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Mia Chmiel and Melissa Emler share all the strategies to make Universal Design for Learning easier to implement in your school or district. Learn more and join the community at udlforward.community
The Learning Experience, powered by CAST
S.05, Ep. Bonus 1: Secret Stash: An Interview with Michelle Ring-Hanson and JoAnn Miller-UDL-Con 2025 Innovative Practice Awardees
Kelli Suding: Welcome to the Learning Experience powered by CAST. I'm one of your hosts, Kelli Suding.
Luis Perez: And I'm Luis Perez.
Bryan Dean: And I'm Bryan Dean.
Kelli Suding: We are three educators here ready to break down barriers until learning has no limits. Let's do this.
Bryan Dean Well, folks, welcome back to another wonderful Learning Experience powered by CAST. This is a super, super secret bonus episode that you get to listen to. I, as always, am Bryan Dean. I got that clean gangster lean and that dip in my hip and that strut in my cut. And I am here with two of our UDL award winners from 2025, who are doing amazing work and have done amazing work with implementation across the entire state here in the US. And I am so very excited to have them both here. If you don't know, then you should probably get to know these names. So with me today, I have JoAnn Miller, and I have Michelle Ring-Hanson. Hey, what's up, ladies? How are we?
Michelle Ring-Hanson We're doing great. How are you?
Bryan Dean You know, I'm trying to stay warm up here in this northern US area up here. I know, right? So just for the listeners, your work was done in Wisconsin, correct? And so if you are one of our international listeners, Wisconsin and Michigan, where I am from, are both in the middle of the country.
JoAnn Miller I'm joining you in trying to stay warm, Bryan.
Bryan Dean In fact, Michigan is one of those places where sometimes you have to go south to get into Canada. So we kind of all have experienced the cold and kind of lived through it. Now, JoAnn, what is it like where you're at right now as far as temperature and trying to stay warm?
JoAnn Miller Well, we're coming off of an Arctic blast right now. So today we might get into the low 30s, but over the past couple of days, we've been in the negatives.
Bryan Dean There is so much, ladies, that I want to talk to you about, not just our shared interest in snow and the winter, but also just what's been going on with you. You did receive the 2025 UDL Innovative Practice Award, which is a massive, massive award. We get tons of entries.
And that award spans all practices. So that's from higher ed to early childhood, from workforce to K-12 education, from industry to classrooms. We just get a ton of folks that get nominated for that award. And then we have a committee that goes through all of the applications, takes a look at them and says, “yeah, this is the one.” And then that gets reviewed again.
And so it's kind of a lengthy process, but it's one that we stand by because it allows us to get to know the folks and what they are doing. So correct me if I'm wrong, but you both received the Innovative Practice Award for basically long-term, deep systemic implementation of UDL across Wisconsin.
Michelle Ring-Hanson That is correct.
Bryan Dean That is, you know, for me, that's a mind blower. So just given some stats, how many school districts are there in the state of Wisconsin?
Michelle Ring-Hanson I think 485.
Bryan Dean 485. And how many, if you know (and if not, that's okay, we can probably take a look at it and do a little fact-finding of our own), but how many students does that encompass within the state of Wisconsin?
JoAnn Miller I know in the CESA 8 area we have just a little over 20,000 students and we're all rural districts.
Bryan Dean And so can you explain what a rural district is?
JoAnn Miller In Wisconsin, there's rural, urban, and suburban districts. I don't know the exact definition of what a rural district is, but it’s a large geographic area with small numbers of students. So for example, in one of our schools, each class has three or four students.
Bryan Dean Just do it a quick fact-finder, it's about 164,000 or 164,500 students throughout the entire state of Wisconsin. It's just a massive number. When we say there's almost 500 districts and then some of those districts are rural in that your third grade classroom for that district has seven students. Your graduating high school class, maybe 20 people or less. When we start talking about that, that's very different than what we would consider an urban school, right? Which is typically, you know, typically we're looking at maybe a thousand, maybe 1500 students in a graduating class. Your third grade students might be 500 or 600. And that to me, that speaks to a different kind of practice, right?
