huggy all of a sudden this morning to me that's my, story for the moment that has a lot of what you and I are most interested in embedded within it, including that I do have lots of biases about who's a good learner and who's not a good learner.
00;42;42;25 - 00;42;45;03
Dr. David Rose
And it was embarrassing to have to confront them.
00;42;45;05 - 00;43;19;10
Nicole Tucker-Smith
Well, I love the story so much and it's so beautiful and honestly, beautifully vulnerable. But what I could, I could literally imagine or envision, like while you were talking, I think you use the words your bias was wiped away because you got to know him. You know that you literally saw him different, you know? And I think that's so much of the reason why we do the work that we do, because if we can just get people to listen and learn, even if you might think from the beginning, oh, they don't have anything to offer, right?
00;43;19;13 - 00;43;49;19
Nicole Tucker-Smith
But the more you know and learn about someone, the more it actually changes your perspective on who they can be, who they can offer, and how you're going to work together. Are you go from, I don't need to know you to we're going to build something together. Yeah. And that's why I'm really excited for the work that we're doing and the work they were going to be publishing around bias in the brain and how the networks work together, how you perceive somebody influences how you feel about them, and then that moves you into acting, right?
00;43;49;19 - 00;44;00;10
Nicole Tucker-Smith
And working together. And I just think it's really fascinating and beautiful and awesome, and it gives me strength and courage. Despite some current challenges that might get in the way of the work.
00;44;00;16 - 00;44;11;17
Dr. David Rose
Yeah, I agree, and so I'm, oh, too many things I want to say. But at any rate, sometime I hope that he and I will be together on your learning cast.
00;44;11;17 - 00;44;22;23
Nicole Tucker-Smith
Yay! Oh, we could definitely do that. Oh, we're going to have a part two. So if my producers are listening we're going to do part two. So we can tell the rest of the story. Because now I'm on like, oh, like what happened in between.
00;44;22;25 - 00;44;33;16
Dr. David Rose
This will be hard for you to sell at 79 year old talking to a 96 year old, I don't know how old he is, but to old white guys, what could they have of interest?
00;44;33;17 - 00;45;00;09
Nicole Tucker-Smith
Nope, not going to be hard. So let me tell you why. And honestly, it's our relationship that kind of inspired our podcast. Did we learn anything in the first place? Because the whole impetus behind the podcast is what can we learn by listening to diverse perspectives? That idea of if I can listen and learn from somebody else's story, do I actually gain a greater understanding of what this world has to offer?
00;45;00;14 - 00;45;22;16
Nicole Tucker-Smith
And so no, I, I think it's going to be great. I think it's going to be an amazing part two. Plus, we've left the audience on a cliffhanger. And honestly, I am really and maybe I'm I'm biased here. As a mother of I do think it's kind of amazing the power of a mother, a mother who says yes, who says no, I know you're capable, I know you're capable, and I am going to make sure you get what you need.
00;45;22;16 - 00;45;25;17
Nicole Tucker-Smith
I will change the system if I have to write.
00;45;25;24 - 00;45;50;21
Dr. David Rose
I know I want to hear that story, too. Maybe you can interview us. And. But what was so powerful about his mother, she just wouldn't take it. That take it that she had a kid couldn't learn. And, you know, he obviously couldn't learn some things and very well in the ways that they're taught and, she just had the inner strength which we all wish we had about our own children to say.
00;45;50;23 - 00;46;03;20
Dr. David Rose
You know what? I'm not going to. No, I'm not going to sign this. And he's going to stay here and we're going to figure out how we can learn here. I just realized I called it learning cache rather than lesson cast. And I do that and I'm old. You can see I'm old.
00;46;03;20 - 00;46;28;18
Nicole Tucker-Smith
It's okay. Well you know the lesson cast is kind of a play on that learning cast. You know all of those things but will definitely. And it makes me thinking maybe well we can start this question now. One thing that came up for me is this idea of, okay, so he's in his 90s, and I imagine that the landscape ideologies have changed since when he was in early elementary school.
00;46;28;20 - 00;46;52;16
Nicole Tucker-Smith
And since then there have been a lot of policies to move us more towards inclusive education. So the idea of including students, there's been so much research around how students with disabilities do better when they're in, for the most part, do better when they're in classrooms with students who are not identified with disabilities, partly with the exposure to rigorous content, all of those things.
