In this case study, we explore how one EALA Community of Action group devised a plan for a public awareness campaign to promote inclusive educational practices in schools.
Empowering Collaboration and Innovation
In December 2023, 28 participants from diverse education sectors convened for the second annual in-person EALA Community of Action. This unique gathering provides a space for professionals to come together, solve, and fund shared challenges. They do all this within 36 hours – from meeting each other to building and establishing a shared vision to creating a shared project.
Invitees ranged from direct service providers and school and district innovators to edtech and non-profit personnel. The one commonality: each brought a critical perspective on real-world problems in education and the tenacity to propose actionable solutions.
EALA also enlisted seven individuals with expertise in education, philanthropy, and acceleration to provide guidance and coaching throughout the event. These coaches provided valuable real-time feedback to the teams while also giving critical pushes in thinking for project alignment among participants.
Following a day of fast-moving and productive sessions, participants formed working groups, cultivated project ideas, and presented their funding proposals. In this unique participatory funding model, the members of the Community of Action have the sole responsibility of deciding which projects receive funding, empowering them to take ownership of their ideas and bring them to fruition.
One such project, “Inclusion Today!” funded by EALA, sought to make inclusive education a systemic priority by developing both the means and a comprehensive plan to launch a public awareness campaign that targets system-level leaders and highlights the need for inclusive educational practices in schools.
Fostering Inclusive Education Through Leader Commitment
“Inclusion Today!” is a collaboration between community members Jessi Brunken and Sergio Jara Arroyos from Blue Engine, Brooke Allen and Justine Katzenbach from Diverse Learners Cooperative, Tim Villegas and Brittni Sammons from Maryland Coalition for Inclusive Education (MCIE), and Cindy Camp from The Described and Captioned Media Program.
This diverse group found common ground around the EALA Promising Practice of Leader Commitment, united by a shared belief that inclusive practices and leadership in a community are inextricably linked – and this buy-in from the top of school systems and organizations is essential to success
This Fall, “Inclusion Today!” is launching a nationwide awareness campaign to encourage school and district leaders to commit to inclusive practices and provide a “starter kit” for inclusive action. The team hopes to support school systems to increase inclusionary practices through this initiative.
According to the Council for Exceptional Children, fewer than 15 percent of special education teachers believed their general education colleagues were highly prepared to work with students with disabilities (CEC, 2019). “Inclusion Today!” hopes to reach general education K-12 teachers and leaders to highlight the need for authentically inclusive practices. By garnering leader commitment to this mindset and providing preliminary guidance and tools for leaders to incorporate practices that support this approach, their goal of supporting school systems to increase inclusionary practices can be achieved.
Executing the “Inclusion Today!” Awareness Campaign
When planning their concept proposal, the “Inclusion Today!” team grounded their efforts on one crucial question:
How might we increase the awareness, interest, and commitment of school system leaders to take inclusive action, disrupting the long-standing disproportionate outcomes for students with disabilities?
From there, the team developed a comprehensive plan to execute their awareness campaign. The process began with planning their vision for working together and synthesizing available research to develop the campaign materials.
The “Inclusion Today!” team plans to utilize the following outlets to reach their audience:
-Social Media (LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter)
-Ads (Social Networks & Closed Networks)
-Newsletters
-Radio
-Press Releases
-PSAs
-Podcast
-Education Influencers
-Conferences
-Blogs
Once developed, the team will share the toolkit to support leader action and elicit follow-up with additional tools and resources.
Targeting System-Level Leadership for Lasting Impact
Focusing on school and district-level leaders and providing explicit examples of inclusive practices, “Inclusion Today!” hopes to catalyze lasting change within the education system.
“We are all working on and talking about the same issue as an indication of a broader systemic problem, which is that inclusive education is not a systemic priority,” the team shared. “Our organizations all understand that to see substantial and lasting change, we must target leadership as the primary audience.”
As part of their public awareness campaign, “Inclusion Today!” will elicit public commitment from school leadership through a pledge to engage in inclusive practices. After signing this pledge, leaders will be equipped with an Inclusive Practices Starter Kit to support them in taking immediate action in their communities. “Inclusion Today!” aims to reach more than one million students through this campaign by engaging numerous system-level leaders representing school districts across the United States by December 2024.