Bryan Dean Dealing with a rural school and a suburban school and then urban schools are all three very different entities to get them all kind of on the same page around UDL and to start saying, we need to implement this statewide. This is a huge undertaking. That to me, I was looking through your nomination, I was like, that is amazing. And I want to get to how you folks kind of handled that; how you guys game plan that and came up with that. But first, I always have to ask, how did you come to this UDL journey? Individually and then what was the fairy tale meeting of these two great minds that said, yeah, we can take on a state implementation. How did that happen?
Michelle Ring-Hanson Well, to kind of piggyback off the idea of the school districts in Wisconsin, I spent my entire career in education, so I had the ability to work in both urban and suburban districts as well as rural school districts. I believe if you look at our K12 enrollment in the state of Wisconsin, there's roughly about 805,000 students in public schools. Yes, we do have private school enrollment as well. And right now, I believe it's about 150,000 students that are in private schools. Our project, our Wisconsin UDL work, was really funded from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction who supported Universal Design for Learning.
And one of the things that we were very proud of is the idea of being the “project of yes.” We wanted to find ways to create opportunities for school districts regardless of size, whether they're rural, urban, or suburban, regardless of size, to be able to join in the work and find a good fit for them. So for me, I came to UDL when I was working in my CESA 7 role and had the privilege of joining the state team and starting to really make connections between school improvement work, the high quality data work and the principles of Universal Design for Learning.
Bryan Dean Right, so you said CESA. What does that stand for?
Michelle Ring-Hanson Wisconsin has 12 cooperative educational service agencies. I was working at our CESA 7 location, which is in that northeastern Wisconsin area. JoAnn was also at one of our service agencies called CESA 8.
JoAnn Miller And Wisconsin partnered with CAST starting in 2014. And that is really how the Universal Design for Learning ball started rolling in Wisconsin. And I was lucky enough to be part of that initial cohort of CESA consultants that were part of that grant work. And through that, the evolution of a systematic implementation process developed. Michelle and I were partnered a few years later as the concept of these classroom-based trials began to materialize. And Michelle and I were partnered because we each have strengths that culminated in having a repeatable and replicable process that can be, that is, happens at the classroom level, but has implications for the larger systems, whether they be schools, districts, or those statewide systems.
And one of the key features of our role was that we partnered with all of the other CESAs throughout the state to develop experts in each of those regions to be able to pick up the trials process and support the school districts in their particular region. So although Michelle and I became the spearhead for the trials, it was because we supported not just classrooms, schools, and districts, but more importantly, we supported those other consultants in all of the regions of Wisconsin who could then turn around and support the districts in their region. So it's really important that these statewide implementations don't stay at the state level department.
That technical implementation is supported at every level so that we don't have state people trying to tell classroom people what to do. They're too far removed from what the practical complex situation in the classroom is.
Bryan Dean I love that description, JoAnn, because I think it's really key, right? Because it's this idea that you know your classroom as a teacher, and we shouldn't take that away from you. However, you know your classroom, right? And then as a building principal, I kind of know my building. As a district administrator, I know the trends of my district, or as a county level individual, I know what's going on in all of the districts in that area.
And so by not putting boundaries on it or saying we are going to tell you what you need to do, you're allowing for these different perspectives to all come in, and everybody to play their part and do what they're really good at. I know it sounds simple, but that is massive. That's really part of that innovative practice. It's not as simple as just knowing what my lane is and staying in it. It's knowing and coordinating all the lanes together, right? And saying, we're going to hold those. And then that weaves into a bigger tapestry.
Michelle Ring-Hanson Right. I think one of the key features for us was to ensure that the process wasn't dependent on a specific person. Because again, that intellectual knowledge, if that person leaves, goes with the person. So one of the other pieces for us was, in addition to having that outreach and every CESA region in Wisconsin, we also wanted there to be tools and practical resources that could stand alone and be picked up by anyone who is interested in the trials process, but also who was interested in really learning and bringing Universal Design for Learning to the classroom.
You know, having that great system, having those multiple resources in both the human side of the work, but also in the resource side of the work and the technical tools in place was one of the reasons that our project was sustainable. And that the work was sustainable. We really looked at making sure that when a district wanted to dabble in UDL or get their feet wet in UDL that they did so with purpose and support, but also that they didn't become reliant on an external resource that if that resource went away, then the work stopped.