00;46;52;16 - 00;47;15;14
Nicole Tucker-Smith
Right. So there's research around that. And I remember when I was, started out as an early teacher in 99, 2000, I remember we were that was really when co-teaching teaching started to become a big thing, co-teaching and inclusion. And, you know, that was 25 years ago, and I have found very, very few places that do inclusion well.
00;47;15;17 - 00;47;33;07
Nicole Tucker-Smith
And so it's not like we haven't been working on inclusion and inclusive practices for a minute. You know, it's been decades. And I just I don't know if you have thoughts or what. Why what are the barriers to having effective inclusive schools like what is it?
00;47;33;09 - 00;48;09;16
Dr. David Rose
It is, a hard journey. And I think, I'm no expert on how to answer that question, but there's two broad things for me. One is that we haven't had good power tools until recently to be able to recognize the differences, like this guy had just told the story about. If he had the digital tools, he would have just said, okay, well, I know I'm going to need my textbooks in digital form because I'm dyslexic and I'll continue to work on my learning to read.
00;48;09;16 - 00;48;39;21
Dr. David Rose
But please don't take me out of science class. And, all of that. So we have we have better tools, are more powerful because they are able to recognize and, adapt to individual differences. And the old tools just didn't do that. Blackboards and, textbooks just don't adapt to individual differences. So that's helpful because I think it's like any other field where new technologies come in and just make, oh, you mean you can fly to Europe?
00;48;39;21 - 00;49;23;29
Dr. David Rose
Who knew that? You know, 100 years ago? And that's one thing that I think the tools we have to use are more powerful, because they are more able to adapt and recognize individual differences and create many paths, rather than everybody's got to be on the same path. But secondly, that part of the reason I wanted to begin with my story was that we have lots of biases that we have inherited from our traditions of various kinds about other people and about ourselves and those are significant barriers to not just the barriers that are inside textbooks and on blackboards, but the people that generated the textbooks of people that are writing on the blackboards.
00;49;24;02 - 00;49;46;27
Dr. David Rose
Myself, I wanted to begin with a story, right? Turns out I had a bias about this guy, which was unfortunate, and I would have never known. But sheer luck that the dinner took a long time to serve, and we have a lot of work to do on that front for all of us. I think you and I are in the same place in this that we think anti-bias work of all kinds is sort of the central core of education.
00;49;46;27 - 00;50;11;27
Dr. David Rose
It's what saying, I know it looks like the sun goes around the Earth, but in fact, science and real learning shows us that that's not what's going on and that our whole lives are going to be like that, where our first impressions are first, biases in many, many ways, lead us to errors, some of them ghastly errors that school largely.
00;50;11;28 - 00;50;30;09
Dr. David Rose
And this is new for me to say, but schools largely should be about anti-bias work, saying, you know what? The sun actually doesn't travel around us, and it takes us learning some science to know why that's true. And let's let's do some of that. And it'll help you when you find other phenomena that you can't explain and so on.
00;50;30;14 - 00;50;50;09
Dr. David Rose
I think facts will be everywhere. You don't have to aren't going to have to teach kids facts. They're going to be delivered, you know, in on their watcher, in their eyeglasses. And truthfully, and I say this knowing that I don't mean this in the literal sense, but kids don't have to read to get that information anymore. It'll read itself to them.
00;50;50;12 - 00;51;13;07
Dr. David Rose
We have to think about what are we going to be doing in education, and largely because those technologies are going to have biases built into them, they're going to have bad ideas. What we need is kids and grown ups who can say, okay, I understand that that's what it says here, or that's what the lecture said, but I need to think about whether that's really true or not.
00;51;13;07 - 00;51;51;03
Dr. David Rose
And how would I identify whether that's true or not? Where would I go for information to give me a broader view? And do I have biases myself that make me more likely to believe this guy? Even though he may be dead wrong and having students at the end of their schooling who largely are able to look at not only the biases in the information that's coming because of becoming vast amounts of it, but biases in themselves as they look at that information and that looking at the things that inhibit us from getting to the real truth of, you know, what the sun really does is going to be what we really need to be
00;51;51;03 - 00;51;55;02
Dr. David Rose
teaching kids. And there's lots of work to be done for sure.
00;51;55;04 - 00;52;24;29
Nicole Tucker-Smith
I think that's such a powerful concept to pause on and really recognize. Education is anti-bias work, that learning is questioning assumptions that we have preconceived notions, and learning is exploring that and proving or disproving, especially when we think about, as you mentioned, the tools technology is going to have to change with their typical programing looks like. So what is learning at its essence?