Bryan Dean I see two things to that, Michelle, that I'd really find interesting. The sustainability is always the hardest part in UDL, right? Because UDL very oftentimes feels almost like this intangible. You know it, but it's real hard because we always have people who are new to UDL who are always saying things like, what does it look like? What does it look like? What does it look like? And you're like, well, it's based on context. It's based on, the individuality of your classroom, your students, how that interaction plays, and it's based on the day. And that makes it really hard to say this is exactly what it looks like. And that leads to being really hard with sustainability. So by building these tools, you hit sustainability. And maybe that stuff was like the primary, but I think by being able to release that and having that philosophy of, ‘if one person leaves, we don't want to lose the institutional knowledge.’
So it becomes more of an invitation as well, which UDL at its very basis is pretty grassroots. That's how it started, and by making it an invitation, then I get to put my own interpretation on it.
Was that intentional? Having it feel like an invitation?
JoAnn Miller Absolutely, absolutely. The choice and autonomy is as important for the professional as it is for the students of that professional.
Bryan Dean Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. Say it again for the folks in the back. Yes, it is.
JoAnn Miller That choice and autonomy and that having worked with many teachers using the trials that was a very important part of their ability to feel like they wanted to do this process. And it's not an easy process because they're interrogating their own practice, something that we feel like we do every day, but this is such a, kind of an action research flavor to it, right? And it can get uncomfortable, but because we've put so much choice and autonomy on the teachers themselves, and we really believe in honoring the classroom professionals and their professionalism.
Listen, one of the things that I always say is if we trust teachers to grade their students that have lifelong implications for those students, and that can get uncomfortable, then we ought to trust those teachers to be able to understand whether their practices are changing engagement and impacting academic achievement.
Bryan Dean Yeah, absolutely. 100%. No notes. Perfect.
JoAnn Miller And I think unfortunately, since the time of state testing that's come out, federal testing, we've reduced that ability to believe in teachers to know that. We've told them every test has to be validated and scientifically accurate. And our judgments as professionals in the classroom are based on our professional knowledge and our professional experience. And those two things, I don't know if I really want to say that they're more valid than state testing, but they're as valid as state testing.
Bryan Dean Absolutely. I think that's it. There's a place, right? There's a place for state testing. You need to know how you stack up and it's part of that feedback loop, right? Getting a grade is part of the feedback loop. It lets me know how I'm doing, but it is not the only thing. How do I feed up to where I want to go next? How do I feed through so that this stays with me? Those things are just as crucially important in learning.
Oftentimes state tests become an autopsy on data that has happened before and not what's happening now.
JoAnn Miller That's exactly right. That's an outcome data piece that tells me about an entire system. It doesn't give me immediate feedback on the impact that I'm having on these students in this time in this classroom with the complexities that are involved in this context.
Michelle Ring-Hanson But I do think the one piece that our trials work has emphasized is the importance of evidence. again, we value our professional practice and professional judgment, but we do want there to be some layer of evidence so we move beyond just an intuition about how students are doing into an evidence base that we can make informed decisions around. And I think that's the one piece for us that we really emphasize in the trials work was the collection of data and the analysis of data in order to make meaning from the evidence of Universal Design for Learning and the UDL practices that were put in place in the classroom and how those practices influence student engagement and their academics.
Bryan Dean Wow. I mean, that that's it. And it helps validate my intuition. That's what I've always felt, if you've been teaching for 20 years, you kind of know what works, what doesn't work to a certain degree. But if you don't have the evidence that backs it, you can't validate that your intuition is right. You can just fight for it and say, I know, because I know the practice or craft of teaching for 20 years. But UDL, and what you folks are discussing, this idea of valid evidence collection that is suited helps reinforce that intuition that I have as a teacher. So it validates me and it's real time and it's the kids sitting in front of me.
Michelle Ring-Hanson And it's real time. Yes, so the teachers can make decisions with that. They can adjust practice with that. They can also adjust strategies for their students and they can validate and help the students make sense of their own learning. Right, and we know that the ultimate goal of student agency comes from students being able to talk about their own learning and to monitor their own progress.