00;52;24;29 - 00;52;36;04
Nicole Tucker-Smith
And if we don't do that, then we are, you know, if we don't recognize that learning is questioning assumptions, then we're heading for a really dangerous path and are all going to be run by robots. Yeah.
00;52;36;06 - 00;53;01;09
Dr. David Rose
I, you know, experiment with I just you got to and so I typed in my name. What a shock that I want to see what it knows about me. And it gave me credit for several books that I had never written or did anything on. You know, it says he's published it on it lists these books, which I didn't write.
00;53;01;12 - 00;53;24;15
Dr. David Rose
And, you know, what's the word that they use in, they don't say dreams. It's a word that when I makes up something, hallucinations. You could say it's hallucinating, but whatever. It's taken information sorting and then and, And figures. I must have written that book if I wrote this one. Whatever. God knows. And it was just dead wrong.
00;53;24;17 - 00;53;53;14
Dr. David Rose
We're going to have to have kids who are really. Well, now, I can't take this as a given. None of this stuff. And people are going to obviously seed the AI information with falsities because they'll want to and biases that they have and don't even know it will be in there and so on. So we're going to need kids that are really able to question their own biases, the biases of this stuff that's been sent to them.
00;53;53;17 - 00;54;04;14
Dr. David Rose
And again, it'll come just when they just ask who was the best basketball player in 1936, it's going to tell them. But what we need our kids to say. But let me think about let.
00;54;04;14 - 00;54;08;14
Nicole Tucker-Smith
Me, let me give it to Nick.
00;54;08;17 - 00;54;17;01
Dr. David Rose
Was so the there was a lot of kids who couldn't play basketball because, you know et cetera. And think, anyway.
00;54;17;04 - 00;54;37;18
Nicole Tucker-Smith
Yeah. And so that makes me, you know, think about, a couple of things. I was working with a group of, special education leaders, and they were checking to see the validity of special education goals written by AI. Right. So they put into I don't remember I don't remember which tool they were using to create a special education goal.
00;54;37;18 - 00;54;47;01
Nicole Tucker-Smith
I think to me what is interesting is like 50% of what came out of that result was good information, and 50% was exactly the wrong thing to do.
00;54;47;04 - 00;54;47;20
Dr. David Rose
Yeah.
00;54;47;23 - 00;55;07;12
Nicole Tucker-Smith
Right. And if you don't understand the not the nuance of education and learning and human behavior, you might say, oh, this looks good. And half of it was decent. And having was exactly the opposite of what should happen for children. And so I just think, you know, helping learners, that is much there's a much more sophisticated way to teach and to learn.
00;55;07;14 - 00;55;29;28
Nicole Tucker-Smith
And I think that when we think about inclusive spaces, part of what you mentioned is we have the tools now. But what I've seen a lot of schools do is because of our bias of what is rigor, not allow those tools to be used. Right. So in my daughter's school, they use laptops and they had the option where for certain texts students could have it read aloud, which makes sense.
00;55;29;28 - 00;55;36;15
Nicole Tucker-Smith
I'm doing social studies. Why can't I have the text read aloud to me? I'm doing something. Where can I have the text? They turned it off, right? So they turned the feature off.
00;55;36;18 - 00;55;37;28
Dr. David Rose
Really? For everybody?
00;55;37;29 - 00;55;39;01
Nicole Tucker-Smith
For everybody.
00;55;39;03 - 00;55;39;28
Dr. David Rose
Wow.
00;55;40;00 - 00;55;54;19
Nicole Tucker-Smith
And then I guess you had to file a petition to get it turned on. But why? And so it's that bias of, well, if it's read aloud to you that's not rigorous. No, that's not it doesn't. What is the goal in this moment. And I think that's why UDL is so powerful because it helps us clarify what is the goal in this moment.
00;55;54;22 - 00;56;01;11
Nicole Tucker-Smith
What do we really mean by rigor? I often tell teachers when I'm working with I was like, rigor is not rigor mortis. Like we don't have to stay stuck.
00;56;01;13 - 00;56;16;27
Dr. David Rose
Yeah, that. I was just thinking. I think I began by talking about that he was a, you know, non reader and how he got to be MD, PhD and master and whatever. All of that is going to be an interesting story.
00;56;16;27 - 00;56;17;18
Nicole Tucker-Smith
Exactly.