JoAnn Miller Bryan, let me go back to that intuition piece for just a moment. Because one thing that we found with the teachers that have worked through this trials process is you're right. as teachers, oftentimes we say, “I know because my intuition tells me. I know it when I see it.” And it's really interesting because our intuition has resulted in the current system that we have.
And when teachers go through this process, because they're collecting that evidence in a way that they can see it, and they can also share it in a common way with their colleagues, it calls into question those assumptions about our intuition that we've made. So teachers have revealed to themselves through this process, and with the data analysis tool that Michelle developed, which is awesome.
They have identified for themselves a place where they've been biased with their own intuition on what their teaching has actually meant for all of their students. And they've been able to change practices that were deep-seated, that they thought were working for all students. And having the data in front of them helped them realize it wasn't exactly what I thought I was understanding about my students; because my data now is showing me that trying something different is affecting students that I didn't feel were reachable, or cared, or all of those words that we use as teachers to explain away disengagement.
Bryan Dean That harkens back to the double loop generative learning and that idea of, there are assumptions I make about learning and assumptions as a teacher or an educator that I make about learning and students and ability. And then there's something that happens. There's problem solving within the moment. And oftentimes you get stuck in the first loop of, ‘here are the results of this test. My kids didn't do great on it or my students didn't do well on it. I need to reteach the concepts of the test instead of challenging what are my assumptions about their learning or the design of the classroom design of the curriculum, whatever.’
What you're doing with evidence that is real time and evidence collection that is in the moment of these students in front of me is that you're actually putting them in a loop that says there's a problem that we need to solve that is an instructional issue maybe or knowledge issue, but there's also the fact that I have to challenge some of those assumptions I have about what students can do, what learning looks like; that this lesson that I thought for the last 15 years was an absolute banger maybe isn't hitting it like it used to, and maybe needs an update, right? That is, in and of itself, this really cool comparison of my practice in real time.
It's just another aspect of this that is an innovative way of looking at it and that it feels so natural. It feels so natural to do it. And when I'm confronted with that evidence, of course I want to make sure that I'm building the best lesson. And it doesn't mean throw out the lesson. It means reconsider my assumptions around that lesson. That is so approachable.
JoAnn Miller Well, it's not some outside person telling me that I need to do something different. It's me as a professional realizing that doing something different has a desired impact on my students.
Bryan Dean Right. And it has an impact on me as an educator. It makes it so that I want to go to school in the morning. And I'm not in the doldrums of the October blues, as I like to call them, where we just have to get to the next break. You know what I mean? Instead, we're in that excitement phase of, “I'm going to try this a little bit differently.” Where it's not a slog to sit on my couch on a Sunday night and lesson plan for the week.
And then seeing students accomplishing things at higher levels, improving, I think is also this other side. So you have these two prongs, three prongs that are going on that are constantly keeping everybody in the mix and having them evaluate who they are as a learner, learner agency, as they are as a teacher, teacher agency.
Michelle Ring-Hanson Well, and you know what we have found through this work and really based on both testimonials from teachers who have participated in the work, but also the data that we collected around teacher practices is there has really been significant efforts made in building a culture of collective efficacy. That the mindsets and the practices that are required have really come to the surface using the trials process.
Bryan Dean You just sent shivers through me with collective efficacy. Are you kidding me?
Michelle Ring-Hanson Yeah, and I think the one thing that, you know, for us was so important is knowing that together the trials process was bringing mindsets and practices into focus. So agency and purpose will drive curiosity and deep learning, right? But we also need that practice that's going to support the learning in the classroom. And as we think about collective efficacy, JoAnn mentioned this earlier, that teaching is complex and uncertain work, right? But we have to use that evidence, or in our case, it's the data, to make that learning experience visible. And when that learning experience is visible, teachers can then see the results or the impact of their efforts and that culture starts to take root not just in one classroom but in the participating classrooms as the teachers start to pay more attention to their practice and to the outcomes that students are gaining or yielding from those practices.
Bryan Dean So I do have a question. Whenever you're making this huge systemic change, enthusiasm and being excited about it just isn't enough for sustainability. It just won't be. It won't jump the gap of innovation. It'll stall out at about your majority group that likes it, your majority adopters. So there has to be some structures that are in place that are the most critical non-negotiables. Do you have some of those when you guys were approaching this? Like you said, these are things that we cannot budge on that we are going to maintain and we're going to do those with fidelity.
Michelle Ring-Hanson Definitely the answer is yes. There are some structures and practices that, when in place, create the environment for the trials work to be successful. Joe and I spent most of our time removing barriers for districts and schools and teachers so that the right work could be the easy work. When I say easy, I don't mean without struggle. I mean with support and structures and resources in place that make the work not just palatable but creating opportunities for success.
Some of those non-negotiables for us are time. Teachers have to have some collaboration time to be able to plan and do this work, but also be reflective and analyze the results of this work. Data collection for us and having evidence was a non-negotiable because again we don't want to go strictly on assumptions. We really do want that evidence to have a role in both what we say is happening for students in the classroom, but also how we describe the impact of our practices. And then I think another non-negotiable is having the appropriate supports in place for those doing the work. So they have a community of practice to lean into and to work alongside.
So we created, JoAnn and I, one of our non-negotiables was having a network for folks who were engaged in this work to come together on a monthly basis and share their celebrations, problem solve together, share strategies and techniques, but also share their data. And have those critical conversations about what we're seeing in our classrooms versus what's happening in another school in another district on another side of our state.
Bryan Dean Right. That reminds me of the Knoster Model of Change, [which indicates the five essential elements of change]. It’s like, ‘We have these things that we don't negotiate on and time is one of them, a community to bounce these ideas off of and foster growth of a culture, you know, is something that we don't negotiate on.’ We have to have those and having the room for introspection and retrospection are just massive; those are things that we can't negotiate. And it's interesting because those aren't tied to test scores.
Michelle Ring-Hanson No, they're not. The other thing, Bryan, we like folks to really have a vision for the work that they're going to be doing. And again, if you think about that Knoster Model of Change, you need vision, skills, incentives, resources, and an action plan. And we really wrapped the trials work around those components to ensure that anyone who was engaging in the work had access to these particular things, but also knew what they were committing to on an internal basis because again, external resources don't necessarily automatically build sustainability within a school, a district or a system.
They can get the ball rolling. They can create that incentive to move forward and help build the skill. But the resources that need to be in place are often dictated by a particular school or a district; their calendar and their funding. We really tried to take those five elements and consider them as we put in place the trials process and then formed the statewide project to invite schools into this work knowing that they too were going to be creating some commitments internally as well as receiving some incentives from the project itself.
Bryan Dean I think that's such a key balance because it's not only that there are external resources to help you, but there's culpability, right? While you're getting these things, you also have to be responsible with these things. You also have to foster these five areas. You have to foster your own resources in some way.
Resources doesn't just mean money, although oftentimes that's important. It doesn't just mean money. It also means people; means lots of different things. You have to have clear leadership. And if that leadership is a co-built model or co-designed model, it's even better. You have to be responsible as a district with these things, as a teacher in your classroom with these things in order for this to work just as much as have outside help and outside support. I think that's, that's a really nice balance.
JoAnn Miller And those tools that Michelle talked about earlier in the UDL implementation trial mentor toolkit that we wrote together includes a lot of those district- and school-level supports for leadership to be able to properly support classroom teachers in implementing the trials work. And all of those tools collectively include communication tools, include planning tools, and it creates a predictable environment that reduces the anxiety that comes along with the unknown when teachers are asked to implement an innovation and only the next step is revealed to them so they always feel like they're stepping off of a cliff.
Our process lays the whole thing out for a year and is adjustable based on each step's success or barrier that is a result of, you know, just being in a school, right? I mean, we had a fire drill, so that meeting couldn't take place. Well, we have flexibility involved in our process to be able to handle those things or handle more adult learning that needs to take place. We have ways to adjust for that.
Michelle Ring-Hanson I think the best thing about the toolkit also is that it is an open source resource for schools and states to look at. We did not want a financial barrier to be present when it came to accessing the tools and supports.