00;56;17;22 - 00;56;28;20
Dr. David Rose
And if they had said, no, no, no, you cannot get your books from Bookshare. You can't no, no digital stuff. You got to read it yourself. You know, just be ridiculous.
00;56;28;21 - 00;56;43;27
Nicole Tucker-Smith
And we're depriving the world, you know, of a beautiful mind, literally. And that's that's that's the cost. That's the cost of not questioning what we mean by rigorous learning, what we mean by engaging.
00;56;44;00 - 00;57;04;24
Nicole Tucker-Smith
So I have a question for you. So there's a little game we like to play called yay or nay. And I have kind of a complicated question for you. So we're only going to do one yay or nay question because this one I don't know. This one is this one's this one's going to be a challenging one. But I really I think our audience would really like to hear what you think about this.
00;57;04;24 - 00;57;25;29
Nicole Tucker-Smith
Yay. Or any question. So, the way it works is we're going to ask an intentionally ambiguous question. Right? So it's going to be like, I don't know, yay or nay. I have mixed feelings, but kind of just kind of go with yay to this or no to that, or it's a mixed match. And so for this question, here we go.
00;57;26;01 - 00;58;09;15
Nicole Tucker-Smith
We're talking about we've been talking about inclusive practices. And in an attempt to make inclusive practices more widespread with some states or school districts or universities or individual schools have done in an attempt to make these inclusive practices more widespread, is that they they call it d siloing. They'd siloed special education and accessibility. So rather than have a special education department that is separate, or an accessibility office that works on its own, now folks from that department are integrated or they collaborate with colleagues under the umbrella of diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility.
00;58;09;17 - 00;58;45;06
Nicole Tucker-Smith
And they have that as a running thread throughout their institution. So now here's the question given recent executive orders by the now current president of the United States, that requires defunding Dia programing and positions that are tied to federal funds. Should the inclusion of individuals with disabilities still be considered equity work, if it potentially means losing funding and staffing?
00;58;45;08 - 00;58;49;07
Nicole Tucker-Smith
What do you think? Yay or nay or in between?
00;58;49;09 - 00;59;22;10
Dr. David Rose
Oh, that's a a hard question, but I think you know me well enough to know that. I would say I would go with working toward the long term. We need especially public schools and public colleges and all of that to succeed for all of our students equitably. And that that is their mission. They don't have another mission. There might be some pushback and even some retrenchments.
00;59;22;12 - 00;59;54;18
Dr. David Rose
And I have to say, we, you, me, everybody like us is going to have to think more about how do we teach so that the bias against what we're doing here doesn't prevail. And I think it's fair to say, I feel that I missed some opportunities to educate better so that it wouldn't get to this place, and that I look back on, you know, long career and realize, you know what?
00;59;54;20 - 01;00;16;02
Dr. David Rose
That there are a lot of people who really think what we're doing is the wrong way to go, and plenty of people who don't. And we didn't focus on them enough, but focus on them enough. We didn't figure out how do we approach this. It can't be the same way for all of those people. Because that didn't work.
01;00;16;02 - 01;00;41;29
Dr. David Rose
And I think we thought just a sheer good idea of UDL would win. And I don't think we thought carefully enough about how are we going to do this so it will win for everybody, meaning that people will say, yeah, I do want to try that, even though I have suspicions about all sorts of other things, including all you smart asses from Boston.
01;00;42;01 - 01;01;08;03
Dr. David Rose
And that we would need to do a better job. I think that's where I'm, I would say troubled right now, kind of looking back at my career and feeling we were not successful at reaching everybody. And that's the worst case scenario for UDL. If we reached mostly people, if we're, like Gus and we were not paying attention, I think you're way ahead of me in this area, Nicole.
01;01;08;03 - 01;01;35;08
Dr. David Rose
And I think there are other people. And so the yay and nay goes. I think the ultimate outcome, I would say, is still a yay. And we have to say nay to some of the narrow practices that we adopted ourselves to try to get there saying to everybody, you've got to come along my path. I think we did that to some people, and you've got to become more like me rather than, as you said earlier, listening to say, who are you now?
01;01;35;08 - 01;01;54;14
Dr. David Rose
And how can we help you get where you want to go? And a better way to introduce UDL to lots of people. So I think UDL needs to take a second look at its own practices and said, we have done some really good things and we haven't done it well yet. That will probably always be true. We'll have to be always learning.