JoAnn Miller I think that's where the real work is. It's this toolkit. We appreciate being recognized with the award, but the spirit of our work is really having districts and states use the toolkit to bridge that theory of UDL into the practice of UDL that impacts students as we have seen in such a positive way.
So for me, and I think I speak for Michelle too; it's not about me. It's not about Michelle. It's really about amplifying the toolkit in a way that it can be picked up across not just districts in Wisconsin or states close to Wisconsin, but across the United States and in other places in the world.
Bryan Dean Yes, ma'am. Yeah, adapted, easily adaptable, flexible enough, but there is rigor in it. It makes sense. I love that concept of it's like stepping off a cliff and hoping there's something else underneath it. You can't see if there's another cliff, but if I step off, I just have to hope and have faith that there will be something there and sometimes there isn't.
And that's what leads us to implementation burnout. That's what leads us to initiative burnout. Like, okay, I'll just wait this out for the next two years, because you know, it's not going to work. But actually having that next step. And not only is it here, you can see it. So when you step off of this cliff, you know that there is something there. It's not a cliff anymore. It's an actual step.
That, I think, is massive. And then being able to adapt, have the toolkit be both rigorous enough to to constitute change and have guidelines around it or structure around it, but also be easily adaptive. That is amazing. There are so many different aspects in this project that are innovative in and of themselves. And when put together, they are just an amazing system of what true innovation science is. Innovation isn't just like, hey, I happened upon something that's kind of cool. Innovation is a planned out thing that has to happen and addresses a need and there are steps to it and there is process to it. And you have highlighted that.
I am just so in awe and so happy and honored to be sitting down in this conversation because this is one of the blueprints. Maybe there's another one, but I have not heard of one that is so well planned out and such a great balance of both leadership and outside resource, along with building capacity and agency and those that are involved in that system. That's amazing to me.
Michelle Ring-Hanson Well, thank you, Bryan. One of the things that we also were very committed to is creating a toolkit that wasn't strictly a lot of text. So the toolkit itself, for those folks that really love to read through the process is there, but we've embedded some videos that accompany certain parts of the process. We have visuals that help make sense of some of the text for folks as well. We've created opportunities for folks to access the toolkit in a variety of ways.
So the toolkit is organized for someone who wants to mentor or coach a team through the process. That's one of the keys for us is the mentoring aspect. Teachers have a lot to do on a daily basis. And as they think about this process and UDL practices, one of the things we wanted for them was to have someone who was going to facilitate going through the process with them so they didn't have to memorize or worry about every step of the process. They got to actually be present in each step of the process and reflect on what that step meant to students and their own practice, but also have someone who's going to help facilitate and plan. Someone who can be an advisor and a data guide and someone who can also be their learning leader to help cheerlead and navigate through the trials process.
Some of those key roles in going through the process and let the teacher focus on the implementation and the teaching. But having somebody there that says, “I'm part of the planning, I'm owning this with you, I'm sharing responsibility, I'm going to help facilitate, I can advise and bring the right tools for each step of the process to the table.” And you know, just because teachers work with a lot of data doesn't mean they like data. So having that mentor who can be that data guide, who is a helpful partner to support not only the gathering of the data, but going through the analysis and those reflective discussions. Oftentimes, we have so much data sitting in front of us, we don't know where the conversation should start.
Bryan Dean Yes, we have so much data; we are taking data all the time in education. Is it the right data? Is it being used in the right place? We don't know because we're consumers of it. We're not connoisseurs of when to use it and how to use it in the right way. And having a mentor just deepens the practice of everybody involved.
Michelle Ring-Hanson Absolutely, and one of the things that we did when we wrote the toolkit is we wrote it for a mentor. So it could be an external mentor, a consultant from a CESA. It could be an internal mentor, a coach. A lot of districts in Wisconsin do have literacy coaches or math coaches. They have curriculum coaches or in some of our schools, the principal was actually the mentor.
But when we wrote the toolkit, we wanted to have a cadence to the toolkit that was consistent for each step of the process. So the toolkit is written for mentors to learn the stage, to grow their own knowledge as a mentor, to lead the work, and to know when to adjust for a team. So the cadence for every stage of this process is learn, grow, lead, and know.