01;01;54;16 - 01;02;07;20
Dr. David Rose
I hate it when I feel like schools feel like, oh good, we've got UDL, we've got to practice, and now we know what to do. And I they can't think like that. They need to think we're just at the beginning and we need to keep learning.
01;02;07;23 - 01;02;26;06
Nicole Tucker-Smith
Always learning, always learning. That's such a beautiful thing. And at the heart of it, education is about an equitable learning environment, especially public schools and equitable learning environments where every learner like that's its job. And to say that it's not about equity work is really missing the whole world.
01;02;26;09 - 01;02;45;17
Dr. David Rose
Yeah, there's no reason, reason to have public education if that's not its goal, you know, just, you know, frightening. But I, I think what's would be bad if we started just blaming right, that the situation and that we need to say no. You know what? We lived here. There are things we need to do better.
01;02;45;23 - 01;02;47;02
Nicole Tucker-Smith
There are things we need to do.
01;02;47;02 - 01;03;07;08
Dr. David Rose
Yes, it's the equivalent of in the old days when I was teaching saying, oh, well, he's not a good learner, so I'm not going to bother teaching him. And I think we as educators need to say, okay, there are people who didn't buy what we were promoting and we didn't teach. Well, here's what we need to say. And we're going to be better.
01;03;07;11 - 01;03;08;10
Dr. David Rose
Yep.
01;03;08;12 - 01;03;29;02
Nicole Tucker-Smith
Yep. We're going to be better. Because what else can we do? The kids need us. And the you know, what else can we do? We got to just say, all right, what are we going to do better? I love that.
01;03;29;04 - 01;03;57;16
Nicole Tucker-Smith
So my last question for you is just, you know, you mentioned your long, extensive career. What are your hopes for the future of education? And I know you said there are things that you could do better, but I think that's kind of all of us, especially those who really care, like, oh, I could have done that better. I think you've done amazing things and I would and I want to preface this by saying that one of my not only biggest learning experiences has been working with you, but one of my biggest joys, really.
01;03;57;16 - 01;03;58;16
Dr. David Rose
That's very sweet.
01;03;58;19 - 01;04;25;03
Nicole Tucker-Smith
You've taught me so much about education and about myself. It's that really questioning and learning and rethinking and examining that also has brought me a lot of joy, because I can see things in a way I didn't see them before. And so I would love to know, just what are your hopes for, you know, given everything that you've lived through and seen and created, what are your hopes for the future?
01;04;25;06 - 01;05;03;25
Dr. David Rose
Well, I guess I do. I don't know how to say this quickly, and I'm not sure I have a coherent picture, but it's interesting to be here among people who have lived their lives already and hear their stories. And largely, this is a place where education worked. The people who live here, I am trying to listen to them about why even this guy I began with, who had every Harvard degree imagined a bull who was flunking everything when he began learning from him.
01;05;03;25 - 01;05;32;05
Dr. David Rose
And as you pointed out, I wish I could learn from his mother, about how you do that. How did they do it when it was even worse? And now I'm here kind of listening to what people who have found learning to be at the center of their lives. What more can I learn, you know, about how to do this and how to do it with great individual differences in people?
01;05;32;07 - 01;05;59;11
Dr. David Rose
I guess what I'm stumbling here, I would say that I see education as moving away from facts and figures, because we can literally look up everything that we want to find and so on, and a lot of the things that we thought were important to teach, we don't need to teach anymore. The things we need to teach are much deeper and more interesting about, I would say, how do we learn together?
01;05;59;14 - 01;06;22;12
Dr. David Rose
And in part, and I think that's been my experience with you, that, you know, things that I don't know, and that's what's made this is a great partnership for me, is that I've learned as much from you as certainly as you have learned from me. We need everybody to get that feeling. We're in school together, and we're lucky if we don't all look alike.
01;06;22;12 - 01;06;43;09
Dr. David Rose
And if we don't all have the same backgrounds, it would just great if everybody thought, this is fabulous. Yes, everybody looked exactly like me, because I'm going to learn more. And I think, you know, and I know that there's research that shows that you're better off if you're in a school where there's diversity because you learn more and it's not narrow, it's brighter.
01;06;43;11 - 01;07;11;06
Dr. David Rose
I just hope, I guess, that we all get there where we want to be. In schools where diversity is recognized, celebrated and prepares kids for a future in a world where we value each other, even if we don't look exactly alike, even if we're not the same gender, even if we don't believe in gender, whatever. All of those things, what brings us together is that we value learning immensely, and we're not on the same paths to get there.
01;07;11;08 - 01;07;18;24
Dr. David Rose
And our schools and our parents recognize that. And and value that. Maybe we take longer to figure out what a good answer your question was.
01;07;18;25 - 01;07;40;04
Nicole Tucker-Smith
No, that was great. That was a great answer. I love it that we value one another, that we value learning from one another. I think that's a much more interesting thing to explore than times tables. I'm not saying people don't need to know timetables, I'm just saying that part of the resistance I think we see when I talk with teachers like, oh, these students aren't engaged.
01;07;40;04 - 01;07;45;03
Nicole Tucker-Smith
I was like, they know that some of what you're teaching doesn't matter, right?
01;07;45;05 - 01;07;46;15
Dr. David Rose
Yeah.
01;07;46;17 - 01;07;50;28
Nicole Tucker-Smith
And so they just not having it. So let's talk about the things that really matter.
01;07;51;00 - 01;07;51;19
Dr. David Rose
Yeah.
01;07;51;21 - 01;07;52;05
Nicole Tucker-Smith
Let's talk with you.
01;07;52;05 - 01;08;16;06
Dr. David Rose
And that's what's possibly really neat ahead is that we realize that's why we've gathered the kids together. And in some ways it will look like ancient education again to where people were in communities. And tribes and so on, where the kids were together learning together, because there was no other way. Well, there'll be some things we bring back.
01;08;16;06 - 01;08;29;26
Dr. David Rose
I think about how it is to learn to work together. We're going to be hunting together. We're going to be gathering together. And that's the most important things for us to learn about. I think the technology is going to gather for us.
01;08;29;29 - 01;08;37;27
Nicole Tucker-Smith
But how can we be together right, I love it. Anything else you want to share? David? This has been just amazing.
01;08;37;29 - 01;09;07;29
Dr. David Rose
I don't think so. Although I guess I wanted to end up just thinking about what is neat is to be here in this completely different community. Everybody, literally the average age is probably 85. And finding out how exciting learning is still here. That the nice thing is that people have gathered here because they're willing to pay a crapload of money to be in an institution, which is an institution, for God sakes.
01;09;07;29 - 01;09;27;13
Dr. David Rose
But they've chosen to come here because it's known as a learning community more than as a health community. So that is really encouraged me. And I'm going to kind of delve in a little bit more here to understand what that means at our age. But I will say, I think it's keeping everybody younger here.
01;09;27;15 - 01;09;29;26
Nicole Tucker-Smith
That's exactly what I was going to say.
01;09;29;29 - 01;09;54;29
Dr. David Rose
They get up in the morning and they're looking forward to their class on, you know, Sartre and Beethoven's meeting in Paris never happened, of course. But, after they are invested in learning and I want to learn from them about how can we maintain that for everybody? Yes. It's a nice group to be part of and everybody deserves to, you know, find places like this.
01;09;55;05 - 01;09;55;20
Dr. David Rose
Yeah.
01;09;55;23 - 01;09;57;29
Nicole Tucker-Smith
Everybody deserves the chance to learn.
01;09;58;01 - 01;09;59;02
Dr. David Rose
01;09;59;04 - 01;10;15;01
Nicole Tucker-Smith
This is just been an honor and a pleasure. And I appreciate you and everything that you've done and continue to do. And just I really appreciate just how genuine and true you are as a human being. So thank you.
01;10;15;04 - 01;10;22;04
Dr. David Rose
Very sweet. I've, as I've said many times, I've learned more from you than you've learned from me. That asymmetry is okay with me.
01;10;22;07 - 01;10;34;12
Nicole Tucker-Smith
It's okay. All right. As long as I know you. All right? It's good. Put it on my tab. Well, thank you. And I will. Of course. See you soon. Bye, David.
01;10;34;14 - 01;10;35;18
Dr. David Rose
Bye bye. See you at work.
01;10;35;19 - 01;10;41;11
Nicole Tucker-Smith
Yes, I'll see you work.
01;10;41;13 - 01;10;55;02
Dr. David Rose
Did we learn anything? Was created by Nicole Tucker Smith, produced by Nicole Tucker Smith. The model, even tall and Cody Hanyu. Edited and engineered by Cody Hanyu. You can continue to listen to do We Learn Anything wherever you get your podcasts?