That has been so powerful because the mentor is someone who is a partner in the process rather than laying the process on top of the work that a teacher already has with lesson planning, grading, and classroom commitments.
Bryan Dean It's an embedded role that actually works alongside. I have to tell you, we're coming up on our time and I could just speak with you for hours because this has been an amazing conversation. We've talked about the toolkit. Where can folks take a peek at this?
JoAnn Miller It's located on the UDL Forward Community, the Wisconsin UDL Forward Community, which is one of the mighty networks. People will have to sign up, but it's free. And they are free to peruse the whole UDL implementation trial mentor toolkit. And there's downloadable tools on there. There's lots of information.
Bryan Dean And that community, UDL Forward, Wisconsin UDL Forward community is a great community. It's one of those communities that has great conversations, has great experts, but also people who are down in the trenches, down in the dirt and getting it done. I am a member of that community and I absolutely dig it.
So then my next question is, what's next? Where are we going? What are we doing? Are we like, this was our magnus opus and we are all set and I'm just going to chill in Mississippi and Wisconsin and this will be all right for a while. Or is there something else? Is there more that we're looking at?
Michelle Ring-Hanson Well, JoAnn and I will always have a passion and fire for UDL and the work. Just as with any version one, you see some of the enhancements that can really elevate the work to the next level. So for us, we have a version two in our future of the toolkit.
Right now, we're kind of taking the show on the road, if you will. We're trying to really get the word out beyond Wisconsin borders on the toolkit itself, the process, and the promise that if you engage in the work, you're going to see some outcomes.
Bryan Dean That's right, grow and show. That's what I call it. You end the grow and show phase. We're going to grow it a little bit more, but we're going to show it all around too and tell our story. I absolutely love that. And teaming up with Loui Lord Nelson, mean, come on, right? Like Loui is one of my favorite human beings in the entire world. I absolutely love her. She's a pinnacle of our UDL community. And if she gives you an approval, it means you know your stuff and so that is well deserved in my opinion. I cannot wait to see where this goes.
We will put the link to the community and how to join it within our podcast show notes. I will also encourage you to check out some of CAST resources, not just our publications, but we also have a community that is based around AI and UDL. about 2,500, almost 3,000 members thick and deep.
And that is also located on Mighty Networks and you can find it through our website. You can also find it through Mighty Networks if you just do a search for UDL or CAST UDL community, you'll find it there as well.
If you want to know more about Michelle and JoAnn's work or just their bios, check out our podcast notes, but also just kind of check them out, check out what they presented, where their recordings are. It will blow your mind and you'll be like, yes, I'm on this train. It's not just a hype train. It is a locomotive of change and I dig it.
So I just want to say, I really appreciate the conversation and I appreciate you two and the work that you're doing in UDL to bring it to another level. Thank you so much for joining us.
JoAnn Miller Can I say one more thing, Bryan? I want to add to Michelle's explanation of what's next for us. We want folks to know that if they need somebody to help them pick up the toolkit and make sense of it, we're available. So people can connect with us, and we would be happy to consult for a kickoff in a state, in a region, or a district.
Bryan Dean Yes, ma'am. And it is something that you're going to want. Like if you are looking at implementation at a state level, you know how difficult that's going to be. And these two ladies have not only done it, but they've done it well and successfully. And they've done it so that everybody feels really great coming out of it.
I dig that idea. I give them two thumbs up. So again, folks, this is bonus episode. We'll release it and you'll find out more. And we are so excited to have had Michelle and JoAnn here with us. So with that, I'm going to sign us off with my typical “peace, love and belly rubs.” And we'll see you on the flip side, y'all. Bye everyone.
?Thanks for joining us for another episode of The Learning Experience Podcast. We are so glad you're part of this conversation, and if you’re like me and today's episode sparks some ideas?it got your brain flowing?just remember there's so much more to explore out there. And remember that CAST is leading the way when it comes to accessibility, workforce innovation, professional development, and research. So visit cast.org to dive deeper.
S.05, Ep.06: Beyond the Visible: Accessibility, Inclusion, and Academic Stress